One evening the purser, Mr. Anderson, came to Miss Gerard with a book in his hand. After introducing himself he remarked that he had with him a most entertaining novel, and it had occurred to him that perhaps she would like to read it. Naturally, after passing through so many ordeals, Helen asked herself, "Now, what can this man want?" However, she replied without hesitation, "With pleasure: after a couple of days, when I have read it, I wish you would come to the cabin and I will return it to you;" and again she said to herself, "In this way I shall see more of this man and learn his motive." At a later day she discovered that he was from New Orleans, a paroled Confederate prisoner who knew of the Claytons. How he became an ally at a critical moment will presently appear. Helen found the book sufficiently interesting to divert her thoughts from dwelling on the further perplexities which she knew were yet to come to vex her soul and perhaps hinder her journey. Retiring to her state-room on the following morning after breakfast, she had again become absorbed in the pages of the novel when she was startled by a loud, authoritative voice in the cabin. Curious to know who it could be, she opened the state-room door, and a glance revealed a new danger. She saw an officer in Federal uniform and with a conspicuously large military moustache about to seat himself at the centre-table, at the same time spreading a large book before him. She perceived that the hour had arrived which was to put to the test all her courage and ingenuity. Unnoticed, she stepped back and locked the door, and climbing up to the highest berth quietly awaited events. Nervously turning the leaves of her novel, she noticed some words written with a pencil on the fly-leaf. With eager eyes she read, "Should you need a friend call on me," signed "Purser," and dated on the previous day. At that instant she was shocked by hearing Mrs. Clayton's loud voice in the cabin. Putting her face close to the lattice over the door of the state-room, she saw the portly Southern dame, who up to this hour had stoutly affirmed that _never_ would she take the horrid oath of allegiance to the wicked Yankee government, standing by the table with her right hand uplifted and deliberately repeating the words dictated by the officer. Few people have a conception of what an exquisite instrument of torture was invented when the famous "iron-clad oath," as it was called, was devised for unrepentant rebels. To refuse it was to abridge liberty and privilege, while to take and keep it was to abandon a cause bred into the bone and sinew of the Southerner.