“You are a soldier, sir,” the officer replied.  “You know I have no latitude in the matter.  This Moore has no status as a regular prisoner of war; he is found on the premises of a non-combatant aiding servile insurrection.  Even President Davis himself could not intervene.  The Southern people are deeply agitated by Butler’s attempts to arouse the negroes.  We have been weakened, robbed by the abduction of hundreds right here on the Peninsula.  The gang that Moore came here with was led by this scoundrel Jones, who is Butler’s agent.  A very vigorous example must be made of these wretches, or the country-side will be deserted and the government will be without produce.  We must inspire confidence in the owners of plantations, or the soldiers in the army will have to come back to guard their homes.”

Jack saw the futility of further pleading.  The officer was unquestionably right.  Such scenes as Rosedale had witnessed would end in the desertion of the rural regions of the Confederacy.  At Mrs. Atterbury’s urgent intercession Kate was permitted to leave the lines with her dead.  She was conducted to the rebel outposts in the Atterbury carriage, and under a flag of truce entered the Union lines near Hampton.  Olympia accompanied her in the carriage, Jack riding with the escort.  Kate refused every suggestion to see Jack; refused his own prayerful message, and sternly, solemnly with her dead passed from the scene of her sorrows.

Youth and something else stronger than medicine, more tenacious than any other motive that keeps the life-current brisk and vigorous, made Dick’s recovery swift and sure.  Rosa had no torments for him now.  The blood-red rose had proved a magician’s amulet to confirm her mind in the sweet teachings of her heart.  But the patrician mother was with difficulty brought to listen to the tying of this love-knot.  She had looked forward to a grand alliance for the heiress of Rosedale—­an alliance that should bring the family high up in the dominant hierarchy of the South.  She listened silently to the young girl’s pleading prattle of the boy’s bravery, his wit, his manliness.  She did not say no, but she hoped to find a way to distract her daughter from a mesalliance, which would not only diminish her child’s rank, but compromise the family politically.  Such a sacrifice could not be.  Fortunately, both were mere children, and the knot would unravel itself without perplexities that maturer love would have involved.  So the mother smiled on the happy girl, kissed Dick tenderly morning and night, for he had been a hero in their defense, and she was too kindly of heart, too loyal to obligation, to permit Dick’s attitude of suitor to lessen her fondness and admiration for the bright, handsome lad.  Olympia was the confidante of both the lovers, listened with her usual good-humor to the boy’s raptures and the girl’s panegyrics, and soon came to share Jack’s high place in the happy lovers’ devotion.