"Oh, if you wait until you learn from me, you'll never be a dangerous accuser. I learn in letters from friends in the West that all the cotton crop has been contracted for by men either in the Northern army or high in the confidence of the Administration. You see, Jack, we are not the Arcadian simpletons you think us. This war is to be paid for out of Northern pockets, any way you look at it. We've got cotton and tobacco, you must have both; you've got money, we must have that. What we don't sell to you we'll send to England." All at the table had listened absorbedly to this strange revelation, and Jack rose from the table shocked and discouraged. Olympia seated herself at the piano, and, slipping out, as he supposed, unseen, Jack strolled off into the fragrant alleys of oleander and laurel. Dick, however, was at his heels. The two continued on in silence, Dick trolling along, switching the bugs from the pink blossoms that filled the air with an enervating odor. "I say. Jack, I've found out something." "What have you found out, you young conspirator?" "Wesley Boone's trying to get the negroes to help him off." "The devil he is!" "Yes. Last night I was down in the rose-fields. Young Clem, Aunt Penelope's boy, was sitting under a bush talking with a crony. I heard him say, 'De cap'n'll take you, too, ef you doan say noffin'. He guv Pompey ten gold dollars.' "'De Lor'! Will he take ev'ybody 'long, too, Clem?' "'Good Lor', no! He's goin' to get his army, and den he'll come an' fetch all de niggahs.' "'De Lor'!' "Trying to get closer, I made a rustling of the bushes, and the young imps shot through them like weasles before I could lay hands on them. Now, what do you think of that?" "If it is only to escape, all right; but if it is an attempt to stir up insurrection, I will stop Wesley myself, rather than let him carry it out!" "Wouldn't it be the best thing to warn Vincent? It would be a dreadful thing to let him go and leave his poor mother and sister here unprotected." "Let me think it over. I will hit on some plan to keep Wesley from making an ingrate of himself without bringing danger on our benefactors." Kate was dawdling on the lawn as the two returned to the house. Jack challenged her to a jaunt. "Where shall it be?" she asked, readily, moving toward him. "The garden of the gods?" "The garden of the goddesses, you mean, if it is the rose-field." "That's true; a god's garden would be filled with thorns and warlike blossoms." "I don't know; a rose-garden grew the wars of the houses of York and Lancaster." "Do you remember the scene in Shakespeare where Bolingbroke and Gaunt pluck the roses?"