y one on the street has some
one from the battle, and oh, what will be said of us when people know
that we--we--" But here the cruelty of the conclusion came too sharply
to her mind, and she walked to the window, sobbing softly.

"I can understand, believe me, Mrs. Raines, and I am going to propose a
means to you whereby I shall be taken from here, and your neighbors
shall never know that you entertained an enemy unawares, though God
knows I don't see why we should be enemies when the battle is over. If
your son were in my condition I should think very hard of my mother if
she were not to him what you have been to me."

"But I can't believe you're a Yankee; you were so gentle, so patient in
all the dreadful times when the surgeon was cutting and hacking. Oh, I
can't believe it! Oh, please say you are joking--that you wanted to give
me a fright. And you have a mother?" She came over near the bed again
and stood looking at him dismally, half in doubt, half in perplexed
wonder; for Yankee, in her mind, suggested some such monster as the
Greeks conjured when the Goths poured into the peninsula, maiming the
men and debauching the women. "I said Sprague wasn't a Virginia name,"
she murmered, plaintively, in a last desperate attempt to fortify
herself against the worst; "but there's no telling what names are in
Virginia now, since Norfolk has grown so big and folks come in that way
from all over the world."

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