bullets from Ratcliff's revolver, and was himself well armed, having determined to shoot down Ratcliff, if necessary, in liberating Clara. In pursuance of his plan he had lured the negrowoman, Agnes, up-stairs, under the pretence already mentioned. Here he had gagged, bound, and confined her securely. Hardly had he finished this job, when, looking out of the window, he had seen Peek and Antoine get out of a carriage and reconnoitre the house. Instantly he had run downstairs, opened the front door, and made himself known.

It was arranged that Antoine and Sam, well armed, and supported by the bloodhound, should remain and look after Ratcliff, not precipitating action, however, and not communicating with Clara, whose relief Peek had generously resolved should first come from the hands of Vance.

Then jumping into the carriage, Peek drove to Lafayette Square, and taking in Madame Josephine and Esha, returned to the St. Charles Hotel. Here he told Vance all he

had done, and introduced the two women, - Vance greeting

Esha with much emotion, as he recognized in her that attendant at his wife's death-bed for whom he had often sought.

Four carriages were now drawn up on Gravier Street. Into one stepped Winslow, Hyde, and Vance; into another Semmes, Blake, Onslow, and Blake's trusty servant, Sergeant Decazes, the escaped slave. Into the third carriage stepped Madame Josephine, Esha, and Peek; and into the fourth, Mrs. Gentry and Mr. Ripper.

This last vehicle must be regarded as the centre of interest, for over it the Loves and Graces languishingly hovered.

In introducing Ripper to Mrs. Gentry, Semmes had remarked, in an aside to the former: "A retired schoolma'am: some money there!" Here was a shaft that went straight to the auctioneer's heart. In three minutes he drew from the lady the fact that, ten days before, she had received a visit from a Vigilance Committee, who had warned her, if she did not pay over to them five thousand dollars within a week, her house would be confiscated, sold, and the proceeds paid over to the Confederate treasury. "Five thousand dollars indeed!" said the lady, in relating the interview; "a whole year's income! O, have n't they been nicely come up with!”

The Confederate highwaymen had done what Satan recom

mended the Lord to do in the case of Job: they had tried Mrs. Gentry in her substance, and she had not stood the test. It had wrought a very sudden and radical change in her political notions. Even slavery was no longer the august and unapproachable thing which she had hitherto imagined; and she threw out a sentiment which savored so much of the abolition heresy, that Ripper, thinking to advance himself in her good opinion, avowed himself boldly an emancipationist, and declared that slavery was "played out." These words, strange to say, did not make him less charming in Mrs. Gentry's eyes.

The drive in the carriage soon offered an opportunity for tenderer topics, and before they reached Camelia Street, the enterprising auctioneer had declared that he really believed he had at last, after a life-long search, found his "affinity." And from that he ventured to glide an arm round the lady's waist, a familiarity at which her indignation was so feebly simulated, that it only added new fuel to hope.

-

But Camelia Place was now reached, and the carriages stopped The whole party were noiselessly introduced into the house. Vance darted up to the room where Clara's note had instructed him he could find her. Seeing the key on the outside, he turned it, opened the door, and presented himself to Clara in the manner already related. The unsuspecting Ratcliff soon followed, and then followed the scenes upon which the curtain has already been raised.

As Vance left the house, with Clara on his arm, several of Ratcliff's slaves gathered round them. To all these Vance promised immediate freedom and help. An old black hostler, named Juba, or Jube, who was also a theologian and a strenuous preacher, was spokesman for the freedmen. He proposed "tree chares for Massa Vance." They were given with a will.

"An' now, Massa Vance," said the Reverend Jube, “may de Lord bress yer fur comin' down har from de Norf ter free an' help we. De Lord bress yer an' de young Missis likewise. An' when yer labors am all ended, an' yer 'v chewed all de hard bones, an' swollerd de bitter pill, may yer go ober Jordan wid a tight hold on de Lord, an' not leeb go till yer git clar inter de city ob Zion."*

* Actual words of a negro preacher, taken down on the spot by a hearer.

CHAPTER XLIII.

A

SOUND of the prompter's whistle, sharp and stridulous.

