that partially covered the
whole sash. Partially, not altogether. Whether accidentally or by
intention, it was swept away at the lower right-hand corner, leaving a
little of the top of the white wall of the room visible, with the edge
of the ceiling. Was there ever a man (or woman) who did not look in
through a half-closed curtain, precisely because there is no propriety
whatever in doing so? Willis has made some of his most taking verbal
photographs, during his "lookings on at the war" at Washington, from
the glimpses caught of the lower half lengths of notables, more or less
undressed, through windows supposed to be closed against outside
observation.

Both Walter Harding and Tom Leslie took an eager look up at the white
wall and the edge of the ceiling, in the upper chamber of the house on
Prince Street. Harding either had sharper eyes than Leslie, or stood in
a more favorable position, for he saw what Leslie did not, and his
discovery was communicated in the brief exclamation:

"By Jupiter!"

"What?" asked Leslie.

"Look!" said Harding, drawing his friend's head into position for a
better view. "If that is not a secesh flag draped up near the ceiling,
may I never brag of my eyesight again!"

Tom Leslie took a nearer look. "If it is _not_ a secesh flag," he said,
"draped over some kind of a gilded ornament like a star, may I never
find another opportunity to look at a pretty girl through this
double-barrelled telescope."

And with the word he had whipped out an opera-glass from his pocket,
large enough to have been formed out of two moderate-sized specimens of
the optical instrument he had named, and levelled it at the object on
the wall. His observations and those of Harding through the same
powerful instrument resulted in the same conclusion. The two red bars
and one white one of the Confederate flag, with the blue field in the
corner and meagre number of stars, were all plainly visible, and beneath
the flag was a gilded circle, some four or five inches in diameter, with
a radiating centre.

"A nice house that, I don't think!" was Tom Leslie's not very classical
comment, as he took the double-barrelled telescope finally down from his
eye, after a second inspection. (It may be mentioned, in a parenthesis,
that the Third Avenue car had some time since rumbled by, and that the
very existence of that entire line of communication had been forgotten
by the two friends.) "Where is Provost Marshal Kennedy, I wonde