They found them piled six layers deep in the trenches, blue and grey, blue and grey. Black wings were spread over the top with red beaks tearing at eyes and lips while deep down below, yet groaned and moved the living wounded.

God of Love and Pity, draw the veil over the scene! No pen can tell its story—no heart endure to hear it.

The stop was brief. Already the cavalry were skirmishing for the next position.

Again the keen eye of Lee had divined his enemy's purpose. By a shorter road his men had reached the North Anna before Grant. When the Union leader arrived on the scene he found the position of his advance division dangerous and quickly withdrew with the loss of two thousand men.

Once more he determined to turn Lee's flank and hurled his army toward Cold Harbor. This time he reached his chosen ground before his opponent and on the 31st, Sheridan's cavalry took possession of the place. The two armies had rushed for this point in waving parallel lines, flashing at each other death-dealing volleys as they touched.

Both armies immediately began to entrench in their chosen positions. Lee, familiar with his ground, had chosen his position with consummate skill. On June the 1st, the preliminary attack was made at six o'clock in the afternoon. It was short and bloody. The Northern division under Smith and Wright charged and lost two thousand two hundred men in an hour.

Again Lee had placed his guns and infantry in a fiery crescent on the hills arranged to catch both flanks and front of an advancing army.

Grant's soldiers knew that grim work had been cut out for them on that fatal morning the third day of June. As John Vaughan walked along the lines the night before he saw thousands of silent men busy with their needle and thread sewing their names on their underclothing.

The hot, close weather of the preceding days had ended in a grateful rain at five o'clock, which continued through the night and brought the tired, suffering men gracious relief.

Grant decided to assault the whole Confederate front and gave his orders for the attack at the first streak of dawn at four-thirty.

The charging blue hosts literally walked into the crater of a volcano flaming in their faces and pouring tons of steel and lead into their stricken flanks. Nothing like it had ever before been seen in the history of war.

Ten thousand men in blue fell in twenty minutes!

The battle was practically over at half past seven o'clock.

General Smith received an order from Meade to renew the assault and flatly refused.

The scene which followed has no parallel in the records of human suffering. Its horror is inconceivable and unthinkable. Through the summer nights the shrieks and groans of the wounded and dying rose in pitiful endless waves. And no hand was lifted to save. For three days they lay begging for water, groaning and dying where they had fallen. It was certain death to venture in that storm-swept space. Only a few brave men fought their way through to rescue a fallen comrade.

It was not until the 7th that a truce was arranged to clear this shamble and then every man in blue was dead save two. Everywhere blood, blood, blood in dark slippery pools—dead horses—dead men—smashed guns, legs, arms, torn and mangled pieces of bodies—the earth plowed with shot and shell.

Thirty days had passed since Grant met Lee in the tangled Wilderness and the Northern army had lost sixty thousand men, two thousand a day.

It is small wonder that he decided not to try longer "to fight it out on that line."

Lee had put out of combat as many men for his opponent as he had under his command at any time and his army with the reinforcements he had received was now as strong as the day he met Grant.

For twelve days the two armies lay in their entrenchments on this field of death while the Federal Commander arranged a new plan of campaign. The sharpshooting was incessant. No man in all the line of blue could stand erect and live an instant. Soldiers whose time of service had expired and were ordered home, had to crawl on their hands and knees through the trenches to the rear.

The new Commander, on whose genius the President and the people had planted their brightest hopes, had just reached the spot where McClellan stood in June, 1862. And he might have gotten there by the James under cover of his gunboats without the loss of a single life.

Again John Vaughan's memory turned to McClellan with desperate bitterness. The longer he brooded over the hideous scenes of the past month, the higher rose his blind rage against the President.



CHAPTER XXXIII

THE BROTHERS MEET

When Julius, who had returned to John Vaughan's service, saw those piles of dead men on the field of Cold Harbor he lost faith in the Union Cause. He made up his mind that the past month's work had more than paid for that letter to the President and he took to the woods on his own hook.

He lay down to sleep the night he deserted in a clump of trees near the Confederate outposts and rested his head on a pillow of pine straw. When he waked in the morning at dawn he felt something tickle his nose. He cautiously reached one hand up to see what it was and felt a lock of hair. He rose slowly, fearing to look till he had gained his feet. He turned his eyes at last and saw that he had been sleeping on a dead man's head protruding through the shallow dirt and pine straw that had been hastily thrown over it the first day of the battle.

With a yell of terror he started on a run for his life.

He never stopped until he had flanked Lee's army by a wide swing, made his way to the rear and joined the Confederacy.

Grant had now changed his plan of campaign. He determined to capture Petersburg by a coup and cut the communication of Lee and Richmond with the South. The coup failed. The ragged remnants of Lee's army which had been left there to defend it, held the trenches until reinforcements arrived.

He determined to take it by a resistless concerted assault. On the 16th he threw three of his army corps on Beauregard's thin lines before Petersburg, capturing four redoubts. At daylight, on the 17th, he again hurled his men on Beauregard and drove his men out of his first line of defense. All day the defenders held their second line, though Grant's crack divisions poured out their blood like water. As night fell the dead were once more piled high on the Federal front and the Confederate dead filled the trenches.

As the third day dawned the fierce, assault was renewed, but Lee had brought up Anderson's Corps with Kershaw and Field's division and the blue waves broke against the impregnable grey ranks and rolled back, leaving the dead in dark heaps.

As the shadows of night fell, Grant withdrew his shattered lines to their trenches.

He had lost ten thousand five hundred more men and had failed.

He began to burrow his fortifications into the earth around Petersburg and try by siege what had been found impossible by assault. Further and further crept his blue lines with pick and axe and spade and shovel, digging, burrowing, piling their dirt and timbers. Before each blue rampart silently grew one in grey until the two siege lines stretched for thirty-seven miles in bristling, flaming semicircle covering both Richmond and Petersburg.

Again Grant planned a coup. He chose the role of the fox this time instead of the lion. He selected the key of Lee's long lines of defense and set a regiment of Pennsylvania miners to work digging a tunnel under the Confederate fort known as "Elliot's Salient," which stood but two hundred yards in front of Burnside's corps.

The tunnel was finished, the mine ready, the fuses set, and eight thousand pounds of powder planted in the earth beneath the unsuspecting Confederates.

Hancock's division with Sheridan's cavalry were sent to make a demonstration against Richmond and draw Lee's main army to its defense. The ruse was partly successful. There were but eighteen thousand behind the defenses of Petersburg on the dark night when Grant massed fifty thousand picked men before the doomed fort. The pioneers with their axes cleared the abatis and opened the way for the charging hosts. Heavy guns and mortars were planted to sweep the open space beyond the Salient and beat back any attempted counter charge.

The time set for the explosion was just before dawn. The fuse was lit and fifty thousand men stood gripping their guns, waiting for the shock. A quarter of an hour passed and nothing happened. An ominous silence brooded over the dawning sky. The only sounds heard were the twitter of waking birds in the trees and hedgerows. The fuse had failed. Two heroic men crawled into the tunnel and found it had spluttered out in a damp spot but fifty feet from the powder. It required an hour to secure and plant a new fuse. Day had dawned. Just in front of John Vaughan's regiment a Confederate spy was caught. He could hear every word of the pitiful tragedy.

He was a handsome, brown-eyed youngster of eighteen.

He glanced pathetically toward the doomed fort, and shook his head:

"Fifteen minutes more and I'd have saved you, boys!"

He turned then to the executioners:

"May I have just a minute to pray?"

"Yes."

He knelt and lifted his head, the fine young lips moving in silence as the first rays of the rising sun flooded the scene with splendor.

"May I write just a word to my mother and to my sweetheart?" he asked with a smile. "They're just over there in Petersburg."

"Yes."

They gave him a piece of paper and he wrote his last words of love, and in a moment was swinging from the limb of a tree. Only a few of the more thoughtful men paid any attention. It was nothing. Such things happened every day. God only kept the records.

The new fuse was set and lighted. The minutes seemed hours as the men waited breathlessly. With a dull muffled roar from the centre of the earth beneath their very feet the fort rose two hundred feet straight into the sky, driven by a tower of flame that stood stark and red in the heavens. And then with blinding crash the mighty column of earth, guns, timbers and three hundred grey bodies sank into the yawning crater. The pit was sixty-five feet wide and three hundred feet long.

The explosion had been a complete success. The undermined fort had been wiped from the landscape. A great gap opened in Lee's lines marked by the grave of three hundred of his men.

