Captain Welford had entered the Secret Service of the Confederacy believing firmly that Socola was a Federal spy. He would not make known his suspicions until he had secured evidence on which to demand his arrest.

This evidence he found most difficult to secure. For months he had watched the handsome foreigner with the patience of a hound. He had taken particular pains to hold Jennie\'s friendship in order to be thrown with Socola on every possible occasion. His men from the Secret Service Department had followed Socola\'s every movement day and night with no results.

He pretended the most philosophic acceptance of the situation and bantered the lovers with expressions of his surprise that an early marriage had not been announced.

Socola received the Captain\'s professions of friendship with no sign of suspicion. He read Dick\'s mind as an open book. He saw through his pretentions and the tragic purpose which underlay his good-natured banter. He knew instinctively that his movements were watched and moved with the utmost caution. For a time he found it impossible to visit the house on Church Hill. Detectives were on his heels the moment he turned his steps to that hill.

The boarding house in which he lived was watched day and night. And yet so carefully had he executed his work the men who were hounding him were completely puzzled. They could not know, of course, that Socola had chosen as his secretary a man in the Department of State. This man he had involved in his conspiracy so completely and hopelessly from the first interview that there was no retreat. He had risked his own life on his judgment of character the day he made his first proposition. But his estimate had proven correct. The fellow blustered and then accepted the bribe and entered with enthusiasm into his service.

Through this clerk the wily director of the Federal Bureau of Information was compelled now to communicate with Miss Van Lew. Socola had secured his services in the nick of time. He had been an old friend of the Van Lew family before the war, their people were distantly related and no suspicion could attach to his visits to her house unless made at an unusual hour.

It was nearly a year from the day he began his watch before Captain Welford succeeded in connecting the stenographer in the Department of State with the woman on Church Hill.

He had been quietly studying "Crazy Bet" for months. From the first he had accused this woman of being a spy. The older men in the Department laughed. Miss Van Lew was the standard joke of the amateurs who entered the Service. The older men all knew that she was a harmless fool whose mind had been unbalanced by her love for negroes and her abolition ideas.

With characteristic stubbornness Dick refused to accept their decision and set about in his own way to watch her. She was in the habit now of making more and more frequent trips to Libby Prison, carrying flowers and delicacies to the Northern prisoners. Dick had observed the use of an old fashioned French platter with an extremely thick bottom. He called the attention of the guard to this platter.

The keen ears of the woman had heard it mentioned. The double bottom at that moment was harmless. The messages she had carried to the prisoners had all been taken from their hiding place and the platter returned to her through the bars.

She hurried home before the guard could make up his mind to examine the contrivance. The next day Dick was on the watch. The Captain whispered to the guard who halted "Crazy Bet" at the door.

"I\'ll have to examine that thing," he said sharply.

"Take it then!" she said with a foolish laugh.

She slipped the old shawl from around it and suddenly plumped the platter squarely into the guard\'s hands. The double bottom that day was filled with boiling water.

"Hell fire!" the guard yelled, dropping the platter with a crash.

He blew on his fingers and let her pick it up and pass on.

The woman had fooled the guard completely, but she had not been so successful with Dick. The trick was too smoothly done. No woman with an unbalanced mind would have been capable of it.

With extraordinary care the Captain followed her through the crowded streets and saw her pass Socola in front of the Custom House. No sign of recognition was made by either, but he saw the stenographer stoop and pick up something from the edge of the sidewalk.

He would have thought nothing of such an act had he not been following this woman on whom his suspicions had been fixed. He leaped at once to the truth.

Miss Van Lew had dropped a cypher message and Socola had taken it.

He watched her again the next day, and, suddenly turning the corner of an obscure street, saw Socola speak to her in low quick tones, raising his voice on his appearance to an idle conventional greeting.

He passed them without apparently noticing anything unusual and hurried to his office with his suspicions now a burning certainty. He had only to wait his opportunity to trap his quarry in the possession of a dispatch that would send him to the gallows.

His evidence was not yet sufficient to ask for his arrest. It was sufficient to convince Jennie Barton whose loyalty to the South was so intense she would not walk on the same side of the street with Miss Van Lew.

He rushed to the Barton house.

Jennie saw before he spoke that he bore a message of tragic import.

"What is it, Dick?" she asked under her breath. "Why do you look at me so?"

"Jennie," he began seriously, "you are sure that you love the South?"

"Don\'t ask me idiotic questions," she answered sternly; &............