Acredale was not the sleepy, sylvan scene we first saw it, when Mrs. Sprague and Merry drove through the wide main street from the station, four months after they had quitted it in search of their soldier boys.  The stately elms still arched the highway to Warchester, but here and there rough gaps were seen in the trim hedge-rows.  Staring new edifices jutted through these breaks upon the grassy walks, and building material lay heaped in confusion all along the graveled walks.  Merry railed at these evidences of commercial invasion, wondering who had come to the village to transform it into city hideousness.  Mrs. Sprague did not give much heed to her companion’s speculations.  Her mind was far away on the James, wondering where her boy was.  It was very hard to settle down to the commonplaces of home life; but, even in all her distraction, Mrs. Sprague saw that a change had come upon the people as well as the place.  With the war and its desolating sights fresh in her memory, she saw, with sorrow and aversion, that social life was gayer than it had ever been, that the rush for wealth had become a fever, and that the simple ways and homely joys of the past were now remitted to the very elderly.  The story of Dick’s mad pursuit of Jack and the Caribees, after the disaster at Bull Run, was soon known in every home in the county.  Friends came from far and near to hear the exciting adventure; and the younger boys, who had been the lad’s classmates in the academy, at once made up a company of youngsters, adorned by the name of the “Perley Rangers,” to be in readiness for the hero’s command when he should return.

The feud between the adherents of the houses of Sprague and Boone had become acrimoniously embittered by the point of view from which each side saw the conduct of Jack.  Among the Boone feudatories he was set down as a traitor, a spy, a murderer.  The first malignant rumors that reached the village after the battle were still maintained stoutly by the Boone lictors.  Jack had ingloriously shirked his part in the battle with the Caribees; he had skulked in the bushes until the issue was decided, and then had followed the sympathies of his secession family; he had gone to the Atterburys, well known for their hatred to the North.  It was to prove his sincerity in the Southern cause that he had wormed himself into the confidence of Wesley Boone’s comrades, and in order that he might be chief agent in the frustration of the plan of escape.

He had won high regard in the Confederacy by saving Davis from capture.  He had, with his own hand, shot Wesley Boone when the plan of capture was on the verge of success.  Could anything be clearer than his odious treason?  Hadn’t he, of all the unfortunates of the battle, found favor and luxurious quarters in Richmond?  Hadn’t he cunningly cajoled the Boones into the visit to the rebel household, in order to wrest the secrets of the Union rescue from them?  It was in vain that the Perleys and others set forth the real case.