T

CHAPTER II

THE GREAT HEART

HE next morning, when Elsie reached the obscure

boarding-house at which Mrs. Cameron stopped,

the mother had gone to the market to buy a bunch of roses to place beside her boy's cot.

As Elsie awaited her return, the practical little Yankee maid thought with a pang of the tenderness and folly of such people. people. She knew this mother had scarcely enough to eat, but eat, but to her bread was of small importance, flowers necessary to life. After all, it was very sweet, this foolishness of these Southern people, and it somehow made her homesick.

"How can I tell her!" she sighed. "And yet I must.”

She had only waited a moment when Mrs. Cameron suddenly entered with her daughter. She threw her flowers on the table, sprang forward to meet Elsie, seized her hands and called to Margaret.

"How good of you to come so soon! This, Margaret, is our dear little friend who has been so good to Ben and to me."

Margaret took Elsie's hand and longed to throw her arms around her neck, but something in the quiet dignity of the Northern girl's manner held her back. She only

smiled tenderly through her big dark eyes, and softly said:

"We love you! Ben was my last brother. We were playmates and chums. My heart broke when he ran away to the front. How can we thank you and your brother!"

"I'm sure we've done nothing more than you would have done for us," said Elsie, as Mrs. Cameron left the

room.

"Yes, I know, but we can never tell you how grateful we are to you. We feel that you have saved Ben's life and ours. The war has been one long horror to us since my first brother was killed. But now it's over, and we have Ben left, and our hearts have been crying for joy all night."

"I hoped my brother, Captain Phil Stoneman, would be here to-day to meet you and help me, but he can't reach Washington before Friday."

"He caught Ben in his arms!" cried Margaret. "I know he's brave, and you must be proud of him."

"Doctor Barnes says they are as much alike as twins— only Phil is not quite so tall and has blond hair like mine." "You will let me see him and thank him the moment he comes?"

"Hurry, Margaret!" cheerily cried Mrs. Cameron, re-entering the parlour. "Get ready; we must go at once to the hospital."

Margaret turned and with stately grace hurried from the room. The old dress she wore as unconscious of its shabbiness as though it were a royal robe.

"And now, my dear, what must I do to get the passes?" asked the mother eagerly.

Elsie's warm amber eyes grew misty for a moment, and the fair skin with its gorgeous rose-tints of the North paled. She hesitated, tried to speak, and was silent.

The sensitive soul of the Southern woman read the message of sorrow words had not framed.

"Tell me, quickly! The doctor-has-not-concealed -his-true-condition-from-me?"

"No, he is certain to recover."

"What then?"

"Worse he is condemned to death by court-martial." "Condemned to death-a-wounded-prisoner-ofwar!" she whispered slowly, with blanched face.

"Yes, he was accused of violating the rules of war as a guerilla raider in the invasion of Pennsylvania."

"Absurd and monstrous! He was on General Jeb Stuart's staff and could have acted only under his orders. He joined the infantry after Stuart's death, and rose to be a colonel, though but a boy. There's some terrible mistake!"

"Unless we can obtain his pardon," Elsie went on in even, restrained tones, "there is no hope. We must appeal to the President."

The mother's lips trembled, and she seemed about to faint.

"Could I see the President?" she asked, recovering herself with an effort.

"He has just reached Washington from the front, and is thronged by thousands. It will be difficult."

The mother's lips were moving in silent prayer, and her eyes were tightly closed to keep back the tears.

"Can you help me, dear?" she asked, piteously.

"Yes," was the quick response.

"You see," she went on, "I feel so helpless. I have never been to the White House or seen the President, and I don't know how to go about seeing him or how to ask him-and-I am afraid of Mr. Lincoln! I have heard so many harsh things said of him."

"I'll do my best, Mrs. Cameron. We must go at once to the White House and try to see him."

The mother lifted the girl's hand and stroked it gently. "We will not tell Margaret. Poor child! she could not endure this. When we return, we may have better news. It can't be worse. I'll send her on

an errand."

She took up the bouquet of gorgeous roses with a sigh, buried her face in the fresh perfume, as if to gain strength in their beauty and fragrance, and left the room.

In a few moments she had returned and was on her way with Elsie to the White House.

It was a beautiful spring morning, this eleventh day of April, 1865. The glorious sunshine, the shimmering green of the grass, the warm breezes, and the shouts of victory mocked the mother's anguish.

At the White House gates they passed the blue sentry pacing silently back and forth, who merely glanced at them with keen eyes and said nothing. In the steady beat of his feet the mother could hear the tramp of soldiers leading her boy to the place of death!

A great lump rose in her throat as she caught the first view of the Executive Mansion gleaming white and silent and ghostlike among the budding trees. The tall columns of the great façade, spotless as snow, the spray of the fountain, the marble walls, pure, dazzling and cold, seemed to her the gateway to some great tomb in which her own dead and the dead of all the people lay! To her the fair white palace, basking there in the sunlight and budding grass, shrub and tree, was the Judgment House of Fate. She thought of all the weary feet that had climbed its fateful steps in hope to return in despair, of its fierce dramas on which the lives of millions had hung, and her heart grew sick.

A long line of people already stretched from the entrance under the portico far out across the park, awaiting their turn to see the President.

Mrs. Cameron placed her hand falteringly on Elsie's shoulder.

"Look, my dear, what a crowd already! Must we

wait in line?"

"No, I can get you past the throng with my father's name."

"Will it be very difficult to reach the President?"

"No, it's very easy.

Guards and sentinels annoy

him. He frets until they are removed.

An assassin or

maniac could kill him almost any hour of the day or night. The doors are open at all hours, very late at night. I have often walked up to the rooms of his secretaries as late as nine o'clock without being challenged by a soul."