The preparations for the contemplated entertainment for the benefit of the poor wounded Confederate soldiers in the county were already begun. It was to be given at Red Rock, and the managers waited only for Jacquelin to recover somewhat from a set-back he had had after his meeting with Leech at Dr. Cary’s. Blair Cary had offers from at least a dozen escorts; but Steve was the fortunate contestant. Miss Dockett was so much interested in her preparations that the two lodgers caught the fever, and found themselves in the position of admirers and part advisers as to a costume for an entertainment to which they were not considered good enough to be invited. Little Thurston had to purchase a part of it in the city, where he went on a visit, and, truth to tell, finding that the small amount entrusted to him—which was all that could be got together even by Mrs. Dockett’s diligence, stimulated by her natural pride in her daughter’s first ball—was not sufficient to purchase material as fine as he thought suited to adorn the plump person of a young lady who had condescended to warble with him, he added to it a small sum from his own by no means over-plethoric pocket, and then lied about it afterward like a trooper and a gentleman. “Well, I always heard a Yankee was a good hand at a bargain,” declared Mrs. Dockett; “but you are the best I ever knew.” And this was Thurston’s reward. The officers had given up hope of being invited to the assembly, when one evening two formal notes, requesting their company, were brought by Steve’s boy Jerry. They were signed simply, “The Committee.” “And now,” said Middleton, “we’re in a bigger hole than before; for it’s for the benefit of the rebels; and if that gets out—. But, perhaps it will not?” “Gets out? Of course it will get out. Everything one doesn’t want to get out, gets out; but yet we must go. Does not our high sense of duty require us to sacrifice our personal prejudices so far as to keep an eye on this first large assemblage of rebels?” “Reely, you’re a genius,” said Middleton, in open admiration. “Of course I am,” was the Lieutenant’s modest reply. Formal notes of acceptance were sent, and the two young officers were soon as busy as anyone making their preparations for their “summer campaign,” as Thurston called it. Both ordered new boots, and Thurston a whole suit, for the occasion. Thurston, in the seclusion of their room, drilled Middleton sedulously in the Old Virginia reel, so as to astonish the native and, as he profanely termed it, “make sure of the capture of the fish Middleton had found in the ford.” An evening or two later, the mail was brought in, and in it were two official letters for Middleton. As he read them, his face fell, and he flung them across to Thurston, who, as he glanced at them, gave an ejaculation hardly consistent with the high-church principles he so proudly vaunted.