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The Cavalier

by George Washington Cable · English · Gutenberg #9839 · 473,734 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Cavalier

Author: George Washington Cable


        
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9839]
                Most recently updated: December 26, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9839

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAVALIER ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders









[Illustration: "Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!"]

THE CAVALIER

BY

GEORGE W. CABLE

1901




CONTENTS

CHAPTER
     I.    She Wanted to Laugh
    II.    Lieutenant Ferry
   III.    She
    IV.    Three Days' Rations
     V.    Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty
    VI.    A Handsome Stranger
   VII.    A Plague on Names!
  VIII.    Another Curtained Wagon
    IX.    The Dandy's Task
     X.    The Soldier's Hour
    XI.    Captain Jewett
    XII.    In the General's Tent
   XIII.    Good-Bye, Dick
    XIV.    Coralie Rothvelt
     XV.    Venus and Mars
    XVI.    An Aching Conscience
   XVII.    Two Under One Hat-Brim
  XVIII.    The Jayhawkers
    XIX.    Asleep in the Death-Trap
     XX.    Charlotte Oliver
    XXI.    The Fight on the Bridge
   XXII.    We Speed a Parting Guest
  XXIII.    Ferry Talks of Charlotte
   XXIV.    A Million and a Half
    XXV.    A Quiet Ride
   XXVI.    A Salute Across the Dead-Line
  XXVII.    Some Fall, Some Plunge
 XXVIII.    Oldest Game on Earth
   XXIX.    A Gnawing in the Dark
    XXX.    Dignity and Impudence
   XXXI.    The Red Star's Warning
  XXXII.    A Martyr's Wrath
 XXXIII.    Torch and Sword
  XXXIV.    The Charge in the Lane
   XXXV.    Fallen Heroes
  XXXVI.    "Says Quinn, S'e"
 XXXVII.    A Horse! A Horse!
XXXVIII.    "Bear a Message and a Token"
  XXXIX.    Charlotte Sings
     XL.    Harry Laughs
    XLI.    Unimportant and Confidential
   XLII.    "Can I Get There by Candle-Light?"
  XLIII.    "Yes, and Back Again"
   XLIV.    Charlotte in the Tents of the Foe
    XLV.    Stay Till To-Morrow
   XLVI.    The Dance at Gilmer's
  XLVII.    He's Dead--Is She Alive?
 XLVIII.    In the Hollow of His Right Arm
   XLIX.    A Cruel Book and a Fool or Two
      L.    The Bottom of the Whirlwind
     LI.    Under the Room Where Charlotte Lay
    LII.    Same Book and Light-Head Harry
   LIII.    "Captain, They've Got Us"
    LIV.    The Fight in the Doorway
     LV.    Rescue and Retreat
    LVI.    Hôtel des Invalides
   LVII.    A Yes and a No
  LVIII.    The Upper Fork of the Road
    LIX.    Under Charlotte's Window
     LX.    Tidings
    LXI.    While Destiny Moved On
   LXII.    A Tarrying Bridegroom
  LXIII.    Something I Have Never Told Till Now
   LXIV.    By Twos. March


ILLUSTRATIONS

"Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!"

"I surrender," he said, with amiable ease

"Well, you _air_ in a hurry!"

With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the fence like a deer

Ferry saluted with his straight blade

"Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very arch

Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of his
followers

Springing to the ground between our two candles, she bent over the open
page



I


SHE WANTED TO LAUGH

Our camp was in the heart of Copiah County, Mississippi, a mile or so
west of Gallatin and about six miles east of that once robber-haunted
road, the Natchez Trace. Austin's brigade, we were, a detached body of
mixed Louisiana and Mississippi cavalry, getting our breath again after
two weeks' hard fighting of Grant. Grierson's raid had lately gone the
entire length of the State, and we had had a hard, vain chase after
him, also.

Joe Johnston's shattered army was at Jackson, about forty-five miles to
northward; beleaguered Vicksburg was in the Northwest, a trifle farther
away; Natchez lay southwest, still more distant; and nearly twice as far
in the south was our heartbroken New Orleans. We had paused to
recuperate our animals, and there was a rumor that we were to get new
clothing. Anyhow we had rags with honor, and a right to make as much
noise as we chose.

It was being made. The air was in anguish with the din of tree-felling
and log-chopping, of stamping, neighing, braying, whooping, guffawing,
and singing--all the daybreak charivari beloved of a camp of
Confederate "critter companies." In the midst of it a chum and I sat
close together on a log near the mess fire, and as the other boys of the
mess lifted their heads from their saddle-tree pillows, from two of them
at once came a slow, disdainful acceptance of the final lot of the
wicked, made unsolicited on discovering that this chum and I had sat
there talking together all night. I had the day before been wheedled
into letting myself be detailed to be a quartermaster's clerk, and this
comrade and I were never to snuggle under the one blanket again. The
thought forbade slumber.

"If I go to sleep," I said,--"you know how I dream. I shall have one of
those dreams of mine to carry around in my memory for a year, like a
bullet in my back." So there the dear fellow had sat all night to give
me my hourly powders of reassurance that I could be a quartermaster's
clerk without shame.

"Certainly you can afford to fill a position which the leader of Ferry's
scouts has filled just before you."

But my unsoldierly motive for going to headquarters kept my misgivings
alive. I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare
was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and
Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and "Les
Misérables"--Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation--lent round; and where
men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs. Ned
Ferry had been Major Harper's clerk, but had managed in several
instances to display such fitness to lead that General Austin had lately
named him for promotion, and the quartermaster's clerk was now
Lieutenant Ferry, raised from the ranks for gallantry, and followed
ubiquitously by a chosen sixty or so drawn from the whole brigade. Could
the like occur again? And could it occur to a chap who could not
comprehend how it had ever occurred at all?

By and by we breakfasted. After which, my precious horse not having
finished his corn, I spread my blanket and let myself doze, but was soon
awakened by the shouts of my companions laughing at me for laughing so
piteously in my sleep.

"Would I not tell my dream, as nice young men in the Bible always did?"

"No, I would not!" But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had
told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose
tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather
some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his
example, but having got in, could only stay there. The boys furnished
the moral; it was not complimentary.

"Well, good-bye, fellows."

"Good-bye, Smith." I have never liked my last name, but at that moment
the boys contrived to put a kindness of tone into it which made it
almost pleasing. "Good-bye, Smith, remember your failings."

Remember! I had yet to make their discovery. But I was on the eve of
making it.

As I passed up the road through the midst of our nearly tentless camp I
met a leather-curtained spring-wagon to which were attached a pair of
little striped-legged mules driven by an old negro. Behind him, among
the curtains, sat a lady and her black maid. The mistress was of
strikingly graceful figure, in a most tasteful gown and broad Leghorn
hat. Her small hands were daintily gloved. The mules stopped, and
through her light veil I saw that she was handsome. Her eyes, full of
thought, were blue, and yet were so spirited they might as well have
been black, as her hair was. She, or fate for her, had crowded thirty
years of life into twenty-five of time.

For many a day I had not seen such charms of feminine attire, and yet I
was not charmed. Every item of her fragrant drapery was from the world's
open market, hence flagrantly un-Confederate, unpatriotic,
reprehensible. Otherwise it might not have seemed to me that her thin
nostrils had got their passionateness lately.

"Are you not a New Orleans boy?" she asked as I lifted my képi and drew
rein.

Boy! humph! I frowned, made myself long, and confessed I had the honor
to be from that city. Whereupon she let her long-lashed eyes take on as
ravishing a covetousness as though I had been a pretty baby.

"I knew it!" she said delightedly. "But tell me, honor bright,"--she
sparkled with amusement--"you're not regularly enlisted, are you?"

I clenched my teeth. "I am nineteen, madam."

Her eyes danced, her brows arched. "Haven't you got"--she hid her smile
with an embroidered handkerchief--"haven't you got your second figure
upside down?" I glared, but with one look of hurt sisterliness she
melted me. Then, pensive just long enough to say, "I was nineteen once,"
she shot me a sidelong glance so roguish that I was dumb with
indignation and tried to find my mustache, forgetting I had shaved it
off to stimulate it. She smiled in sweet propitiation and then came
gravely to business. "Have you come from beyond the pickets?"

"No, madam."

"Have you met any officer riding toward them?"

I had not. Her driver gathered the reins and I drew back.

"Good-bye, New Orleans soldier-boy," she said, gaily, and as I raised my
cap she gave herself a fetching air and added, "I'll wager I know
your name."

"Madam,"--my cap went higher, my head lower--"I never bet."

I could not divine what there was ridiculous about me, except a certain
damage to my dress, of which she could not possibly be aware as long as
I remained in the saddle. Yet plainly she wanted to laugh. I made it as
plain that I did not.

"Good-day, sir," she said, with forced severity, but as I smiled
apologetically and moved my rein, she broke down under new temptation
and, as the wagon moved away, twittered after me unseen,--"Good-bye, Mr.
Smith."



II


LIEUTENANT FERRY

I passed on, flattered but scandalized, wasting no guesses on how she
knew me--if she really knew me at all--but taking my revenge by
moralizing on her, to myself, as a sign of the times, until brigade
headquarters were in full view, a few rods off the road; four or five
good, white wall-tents in a green bit of old field backed by a thicket
of young pines.

Midway of this space I met Scott Gholson, clerk to the Adjutant-general.
It was Gholson who had first spoken of me for this detail. He was an
East Louisianian, of Tangipahoa; aged maybe twenty-six, but in effect
older, having from birth eaten only ill-cooked food, and looking it;
profoundly unconscious of any shortcoming in his education, which he had
got from a small church-pecked college of the pelican sort that feed it
raw from their own bosoms. One of his smallest deficiencies was that he
had never seen as much art as there is in one handsome dinner-plate.
Now, here he was, riding forth to learn for himself, privately, he said,
why I did not appear. Yet he halted without turning, and seemed to wish
he had not found me.

"Did you"--he began, and stopped; "did you notice a"--he stopped again.

"What, a leather-curtained spring-wagon?"

"No-o!" he said, as if nobody but a gaping idiot would expect anybody
not a gaping idiot to notice a leather-curtained spring-wagon. "No-o!
did you notice the brown horse that man was riding who just now passed
you as you turned off the road?"

No, I barely remembered the rider had generously moved aside to let me
go by. In pure sourness at the poverty of my dress and the perfection of
his, I had avoided looking at him higher than his hundred-dollar boots.
My feet were in uncolored cowhide, except the toes.

"He noticed you," said Gholson; "he looked back at you and your bay.
Wouldn't you like to turn back and see his horse?"

"Why, hardly, if I'm behindhand now. Is it so fine as that?"

"Well, no. It's the horse he captured the time he got the Yankee who had
him prisoner."

"Who?" I cried. "What! You don't mean to say--was that Lieutenant
Ferry?"

"Yes, so called. He wa'n't a lieutenant then, he was a clerk, like you
or me."

"Oh, I wish I had noticed him!"

"We can see him yet if you--"

"Do you want to see him?" I gathered my horse.

"Me!--No, sir. But you spoke as if--"

I shook my head and we moved toward the tents. This was worse than the
dream; the rat had not seen the cockerel, but the cockerel had observed
the rat--dropping into the barrel: the cockerel, yes, and not the
cockerel alone, for I saw that Gholson was associating him with her of
the curtained wagon. By now they were side and side. I asked if Ferry
came often to headquarters. "Yes, quite as often as he's any business
to." "Ah, ha!" thought I, and presently said I had heard he was a
great favorite.

"Well,--yes,--he--he is,--with some."

"Don't you like him?"

"Who, me? Oh!--I--I admire Ned Ferry--for a number of things. He's more
foolhardy than brave; he's confessed as much to me. Women call him
handsome. He sings; beautifully, I suppose; I can't sing a note; and
wouldn't if I could. Still, if he only wouldn't sing drinking-songs
--but, Smith, I think that to sing drinking-songs--and all
the more to sing them as well as some folks think he does--is to
advocate drinking, and to advocate drinking is next door to excusing
drunkenness!"

"Then Ned Ferry doesn't drink?"

"Indeed he does! I don't like to say it, and I don't say he drinks 'too
much', as they call it; but, Smith, he drinks with men who do! Oh, _I_
admire him; only I do wish--"

"Wish what?"

"Oh, I--I wish he wouldn't play cards. Smith, I've seen him play cards
with the shells bursting over us!"

For my part I privately wished this saint wouldn't rub my uninteresting
surname into me every time he spoke. As we dismounted near the tents I
leaned against my saddle and asked further concerning the object of his
loving anxiety. Was Ned Ferry generous, pleasant, frank?

"Why, in outward manner, yes; but, Smith, he was raised to be a Catholic
priest. I could a heap-sight easier trust him if he'd sometimes show
distrust, himself. If he ever does I've never seen it. And yet--Oh,
we're the best of friends, and I'm speaking now only as a friend and
_toe_ a friend. Oh, if it wa'n't for just one thing, I could admit what
Major Harper said of him not ten minutes ago to me; that you never
finish talking to Ned Ferry without feeling a little brighter, happier
and cleaner than when you began; whereas talking with some men it's just
the reverse."

I looked carefully at my companion and asked him if the Major had said
_all_ of that. He had, and Gholson's hide had turned it without taking a
scratch. "That's fine!--as to Ferry," I said.

"Oh, yes,--it would be--if it was only _iso_. Trouble is, you keep
remembering he's such a stumbling-block to any real spiritual inquirer.
Yes, and to himself; for, you know, spiritually there's so much less
hope for the moralist than what there is for the up-and-down reprobate!
You know that,--_Smith_."

My silence implied that I knew it, though I did not feel any brighter,
happier or cleaner.

"Smith, Ned Ferry is not only a Romanist, he's a romanticist. We--you
and me--are religionists. _Our_ brightness and happiness air the
brightness and happiness of faith; our cleanness is the cleanness of
religious scruples. Worst of it with Ned is he's satisfied with the
difference, I'm afraid! That's what makes him so pleasant to fellows who
don't care a sou marquee about religion."

I said one might respect religion even if he did not--

"Oh, he's always _polite_ to it; but he's--he's read Voltaire! Oh, yes,
Voltaire, George Sand, all those men. He questions the Bible, Smith. Not
to me, though; hah, he knows better! Smith, I can discuss religion and
not get mad, with any one who don't question the Bible; but if he does
that, I just tell you, I wouldn't risk my soul in such a discussion!
Would you?"

I could hardly say, and we moved pensively toward Major Harper's tent.
Evidently the main poison was still in Gholson's stomach, and when I
glanced at him he asked, "What d'you reckon brought Ned Ferry here just
at this time?"