Burnside's division rushed into the crater and climbed through the breach. His men were met promptly by Ransom's brigade of North Carolinians and held. The Union support became entangled in the hole, stumbled and fell in confusion.

General Mahone's brigades hastily called, rushed into position, and a general Confederate charge was ordered. In silence, their arms trailing by their sides, they quickly crossed the open space and fell like demons on the confused blue lines which were driven back into the crater and slaughtered like sheep. The Confederate guns were trained on this yawning pit whose edges now bristled with flaming muskets. Regiment after regiment of blue were hurled into this hell hole to be torn and cut to pieces.

A division of negro troops were hurried in and the sight of them drove the Southerners to desperation. It took but a moment's grim charge to hurl these black regiments back into the pit on the bodies of their fallen white comrades. The crater became a butcher's shambles.

When the smoke cleared four thousand more of Grant's men lay dead and wounded in the grave in which had been buried three hundred grey defenders.

Lee's losses were less than one third as many. Grant asked for a truce to bury his dead and from five until nine next morning there was no firing along the grim lines of siege for the first time since the day Petersburg had been invested.

So confident now was Lee that he could hold his position against any assault his powerful opponent could make, he detached Jubal Early with twenty thousand men and sent him through the Shenandoah Valley to strike Washington.

Grant was compelled to send Sheridan after him. In the meantime he determined to take advantage of Lee's reduced strength and cut the Weldon railroad over which were coming all supplies from the South.

Warren's corps was sent on this important mission. His attack failed and he was driven back with a loss of three thousand men. He entrenched himself and called for reinforcements. Hancock's famous corps was hurried to the assistance of Warren.

John Vaughan's regiment was now attached to Hancock's army. As they were strapping on their knapsacks for this march, to his amazement Julius suddenly appeared, grinning and bustling about as if he had never strayed from the fold. His clothes were in shreds and tatters.

"Where have you been all this time, nigger?" John asked.

"Who, me?"

"And where'd you get that new suit of clothes?"

"Well, I'm gwine tell ye Gawd's truf, Marse John. Atter dat Cold Harbor business I lit out fur de odder side. I wuz gittin' 'long very well dar wid General Elliot in de Confederacy when all of er sudden somfin' busted an' blowed me clean back inter de Union. An' here I is—yassah. An' I'se gwine ter stick by you now. 'Pears lak de ain't no res' fur de weary no whar."

John was glad to have his enterprising cook once more and received the traitor philosophically.

Lee threw A. P. Hill's corps between Warren and Hancock's advancing division. Hancock entrenched himself along-the railroad which he was destroying.

Hill trained his artillery on these trenches and charged them with swift desperation late in the afternoon. The Union lines were broken and crushed and the men fled in panic. In vain "Hancock the Superb," who had seen his soldiers fall but never fail, tried to rally them. In agony he witnessed their utter rout. His trenches were taken, his guns captured and turned in a storm of death on his fleeing men. He lost twelve stands of colors, nine big guns and twenty-five hundred men.

As the darkness fell General Nelson A. Miles succeeded in rallying a new line and stayed the panic by a desperate countercharge.

Once more the grapple was hand to hand, man to man, in the darkness. John Vaughan had fired the last load, save one, from his revolver, and sword in hand, was cheering his men in a mad effort to regain their lost entrenchments. Blue and grey were mixed in black confusion. Only by the light of flashing guns could friend be distinguished from foe. A musket flamed near his face and through the deep darkness which followed a sword thrust pierced his side. He sprang back with an oath and clinched with his antagonist, feeling for his throat in silence. For a minute they wheeled struggled and fought in desperation, stumbling over underbrush, slipping to their knees and rising. Every instinct of the fighting brute in man was up now and the battle was to the death for one—perhaps both.

John succeeded at last in releasing his right hand and drawing his revolver. His enemy sprang back at the same moment and through the darkness again came the sword into his breast. He felt the blood following the blade as it was snatched away, raised his revolver and fired his last shot squarely at his foe. The muzzle was less than two feet from his face and in the flash he saw Ned's look of horror, both brothers recognizing each other in the same instant.

"John—my God, it's you!"

"Yes—yes—and it's you—God have mercy if I've killed you!"

In a moment the older brother had caught Ned's sinking body and lowered it gently on the leaves.

"It's all right, John, old man," he gasped. "If I had to die it's just as well by your hand. It's war—it's hell—all hell—anyhow—what's the difference——"

"But you mustn't die, Boy!" John whispered fiercely. "You mustn't, I tell you!"

"I didn't want to die," Ned sighed. "Life was—just—becoming—real—beautiful—wonderful——"

He stopped and drew a deep breath.

John bent lower and Ned's arm slipped toward his neck and his fingers touched the warm blood soaking his clothes.

"I'm—afraid—I—got—you,—too,—John——"

"No, I'm all right—brace up, Boy. Pull that devil will of yours together—we've both got it—and live!"

The younger man's head had sunk on his brother's blood-stained breast.

"Now, look here, Ned, old man—this'll never do—don't—don't—give up!"

The answer came faint and low:

"Tell—Betty—when—you—see—her—that—with—my—last—breath—I—spoke —her—name—her—face—lights—the—dark—way——"

"You're going, Ned?"

"Yes——"

"Say you forgive me!"

"There's—nothing—to—forgive—it's—all—right—John—good-bye——"

The voice stopped. The battle had ceased. The woods were still. The older brother could feel the slow rising and falling of the strong young chest as if the muscles in the glory of their perfect life refused to hear the call of Death.

He bent in the darkness and kissed the trembling lips and they, too, were still. He drew himself against the trunk of a tree and through the beautiful summer night held the body of his dead brother in his arms.

His fevered eyes were opened at last and he saw war as it is for the first time. It had meant nothing before this reckoning of the dead and wounded after battle—sixty thousand men from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor in thirty days—ten thousand five hundred in the futile dash against Petersburg—four thousand in the crater—five thousand five hundred more now on this torn, twisted railroad, and all a failure—not an inch of ground gained.

These torn and mangled bundles of red rags he had watched the men dump into trenches and cover with dirt had meant nothing real. They were only loathsome things to be hidden from sight before the bugles called the army to move.

Now he saw a vision. Over every dark bundle on those blood-soaked fields bent a brother, a father, a mother, a sister or sweetheart. He heard their cries of anguish until all other sounds were dumb.

The heaps of amputated legs and arms he had seen so often without a sigh were bathed now in tears. The surgeons with their hands and arms and clothes soaked with red—he saw them with the eyes of love—scene on scene in hideous review—the young officer at Cold Harbor whose leg they were cutting off without the use of chloroform, his face convulsed, his jaws locked as the knife crashed through nerve and sinew, muscle and artery. And those saws gnawing through bones—God in heaven, he could hear them all now—they were cutting and tearing those he loved.

He heard their terrible orders with new ears. For the first time he realized what they meant.

"Give them the bayonet now——"

The low, savage, subdued tones of the officer had once thrilled his soul. The memory sickened him.

He could hear the impassioned speech of the Colonel as the men lay flat on their faces in the grass—the click of bayonets in their places—the look on the faces of the men eager, fierce, intense, as they sprang to their feet at the call:

"Charge!"

And the fight. A big, broad-shouldered brute is trying to bayonet a boy of fifteen. The boy's slim hand grips the steel with an expression of mingled rage and terror. He holds on with grim fury. A comrade rushes to his rescue. His bayonet misses the upper body of the strong man and crashes hard against his hip bone. The man with his strength seizes the gun, snatches it from his bleeding thigh and swings it over his head to brain his new antagonist, when the first boy, with a savage laugh, plunges his bayonet through the strong man's heart and he falls with a dull crash, breaking the steel from the musket's muzzle and lies quivering, with the blood-spouting point protruding from his side. He understood now—these were not soldiers obeying orders—they were fathers and brothers and playmates, killing and maiming and tearing each other to pieces.

Lord God of Love and Mercy, the pity and horror of it all!

It was one o'clock before Julius, searching the field with a lantern, came on him huddled against the tree with Ned's body still in his arms, staring into the dead face.



CHAPTER XXXIV

LOVE'S PLEDGE

Again Betty Winter found in her work relief from despair. She had hoped for peace in the beauty and tenderness of Ned's chivalrous devotion. Yet his one letter reporting the meeting had revealed her mistake. The moment she had read his confession the impulse to scream her protest to John was all but resistless. She had tried in vain to find a way of writing to Ned to tell him that she had deceived him and herself, and ask his forgiveness.

