The four sprang from the piazza and ran into the street. Harry,
although he had originally felt no desire to seize Shepard, was carried
along by the impetus. It was the first man-hunt in which he had ever
shared, and soon he caught the thrill from the others. The colonel,
no doubt, was right. Shepard was a spy and should be taken. He ran
as fast as any of them.

Shepard, if Shepard it was, heard the swift footsteps behind him,
glanced back and then ran.

"After him!" cried Major St. Hilaire, his volatile blood leaping high.
"His flight shows that he's a spy!"

But the fugitive was a man of strength and resource. He ran swiftly
into a cross street, and when they followed him there he leaped over
the low fence of a lawn, surrounding a great house, darted into the
shrubbery, and the four, although they were joined by others, brought
by the alarm, sought for him in vain.

"After all, I'm not sorry he got away," said Colonel Talbot, as they
walked back to Madame Delaunay's. "There is no war, and hence, in a
military sense, there can be no spies. I doubt whether we should have
known what to do with him had we caught him, but I am certain that he
has complete maps of all our defenses."

Harry, with Arthur and many others whom he knew, started the next day
for Montgomery. Jefferson Davis had already been chosen President,
and Alexander H. Stephens Vice-President, and Davis was on his way
from his Mississippi home to the same town to be inaugurated. In the