, in the confidence of the highest--to the highest. Don't turn from me. I am offering you no bribe, Clarence, only your deserts. Come with me. Leave these curs behind, and live the hero that you are!" He turned his blazing eyes upon her. "If you were a man"--he began passionately, then stopped. "No! I am only a woman and must fight in a woman's way," she interrupted bitterly. "Yes! I intreat, I implore, I wheedle, I flatter, I fawn, I lie! I creep where you stand upright, and pass through doors to which you would not bow. You wear your blazon of honor on your shoulder; I hide mine in a slave's gown. And yet I have worked and striven and suffered! Listen, Clarence," her voice again sank to its appealing minor,--"I know what you men call 'honor,' that which makes you cling to a merely spoken word, or an empty oath. Well, let that pass! I am weary; I have done my share of this work, you have done yours. Let us both fly; let us leave the fight to those who shall come after us, and let us go together to some distant land where the sounds of these guns or the blood of our brothers no longer cry out to us for vengeance! There are those living here--I have met them, Clarence," she went on hurriedly, "who think it wrong to lift up fratricidal hands in the struggle, yet who cannot live under the Northern yoke. They are," her voice hesitated, "good men and women--they are respected--they are"-- "Recreants and slaves, before whom you, spy as you are--stand a queen!" broke in Brant, passionately. He stopped and turned towards the window. After a pause he came back again towards the bed--paused again and then said in a lower voice--"Four years ago, Alice, in the patio of our house at Robles, I might have listened to this proposal, and--I trem