Chapter V: Betrayed Innocence

There he slumbered on that rude lounge, with his head upon his hands and his hands under his head. A man, like you--or me--or any other man. Did you ever notice how you always keep your eyes shut when you are asleep? The lids come down over your orbs, your soul's windows, like night over the sun. You shall have visions of Heaven, or Hades, according to what you had for supper. Lobster salad, or truffles, will act upon a sleeping man's great, dark soul, like one of PAGE'S pictures on the open eye. Make it see light blue landscapes, and pallid faces looking out of pink distances. You think that young man there is sleeping upon a rude couch? No. He is sleeping upon something not palpable to your worldly eyes nor mine; he is sleeping upon an empty stomach. You dare not pity him. His scornful, stern man's soul would wither you if you talked to him of compassion. Such is man. An animal. A worm of the dust. Yet proud. Ha! you know it. You blush for your unworthy thought. Such is woman. Something aroused the sleeper suddenly. It might have been an angel's whisper, or the kiss of an insect. He sprang to his feet, shook himself, and mentally declared that he had come pretty near getting asleep. The idea was rational.

"By all that's blue! it can't be, though it is, by Jupiter!"

The gas was still burning brightly. Mr. BOB PETERS had caught sight of his watch as it was reflected in the mirror, with the hands pointing to a quarter past Twelve. With great rapidity he grasped the repeater, stabbed it into his fob, crushed his demoralized hat upon his head, looked regretfully about the room, turned off the gas, and in another moment was stealthily groping his way down stairs, toward the front door. The door yielded to his hand, but no JOCKO was there. "I suppose," murmured Mr. PETERS to himself, "I suppose the faithful fellow is praying for me somewhere in the kitchen, with his hands resting on a jar of sweetmeats. Ah! I ought to be a better man than I am." With this excellent moral reflection, Mr. BOB PETERS stepped into the street and faced boldly for the path to freedom; but at the very first corner his road was barred by two individuals in military caps and the first stage of intoxication.

"Aryupeters--eters!" said one, who was evidently desirous of having but a single word with him.

"With a BOB," replied the fugitive sententiously.

"Aw' ri', then," observed the two in chorus, and Mr. PETERS quickly found himself attended on either side by guardians whose affectionate manner of monopolizing his arms suggested a civil process of the most uncivil sort.

"Treachery!" he exclaimed, struggling fiercely. The twain held him tightly, however, with the strength of tight-uns, and his exertion only caused them to venture divers pleasant oaths concerning the destiny of his eyes.

Onward they dragged him, down Broad street and up half a dozen other streets, until a certain rebel institution was gained. "In with'm," said one of his captors; and they hurried him past a sentry and through a hall into a long, low room, where half a dozen miserable candles stuck up against the walls revealed a dismal company of over a hundred--some stretched upon the floor, some standing about, and others clustered around what appeared to be a cot in one corner.

"Is this the Confederate Congress?" asked the astonished BOB, as his captors left him, turning the key and adjusting various bolts as they went out.

"It's LIBBY'S pork-packing-house," answered the prisoner nearest him, "and you're jugged, I suppose, as a spy."

"Pork-packing!" ejaculated the bewildered BOB. "Why, this is treating me like a hog."

Several prisoners at once gave in their adhesion to this logical premise.

"Here's a case of betrayed innocence!" soliloquized Mr. BOB PETERS, bitterly, "I've trusted to LIBBY, and Libby's taken me in."--

"I'm going to be exchanged, I tell you!"

The sound came from the cot in the corner, and as the crowd in that direction opened for a moment, the new-comer beheld a sight that, for a time, made him forget his own troubles. A tall, gaunt man in ragged, Zouave uniform was reclining upon his elbow on the miserable pallet, the pale, dismal light of the candles disclosing a ghastly wound on his right temple, from which the blood was trickling down upon his rusty and matted beard.

"I'm going to be exchanged, I tell you!" he exclaimed, waving the others away with his left hand and glaring directly at BOB. "I've been here a whole year, and Eighty's boys wants me back; and I'm going to be exchanged."

"The poor fellow was shot by one of the sentries this morning. He's from a New York regiment, and has been a prisoner ever since Bull Run," whispered one of the unfortunates to BOB.

The latter approached the wounded man and kindly asked; "Can I do anything for you, old fellow?"

The dying Zouave regarded him with a ghastly smile; "Yes," said he, "you can go down to Eighty's truck house and take care of little JAKE till I'm exchanged. Will you, bub, will you?"

"Is JAKE your child?" asked Bob.

"No," responded the Zouave, softly, "it's only a little yaller dorg. I aint got no wife, nor child, nor no friend except the masheen and little JAKE. He's petty as a picture, bub, and he's slept with me many a gay old night around Catherine Market--he has. You'll be kind to him, bub, won't you?"

"Here! what's this noise about? What are yes doin' with lights this time ernight? I'll soon stop his Yankee groaning," were the words of a brutal keeper, who had just come in and was roughly elbowing his way toward the cot.

"Stand off, you hound!" shouted BOB, throwing himself between the keeper and the dying soldier. "Stand off!" growled the prisoners, fiercely crowding upon the intruder with murder in their faces.

"Hark!" said the Zouave, leaning listfully forward, "there goes the Hall bell--one--two--three----" His features lighted up as with the glow of a conflagration; his lips opened--

"_Fire! Fire! Fire!_"

And the Zouave fell back upon the cot--dead.

