Chapter VIII: Without End

Seated upon the lounge where _he_ so often had rested, with her elbows resting upon the table on which _his_ arms had so frequently reposed, sat the afflicted LIBBY. She had heard her paternal leave the house an hour before, and she had just heard the sound of his boots in the hall below as he returned; but she felt no desire to learn the reason thereof. Like her mother, she had seen the account of MR. PETERS' arrest in the morning paper, and her bewilderment at the statement respecting the device used to entrap that persecuted youth by a Daughter of the South, was only equalled by her grief at the unfortunate present predicament of her lover. So absorbed was she in her sorrows that she heard not the opening of the parlor door below her, nor the sound of footsteps on the stairs:--

"Miss ORDETH!"

Was it a dream? The beautiful mourner turned quickly in the direction of the sound, and beheld the bodily presentment of Mr. BOB PETERS, who stood near the door with his shocking bad hat between his hands and an expression of stern reproach upon his countenance.

"BOB!--you here?" exclaimed the maiden, starting from her seat with a little shriek.

"Mr. PETERS, if you please, Madame," said the late captive, with much dignity. "Owing to a great spread of Union sentiment in the bosom of your paternal relative, and his consequent representation in my behalf, I _am_ here, to blast you with the sight of the innocence you have betrayed! I slipped up here to confront you, Madame," observed Mr. PETERS, with some ease of manner, "while the old ones were packing the silver-plated spoons preparatory to a combined movement on the peaceful hamlet of Danville."

"What do you mean, you ridiculous thing?" asked LIBBY, scarcely believing her own ears.

"That we must part," returned Mr. PETERS, calmly straightening an angle in the rim of his hat. "You named an hour for my nocturnal escape--quarter-past Twelve. I fled the Residence at that unseemly hour, though another maiden had previously invited me to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I went, and walked straight into the arms of the unsleeping Southern Confederacy, who was inebriated at the time, and conducted me to the penal pork-packing establishment. Enough! we part. I go to Danville with you, but only as an ordinary acquaintance of chilling reserve."

"Why BOB, what can you mean?" ejaculated _Libby_, to whom this remarkable speech was not particularly lucid; "it was not my fault that you were taken. If you had gone at quarter-past Twelve, as I told you, all would have been well. Oh, BOB, when JOCKO told me next morning that he had waited for you a whole hour in the hall in vain, and when ma and I found that you had really gone at the wrong time, I sat right down and cried my eyes out."

"The wrong time!" exclaimed Mr. PETERS, striding suddenly toward the mirror. "Impossible! Observe this repeater of mine, which is a reliable time-piece. On the night in question, this repeater was plainly before me, hanging on this gas bracket, before this looking-glass." Here Mr. PETERS illustrated his assertion by suspending his watch from the bracket, under which it spun feebly for a moment. "At the very instant of my waking from a temporary slumber, I caught sight of this same repeater in the glass, and--why! what's this?"

In a moment every vestige of resentment had faded from the features of Mr. BOB PETERS, and he stood staring at the reflection of his watch in the glass with the look of a man in the last stage of wonder.

LIBBY timidly drew near and placed a hand on his arm.

"What's the matter, dear?"

"What time is it now by the repeater?" asked Mr. PETERS, excitedly, but without moving his eyes.

"Why, it's ten minutes past Ten," replied LIBBY, glancing at the face of the watch as it appeared in the mirror, and wondering what would come next.

"Look again!!" thundered Mr. PETERS.

"Why," repeated LIBBY, half-frightened, "it's ten minutes past Ten."

Mr. BOB PETERS deliberately took down his watch and pointed convulsively at its face with one finger. The time was ten minutes _of_ Ten!

Mr. PETERS' first act was to clasp the maiden to his bosom and kiss her unceremoniously. Then releasing her, he took two steps in a popular break-down and burst into a stentorian peal of laughter.

"I shall have to call Pa," said poor LIBBY.

"Not a bit of it!" shouted BOB, ceasing his Terpsichoreanism for a moment; "don't you see the joke? It's all in the looking-glass, my pet. When I thought it was a quarter past Twelve and fled the residence, it was really a quarter _of_ Twelve--don't you see? The looking-glass _reversed the hands on the watch_!"

And so it was, _mon ami_. Hold your own time-piece with its face to a mirror, and you will "see the point."

But what can excuse that General who, after leading the whole country to expect that he would take Richmond in time for me to conclude this picture of Southern life, as I originally planned to do, now changes his base of operation in a strategic manner, and introduces a fizzle into romantic literature----

* * * * *

Here Smith-Brown, who happened to be awake, coughed intrusively, my boy, and says he:

"The fault is not the General's, my friend. The Secretary of War is alone to blame for it. He has killed literature."

How true was that speech, my boy. The Secretary is indeed responsible for this literary disaster, as well for everything else; and if he ever undertakes to stand on his own responsibility, he will find plenty of room to move about.

Yours, droopingly,
ORPHEUS C. KERR.