midnight
And yet Colonel Egbert Crawford , visiting the city two hours afterwards , and dropping in at two or three favorite resorts of men who talked horse , war and politics , on his way to the house of his cousin , -- bore himself bravely under his weight of uniform , and more than once threw in a pardonable boast over the services he was rendering the country , the sacrifices he was making , and the rapid growth and efficiency of the Two Hundredth Regiment . `` All brass is not fashioned and moulded in foundries , where men do swelter like to those standing in the flames of the fiery furnace , '' says an old writer , Arnold of Thorndean , `` but much of it doth become shaped in the human countenance . '' The question may have been asked , before this point in narration , by some of those who have been induced to follow the progress of this story -- What has become of some of the prominent characters first introduced , Dexter Ralston , the stalwart Virginian , and the girl Kate , who seemed at that time to be so closely identified with the movements of the `` red woman . '' The curiosity is a natural one , whether there really was such a secret of disloyalty , hidden away either in the house on Prince Street or that on East 5 -- , as justified Tom Leslie and Walter Harding in their long ride at midnight and their subsequent interview with Police-Superintendent Kennedy . To some extent this question can be answered , at this point ; but there will still remain some mysteries unexplainable until the end of this narration , and even some impossible to elucidate until the close of the war and the re-union of Northern and Southern society on the old basis , makes it possible to reveal all that may have occurred during the conflict . There are two modes in which romances can be written . The first , and perhaps the more popular , is that in which no bound whatever is set by either probability or conscience -- in which the narrator assumes to know what never could be known except to an omniscient being , and to describe such circumstances as never could have occurred in any world under the same general regulations as our own .