The Confederate officer, nevertheless, had hitherto felt a degree of safety in the attic and had the resources of a manly patience to await the event. This nocturnal eccentricity on the part of the guest of the house, however, roused new forebodings. It bore in its own conditions the inception of added danger. It was unprecedented. It marked a turbulent restlessness and the element of change. In the evidently agitated state of the stranger's nerves, some trifle, the scamper of a rat, the dislodgment of the rickety old cornice of this bedstead, the fall of one of the girandoles, teetering over there on a chest of drawers, might rouse him with its clamor and justify the ascent of the attic stairs to investigate its source. These were troublous times. There were stories forever afloat of lawless marauders. Smoke-houses were broken into and pillaged. Mansions were robbed and fired, and their tenants, chiefly women and children, fleeing into the cornfields to hide, watched the roof-tree flare. It was hard for the authorities to find and fix the responsibility for these dread deeds in remote inaccessible spots, and it would be culpable neglect for this Federal officer to tolerate the suggestion of an ill-omened noise or an unaccustomed presence without seeking out its cause. Evidently any accident would bring him upstairs. It was equally obvious that the garret was no place to sleep to-night! Julius, as he lay on the pillow, could hardly rid himself of the idea of approach. Ever and anon he looked for the stealthy shadow of which he had dreamed, climbing in the moonbeams along the balusters of the stairway. Finally he stole silently out of the reach of the moonlight to a darker corner of the room,--the deep recess of one of the windows which the shadow of a great branch of the white pine made duskier still. The tall tree, with its full, sempervirent boughs, showed the varying nocturnal tints that color may compass, uninformed by the sun,--the cool suggestion of a fair dull green where the moonbeams glistered, the fibrous leaves tipped with a dim sparkle; the deep umbrageous verdure where the darkness lurked and yet did not annul the vestige of tone. As he reclined on the window-seat, he discerned farther down a faint flare of artificial light. It described a regularly barred square amidst the pine needles, and he presently recognized it as the light from the window of Captain Baynell's room. Now and again it flickered in a way that told how the disregarded candle was beginning to gutter in the socket. Still to and fro the regular footfalls went, muffled on the heavy carpet, but in the dead hush of night perceptible enough to the watching listener. At last with a final flare the taper burned out, but the moon was in the windows along the western side of the house, and still to and fro went the steps, betokening the turmoil of unquiet thoughts. Julius watched how the moonbeams shifted from bough to bough as the slow night lingered. He