“Thank you very much,” tartly replied Mrs. Charteris, thrusting her candle into the officer’s face and causing him to jump back a yard or so. “I see nothing to frighten anybody in you or any of your men. There is no Confederate officer here; they are all waiting for you with arms in their hands outside of Richmond.” In vain the officer endeavored to stop the torrent of Mrs. Charteris’s wrathful eloquence and to escape the proximity of the candle which she persistently thrust under his nose. It ended by his beating an ignominious retreat to the gunboat lying in the river. A few souvenirs in the way of ducks and turkeys and Mrs. Charteris’s coach horses were carried off, but, as she triumphantly recounted at church the next Sunday, “It was worth losing a pair of old carriage horses--for both of mine were getting shaky on their legs--for the pleasure of speaking my mind to that Yankee officer and see him run away from me!” Nearly every place on the river was visited at some time during the spring by the gunboats, and the inland plantations were also raided at different times by detachments of cavalry. Harrowby, however, by a singular chance, escaped. This was strange in itself and mightily helped the story floating about concerning Angela’s supposed communication with the Federal lines. The flight of the negroes to the Yankees had come to an end because practically all of the young and able-bodied had gone. Only the older, feebler, and more conservative ones, and the young children and their mothers remained. There was no doubt that the negroes who stayed at home had advance notice of the Federal incursions and kept up a continual intercourse with those who had fled to the Federal camp. No one realized this more than Angela, who suddenly began to get letters with considerable regularity from Neville. He had been sent East and was then for a short time at Fort Monroe, but knew not how long he would be there. It was easy enough to get his letters as far as the Federal lines, and then there was always opportunity of passing them from hand to hand among the negroes until they reached Mammy Tulip, who, in turn, gave them to Angela. Neville wrote in a spirit of sadness and even bitterness. “I could be useful here,” he wrote, “far more than recruiting in the West. We are as short of trained artillerists as the Confederates are, and ordinarily I should have already had an opportunity to distinguish myself. But I am distrusted by all except the few of my classmates of West Point, who know me well. If ever I can get to the front then I can prove to all that I am a true man and as ready to die for the Union as any soldier who follows the flag. For yourself, make ready to come to me at any day, for you may be assured that at the first possible moment I shall send for you, the sweetest comfort left me.” Then came a few words of deep tenderness which Angela read with tears dropping upon the page. How hard a fate was Neville Tremaine’s, after all!