n."

Andrew Jackson's face had been perfectly unmoved during this
conversation until he heard the allusion to his son. Then his face
changed visibly.

"I know nothing concerning which you can attack the honor of my son, Mr.
Wingfield," he said with an effort to speak as unconcernedly as before.

"My charge is as follows," Vincent said quietly: "I was imprisoned at
Elmira with a number of other officers, among them your son. Thinking
that it was time for the unpleasantness that had been existing between
us to come to an end, I offered him my hand. This he accepted and we
became friends. A short time afterward a mode of escape offered itself
to me, and I proved the sincerity of my feelings toward him by offering
to him and another officer the means of sharing my escape. This they
accepted. Once outside the walls, I furnished them with disguises that
had been prepared for them, assuming myself that of a minister. We then
separated, going in different directions, I myself being accompanied by
my negro servant, to whose fidelity I owed our escape. Two days
afterward an anonymous writer communicated to the police the fact that I
had escaped in the disguise of a minister, and was accompanied by my
black servant. This fact was only known to the negro, myself, and the
two officers. My negro, who had released me, was certainly not my
betrayer; the other officer could certainly have had no possible motive
for betraying me. There remains, therefore, only your son, whose
hostility to me was notorious, and who had expressed himself with
bitterness against me on many occasions, and among others in the hearing
of my friend Mr. Furniss here. Such being the case, it is my intention
to charge him before the military authorities with this act of
treachery. But, as I have said, I am willing to forego this and to keep
silence as to your conduct with reference to my slave Dinah Moore, if
you will restore her and her child uninjured to the house from which you
caused her to be taken."

The sallow cheeks of the old planter had grown a shade paler as he
listened to Vincent's narrative, but he now burst out in angry tones:

"How dare you, sir, bring such an infamous accusation against my son--an
accusation, like that against myself, wholly unsupported by a shred of
evidence? Doubtless your negro had confided to some of his associates
his plans for assisting you to escape from prison, and it is from one of
these that the denunciation has come