“Nonsense!  You are hostages for Vincent, in case he is captured, as long as you are here; I can’t let you go—­under the laws of war—­I can not.  Can I, Vincent?”

Vincent looked at Jack solemnly, but made no answer.

“Mamma is quite right.  While you are with us no harm can come to Vincent; for, if he should be taken prisoner, we can threaten the Yankee Government to put you to torture unless he is well treated,” Rosa interrupted, reassuringly.

“We should be far more aid and comfort to Vincent if we were in the North than we could be here.  If he were taken prisoner and wounded, we could return him the kindness we have received here.  In any event, we could lessen the hardships of prison life.”

“Oh, you would have to minister to a mind diseased, if such a fate should befall me!” Vincent cried, sentimentally; with a glance into Olympia’s eyes, which met his at the moment.  Both blushed; and Olympia, to relieve the embarrassment, said, decisively: 

“Mamma is right.  Jack must have his family on the ground, to watch over his interests.  I am sure there is some underhand work responsible for this long delay in his case, for I saw by The Whig, last week, that exchanges of prisoners had been made; I think that—­” But, suddenly remembering the presence of Kate and Wesley, she did not finish the thought, which implied a belief in the intervention of the elder Boone—­to Jack’s detriment.  In the end—­when the two mothers talked the matter over—­Mrs. Sprague carried the point.  She convinced Mrs. Atterbury that there was danger to Jack in a longer stay of his family in the Confederate lines.  Vague reports had already reached them from Acredale of the suspicious hostility in which the Democrats were held after Bull Run.  The Northern papers, which came through the lines quite regularly, left no doubt that Democratic leanings were universally interpreted in the North as evidences of rebel sympathy, if not partisanship.  Such a charge, as things stood, would be fatal to Jack; and the mother’s duty was plain.  She had friends in Washington, once powerful, who could stand between her son and calumny—­perhaps more serious danger—­when she was present in person to explain his conduct.  If she could not at once secure his exchange, she could save him from compromise in the present inflammable and capricious state of the public mind.  Understanding this, and the enmity of Boone, Mrs. Atterbury not only made no further objection, but acknowledged the urgent necessity of the mother’s presence in the North.  The idle life of Rosedale had grown unbearably irksome to Merry, too.

“I feel as if I were a rebel,” she confided to Mrs. Sprague in the evening talks, when the piano sounded and the young people were making the hours pass in gayety.  “It’s a sin for us to laugh and be contented here, when our friends are bearing the burdens of war.  I shall be ashamed to show my face in Acredale.  Oh, I wish I could carry a musket!”