It was impossible to write to John under such conditions and she had suffered in silence. And then the wounded began to pour into Washington from Grant's front. The like of that procession of ambulances from the landing on Sixth Street to the hospitals on the hills back of the city had never been seen. The wounded men were brought on swift steamers from Aquia Creek. Floors and decks were covered with mattresses on which they lay as thickly as they could be placed. As the wounded died on the way they were moved to the bow and their faces covered.

At the landing tender hands were lifting them into the ambulances which slowly moved out in one line to the hospitals and back in a circle by another. These ambulances stretched in tragic, unbroken procession for three miles and never ceased to move on and on in an endless circle for three days and nights.

In an agony of anxiety Betty asked to be transferred to the landing that she might watch them fill the wagons. Her soul was oppressed with the certainty that John Vaughan would be found in one of them.

On the morning of the third day they were still coming in never-ending streams from the steamer decks. She wrung her hands in a moment of despair:

"Merciful God! Are they bringing back Grant's whole army?"

The patience of these suffering men was sublime. Only a sigh from one who would rise no more. Only a groan here and there from parched lips that asked for water.

At last came the ominous news for which she had watched and waited with sickening forebodings. The Republican printed the name of Captain John Vaughan among the wounded in the fight of Warren and Hancock's corps over the Weldon Railroad. There were only two thousand wounded men sent in on the steamers from the front after this battle, and they arrived at night.

Betty hurried to the landing and found that the ambulances had begun to move. She searched every face in vain, and when the last stretcher had passed out walked with trembling steps and scanned each silent covered face in the bow.

"Thank God," she murmured, "he's not there!"

She must begin now the patient search among the eighty thousand sick and wounded men in the city of sorrows on the hills.

She secured a hack and tried to reach the head of the procession and find the destination of the first wagons that had left before her arrival.

It was after midnight. A thunder storm suddenly rolled its dense clouds over the city and smothered the street lamps in a pall of darkness. The rain burst with a flash of lightning and poured in torrents. The electric display was awe-inspiring. The horses in one of the ambulances in the long line stampeded and smashed the vehicle in front. The procession was stopped in the height of the storm. The vivid flame was now continuous and Betty could see the wagons standing in a mud-splashed row for a mile, the lightning play bringing out in startling outline each horse and vehicle.

From every ambulance was hanging a fringe of curious objects shining white against the shadows when suddenly illumined. Betty looked in pity and awe. They were the burning fevered arms and legs and heads of the suffering wounded men eager to feel the splash of the cooling rain.

A full week passed before her search ended and she located him in one of the big new buildings hastily constructed of boards.

With trembling step she started to go straight to his cot. The memory of his brutal stare that day stopped her and she scribbled a line and sent it to him:

"John, dear, may I see you a moment?

"BETTY."

The doctor assured her that he was rapidly recovering, though restless and depressed. She caught her breath in a little gasp of surprise at the sight of his white face, pale and spiritual looking now from the loss of blood.

Her eyes were shining with intense excitement as she swiftly crossed the room, dropped on her knees beside his cot and seized his hands:

"O John, John, can you ever forgive me!"

He slipped his arm around her neck and held her a long time in silence.

The men in the room paid no attention to the little drama. It was happening every day around them.

"Oh, dearest," she went on eagerly, "I tried to put you out of my heart, but I couldn't. I am yours, all yours, body and soul. Love asks but one question—do you love me?"

"Forever!" he whispered.

"In my loneliness and despair I tried to give myself to Ned, but I couldn't, dear. I would have told him so had I been able to reach him—though I dreaded to hurt him."

John drew her hands down and looked at her with a strange expression.

"He's beyond the reach of pain and disappointment now, dear——"

"Dead?" she gasped.

The man only nodded, and clung desperately to her hands while her head sank in a flood of tears.

"We'll cherish his memory," he said in a curiously quiet voice, "as one of the sweetest bonds between us, my love——"

"Yes—always!" was the low answer.

For the life of him John Vaughan couldn't tell the terrible fact that his hand had struck him down. God alone should know that.

When she had recovered from the shock of the announcement Betty caressed his hand gently:

"We just love whom we love, dearest, and we can't help it. I am yours and you are mine. It's not a question of good or bad, right or wrong. We love—that's all."

"Yes, we love—that's all and it's everything. There's no more doubt, dear?"

"Not one," she cried. "I'm going to bring back the red blood to your cheeks now and take that fevered look out of your eyes——"

The weeks of convalescence were swift and beautiful to Betty—her ministry to his slightest whim a continuous joy. The only cloud in her sky was the strange, feverish, unquiet look in his eyes. On the day of his discharge he received a letter from his mother which deepened this expression to the verge of mania.

"What is it, dear?" Betty asked in alarm.

"One of those unfortunate things that have been happening somewhere every day for the past year—an arrest and imprisonment for treasonable utterances——"

"Who has been arrested?"

"This time my father in Missouri."

"Your father?" she gasped.

"Yes. He has been a bitter critic of the war. He seems to have gone too far. There was a riot of some sort in the village and he took the wrong side."

There was an ominous quiet in the way he talked.

"I'll take you to see the President, dearest," she said soothingly. "We'll ask for his release. It's sure to be granted."

John's eyes suddenly flashed.

"You think so?"

"Absolutely sure of it."

"We'll try it then," he said, with a cold ring in his voice that chilled Betty's heart, and sent her home wondering at its meaning.



CHAPTER XXXV

THE DARKEST HOUR

In the summer of 1864 the President saw the darkest hours of his life. The change in his appearance was startling and pitiful. His sombre eyes seemed to have sunk into their caverns beneath the bushy brows and all but disappeared. Their gaze was more and more detached from earth and set on some dim, invisible shore. Deeper and deeper sank the furrows in his ashen face. The shoulders drooped beneath a weight too great for any human soul to bear.

To Betty Winter's expression of loyalty and sympathy he answered sadly:

"It's success I need, child,—not sympathy. My own burdens of cares are as nothing to my soul. It's our cause—our cause—the Union must live or I shall die!"

He sat sometimes by his window for hours immovable as a marble statue, his deep, hungry eyes gazing, gazing forever over the shining river toward the Southern hills. His Secretaries stepped softly about the room in silent sympathy with the Chief they loved with passionate devotion.

Grant had crossed the Rapidan on that glorious spring morning in May with his magnificent army accompanied by the highest hopes of millions. And there had followed those awful sickening battles, one after another, until he had fallen back in failure before the impassable trenches around Petersburg.

The star of Grant, the conquering hero of the West, had apparently set in a sea of blood.

Lee, with inferior numbers, alert, resourceful, vigilant, had checked and baffled him at every turn, and Richmond's fall was no nearer to human eye than in 1862.

The miles and miles of hospital barracks in Washington, crowded to their doors with wounded, dying men, were the living witnesses of the Nation's mortal agony. Every city, town, village, hamlet and county in the North was in mourning. Death had literally flung its pall over the world.

From these thousands of stricken homes there had slowly risen a storm of protest against the new leader of the Army. The word "Butcher" was on every lip. General Grant, they said, possessed merely the qualities of the bulldog fighter—tenacity and persistence. He held what he had won so long as men were poured into his ranks by tens of thousands to take the place of the dead. They declared that he possessed no genius, no strategic skill, no power to originate plans and devise means to overcome his skillful and brilliant antagonist. The demand was pressed on the President for his removal.

His refusal had brought on him the blame for all the blood and all the suffering and all the failures of the past bitter year.

His answer to his critics was remorseless in its common sense, but added nothing to his hold on the people.

"We must fight to win," he firmly declared. "Grant is the ablest general we have yet developed. His losses have been appalling—but the struggle is now to the bitter end. Our resources are exhaustless. The South can not replace her fallen soldiers—her losses are fatal, ours are not."

In the face of a political campaign he prepared a call by draft for five hundred thousand more men and issued a proclamation appointing a day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.

The spirits of the people touched the lowest tide ebb of despair.

The war debt had reached the appalling total of two thousand millions of dollars and its daily cost was four millions. The paper of the Treasury was rapidly depreciating and the premium on gold rising until the value of a one dollar green-back note was less than fifty cents in real money. The bankers, fearing the total bankruptcy of the Nation, had begun to refuse further loans on bonds at any rate of interest.

The bounty offered to men for reenlistment in the army when their terms expired amounted to the unheard of sum of one thousand five hundred dollars cash on signing for the new term. Bounty jumping had become the favorite sport of adventurous scoundrels. Millions of dollars were being stolen by these men without the addition of a musket to the fighting force. Grant was hanging them daily, but the traitor's work continued. The enlisted man deserted in three weeks and reappeared at the next post and reenlisted again, collecting his bounty with each enrollment.

