st be secure against any form of
meddling. You must avoid your daughter's chamber--indeed, it would be
better if you could quit Acredale for a few days. You would be less
embarrassed by intrusive neighbors and keep your conscience clear of
evasions."

So it was settled that Boone should take up his quarters in Warchester,
coming out late every night for news.

Meanwhile, Acredale had read with amazement, first, of the finding of
Jack Sprague among the rebels at Point Lookout, then, the extraordinary
story of the court-martial and death-sentence. Every one called at the
Sprague mansion, but it was in the hands of the servants, Olympia and
her guest having returned to Washington so soon as the story of her
brother's peril reached her. Dick, too, had flown to his adored Jack,
and Acredale, confounded by the swift alternations in the young
soldier's fortunes, settled down to wait the outcome with a tender
sorrow for the bright young life eclipsed in disgrace so awful, death so
ignominious.

We have looked on while most of the people in this history worked
through night to light in the moral perplexities besetting them. We have
seen warriors in love and danger gallantly extricating themselves and
plucking the bloom of safety from the dragon path of danger. We have
seen a moral combat in the minds of most of the people who have had to
do with our luckless Jack. But all herein set down has been the merest
November melancholy compared to the charnel-house of dead hopes and
baffled purposes that tortured Elisha Boone. Unlovely as Boone has
seemed to us, he had one of the prime conditions of human goodness--he
loved. He had loved very fondly his son Wesley. He loved very tenderly
his daughter Kate.

With this love came the sanctification that must abide where love is. I
don't think he had much of what may be called the second condition of
human goodness--reverence. If he had, we should never have seen him push
revenge to the verge of crime. Richard Perley, it is true, accuses him
of a turpitude that makes a man shudder and abhor; but allowances must
be made for the exaggeration of a careless spendthrift--a "good fellow,"
than whom I can conceive of nothing so useless and mischievous in the
human economy. For my part, I think I could endure the frank
heartlessness of a man like Boone more philosophically than the false
good-nature of the creature men call a good fellow.

Obviously, Boone did not take Dick Perley's estimate o