Baltimore Station, then the only one in the city connecting with the North.  To her surprise, the driver stopped near the curb a block or more short of the railway.  She looked out, and as she did so the driver pointed to her father’s carriage halted just ahead.  She took out her purse, but was delayed a moment in getting the fare, keeping her eye, however, on her father as he hurried from the cab to a building before which a sentry was lazily pacing.  She was not two minutes in reaching the doorway, but he had disappeared.

The soldier asked her no questions, and of course she could ask none, as probably her father was unknown to the military filling the place.  She must follow on until she overtook him.  There were clerks busy at long desks, military officials moving about with files of documents.  The presence of a few women in widow’s weeds reassured Kate, and as no one molested her she persisted in her design.  He was not on the lower floor, and, coming back, she ascended a broad stairway.  The hall was wide, and filled with people all in uniform.  She could hear a monotonous voice reading in front, where the crowd clustered thickest.  She looked about helplessly, and tried to push forward.  Suddenly she heard the words:  “Guilty of taking the life of the same Wesley Boone.  Specification third:  And that the said John Sprague is guilty of the crime of spying inside the lines of the armies of the United States.”  For a moment Kate stood stupefied—­rooted to the floor.  Jack was undergoing an ignominious trial for murder—­for desertion!  All fear, all timidity, all sense of the unfitness of feminine evidence in such a place fled from her.  She pushed her way through the astonished throng which fell aside as they saw her black dress and flowing drapery.  She reached the last range of benches, where men were seated, some writing, some consulting documents, while the clerk read the charges.  Her eye fell upon her father seated near the place of the presiding officer.  She grew confident and confirmed by the sight:  it was a signal to the daring that fired her.  “Stop!” she said, in a clear voice.  “I don’t know what this place is; I don’t know what meaning these proceedings have.  I heard a charge that is not true.  It is false that John Sprague murdered Wesley Boone.  Wesley Boone was my brother, and he was killed in the dark by one of several shots fired at the same instant.  Furthermore, my brother was armed and in the sleeping-room of the mistress of the house at the dead of night.  If John Sprague’s bullet killed him it was shot in self-defense and in the safeguarding of two terrified women.  He had no more idea of whom he was struggling with than—­than the soldier who fires in battle.  Furthermore, he is no spy.  He risked his life to rescue prisoners.  He saved the life of one of them who can be brought here to testify.  He—­”