Rose colored scarlet, but made no response, for recreant Jimmie flashed across her mind, and she shrank from having even the vulgar Bill know how intimately she was connected with a traitor. Bill watched her narrowly, and thinking to himself, “I’m on the right track, I’ll bet,” he continued, “I hain’t no relations in the Confederate army, I know, and I don’t an atom b’lieve you have.” No answer from Rose, except a heightened bloom upon her cheek, and her inquisitor went on: “Have you any friends there?” Rose could not tell a lie, and after a moment’s silence, she stammered out: “Please don’t ask me. Oh, Jimmie, Jimmie, I wish I knew where he was!” and the great tears trickled through the snowy fingers clasped over her flushed face. “I’ll be darned if I aint cryin’ too,” Bill said, wiping his eyes with his shirt sleeve, “but bein’ I’m in for it I may as well see it through.” “What might be your name before it was Miss Marthers?” “Carleton!” and Rose looked up quickly at Bill, who continued: “You came from Boston, I b’lieve?” “Yes, from Boston,” and Rose leaned eagerly forward while Bill, with his favorite “Nuff said,” plunged his hand into his pocket, and taking out the _picture_, passed it to Rose. Quick as thought the bright color faded from her cheek, and with ashen, quivering lips, she whispered; “_It’s I!_ It’s mine, taken for Jimmie, just before he went away! How came you by it? Oh tell me!” and in the voice there was a tone of increasing anguish. “Tell me, was it,—was it,—_Jimmie_, my brother, whom you took prisoner and carried to Washington?” “If James Carleton is your brother, I s’pose it was,” Bill said; “and that’s the very picter he stuck to like a chestnut burr, begging for it like a dog, and offerin’ everything he had if I’d give it up.” “Why didn’t you, then?” and Rose’s eye blazed with anger, making Bill shrink before their indignant gaze. “’Twas rotten mean in me, I know,” he said timidly, “but they _was con-tra-band_ according to law, and I felt so savage at the pesky Rebels then. I didn’t know ’twas you he teased so for, actually cryin’ when I wouldn’t give it up. I’m sorry, I be, I swan, and I’ll give you every confounded contraband. You’ve got the watch, and there’s the ring, the spetacles, the tobarker box, and the thingumbob for cigars, the sum total of his traps, except a chaw or so of the weed that I couldn’t very well bring back,” and Bill’s face wore a very satisfied expression as he laid in Rose’s lap every article belongin’ to her brother.