she was a baby, and a shy, hungry heart, long hidden from the world,
leaped in tenderness and pain to meet that embrace.

Elsie walked with her to the door, wondering how the terrible truth of her
boy's doom could be told.

She tried to speak, looked into Mrs. Cameron's face, radiant with grateful
joy, and the words froze on her lips. She decided to walk a little way
with her. But the task became all the harder.

At the corner she stopped abruptly and bade her good-bye:

"I must leave you now, Mrs. Cameron. I will call for you in the morning
and help you secure the passes to enter the hospital."

The mother stroked the girl's hand and held it lingeringly.

"How good you are," she said softly. "And you have not told me your
name?"

Elsie hesitated and said:

"That's a little secret. They call me Sister Elsie, the Banjo Maid, in the
hospitals. My father is a man of distinction. I should be annoyed if my
full name were known. I'm Elsie Stoneman. My father is the leader of the
House. I live with my aunt."

"Thank you," she whispered, pressing her hand.

Elsie watched the dark figure disappear in the crowd with a strange tumult
of feeling.

The mention of her father had revived the suspicion that he was the
mysterious power threatening the policy of the President and planning a
reign of terror for the South. Next to the President, he was the most
powerful man in Washington, and the unrelenting foe of Mr. Lincoln,
although the leader of his party in Congress, which he ruled with a rod of
iron. He was a man of fierce and terrible resentments. And yet, in his
personal life, to those he knew, he was generous and considerate. "Old
Austin Stoneman, the Great Commoner," he was called, and his name was one
to conjure with in the world of deeds. To this fair girl he was the
noblest Roman of them all, her ideal of greatness. He was an indulgent
father, and while not demonstrative, loved his children with passionate
devotion.

She paused and looked up at the huge marble columns that seemed each a
sentinel beckoning her to return within to the cot that held a wounded
foe. The twilight had deepened, and the soft light of the rising moon had
clothed the solemn majesty of the building with shimmering tenderness and
beauty.

"Why should I be distressed for one, an enemy, among these thousands who
have fallen?" she asked herself. Every detail of the scene she had passed
through with him and his mother stood out in her soul w