The place had once been a commodious dwelling house, but was now, like many others of the finest mansions in Washington, taken for the service of the government. A sentinel was on guard before the door. Mr. Force spoke a few words to him, and passed on with his party. He entered a front hall, and thence through a door on the right they passed into a large front room, furnished with seats all around its walls, and a long table at its back, with chairs behind it, and folios and stationery on its top. Two or three men in uniform sat behind this table, while all around the room, on the benches against the walls, sat a rough-looking score of men guarded by soldiers. There was another door on the right of the long table, and opening into a rear room. A sentinel or janitor stood at that door. While they waited to be admitted to the presence of the commissioner, the door opened, and two prisoners came out, guarded by a detachment of soldiers. “There he is! There is the head devil—and not in irons, either! And there—there, in his company—a prisoner, too, by all that is atrocious!—is my mate, Roland!” The two gentlemen looked up, stared at the prisoners who were slowly crossing the room to the outer door, closely guarded by the soldiers—stared until the elder and stouter of the two lifted the back of his hand to his forehead in a mock salute, and smiled, while the younger fixed a gaze of yearning entreaty upon the face of his old captain, and then turned the same gaze upon his old friend. Yes! the pirate’s first officer, taken, red-handed, with him, was Roland Bayard! But who was the pirate himself? CHAPTER XIV WHO HE WAS “You say this man is the captain of the _Argente_?” inquired Mr. Force of the old skipper, when the prisoners and their guard had passed out of the room. “Yes! He is Silver—Silver, the pirate captain! No irons on his wrists yet! Prisoner of war, is he? Ah! ah! we shall see—we shall see! But my brave Roland! Taken with him! This, then was the blockade runner’s first officer whom they were talking about, who was taken with him, and is now sent to prison with him! Oh, Roland! Roland! Is it possible that you yielded to temptations to join in a lawless life! But it will cost you your own life, Roland, my lad! No rescued prisoner from the pirate’s clutch are you, Roland, but a comrade of pirates yourself! I thought I knew the boy! I thought I knew him for an honest lad! But I was mistaken in him! Oh, how mistaken I was!” While the captain was muttering these lamentations to himself, Mr. Force was standing in a maze of perplexity—not thinking then so much of Roland as of the pirate captain. The earl touched him on the shoulder and aroused him. “I know the villain!” he said. “I have much cause to know him! His name is Stukely—Byrne Stukely—once a lieutenant in the royal navy, but cashiered years ago for dishonorable conduct.”