d, and slaves set free. Then there was
a certain oath to be taken by all citizens who did not wish 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
vir