As he stared into the long room after the departing soldiers, he did not know Edith Varney was still there, nor could he see her at all, for she was on the other side of the curtain, looking out of the window, and it seemed to him that the room was empty. Jonas was a very intelligent negro, and while under any ordinary circumstances his devotion to his master and mistress would have been absolutely sure, yet he had become tinged with the ideas of freedom and liberty in the air. He had assisted many and many a Union prisoner. Captain Thorne, by his pleasant ways and nice address, had won his heart. And he himself was deeply concerned personally that the young man should not be punished for his attempt to bring about the success of the Union cause, which Jonas felt to be his own cause. Therefore he had a double motive to secure the freedom of his principal if it were in any way possible. Of course, any direct interposition was out of the question. He was still only a slave. His open interference would have been fruitless of any consequences except bad ones for himself, and he was already more than compromised by the events of the night. What he was to do he must do by stealth. As he stared at the pyramids of guns, listening to the hum of conversation from the room across the hall—the door had been fortunately closed—a thought came to him. He pushed aside the portières with which he had concealed himself, and entered the room by the back door. He glanced about apprehensively. He was not burdened with any overplus of physical courage, and what he did was the more remarkable, especially in view of the fact that the soldiers might return at any moment and catch him at what they could very easily construe as an act of high treason, which would result in his blood being mingled with that of Captain Thorne, in the same gutter, probably. He moved with cat-like swiftness in the direction of the first stack of rules. He knelt down by it, seized the nearest gun, which lay across the other three, swiftly opened the breech-plug, drew out the cartridge, looked at it a moment, put the end of it in his mouth, and crunched his strong white teeth down upon it. When he finished, he had the leaden bullet in his mouth, and the cardboard shell in his hand. He replaced this latter in the chamber and closed the breech-plug. A smile of triumph irradiated his sable features. The gun could be fired, but whatever or whoever stood in front of it would be unharmed. He had not been quite sure that he could do this, but the result of his experiment convinced him. All the other guns were of the same character, and, given the time, he could render them all harmless. He did not waste time in reflection, but started in with the same process on the others. He worked with furious haste until every bullet had been bitten off every cartridge. It would have been impossible to have drawn the bullets of the ordinary muzzle-loading rifle, or army musket, in twenty times the period.