hope—­that Wesley had escaped; but with shuddering horror he hastened with Barney back to the scene of blood and death.  The great candelabra on the mantel had been lighted, and the room was visible as in daylight.  Jack halted, transfixed, horror-stricken, in the doorway.  The women in hastily snatched robes were all there, and on the floor, wailing over the dead body of Wesley, Kate sat, prone and disheveled, calling to him to look at her, to speak to her, as she kissed the cold lips in incredulous despair.  She paid no heed to Mrs. Atterbury, to Olympia, kneeling beside her—­all her heart, all her senses benumbed in the agony of the cruel blow.  Jack moved to the piteous group, and, dropping on his knees, felt the lifeless pulse, and sank back, pale and shrinking, with the feeling that he was a murderer.  Mrs. Atterbury turned to him, crying convulsively: 

“Oh, what does it mean, Mr. Sprague? what does it mean?”

“It is a dreadful game of cross-purposes.  These unhappy men believed Mr. Davis to be in this room when they entered.  They meant to capture him and carry him North.”

“Ah, thank God! thank God! who carried our President away in time,” and the matron clasped her hands fervently as she sank in a chair.  But the sight of Kate, woe-begone, feverishly caressing the dead brother, brought the tenderer instincts back.  She rose again, and, clasping her arms about the poor girl, said pleadingly: 

“Let him be carried to his room; you are covered with blood.”

“Ah, it is his blood, his innocent blood!  Murdered, when he should have found merry.”

Jack found tongue now.  He was hideously calm—­the frightful calm of great-hearted men, who use mirth, levity, and indolency to hide emotion.

“Miss Boone—­Kate it was perhaps the shot from my pistol that killed Wesley.  I did it in defense of women in peril, in defense of my own life.  It was an accident in one sense.  Had I known the circumstances I certainly shouldn’t have fired, but you must put the blame on me, not upon this guiltless household.”

She looked up at him—­looked with a wild, despairing, unbelieving gaze, pressing the handsome dead face to her bosom, and then, with a wild, wailing sob, bent her head until the shining dark mass of hair fell like a funeral veil over her own and the dead face.  Rosa, who had disappeared in the dressing-room, now entered the chamber.  Turning from the woful group on the floor, she glanced hastily about, as if in search of some one.  Her eyes fell upon Dick, dazed and bleeding, on the couch.  She ran to him with a tender cry.

“O Richard! are you hurt?  Great heavens! your face is all blood.  You are wounded.  O mamma, come—­come—­Richard is dying!”

The boy tried his best to smile, holding his hand over his left side, as if stifling pain.  He smiled—­a bright, contented happy smile—­as Rosa knelt, sobbing, by his side, and, opening his jacket, baring the blood-stained shirt, plucked a purplish rose from the bleeding bosom.