In the Second Act _Alan_,--supposing that the Confederate Army has moved away--rashly returns to Boonsboro, desiring to effect reconciliation with his sweetheart. _Lloyd_, trying to bring about a meeting between the lovers, speaks, ambiguously, to _Maryland_ about “a Northern friend” whom he wishes her to meet for him and “detain.” Later, while trying to make his way to the Union lines with important information, _Lloyd_ is shot and, dying, is detected as a spy: _Alan_ is, meantime, recaptured, wearing the hat and overcoat of a Confederate officer, and _Maryland_, unaware of his identity and thinking to clear her brother’s reputation as a loyal Southerner, denounces the prisoner to _General Kendrick_ as the real spy. _Alan_, by order of his father, is then tried by court-martial and condemned to death. In the Third Act _Maryland_ makes her way into the Union lines and obtains from _General Hooker_, there commanding, a letter to _General Kendrick_ certifying that the presence of his son, _Colonel Kendrick_, within the Confederate lines, was due to a personal, not a military, motive,--in short, that _Alan_ is not a spy. Returning with this letter to her home, which has become Confederate Headquarters, _Maryland_ finds that _General Kendrick_ has been killed in action and that _Colonel Thorpe_ is in command. _Thorpe_, whom she visits in his quarters in the old church of Boonsboro,--part of which is also used for confinement of military prisoners,--and to whom she appeals for mercy, perceiving that _Hooker’s_ letter, if it should reach any Confederate officer other than himself, would imperil his own life, not only refuses a reprieve for _Alan Kendrick_ but orders that execution of the death sentence be hastened. Then, half drunken and wholly bestial, he insults the unfortunate _Alan_, who, pinioned and helpless, is on his way to the gallows and, in his presence, threatens his sweetheart with outrage. _Maryland_, in desperation, defending herself, stabs _Thorpe_ with a bayonet (a weapon ingeniously introduced for this purpose among the articles accessory to the stage setting, being thrust into a table-top and used as a candlestick), wounding and disabling him. She then liberates _Alan_, who makes his escape. _Thorpe_, rallying, orders the church-bell rung, a prearranged signal warning all sentries that a prisoner has broken jail; but _Maryland_, making her way to the belfry, seizes the clapper of the great bell and, thus enacting the devoted expedient of _Bessie_, in “Curfew Must Not Ring To-night,” prevents the alarm and enables her lover to make good his escape. In the Fourth Act _Thorpe’s_ double duplicity has been discovered in the Rebel capital and he is ordered under arrest by _General Lee_; the Confederate troops, defeated in a general engagement, are forced to evacuate Boonsboro, and the play ends with a prospective reconciliation of the lovers.