"Yes, we love--that's all and it's everything. There's no more doubt, dear?" "Not one," she cried. "I'm going to bring back the red blood to your cheeks now and take that fevered look out of your eyes----" The weeks of convalescence were swift and beautiful to Betty--her ministry to his slightest whim a continuous joy. The only cloud in her sky was the strange, feverish, unquiet look in his eyes. On the day of his discharge he received a letter from his mother which deepened this expression to the verge of mania. "What is it, dear?" Betty asked in alarm. "One of those unfortunate things that have been happening somewhere every day for the past year--an arrest and imprisonment for treasonable utterances----" "Who has been arrested?" "This time my father in Missouri." "Your father?" she gasped. "Yes. He has been a bitter critic of the war. He seems to have gone too far. There was a riot of some sort in the village and he took the wrong side." There was an ominous quiet in the way he talked. "I'll take you to see the President, dearest," she said soothingly. "We'll ask for his release. It's sure to be granted." John's eyes suddenly flashed. "You think so?" "Absolutely sure of it." "We'll try it then," he said, with a cold ring in his voice that chilled Betty's heart, and sent her home wondering at its meaning. CHAPTER XXXV THE DARKEST HOUR In the summer of 1864 the President saw the darkest hours of his life. The change in his appearance was startling and pitiful. His sombre eyes seemed to have sunk into their caverns beneath the bushy brows and all but disappeared. Their gaze was more and more detached from earth and set on some dim, invisible shore. Deeper and deeper sank the furrows in his ashen face. The shoulders drooped beneath a weight too great for any human soul to bear. To Betty Winter's expression of loyalty and sympathy he answered sadly: "It's success I need, child,--not sympathy. My own burdens of cares are as nothing to my soul. It's our cause--our cause--the Union must live or I shall die!" He sat sometimes by his window for hours immovable as a marble statue, his deep, hungry eyes gazing, gazing forever over the shining river toward the Southern hills. His Secretaries stepped softly about the room in silent sympathy with the Chief they loved with passionate devotion. Grant had crossed the Rapidan on that glorious spring morning in May with his magnificent army accompanied by the highest hopes of millions. And there had followed those awful sickening battles, one after another, until he had fallen back in failure before the impassable trenches around Petersburg. The star of Grant, the conquering hero of the West, had apparently set in a sea of blood. Lee, with inferior numbers, alert, resourceful, vigilant, had checked and baffled him at every turn, and Richmond's fall was no nearer to human eye than in 1862.