There had been an almost total suspension of military movements East and West.  Both sides were straining every resource to bring drilled armies into the field, when the decisive blow fell.  In his drives and walks about the James and Williamsburg, Jack saw that the country was stripped of the white male population.  The negroes carried on all the domestic concerns of the land.  In these excursions, too, he marked, with a keen military instinct, the points of defense General Magruder, who commanded the department, had left untouched.  He wondered if the Union arms would ever get as far down as this.  If they did, and he were of the force, he would like to have a cavalry regiment to lead!  Vincent was to rejoin his command at Manassas in October.  Jack looked forward to the event with the most dismal discontent.  To be tied up here, far from his companions; to seem to enjoy ease, when his regiment was indurating itself by drills, marches, and the rough life of the soldier for the great work it was to do, maddened him.

“I give you fair warning, Vint, if an exchange isn’t arranged before you leave here, I shall cut stick:  the best way I can.”

“Good!  How will you manage?  It’s a long pull between here and our front at Manassas.  How will you work it?  Just as soon as you quit the shelter of Rosedale, you are a suspect.  Even the negroes will halt you.  If you should make for Fortress Monroe, you have all of Magruder’s army to get through.  You would surely be caught in the act, and then I could do nothing for you.  You would be sent to Castle Winder, and that isn’t a very comfortable billet.”

Some hint of Jack’s discontent, or rather of his vague dream of flight, came into Dick’s busy head, and when one day they were tramping down by the James together, he said, owlishly: 

“I say, Jack, when Vincent goes, let us clear out!”

“I say yes, with all my heart, but how can it be done?  We are more than forty miles from the nearest Union lines.  Whole armies are between us.  Any white man found on the highway is questioned, and if he can’t give a clear account of himself is sent to the provost prison.  You remember the other day, when we left the rest to go through the swamp road near Williamsburg, we were hailed by a patrol, and if Vincent hadn’t been within reach we would have been sent to the provost prison.  Even the negroes act as guards.”

“Don’t be too sure of that.  I’ve been talking to some of them.  They are ’fraid as sin of the overseers, but you notice they shut up all the negroes in their own quarters at night, don’t you?  If they were all right, why should they do that?”

“Good heavens! you haven’t been trying to make an uprising among the Rosedale servants, Dick?  Don’t you know that no end of ours could justify that?  These people have been like brothers—­like our own family to us.  It would be infamous—­infamous without power in the language for comparison—­if we should requite their humanity by stirring up servile strife.  I should be the first to take arms against the slaves in such revolt, and give my life rather than be instrumental in bringing misery upon the Atterburys.”