The enemies of the President in his own party, led by Senator Winter, to make sure of his defeat before the convention, which was about to meet in Baltimore, held a National convention of Radical Republicans in Cleveland and nominated John C. Fremont for the Presidency. Their purpose was by this party division to make Lincoln's nomination an impossibility. Fremont's withdrawal was the weapon with which they would fight the President before the regular Republican convention and after. Senator Winter voiced the feeling of this convention in a speech of bitter and vindictive eloquence.

"I denounce the administration of Abraham Lincoln," he declared, "as imbecile and vacillating. We demand not only the crushing of Lee's army, but a program of vengeance against the rebels, which will mean their annihilation when conquered. We demand the confiscation of their property, the overthrow of every trace of local government and the reduction of their States to conquered provinces under the control of Congress. The milk and water policy of Lincoln is both a civil and a military failure, and his renomination would be the greatest calamity which could befall our Nation!"

A week later the regular party convention met at Baltimore. On the night before this meeting the President's renomination was not certain.

On every hand his enemies were assailing him with unabated fury. Every check to the National arms was laid at his door—every mistake of civil or military management. The ravages of the Confederate cruisers which were built in England and had swept the seas of our commerce were blamed on him. He should have called Great Britain to account for these outrages and had two wars instead of one!

The cost of the great struggle mounting and mounting into billions was his fault. The draft might have been avoided with the Government in abler hands. The emancipation policy had not freed a single negro and driven the whole Democratic Party into opposition to the war. His Border State policy had held four Slave States in the Union, but crippled the moral power of his position as anti-Slavery man. Every lie, every slander of four years were now repeated and magnified.

A competent man must be put into the White House. The Rail-splitter must go!

The real test of strength would come in the secret meeting of the Grand Council of the Union League—the Secret Society which had been organized to defeat the schemes of the Knights of the Golden Circle. In this meeting men will say exactly what they think. In the big convention to-morrow all will be harmony and peace. The convention will do what these powerful leaders from every State in the North tell them to do.

The assembly is dignified and orderly. The men who compose it are the eyes and ears and brains of the party they represent. They are the real rulers of the Nation. The party will obey their orders. These are the men who do the executive thinking for millions. The millions can only reject or ratify their wills. We are a democracy in theory, but in reality here is assembled the aristocracy of brains which constitutes our government.

The Grand President Edmunds raps for order and faces a crowd of keen, intelligent leaders of men his equal in culture and will.

The meeting is called for but one purpose. With swift, direct action the battle begins. A friend of the President offers a resolution endorsing his administration, preceded by a preamble which declares it to be unwise to swap horses while crossing a stream.

The big guns open on this battle line without a moment's hesitation. Senator Winter has not thought it wise to make this opening speech. The prominent part he took in organizing and launching the Fremont convention has put him in the position of an avowed bolter. He has already put forward a colleague from the Senate who is supposed to be friendly to the administration.

The Senator is a man of blunt speech and dominating personality. He speaks with earnestness, conviction and eloquence. He does not mince words. All the petty grievances and mistakes and disappointments of his four years under the tall, quiet man's strong hand are firing his soul now with burning passion.

He boldly accuses the President of tyranny, usurpation, illegal acts, of abused power, of misused advantages, of favoritism, stupidity, frauds in administration, timidity, sluggish inaction, oppression, the willful neglect of suffering and the willful refusal to hear the cry of the down-trodden slave.

He turns the battery of his scorn now on his personal peculiarities, his drawn and haggard and sorrow marked face, his heartlessness in reading and telling funny stories, and last of all his selfish ambition which asks a second term at the sacrifice of his party and his country.

A Congressman of unusual brilliance and power follows this assault with one of even greater eloquence and bitterness.

Two more in quick succession and all demand with one accord the same thing:

"Down with Lincoln!"

Not a voice has been lifted in his favor. If he has a friend he is apparently afraid to open his mouth.

And then the giant form of Jim Lane slowly rises. He looks quietly over the crowd as if passing in review the tragic events of four years. Is he going to add his voice to this chorus of rage? A year ago in the same Grand Council he had a bitter grievance against the President and assailed him furiously. Yesterday he was at the White House and came away with a shadow on his strong face.

He stood for a long time in silence and seemed to be scanning each individual in the crowd of tense listeners.

And then his deep voice broke the stillness. His words rang like the boom of cannon and their penetrating power seemed to pierce the brick walls of the room.

"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Grand Council:

"To stir up sore and wounded hearts to bitterness requires no skill or power of oratory. To address the minds of men sickened by disaster, wearied by long trial, heated by passion, bewildered by uncertainty, heavy with grief, and cunningly to turn them into one vindictive channel, into one blind rush of senseless fury requires no great power of oratory and no great mastery of the truth. It may be the trick of a charlatan!"

He paused and gazed with deliberate and offensive insolence into the faces of the men who had spoken. Their eyes blazed with wrath, and a fierce thrill of excitement swept the crowd.

"For a man to address himself to an assembly like this, however, goaded to madness by suffering, sorrow, humiliation, perplexity—and now roused by venomous arts to an almost unanimous condemnation of the innocent—I say to address you, turn you in your tracks and force you to go the other way—that would indeed be a feat of transcendent oratorical power. I am no orator—but I am going to tell you the truth and the truth will make you do that thing!"

Men began to lean forward in their seats now as with impassioned faith he told the story of the matchless work the great lonely spirit had wrought for his people in the White House during the past passion-torn years. His last sentence rang like the clarion peal of a trumpet:

"Desert him now and the election of George B. McClellan on a 'Peace-at-any-Price' platform is a certainty—the Union is dissevered, the Confederacy established, the slaves reshackled, the dead dishonored and the living disgraced!"

His last sentence was an angry shout whose passion swept the crowd to its feet. The resolution was passed and Lincoln's nomination became a mere formality.

But Senator Winter had only begun to fight. His whole life as an Abolitionist had been spent in opposition to majorities. He had no constructive power and no constructive imagination. His genius was purely destructive, but it was genius. Without a moment's delay he began his plans to force the President to withdraw from his own ticket in the midst of his campaign.

The one ominous sign which the man in the White House saw with dread was the rapid growth through these dark days of a "Peace-at-any-Price" sentiment within his own party lines in the heart of the loyal North. Again Horace Greeley and his great paper voiced this cry of despair.

The mischief he was doing was incalculable because he persisted in teaching the millions who read his paper that peace was at any time possible if Abraham Lincoln would only agree to accept it. As a Southern-born man, the President knew the workings of the mind of Jefferson Davis as clearly as he understood his own. Both these men were born in Kentucky within a few miles of each other on almost the same day. The President knew that Jefferson Davis would never consider any settlement of the war except on the basis of the division of the Union and the recognition of the Confederacy. When Greeley declared that the Confederate Commissioners were in Canada with offers of peace, the President sent Greeley himself immediately to meet them and confer on the basis of a restored Union with compensation for the slaves. The Conference failed and Greeley returned from Canada angrier with the President than ever for making a fool of him.

In utter disregard for the facts he continued to demand that the Government bring the war to an end. The thing which made his attack deadly was that he was rousing the bitterness of hopeless sorrow in thousands of homes whose loved ones had fallen.

Thoughtful men and women had begun to ask themselves new questions:

"Is not the price we are paying too great?"

"Can any cause be worth this ocean of tears, this endless deluge of blood?"

The President must answer this bitter cry with the positive assurance that he would make peace at any moment on terms consistent with the Nation's preservation or both he and his party must perish.

He determined to draw from Mr. Davis a positive declaration of the terms on which the South would accept peace. He dared not do this openly, as it would be a confession to Europe of defeat and would lead to the recognition of the Confederacy.

He accordingly sent Colonel Jaquess, a distinguished Methodist clergyman in the army, and J. R. Gilmore, of the Tribune, on a secret mission to Richmond for this purpose. They must go without credentials or authority, as private individuals and risk life and liberty in the undertaking.

Both men promptly accepted the mission and left for Grant's headquarters to ask General Lee for a pass through his lines.

The Democratic Party was now a militant united force inspired by the Copperhead leaders, who had determined to defeat the President squarely on a peace platform and put General McClellan into the White House. Behind them in serried lines stood the powerful Secret Orders clustered around the Knights of the Golden Circle.

Positive proofs were finally laid before the President that these Societies had planned an uprising on the night of the election and the establishment of a Western Confederacy.

Edmunds, the President of the Union League, handed him the names of the leaders.

"Now, sir, you can strike!" he urged.