I made no reply. He looked momentous, leaned to me sidewise with a hand
horizontally across his mouth, and whispered a name. It was new to me.
"Charlie Toliver?" I murmured, for we were at the tent door.

"The war-correspondent," whispered Gholson; "don't you know?" But the
flap of the tent lifted and I could not reply.



III


SHE

Major Harper was the most capable officer on the brigade staff. I had
never met a man of such force and dignity who was so modestly affable.
His new clerk dined with him that first day, at noon in his tent, alone.
Hot biscuits! with butter! and rock salt. Fried bacon also--somewhat
vivacious, but still bacon. When the tent began to fill with the smoke
of his meerschaum pipe, and while his black boy cleared the table for us
to resume writing, we talked of books. Here was joy! I vaunted my love
for history, biography, the poets, but spoke lightly of fiction.

The smoker twinkled. "You're different from Ned Ferry," he said.

"Has he a taste for fiction?" I asked, with a depreciative smirk.

"Yes, a beautiful story is a thing Ned Ferry loves with a positive
passion."

"I suppose we might call him a romanticist," said I, "might we not?"

The patient gentleman smiled again as he said, "Oh--Gholson can attend
to that."

I took up my pen, and until twilight we spoke thereafter only of
abstracts and requisitions. But then he led me on to tell him all about
myself. I explained why my first name was Richard and my second name
Thorndyke, and dwelt especially on the enormous differences between the
Smiths from whom we were and those from whom we were not descended.

And then he told me about himself. He was a graduate of West Point, the
only one on the brigade staff; was a widower, with a widowed brother, a
maiden sister, two daughters, and a niece, all of one New Orleans
household. The brothers and sister were Charlestonians, but the two men
had married in New Orleans, twin sisters in a noted Creole family. The
brother's daughter, I was told, spoke French better than English; the
Major's elder daughter spoke English as perfectly as her father; and the
younger, left in her aunt's care from infancy, knew no French at all. I
wondered if they were as handsome as their white-haired father, and
when I asked their names I learned that the niece, Cécile, was a year
the junior of Estelle and as much the senior of Camille; but of the days
of the years of the pilgrimage of any of the three "children" he gave me
no slightest hint; they might be seven years older, or seven years
younger, than his new clerk.

To show him how little I cared for any girl's age whose father preferred
not to mention it, I reverted to his sister and brother. She was in New
Orleans, he said, with her nieces, but might at any moment be sent into
the Confederacy, being one of General Butler's "registered enemies." The
brother was--

"Out here somewhere. No, not in the army exactly; no, nor in the navy,
but--I expect him in camp to-night. If he comes you'll have to work when
you ought to be asleep. No, he is not in the secret service, only in _a_
secret service; running hospital supplies through the enemy's lines
into ours."

I was thrilled. _I_ was taken into the staff's confidence! Me, _Smith!_
That _Major Harper_ would tell me part of a matter to conceal the rest
of it did not enter my dreams, good as I was at dreaming. The flattery
went to my brain, and presently, without the faintest preamble, I asked
if there was any war-correspondent at headquarters just now. There came
a hostile flash in his eyes, but instantly it passed, and with all his
happy mildness he replied, "No, nor any room for one."

Just then entered an ordnance-sergeant, so smart in his rags that the
Major's affability seemed hardly a condescension. He asked me to supper
with his mess--"of staff _attatchays_," he said, winking one eye and
hitching his mouth; at which the Major laughed with kind disapprobation,
and the jocose sergeant explained as we went that that was only one of
Scott Gholson's mispronunciations the boys were trying to tease him
out of.

I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper,
stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head
(save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only Gholson
was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious jests got
off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind. Never had I
been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing "All quiet along
the Potomac to-night," and was courteously praised when I had done so.
But there is where affliction overtook me; they debated its authorship.
One said a certain newspaper correspondent, naming him, had proved it to
be the work--I forget of whom. But I shall never forget what followed.
Two or three challenged the literary preeminence of that correspondent,
and from as many directions I was asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying
back against a pile of saddles with my head in my hands, sodden with
self-assurance, I replied, magnanimously, "Oh, I don't set up for a
critic, but--well--would you call him a better man than
Charlie Toliver?"

"Who--o?" It was not one who asked; the whos came like shrapnel; and
when, not knowing what else to do, I smiled as one dying, there went up
a wail of mirth that froze my blood and then heated it to a fever. The
company howled. They rolled over one another, crying, "Charlie
Toliver!--Charlie Toliver!--Oh, Lord, where's Scott Gholson!--Charlie
Toliver!"--and leaped up and huddled down and moaned and rolled and
rose and looked for me.

But, after all, fortune was merciful, and I was gone; the Major had
summoned me--his brother had come. I went circuitously and alone. As I
started, some fellow writhing on the grass cried, "Charlie Tol--oh, this
is better than a tcharade!" and a flash of divination enlightened me.
While I went I burned with shame, rage and nervous exhaustion; the name
Scott Gholson had gasped in my ear was the name of her in the curtained
wagon, and I cursed the day in which I had heard of Charlotte Oliver.



IV


THREE DAYS' RATIONS

In the vocabulary of a prig, but in the wrath of a fishwoman, I
execrated Scott Gholson; his jealousies, his disclosures, his religion,
his mispronunciations; and Ned Ferry--that cockerel! Here was I in the
barrel, and able only to squeal in irate terror at whoever looked down
upon me. I could have crawled under a log and died. At the door of the
Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve
when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's
nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling
good joke Smith had just got off on Gholson!

"We shall have to get Ned Ferry back here," the Major was saying as I
entered, "to make you boys let Scott Gholson alone."

The young man laughed and turned to go. "Why doesn't Ned Ferry make
_her_ let Gholson alone? He can do it; he's got her round his finger as
tight as she's got Gholson round hers."

"Harry," replied the Major, from his table full of documents, "don't you
know that any man who's got a woman wrapped round his finger has also
got her wrapped round his throat?"

The aide-de-camp laughed like a rustic and vanished. "Smith," said the
Major, "your eyes are--"

"I've been awake for forty-eight hours, Major. But--oh, I'm not
sleepy."

"Well, go get some sleep.--No, go at once; you'll be called when
needed."

But I was not needed; while I slept, who should come back and do my work
in my stead but Ned Ferry. When I awoke it was with a bound of alarm to
see clear day. The command was breaking camp. I rushed out of the tent
with canteen, soap and comb, and ran into the arms of the mess-cook. We
were alone. "Oh, yass, seh," he laughed as he poured the water into my
hands, "th'ee days' rairtion. Seh? Lawd! dey done drawed and cook' befo'
de fus' streak o' light. But you all right; here yo' habbersack, full
up. Oh, I done fed yo' hoss. Here yo' jacket an' cap; and here yo'
saddle an' bridle--Oh, you welcome; I dess tryin' to git shet of 'em
so's I kin strak de tent."

As I mounted, our wagonmaster rode by me, busy as a skipper in a storm.
"Oh, here!" he cried, wheeled, and reaching something to me added,
"that's your pass. Major Harper wants you as quick as you can show up.
He says never mind the column, ride straight after him. Keep this road
to Hazlehurst and then go down the main Brookhaven road till you
overtake him. He's by himself--nearly."

As the rider wheeled away I blurted out with anxious loudness in the
general hubbub, "Isn't his brother with him?"

He flashed back a glare of rebuke and then bellowed to heaven and earth,
"Oh, the devil and Tom Walker! I don't keep run of sutlers and
citizens!" He took a circuit, standing in his stirrups and calling
orders to his teamsters, and as he neared me again he said very gently,
"Good Lord! my boy, don't you know better than to shoot your mouth off
like that? You'll find nobody with the Major but Ned Ferry, and I don't
say you'll find him."

I galloped to the road. Away down through the woods it was full of
horsemen falling into line. With the nearest colonel was Lieutenant
Helm, the aide-de-camp. I turned away from them toward Hazlehurst, but
looked back distrustfully. Yes, sure enough, the whole command was
facing into column the other way! My horse and I whirled and stood
staring and swelling with indignation--we ordered south, and the brigade
heading westward! He fretted, tramped, neighed, and began hurriedly to
paw through the globe to head them off on the other side. He even
threatened to rear; but when I showed him I was ashamed of that, he bore
me proudly, and I sat him as proudly as he bore me, for he made me more
than half my friends. And now as the aide-de-camp wheeled about from the
receding column and came our way saluting cordially, we turned and
trotted beside him jauntily. Our first talk was of saddles, but very
soon I asked where the General was.

"Out on the Natchez Trace waiting for the command. I'm carrying orders
to Fisher's battery, down here by the cross-roads. Haven't you seen the
General this morning? What! haven't seen him in his new uniform? Whoop!
he's a blaze of glory! Look here, Smith, I believe you know who brought
it to him!"

"How on earth should I know?"

"Oh, how innocent you always are! Look here! just tell me this; was it
the Major's brother brought it, or was it Ned Ferry?"

"Suppose it wasn't either."

"I knew it! I knew it was her! Ah, you rogue, you know it was her!"

"Well, that _might_ depend on who 'her' is." We had reached the
cross-roads and he was turning south.

"Look!" he said, and gave the glance and smile of the lady in the
curtained wagon so perfectly that I cackled like a small boy. "Oh, you
know that, do you? I dare you to say she didn't bring it!"

"I give you my word I don't know!" called I as the distance grew between
us. "And I give you my word I don't care!" he crowed back as we
galloped apart. His speech was two or three words longer, but they are
inappropriate at the end of a chapter, and I expurgate.



V


EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN, TWENTY

On entering Hazlehurst I observed all about the railway-station a
surprising amount of quartermaster's stores. A large part were cases of
boots and shoes. Laden with such goods, a train of shabby box-cars stood
facing south, its beggarly wood-burner engine sniffing and weeping,
while the cork-legged conductor helped all hands wood up. Though homely,
the picture was a stirring one. Up through the blue summer morning came
the sun, bringing to mind the words of the dying Mirabeau, "If that is
not God, at least it's his first cousin."

Even in the character of the goods there was eloquence, and not a
drollery in the scene, not even an ugliness, but was touched, was rife,
with the woe of a war whose burning walls were falling in on us. And
outward, too, upon others; a few up-ended cottonbales leaned against
each other ragged and idle, while women and babes starved for want of
them in far-away Lancaster.

One of the cars furthest from the engine had no freight proper, only a
number of trunks; and these were nearly hidden by the widely crinolined
flounces of an elegant elderly lady who sat on the middle one. And now
she, too, was hidden, and the wide doorway in the side of the car more
than filled, by the fashionable gowns of three girls. On the ground
below there stood a lieutenant in a homemade gray uniform, and at his
back half a dozen big, slouching, barefoot boys squirted tobacco juice
and gazed at the ladies. The officer scanned me, spoke to the ladies,
scanned me again, and threw up an arm. "Ho--o! Come here! Hullo! Come
here--if you please."

If he had not said please he should have ho'd and hullo'd in vain, but
at that word I turned. Before I had covered half the distance I read New
Orleans! my dear, dear old New Orleans! in every line of those ladies'
draperies, and at twenty-five yards I saw one noble family likeness in
all four of their sweet faces. Oh, but those three maidens were fair!
and I could name each by her name at a glance: Camille, Cécile, Estelle;
eighteen, nineteen, twenty!

There was a hush of attention among them as the lieutenant and I
saluted. His left hand was gone at the wrist and the sleeve pinned back
on itself. He asked my name; I told him. In the car there was a stir of
deepening interest. I inquired if he was the post-quartermaster here.
He was.

"Ain't you Major Harper's quartermaster-sergeant?" he asked.

"I am his clerk." In the car a flash of joy and then great decorum.

As he handed me a writing he glowed kindly. It proved to be from Major
Harper; a requisition upon this officer for shoes and clothing; not for
a brigade, regiment or company, but for me alone, from hat to shoes. I
tendered it back silently, and saw that he knew its purport already from
the Major, and that the ladies knew it from him. The good fellow looked
quite happy a moment, but then reddened as they joyfully crowded the
car's doorway to see me fitted!

"We can select out sev'l pair--" he began, but heard a puerile titter
and lost his nerve. "Now, you boys that ain't got any business here,
jest clair out!--Go! I tell you, aw I'll--" The boys loitered off toward
the engine. "We can select out sev'l si-izes," he drawled, uncovering a
box, "and fit you ove' in my office. You ain't so pow'ful long nor so
pow'ful slim, but these-yeh gov'ment contrac's they seldom ev' allow
fo' anybody so slim in the waist bein' so long in the, eh,--so, eh,--so
long f'om thah down. But yet still, if you'll jest light off yo' hoss
and come and look into this-yeh box--"

Hmm! yes! I wouldn't have got off my horse and leaned over that box to
save the Confederacy. "I thank you, Lieutenant, but I can't stop. If
you'll hand me up a jacket and pair of shoes I'll sign for them and go.
I don't want a hat, but I reckon I'd as well include shoes, although
really,--" I glanced down brazenly at the stirrup-leathers that so
snugly hid my naked toes.

As the quartermaster lifted out a pair of brogans as broad as they were
long, there came a cry of protestation from the freight-car group, that
brought the entire herd of rustics from the woodpile and the locomotive.
Miss Harper rose behind her nieces, tall, slender, dark, with keen
black eyes as kind as they were penetrating. "My boy!" she cried, "you
cannot wear those things!"

Camille, the youngest, whispered to her, whereupon she beckoned.
"Oh!--oh, do come here!--Mr. Smith, I am the sister of Major Harper.
You're from New Orleans? Does your mother live in Apollo Street?"

"Yes, madam, between Melpomene and Terpsichore."

"Richard Thorndyke Smith! My dear boy," she cried, while the nieces
gasped at each other with gestures and looks all the way between
Terpsichore and Melpomene, and then the four cried in chorus, "We know
your mother!"

"We've got a letter for you from her!" exclaimed Camille.

"And a suit of unie-fawm!" called Cécile, with her Creole accent.

"We smuggled it through!" chanted the trio, ready to weep for virtuous
joy. And then they clasped arms like the graces, about their aunt, and
let her speak.

"We all helped your mother make your uniform," she said. "In the short
time we've known her we've learned to love her dearly." With military
brevity she told how they had unexpectedly got a pass and were just out
of New Orleans--"poor New Orleans!" put in Estelle, the eldest, the
pensive one; that they had come up from Pontchatoula yesterday and last
night, and had thrown themselves on beds in the "hotel" yonder without
venturing to disrobe, and so had let her brother pass within a few
steps of them while they slept! "Telegraph? My dear boy, we came but ten
miles an hour, but we outran our despatch!" Now they had telegraphed
again, to Brookhaven, and thanks to the post-quartermaster, were going
down there at once on this train. While this was being told something
else was going on. The youngest niece, Camille, had put herself entirely
out of sight. Now she reappeared with very rosy cheeks, saying, "Here's
the letter."