The scenes move,.— they dispart. The Crescent City, with its squares and gardens filled with verdure, its stately steeples, and its streets lying lower than the river, and protected only by the great Levee from being converted into a bed for fishes, the Crescent City, under the swift touch of our fairy scene-shifters, divides, slides, and disappears. A new scene simultaneously takes its place. It represents a street in New York. Not one of the clean, broad, well-kept avenues, lined on either side with mansions, beautiful and spacious. It is a trans-Bowery Street, narrow and noisome, dirty and dismal. There the market-man stops his cart and haggles for the price of a cabbage with the care-worn housewife, who has a baby in her arms and a two-year-old child tugging at her gown. Poor woman! She tries to cover her bosom as the wayfarer, redolent of bad tobacco, passes by with a grin at her shyness. There the milkman rouses you at daylight by his fiendish yell, a nuisance not yet abated in the more barbarous parts of the city. There the soap-man and the fish-man and the rag-man stop their carts, presenting in their visits the chief incidents that vary the monotony of life in Lavinia Street, if we except an occasional dog-fight.

One of the tenements is a small, two-story brick house, with a basement beneath the street-level, and a dormer window in the attic. A family moved in only the day before yesterday. They have hardly yet got settled. Nevertheless, let us avail ourselves of the author's privilege (universal "dead-head" that he is!) and enter.

We stand in a little hall, the customary flight of stairs being in front, while a door leads into the front sitting-room or parlor on the left. Entering this room, the first figure we notice is an apparently young man, rather stout, with black whiskers and hair, and dressed in a loose sack and pantaloons, in the size and cut of which the liberal fashion of the day is somewhat exaggerated. He stands in low-cut shoes and fleshcolored silk stockings. About his neck he wears a choker of the most advanced style, and tied with a narrow lustring ribbon, gay with red and purple. As his back is partly turned to us, we cannot yet see who he is.

A woman, in age perhaps not far from fifty, with a pleasant, well-rounded face, and attired in a white cambric wrapper, richly embroidered, her hair prudently hidden under a brown chenille net, stands holding a framed picture, waiting for it to be hung. It is Marshall's new engraving of Washington. The lady is Mrs. Pompilard, born Aylesford; and the youth on the chair is her husband, the old, yet vernal, the venerable yet blooming, Albert himself. It is more than ten years since he celebrated his seventieth birthday.

Having hung the picture, Pompilard stepped down, and said: "There! Show me the place in the whole city where that picture would show to more advantage than just there in that one spot. The color of the wall, the light from the window are just what they ought to be to bring out all the beauties. Let us not envy Belmont and Roberts and Stewart and Aspinwall their picture-galleries, let us be guilty of no such folly, Mrs. Pompilard, while we can show an effect like that!"

"Who spoke of envying them, Albert? Not I, I'm sure! The house will do famously for our temporary use. Yet it puzzles me a little to know where I am to stow these two children of Melissa's."

"Pooh! That can be easily managed. Leonora can have a mattress put down for her in the upper entry; and as for the five-year-old, Albert, my namesake, he can throw himself down anywhere, - in the wood-shed, if need be. Indeed, his mother tells me she found him, the other night, sleeping on the boards of the piazza, in order, as he said, to harden himself to be a soldier. How is poor Purling this morning?"

"His wound seems to be healing, but he's deplorably lowspirited; so Melissa tells me."

"Low-spirited? But we must n't allow it! The man who could fight as he did at Fair Oaks ought to be jolly for the rest of his life, even though he had to leave an arm behind him on the battle-field."

"It is n't his wound, I suspect, that troubles him, but the state of his affairs. The truth is, Purling is fearfully poor, and he's too honest to run in debt. His castles in the air have all tumbled in ruins. Nobody will buy his books, and his publishers have all failed."

"But he can't help that. The poor fellow has done his best, and I mainta that he has talents of a certain sort."

"Perhaps so, but his forte is not imaginative writing." "Then let him try history."

"But I repeat it, my dear Albert, imaginative writing is not his forte."

"Ah! true. You are getting satirical, Mrs. Pompilard. Our historians, you think, are prone to exercise the novelist's privilege. Let us go up and see the Major."

They mounted one flight of stairs to the door of the front chamber, and knocked. It was opened by Mrs. Purling, once the sentimental Melissa, now a very matronly figure, but still training a few flaxen, maiden-like curls over her temples, and shedding an air of youth and summer from her sky-blue calico robe, with its straw-colored facings. She inherited much of the paternal temperament; and, were it not that her husband's desponding state of mind had clouded her spirits, she would have shown her customary aspect of cheerful serenity. "Is the Major awake?"

"O yes! Walk in.”

"Ah! Cecil, my hearty," exclaimed Pompilard, "how are you getting on?"

"Pretty well, sir. The wound's healing, I believe. I'm afraid we 're inconveniencing you shockingly, coming here, all of us, bag and baggage."

"Don't speak of it, Major. (which I deny), what then? thing for our country? If you can afford to contribute an arm,

Even if we are inconvenienced Ought n't we, too, to do some