His face suddenly fell--in this most intimate essential of true gentlemanhood, in this dearest requisition of a soldier's faith, that is yet the commonest principle of the humblest campaigner, he was held to have failed, in point of honor. He was held to have paltered and played a double part, to have betrayed alike his country, the fair name of his corps, and his own unsullied record. And this was the fiat of fair-minded men, comrades, countrymen, to be expressed in the preferred charges. Bankrupt in all he held dear, he shrank from seeming to beg the sheer empty bounty of her sympathy. He hardly cared to face these reflections in her presence. He arose to go, and it was with composed, conventional courtesy, as inexpressive as if he were some casual friendly caller, that he took his leave, resolutely ignoring all the tragedy of the situation. The next day came the news that charges having been duly preferred he had been placed in arrest to await the action of the general court-martial to be assembled in the town. CHAPTER XVI Ashley, in common with a number of Baynell's friends, did not recognize a fair spirit in the inception of the investigation. The military authorities in Roanoke City seemed rancorously keen to prove that naught within the scope of their own duty could have averted the disasters of the battle of the redoubt. The moral gymnastic of shunting the blame was actively in progress. The proof of treachery within the lines, individual failure of duty, would explain to the Department far more to the justification of the commander of the garrison of the town the losses both of life and material, and the jeopardy of the whole position, than admission of the fact that the military of the post had been outwitted, and that the enemy was entitled to salvos of applause for a very gallant exploit. Indeed, only specific details from one familiar with the interior of the works, to which, of course, citizens were not admitted, could have informed Julius Roscoe of the location of the powder magazine and enabled him to utilize in this connection his own early familiarity with the surroundings. Thus the theory that Julius Roscoe could not have accomplished its destruction had he not been harbored, even helped, by the connivance of a personal friend in the lines, and that friend, a Federal officer, was far more popular among the military authorities than the simple fact that a Rebel had been detected visiting his father's house by a Federal officer, a guest therein, promptly arrested, and in the altercation the one had been hurt and the other had escaped. Had the capture of the redoubt never occurred later as a sequence, this transient encounter of Baynell's would hardly have elicited a momentary notice.