Chapter 7

THE COTTAGE IN THE SIDE STREET

Prescott rose the next morning with an uneasy weight upon his mind--the thought of the prisoner whom he had taken the night before. He was unable to imagine how a woman of her manner and presence had ever ventured upon such an enterprise, and he contrasted her--with poor results for the unknown--with Helen Harley, who was to him the personification of all that was delicate and feminine.

After the influence of her eyes, her beauty and her voice was gone, his old belief that she was really the spy and had stolen the papers returned. She had made a fool of him by that pathetic appeal to his mercy and by a simulated appearance of truth. Now in the cold air of the morning he felt a deep chagrin. But the deed was past and could not be undone, and seeking to dismiss it from his mind he went to breakfast.

His mother, as he had expected, asked him nothing about his late absence the night before, but spoke of the reception to General Morgan and the golden haze that it cast over Richmond.

"Have you noticed, Robert," she asked, "that we see complete victory for the South again? I ask you once more how many men did General Morgan bring with him?"

"I don't know exactly, mother. Ten, perhaps."

"And they say that General Grant will have a hundred thousand new troops."

Prescott laughed.

"At that rate, mother," he replied, "the ten will have to whip the hundred thousand, which is a heavier proportion than the old one, of one Southern gentleman to five Yankees. But, seriously, a war is not won by mere mathematics. It is courage, enthusiasm and enterprise that count."

She did not answer, but poured him another cup of coffee. Prescott read her thoughts with ease. He knew that though hers had been a Southern husband and hers were a Southern son and a Southern home, her heart was loyal to the North, and to the cause that she considered the cause of the whole Union and of civilization.

"Mother," he said, the breakfast being finished, "I've found it pleasant here with you and in Richmond, but I'm afraid I can't stay much longer. My shoulder is almost cured now."

He swung his arm back and forth to show how well it was.

"But isn't there some pain yet?" she asked.

Prescott smiled a little. He saw the pathos in the question, but he shook his head.

"No, mother," he replied, "there is no pain. I don't mean to be sententious, but this is the death-grapple that is coming. They will need me and every one out there."

He waved his hand toward the north and his mother hid a little sigh.

Prescott remained at home all the morning, but in the afternoon he went to Winthrop's newspaper office, having a direct question in mind.

"Has anything more been heard of