to have
guardians appointed over their actions. There were many who swallowed
this oath and never felt any ill effects. Mr. Jacob Cluyme was one, and
came away feeling very virtuous. It was not unusual for Mr. Cluyme to
feel virtuous. Mr. Hopper did not have indigestion after taking it, but
Colonel Carvel would sooner have eaten, gooseberry pie, which he had
never tasted but once.

That summer had worn away, like a monster which turns and gives hot gasps
when you think it has expired. It took the Arkansan just a month, under
Virginia's care, to become well enough to be sent to a Northern prison He
was not precisely a Southern gentleman, and he went to sleep over the
"Idylls of the King." But he was admiring, and grateful, and wept when he
went off to the boat with the provost's guard, destined for a Northern
prison. Virginia wept too. He had taken her away from her aunt (who would
have nothing to do with him), and had given her occupation. She nor her
father never tired of hearing his rough tales of Price's rough army.

His departure was about the time when suspicions were growing set. The
favor had caused comment and trouble, hence there was no hope of giving
another sufferer the same comfort. The cordon was drawn tighter. One of
the mysterious gentlemen who had been seen in the vicinity of Colonel
Carvel's house was arrested on the ferry, but he had contrived to be rid
of the carpet-sack in which certain precious letters were carried.

Throughout the winter, Mr. Hopper's visits to Locust Street had continued
at intervals of painful regularity. It is not necessary to dwell upon his
brilliant powers of conversation, nor to repeat the platitudes which he
repeated, for there was no significance in Mr. Hopper's tales, not a
particle. The Colonel had found that out, and was thankful. His manners
were better; his English decidedly better.

It was for her father's sake, of course, that Virginia bore with him.
Such is the appointed lot of women. She tried to be just, and it occurred
to her that she had never before been just. Again and again she repeated
to herself that Eliphalet's devotion to the Colonel at this low ebb of
his fortunes had something in it of which she did not suspect him. She
had a class contempt for Mr. Hopper as an uneducated Yankee and a person
of commercial ideals. But now he was showing virtues,--if virtues they
were,--and she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. With his great
shrewdness and