My thanks were few and awkward, for there still hung to the missive a
basting thread, and it was as warm as a nestling bird. I bent
low--everybody was emotional in those days--kissed the fragrant thing,
thrust it into my bosom, and blushed worse than Camille.

"Poor boy!" said the aunt. "It's the first line you've had for months.
Your sweet mother wrote, but her letters were all intercepted, and the
last time she was warned that next time she'd be dealt with according to
military usage! I'm glad we could give you this one at once. We can't
give you the uniform, for we--why, girls, what--why, what nonsense!"

Maybe I did not say vindictive things inside me just then! The three
nieces had turned open-mouthed upon one another and sunk down upon their
luggage with averted faces.

"I say we can't give it to you now," Miss Harper persisted, with a
motherly smile; "we're wearing it ourselves. We've had no time to take
it off. I couldn't get the boots off me last night. And even if you had
the boots, the other things--"

"Aunt Martha!" moaned some one. "Well, in short," said the aunt,
twinkling like her brother, "we can't deliver the goods, and--" She
started as though some one had slapped her between the shoulder-blades.
It was the engine caused it, whistling in the old, lawless way, putting
a whoop, a howl, a scream and a wail into one. The young ladies quailed,
the train jerked like several collisions, the bell began tardily to
clang, and my steed whirled, cleared a packing case, whirled again, and
stood facing the train, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flapping, not
half so much frightened as insulted. The post-quartermaster waved to the
ladies and they to us. For a last touch I lifted my cap high and backed
my horse on drooping haunches--you've seen Buffalo Bill do it--and
then, with a leap like a cricket's, and to a clapping of maidens' hands
that made me whooping drunk, we stretched away, my horse and I, on a
long smooth gallop, for Brookhaven.



VI


A HANDSOME STRANGER

Certainly no cricket ever dropped blither music from his legs than did
my beautiful horse that glorious morning as we clattered in perfect
rhythm on the hard clean road of the wide pine forest. Ah! the forest is
not there now; the lumbermen--

For an hour or so the world seemed to have taken me for its center as
smoothly as a sleeping top. Only after a good seven miles did my
meditations begin to reveal any bitter in the sweet; but it was in
recalling for the twentieth time the last sight of Camille, that I
heard myself say, I know not whether softly or loudly,

"Oh, hang the uniform!"

The morning was almost sultry. As I halted in the clear ripples of a
gravelly "branch" to let my horse drink, I heard no great way off the
Harpers' train shrieking at cattle on the track, and looking up I
noticed just behind me an unfrequented by-road carefully masked with
brush, according to a new habit of the "citizens". The next moment my
horse threw up his head to listen. Then I heard hoofs and voices, and
presently there came trotting through the oak bushes and around the mask
of brush two horsemen unusually well mounted, clad and armed. Their very
dark gray uniforms were so trim and so nearly blue that my heart came
into my throat; but then I noticed they carried neither carbines nor
sabres, but repeaters only, a brace to each. They splashed lightly to
either side of me, and the three horses drank together.

"Good-morning," we said. One of the men was a sergeant. He scanned my
animal, and then me, with a dawning smile. "That's a fightin'-cock of a
horse you've got, sonny."

"Yes, bub," I replied. The two men laughed so explosively that my horse
lifted his head austerely.

"Jim," said the younger, "I don't believe all the conscripts we've
caught these three days are worth the powder they've cost!"

"No," replied Sergeant Jim, "I doubt if the most of 'em are." I turned
to him and drew down my under eyelid. "Will you kindly tell me, sir, if
you see any unnatural discoloration in there?"

He smiled. "No, but I can put some there if you want it."

"Thank you, I couldn't let you take so much trouble--or risk."

The three of us pattered out of the stream abreast. "No trouble,"
replied the sergeant, "it wouldn't take half a minute."

"No," I rejoined, "the first step would be the last."

The men laughed again. "You must a-been born with all your teeth," said
the private, as we quickened to a trot. "What makes you think we ain't
after conscripts?"

"Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for
good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up
we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all."

The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds. Then
the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh while
Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would be
horn-swoggled!

"I'm willing," I responded, and we all laughed. The younger horseman
asked my name. "Smith," I said, with dignity, and they laughed again,
their laugh growing louder when I would not smile.

"Well, say; maybe you'll tell us who this is we're about to meet up
with."

Through the shifting colonnades of pine, a hundred yards in front of
us, came two horsemen in the same blue-gray of the pair beside me.
"Whoever he is," I said, "that gray he's riding is his second best, or
it's borrowed," for his mount, though good, was no match for him.

"Borrowed!" echoed the sergeant. "If he doesn't own that mare no man
does."

"Nor no woman?" I asked, and again across the back of my neck my two
companions gazed at each other.

"By ganny!" exclaimed one, and--"You're a coon," murmured the other, as
the new-comers drew near. The younger of these also was a private.
Behind his elbow was swung a Maynard rifle. Both carried revolvers. The
elder wore a long straight sword whose weather-dimmed orange sash showed
at the front of a loose cut-away jacket. Under this garment was a shirt
of strong black silk, made from some lady's gown and daintily corded
with yellow. On the jacket's upturned collar were the two gilt bars of a
first lieutenant, but the face above them shone with a combined
intelligence and purity that drew my whole attention.

A familiar friendship lighted every countenance but mine as this second
pair turned and rode with us, the lieutenant in front on Sergeant Jim
Longley's right, and the two privates with me between them behind. For
some minutes the sergeant, in under-tone, made report to his young
superior. Then in a small clearing he turned abruptly into a
neighborhood road, and at his word my two companions pricked after him
westward. I closed up beside the lieutenant; he praised the weather, and
soon our talk was fluent though broken, as we moved sometimes at a trot
and often faster. In stolen moments I scanned him with the jealousy of
my youth. Five feet, ten; humph! I was five, nine and a thirty-second.
In weight he looked to be just what I always had in mind in those
prayers without words with which I mounted every pair of commissary
scales I came to. The play of his form as our smooth-gaited horses sped
through the flecking shades was worth watching for its stanch and supple
grace. Alike below the saddle and above it he was as light as a leaf and
as firm as a lance. I had long yearned to own a pair of shoulders not
too square for beauty nor too sloping for strength, and lo, here they
were, not mine, but his. No matter; the slender mustache he sported he
was welcome to, I had shaved off nearly as good a one; wished now I
hadn't. As once or twice he lifted his képi to the warm breeze I took
new despair from the soft locks of darkest chestnut that lay on his head
in manly order, ready enough to curl but waiving the privilege.

"Cock-a-doodle-doo," thought I; "if those are not the same
hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their
first cousins!"



VII


A PLAGUE ON NAMES!

Once more I measured my man. Celerity, valor, endurance, they were his
iridescent neck and tail feathers. On a certain piece of road where we
went more slowly I mentioned abruptly my clerkship under Major Harper
and watched for the effect, but there was none. Did he know the Major?
Oh, yes, and we fell to piling item upon item in praise of the
quartermaster's virtues and good looks. Presently, with shrewdest
intent, I said the Major was fine enough to be the hero of a novel! Did
not my companion think so?

Yes, he thought so; but I believed the glow in his tone was for novels.
I extolled the romance of actual life! I denounced that dullness which
fails to see the poetry of daily experience, and goes wandering after
the mirages of fiction! And I was ready to fight him if he liked. But he
agreed with me most cordially.

"And yet," he began to add,--

"Yet what?" I snapped out, with horse eyes.

"Doesn't a good story revive the poetry of our actual lives?" He wiped
the rim of his cap with a handkerchief of yellow silk enriched at one
corner with needlework.

"Um-hm!" I thought; "Charlotte Oliver, eh?" I responded tartly that I
had that very morning met four ladies the poetry of whose actual,
visible loveliness had abundantly illustrated to me the needlessness and
impertinence of fiction! By the way, did he not think feminine beauty
was always in its ripest perfection at eighteen?

Well, he thought a girl might be prettiest at eighteen and handsomest
much later. And again I said to myself, "Charlotte Oliver!" But when I
looked searchingly into his eyes their manly sweetness so abashed me
that I dropped my glance and felt him looking at me. I remembered my
fable and flinched. "Isn't your name--" I cried, and choked, and when I
would have said Ferry, another word slipped out instead. He did not hear
it plainly:

"Cockerel, did you say?"

A sweet color was I. "Yes, that's what I said; Cockerel. Isn't your last
name Cockerel?"

"No," he said, "my last name is Durand." He gave it the French
pronunciation.

"Mine is Smith," I said, and we galloped.

A plague on names! But I was not done with them yet. We met other scouts
coming out of the east, who also gave reports and went on westward,
sometimes through the trackless woods. At a broad cross-road which
spanned the whole State from the Alabama line to the Mississippi River
stood another sergeant, with three men, waiting. They were the last.

Again we galloped alone; and as our horses' hoofs beat drummers' music
out of the round earth our dialogue drifted into confessions of our own
most private theories of conduct, character and creation. Now that this
man's name was not--Cockerel, my heart opened to him and we began to
admit to each other the perplexities of this great, strange thing called
Life. Especially we confessed how every waking hour found us jostled and
torn between two opposite, unappeasable tendencies of soul; one an
upward yearning after everything high and pure, the other a
down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence. I was warmed and fed.
Yet I was pained to find him so steeped in presumptuous error, so
wayward of belief and unbelief. The sweet ease with which he overturned
and emptied out some of my arguments gave me worse failure of the
diaphragm than a high swing ever did. Nevertheless I responded; and he
rejoined; and I rejoined again, and presently he gave me the notion that
he was suffering some cruel moral strain.



VIII


ANOTHER CURTAINED WAGON

Upon whatever fundamental scheme we perseveringly concentrate our
powers, upon whatever main road of occupation we take life's
journey,--art, politics, commerce, science,--if only we will take its
upper fork as often as the road divides, then will that road itself, and
not necessarily any cross-road, lead us to the noblest, truest plane of
convictions, affections, aspirations. Such a frame of mind may be quite
without religiosity, as unconscious as health; but the proof of its
religious reality will be that, as if it were a lighthouse light and we
its keeper, everybody else, or at any rate everybody _out on the deep_,
will see it plainer than we. Such is the gist of what this young man was
saying to me, when our speculations were brought to an end by our
overtaking a man well mounted, and a woman whose rough-gaited was
followed by a colt.

The pair took our pace, the man plying me with questions, and his wife,
in front, telling Lieutenant Durand all the rumors of the day. Her scant
hair was of a scorched red tone, she was freckled down into her collar,
her elbows waggled to the mare's jog, and her voice was as flat as a
duck's. Her nag had trouble to keep up, and her tiny faded bonnet had
even more to keep on. Yet the day was near when the touch of those
freckled hands was to seem to me kinder than the breath of flowers, as
they bathed my foul-smelling wounds, and she would say, in the words of
the old song, "Let me kiss him for his mother," and I should be helpless
to prevent her. By and by the man raised his voice:--

"Why, yo' name _is_ Smith, to be sho'! I thought you was jest a-tryin'
to chaw me. Why, Major Harper alludened to you not mo'n a half-ow ago.
Why, Miz Wall! oh, Miz Wall!"

But the wife was absorbed. "Yayse, seh," she was saying to the
lieutenant, "and he told us about they comin' in on the freight-kyahs
f'om Hazlehurst black with dust and sut and a-smuttyin' him all oveh
with they kisses and goin's-on. He tol' me he ain't neveh so enjoyed
havin' his face dirty sence he was a boy. He would a-been plumb happy,
ef on'y he could a-got his haynds on that clerk o' his'n. And when he
tol' us what a gay two-hoss turn-out he'd sekyo'ed for the ladies to
travel in, s' I, Majo', that's all right! You jest go on whicheveh way
you got to go! Husband and me, we'll ride into Brookhaven and bring 'em
out to ow place and jest take ca'e of 'em untel yo' clerk is _found_."

"Miz Wall!" cried the husband--"She's busy talkin'.--Miz Wall!--she
don't hyuh me. I hate to interrupt heh.--Oh, Miz Wall! hyuh's Majo'
Harper's clerk, right now!"

"Law, you hain't!" cried Mrs. Wall, smiling back as she jounced. "If you
air, the Majo's sisteh's got written awdehs fo' you."

I shot forward, but had hardly more than sent back my good-bye when
around a bend of the road, in a wagon larger than Charlotte Oliver's,
with the curtains rolled up, came the four Miss Harpers, unsooted and
radiant. The aunt drove. We turned, all four, and rode with them, and
while the seven chatted gaily I read to myself the Major's note. It bade
me take these four ladies into my most jealous care and conduct them to
a point about thirty miles west of where we then were. A dandy's task in
a soldier's hour! I ground my teeth, but as I lifted my glance I found
Camille's eyes resting on me and read anxiety in them before she could
put on a smile of unemotional friendliness that faded rapidly into
abstraction. She was as pretty as the bough of wild azaleas in her hand,
yet moving forward I told her aunt the order's purport and that it
implied the greatest despatch compatible with mortal endurance. The
whole four seemed only delighted.

But Mrs. Wall protested. No, no, her hospitality first, and a basket of
refreshments to be stowed in the vehicle, besides. "Why, that'll
_sa-ave_ ti-ime. You-all goin' to be supprised to find how hungry
y'all ah, befo' you come to yo' journey's en', to-night, and them col'
victuals goin' taste pow'ful fi-ine!"

Our acceptance was unanimous. I even decided not to inform Lieutenant
Durand until after the repast, that ladies under my escort did not pick
acquaintanceship with soldiers on the public highway. But before the
brief meal was over I was wishing him hanged. Hang the heaven-high
theories that had so lately put me in love with him! Hang his melodious
voice, his modest composure, his gold-barred collar, his easy command of
topics! Hang the women! they feasted on his every word and look! Ah,
ladies! if I were mean enough to tell it--that man doesn't believe in
hell! He has a down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence; he has
told me so!

How fast acquaintance grew! When he addressed himself to Cécile, the
cousin of the other two, her black eyes leapt with delight; for as
calmly as if that were the only way, he spoke to her in French--asked
her a question. She gave answer in happiest affirmation, and explained
to her aunt that her Durand schoolmates of a year or two back were
cousins to the Lieutenant. When the throng came out to the carry-all I
was there and mounted. Squire Wall took me a few rods to point out where
a fork of his private road led into the highway. Then the carry-all came
merrily after, and with a regret that surprised me I answered our
Lieutenant's farewell wave, forgave him all his charms, and saw him face
westward and disappear by a bridle-path.



