Chapter 5

AN ELUSIVE FACE

Walking abroad at noontime next day, Prescott saw Helen Harley coming toward Capitol Square, stepping lightly through the snow, a type of youthful freshness and vigour. The red hood was again over her head, and a long dark cloak, the hem of it almost touching the snow fallen the night before, enclosed her figure.

"Good-morning, Mr. Soldier," she said cheerily; "I hope that your dissipations at the Mosaic Club have not retarded the recovery of your injured shoulder."

Prescott smiled.

"I think not," he replied. "In fact, I've almost forgotten that I have a shoulder."

"Now, I can guess where you are going," she said.

"Try and see."

"You are on your way to the Capitol to hear Mr. Redfield reply to that attack of Mr. Winthrop's, and I'm going there, too."

So they walked together up the hill, pausing a moment by the great Washington monument and its surrounding groups of statuary where Mr. Davis had taken the oath of office two years before, and Mr. Sefton, who saw them from an upper window of that building, smiled sourly.

The doors of the Capitol were wide open, as they always stood during the sessions of Congress, and Robert and Helen passed into the rotunda, pausing a moment by the Houdon Washington, and then went up the steps to the second floor, where they entered the Senate Chamber, now used by the Confederate House of Representatives. The tones of a loud and tireless voice reached them; Mr. Redfield was already on his feet.

The honourable member from the Gulf Coast had risen on a question of personal privilege. Then he required the clerk of the House to read the offending editorial from Winthrop's newspaper, during which he stood haughtily erect, his feet rather wide apart, his arms folded indignantly across his breast, and a look of righteous wrath on his face. When the clerk finished, he spat plentifully in a spittoon at his feet, cleared his throat, and let loose the flood of rhetoric which was threatening already to burst over the dam.

The blow aimed by that villainous writer, the honourable gentleman said, was struck at him. He was a member of the Committee on Military Affairs, and he must reply ere the foul stain was permitted to tarnish his name. He came from a sunny land where all the women were beautiful and all the men brave, and he would rather die a thousand deaths than permit any obscure ink-slinger to impeach his fair fame. He carried the honour of his country in his heart; he would sooner die a thousand deaths than to permit--to permit---

He paused, and waved his hand as he sought for a metaphor sufficiently strong-winged.

"Wait a minute, Mr. Redfield, and I'll help you down," dryly said a thin-faced member from the Valley of Virginia.

The sound of subdued laughter arose and the