o Olympia?
She could say she did not know Jones, but Olympia would surely ask what
questions she had put to him. What should she say? That he had been
taken away from the hospital? She knew Olympia well enough to know that
this vague story would only incite her to further inquiry. She would
find out the father's handiwork in the affair, and she, too, would be
set on the rack of suspicion.

When the carriage reached the door, Kate dared not enter. She dismissed
the man and set out toward the green fields below the rounded slope of
Meridian Hill. Here she could breathe freely. "I can think clearly now,"
she panted, with a gush of warm tears. If she could only remain calm,
she could look Into the black abyss with the eye of reason, rather than
terror. Calmness came soothingly as she walked, and she began at the
beginning, weighing probabilities. All seemed dark and hopeless, until
she came back to the record in the surgeon-general's office. Jones, sent
from Hampton Hospital, December 13th. This was about the time Jack had
reached the Union lines. He had left Richmond late in November. All
Brodie's inquiries at Fort Monroe had been fruitless in finding the
whereabouts of the fugitives that came through the lines at that time.
Dick had been one of them. If Jones were not Jack himself, he must have
been one of the group that escaped with Jack. It all led back to the
first frightful conjecture. Her father was abducting a witness who could
divulge Jack's whereabouts, or he was secreting Jack until be could work
him harm. The walk began to revive Kate's courage as well as her
faculties. She must act with energy. The hardest part of the problem was
to get clear of Olympia, for Kate at once made up her mind to quit
Washington that very night for home. She must evade Olympia's inquiries
as best she could, and make some excuse for journeying thither.

When she reached home, fortune had intervened to save her conscience
from the falsehoods she feared she would have to employ. The landlady
met her in the hallway with a white face.

"O Miss Boone, Mrs. Sprague is taken very bad. The doctor's with her
now. I think it is typhoid fever."

Up-stairs misfortune gave her a further release. Olympia came into
Kate's room, agitated and in tears.

"All, Kate, mamma is suffering pitiably. The doctor thinks it is
typhoid, and he ordered me to remain away from her. You must leave the
house. It won't do for all of us to be ill together. I may n