IX


THE DANDY'S TASK

Westward likewise we soon were bickering. The morning sun shone high;
the thin, hot dust blew out over the blackened ground of some forest
"burn" or through the worm fence of some field where a gang of slave men
and women might be ploughing or hoeing between the green rows of young
cotton or corn. The level stretches were many, the slopes gradual, and
to those sweet city-bird ladies everything was new and delightful; a log
cabin!--with clay chimney on the outside!--a well and its
well-sweep!--another cabin with its gourd-vines! They knew that blessed
alchemy which turns all things into the poetry of the moment. Sweet they
would have been anywhere to any eye or mind; but I was a homeless
trooper lad, and sweeter to the soldier boy than water on the
battlefield are short hours with ladies who love him for his banner
and his rags.

These four were charmed with an old field given up to sedge, its deep
rain-gullies as red as gaping wounds, its dead trees in tatters of long
gray moss. Estelle became a student of flowers, Cécile of birds, Camille
of trees. All my explanations were alike enchantingly strange. To their
minds it had never occurred that the land sloped the same way the water
ran! When told that these woods abounded in deer and wild turkey they
began to look out for them at every new turn of the road. And the turns
came fast. Happy miles, happy leagues; each hour was of a mellower
sweetness than the last; they seemed to ripen in the sun. The only
drawback was my shame of a sentimental situation, but once or twice I
longed to turn the whole equipage into the woods--or the ditch. As, for
instance, when three pine-woods cavalrymen had no sooner got by us than
they set up that ribald old camp-song,

  "We're going to get married, mamma, mamma;
  We're going to get married, but don't tell pa--"

"Deserters, I don't doubt!" was my comment to the ladies. Tongue revenge
is poor, but it is something.

Except in such moments, however, the war seemed farther away than it had
for months and months. But about eleven o'clock we began to find the way
scored by the fresh ruts of heavy wheels and the dust deepened by
hundred of hoofs. The tops and faces of the roadside banks were newly
trampled and torn by clambering human feet. Here was a canteen, smashed
in a wheel-track; yonder a fragment of harness; here lay a broken hame,
there was the half of a russet brogan and yonder a ragged sock stained
and bloody.

"Why, what does all this mean?" asked Miss Harper amid her nieces'
cries.

I said it meant Fisher's battery hurrying to the front. Twenty miles
since five that morning was a marvel, horse artillery though they were,
for, as I pointed out by many signs, their animals were in ill
condition. "We shall have to go round them by neighborhood roads," I
said, and presently we were deeper than ever in woodland shades and
sources of girlish wonderment. The humid depths showed every sort of
green and gray, their trunks, bushes and boughs, bearded with hanging
moss, robed with tangled vines and chapleted with mistletoe. We seemed
to have got this earth quite to ourselves and very much to our liking.

One o'clock. Miss Harper suggested a halt to feed the horses. I, knowing
what it would cost me to dismount and go walking about, said no, thrice
no; let us first get back upon the main road in front of that battery.
On, therefore, we hurried, and soon the reality of the war was vivid to
us again. In a stretch of wet road where the team had mutely begged
leave to walk and the ladies had urged me to sing we had at length
paused in a pebbly rivulet to allow the weary animals to drink, and the
girls and the aunt and the greenwood and I were all in chorus
bidding somebody

  "Unloose the west port and let us go free,"

when, just as our last note died among the trees one of us cried,
"Listen!" and through the stillness there came from far away on our
right the last three measures of a bugle sounding The March.

My eyes rested in Camille's and hers in mine. A musical license gave us
the courage. At the last note our gaze did not sink but took on more
glow, while out of the forest behind us a distant echo answered the last
measure of the strain. Then our eyes slowly fell; and however it may
have seemed to her, to me it was as if the vanished strains were not
only or chiefly of bugle and echo, but as though our two hearts had
called and answered in that melodious unison.

All that warm afternoon we paid the tiresome penalty of having pushed
our animals too smartly at the outset. We grew sedate; sedate were the
brows of the few strangers we met. We talked in pairs. When I spoke with
Miss Harper the four listened. She asked about the evils of camp life;
for she was one of that fine sort to whom righteousness seems every
man's and woman's daily business, one of the most practical items in the
world's affairs. And I said camp life was fearfully corrupting; that the
merest boys cursed and swore and stole, or else were scorned as
weaklings. Then I grew meekly silent and we talked in pairs again, and
because I yearned to talk most with Camille I talked most with Estelle.
Three times when I turned abruptly from her to Camille and called,
"Hark!" the fagged-out horses halted, and as we struck our listening
pose the bugle's faint sigh ever farther in our rear was but feebly
proportioned to the amount of our gazing into each other's eyes.

Once, when we were not halted or harkening, we heard overmuch; heard
that which brought us to an instant stand and caused even Miss Harper to
gaze on me with dismayed eyes and parted lips, and the blood to go
thumping through my veins. From a few hundred yards off in the
northwest, beyond the far corner of an old field and the woods at its
back, two gunshots together, then a third, with sharp, hot cries of
alarum and command, and then another and another shot, rang out and
spread wanderingly across the tender landscape.



X


THE SOLDIER'S HOUR

To regain the highroad we had turned into a northerly fork, and were in
as lovely a spot as we had seen all day. Before us and close on our
right were the dense woods of magnolia, water-oak, tupelo and a hundred
other affluent things that towered and spread or clambered and hung. On
the left lay the old field, tawny with bending sedge and teeming with
the yellow rays of the sun's last hour. This field we overlooked through
a fence-row of persimmon and wild plum. Among these bushes, half fallen
into a rain-gully, a catalpa, of belated bloom, was loaded with blossoms
and bees, and I was directing Camille's glance to it when the shots
came. Another outcry or two followed, and then a weird silence.

"Some of our boys attacked by a rabbit," I suggested, but still
hearkened.

"That was not play, Mr. Smith," Miss Harper had begun to respond, when a
voice across the sedge-field called with startling clearness,

"Hi! there goes one of them!--Halt!--Halt, you blue--" pop!--pop!--pop!

"Prisoners making a break!" I forgot all my tatters and stood on tiptoe
in the stirrups to overpeer the fence-row. The next instant--"Sh--sh!"
said I and slid to the ground. "Hold this bridle!" I gave it to Camille.
"Don't one of you make a sound or a motion; there's a Yankee coming
across this field in the little gully just behind us."

I bent low, ran a few steps, cocking my revolver as I went. Then I rose,
peeped, bent again, ran, rose, peeped, waited a few seconds behind the
catalpa, and without rising peeped once more. Here he came! He was an
officer. His uniform was torn and one whole side of him showed he had at
some earlier hour ridden through a hedge and fallen from his horse. On
he came! nearer--nearer--oh, what a giant! Quickly, warily, he crouched
under the fence where it hung low across the gully, and half through it
in that huddled posture he found my revolver between his astonished
eyes. I did not yell at him, for I did not want the men he had escaped
from to come and take him from me; yet when I said, "Halt, or you die!"
the four ladies heard me much too plainly. For, frankly, I said more and
worse. I felt my slenderness, my beardless youth, my rags, and his
daring, and to offset them all in a bunch, I--I cursed him. I let go
only one big damn and I've never spoken one since, though I've done many
a worse thing, of course. I protest it was my modesty prompted it then.

"I surrender," he said, with amiable ease. I stepped back a pace and he
drew out and straightened up--the tallest man I had ever seen. I laughed,
he smiled, laughed; my eyes filled with tears, I blazed with rage, and in
plain sight and hearing of those ladies he said, "That's all right, my
son, get as scared as you like; only, you don't need to cry about it."

"Hold your tongue!" I barked my wrath like a frightened puppy, drawing
back a stride and laying my eye closer along the pistol. "If you call me
your son again I'll send you to your fathers."

His smile darkened. "I am your prisoner," he said, with a sudden
splendid stateliness, and right then I guessed who he was.

"Yess, sir, you are!" I retorted. "Move to that wagon! And if you take
one step out of common time you'll never take another."

The aunt and her nieces were standing in the carry-all, she majestic,
they laughing and weeping in the one act. I waved them into their seats.

"Halt!" We halted. "About face!" As the prisoner eyed me both of us
listened. His equanimity was almost winsome, and I saw that friendliness
was going to be his tactics.

"Guess I'm the first Yankee y' ever caught, ain't I?" His smile was
superior, but congratulatory.

"You'll be the first prisoner I ever shot if you get any funnier!"

We listened again. "They've gone the wrong way," I said, still savage.

"No," he replied, "I came the wrong way."

The ladies smiled; I glowered. "Take those horses by their heads and
turn them to me!"

An instant his superb eye resented, but then he pleasantly did my
bidding. "Suits me well; rather chance it with you than with those I've
just left."

[Illustration: "I surrender," he said, with amiable ease.]

"Easier to get away, you think?" I asked, with a worse frown than ever,
as he stepped into the carry-all and took the lines.

"No, not so easy; but those fellows are Arkansans, and they're in a bad
humor with me."

I took the hint and grew less ferocious. "While you," I said, "are
Captain Jewett."

"I am," was his reply, and my heart leaped for joy. We hurried away. My
captive was the most daring Union scout between Vicksburg and New
Orleans; these very Harpers knew that. The thing unknown to us was that
already his fate was entangled with Ned Ferry's and Charlotte Oliver's,
as yet more it would be, with theirs and ours, in days close at hand.



XI


CAPTAIN JEWETT

Once more we were in the by-road which had brought us westward parallel
with the highway. The prisoner drove. Aunt Martha sat beside him, slim,
dark, black-eyed, stately, her silver-gray hair rolled high à la
Pompadour. With a magnanimity rare in those bitter days she incited him
to talk, first of New Orleans, where he had spent a month in camp on one
of the public squares, and then of his far northern home, and of loved
ones there, mother, wife and child. The nieces, too, gave a generous
attention. Only I, riding beside the hind wheels, held solemnly aloof.

"Front!" I once snapped out with a ring that made the trees reply and
the ladies catch their breath. "If you steal one more look back here
I'll put a ball into your leg."

He smiled, chirped the horses up and resumed his chat. I heard him
praise my horse and compare him not unfavorably with his own which he
had lost that morning'. He and a few picked men had been surprised in a
farmhouse at breakfast. They had made a leap and a dash, he said, but
one horse and rider falling dead, his horse, unhurt, had tumbled over
them, and here was his rider.

I prompted Camille to ask if he had ever encountered Ned Ferry, and he
laughed.

"No," he said, but Ned Ferry had lately restored to him, by proxy, some
lost letters, with an invitation to _come and see him_.

I laughed insolently. The young ladies sparkled, and so did Miss Harper,
as she asked him who had been the proxy.

He said the proxy was a young woman who had a knack of getting passes
through the lines, and the three girls exchanged looks as knowing as
they were delighted.

"I tell her as a friend," he said, "she'll get one into Fortress Monroe
yet!"

Miss Harper's keen eyes glittered. "You northerners hardly realize our
feelings concerning the imprisonment of women, I think."

"My dear madam, you don't realize ours. We don't want to imprison
women."

So there came a silence, and then a gay laugh as three of us at once
asked if he had ever heard of Lieutenant Durand. "Durand!" he cried, and
looked squarely around at me. I lifted the cocked revolver, but he kept
his fine eyes on mine and I rubbed my ear with my wrist. "What?" he
said, "an elegant, Creole-seeming young fellow, very handsome? Why, that
fellow saved my life this very afternoon."

The young ladies were in rapture. Miss Harper asked how he had done it.

"If I tell you that," said the Captain, "you won't like me the least
bit."

Whereat Cécile replied, "Ah--well! we cou'n' like you the leaz bit
any-'ow."

"I suppose that's so," laughed the officer. "I'll tell you how it was.
My guard were just about to hang me for saying I thought we had a right
to make soldiers of the darkies, when your friend came galloping along,
saw the thing, and rushed in and cut the halter with his sword. And when
they demanded to know who and what he was, he told them Durand, and that
they'd hear it again, for he should report them."

"Oh, sir," cried Estelle, whose eyes, brows, lashes and hair were all of
the same luminous red-brown, and in whose cheeks the rose seemed always
to burn through the olive, "how can you and your people seek to kill
such men as that?"

"Such as which?" asked the Yankee, with a twinkle. "There were two
kinds."

"But, o-oh! sir!" exclaimed the trio, when Miss Harper waved them to
forbear. There was yet some daylight left as we trundled into a broad
highroad and turned northward. We passed a picket guard and then a whole
regiment of cavalry going into camp. They scrambled to the sides of the
road and stormed us with questions, chaffing us cruelly when I remained
silent. "Lawd! look a' this-yeh Yank a-bringin' in ow desertehs!" "Hey,
you big Yank, you jest let that po' little conscrip' go!"

Headquarters, we heard from a courier who said he was the third sent out
to find us, were at the "Sessions house" two miles further on. We sent
him galloping back there, and after a while here came Major Harper and
three or four others of the staff, including Harry Helm. What a flood of
mirthful compliment there was at sight of us and our captive; Harry was
positively silly. In the series of introductions that followed he was
left paired with Camille, and I said things to myself. Major Harper rode
by the prisoner. "Well, Captain," he said, "you've had some experiences
since you left me this morning. Don't you want to give us your parole
this time, temporarily, for an hour or so, and be more comfortable?"

"Thank you, Major," the Federal affably replied, "that would be a great
relief to this most extraordinary youngster that I've brought with me."
He gave it and we turned into a lofty grove whitened with our
headquarters tents.

"Smith," said the Major, "your part is done, and well done. You needn't
report to me again to-night; the General wishes to see you a moment.
Captain, will you go with this young man to General Austin's tent?"



XII


IN THE GENERAL'S TENT

I went to Gholson. He told me I was relieved of my captive and bade me
go care for my horse and return in half an hour. In going I passed close
by the Sessions plantation house. Every door and window was thrown wide
to the night air, and preparations were in progress for a dance; and as
I returned, a slave boy ran across my path, toward the house, bearing a
flaming pine torch and followed by two ambulances filled with daughters
of the neighborhood in clouds of white gauze. I found the General in
fatigue dress. His new finery hung on the tent-pole at his back. Old
Dismukes, the bull-necked colonel of the Arkansans, lounged on a
camp-cot. Both smoked cigars.

The General asked me a number of idle questions and then said my
prisoner had called me a good soldier. Old Dismukes smiled so broadly
that I grew hot, believing the Yankee had told them of my tears.

"Smith," said the Colonel, and then smoked and smiled again till my brow
beaded,--"tired?"

"No, sir."

