The long, long days of heat dragged slowly, with little to cheer those families separated from their dear ones by a great army.  Clarence might die, and a month—­perhaps a year—­pass without news, unless he were brought a prisoner to St. Louis.  How Virginia envied Maude because the Union lists of dead and wounded would give her tidings of her brother Tom, at least!  How she coveted the many Union families, whose sons and brothers were at the front, this privilege!

We were speaking of the French Revolution, when, as Balzac remarked, to be a spy was to be a patriot.  Heads are not so cheap in our Anglo-Saxon countries; passions not so fierce and uncontrollable.  Compare, with a prominent historian, our Boston Massacre and St. Bartholomew.

They are both massacres.  Compare Camp Jackson, or Baltimore, where a few people were shot, with some Paris street scenes after the Bastille.  Feelings in each instance never ran higher.  Our own provost marshal was hissed in the street, and called “Robespierre,” and yet he did not fear the assassin’s knife.  Our own Southern aristocrats were hemmed in in a Union city (their own city).  No women were thrown into prison, it is true.  Yet one was not permitted to shout for Jeff Davis on the street corner before the provost’s guard.  Once in a while a detachment of the Home Guards, commanded by a lieutenant; would march swiftly into a street and stop before a house, whose occupants would run to the rear, only to encounter another detachment in the alley.

One day, in great excitement, Eugenie Renault rang the bell of the Carvel house, and ran past the astounded Jackson up the stairs to Virginia’s room, the door of which she burst open.

“Oh, Jinny!” she cried, “Puss Russell’s house is surrounded by Yankees, and Puss and Emily and all the family are prisoners!”

“Prisoners!  What for?” said Virginia, dropping in her excitement her last year’s bonnet, which she was trimming with red, white, and red.

“Because,” said Eugenie, sputtering with indignation “because they waved at some of our poor fellows who were being taken to the slave pen.  They were being marched past Mr. Russell’s house under guard—­Puss had a small—­”

“Confederate flag,” put in Virginia, smiling in spite of herself.

“And she waved it between the shutters,” Eugenie continued.  And some one told, the provost marshal.  He has had the house surrounded, and the family have to stay there.”

“But if the food gives out?”

“Then,” said Miss Renault, in a voice of awe, “then each one of the family is to have just a common army ration.  They are to be treated as prisoners.”

“Oh, those Yankees are detestable!” exclaimed Virginia.  “But they shall pay for it.  As soon as our army is organized and equipped, they shall pay for it ten times over.”  She tried on the bonnet, conspicuous with its red and white ribbons, before the glass.  Then she ran to the closet and drew forth the white gown with its red trimmings.  “Wait for me, Genie,” she said, “and we’ll go down to Puss’s house together.  It may cheer her to see us.”