d taken the boat out in
Sempland's place. Why had she not thought of that possibility? And he
had loved her, and he would never come back.

With a misery akin to Sempland's she heard the bombardment which
proclaimed that something had happened. Had the flagship been blown up?
Nothing was left to her. She would go to the general and tell the truth
in the morning, and then--he would be free. They could punish her and
she could die. Well, death would be welcome.

[Illustration: "Poor little Fanny Glen ... she had lost on every
hand."]

Poor little Fanny Glen! She had played, and played the fool
exceedingly--and she had lost on every hand!

CHAPTER X

A STUBBORN PROPOSITION

The general, who was always on the alert, ordinarily began his work
with the sun, and rarely did he stop with the setting of it, either.
The next morning, therefore, he was at his headquarters at an unusually
early hour.

Fortune had favored him in that one of the harbor patrol boats, making
a daring reconnaissance about midnight, to discover if possible what
had happened to the _David_, had captured a whale boat from one of the
Union ships, bound on a similar errand, and had brought her crew to the
city. By questioning them Beauregard learned of the blowing up of the
_Housatonic_, and the almost certain loss of the torpedo boat. He was
sorry that he missed the _Wabash_ and the admiral, and intensely
grieved over the lack of any tidings from the _David_ or her men,
which, however, caused him little surprise, but he was glad, indeed,
they had been so brilliantly successful in eliminating the magnificent
new steam sloop-of-war _Housatonic_ from the force blockading them.

Incidentally he learned, with some additional satisfaction, that
Admiral Vernon was to be relieved of his command on account of illness
and was going North with his flagship in a few days. The admiral had
shown himself so intensely enterprising and pugnacious that Beauregard
hoped and expected that any change in opponents would be for the
betterment of the situation from the Southern point of view.

When he had digested the important news of the morning, he sent for his
prisoner of the night before. The general had been very indignant on
the wharf, and justly so, but he instinctively felt that there was
something in the situation, which, if he could get at it, might relieve
from the odium of his position the young officer, whose family history,
no less than his person