he top of the gully, the corporal pointed to
what seemed to be a bit of striped calico hanging on a thorn bush in the
ravine.

"That's her," said the corporal. "I know the dress; I was on guard when
she was passed. The searchers, who were picking up our men, haven't got
to her yet; but she ain't moved or stirred these two hours. Would you
like to go down and see her?"

The lieutenant hesitated. He was young, and slightly fastidious as
to unnecessary unpleasantness. He believed he would wait until the
searchers brought her up, when the corporal might call him.

The mist came up gloriously from the swamp like a golden halo. And
as Clarence Brant, already forgotten, rode moodily through it towards
Washington, hugging to his heart the solitary comfort of his great
sacrifice, his wife, Alice Brant, for whom he had made it, was lying
in the ravine, dead and uncared for. Perhaps it was part of the
inconsistency of her sex that she was pierced with the bullets of those
she had loved, and was wearing the garments of the race that she had
wronged.

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

It was sunset of a hot day at Washington. Even at that hour the broad
avenues, which diverged from the Capitol like the rays of another sun,
were fierce and glittering. The sterile distances between glowed
more cruelly than ever, and pedestrians, keeping in the scant shade,
hesitated on the curbstones before plunging into the Sahara-like
waste of crossings. The city seemed deserted. Even that vast army of
contractors, speculators, place-hunters, and lobbyists, which hung on
the heels of the other army, and had turned this pacific camp of the
nation into a battlefield of ignoble conflict and contention--more
disastrous than the one to the South--had slunk into their holes in
hotel back bedrooms, in shady barrooms, or in the negro quarters of
Georgetown, as if the majestic, white-robed Goddess enthroned upon the
dome of the Capitol had at last descended among them and was smiting to
right and left with the flat and flash of her insufferable sword.

Into this stifling atmosphere of greed and corruption Clarence Brant
stepped from the shadow of the War Department. For the last three weeks
he had haunted its ante-rooms and audience-chambers, in the vain hope
of righting himself before his superiors, who were content, without
formulating charges against him, to keep him in this disgrace of
inaction and the anxiety of suspense. Unable to ascertain t