Tom Leslie took a nearer look. "If it is _not_ a secesh flag," he said, "draped over some kind of a gilded ornament like a star, may I never find another opportunity to look at a pretty girl through this double-barrelled telescope." And with the word he had whipped out an opera-glass from his pocket, large enough to have been formed out of two moderate-sized specimens of the optical instrument he had named, and levelled it at the object on the wall. His observations and those of Harding through the same powerful instrument resulted in the same conclusion. The two red bars and one white one of the Confederate flag, with the blue field in the corner and meagre number of stars, were all plainly visible, and beneath the flag was a gilded circle, some four or five inches in diameter, with a radiating centre. "A nice house that, I don't think!" was Tom Leslie's not very classical comment, as he took the double-barrelled telescope finally down from his eye, after a second inspection. (It may be mentioned, in a parenthesis, that the Third Avenue car had some time since rumbled by, and that the very existence of that entire line of communication had been forgotten by the two friends.) "Where is Provost Marshal Kennedy, I wonder?" "Oh, it may not be quite so bad as you think," said Harding, reading the whole of his friend's thought. "Who knows?--that secesh flag may be a trophy won by one of our soldiers, and brought or sent home." "Humph!" said Tom, significantly. "That won't do, Harding! If the flag was a trophy, and in the house of a loyal man, it would not be quite so neatly draped on the wall, with the lodge emblem of the Knights of the Golden Circle under it!" "Phew!" said Harding, "is that really the emblem?" "_The_ emblem, and nothing else," answered Leslie. "There is mischief in that house, and the nest must be looked after." Suddenly, and while the two friends yet looked, there were dark shadows flung on the white curtain, as if of moving figures, and then one shadow, as if of a human arm, began to move up and down on the curtain and kept moving steadily. Directly there was one quick sharp scream, followed by no other sound, though both listened intently. Then a figure came to the window, and apparently looked out, disappearing again in a moment and leaving every thing as before. "By George, I cannot stand this!" said Leslie. "Nor I," said Harding, moved by quite a different feeling. "I am getting sleepy and must go home." "Must you?" said Tom Leslie. "Well, you are not going a step. You cannot be spared just yet. Do you see that tree?" Harding had seen the tree for some minutes--a tall one with wide branches, standing a little to the left of the window. But he did not see anything special in the tree, while Leslie did, and that made the great difference.