Each

interchange of views on the subject of New Orleans. cheered the other with assurances of the impracticability of the Federal attack. After public affairs had been discussed, the so-called President said: "Excuse me for not having asked after Mrs. Ratcliff. Is she well?"

"She died some time since,” replied Ratcliff.

"Indeed! In these times of general bereavement we find it impossible to keep account of our friends."

"It is my purpose, Mr. President, to marry soon again. You have yourself set the example of second nuptials, and I believe the experiment has been a happy one."

"Yes; may yours be as fortunate! Who is the lady ?”

"A young person not known in society, but highly respectable and well educated. I shall have the pleasure to present her to you here in Richmond in the course of the summer.” "Mrs. Davis will be charmed to make her acquaintance. Come and help us celebrate Lee's next great victory."

"Thank you. If I can get my affairs into position, I may wish to pass the next year in Europe with my new wife. It would not be difficult, I suppose, for you to give me some diplomatic stamp that would make me pass current."

"The government will be disposed, no doubt, to meet your views. We are likely to want some accredited agent in Spain. A post that would enable you to fluctuate between Madrid and Paris would be not an unpleasant one."

"It would suit me entirely, Mr. President."

"You may rely on my friendly consideration."
"Thank you. How about foreign recognition?"

"Slidell writes favorably as to the Emperor's predispositions In England, the aristocracy and gentry, with most of the trading classes, undoubtedly favor our cause. They desire to see the Union permanently broken up, and will help us all they can. But they must do this indirectly, seeing that the mass of the English people, the rabble rout, even the artisans, thrown out of employment by this war, sympathize with the plebeians of the North rather than with us, the true master race of this continent, the patricians of the South."

"I'm glad to see, Mr. President, you characterize the Northern scum as they deserve, descendants of the refuse sent over by Cromwell."

66

Yes, Mr. Ratcliff, you and I who are gentlemen by birth and education, and whose ancestors, further back than the Norman Conquest, were all gentlemen,*- can poorly disguise our disgust at any association with Yankees."

"Gladstone says you've created a nation, Mr. President." "Yes; Gladstone is a high-toned gentleman. His ancestors made their fortunes in the Liverpool slave-trade.”

"Have you any assurances yet from Mason?

"Nothing decisive. But the eagerness of the Ministry to humble the North in the Trent affair shows the real animus of the ruling classes in England. Lord John disappoints me occasionally. Bad blood there. But the rest are all right." "A pity they could n't put their peasantry into the condition of our slaves! "

"A thousand pities! But the new Confederacy must be a Missionary to the Nations,† to teach the ruling classes throughout the world, that slavery is the normal status for the mechanic and the laborer. Meanwhile the friends of monarchy in Europe must foresee that such a triumph as republicanism would have in the restoration of the old Union, with slavery no longer a power in the land, and with an army and navy the first in the world, would be an appalling spectacle."

"What do you hear from Washington, Mr. President?”

"The last I heard of the gorilla, he was investigating the so-called spiritual phenomena. The letter-writers tell of a medium having been entertained at the White House."

Here Mr. Memminger came in to talk over the state of the Rebel exchequer, a subject which Mr. Davis generally disposed of by ignoring; his old experience in repudiation teaching him that the best mode of fancy financiering was, if we may descend to the vernacular,

to "go it blind."

"I'll intrude no longer on your precious time," said Ratcliff. "I go home to send you word that the renegade Tennessean, Farragut, and that peddling lawyer from Lowell, Picayune Butler, have been spued out of the mouths of the Mississippi." The "President" rose, pressed Ratcliff's proffered hand, and, with a stiff, angular bow, parted from him at the door.

*Mr. Davis's father was a "cavalier." He dealt in horses.

"Reverently, we feel that our Confederacy is a God-sent missionary to the nations, with great truths to preach." —Richmond Enquirer.

CHAPTER XLI.

HOPES AND FEARS.

"In the same brook none ever bathed him twice:

To the same life none ever twice awoke."

Young.

THR

HREE days after his interview with the "remarkable man," Ratcliff was at Montgomery, Ala. There he telle graphed to Semmes, and received these words in reply: "All safe. On your arrival, go first to my office for directions." Ratcliff obeyed, and found a letter telling him not to go home, but to meet Semmes immediately at the house to which the latter had transferred the white slave. Half an hour did not elapse before lawyer and client sat in the curtained drawingroom of this house, discussing their affairs.

