Jack could scarcely keep a serious face, as this humorous lament displayed the pride of the Dominion and the unconscious Boeotianism of the provincial.

“Now, Mrs. Raines, here is what I propose:  Major Atterbury, of whom you read to me, is my nearest friend.  We have been college comrades; he has passed weeks at my home, and I have been asked to his, and meant to come this autumn vacation, if the war had not broken out.  I will write to his mother, and she will have me removed to her house, and it need never be known that you gave aid and comfort to the enemy.”

“But the Atterburys will never receive you.  They were the first to favor secession, when all the rest of us opposed it.  To tell you the truth, Mr. Sprague, it is partly because we were abused a good deal for holding back when the secession excitement was first started, that I am so—­so anxious about the story getting out that we entertained a Yankee prisoner.  My husband is in the service of the government in Norfolk, and my son is in the army.  But you know what neighborhood gossip is.”

So, after a friendly talk in which the poor lady cried a great deal and besought Jack’s good-will for her darling William, if ever he were luckless enough to be captured, the note was written and dispatched to the Atterburys, whose city house was near the capital square.  The messenger returned a half-hour later, reporting the family out of town; that they had taken the major to their country-place near Williamsburg, on the banks of the James.  The messenger had given the letter to the housekeeper, who said that it would go out an hour later with the mail sent daily to the family.

“Williamsburg is two hours’ ride on the train,” Mrs. Raines explained, “and we sha’n’t hear from them until to-morrow.”

Jack said nothing; his mind was on his mother and the misery she must be enduring.  He turned restlessly on his pillow that night, and woke feverish in the morning.  Mrs. Raines now took as much pains to keep people who called from seeing her hero as she had before put herself out to display the invalid.  Even the doctor, calling about nine o’clock, was sent away on some pretext, and the poor lady waited with an anxiety, almost as poignant as Jack’s own, for the response to his note.  About noon it came.  Mrs. Raines went to the door herself, not daring to trust the colored girl, who had lavished untold pains on Jack’s linen and the manual part of his care.  Jack heard low voices in the hallway, then on the stairs, and he knew some one had come.

“Here is Miss Atterbury sent to fetch you, lieutenant,” Mrs. Raines said, now very much relieved, and impressed, too, by the powerful friends her dangerous protege was able to summon so promptly by a line.

“You are Rosalind?” Jack said, smiling at a pair of the brownest and most bewitching eyes fixed soberly on him.  “I should have known you if I had met you in the street, although you were a small girl when I saw you last.”