“Jones, is it you?”

“Ah, captain, we are waiting for ropes to secure the prize.”

“There is no time to wait.  The dog has made such a noise that I didn’t hear your signal.  I saw you from my window.  Come, we must not lose a minute, for I couldn’t fasten the brute very well.  Davis is here, and we have only to take him from his room.  The cavalry went about eleven; I heard them march away an hour ago.”

“Now, give me the exact situation here, that there may be no surprise.  How many men are we likely to encounter in the event of a fracas?”

“Counting Davis and Lee, four in the house.  How near the orderlies and guards are you know better than I. Besides Davis, there’s Jack Sprague, young Atterbury, and Dick—­but he don’t count.”

“No!  Why?”

“He is not over his wound, and besides he’s but a boy.  They had two pistols loaded, but I managed to draw all the charges except one.  So that if Jack and Atterbury should come to the rescue they could do no damage.”

“They sleep at this end of the house?”

“Yes, and our work is at the other.”

“Well, then, in that case I will get ladders I saw near the carriage-house and put them up to Davis’s window as a means of escape in case these young men get after us before we finish the job.  Even with their unloaded pistols, two full grown men and the boy could make trouble.”

He called Number Two and gave him orders to place a ladder at each of the two windows of Davis’s room, and to have a man at the top of each—­armed.  When the men had hurried away, Jones continued: 

“Here’s a pistol for you.  It is a six-shooter bull-dog, and will do sure work.  Now move on to the stairway; others will join us in a moment.  You’re sure you know Davis’s room?  It would be mighty awkward to poke into any of the others.”

“Yes; everybody in the house was taken to see it.  It is the old lady’s room, occupied by mother and daughter, generally; but given up to the President for the night.”

They are in the hall, stealing softly over the thick matting; they are in the broad corridor—­running the whole length of the house—­Jack’s, Olympiads, Dick’s, and Kate’s rooms all behind them—­southward.  Wesley, with Jones touching his right arm and Number Two at his left, is moving slowly, silently northward to the left of the stairs.

“Great God!  What was that?”

A sound as of a clattering troop of cavalry, the neighing of horses in the grounds!  Wesley halted, trembling, dismayed.

“That’s all right,” Jones whispered, “I ordered the stables opened so that the horses wouldn’t be handy, if any one should happen to be at hand who felt like pursuing us, or going for the cavalry.”

“It was a mistake; the horses will arouse the house.  We must hurry.”

In a moment they were before the door of the Davis room.  Wesley raised the latch.  It was an old-fashioned fastening.  Number Two was directed to stand at the threshold while Wesley and Jones secured Davis.