The summer-house had already a thatch of vines, but bare columns upheld the roof, and it occupied a little circular space of gravel, whence a broad gravel walk ran toward each point of the compass. An approach could be instantly observed, a step instantly heard, and therefore it did not seem to Julius altogether incongruous that business of importance and details of secrecy should presently be broached. The table in the centre was all at once covered with papers, and he began to understand the mysteries that had hitherto baffled him when gradually the details of a very bold and extensive blockade-running scheme were unfolded. This was in defiance, of course, of the Federal regulations, and in so far militated against no interest of the government that Julius had sworn to serve. But it was a private enterprise for personal profit, and whether the export of cotton from the country to England at this juncture accorded with the policy of the Confederate States he had no means of knowing. At one time, he was aware, there existed an impression that the official withholding of such shipments as could be effected by running the blockade tended to create such paucity of the staple in the English market as might influence the already pronounced disposition of the British to interfere in aid of the Confederacy, and bringing the war to an end remove this restriction of manufactures and trade. All this was beyond his province. He held very still, remained keenly observant, watching for the loophole that might enable him to quit these tortuous ways for the very simple matter of fighting the battles of his section. After these various turmoils of doubt, and hope, and despair, it would be a mere trifle to charge with his company to the muzzles of the biggest howitzers that ever bellowed. He discovered that these men were in correspondence with secret agents in the Confederacy; they spoke of various depots of the cotton which presently developed as mere caches--bales hidden in swamps, to be brought out only by such craft as could navigate bayous, or in deserted gin-houses on abandoned plantations, or in old tumble-down warehouses on the outskirts of towns,--never much at any one point, but all that could be found and bought, and concealed and held, to be gotten away at last to a foreign market. The system sought to reach to the Gulf of Mexico, to gather up the scattered wayside stores, and either by taking advantage of some lapse of Federal vigilance, or else by strategy, to run the blockade with a ship-load, and away for England! Thus the enterprise was contrary to the policy of both factions. The Company's gold would recruit the endurance of the South, and yet he knew that the Confederate authorities had put the torch to thousands of bales rather than let the cotton fall into their enemy's hands--the precious commodity, then selling at amazing prices in the markets of New York.