The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, Series 2. R. H. Newell

      "Mars'r," said Jocko, handing a folded paper to the fugitive prisoner, "dis was gub to me for you by my chile Efrum, dat b'longs to Missus Adams; and I hope, Mas'r, dat you will read um with fear an' trem'lin, for the Lor' is very good to let you lib in your great sins, Mars'r."

      How beautiful, mon ami, is that strong spirit of piety we often find developed in the uncultivated, like the rich oyster found on the barren sea-shore. Taken in connection with the children of Ham, it is as mustard to a sandwich, for moving us to occasional tears.

      Mr. Bob Peters waved the faithful black from his presence, and read the note, which ran thus:

      "Mr. Peters—Sir:—Though, as a daughter of the Sonny South, I cannot but regard you as a traitor to our country, the memory of past hours in my soul-life induces me to act toward you as a heart-friend. I have heard, through those faithful beings of which your friends would rob and murder us, that you are a prisoner, and will save you. Contrive to get out of the house in some way on Sunday (to-morrow) evening, at a quarter of twelve, and you will find those waiting for you who will deliver you for a time from our vengeance. It is the impulsive heart-throb of a weak woman that bids me do this—not the spirit-aspiration of the Southern daughter.

      "Eve Adams."

      Mr. Bob Peters lowered the hand holding the note until it rested heavily on his right knee, and gazed before him, as he sat on his couch, with a puzzled expression of countenance. He had been sitting in this way, perfectly motionless, for five minutes perhaps, when the door was gently pushed open a few inches, a dainty white hand came through the aperture, deposited a mysterious black bottle on the floor very softly, and disappeared as it came. In an instant, Mr. Peters sprang to his feet, dashed the note to the ground, seized the bottle, and immediately applied it to his lips with great enthusiasm.

      His Mistress had understood that last subtle glance he gave her. With the wonderful insight of man's deeper nature peculiar to girls about eighteen years old, she had divined the one thing required to make the captive comfortable.

      Oh, woman, woman! In the language of a revised poet—

      Without the smile from partial beauty won, Ah, what were man!—a world without a son!"

      CHAPTER III.—THE WIDOW'S MITE.

      The Adamses resided in one of the aristocratic by ways crossing Main Street, and were directly descended from those distinguished and chivalric anciens pauvres of the Old Dominion, who boasted the blood of the English cavaliers, and were a terror to their foes and creditors. Adams, the husband and father, was a fine specimen of the Southern gentleman in his day, possessing an estate in Louisa County, so completely covered with mortgages that no heir could get to it, and having won great fame by inventing an entirely new and singularly humorous oath for the benefit of a Yankee governess, when that despised hireling presumed to ask for a portion of her last year's salary. He might have lived to a green old age, but for the extraordinary joy he experienced at having negotiated a second mortgage on some property not worth quite half the first, which filled this worthy man with such exceeding great joy, that he drank rather more at a sitting than would start an ordinary hotel-bar, and died soon after of delirium tremens, as such noble and chivalric souls are very apt to do. The family left by the lamented Adams, consisting of a wife and one child—a daughter, at once assumed the most becoming style of mourning, moved in a funeral procession through society for six months, and then resigned themselves to the will of Providence with that beautiful cheerfulness which may either denote a high order of Christianity, or a low order of memory, as the case may be.

      At the period of which the present veracious history treats, the bereaved mother and daughter were living in subdued style in the locality designated above. Among their most intimate associates were the Ordeths, between whose family and theirs there existed that pleasing and kindly familiarity which permits the most open recognition of mutual virtues in society and the most searching criticism of individual weaknesses at home. The Adamses and Ordeths met at each other's houses with gushes of endearment that edified all beholders; and if Miss Eve said to her mother on their way home from church that Libby Ordeth looked like a perfect fright in that ridiculous new bonnet of hers, it was only because her affectionate heart felt a pang at seeing her bosom-friend appear to less advantage than her own self-sacrificing self.

      It is a touching peculiarity of this modern friendship, mon ami, that a majority of the errors its fairest votaries detect in each other, are those of the head—not of the heart. Eve Adams, whose diminutive size had given occasion to the mot by which she was denominated the "Widow's Mite," was calling at the Ordeths when Mr. Bob Peters first came in under a flag of truce from Fortress Monroe, and was witness to the chivalric reception accorded to that gentleman by his relatives, before his pecuniary mission was known. In the exuberance of his nature, Mr. Peters had kissed her with the rest of the family, and from the moment of receiving that chaste salutation, Eve had selected the Northern stranger as her hero in that ideal novel of spiritual yellow-covers in which all maidens live, and move and have their beings until stern reality bursts upon them in the shape of a husband or a snub.

      From thenceforth she was a frequent visitor at the Ordeths, and laid close siege to the gay Robert's heart with all the languishment deemed necessary in such cases, and a tremendous flirtation was going on before the maiden discovered that the affections of the youth were already given to another. Then came a revulsion of feeling, opening the eyes of the Widow's Mite to the fact that Mr. Bob Peters was a thieving abolitionist, unworthy the toleration of any true daughter of the South. After this overpowering revelation, it was the first thought of Eve Adams to at once inform the festive Peters of the utter detestation in which she held him, and a favorable opportunity soon offered. At a social gathering at the Ordeth's, she had withdrawn for a moment to an ante-room, for the purpose of drawing from her bosom an elegant silver snuff-box, dipping therein a small brush, and subsequently applying the same to her pearly teeth, when Mr. Bob Peters entered unannounced, and agreeably demanded a "pinch." The situation was favorable to an avowal of enmity, and a suitable expression was rising to the lips of the maiden, when the thought of a still keener revenge kept her silent, and she contented herself with a temporary sneer and a majestic exit from the apartment.

      It was soon after this incident that Mr. Bob Peters' presentation to Mr. Ordeth of the bill for furniture which he had been empowered to collect by a New York house, reminded the latter that it was his duty, as a patriot, to sacrifice even his cousin's son for the good of the Confederacy. With the stern self-devotion of an ancient Roman, Mr. Ordeth not only accused his hapless relative of flagrant Abolitionism, but at once made arrangements with the military authorities for that relative's immediate incarceration as an enemy to the Commonwealth. An enemy to the Commonwealth of Virginia must be indeed an unnatural wretch; for no such wealth is known to be in existence just now, and enmity to the dead is a thing inexcusable. It was a crime of which Mr. Bob Peters was incapable; yet would he have suffered for it, had not the devoted Libby concealed him in the hour of danger.

      Of this concealment, Miss Eve had learned from Efrum, the son of Jocko, though she knew not how long it was to be continued.

      CHAPTER IV.—"TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE."

      Several of the Richmond churches were opened that Sunday night, and thither repaired many of the Cottonocracy, devotional children of Bale, to implore Providence in behalf of an army whose heroes have generally appeared, in the eyes of the Federal troops, to be wholly Leave-ites. The recent intelligence of "another confederate victory," at Williamsburg, had added a finishing touch to the panic created by reports of the triumphal retreat from Yorktown previously received, and the fervor of Richmond's piety on that evening was eminently worthy of a city liable at any moment to be cannonized. The reverend clergy of the rebel capital selected their texts from Exodus by instinct, as it were, and proved so conclusively that the Yankee invader was no man, that the listening congregations were impressed with an instructive and repentant sense of their own wickedness, (for they are the wicked who invariably flee when "no man" pursueth,) and several members evinced their new-born disgust at this sinful world by resolutely closing their eyes upon it at once.

      In his pew sat Mr. Victor E. Ordeth, with his wife and son, the latter a member