"That's a lie," he pleasantly remarked, and lay back, enjoying my silent
wrath. "Send him, General," he added, "he's your man."

The General looked at me between puffs of his cigar. "I hear you've
ridden over fifty miles to-day."

"Yes, General." "If I give you a good fresh horse can you go
twenty-three miles more by midnight?"

"Yes, General, if I don't have to save the horse."

"The horse may have to save you," drawled the Arkansan.

"I think you know Lieutenant Durand?" asked the General, with a
quizzical eye.

"Slightly."

"Well, Smith, on his suggestion approved by Major Harper, I have
detailed another clerk to the Major."

Rills of perspiration tickled my back like flies. "Can't one man do the
work?"

"Yes, the new man is detailed in your place."

I almost leaped from the ground in consternation. My whole frame
throbbed, my mouth fell open, my tongue was tied.

The man who had got me into this thing--this barrel--lifted the
tent-flap. "Mr. Gholson," said the General, "write an order assigning
Smith to Ferry's scouts."

The flap fell again and my panic was turned into a joy qualified only by
a reduced esteem for my general as a judge of character.

Old Dismukes rose. "Good-night. Shall I send this boy that Yankee's
horse?"

"Oh I was forgetting that; yes, do!"

At the door the Colonel gave me a last look. "Good-night, Legs."

I dared not retort, but I looked so hard at his paunch that the General
smiled. Then he asked me if I knew where we were then camped, and I said
we were on the Meadville and Fayette road, near Franklin, twenty miles
southeast of Fayette and--

"That will do. Now, beyond Fayette, about seven miles north, there's a
place--"

"Clifton?"

"Don't interrupt me, Smith. Yes, Clifton. You're not to reach there
to-night--"

"I can do it, General."

"You can do as you're told; understand?" I understood.

"The enemy are in Fayette to-night," he continued. "So when you get
half-way to Fayette, just across Morgan's Creek, you'll take a dim fork
on the right running north along the creek. Ever travel by the stars?"

I began to tell how well I knew the stars, but he stopped me. "Yes;
well, keep straight north till you strike the road running east and west
between Fayette and Union Church. You'll find there a little
polling-place called Wiggins. Turn west, toward Fayette, and on the
north side of the main road, opposite the blacksmith's shop, you'll come
to a small--"

"I see."

"What do you see?" His frown scared me to my finger-tips.

"Why, I suppose I'm to find there a road down Cole's Creek to Clifton."

"Smith, if you interrupt me again, sir, you'll find the road back to
your regiment. Opposite that blacksmith's shop you'll see a white
cottage. There's a young lady stopping there to-night, a stranger, a
traveller. The old lady who lives there has taken her in at my request.
See that the young lady gets this envelope. It's no great matter, merely
a pass through our lines; but it's your ostensible business till you get
there; understand?"

I thought I did until I glanced at the superscription: Miss Coralie
Rothvelt.

"Now, here is another matter of much more importance." He showed, but
retained, another envelope. "Behind the house where you're to find Miss
Rothvelt there's a road into Cole's Creek bottom. The house you're to
stop at to-night, say from twelve o'clock till three or half-past, is on
that road, about five miles from Wiggins, from Clifton and from Fayette.
I'm sending you there expecting the people in that house will rob you if
you give them half a chance."

"I understand, General; they'll not get it."

"Smith, I want them to get it. I want them to rob you of this." He
waggled the envelope. "I want this to fall into the hands of the enemy;
as it will if those people rob you of it."

I snapped my eyes. He smiled and then frowned. "I don't want a clumsy
job, now, mind! I don't want you to get captured if you can possibly
avoid it; but all the same they mustn't get this so easily as to suspect
it's a bait. So I want you to give those villains that half-chance to
rob you, but not the other half, or they may--oh, it's no play! You must
manage to have this despatch taken from you totally against your will!
Then you must reach Clifton shortly after daylight. Ferry's scouts are
there, and you'll say to Lieutenant Ferry the single word, Rodney.
Understand?" He pretended to be reconsidering. "I--don't know
but--after all--I'd better send one of my staff instead of you."

"Oh, General, if you send an officer they'll see the ruse! I can do it!
I'll do it all right!"

"I'm most afraid," he said, abstractedly, as he read my detail, which
Gholson brought in. "Here,"--he handed it to me--"and here, here's the
despatch too."

"What's the name, General, of the man whose house I'm to go to?"

"You'd best not know; I want you to seem to have stumbled upon the
place. You can't miss it; there's no other house within two miles of it.
Good-bye, my lad;"--he gave me his hand;--"good luck to you."

Gholson, in the Adjutant-general's tent, told me Ned Ferry had named me
to the General as a first-class horseman and the most insignificant-
looking person he knew of who was fit for this venture.

"Ned Ferry! What does Ned Ferry know about my fitness?"

"Read the address on your despatch," said Gholson, resuming his pen.

I snatched the document from my bosom, into which I had thrust it to
seize the General's hand "Oh, Gholson!" I said, in deep-toned grief, as
I looked up from the superscription, "is that honest!"

He admitted that by the true religionist's standard it was not honest,
but reminded me that Ned Ferry--in his blindness--was only a poor
romanticist. The despatch was addressed to Lieutenant Edgard
Ferry-Durand.

Major Harper's black boy brought me the Yankee's horse with my bridle
and saddle on him; an elegant animal as fresh as a dawn breeze. Also he
produced a parcel, my new uniform, and a wee note whose breath smelt of
lavender as it said,--

"Papa tells us you are being sent off on courier duty to-night. What a
heart-breaking thing is war! How full of cruel sepa'--"

That piece of a word was scored out and "dangers" written in its place.
The missive ended all too soon, with the statement that I was requested
to call, on my way out of camp, at the side gallery of the house--
Sessions's--and let the writer and her sister and her cousin and her
father and her aunt see me in my new uniform and bid me good-bye.



XIII


GOOD-BYE, DICK

I found but one white figure under the dim veranda eaves. "Miss
Camille?"

"Wh'--who is that?" responded a musical voice. "Why, is that Mr. Smith?"
as if I were the last person in the world one should have expected to
see there. The like of those moments I had never known. I saw her eyes
note the perfect fit of my uniform, though neither of us mentioned it. I
tried to tell her that Lieutenant Durand was Ned Ferry and that I was
now one of his scouts, but she had already heard both facts, and would
not tell me what her father had said about me, it was so good. Standing
at the veranda's edge a trifle above me, with her cheek against one of
the posts and her gaze on her slipper, she asked if I was glad I was
going with Ned Ferry, and I had no more sense than to say I was; but she
would neither say she was glad nor tell why she was not.

Through the open windows we could see the dancers. Now and then a pair
of fanning promenaders came down the veranda, but on descrying us turned
back. I said I was keeping her from the dance. To which she replied,
drooping her head again, that she shouldn't dance that night.

"Too tired?"

"No."

"Too warm?"

"Oh, no, not too warm."

"Why, then?"

"Oh--I--just don't feel as if I could, that's all."

My heart beat wildly and I wanted to ask if it was on my account; but I
was too pusillanimous a coward, and when I feebly tried to look into her
eyes she would not let me, which convinced me that she lacked candor. A
dance ended. Gold-laced fellows came and sat on the veranda rail wiping
wrists and brows with over-tasked handkerchiefs, and explaining the
small mishaps of the floor. Two promenaders mentioned the hour. I gasped
my amazement and extended my hand. "Good-bye."

"Wait a moment," she murmured, and watched the promenading pair turn
back. Then she asked if I had read my mother's letter. I said I had. And
then, very pensively, with head bent and eyes once more down, she
inquired if I liked to get letters. Which led, quite accidentally, to my
asking leave to write to her.

She replied that she did not mean that. Nevertheless, I insisted, would
she? She only bent lower still. I asked the third time; and with nothing
but the parting of her hair for me to look at, she nodded, and one of
her braids fell over in front, and I took the pink-ribboned live end of
it timorously between thumb and finger and felt as if I had hold of an
electric battery.

She backed half a step, and quite needlessly I let it go. Then she bade
me not forget I had promised her the words of a certain song. "Want
them? Indeed, yes! Did you not say it was an unpublished song written
by a messmate of yours?--oh, Mr. Smith! I see why you stammer! You said
'a member of your mess'! oh!--oh!--oh!--you wrote it, yourself! And you
wrote it to-day! That explains--" She drew an awesome breath, rose to
her toes and knit her knuckles under her throat.

I was in the sweetest consternation. With the end of her braid once more
in my fingers I made her promise to keep the dark secret, and so
recited them.

"Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
  Turn away thine eyes ere my bosom burn,
Lit with foolish hope to hear thy fondling sighs,
  Like yon twilight dove's, breathe, Return, return!
Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
  O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!

"Maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!
  Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn.
Breathe, O! breathe to me, as these love-languid skies
  To yon twilight star breathe, Return, return!
Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
  O maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!"

"Mis-ter Smith! you wrote that?--to-day! Wh'--who is she?"

"One too modest," I murmured, "to know her own portrait." I clutched the
braid emotionally and let it go intending to retake it; but she dropped
it behind her and said I was too imaginative to be safe.

I stiffened proudly, turned and mounted my steed, but her eyes drew
mine. I pressed close, bent over the saddle-bow, and said,
"Good-bye, Camille."

"Good-bye." I could barely hear it.

"Oh!--good-bye, just anybody?" I asked; and thereupon she gathered up
all her misplaced trust in me, all her maiden ignorance of what is in
man, and all her sweet daring, to murmur--

"Good-bye,--Dick."

I caught my breath in rapture and rode away. She was there yet when I
looked back--once--and again--and again. And when I looked a last time
still she had not moved. Oh, Camille, Camille! to this day I see you
standing there in pink-edged white, pure, silent, motionless, a
summer-evening cloud; while I, my body clad in its unstained--only
because unused--new uniform, and my soul tricked out in the
foolhardiness and vanity of a boy's innocence, rode forth into the night
and into the talons of overmastering temptation.



XIV


CORALIE ROTHVELT

The night was still and sultry. At one of the many camp-fires on the
edge of the road I saw the Arkansas colonel sitting cross-legged on the
ground, in trousers, socks and undershirt, playing poker.

Out in the open country how sweet was the silence. Not yet have I
forgotten one bright star of that night's sky. My mother and I had
studied the stars together. Lately Camille, her letter said, had learned
them with her. Now the heavens dropped meanings that were for me and for
this night alone. While the form of the maiden--passing fair--yet
glimmered in the firmament of my own mind, behind me in the south soared
the Virgin; but as some trees screened the low glare of our camp I saw,
just rising into view out of the southeast, the unmistakable eyes of the
Scorpion. But these fanciful oracles only flattered my moral
self-assurance, and I trust that will be remembered which I forgot, that
I had not yet known the damsel from one sun to the next.

I was moving briskly along, making my good steed acquainted with me,
testing his education, how promptly for instance, he would respond to
rein-touch and to leg-pressure, when I saw, in front, coming toward me,
three riders. Two of them were very genteel chaps, though a hand of each
was on the lock of his carbine. The third was a woman, veiled, and clad
in some dark stuff that in the starlight seemed quite black and
contrasted strongly with the paleness of her horse. Her hat, in
particular, fastened my attention; if that was not the same soft-brimmed
Leghorn I had seen yesterday morning, at least it was its twin sister. I
halted, revolver in hand, and said, as they drew rein,--"Good-evening."

"Good-evening," replied the nearer man. "How far is it to
camp--Austin's?"

"A short three miles."

"To what command do you belong?" he asked.

"Ferry's scouts. What command is yours, gentlemen?"

"Ferry's scouts." He scrutinized me. "What command do you say you--"

"Ferry's scouts," I repeated. "F-e-r-r-y-apostrophe s,
Ferry's--s-k-o-w-t-s--scouts."

The trio laughed, the young woman most musically.

"How long have you belonged to Ferry's scouts?" sceptically demanded
their spokesman.

"About an hour and a quarter."

"Oh! that-a-way."

"Yes," I replied, "in that direction."

The three laughed again and the men sank their carbines across their
laps, while in a voice as refined as her figure their companion said,
"Good-evening, Mr. Smith." She laid back her veil and even in the
darkness I felt the witchery of her glance. "I was just coming to meet
you," she continued, "to get the letter you're bringing me from General
Austin. I feared you might try to come around by Fayette, not knowing
the Yankees are there. These gentlemen didn't know it." "She just did
save us!" laughed the man hitherto silent.

"I'm Miss Coralie Rothvelt," she added, and then how she sparkled in the
dark as she said, "I see you remember me."

"I am but human."

"And yet you never take a lady's name for granted?"

"I am to know Miss Rothvelt by finding her in a certain place." My
honeyed bow implied that her being just now very much out of place was
no fault of mine.

"Nonsense!" muttered both men, and I liked them the better.

"My dear Smith," said Miss Rothvelt, "keep your trust. But if I part
here with these two kind gentlemen--"

"Who don't belong to Ferry's scouts at all," I still more sweetly added.

"No," she laughed, "and if I go back with you to Wiggins--to the little
white cottage, you know, opposite the blacksmith's shop,--you'll give me
what you've got for me, won't you?" She dropped her head to one side and
a mocking-bird chuckle rippled in her throat.

"I shall count myself honored," said I, and we went, together and alone.



XV


VENUS AND MARS

Since those days men have made "fire-proof" buildings. You know them;
let certain aggravations combine--they burn like straw. We had barely
started when I began to be threatened with a conflagration against which
I should have called it an insult to have been warned. The adroit beauty
at my side set in to explain more fully her presence. From her window
she had seen those two trim fellows hurrying along in a fair way to
blunder into the Federal pickets within an hour, had cautioned them, and
had finally asked leave to come with them, they under her guidance, she
under their protection.

"You were so anxious to get the General's letter?" I asked.

"I was so anxious about you," she replied, with feeling, and then broke
into a quizzical laugh.

I had not the faintest doubt she was lying. What was I to her? The times
were fearfully out of joint; women as well as men were taking war's
licenses, and with a boy's unmerciful directness I sprang to the
conclusion that here was an adventuress. Yet I had some better thoughts
too. While I felt a moral tipsiness going into all my veins, I asked
myself if it was not mainly due to my own inability to rise in full
manliness to a most exceptional situation. Her jaunty method of
confronting it, was I not failing to regard _that_ with due magnanimity?
Was this the truth, or after all ought I really to see that at every
turn of her speech, by coy bendings of the head, by the dark seductions
of dim half-captive locks about her oval temples, and by many an
indescribable swaying of the form and of the voice, I was being--to
speak it brutally--challenged? Even in the poetic obscurity of the night
I lost all steadiness of eye as I pertly said--

"And so here you are in this awful fix."

