hat he will then place himself in
communication with Colonel Sweet, commanding at Chicago."

The Major did not "put up at the corner of Lake and State Streets," and
that fact relieved the Government from the trouble of estimating the
value of his services, and, what is more to be deplored, rendered it
impossible for the Commandant to recognize and arrest the Rebel leaders
during the sitting of the Chicago Convention. What became of the Major
is not known. He may have repented of his good deeds, or his treachery
may have been detected and he put out of the way by his accomplices.

It will be noticed how closely the Rebel officer's disclosures accorded
with the information gathered through indirect channels by the astute
Commandant. When the report was conveyed to him, he may have smiled at
this proof of his own sagacity; but he made no change in his
arrangements. Quietly and steadily he went on strengthening the camp,
augmenting the garrison, and shadowing the footsteps of all suspicious
new-comers.

At last the loyal Democrats came together to the great Convention, and
with them came Satan also. Bands of ill-favored men, in bushy hair, bad
whiskey, and seedy homespun, staggered from the railway-stations, and
hung about the street-corners. A reader of Dante or Swedenborg would
have taken them for delegates from the lower regions, had not their
clothing been plainly perishable, while the devils wear everlasting
garments. They had come, they announced, to make a Peace President, but
they brandished bowie-knives, and bellowed for war even in the sacred
precincts of the Peace Convention. But war or peace, the Commandant was
ready for it.

For days reinforcements had poured into the camp, until it actually
bristled with bayonets. On every side it was guarded with cannon, and,
day and night, mounted men patrolled the avenues to give notice of the
first hostile gathering. But there was no gathering. The conspirators
were there, two thousand strong, with five thousand Illini to back them.
From every point of the compass,--from Canada, Missouri, Southern
Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and even loyal Vermont, bloody-minded
men had come to give the Peace candidate a red baptism. But "discretion
is the better part of valor." The conspirators saw the preparations and
disbanded. Not long afterward one of the leaders said to me, "We had
spies in every public place,--in the telegraph-office, the camp itself,
and even _close by_