he wondered about the shots. A crowd of drunken fools were still
hanging around the Galt House bar perhaps. She went back to bed and
slept again.

It was eight o'clock before the crash of a volley from the Arsenal
enclosure roused her. She leaped to her feet, rushed to the window and
stood trembling as volley followed volley in a long rattle of rifle and
shotgun and pistol.

A neighbor hurried past with a gun in his hand. She asked him what the
fighting meant.

"Armed Abolitionists have invaded Virginia," he shouted.

Still it meant nothing to her personally. Her husband was not an
Abolitionist. She had known him for more than a year. She had been with
him day and night for six months in the sweet intimacy of home and love.

And then the hideous truth came crashing on her terror-stricken soul.
Cook had been recognized by a neighbor as he drove Colonel Washington's
wagon across the Maryland bridge at dawn. A committee of citizens came
to cross-examine her.

She faced them with blanched cheeks.

"My husband, an Abolitionist!" she gasped.

"He's with those murderers and robbers."

She turned on the men like a young tigress.

"You're lying--I tell you!"

For an hour they tried to drag from her a confession of his plans. They
left at last convinced that she knew nothing, that she suspected nothing
of his real life. She had fought them bravely to the last. In her soul
of souls she knew the hideous truth. She recalled the strange yearning
with which he had looked at her as he left Sunday morning. She saw the
bottom of the gulf at last.

With a cry of anguish and despair she sank to the floor in a faint.

She stirred with one thought tearing at her heart. Had they killed or
captured him? She rose, dressed and joined the crowd that surged through
the streets. The Rifle Works had been captured, Kagi was dead, the other
two wounded, one fatally, the other a prisoner. No trace of her husband
had been found. He had not reentered the town from the Maryland side.

She walked to the bridge and found it guarded by armed citizens. Tears
of joy filled her eyes.

"He can't get back now!" she breathed.

She hurried to her room, fell on her knees and prayed:

"Oh, dear Lord Jesus, I've tried to be a good and faithful wife. My man
has loved me tenderly and truly. Save him, oh, Lord! Don't let him come
back now into this den of howling beasts. They'll tear him to pieces.
And I can't endure it. I can't. I can't. Have pity,