The tall, sorrowful man slowly shook his head.

"You doubt the truth of these statements?" Edmunds asked.

"No. They are too true. Let sleeping dogs lie. One revolution at a time. We have all we can manage at present. If we win the election they won't dare rise. If we lose, it's all over anyhow—and it makes no difference what they do."

With patient wisdom he refused to stir the dangerous hornet's nest.

And to cap the climax of darkness, Jubal Early's army suddenly withdrew from Lee's lines, swept through the Shenandoah Valley and invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania.

With three-quarters of a million blue soldiers under arms, the daring men in grey were once more threatening the Capital. They seized and cut the Northern railroads, burning their bridges and capturing trains; they threatened Baltimore, captured Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, burned it, spread terror throughout the State and surrounding territory, and brushing past Lew Wallace's six thousand men at Monocacy, were bearing down on Washington with swift ominous tread.

It was incredible! It was unthinkable, and yet the reveille of Early's drums could be heard from the White House window.

John Bigelow, our Charge d'Affaires at Paris, had sent warning of a conversation with the Emperor of France, at which the President had only smiled.

"Lee will take Washington," the Emperor had declared, "and then I shall recognize the Confederacy. I have just received news that Lee is certain to take the Capital."

The message was flashed to Grant for help. The city was practically at Early's mercy if he should strike. He couldn't hold the Capital, of course, but if he took it even for twenty-four hours the Government would lose all prestige and standing in the Courts of Europe.

For twenty-four hours the panic in Washington was complete. The Government clerks were rushed into the trenches and hastily armed.

Early threw one shell into the city, which crashed through a house, his cavalry dashed into the corporate limits and took a prisoner and later burned the house of Blair, a member of the Cabinet.

The Sixth Corps arrived from Petersburg; a thousand men were killed and wounded in the skirmishing of two days, but the Capital escaped by the skin of its teeth.

Grant laconically remarked:

"If Early had been one day earlier he would have entered the Capital."

While he had not actually taken Washington, Lee's strategy was a masterly stroke. He had cleared the Shenandoah Valley, which was his granary, and enabled the farmers to reap their crops. He had showed the world that his army was still so terrible a weapon that with it he could hold Grant at bay, drive his enemy from the Valley, invade two Northern States, burn their cities and destroy their railroads, and throw his shells into Washington.

A wave of incredulous sickening despair swept the North. If this could be done after three and a half years of blood and tears and two billions of dollars spent, where could the end be?

Early had done in Washington what neither McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, Meade nor Grant had yet succeeded in doing for Richmond—thrown shells into the city and taken a prisoner from its very streets. Had he arrived a day earlier—in other words, had not Lew Wallace's gallant little army of six thousand delayed him twenty-four hours—he could have entered the city, raided the Treasury and burned the Capitol.

Senator Winter was not slow to strike the blow for which he had been eagerly waiting a favorable moment. He succeeded in detaching from the President in this moment of panic a group of men who had stood squarely for his nomination at Baltimore. He agreed to withdraw Fremont's name if they would induce the President to withdraw and a new convention be called.

So deep was the depression, so black the outlook, so certain was McClellan's election, that the members of the National Republican Executive Committee met and conferred with this Committee of traitors to their Chief.

No more cowardly and contemptible proposition was ever submitted to the chosen leader of a great party. It was not to be wondered at that Winter and his Radical associates could stoop to it. They were theorists. To them success was secondary. They would have gladly and joyfully damned not only the Union—they would have damned the world to save their theories. But that his own party leaders should come to him in such an hour and ask him to withdraw cut the great patient heart to the quick.

He agreed to consider their humiliating proposition and give them an answer in two weeks. Nicolay, his first Secretary, wrote to John Hay, who was in Illinois:

"DEAR MAJOR: Hell is to pay. The politicians have a stampede on that is about to swamp everything. The National Committee are here to-day. Raymond thinks a commission to Richmond is the only salt to save us. The President sees and says it would be utter ruin. The matter is now undergoing consultation. Weak-kneed damned fools are on the move for a new candidate to supplant the President. Everything is darkness and doubt and discouragement. Our men see giants in the airy and unsubstantial shadows of the opposition, and are about to surrender without a blow. Come to Washington on the first train. Every man who loves the Chief must lay off his coat now and fight to the last ditch. He's too big and generous to be trusted alone with these wolves. He is the only man who can save this Nation, and we must make them see it."

Worn and angry after the long discussion with his cowardly advisers, the President retired to his bedroom, locked the door, laid down, and tried to rest. Opposite the lounge on which he lay was a bureau with a swinging mirror. He gazed for a moment at his long figure, which showed full length, his eye resting at last on the deep cut lines of the haggard face. Gradually two separate and distinct images grew—one behind the other, pale and death-like but distinct. He looked in wonder, and the longer he looked the clearer stood this pale second reflection.

"That's funny!" he exclaimed.

He rose, rubbed his eyes, and walked to the mirror, examining it curiously. He had always been a man of visions—this child of the woods and open fields.

"I wonder if it's an illusion?" he muttered. "I'll try again."

He returned to the couch and lay down. Again it grew a second time plainer than before, if possible. He watched for a long time with a feeling of awe.

"I wonder if I'm looking into the face of my own soul?" he mused.

He studied this second image with keen interest. It was five shades paler than the first. The thing had happened to him once before and his wife had declared it a sign that he would be elected to a second term, but the paleness of the second image meant that he would not live through it. It was uncanny. He rose and paced the floor, laid down again, and the image vanished. What did it mean?

Only that day a secret service man had come to warn him of a new plot of assassination and beg him to double the guard.

"What is the use, my dear boy, in setting up the gap when the fence is down all around?"

"Remember, sir, they shot a hole through your hat one night last week on your way to the Soldiers' Home."

"Well, what of it? If a man really makes up his mind to kill me he can do it——"

"You can take precautions."

"But I can't shut myself up in an iron box—now, can I? If I am killed I can die but once. To live in constant dread of it is to die over and over again. I decline to die until the time comes—away with your extra guards! I've got too many now. They bother me."

He threw off his depression and took up a volume of Artemus Ward's funny sayings to refresh his soul with their quaint humor. He must laugh or die. He had promised to see Betty Winter with a friend who had a petition to present at ten o'clock. He would rest until she came.

John Vaughan had insisted on her coming at this unusual hour. She protested, but he declared the chances of success in asking for his father's release would be infinitely better if she took advantage of the President's good nature and saw him alone at night when they would not be interrupted.

As they neared the White House grounds, crossing the little park on the north side, Betty's nervousness became unbearable. She stopped and put her hand on John's arm.

"Let's wait until to-morrow?" she pleaded.

"The President is expecting us——"

"I'll send him word we couldn't come."

"But, why?"

She hesitated and glanced at him uneasily:

"I don't know. I'm just nervous. I don't feel equal to the strain of such an interview to-night. It means so much to you. It means so much to me now that love rules my life——"

He took her hands in his and drew her into the friendly shadows beside the walk.

"Love does rule life, doesn't it?"

"Absolutely. I'm frightened when I realize it," she sighed.

"You are all mine now? In life, in death, through evil report and good report?"

"In life, in death, through evil report and good report——yours forever, dearest!"

He took her in his arms and held her in silence. She could feel him trembling with deep emotion.

"There's nothing to be nervous about then," he said, reassuringly, as his arms relaxed. "Come, we'll hurry. I want to send a message to my father to-night announcing his release."

At the entrance to the White House grounds they passed a man who shot a quick glance at John, and Betty thought his head moved in a nod of approval or recognition.

"You know him?" she asked nervously.

"One of Baker's men, I think—attempt on the President's life last week. They've doubled the guard, no doubt."

They passed another, strolling carelessly from the shadows of the white pillars of the portico.

"They seem to be everywhere to-night," John laughed carelessly.

The White House door was open and they passed into the hall and ascended the stairs to the Executive Chamber without challenge. Little Tad, the President's son, who ran the House to suit himself at times, was in his full dress suit of a lieutenant of the army and had ordered the guard to attend a minstrel show he was giving in the attic.

The President had agreed to meet Betty in his office at ten o'clock and told her to bring her friend right upstairs and wait if he were not on time.

They sat down and waited five minutes in awkward silence. Betty was watching the strange glittering expression in John Vaughan's eyes with increasing alarm.

She heard a muffled footfall in the hall, stepped quickly to the door, and saw the man they had passed at the entrance to the grounds.

She returned trembling.

"The man we passed at the gate is in that hall," she whispered.

