gainst the
administration, would no longer tolerate Beauregard in the same camp
with their chief. They had demanded a free field for Joseph E. Johnston
in the conflict with McClellan or they had threatened his resignation
and the disruption of the Confederate army.

The President, sick unto death over the wrangling of these two generals,
had separated them and sent Beauregard west where the genius of Albert
Sidney Johnston could use his personal popularity, and his own more
powerful mind would neutralize in any council of war the little man's
feeble generalship.

Socola listened to Barton's fierce, unreasoning invective with a sense
of dread. It was impossible to realize that this big-mouthed, bitter,
vindictive, ridiculous politician was the father of the gentle girl he
loved. There must be something of his power of malignant hatred
somewhere in Jennie's nature. He had caught just a glimpse of it in the
story she had told the Richmond papers.

She stood in the doorway at last, a smiling vision of modest beauty. Her
dress of fine old lace seemed woven of the tender smiles that played
about the sensitive mouth.

He sprang to his feet and took her hand, his heart thumping with joy.
She felt it tremble and laughed outright.

"So you have returned a fiercer rebel than ever, Miss Jennie?" he said
hesitatingly.

He tried to say something purely conventional but it popped out when he
opened his mouth--the ugly thought that was gnawing at his happiness.

"Yes," she answered thoughtfully, "I never realized before what it meant
to be with my own people. I could have burned New Orleans and laughed
at its ruins to have smoked Ben Butler out of it--"

"President Davis has proclaimed him an outlaw I see," Socola added.

"If he can only capture and hang him, the people of Louisiana would be
perfectly willing to lose all--"

"But your brother, the Judge, is still loyal to the Union--you can't
hate him you know?"

Jennie's eyes flashed into Socola's.

Why had he asked the one question that opened the wound in her heart?
Perhaps her mind had suggested it. She had scarcely spoken the bitter
words before she saw the vision of his serious face and regretted it.

"Strange you should have mentioned my brother's name at the very moment
his image was before me," the girl thoughtfully replied.

"Clairvoyance perhaps--"

"You believe in such things?" Jennie asked.

"Yes. My mother leaped from her bed with a scream one night an