In desperation, they turned towards the mountains of West Virginia and Tennessee. The population there had always been loyal, and had healthfully resisted the revolutionary infection; the mountains themselves afforded opportunities for defence, and possibly for the gathering of an army which, with the regulars as a nucleus, might be able to make some successful stand against the revolutionists. After another toilsome march, about fifteen hundred of the soldiers succeeded in reaching the mountains, though closely pursued by greatly superior numbers of the rebels. In the mean time the President had been stealthily conveyed to a farm-house, some twenty miles from Richmond, belonging to a loyal gentleman of that city, with the intention of sending him farther South by the earliest opportunity. During the night he was attacked by pneumonia. Enfeebled by physical weariness and mental strain, he rapidly sank. His identity was concealed to the last, and, excepting the gentleman in whose house he lay and the physician who attended him, not one of the inmates knew that under that roof the last President of the United States passed away. Even after his death the secret was kept, and his fate was never made known to the revolutionary leaders, who had themselves fallen before the story was told. While one portion of the revolutionary forces at Washington had been disputing the passage of the regulars into Virginia at Long Bridge, another portion was scouring the city and arresting the members of Congress who remained and could be found. Few of them knew what had happened, and their capture was easy. When the next morning dawned, it found all the Congressmen, except those in secret sympathy with the revolution, herded in the District jail, and the building surrounded by armed detachments from the revolutionary forces. XI. A PRECIOUS TRIUMVIRATE. O’Halloran and Wagner issued another proclamation. This time it was addressed directly to the “revolutionary army” and to the allied organizations in sympathy with the new order of things. It announced the flight of the Administration and the withdrawal of the national troops. Its signers declared, with audacious and impudent hypocrisy, that they deplored the disorder and destruction of property which had followed the revolution in many cities, and which they feared might be imitated in Washington unless immediate steps were taken to carry on the government. The various organizations engaged in the revolt were again invited to send delegates to an October “peace convention.” In the mean time O’Halloran and Wagner summoned Herr Van Liest, a prominent anarchistic agitator, to join them, and announced that the triumvirate so composed would administer the government till a permanent arrangement should be perfected.