An envelope sealed with sealing-wax, unless it has also a wrapping of twine or tape whose only knot is under the seal, can be opened without breaking the seal. Gholson had once told me this. Hold a thin, sharp knife-blade to the spout of a boiling tea-kettle; then press the blade\'s edge under the edge of the seal. Repeat this operation many times. The wax will yield but a hair\'s-breadth each time, but a hair\'s-breadth counts, and in a few minutes the seal will be lifted entire. A touch of glue or paste will fasten it down again, and a seal so tampered with need betray the fact only to an eye already suspicious.
As I say, I slept. The door between me and the hall had a lock, but no key; another door, letting from my room to the room in front of it, had no lock, but was bolted. I slept heavily and for an hour or more. Then I was aware of something being moved--slowly--slyly--by littles--under my pillow. The pillow was in a case of new unbleached cotton. When I first lay down, the cotton had so smelt of its newness that I thought it was enough, of itself, to keep me awake. Now this odor was veiled by another; a delicate perfume; a perfume I knew, and which brought again to me all the incidents of the night, and all their woe. I looked, and there, so close to the bedside that she could see my eyes as plainly as I saw hers, stood Coralie Rothvelt. In the door that opened into the hall were two young officers, staff swells, in the handsomest Federal blue. The moonlight lay in a broad flood between them and me. It silvered Miss Rothvelt from the crown of her hat to the floor, and brightened the earnest animation of her lovely face as she daintily tiptoed backward with one hand delicately poised in the air behind her, and the other still in the last pose of withdrawing from under the pillow--empty!
My problem was indeed simplified. The despatch had been stolen, opened, read, re-sealed and returned. All I now had to do was to lie here till daybreak and then get away if I could, deliver the despatch to Ned Ferry, and tell him--ah! what?--how much? Oh, my bemired soul, how much must I tell? My shame I might bear; I might wash it out in blood at the battle\'s front; but my perfidy! how much was it perfidy to withhold; how much was it perfidy to confess?
The heaviness of my soul, by reacting upon my frame and counterfeiting sleep better than I could have done it in cold blood, saved me, I fancy, from death or a northern prison. When I guessed my three visitors were gone I stirred, as in slumber, a trifle nearer the window, and for some minutes lay with my face half buried in the pillow. So lying, there stole to my ear a footfall. My finger felt the trigger, my lids lifted alertly, and as alertly reclosed. Outside the window one of the officers, rising by some slender foothold, had been looking in upon me, and in sinking down again and turning away had snapped a twig. He glanced back just as I opened my eyes, but once more my head was in shadow and the moonlight between us. When I peeped again he was moving away.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes dragged by. Counting them helped me to lie still. Then I caught another pregnant sound, a mumbling of male voices in the adjoining front room. I waited a bit, hearkening laboriously, and then ever so gradually I slid from the bed, put on everything except my boots, and moved by inches to the door between the two rooms. It was very thin; "a good sounding-board," thought I as I listened for life or death and hoped my ear was the only one against it.
The discussion warmed and I began to catch words and meanings. Oftenest they were old Lucius Oliver\'s, whose bad temper made him incautious. While his son and the other two jayhawkers obstinately pressed their scheme he kept saying, sourly, "That\'s--not--our--wa-ay!"
At length he lost all prudence. "Nn--o!--Nnno--o, sir! Not in this house you don\'t; and not on this place! Wait till he\'s off my land; I\'m not goin\' to have the infernal rebels a-turpentinin\' my house and a-burnin\' it over my head. What air you three skunks in such a sweat to git found out for, like a pack o\' daymn\' fools! I\'ve swone to heaven and hell to git even ef revenge can ever git me even, and this ain\'t the way to git even. It\'s not--our--wa-ay!"
His son\'s attitude exasperated him. "You know this ain\'t ever been our way; you\'d say so, yourself, ef you wa\'n\'t skin full o\' china-ball whiskey! What in all hell is the reason we can\'t do him as we\'ve always done the others?"
"Oh, shut your dirty face!" replied the son, while one of his cronies warned both against being overheard. But when this one added something further the old man snarled:
"What\'s that about the horse?--The horse might git away and be evidence ag\'inst us?--What?--Oh, now give the true reason; you want the horse, that\'s all! You two lickskillets air in this thing pyo\'ly for the stealin\'s. Me and my son ain\'t bushwhackers, we\'re gentlemen! At least I\'m one. Our game\'s revenge!"
Not because of this speech, but of a soft rubbing sound on the window-sill behind me, my heart turned cold. Yet there I saw a most welcome sight............