"I'm enjoying one advantage," she replied, "which you do not."

"What is that?"

"Why, I can read my safety in your face. You can't read anything in
mine; you're afraid to look."

All I got by looking then was a mellow laugh from behind her relowered
veil; but we were going at a swift trot, nearing a roadside fire of
fence-rails left by some belated foraging team, and as she came into the
glare of it I turned my eyes a second time. She was revealed in a garb
of brown enriched by the red beams of the fire, and was on the gray mare
I had seen that morning under Lieutenant Edgard Ferry-Durand.

"You recognize her?" the rider asked, delightedly. "She's not stolen,
she's only served her country a little better than usual to-day; haven't
you, Cousin Sallie?" (Cousin Sallie was short for Confederate States.)

The note of patriotism righted me and I looked a third time. The one art
of dress worth knowing in '63 was to slight its fashions without
offending them, and this pretty gift I had marked all day in the
Harpers. But never have I seen it half so successful as in the veiled
horsewoman illumined by the side-lights of those burning fence-rails.
The white apparition at the veranda's edge gleamed in my mind, yet
swiftly faded out, and a new fascination, more sudden than worthy heaved
at my heart. Then the fire was behind us and we were in the deep night.

On the crest of a ridge we slackened speed and my fellow-traveller
lifted her veil and asked exultantly what those two splendid stars were
that overhung yonder fringe of woods so low and so close to each other.
The less brilliant one, I said, the red one, was Mars.

"And the one following, almost at his side?"

"Don't you know?" I asked.

Her eyes flashed round upon me like stars themselves. "Not--Venus?" she
whispered, snatched in her breath, bit her lip, and half averting her
face, shot me through with both "twinklers" at once. Then she took a
long look at the planets and suddenly exclaimed with a scandalized air--

"They're going down into the woods together!"

"Yes," I responded, "and without even waiting for Diana."

She dropped the rein and lifted both arms toward them. "Oh, blessings on
your glorious old heathen hearts, what do you want of Diana, or of any
one in heaven or earth except each other!"

Foolish, idle cry, and meant for no more, by a heart on fire with
temptations of which I knew nothing. But then and there my poor
adolescent soul found out that the preceptive stuff of which it had
built its treasure-house and citadel was not fire-proof.



XVI


AN ACHING CONSCIENCE

Yet great is precept. Precept is a well. Up from its far depths by slow,
humble, constant process you may draw, in a slender silver thread, and
store for sudden use, the pure waters of character.

It has happened, however, that a man's own armor has been the death of
him. So the moral isolation of a young prig of good red blood who is
laudably trying to pump his conduct higher than his character--for
that's the way he gets his character higher--has its own peculiar
dangers. Take this example: that he does not dream any one will, or can,
in mere frivolity, coquette, dally, play mud-pies, with a passion the
sacredest in subjection, the shamefulest in mutiny, and the deepest and
most perilous to tamper with, in our nature. As hotly alive in the
nethermost cavern of his heart as in that of the vilest rogue there is a
kennel of hounds to which one word of sophistry is as the call to the
chase, and such a word I believed my companion had knowingly spoken. I
was gone as wanton-tipsy as any low-flung fool, and actually fancied
myself invited to be valiant by this transparent embodiment of passion
whose outburst of amorous rebellion had been uttered not because I was
there, but only in pure recklessness of my presence. Of course I ought
to have seen that this was a soul only over-rich in woman's love;
mettlesome, aspiring, but untrained to renunciation; consciously
superior in mind and soul to the throng about her, and caught in some
hideous gin of iron-bound--convention-bound--or even law-bound--foul
play. But I was so besotted as to suggest a base analogy between us and
those two sinking stars.

Unluckily she retorted with some playful parry that just lacked the
saving quality of true resentment. How I rejoined would be small profit
to tell. I had a fearful sense of falling; first like a wounded
squirrel, dropping in fierce amazement, catching, holding on for a
panting moment, then dropping, catching and dropping again, down from
the top of the great tree where I had so lately sat scolding all the
forest; and then, later, with an appalling passivity. And at every fresh
exchange of words, while she laughed and fended, and fended and laughed,
along with this passivity came a yet more appalling perversity; a
passivity and perversity as of delirium, and as horrid to her as to me,
though I little thought so then.

We came where a line of dense woods on our left marked the bottom-lands
of Morgan's Creek. With her two earlier companions my fellow-traveller
had crossed a ford here shortly after sunset, seeing no one; but a guard
might easily have been put here since, by the Federals in Fayette.
Pretty soon the road, bending toward it, led us down between two fenced
fields and we stealthily walked our horses. Close to a way-side tree I
murmured that if she would keep my horse I would steal nearer on foot
and reconnoitre, and I had partly risen from the saddle, when I was
thrilled by the pressure of her hand upon mine on the saddle-bow. "Don't
commit the soldier's deadliest sin, my dear Mr. Smith," she said under
her breath, and smiled at my agitation; "I mean, don't lose time."

I was about to put a false meaning even on that, when she added "We
don't need the ford this time of year; let us ride back as if we gave up
the trip--for there may be a vidette looking at us now in the edge of
those bushes--and as soon as we get where we can't be seen let us take a
circuit. We can cross the creek somewhere above and strike the Wiggins
road up in the woods. You can find your way by the blessed stars, can't
you--being the angel you are?"

My whole nature was upheaved. You may smile, but my plight was awful. In
the sultry night I grew cold. My bridle-hand, still lying under her
palm, turned and folded its big stupid fingers over hers. Then our hands
slid apart and we rode back. "I wish I were good enough to know the
stars," she said, gazing up. "Tell me some of them."

I told them. Two or three times my voice stuck in my throat, I found the
sky so filled, so possessed, by constellations of evil name. At our back
the Dragon writhed between the two Bears; over us hung the Eagle, and in
the south were the Wolf, the Crow, the Hydra, the Serpent--"Oh, don't
tell any more," she exclaimed. "Or rather--what are those three bright
stars yonder? Why do you skip them?"

"Those? That one is the Virgin's sheaf; and those two are the Balances."

I failed to catch her reply. She spoke in a tone of pain and sunk her
face in her hand. "Head ache?" I asked. "No." She straightened, and
from under her coquettish hat bent upon me such a look as I had never
seen. In her eyes, in her tightened lips, and in the lift of her head,
was a whole history of hope, pride, pain, resolve, strife, bafflement
and defiance. She could not have chosen to betray so much; she must have
counted too fully on the shade of her hat-brim. The beautiful frown
relaxed into a smile. "No," she repeated, "only an aching conscience.
Ever have one?"

I averted my face and answered with a nod.

"I don't believe you! I don't believe you ever had cause for one!" She
laid a hand again upon mine.

I covered it fiercely and sunk my brow upon it. And thereupon the wave
of folly drew back, and on the bared sands of recollection I saw, like
drowned things, my mother's face, and Gholson's and the General's, and
Major Harper's, and Ned Ferry's, and Camille's. Each in turn brought its
separate and peculiar pang; and among those that came a second time and
with a crueler pang than before was Camille's.

"You're tired!" murmured the voice beside me, and the wave rolled in
again. I lifted my brow and moved one hand from hers to make room on it
for my lips, but her fingers slipped away and alighted compassionately
on my neck. "You must be one ache from head to foot!" she whispered.

I turned upon her choking with anger, but her melting beauty rendered me
helpless. Black woods were on our left. "Shall we turn in here?"
I asked.

"Yes." She stooped low under the interlacing boughs and plunged with me
into the double darkness.



XVII


TWO UNDER ONE HAT-BRIM

"Is this the conservatory?" playfully whispered Miss Rothvelt; and if a
hot, damp air, motionless, and heavy with the sleeping breath of
countless growths could make it so, a conservatory it was. Every
slightest turn had to be alertly chosen, and the tangle of branches and
vines made going by the stars nearly impossible. The undergrowth crowded
us into single file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses
came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were
much the same until near the end of our détour, when my horse swerved
abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake sounded almost under foot. The
mare swerved, too, and hurried forward to my horse's side.

"That was almost an adventure, itself," laughingly murmured my
companion, as if adventures were what we were in search of. While she
spoke we came out into a slender road and turned due north. "Did you,"
she went on, childishly, "ever take a snake up by the tail, in your
thumb and finger, and watch him try to double on himself and bite you? I
have, it's great fun; makes you feel so creepy, and yet you know
you're safe!"

She laughed under her breath as if at hide-and-seek. Then we galloped,
then trotted again, galloped, walked and trotted again. Two miles,
three, four, we reckoned off, and slowed to a walk to come out
cautiously upon the Union Church and Fayette road. A sound brought us
to a halt. From the right, out on the main road, it came; it was made by
the wheels of a loaded wagon. I leaned sidewise until her hat-brim was
over me and whispered "Yankee foragers;" but as I drew my revolver we
heard voices, I breathed a sigh of relief, and with her locks touching
mine we chuckled to each other in the dark. The passers were slaves
escaping to the Federal camp.

Now they came into view, on the broader road, two whole ragged families
with a four-mule team. They passed on. And then all at once the whole
situation was too much for me. In the joy of release I groped out
caressingly and touched my companion's cheek. Whereat she took my
fingers and drew them to her lips--twice. The next moment I found--we
found--my lifted wrists in the slender grasp of her two hands and she
was murmuring incoherent protests. Suddenly she grew eloquent. "Oh,
think what you are and have always been! Do you think I don't know? Do
you suppose I would have put myself into this situation, or taken the
liberties I have taken with you, if I had not known you, and known you
well, before ever I saw you? Ah! I have heard such good things of you!
and the moment I saw you I saw they were true!--Yes,--yes, I tell you
they were, they are! And I'm not going to take my trust away from you
now! You shall keep my trust as you have kept all others. You shall be
as miserly of it as of your general's. You will keep it!" Her whispers
grew more and more gentle. "My dear friend, my dear friend! what is this
trust compared to the trust I wish I might lay on you?" What did she
mean by that! Had she some schemer's use for me? I could not ask, for
her little hands had gradually slipped from my wrists to my fingers and
were softly, torturingly fondling them. Suddenly she laughed and threw
her hands behind her back. "I'm blundering! Oh, Richard Smith, be kind
to a woman's poor wits, and let me say to-morrow that I know one man who
can be trusted--who I know can be trusted--to make a woman's folly her
protection. Do you know, dear, that any woman who can say that, is
richer than any who cannot? And I am but a woman, sometimes a bit silly.
Trouble is I'm a live one and a whole one!--or else I'm a live one and
not quite a whole one--I wonder which it is!"

I mumbled something about never wishing to tempt any one.

"Oh, you haven't tempted me," she replied, with kind amusement. "You
couldn't if you should try. You're a true soldier, with a true soldier's
ideals; and I'm pledged to help you keep them."

"What do you mean?" I demanded. "To whom are you pledged for any such--"

"Oh!--don't you wish you knew! Why, to myself, for instance. Come! duty
calls."

"Come!" I echoed. We swung into the broader road and followed the
contrabands.

We came as close to them as was wise, and had to walk our horses. I
could discern Miss Rothvelt's features once more, and felt a truer
deference than I had yet given her. Near the blacksmith's shop, in the
dusk of some shade-trees, she once more touched my shoulder. I turned
resentfully to bid her not do it, but her shadowy gaze stopped me.

"Don't be moody," she said; "the whole mistake is four-fifths mine. And
anyhow, repining is only a counterfeit repentance, you know. Come, I
don't want to tease you. It's only myself I love to torment. I'm the
snake I like to hold up by the tail. Did you never have some dull,
incessant ache that seemed to pain less when you pressed hard on it?"
She laughed, left me and rode into the cottage gate.

What do you say?--Yes, she might have spoken more wisely. Yet always
there vibrated in her voice a wealth of thought, now bitter, now sweet,
and often both at once, and a splendor of emotions, beyond the scope of
all ordinary natures. How far beyond my own scope they were, even with
my passions at flood-tide and turbid as a back-street overflow, I
failed to ponder while I passed around the paling fence alone.

In the edge of the woods at the rear of this enclosure I found the road
that led into Cole's Creek bottom, and there turned and waited. A corner
of the cottage was still in view among its cedars and china-trees. In an
intervening melon-patch blinked the yellow lamps of countless fireflies.
And now there came the ghost of a sound from beyond the patch, then a
glimpse of drapery, and I beheld again the subject of my thoughts. Such
thoughts! Ah! why had I neither modesty, wit nor charity enough to see
that yonder came a woman whose heart beat only more strongly than the
hearts of all the common run of us, with impulses both kind and high,
although society, by the pure defects of its awkward machinery, had
incurably mutilated her fate; a woman wrestling with a deep-founded love
that, held by her at arm's length, yielded only humiliations and by its
torments kept her half ripe for any sudden treason even against that
love itself.

She came without her horse, pointing eagerly at the brightness of the
sky above the unrisen moon. "Diana!" she whispered, and tossed a kiss
toward it. "You saw me put the mare into the stable and go into the
house by the back door?"

"Yes," I said, and handed her, as I dismounted, the General's gift, the
pass.

She snatched it gaily, loosed a fastening at her throat and dropped the
missive into her bosom. Then with passionate gravity she asked, "Now,
are you going straight on to Clifton to-night--without stopping?"

"I haven't been ordered to tell any one where I'm going."

"Neither was Lieutenant Ferry," she dryly responded, "yet I have it from
him."

"He told you?--Ah! you're only guessing," I said, and saw that I was
helping her to guess more correctly.

"Pooh!" she replied, ever so prettily, "do you suppose I don't know?
Ferry's scouts are at Clifton, and you've got a despatch for
Lieutenant--eh,--Durand--hem!" She posed playfully. "Now, tell me;
you're not to report to him till daylight, are you? Then why need you
hurry on now? This house where I am is the only safe place for you to
sleep in between here and Clifton. I'll wake you, myself, in good time."
My heart pounded and rose in my throat, yet I managed to say, "My
orders are plain." I flinched visibly, for again I had told too much. I
pretended to listen toward the depths of the wood.

She struck a mock-sentimental attitude and murmured musically--

  "'The beating of our own hearts
  Was all the sound we heard.'

"Yes,"--she put away gaiety--"your orders are plain; and they're as
cruel as they are plain!"

"Cruel to you?" I took her hand from my arm and held it.

"Oh! cruel to you, Richard, dear; to you! And--yes!--yes!--I'll
confess. I'll confess--if only you'll do as I beg! Yes, ah yes, cruel to
me! But don't ask how, and we'll see if you are man enough to keep a
real woman's real secret! And first, promise me not to put up at that
house which the General and Lieutenant Ferry--"

"Lieutenant Ferry is not sending me to any house."

