have dared to linger there
long enough to have made an examination of the box, with an officer in
the next room, and the sergeant passing. The box had been removed, and
the examination made elsewhere!

An idea seized him. Miss Faulkner was still absent, the mulatto had
apparently gone home. He quickly mounted the staircase, but instead of
entering his room, turned suddenly aside into the wing which had been
reserved. The first door yielded as he turned its knob gently and
entered a room which he at once recognized as the "young lady's
boudoir." But the dusty and draped furniture had been rearranged and
uncovered, and the apartment bore every sign of present use. Yet,
although there was unmistakable evidence of its being used by a person
of taste and refinement, he was surprised to see that the garments
hanging in an open press were such as were used by negro servants, and
that a gaudy handkerchief such as housemaids used for turbans was lying
on the pretty silk coverlet. He did not linger over these details, but
cast a rapid glance round the room. Then his eyes became fixed on a
fanciful writing-desk, which stood by the window. For, in a handsome
vase placed on its level top, and drooping on a portfolio below, hung a
cluster of the very flowers that Miss Faulkner had carried!

CHAPTER IV.

It seemed plain to Brant that the dispatch-box had been conveyed here
and opened for security on this desk, and in the hurry of examining
the papers the flower had been jostled and the fallen grains of pollen
overlooked by the spy. There were one or two freckles of red on the
desk, which made this accident appear the more probable. But he was
equally struck by another circumstance. The desk stood immediately
before the window. As he glanced mechanically from it, he was surprised
to see that it commanded an extensive view of the slope below the
eminence on which the house stood, even beyond his furthest line of
pickets. The vase of flowers, each of which was nearly as large as a
magnolia blossom, and striking in color, occupied a central position
before it, and no doubt could be quite distinctly seen from a distance.
From this circumstance he could not resist the strong impression that
this fateful and extraordinary blossom, carried by Miss Faulkner and the
mulatto, and so strikingly "in evidence" at the window, was in some
way a signal. Obeying an impulse which he was conscious had a half
superstitious foundation, he car