.

"Fort Monroe?" Mrs. Sprague echoed mechanically. "Yes, ah, yes. Merry,
where's the paper?"

Olympia devoured the meager scrap and then dropped the journal on her
knees. Her mind was in a whirl. In Richmond the escape had been
announced, then the news that the party had been surrounded in the
swamp, then day by day details of the taking of straggling negroes and
one or two soldiers, but no name that even resembled Jack's. The
Atterburys, after the first painful sensation, had given their approval
of Jack's going, and used all means in their power to get such facts as
would comfort Olympia. They assured her that Jack had reached the Union
lines, and then she had set out northward, expecting to find him at home
or in communication with his family. No word from Dick? No word from
Jack? They were dead, and she--she had urged them to the mad adventure!
She had given Jack no peace, had fired Dick to the fatal enterprise. She
dared not look in the tearless eyes of her mother. She dared not face
the ghastly questioning in Merry's meek eye. Brodie had gone down to see
the escaped men. Perhaps he would discover something. This was the small
comfort left the three when, near midnight, they ended the woful
conference.

The next day Olympia was visited by a representative of the _Crossbow_,
the chief journal of Warchester, and urged to write a narrative of her
adventures in the rebel capital. Until her friends made her see how much
effect it would have in clearing Jack's reputation she shrank from the
publicity, but with that end in view--Jack's honor--she wrote, and wrote
with strength and clearness, the moving incidents of her brother's
capture, captivity, and escape--or his bold effort to escape. This she
told so simply, so directly, so vividly, that the truth of it at once,
struck the most prejudiced reader, who had no cause to continue in his
prepossession. After the publication in the Warchester paper scores who
had sided with the Boone faction either called or wrote to confess their
error. Even the Acredale _Monitor_, a weekly sheet notoriously in the
interest of Boone, felt constrained to copy parts of the account and
publish with it a shambling retraction of previous criticism, based on
imperfect knowledge, that it had printed concerning Sergeant Sprague.
"Death," it declared, "has obliterated all feeling that existed against
our young townsman, whose conduct, though open to grievous doubt in the
early part of his mili