pocket, and watched the
fool hurry with swift feet straight to Joe Hall's place and disappear
within.

Betty failed to come at the appointed time and he was heartsick. He
would finish his work in six hours to-morrow and he should not lose a
moment in passing the Federal lines. The precious figures he had bought
were memorized and the paper destroyed. In six hours next day he
completed the drawings of the fort on which information had been asked
and was ready to leave.

But he had not seen Betty. He tried to go and each effort only led him
to the corner from which he watched her house. He lingered until night
and waited an hour again in the dark. And still she had not come. And
then it slowly dawned on him that she must have realized from the moment
she read his message the peril of his position and the danger of his
betrayal in their meeting.

He turned with quick, firm tread to pass the Federal lines without
delay, and walked into the arms of two secret service men.

Without a word he was manacled and led to prison. The boy he had bribed
had been under suspicion since his first visits to Joe Hall's. Stanton
had discovered that his desk had been rummaged. Five of his nine
Southern comrades had been arrested and he was the sixth. The rage of
the Secretary of War had been boundless. He had thrown out a dragnet of
detectives and every suspicious character in the city was passing
through it or landing in prison.

The men stripped him and searched with the touch of experts every stitch
of his clothing, ripped the lining of his coat, opened the soles of his
shoes, split the heels and found nothing. He had been ordered to dress
and given permission to go, when suddenly the officer conducting the
search said:

"Wait!"

Ned stopped in the doorway. It was useless to protest.

"Excuse my persistence, my friend," he said apologetically. "You seem
all right and my men have apparently made a mistake, all the same I'm
going to examine your mouth----"

Ned's eyes suddenly flashed and his figure unconsciously stiffened.

"I thought so!" the officer laughed.

The door was closed and the guard stepped before it.

And then, with quick sure touch as if he saw the object of his search
through the flesh, the detective lifted Ned Vaughan's upper lip and drew
from between his lips and teeth the long, thin, delicately folded
tinfoil within which lay the tissue drawing of the fort.

The drumhead court-martial which followed was