The keeper crawled forward like a whipped hound, and eyed the outstretched form with a face full of fear:

"Exchanged at last, by G--d!"

True, O traitorous hireling! and by God alone. For when that honest, loyal soul went out, there came to take its place an Avenging Spirit, that shall not cease to call on Heaven for vengeance on the Southern murderer until the cowardly stain of fifty thousand murders, such as this, are washed out in a terrible atonement.

"Poor little JAKE," murmured Mr. BOB PETERS, "I wonder if he's a terrier." Then, turning to the keeper,--"How long is my imprisonment in this terrible place to be continued?"

The keeper eyed the querist with no very amiable expression, "You'll stay here," said he, "until you take the Oath, I reckon."

"In that case, my native land, good night," responded the interesting captive, Byronically; "my incarceration will terminate with an epitaph--'_Hic Jacet_ ROBERT PETERS. A victim of miss-placed confidence. He died young'--Jailor, you are affected. Accept a quarter!"

The Cerberus clutched the proffered coin and eyed it with feverish intensity. It was evidently the first quarter he had seen since the commencement of his services in that hole. The man's better nature was touched. "Hist!" he said, drawing Mr. PETERS aside and speaking in a whisper: "I can no longer conceal the truth. I am a Southern Union man."

It is a beautiful peculiarity of our common nature, _mon ami_, that crime never sinks so deeply nor perversion spreads so obstinately in the human soul, but there is still a deeper current of normal rectitude responsive to the force of currency. That this was known to the ancients, is evinced by the antique custom of placing coins on the eyes of the dead, thereby signifying to all concerned that, whatever faults might have perished with the deceased, _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_.

"Can't I have a room to myself?" asked BOB, after a short pause.

"Follow me," was the response; and he followed the keeper through a crowd of curious prisoners, up a stair-way against a wall, to a room on the next floor. The keeper opened the door with a key from one of his pockets, and led the way into an apartment whose only furniture was a bed, a ricketty chair and a bit of looking-glass on a shelf.

"I sleep here sometimes myself," said the keeper; "but you shall stay here for a small rent. Make yourself comfortable."

"Stop a minute," said BOB, as the man turned to leave. "Do you know how I came to be arrested?"

"I don't know exactly," was the answer; "but I believe you was informed upon by some woman. Good night. Here's the candle."

The prisoner cast himself upon the bed, as the key grated again in the lock, and was fast asleep before the poor fellows down stairs had extinguished their miserable lights.

In the morning the friendly keeper brought him his breakfast, consisting of a cup of something very much like "sacred soil" after a heavy rain, two geological biscuits and a copy of the Richmond _Whig_.

"What do you call this stuff?" asked Mr. PETERS, ruefully eyeing the contents of the cup.

"Coffee," replied the keeper, blandly, "real Mocha."

Mr. PETERS was silent. To call such fluid Mocha was sheer mockery.

The biscuits dispatched and the coffee defied, the captive betook himself to deep and admiring contemplation of the newspaper; and was deriving much valuable instruction from an article written to prove how skilfully and ingeniously the Southern Confederacy had struck a telling blow at its ruthless invaders by strategetically surrendering Norfolk, when an early visitor was admitted. Said visitor was a young man contained in a picturesquely-tattered uniform, with a fatigue cap on his head and a rusty sword rattling at his heels.

"BOB, my boy," said he, "how the mischief did you get into this scrape?"

"This is some of your family's Chivalry," responded Mr. PETERS, shortly.

"My governor certainly did come it over you a little," observed the visitor, who was no other than the younger ORDETH; "but you might have gone off safely enough if you'd been at the bridge at quarter-past Twelve, as you were told. I don't like the governor's style any more than you do, and if you had come to time I could have passed you out of the lines easily enough."

"I did come to time," answered BOB, with great bitterness, "and a pretty time of night it was. How did I get into this scrape? The Southern Confederacy brought me here. I've had enough of you and your family. It affords me satisfaction to contemplate a perspective in which your family are attending a funeral of one of their number whose demise would be attended with funeral honors, if all his comrades were not engaged in the work of running away from MCCLELLAN."

Mr. PETERS hazarded this cutting insinuation of the future with an expression of countenance rigidly severe.

"But, my dear boy, there is some mistake. You--"

"Enough, Sir!"

"Oh, very well; if you won't you won't," exclaimed the Confederate youth, growing very red in the face. "All I have to say is, that I have done my part as your friend. If you had been at the bridge at quarter-past Twelve last night, you might be back among the Yankees now. And, let me tell you, those same Yankees will never conquer the South."

"Perhaps not," said Mr. PETERS, ironically.

"One of our officers has just invented a new gun that will soon teach the North manners," continued the Confederate, with increasing heat. "It throws one-hundred-pound balls as fast as a man can turn the handle."

"Ah!" said BOB, sneeringly.

"Yes; and it has but one defect."

"What's that?" asked BOB, with some appearance of interest.

"The handle won't turn!" ejaculated the young Virginian, darting hastily from the room to hide his emotion.

Mr. PETERS looked vaguely after the retreating form of the sensitive youth, and as one of the keepers relocked the door again from the outside, his face sank upon his hands. What did his visitor mean by accusing him of not making his appearance at the appointed time? It was exactly quarter-past Twelve when he left the house. "I see how it is," murmured Mr. PETERS, between his hands; "the boy has been taking something hot."