"Pardon me, I know better. This is his scheme." She laid her free hand
on our two. "Tell me you will not go to that house!"

I attempted an evasion. "Oh--a blanket on the ground--face covered up in
it from the mosquitos--is really--"

"Right!" She laughed. "I wish a woman could choose that way. Oh! if
you'll do that I'll go with you and stand guard over you!"

Dolt that I was, I would have drawn her close, but she put me off with
an outstretched arm and forbidden smile. "No!--No! this is a matter of
life and death."

I stepped back, heaving. "Who and what are you? Who and what are you?"

"Why, who and what should I be?"

"Charlotte Oliver!"

"Hmm; Charlotte Oliver. Are you sure you have the name just right?"

"Why haven't I got it right?"

"Oh, I don't doubt you have; though I didn't know but it might be
Charlie Toliver or something."

I dilated. "Who told--did Ned Ferry tell you that story?"

"He did. Or, to be accurate, Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. My dear Richard,
we cannot be witty and remain un-talked-about."

"I--I believe it yet! You are Charlotte Oliver!"

She became frigid. "Do you know who and what Charlotte Oliver is?--No?
Well, to begin with, she's a married woman--but pshaw! you believe
nothing till it's proved. If I tell you who and what I am will you do
what I've asked you; will you promise not to stop at Lucius Oliver's
house?" She softly reached for my hand and pressed and stroked it.
"Don't stop there, dear. Oh, say you will not!"

"Is it so dangerous?"

"General Austin believes it is. You're being used to bait a trap,
Richard."

I laughed a gay disdain. "Who is Lucius; is he Charlotte's husband?"

The reply came slowly. "No; her husband is quite another man; this
man's wife has been dead for years. No, Charlotte Oliver lives
in--hark!"

The sound we had heard was only some stir of nature in her sleep. "I
must go," I said.

"Oh, no, no! I cannot let you!" She clutched the hand she had been
stroking.

"Coralie! Coralie Rothvelt!"--my cry was an honest one--"you tempt me
beyond human endurance."

She threw my hand from her. "I know I do! I'm so unworthy to do it that
I wouldn't have believed I could. You thought I was Charlotte
Oliver--Heavens! boy, if you should breathe the atmosphere Charlotte
Oliver has to live in! But understand again, for your soul's comfort,
you haven't tempted me. Go, if you must; go, take your chances; and if
you're spared ever to see your dear, dear little mother--"

"My mother! Do you know my mother?"

"Tell her I tried to keep my promise to her."

"You promised her--what did you promise her?"

"Only to take care of you whenever I had the chance. Go, now, you must!"

"And was care for me your only motive in--"

"No; no, Richard, I wanted, and I still want, you to take care of me!
But go, now, go! at once or not at all! Good-bye!" She laughed and
fluttered away. I sprang upon my horse and sped into the forest.

Another mile, another half; then my horror and dismay broke into gesture
and speech, and over and over I reviled myself as a fool, a traitorous
fool, to be fooled into confession of my errand! I moaned with physical
pain; every fatigue of the long day now levied payment, and my back,
knees, shoulders, ached cruelly. But my heart ached most, and I bowed in
the saddle and cried--

"What have I done, oh, what have I done? My secret! my general's, my
country's secret! That woman has got it--bought it with flatteries and
lies! She has drawn it from my befouled soul like a charge from a gun!"

For a moment I quite forgot how evident it was that she had gathered
earlier inklings of it from some one else. Suddenly my thought was of
something far more startling. It stopped my breath; I halted; I held my
temples; I stared. What would she do with a secret she had taken such
hazards to extort? Ah! she'd carry it straight to market--why not? She
would give it to the enemy! Before my closed eyes came a vision of the
issue--disaster to our arms; bleeding, maiming, death, and widows' and
orphans' tears.

"My God! she shall not!" I cried, and whirled about and galloped back.

At the edge of the wood, where we had parted, I tied my horse, and crept
along the moonlight shadows of the melon-patch to the stable. The door
was ajar. In the interior gloom I passed my hands over the necks and
heads of what I recognized to be the pair of small mules I had seen at
Gallatin. Near a third stall were pegs for saddle and bridle, but they
were empty. So was the stall; the mare was gone.

"Gone to the Yankees at Fayette!" I moaned, and hurried back to my
horse. To attempt to overtake one within those few miles would only make
failure complete, and I scurried once more into the north with such a
burden of alarm and anguish as I had never before known.



XVIII


THE JAYHAWKERS

IT was well that I was on the Federal captain's horse. He knew this sort
of work and could do it quicker and more quietly than mine. Mine would
have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it. Another
advantage was the moon, and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I
saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge
of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins.
Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young
white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to
startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the
rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay
ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw--for
the excited dogs had pushed the door open--that two of the men were
white, though but one wore shoes. On him the light fell revealingly as
he and the yellow girl before him passed each other in the dance and
faced again. He was decidedly blond. The other man, though silhouetted
against the glare of burning pine-knots, I knew to be white by the
flapping of his lank locks about his cheeks as he lent his eyes to the
improvisation of his steps. His partner was a young black girl. I
burned with scorn, and doubtless showed it, although I only asked whose
plantation this was.

"This-yeh pla-ace?" The rustic dragged his words lazily, chewed tobacco
with his whole face, and looked my uniform over from cap to spur. "They
say this-yeh place belong to a man which his name Lu-ucius Ol-i-veh."

So! I honestly wished myself back in my old rags, until I reflected that
my handsome mount was enough to get me all the damage these wretches
could offer. Still I thought it safest to show an overbearing frown.

"To what command do you fellows belong?"

He spurted a pint to reply, "Fishe's batt'ry."

"Oh! And where is the battery?"

"You sa-ay 'Whah is it?'--ow batt'ry"--he champed noisily--"I dunno.
Does you? Whah is it?"

"It's twenty miles off; why are you not with it? What are you doing
here?"

"You sa-ay 'What we a-doin' hyuh?' Well, suh, I mought sa-ay we ain't
a-doin' nuth'n'; but I"--he squirted again--"_will_ sa-ay that so fah as
you _see_ what we a-doin', you _kin_ see, an' welcome; an' so fah as you
don't see, it ain't none o' yo' damn' busi-ness."

"Oh, that's all right, I was only asking a friendly question."

"Yaas; well, that's all right, too, suh; I uz on'y a-givin' you a
frien'ly aynsweh. I hope you like it."

Our intercourse became more amiable and the fellow dragged in his advice
that I spend the rest of the night at the house of Mr. Oliver. His
acquaintance with that gentleman seemed to grow while we talked, and
broke into bloom like a magician's rosebush. He described him as a kind
old bird who made hospitality to strangers his meat and drink. A
conjecture darted into my mind. "Why, yes! that is his married son, is
he not, yonder in the cabin; the one with the fair hair?"

"Who?--eh,--ole man Ol-i-veh? You sa--ay 'Is that his ma'-ied son, in
yondeh; the one 'ith the fah hah? '--Eh,--no--o, suh,--eh,--yass,
suh,--yass! Oh, yass, suh, thass his--tha'--thass his ma'ied son, in
thah; yass, suh, the one 'ith the fah hah; yass, suh. I thought you
meant the yetheh one."

"I don't believe," said I, "I'd better put myself on the old gentleman
when the mistress of the house is away."

"_She_ ain't awa-ay."

"Is she not! Isn't she the Mrs. Oliver--Charlotte Oliver--who is such
friends--she and her husband, I mean, of course,--"

"_Uv_ co'se!" The reptile giggled, squirted and nodded.

"--With General Austin," I continued, "--and with Lieutenant Ferry?"

"She air!" He was pleased. "Yass, we all good frien's togetheh."

"But if she--oh, yes!--Yes, to be sure; she could easily have got here
yesterday afternoon."

"Thass thess when she arrove!" It was fascinating to watch the animal's
cunning play across his face. The fiddle's tune changed and the dance
quickened.

"I naturally thought," resumed I, with a smile meant to refer to the
blond dancer, "that the madam _must_ be away somewhere."

My hearer grinned. "Oh, that ain't no sign. Boys will be boys. You know
that, yo'se'f. An' o' co'se she know it. Oh, yass, she at home."

"Well, I reckon I'll stop all night." I began to move on. His eyes
followed greedily.

"Sa-ay! I'll wrastle you fo' them-ah clo'es."

I waved a pleasant refusal and rode toward the house.



XIX


ASLEEP IN THE DEATH-TRAP

The dwelling was entirely dark. I came close in the bright moonlight and
hallooed. At my second hail the door came a small way open, and after a
brief parley a man's voice bade me put up my horse and come in. The
stable was a few steps to the right and rear. Returning, I took care to
notice the form of the house: a hall from front to rear; one front and
one rear room on each side of it; above the whole a low attic, probably
occupied by the slave housemaids.

I was met in the bare unpainted hall by a dropsical man of nearly sixty,
holding a dim candle, a wax-myrtle dip wrapped on a corncob. He had a
retreating chin, a throat-latch beard and a roving eye; stepped with one
foot and slid with the other, spoke in a dejected voice, and had very
poor use of his right hand. I followed him to the rear corner chamber,
the one nearest the stable, feeling that, poor as the choice was, I
should rather have him for my robber and murderer than those villains
down at the quarters. I detained him in conversation while I drew off my
boots and threw my jacket upon the back of a chair in such a way as to
let my despatch be seen. The toss was a lucky one; the document, sealed
with red wax, stuck out arrogantly from an inside pocket. Then, asking
lively questions the while as if to conceal a blunder and its
correction, I moved quickly between him and it and slipped the missive
under a pillow of the fourpost bedstead.

He was not wordy, and he tarried but a moment, yet he explained his
paralysis. In the dreary monotone of a chronic sour temper he related
that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing
horses, and their officer, on being called by him "no gentleman," had
struck him behind the ear with the butt of a carbine. I asked what
punishment the officer received, and I noticed the plural pronoun as he
icily replied, "We didn't enter any complaint."

I said with genuine warmth that if he would give me that man's
name--etc.

He waited on the threshold with his dropsical back to me for my last
word, and then, still in the same attitude, droned, "O-oh, he's dead.
And anyhow," he finished out of sight in the hall, "that's not our way."

I sat on the edge of the bed, in the moonlight, wishing I knew what
their way was. I considered my small stock of facts. The one that
appalled me most was the inward guilt which I brought with me to this
ordeal. I wanted to say my childhood prayers and I could not. For I
could not repent; at least the _emotion_ of repentance would not come.
Moreover, every now and then there leapt across this blackness of guilt
a forked lightning of fright, as I realized that I could no more plan
than I could pray. No doubt Coralie Rothvelt, by this time in Fayette,
was telling some Federal commander that a certain Confederate courier,
now asleep at the house of Lucius Oliver, had let slip to her the fact
that his despatches were written to be captured, and that, read with
that knowledge, they would be of guiding value. What mine host himself
might have in view for me I could not guess, but most likely those three
rapscallions down at the quarters were already plotting my murder. So
now for a counterplot--alas! the counterplot would not unfold for me!

I rallied all my wits. Here was an open window. Through it the moonlight
poured in upon the lower half of the bed. If I should lie with my eyes
in the shadow of the headboard no one entering by the door opposite
could see that I was looking. Good! but what to do when the time should
come--ah me!--and "Oh, God!" and "Oh, God!" again. Ought I, now, to let
the enemy get the despatch, or must I not rather keep it from him at
whatever risk of death or disgrace? Ah! if I might only fight, and let
the outcome decide for me! And why not? Yes, I would fight! And oh! how
I would fight! If by fighting too well I should keep the despatch, why,
that, as matters now stood, was likely to be the very best for my
country's cause. On the other hand, should I fight till I fell dead or
senseless and only then lose it, surely then it would be counted genuine
and retain all its value to mislead. Oh, yes,--I could contrive nothing
better--I would fight!

I drew the counterpane aside, lay down under it revolver in hand, and
then, for the first time since I had put on the glorious gray, found I
could not face the thought of death. I grew steadily, penetratingly,
excruciatingly cold, and presently--to the singular satisfaction of my
conscience--began to shake from head to foot with a nervous chill. It
was agonizing, but it was so much better than the spiritual chill of
which it took the place! I felt as though I should never be warm again.
Yet the attack slowly passed away, and with my finger once more close to
the trigger, I lay trying to use my brain, when, without prayer or plan,
I solved the riddle, what I should do, by doing the only thing I knew I
ought not to do. I slept.



XX


CHARLOTTE OLIVER

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. Against the outer edge of the sill an unseen hand was
moving a forked stick to and fro. The tip of one of its tines was slit,
in the slit was a white paper, and in the fork hung the bridle of my
horse. I glided to the window. But there bethinking me how many a man
had put his head out at just such a place and never got it back, I made
a long sidewise reach, secured the paper, and read it.

It was the envelope which had contained Coralie Rothvelt's pass. Its
four flaps were spread open, and on the inside was scrawled in a large
black writing the following:

_Yankees gone, completely fooled. Do not stir till day, then ride for
your life. We're not thwarting Lieutenant Ferry's plan, we're only
improving upon it. When you report to him don't let blame fall upon the
father and son whose roof this night saves you from a bloody death. Do
this for the sake of her who is risking her life to save yours. We serve
one cause; be wary--be brave--be true_.

I stood equally amazed and alert. The voices still growled in the next
room, and my horse's bridle still hung before the window. I peered out;
there stood the priceless beast. I came a sly step nearer, and lo! in
his shadow, flattened against the house, face outward, was Coralie
Rothvelt comically holding the forked stick at a present-arms.
Throbbing with a grateful, craving allegiance, I seized the rein. Then I
bent low out the window and with my free hand touched her face as it
turned upward into a beam of moonlight. She pressed my fingers to her
lips, and then let me draw her hand as far as it could come and cover it
with kisses. Then she drew me down and whispered "You'll do what
I've asked?"

When I said I would try she looked distressfully unassured and I added
"I'll do whatever risks no life but mine."

Her face spoke passionate thanks. "That's all I can ask!" she said,
whispered "When you go--_keep the plain road,"_--and vanished.

I sat by the window, capped, booted, belted, my bridle in one hand,
revolver in the other. In all the house, now, there was no sound, and
without there was a stillness only more vast. I could not tell whether
certain sensations in my ear were given by insects in the grass and
trees or merely by my overwrought nerves and tired neck. The moon sailed
high, the air was at last comfortably cool, my horse stood and slept. I
thought it must be half-past two.