"I cannot believe," said Ratcliff, "that Josephine intended to have the girl escape. She was the first to plan this marriage."

"I did not act on light grounds of suspicion," replied Semmes. "I had myself overheard remarks which convinced me that Madame was playing a double game. Either she or some one else has put it into the girl's head that she is not lawfully a slave, but the kidnapped child of respectable parents."

As he spoke these words Semmes looked narrowly at Ratcliff, who blenched as if at an unexpected thrust. Following up his advantage, Semmes continued: "And, by the way, there is one awkward circumstance which, if known, might make trouble. I see by examining the notary's books, that, in the record of your proprietorship, you speak of the child as a quadroon. Now plainly she has no sign of African blood in her veins."

Ratcliff gnawed his lips a moment, and then remarked: "The fact that the record speaks of the child as a quadroon does not amount to much. She may have been born of a quadroon mother, and may have been tanned while an infant

so as to appear herself like a quadroon; and subsequently her skin may have turned fair. All that will be of little account. Half of the white slaves in the city would not be suspected of having African blood in their veins, but for the record. would think of disputing my claim to a slave, had been held by me for some fifteen years ?"

Who

-one, too, that

Well might Ratcliff ask the question. It is true that the laws of Louisiana had some ameliorated features that seemed to throw a sort of protection round the slave; and one of these was the law preventing the separation of young children from their mothers under the hammer; and making ownership in slaves transferable, not by a mere bill of sale, like a bale of goods, but by deed formally recorded by a notary. But it is none the less true that such are the necessities of slavery that the law was often a dead letter. There was always large room for evasion and injustice; and the man who should look too curiously into transactions, involving simply the rights of the slave, would be pretty sure to have his usefulness cut short by being denounced as an Abolitionist.

The ignominious expulsion of Mr. Hoar who went to South Carolina, not to look after the rights of slaves, but of colored freemen, was a standing warning against any philanthropy that had in view the enforcement or testing of laws friendly to the blacks.

"I should not be surprised," remarked Semmes, "if this young woman either has, or believes she has, some proofs invalidating your claim to hold her as a chattel."

"Bah! I've no fear of that. Who, in the name of all the fairies, does the little woman imagine she is?"

"She cherishes the notion that she is the daughter of that same Henry Berwick who was lost in the Pontiac. Should that be so, the house you live in is hers. That would be odd, would n't it? You seem surprised. Is there any probability in the tale?"

"None whatever!" exclaimed Ratcliff, affecting to laugh, but evidently preoccupied in mind, and intent on following out some vague reminiscence.

He remembered that the infant he had bought as a slave and taken into his barouche wore a chemise on which were

initial letters marked in silk. He was struck at the time by the fineness of the work and of the fabric. He now tried to recall those initial letters. By their mnemonic association with a certain word, he had fixed them in his mind. He strove to recall that word. Suddenly he started up. The word had come back to him. It was cab. The initials were C. A. B. Semmes detected his emotion, and drew his own inferences accordingly.

"By the way," said he, “having a little leisure last night, I looked back through an old file of the Bee newspaper, and there hit upon a letter from the pen of a passenger, written a few days after the explosion of the Pontiac."

"Indeed! One would think, judging from the trouble you take about it, you attached some degree of credence to this fanciful story."

"No. 'Tis quite incredible.

But a lawyer, you know, ought to be prepared on all points, however trivial, affecting his client's interests."

"Did you

find anything to repay you for your search?"

"I will read you a passage from the letter; which letter, by the way, bears the initials A. L., undoubtedly, as I infer from the context, those of Arthur Laborie, whose authority no one in New Orleans will question. Here is the passage. The letter is in French. I will translate as I read:

"Among the mortally wounded was a Mr. Berwick of New York, a gentleman of large wealth. They had pointed him out to me the day before, as, with a wife and infant child, the latter in the arms of a nurse, a colored woman, he stood on the hurricane-deck. The wife was killed, probably by the inhalation of steam. I saw and identified the body. The child, they said, was drowned; if so, the body was not recovered. A colored boy reported, that the day after the accident he had seen a white child and a mulatto woman, probably from the wreck, in the care of two white men; that the men told him the woman was crazy, and that the child belonged to a friend of theirs who had been drowned. I give this report, in the hope it may reach the eyes of some friend of the Berwicks, though it did not seem to make much impression on the officials who conducted the investigation. Probably they had good reason for dismissing the testimony; for Mr. Berwick died in the full belief that his wife and child had already passed away."