were shown up to the door of Jack’s room, where Rosalind very discreetly left them, to introduce the other guests to Mrs. Atterbury, attracted to the place by the unwonted sounds.  When presently the visitors were shown into Vincent’s room, Jack called out to them to come and see valor conquered by love; and, when they entered, mamma was brushing her eyes furtively, while she still held Jack’s unwounded hand under the counterpane.  Master Dick excited the maternal alarm by throwing himself rapturously on the wounded hero and giving him the kiss he had denied Rosalind.  Indeed, he showered kisses on the abashed hero, whose eyes were suspiciously sparkling at the evidence of the boy’s delight.  He established himself in Jack’s room, and no urging, prayer, or reproof could induce him to quit his hero’s sight.

“I lost him once,” he said, doggedly, “and I’m not going to lose him again.  Where he goes, I’m going; where he stays, I’ll stay—­sha’n’t I, Jack?”

“You shall, indeed, my dauntless Orestes; you shall share my fortunes, whatever they be.”

He insisted on a cot in the room, and there, during the convalescence of his idol, he persisted in sleeping—­ruling all who had to do with the invalid in his own capricious humor, hardly excepting Mrs. Sprague, whom he tolerated with some impatience.  Letters were dispatched northward to relieve the anxiety of Pliny and Phemie, as well as the Marshes.  But it hung heavily on Jack’s heart that no trace of Barney had been found.  Advertisements were sent to the Richmond papers, and he waited in restless impatience for some sign of the kind lad’s well-being.

“Well, Jack, this isn’t much like the pomp and circumstance of glorious war,” Olympia cried, the next morning, coming in from an excursion about the “plantation,” as she insisted on calling the estate, attended by Merry, Rosa, and Dick.  “I never saw such foliage!  The roses are as large as sunflowers, and there are whole fields of them!”

“Yes; I believe the Atterburys make merchandise of them.”

“But who buys them about here?  They seem to grow wild—­as fine in form and color as our hot-house varieties.  Surely they are not bought by the colored people, and there seems to be no one else—­no other inhabitants, I mean.”

“Oh, no; they are shipped North in the season for them; but I don’t think the family has paid much attention to that branch of the business of late years.  Their revenues come from tobacco and cotton.  Their cotton-fields are in South Carolina and along the Atlantic coast.”

“And are these colored people all slaves?” Her voice sank to a whisper, for Vincent’s door was ajar.

“Yes, every man jack of them.  Did you ever see such merry rogues?  They laugh and sing half the night, and sing and work half the day.”

“They don’t seem unhappy, that’s a fact,” Olympia said, reflectively, “but I should think ownership in flesh and blood would harden people; and yet the Atterburys are very kind and gentle.  I saw tears in Mrs. Atterbury’s eyes, yesterday, when mamma was sitting here with you.”