dence, sir! Be thankful I don't string you up to the yard-arm. Here, Mr. Buttons, see that this fellow is placed among the prisoners, and strictly guarded. I hold you responsible for him, sir!”

The Commodore turned on his heel and left Ratcliff panting with an intolerable fury that he dared not vent. Big drops of perspiration came out on his face. The midshipman, playfully addressed as Mr. Buttons, was a very stern-looking gentleman, of the name of Adams, who wore on his coat a very conspicuous row of buttons, and whose fourteenth birthday had been celebrated one week before. Motioning to Ratcliff, and frowning imperiously, he stamped his foot and exclaimed, "Follow me!" The slave-lord, with an internal half-smothered groan of rage and despair, saw that there was no help, and obeyed.

In one of the smaller parlours of the White House in Washington sat two men of rather marked appearance. One of them sat leaning back in his tipped chair, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and his right ankle resting on his left knee. His figure, though now flaccid and relaxed, would evidently be a tall one if pulled out like the sliding joints of a spy-glass; but gaunt, lean, and ungainly, with harsh angles and stooping shoulders. He was dressed in a suit of black, with a black satin vest, and round his neck a black silk kerchief

tied carelessly in a knot, and passing under a shirt-collar turned down and revealing a neck brawny, sinewy, and tanned.

The face that belonged to this figure was in keeping with it, and yet attractive from a certain charm of expression. Nose prominent and assertive; cheek-bones rather obtrusive, and under them the flesh sallow and browned, though partially covered by thick bristling black whiskers; eyes dark and deeply set; mouth and lips large; and crowning all these features a shock of stiff profuse black hair carelessly put aside from his irregularly developed forehead, as if by no other comb than that which he could make of his long lank fingers.

This man was not only the foremost citizen of the Republic, officially considered, but he had a reputation, exaggerated beyond his deserts, for homeliness. By the Rebel press he was frequently spoken of as "the ape" or the "gorilla." From the rowdy George Sanderson to the stiff, if not stately Jefferson Davis (himself far from being an Adonis), the pro-slavery champions took a harmless satisfaction, in their public addresses, in alluding, in some contemptuous epithet, to the man's personal shortcomings. So far from being dis

turbed, the object of all these revilings would himself sometimes playfully refer to his personal attractions, unconscious how much there was in that face to redeem it from being truly characterised either as ugly or commonplace.

As he sat now, with eyes bent on vacancy, and his mind revolving the arguments or facts which had been presented by his visitor, his countenance assumed an expression which was pathetic in its indication of sincere and patient effort to grasp the truth and see clearly the way before him. The expression redeemed the whole countenance, for it was almost tender in its anxious yet resigned. thoughtfulness; in its profound sense of the enormous and unparalleled responsibilities resting on that one brain, perplexing it in the extreme.

The other party to the interview was a man whose personal appearance was in marked contrast. Although he had numbered in his life nearly as many years as the President, he looked some ten years younger. His figure was strikingly handsome, compact, and graceful; and his clothes were nicely adapted to it, both in colour and cut. Every feature of his face was finely outlined and proportioned; and the whole expression indicated at once refinement and energy, habits of intellectual cul

ture and of robust physical exercise and endurance. This man was he who has passed so long in this story under the adopted name of Vance.

There had been silence between the two for nearly a minute. Suddenly the President turned his mild dark eyes on his visitor, and said: "Well, sir, what would you have me do?"

"I would have you lead public opinion, Mr. President, instead of waiting for public opinion to lead you."

"Make this allowance for me, Mr. Vance: I have many conflicting interests to reconcile; many conflicting facts and assertions to sift and weigh. Remember I am bound to listen, not merely to the men of New England, but to those of Kentucky, Maryland, and Eastern Tennessee."

"Mr. President, you are bound to listen to no man who is not ready to say, Down with slavery if it stands in the way of the Republic! You should at once infuse into every branch of the public service this determination to tear up the bitter root of all our woes. Why not give me the necessary authority to raise a black regiment?"

"Impossible! The public are not ripe for any such extreme measure."

"There it is! You mean that the public shall