"What of it?" was the careless answer. "Baker's secret service men come and go when they please here——"

He paused and glanced at the door.

"He has his eye on us maybe," he added, with a little laugh.

He studied Betty's flushed face for a moment, curiously hesitated as if about to speak, changed his mind, and was silent. He drew his watch from his pocket and looked at it.

"I've ordered a carriage to wait for you at the gate at a quarter past ten," he said quickly. "I forgot to tell you."

"Why—it may take us longer than half an hour?"

"That's just it. We may be talking two hours. Such things can't be threshed out in a minute. You can introduce me, say a good word, and leave us to fight it out——"

"I want to stay," she interrupted.

"Nonsense, dear, it may take hours. Besides, I may have some things to say to the President, and he some things to say to me that it were better a sweet girl's ears should not hear——"

"That's exactly what I wish to prevent, John, dear," she pleaded. "You must be careful and say nothing to offend the President. It means too much. We must win."

"I'll be wise in the choice of words. But you mustn't stay, dear. I'm not a child. I don't need a chaperone."

"But you may need a friend——"

"He does wield the power of kings—doesn't he?"

"With the tenderness and love of a father, yes."

"And yet I've wondered," he went on in a curious cold tone, "why he hasn't been killed—when the death of one man would end this carnival of murder——"

"John, how can you say such things?" Betty gasped.

"It's true, dear," he answered calmly. "This man's will alone has prevented peace and prevents it now. The soldiers on both sides joke with one another across the picket lines. They get together and play cards at night. Before the battle begins, our boys call out:

"'Get into your holes, now, Johnnie, we've got to shoot.'

"Left to themselves, the soldiers would end this war in thirty minutes. It's the one man at the top who won't let them. It's hellish—it's hellish——"

"And you would justify an assassin?" Betty asked breathlessly.

"Who is an assassin, dear?" he demanded tensely. "The man who wields a knife or the tyrant who calls the fanatic into being? Brutus or Caesar, William Tell or Gessler? Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God——"

"John, John—how can you say such things—you don't believe in murder——"

"No!" he breathed fiercely. "I don't now. I used to until I had a revelation——"

He stopped short as if strangled.

"Revelation—what do you mean?" Betty whispered, watching his every movement, with growing terror.

He looked at her with eyes glittering.

"I didn't want to tell you this," he began slowly. "I meant to keep the black thing hidden in my own soul. But you'll understand better if I speak. I killed Ned Vaughan with my own hands——"

"You're mad——" Betty shivered.

"I wish I were—no—I was never sane before that flash of red from hell showed me the truth—showed me what I was doing. We fought in the darkness of a night attack, hand to hand, like two maddened beasts. He ran me through with his sword and I sent the last ball left in my revolver crashing through his breast. In the glare of that shot I saw his face—the face of my brother! I caught him in my arms as he fell and held him while the life blood ebbed away through the hole I had torn near his heart. And then I saw what I'd been doing, saw it all as it is—war—brother murdering his brother—the shout and the tumult, the drums and bugles, the daring and heroism of it all, just that and nothing more—brother cutting his brother's throat——"

His head sank into his hands in a sob that strangled speech.

Betty slipped her arm tenderly around his shoulder and stroked the heavy black hair.

"But you didn't know, dear—you wouldn't have fired that shot if you had——"

He lifted himself suddenly and recovered his self-control.

"No. That's just it," he answered bitterly. "I wouldn't have done it had I known—nor would he, had he known. But I should have seen before that every torn and mangled body I had counted in the reckoning of the glory of battle was some other man's brother, some other mother's boy——"

He paused and drew himself suddenly erect:

"Well I'm awake now—I know and see things as they are!"

His hand unconsciously felt for his revolver, and Betty threw her arms around his neck with a smothered cry of horror:

"Merciful God—John—my darling—you are mad—what are you going to do?"

"Why nothing, dear," he protested, "nothing! I'm simply going to ask the President whose power is supreme to give my father a fair trial or release him—that's all—you needn't stay longer—the carriage is waiting. I can introduce myself and plead my own cause. If he's the fair, great-hearted man you believe, he'll see that justice is done——"

"You are going to kill the President!" Betty gasped.

"Nonsense—but if I were—what is the death of one man if thousands live? I saw sixty thousand men in blue fall in thirty days—two thousand a day—besides those who wore the grey. At Cold Harbor I saw ten thousand of my brethren fall in twenty minutes. Why should you gasp over the idea that one man may die whose death would stop this slaughter?"

"John, you're mad!" she cried, clinging to him desperately. "You're mad, I tell you. You've lost your reason. Come with me, dear—come at once——"

"No. I was never more sane than now," he answered firmly.

"Then I'll warn the President——"

He held her with cruel force:

"You understand that if it's true, my arrest, court-martial and death follow?"

"No. I'll warn him not to come. I alone know——"

She broke his grip on her arm and started toward the door. He lifted his hand in quick commanding gesture:

"Wait! my men are in that hall—it's his life or mine now. You can take your choice——"

The girl's figure suddenly straightened:

"Take your men out and go with them at once!"

"No. If he does justice, I may spare his life. If he does not——"

"You shall not see him——"

"It's my life or his—I warn you——"

"Then it's yours—I choose my country!"

She walked with quick, firm step to the door leading into the family apartments of the President. On the threshold her feet faltered. She grasped the door facing, turned, and saw him standing with folded arms watching her—with the eyes of a madman. Her face went white. She lifted her hand to her heart and slowly stumbled back into his arms.

"God have mercy!" she sobbed. "I'm just a woman—my love—my darling—I—I—can't—kill you——"

Her arms relaxed and she would have fallen to the floor had he not caught the fainting form and carried her into the hall.

Two men were at his side instantly.

"Take Miss Winter downstairs," he whispered. "There's a carriage at the gate. Bring it quietly to the door—one of you take her to the Senator's home. The other must return here immediately and wait my orders. There's no guard in this outer hall at night. The one inside is with the boy. Keep out of sight if any one passes."

The men obeyed without a word and John Vaughan stepped quickly back into the Executive office, drew the short curtains across the window, turned the lights on full, examined his revolver, and sat down in careless attitude beside the President's desk. He could hear his heavy step already approaching the door.



CHAPTER XXXVI

THE ASSASSIN

John Vaughan's face paled with the sudden realization of the tremendous deed he was about to do. It had seemed the only solution of the Nation's life and his own, an hour ago. The air of Washington reeked with deadly hatred of the President. Every politician who could not control his big, straightforward, honest mind was his enemy. The gloom which shrouded the country over Grant's losses and the failure of his campaign had set every hound yelping at his heels in full cry. He spent much of his time in the hospitals visiting and cheering the wounded soldiers. These men were his friends. They believed in his honesty, his gentleness and his humanity, and yet so deadly had grown the passions of war and so bitter the madness of political prejudice that the majority of the wounded men were going to vote against him in the approaching election.

An informal vote taken in Carver Hospital had shown the amazing result of three to one in favor of McClellan!

John Vaughan, in his fevered imagination, had felt that he was rendering a heroic service to the people in removing the one obstacle to peace. The President was the only man who could possibly defeat McClellan and continue the war. He was denounced by the opposition as usurper, tyrant, and dictator. He was denounced by thousands of men in his own party as utterly unfit to wield the power he possessed.

And yet, as he heard the slow, heavy footfall approaching the door, a moment of agonizing doubt gripped his will and weakened his arm. His eye rested on a worn thumbed copy of the Bible which lay open on the desk. This man, who was not a church member, in the loneliness of his awful responsibilities, had been searching there for guidance and inspiration. There was a pathos in the thought that found his inner conscience through the mania that possessed him.

Well, he'd test him. He would try this tyrant here alone before the judgment bar of his soul—condemn him to death or permit him to live, as he should prove true or false to his mighty trust.

His hand touched his revolver again and he set his square jaws firmly.

The tall figure entered and closed the door.

A flash of blind rage came from the depths of John Vaughan's dark eyes at the first sight of him. He moved forward a step and his hand trembled in a desperate instinctive desire to kill. He was a soldier. His enemy was before him advancing. To kill had become a habit. It seemed the one natural thing to do.

He stopped with a shock of surprise as the President turned his haggard eyes in a dazed way and looked about the room.

The light fell full on his face increasing its ghost-like pathetic expression. The story of anxiety and suffering was burnt in letters of fire that left his features a wrinkled mask of grey ashes. The drooping eyelids were swollen, and dark bags hung beneath them. The muscles of his massive jaws were flaccid, the lines about his large expressive mouth terrible in their eloquence. His sombre eyes seemed to gaze on the world with the anguish of millions in their depths.

