"Confound you, Victor!" muttered Peek. "You've told me nothing new, bringing me here. I was already aware your master was in jail. I can do nothing for him. Can't you do better than that? Come along!"

Returning to Semmes's office, Peek tried once more to interest the dog in the glove; but Victor tossed his nose away as if in a pet. He would have nothing to do with it.

"Come along, then, you rascal," said Peek. "We can do nothing further to-night. Come and share my room with me."

He reached home as the clock struck one. Victor followed him into the house, and eagerly disposed of a supper of bones and milk. Peek then went up to bed and threw down a mat by the open window, upon which the dog stretched himself as if he were quite as tired as his human companion.

108

CHAPTER VI.

THE REMARKABLE MAN AT RICHMOND.

Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look.

YES, Ratcliff had escaped.

Shakespeare.

His temper had

not been sweetened by his forced visit to the North. In Fort Lafayette he was sullen. Then he changed his tactics. Finding that Surgeon Mooney, though a Northern man, had conservative notions on the subject of the "nigger," he addressed himself to the work of befooling that functionary. Inasmuch as Nature had already half done it to his hands, he did not find the task a difficult one.

In his imprisonment Ratcliff had ample time for indulging in day-dreams. He grew almost maudlin over that photograph of Clara. Yes!

By his splendid generosity he would bind to him for ever that beautiful young girl.

He must transmit his proud name to legitimate children. He must be the founder of a noble house; for the Confederacy, when triumphant, would undoubtedly have its orders of nobility. A few years in Europe with such a wife would suit him admirably. Slidell and Mason, having been released from Fort Warren in Boston harbour, would be proud to take him by the hand and introduce him and his to the best society.

These visions came to soften his chagrin and mitigate the tediousness of imprisonment. But he now grew impatient for the fulfilment of his schemes. Delay had its dangers. True, he confided much in the vigilance of Semmes, but Semmes was an old man, and might drop off any day. A beautiful white slave was a very hazardous piece of property.

It was not difficult for Ratcliff to persuade Surgeon Mooney that his health required greater liberty of movement. At a time when, under the Davis régime, sick and wounded United States soldiers, imprisoned at Richmond in filthy tobacco warehouses, were, in repeated instances,

brutally and against all civilised usages shot dead for going to the windows to inhale a little fresh air, the National authorities were tender to a degree, almost ludicrous in contrast, of the health and rights of Rebel prisoners. If any of these were troubled with a bowel complaint or a touch of lumbago, the "central despotism at Washington" was denounced, by journals hostile to the war, as responsible for the affliction, and the people were called on to rescue violated Freedom from the clutches of an insidious tyrant, even from plain, scrupulous "old Abe," son of a poor Kentuckian who could show no pedigree, like Colonel Delancy Hyde and Jefferson Davis.

A pathetic paragraph appeared in one of the newspapers, giving a piteous story of a "loyal citizen of New Orleans," who, for no nameable offence, was made to pine in a foul dungeon to satisfy the personal pique of Mr. Secretary Stanton. Soon afterwards a remonstrance in behalf of this victim of oppression was signed by Surgeon Mooney. Ratcliff, whom the public sympathy had been led to picture as in the last stage of a mortal malady, was forthwith admitted to extraordinary privileges. He was enabled to communicate clandestinely with friends in New

York. He soon managed to get on board a Nova Scotia coasting schooner. A week afterwards, he succeeded in running the blockade, and in disembarking safely at Wilmington, N. C.

Anxious as he was to get home, he must first go to Richmond to pay his respects to "President" Davis, of whom everybody at the South used to say to Mr. W. H. Russell of the "London Times," "Don't you think our President is a remarkable man?" Ratcliff was not unknown to Davis, and sent up his card. It drew forth an immediate "Show him in." The "remarkable man sat in his library at a small table strewn with letters and manuscripts. A thin, Cassiuslike, care-burdened figure, slightly above the middle height. What some persons call dignity in his manner was in truth merely ungracious stiffness; while his hauteur was the unquiet arrogance that fears it shall not get its due. His face was not that of a man who could prudently afford to sneer (as he had publicly done) at Abraham Lincoln's homeliness. But before him lay letters on which the postage-stamp was an absurdly flattered likeness of himself-as like him as the starved apothecary is like Jupiter Tonans.