hose praise was a trifle lukewarm, to be sure. But popular
opinion, when once aroused, will draw a grunt from the most grudging.

We are not permitted, alas, to go behind these stern walls and discover
how Captain Colfax passed that eventful Sunday of the Exodus. We know
that, in his loneliness, he hoped for a visit from his cousin, and took
to pacing his room in the afternoon, when a smarting sense of injustice
crept upon him. Clarence was young. And how was he to guess, as he looked
out in astonishment upon the frightened flock of white boats swimming
southward, that his mother and his sweetheart were there?

On Monday, while the Colonel and many prominent citizens were busying
themselves about procuring the legal writ which was at once to release
Mr. Colfax, and so cleanse the whole body of Camp Jackson's defenders
from any, veiled intentions toward the Government, many well known
carriages drew up before the Carvel House in Locust Street to
congratulate the widow and the Colonel upon the possession of such a son
and nephew. There were some who slyly congratulated Virginia, whose
martyrdom it was to sit up with people all the day long. For Mrs, Colfax
kept her room, and admitted only a few of her bosom friends to cry with
her. When the last of the callers was gone, Virginia was admitted to her
aunt's presence.

"Aunt Lillian, to-morrow morning Pa and I are going to the Arsenal with a
basket for Max. Pa seems to think there is a chance that he may come back
with us. You will go, of course."

The lady smiled wearily at the proposal, and raised her hands in protest,
the lace on the sleeves of her dressing gown falling away from her white
arms.

"Go, my dear?" she exclaimed, "when I can't walk to my bureau after that
terrible Sunday. You are crazy, Jinny. No," she added, with conviction,
"I never again expect to see him alive. Comyn says they may release him,
does he? Is he turning Yankee, too?"

The girl went away, not in anger or impatience, but in sadness. Brought
up to reverence her elders, she had ignored the shallowness of her aunt's
character in happier days. But now Mrs. Colfax's conduct carried a
prophecy with it. Virginia sat down on the landing to ponder on the years
to come,--on the pain they were likely to bring with them from this
source--Clarence gone to the war; her father gone (for she felt that he
would go in the end), Virginia foresaw the lonely days of trial in
company with this vain woman whom