For a moment John Vaughan was held in a spell by the unexpected apparition.

"You are alone, sir?" the quiet voice slowly asked.

"Yes."

"I had expected Miss Winter——"

"She came with me and was compelled to leave."

"Oh—will you pull up a chair."

The tall form dropped wearily at his desk. His voice had a far-away expression in its tones.

"And what can I do for you, sir?" he asked.

"My name is Vaughan—John Vaughan——"

The dark head was lifted with interest:

"The brother of Ned Vaughan, who escaped from prison?"

John nodded:

"The son of Dr. Richard Vaughan, of Palmyra, Missouri."

"Then you're our boy, fighting with Grant's army—yes, I heard of you when your brother was in trouble. You've been ill, I see—wounded, of course?"

"Yes."

The President rose and took his visitor's hand, clasping it with both his own:

"There's nothing I won't do for one of our wounded boys if I can—what is it?"

"My mother writes me that my father has been arrested without warrant, is held in prison without bail and denied the right to trial——"

He paused and leaned on the desk, trembling with excitement which had increased as he spoke.

"I have come to ask you for justice—that he shall be confronted by his accusers in open court and given a fair trial——"

A frown deepened the shadows in the dark, kindly face:

"And for what was he arrested?"

"For exercising the right of free speech. In a public address he denounced the war——"

The President shook his head sorrowfully:

"You see, my boy, your house is divided against itself—the symbol in the family group of our unhappy country. Of course, I didn't know of this arrest. Such things hurt me, so I refuse to know of them unless I must. They tell me that Seward and Stanton have arrested without warrant thirty-five thousand men. I hope this is an exaggeration. Still it may be true——"

He stopped, sighed, and shook his head again:

"But come, now, my son, and put yourself in my place. What can I do? I've armed two million men and spend four millions a day to fight the South because they try to secede and disrupt the Union. My opponents in the North, taking advantage of our sorrows, harangue the people and elect a hostile legislature in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. They are about to pass an ordinance of secession and strike the Union in the back. If secession is wrong in the South it is surely wrong in the North. Shall I fight secession in the South and merely argue politely with it here? Instead of shooting these men, I've consented to a more merciful thing, I just let Seward and Stanton lock them up until the war is over and then I'll turn them all loose.

"Understand, my boy, I don't shirk responsibility. No Cabinet or Congress could conduct a successful war. There must be a one man power. I have been made that power by the people. I am using it reverently but firmly. And I am backed by the prayers, the good will and the confidence of the people—the silent millions whom I don't see, but love and trust.

"This war was not of my choosing. Once begun, it must be fought to the end and the Nation saved. It will then be proved that among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. To preserve the life of the Constitution I must strain some of its provisions in time of war——"

"And you will not interfere to give these accused men a trial?" John Vaughan interrupted in hard tones.

"I cannot, my boy, I dare not interfere. The civil law must be suspended temporarily in such cases. I cannot shoot a soldier for desertion and allow the man to go free who, by denouncing the war, causes him to desert. It cuts to the very heart of the Nation—its life is involved——"

He rose again and paced the floor, turning his back on his visitor in utter unconsciousness of the dangerous glitter in his eyes.

He paused and placed his big hand gently on John's arm:

"I know in doing this I am wielding a dangerous power—the power of kings—not because I love it, but because I must save my country. And I'm the humblest man who walks God's earth to-night!"

In spite of his bitterness, the simplicity and honesty of the President found John Vaughan's heart. No vain or cruel or selfish man could talk or feel like that. In the glow of his eager thought the ashen look of his face disappeared and it became radiant with warmth and tenderness. In dreamy, passionate tones he went on as if talking to convince himself he must not despair. The younger man for the moment was swept resistlessly on by the spell of his eloquence.

"They are always asking of me impossible things. Now that I shall remove Grant from command. I know that his battles have been bloody. Yet how else can we win? The gallant, desperate South has only a handful of men, ragged and half starved, yet they are standing against a million and I have exhaustless millions behind these. With Lee they seem invincible and every move of his ragged men sends a shiver of horror and of admiration through the North. Yet, if Grant fights on he must win. He will wear Lee out—and that is the only way he can beat him.

"Besides, his plan is bigger than the single campaign against Richmond. There's a grim figure at the head of a hundred thousand men fighting his way inch by inch toward Atlanta. If Sherman should win and take Atlanta, Lee's army will starve and the end is sure. I can't listen to this clamor. I will not remove Grant—though I've reasons for believing at this moment that he may vote for McClellan for President.

"Don't think, my son, that all this blood and suffering is not mine. It is. Every shell that screams from those big guns crashes through my heart. The groans of the wounded, the sighs of the dying, the tears of widows and orphans, of sisters and mothers—all—blue and grey—they are mine. I see and hear it all, feel all, suffer all.

"No man who lives to-day is responsible for this war. I could not have prevented it, nor could Jefferson Davis. We are in the grip of mighty forces sweeping on from the centuries. We are fighting the battle of the ages.

"But our country's worth it if we can only save it. Out of this agony and tears will be born a united people. We have always been cursed with the impossible contradiction of negro slavery.

"There has never been a real Democracy in the world because there has never been one without the shadow of slavery. We must build here a real government of the people, by the people, for the people. It's not a question merely of the fate of four millions of black slaves. It's a question of the destiny of millions of freemen. I hear the tread of coming generations of their children on this continent. Their destiny is in your hand and mine—a free Nation without a slave—the hope, refuge and inspiration of the world.

"This Union that we must save will be a beacon light on the shores of time for mankind. It will be worth all the blood and all the tears we shall give for it. The grandeur of our sacrifice will be the birthright of our children's children. It will be the end of sectionalism. We can never again curse and revile one another, as we have in the past. We've written our character in blood for all time. We've met in battle. The Northern man knows the Southerner is not a braggart. The Southerner knows the Yankee is not a coward.

"There can be but one tragedy, my boy, that can have no ray of light—and that is that all this blood should have flowed in vain, all these brave men died for nought, that the old curse shall remain, the Union be dismembered into broken sections and on future bloody fields their battles be fought over again——"

He paused and drew a deep breath:

"This is the fear that's strangling me! For as surely as George B. McClellan is elected President, surrounded by the men who at present control his party, just so surely will the war end in compromise, failure and hopeless tragedy——"

"Why do you say that?" John asked sharply.

"Because standing here on this very spot, before the battle of Gettysburg I offered him the Presidency if he would preside at a great mass meeting of his party and guarantee to save the Union. I offered to efface myself and give up the dearest ambition of my soul to heal the wounds of my people—and he refused——"

"Refused?" John gasped.

"Yes."

The younger man gazed at the haggard face for a moment through dimmed eyes, sank slowly to a seat and covered his face in his hands in a cry of despair!

The reaction was complete and his collapse utter.

The President gazed at the bent figure with sorrowful amazement, and touched his head gently with the big friendly hand:

"Why, what's the matter, my boy? I'm the only man to despair. You're just a captain in the army. If to be the head of hell is as hard as what I've had to undergo here I could find it in my heart to pity Satan himself. And if there's a man out of hell who suffers more than I do, I pity him. But it's my burden and I try to bear it. I wish I had only yours!"

John Vaughan sprang to his feet and threw his hands above his head in a gesture of anguish:

"O my God, you don't understand!"

He quickly crossed the space that separated them and faced the President with grim determination:

"But I'm going to tell you the truth now and you can do what you think's right. In the last fight before Petersburg I killed my brother in a night attack and held his dying body in my arms. I think I must have gone mad that night. Anyhow, when I lay in the hospital recovering from my wounds, I got the letter about my father and made up my mind to kill you——"

He paused, but the sombre eyes gave no sign—they seemed to be gazing on the shores of eternity.

"And I came here to-night for that purpose—my men are in that hall now!"

He stopped and folded his hands deliberately, waiting for his judge to speak.

A long silence fell between them. The tall, sorrowful man was looking at him with a curious expression of wonder and self pity.

"So you came here to-night to kill me?"

"Yes."

Again a long silence—the deep eyes looking, looking with their strange questioning gaze.

"Well," the younger man burst out at last, "what is my fate? I deserve it. Even generosity and gentleness have their limit. I've passed it. And I've no desire to escape."

The kindly hand was lifted to John Vaughan's shoulder:

"Why didn't you do it?"

