"They have behaved very well for Yankees," replied he, "No luxury, and they will not hear of my having a servant. They are used to doing their own work. But they have treated me much better since I refused to take their abominable oath." "And you will be honored for it when the news reaches town." "Do you think so, Jinny?" Clarence asked eagerly, "I reckon they will think me a fool!" "I should like to hear any one say so," she flashed out. "No," said Virginia, "our friends will force them to release you. I do not know much about law. But you have done nothing to be imprisoned for." Clarence did not answer at once. Finally he said. "I do not want to be released." "You do not want to be released," she repeated. "No," he said. "They can exchange me. If I remain a prisoner, it will have a greater effect--for the South." She smiled again, this time at the boyish touch of heroics. Experience, responsibility, and he would get over that. She remembered once, long ago, when his mother had shut him up in his room for a punishment, and he had tortured her by remaining there for two whole days. It was well on in the afternoon when she drove back to the city with Mr. Brinsmade. Neither of them had eaten since morning, nor had they even thought of hunger. Mr. Brinsmade was silent, leaning back in the corner of the carriage, and Virginia absorbed in her own thoughts. Drawing near the city, that dreaded sound, the rumble of drums, roused them. A shot rang out, and they were jerked violently by the starting of the horses. As they dashed across Walnut at Seventh came the fusillade. Virginia leaned out of the window. Down the vista of the street was a mass of blue uniforms, and a film of white smoke hanging about the columns of the old Presbyterian Church Mr. Brinsmade quietly drew her back into the carriage. The shots ceased, giving place to an angry roar that struck terror to her heart that wet and lowering afternoon. The powerful black horses galloped on. Nicodemus tugging at the reins, and great splotches of mud flying in at the windows. The roar of the crowd died to an ominous moaning behind them. Then she knew that Mr. Brinsmade was speaking:-- "From battle and murder, and from sudden death--from all sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion,--Good Lord, deliver us." He was repeating the Litany--that Litany which had come down through the ages. They had chanted it in Cromwell's time, when homes were ruined and laid waste, and innocents slaughtered. They had chanted it on the dark, barricaded stairways of mediaeval Paris, through St. Bartholomew's night, when the narrow and twisted streets, ran with blood. They had chanted it in ancient India, and now it was heard again in the New World and the New Republic of Peace and Good Will.