The paper brought no news, nor mentioned the ruse to which Captain Lyon had resorted to elude the writ by transporting his prisoner to Illinois.  Newspapers were not as alert then as now.  Colonel Carvel was off early to the Arsenal in search of tidings.  He would not hear of Virginia’s going with him.  Captain Lige, with a surer instinct, went to the river.  What a morning of suspense!  Twice Virginia was summoned to her aunt, and twice she made excuse.  It was the Captain who returned first, and she met him at the door.

“Oh, what have you heard?” she cried.

“He is alive,” said the Captain, tremulously, “alive and well, and escaped South.”

She took a step toward him, and swayed.  The Captain caught her.  For a brief instant he held her in his arms and then he led her to the great armchair that was the Colonel’s.

“Lige,” she said,—­are you sure that this is not—­a kindness?”

“No, Jinny,” he answered quickly, “but things were mighty close.  I was afraid last night.  The river was roarin’.  They struck out straight across, but they drifted and drifted like log-wood.  And then she began to fill, and all five of ’em to bail.  Then—–­then she went down.  The five soldiers came up on that bit of an island below the Arsenal.  They hunted all night, but they didn’t find Clarence.  And they got taken off to the Arsenal this morning.”

“And how do you know?” she faltered.

“I knew that much this morning,” he continued, “and so did your pa.  But the Andrew Jackson is just in from Memphis, and the Captain tells me that he spoke the Memphis packet off Cape Girardeau, and that Clarence was aboard.  She picked him up by a miracle, after he had just missed a round trip through her wheel-house.”

THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill

BOOK III

Volume 6.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCING A CAPITALIST

A cordon of blue regiments surrounded the city at first from Carondelet to North St. Louis, like an open fan.  The crowds liked best to go to Compton Heights, where the tents of the German citizen-soldiers were spread out like so many slices of white cake on the green beside the city’s reservoir.  Thence the eye stretched across the town, catching the dome of the Court House and the spire of St. John’s.  Away to the west, on the line of the Pacific railroad that led halfway across the state, was another camp.  Then another, and another, on the circle of the fan, until the river was reached to the northward, far above the bend.  Within was a peace that passed understanding,—­the peace of martial law.