"Because for the first time you made me see things as you see them—I got a glimpse of the inside——"

"Then I won you—didn't I?" the President cried with elation. "I've been talking to you just to keep my courage up—just to save my own soul from the hell of despair. But you've lifted me up. If I can win you I can win the others if I could only get their ear. All I need is a little time. And I'm going to fight for it. Every act of my life in this great office will stand the test of time because I've put my immortal soul into the struggle without one thought of saving myself.

"I've told you the truth, and the truth has turned a murderer into my friend. If only the people can know—can have time to think, I'll win. You thought me an ambitious tyrant—now, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Great God!—I had my ambitions, yes—as every American boy worth his salt has. And I dared to dream this vision of the White House—I, the humblest of the humble, born in a lowly pioneer's cabin in the woods of Kentucky. My dream came true, and where is its glory? Ashes and blood. And I, to whom the sight of blood is an agony unendurable, have lived with aching heart through it all and envied the dead their rest on your battlefields——"

He stopped suddenly and fixed John with a keen look:

"You'll stand by me, now, boy, through thick and thin?"

"I'd count it an honor to die for you——"

"All right. I give you the chance. I'm going to send you on a dangerous mission. I need but two things to sweep the country in this election and preserve the Union—a single big victory in the field to lift the people out of the dumps and make them see things as they are, and a declaration from Mr. Davis that there can be no peace save in division. I know that he holds that position, but the people in the North doubt it. I've sent Jaquess and Gilmore there to obtain his declaration. Technically they are spies. They may be executed or imprisoned and held to the end of the war. They go as private citizens of the North who desire peace.

"I want another man in Richmond whose identity will be unknown to report the results of that meeting in case they are imprisoned. You must go as a spy at the double risk of your life——"

"I'm ready, sir," was the quick response.

The big hand fumbled the black beard a moment:

"You doubtless said bitter things in Washington when you returned?"

"Many of them."

"Then you were approached by the leaders of Knights of the Golden Circle?"

"Yes."

"Good! You're the man I want without a doubt. You can use their signs and pass words in Richmond. Besides, you have a Southern accent. Your chances of success are great. I want you to leave here in an hour. Go straight through as a scout and spy in Confederate uniform. If Jaquess and Gilmore are allowed to return and tell their story—all right, your work with them is done. If they are imprisoned, get through the lines to Grant's headquarters, report this fact and Mr. Davis' answer, and it will be doubly effective—you understand?"

"Perfectly, sir."

"That's your first job. But I want you to go to Richmond for a double purpose—to take the train for Atlanta, get through the lines and give a message to a man down South I've been thinking about for the past month. The world has forgotten Sherman in the roar of the great battles Grant has fought. I haven't. Slowly but surely his grim figure has been growing taller on the horizon as the smoke lifts from each of his fights. Grant says he is our biggest general. Only a great man could say that about a subordinate commander. That's another reason I won't listen to people who demand Grant's removal.

"Sherman is now a hundred and fifty miles in Georgia before Atlanta. His road is being cut behind him every other day. You might be weeks trying to get to him by Chattanooga. The trains run through from Richmond. I want you to reach him quick, and give him a message from me. I can't send a written order. It wouldn't be fair to Grant. I'll give you credentials that he'll accept that will cost you your life in Richmond if their meaning is discovered.

"Tell General Sherman that if he can take Atlanta the blow will thrill the Nation, carry the election, and save the Union. Grant is deadlocked at Petersburg and may be there all winter. If he can fight at once and give us a victory, it's all that's needed. I'll send him an order to strike. Tell him to destroy it if he wins. If he loses—I'll publish it and take the blame on myself. Can you do this?"

"I will or die in the effort," was the quick reply.

"All right. Take this card at once to Stanton's office. Ask him to send you by boat to Aquia—by horse from there. Return here for your papers."

In ten minutes John had dispatched a note to Betty:

"DEAREST: God saved me from an act of madness. He sent His message through your sweet spirit. I am leaving for the South on a dangerous mission for the President. If I live to return I am all yours—if I die, I shall still live through eternity if only to love you.

"JOHN."

Within an hour he had communicated with the commander of the Knights, his arrangements were complete, and he was steaming down the river on his perilous journey.



CHAPTER XXXVII

MR. DAVIS SPEAKS

John Vaughan arrived in Richmond a day before Jaquess and Gilmore. His genial Southern manner, his perfect accent and his possession of the signs and pass words of the Knights of the Golden Circle made his mission a comparatively easy one.

He had brought a message from the Washington Knights to Judah P. Benjamin, which won the confidence of Mr. Davis' Secretary of State and gained his ready consent to his presence on the occasion of the interview.

The Commissioners left Butler's headquarters with some misgivings. Gilmore took the doughty General by the hand and said: "Good-bye, if you don't see us in ten days you may know we have 'gone up.'"

"If I don't see you in less time," he replied, "I'll demand you, and if they don't produce you, I'll take two for one. My hand on that."

Under a flag of truce they found Judge Ould, the Exchange Commissioner, who conducted them into Richmond under cover of darkness.

They stopped at the Spottswood House and the next morning saw Mr. Benjamin, who agreed to arrange an interview with Jefferson Davis.

Mr. Benjamin was polite, but inquisitive.

"Do you bring any overtures from your Government, gentlemen?"

"No, sir," answered Colonel Jaquess. "We bring no overtures and have no authority from our Government. As private citizens we simply wish to know what terms will be acceptable to Mr. Davis."

"Are you acquainted with Mr. Lincoln's views?"

"One of us is fully," said Colonel Jaquess.

"Did Mr. Lincoln in any way authorize you to come here?"

"No, sir," said Gilmore. "We came with his pass, but not by his request. We came as men and Christians, not as diplomats, hoping, in a frank talk with Mr. Davis, to discover some way by which this war may be stopped."

"Well, gentlemen," said Benjamin, "I will repeat what you say to the President, and if he follows my advice, he will meet you."

At nine o'clock the two men had entered the State Department and found Jefferson Davis seated at the long table on the right of his Secretary of State.

John Vaughan was given a seat at the other end of the table to report the interview for Mr. Benjamin.

He studied the distinguished President of the Confederate States with interest. He had never seen him before. His figure was extremely thin, his features typically Southern in their angular cheeks and high cheek bones. His iron-grey hair was long and thick and inclined to curl at the ends. His whiskers were small and trimmed farmer fashion—on the lower end of his strong chin. The clear grey eyes were full of vitality. His broad forehead, strong mouth and chin denoted an iron will. He wore a suit of greyish brown, of foreign manufacture, and as he rose, seemed about five feet ten inches. His shoulders slightly stooped.

His manner was easy and graceful, his voice cultured and charming.

"I am glad to see you, gentlemen," he said. "You are very welcome to Richmond."

"We thank you, Mr. Davis," Gilmore replied.

"Mr. Benjamin tells me that you have asked to see me to——"

He paused that the visitors might finish the sentence.

"Yes, sir," Jaquess answered. "Our people want peace, your people do. We have come to ask how it may be brought about?"

"Withdraw your armies, let us alone and peace will come at once."

"But we cannot let you alone so long as you repudiate the Union——"

"I know. You would deny us what you exact for yourselves—the right of self-government."

"Even so," said Colonel Jaquess, "we can not fight forever. The war must end sometime. We must finally agree on something. Can we not agree now and stop this frightful carnage?"

"I wish peace as much as you do," replied Mr. Davis. "I deplore bloodshed. But I feel that not one drop of this blood is on my hands. I can look up to God and say this. I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming and for twelve years I worked day and night to prevent it. The North was mad and blind, and would not let us govern ourselves and now it must go on until the last man of this generation falls in his tracks and his children seize his musket and fight our battle, unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence, and that or extermination we will have."

"We have no wish to exterminate you," protested the Colonel. "But we must crush your armies. Is it not already nearly done? Grant has shut you up in Richmond. Sherman is before Atlanta."

"You don't seem to understand the situation," Mr. Davis laughed. "We're not exactly shut up in Richmond yet. If your papers tell the truth it is your Capital that is in danger, not ours. Lee, whose front has never been broken, holds Grant in check and has men enough to spare to invade Maryland and Pennsylvania and threaten Washington. Sherman, to be sure, is before Atlanta. But suppose he is, the further he goes from his base of supplies, the more disastrous defeat must be. And defeat may come."

"But you cannot expect," Gilmore said, "with only four and one half millions to hold out forever against twenty?"

Mr. Davis smiled:

"Do you think there are twenty millions at the North determined to crush us? I do not so read the returns of your elections or the temper of your people."

"If I understand you, then," Jaquess continued, "the dispute with your government is narrowed to this, union or disunion?"