"Now it must be three." Miss Rothvelt's writing lay in my bosom beside
my despatch. At each half-hour I re-read it. At three-and-a-half I
happened to glance at the original superscription. A thought flashed
upon me. I stared at her name, and began to mark off its letters one by
one and to arrange them in a new order. I took C from Coralie and h from
Rothvelt; after them I wrote a from Coralie and r from Rothvelt, l and o
from Coralie and two t's and an e from Rothvelt, and behold, Charlotte!
while the remaining letters gave me Oliver.

Ah! where had my wits been? Yet without a suspicion that she was
Charlotte Oliver one might have let the anagram go unsuspected for a
lifetime. Evidently it concealed nothing from General Austin or Ned
Ferry; most likely it was only the name she used in passing through the
lines. At any rate I was convinced she was a good Confederate, and my
heart rose.

But why, then, this ardent zeal to save the necks of the two traitors
"whose roof this night--" etc.? Manifestly she was moved by passion, not
duty; love drove her on; but surely not love for them. "No," I guessed
in a reverent whisper, "but love for Ned Ferry." It must have been
through grace of some of her nobility and his, caught in my heart even
before I was quite sure of it in theirs, that I sat and framed the
following theory: Ned Ferry, loving Charlotte Oliver, yet coerced by his
sense of a soldier's duty, had put passion's dictates wholly aside and
had set about to bring these murderers to justice; doing this though he
knew that she could never with honor or happiness to either of them
become the wife of a man who had made her a widow, while she, aware of
his love, a love so true that he would not breathe it to her while this
hideous marriage held her, had ridden perilously in the dead of night to
circumvent his plans if, with honor to both of them, it could be done.

The half-hour dragged round to four. My horse roused up but kept as
quiet as a clever dog. I heard a light sound in the hall; first a step
and then a slide, then a step again and then a slide; Lucius Oliver was
coming toward my door. The cords gathered in my throat and my finger
stole to the trigger; Heaven only knew what noiseless feet might be
following behind that loathsome shuffle. It reached the door and was
still. And now the door opened, softly, slowly, and the paralytic stood
looking in. The moonlight had swung almost out of the room, but a band
of it fell glittering upon the revolver lying in my lap with my fingers
on it, each exactly in place. Also it lighted my other hand, on the
window-sill, with the bridle in it. Old Lucius was alone. In the gloom I
could not see his venom gathering, but I could almost smell it.



XXI


THE FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE

"Good-morning," I murmured.

"Good-morning," he responded, tardily and grimly. "Well, you _air_ in a
hurry."

"Not at all, sir. I'm sorry to seem so; it's not the tip-top of
courtesy,--"

"No, it ain't too stinkin' polite."

"True; but neither are the enemy, and they're early risers, you know."

"Well, good Lord! don't hang back for my sake!"

I put on an offended esteem. "My dear sir, you've no call to take
offence at me. I'm waiting because my business is too--well, if I must
explain, it's--it's too important to be risked except by good safe
daylight; that's all."

[Illustration: "Well, you _air_ in a hurry!"]

Oh, he wasn't taking offence. His reptile temper crawled into hiding,
and when I said day was breaking, he said he would show me my way.

"Why, I keep the plain road, don't I?"

No, he would not; only wagons went that way, to cross the creek by a
small bridge. I could cut off nearly two miles by taking the bridle-path
that turned sharply down into the thick woods of the creek-bottom about
a quarter of a mile from the house and crossed the stream at a sandy
ford. "Ride round," he said, "and I'll show you from the front of
the house."

Thence he pointed out a distant sycamore looming high against the soft
dawn. There was the fence-corner at which the bridle-path left the road.
He icily declined pay for my lodging. "We never charge a Confederate
soldier for anything; that's not our way."

Day came swiftly. By the time I could trot down to the sycamore it was
perfectly light even in the shade of an old cotton-gin house close
inside the corner of the small field around which I was to turn. The
vast arms of its horse-power press, spreading rigidly downward, offered
the only weird aspect that lingered in the lovely morning. I have a
later and shuddering memory of it, but now the dewy air was full of
sweet odors, the squirrel barked from the woods, the woodpecker tapped,
and the lark, the cardinal and the mocking-bird were singing all around.
The lint-box of the old cotton-press was covered with wet
morning-glories. I took the bridle-path between the woods and the field
and very soon was down in the dense forest beyond them. But the moment
I was hid from house and clearing I turned my horse square to the left,
stooped to his neck, and made straight through the pathless tangle.

Silence was silver this time, speed was golden. But every step met its
obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers,
brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held
dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath,
footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait
were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road by that way as
soon as they found I was flanking them. And so I strove on at the best
speed I could make, and burst into the road with a crackle and crash
that might have been heard a hundred yards away. One glance up the
embowered alley, one glance down it, and I whirled to the right, drove
in the spur, and flew for the bridge. A wild minute so--a turn in the
road--no one in sight! Two minutes--another turn--no one yet!
Three--three--another turn--no one in front, no one behind--

The thunder of our own hoofs
  Was all the sound we heard.

A fourth turn and no one yet! A fifth--more abrupt than the others--and
there--here--yonder now behind--was the path I had feared, but no one
was in it, and the next instant the bridge flashed into view. With a
great clatter I burst upon it, reached the middle, glanced back, and
dropped complacently into a trot. Tame ending if--but as I looked
forward again, what did I see? A mounted man. At the other end of the
bridge, in the shade of overhanging trees, he moved into view, and well
I knew the neat fit of that butternut homespun. He flourished a revolver
above his head and in a drunken voice bade me halt.

I halted; not making a point of valor or discretion, but because he was
Charlotte Oliver's husband. I read his purpose and listened behind me as
we parleyed. "Don't halt me, sir, I'm a courier and in a hurry."

He hiccoughed. "Let's--s'--see y' orders."

I took my weapon into my bridle-hand by the barrel and began to draw
from my bosom the empty envelope addressed Coralie Rothvelt. At the same
time I let my horse move forward again, while I still listened backward
with my brain as busy as a mill. Was there here no hidden succor? Was
that no part of Ned Ferry's plan--if the plan was his? Were those
villains waiting yet, up at the ford? I could hear nothing at my back
but the singing of innumerable birds.

"Halt!" the drunkard growled again, and again I halted, wearing a look
of timid awe, but as full of guile as a weasel. I reined in abruptly so
as to make the reach between us the fullest length of my outstretched
arm with the paper in two fingers as I leaned over the saddle-bow. He
bent and reached unsteadily, and took the envelope; but hardly could his
eye light upon the superscription before it met the muzzle of my weapon.

"Don't move." My tone was affectionate. "Don't holla, or I'll give you
to the crows. Back. Back off this bridge--quick! or I'll--" I pushed
the pistol nearer; the danger was no less to him because I was
thoroughly frightened. He backed; but he glared a devilish elation, for
behind me beat the hoofs of both his horsemen. I had to change
my tactics.

"Halt! Turn as I turn, and keep your eye on _this."_

Glad was I then to be on a true cavalryman's horse that answered the
closing of my left leg and moved steadily around till I could see down
the bridge. Oliver, after a step or two, stopped. "Turn!" I yelled, and
swelled. "One, two,--"

He turned. There was not a second to spare. The two long-haired fellows
came nip and tuck. I see yet their long deer-hunters' rifles. But I
remembered my pledge to this man's wife, and proudly found I had the
nerve to hold the trigger still unpressed when at the apron of the
bridge the rascals caught their first full sight of us as we sat
humpshouldered, eye to eye, like one gray tomcat and one yellow one.
They dragged their horses back upon their haunches. One leaped to the
ground, the other aimed from the saddle; but the first shot that woke
the echoes was neither theirs nor mine, but Sergeant Jim Langley's,
though that, of course, I did not know. It came from a tree on our side
of the water, some forty yards downstream. The man in the saddle fired
wild, and as his horse wheeled and ran, the rider slowly toppled over
backward out of saddle and stirrups and went slamming to the ground.

His companion had no time to fire. Instantly after these two shots came
a third, and some willows upstream filled with its white smoke. The
second long rifle fell upon the bridge and its owner sank to his knees
heaving out long cries of agony that swelled in a tremor of echoes up
and down the stream. Another voice, stalwart, elated, cut through it
like a sword. "Don't shoot, Smith, we're coming; save that hound for
the halter!"

The groans of the wounded man closed in behind it, a flood of agony, and
my own outcry increased the din as I called "Come quick, come quick! the
wounded fellow's remounting!"

The wretch had lifted himself to his feet by a stirrup. Then, giving
out, he had sunk prone, and now, still torturing the air with his horrid
cries, was crawling for his rifle. Oliver saw I had a new inspiration.
All the drunkenness left his eyes and they became the eyes of a snake,
but too quickly for him to guess my purpose I turned my weapon from his
face and fired. His revolver flew from his bleeding hand, a stream of
curses started from his lips, and as I thrust my pistol into his face
again and snatched his bridle he screamed to the crawling woodman
"Shoot! shoot! Kill one or the other of us! Oh! shoot! shoot!"

The rifle cracked, but its ball sang over us; a shot answered it behind
me; the howling man's voice died in a gurgle, and Sergeant Jim ran by
me, leaped upon the horse that had stayed beside his fallen rider, and
was off hot-footed after the other. "Turn your prisoner over to Kendall,
Smith," he cried, "and put out like hell for Clifton!"

I gave no assent, and I believe Oliver guessed my purpose to save him,
though his eyes were as venomous as ever. I flirted the rein off his
horse's neck and said, savagely "Come! quick! trot! gallop!" The
sergeant's young companion of the morning before dashed out of the
bushes on his horse with Jim's horse in lead. "I've got him safe,
Kendall," I cried, and my captive and I sped by him at a gallop on our
way to Ned Ferry's command.



XXII


WE SPEED A PARTING GUEST

Rising to higher ground, we turned into the Natchez, and Port Gibson
road where a farm-house and country "store" constituted Clifton. Still
at a gallop we left these behind and entered a broad lane between fields
of tasselling corn, where we saw a gallant sight. In the early sunlight
and in the pink dust of their own feet, down the red clay road at an
easy trot in column by fours, the blue-gray of their dress flashing with
the glint of the carbines at their backs, came Ferry's scouts with Ned
Ferry at their head. There was his beautiful brown horse under him, too.
My captive and I dropped to a walk, the column did the same, and Ferry
trotted forward, beckoning us to halt. His face showed triumph and
commendation, but no joy. Oliver answered his scrutiny with a blaze
of defiance.

"Good-morning, Smith, who is your prisoner?"

"His name is Oliver."

Ferry looked behind to the halted column. "Lieutenant Quinn, send two
men to guard this one. Smith, where's Sergeant Langley; where's Kendall?
Kendall?"

While I told of the scrimmage, the guard relieved me of Oliver, and as I
finished, three men galloped up and reined in. "All right," said
one, saluting.

"South?" asked our leader.

"Before day," replied the new-comer, glowing with elation, and I grasped
the fact that the enemy had taken our bait and I had not betrayed my
country. The three men went to the column, and Ferry, looking up from
the despatch which I had delivered to him, said--

"Of course no one has seen this despatch, eh?--Oh!"--a smile--"yes?
who?"

"Two Federal officers."

"Two--what?" His smile broadened. "You _know_ that?"

"I saw them, Lieutenant, looking in at the door to see the despatch put
back under my pillow. Yes, sir, by the same hand that had shown it
to them."

"Whose hand was it; that fellow's, yonder?" Oliver was several paces
away.

"No, Lieutenant, I don't believe he had anything to do with it; and I've
no absolute proof, either, that he was at the bridge to rob or kill me.
I threatened his life first, sir. At any rate that hand under my pillow
was neither his nor his father's."

"But they were present, eh?"

"They were neither of them present, Lieutenant; that hand was Miss
Coralie Rothvelt's."

"Oh, no!" he murmured, "that cannot be!" "I saw her face, Lieutenant,
nearer to mine than yours is now. But she did it to help us--oh, but I
know that, sir! She came under my window and told me she had done it!
She told me to tell you she hadn't thwarted your plan, but only improved
on it, and I believe--Lieutenant, if you will hear me patiently through
a confession which--" I choked with emotion.

He lighted up with happy relief. "No, you need not make it. And you need
not turn so pale." Whereat I turned red. "She saw the despatch was a
trap for the Yankees, and used it so, you think? Ah, yes, Smith, I see
it all, now; she pumped you dry."

I could not speak, I shook my head, and for evidence in rebuttal I
showed in my eyes two fountains of standing tears.

"How, then, did she know?"

"Lieutenant, she guessed! She must have just put two and two together
and guessed! Or else, Lieutenant,--"

"She must have pumped others before she pumped you, eh?" There was
confession in his good humor. "But tell me; did she not see also this
other trap, for this man and his father, and try to save them out of
it?--oh, if you don't want--never mind." He laid a leg over the front of
his saddle and sat thinking. So I see him to-day: his chestnut locks,
his goodly limbs and shoulders, the graceful boots, cut-away jacket,
faded sash, straight sword, and that look of care on his features which
intensified the charm of their spiritual cleanness; behind him his band
of picked heroes, and for background the June sky. Whenever I smell
dewy corn-fields smitten with the sun that picture comes back to me.

"No," he said again, "you need not tell me." By a placid light in his
face I saw he understood. He drew his watch, put it back, thought on,
and smiled at my uniform. "It has not the blue of the others," he said,
"but indeed they are not all alike, and it will match the most of
them--after a rain or two--and some dust. You have been trading horses?"

I explained. While doing so I saw one of the guard reaching the
prisoner's bridle to the other. Hah! Oliver had slapped the bridle free.
In went his spurs! By a great buffet on the horse's neck he wheeled him,
and with the rein dangling under the bits went over the fence like a
deer. "Bang! bang! bang!"

It was idle; a magic seems to shield a captive's leap for life. Away
across the corn he went to the edge of a tangled wood, over the fence
there again, and into the brush. "Halt! bang!" and "Halt! bang!" it was,
at every bound, but now the pursuers came back empty-handed, some
contemptuously silent, some laughing. Ferry glanced again at the time,
and I was having within me a quarrel with him for his indifference at
the prisoner's escape, when with cold severity he asked--

"Why did you not fire?"

I flushed with indignation, and my eye retorted to his that I had only
followed his example. His answer was a smile. "You, also, have been
guessing, eh?" he said, and when I glowed with gratitude he added,

"Never mind, we must have a long talk. At present there is a verbal
message for me; what is it?"

"Verbal message? No, Lieutenant, she didn't--oh!--from the General! Yes!
the General says--'Rodney.'"

He turned and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, "Left
into line wheel--march!" chanted our second in command.
"Backwards--march!" and then "Right dress!" and the line, that had been
a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning
sun in their faces. Then Ferry called "Fours from the right, to march to
the left--march!" and he and Quinn passed up the middle of the road
along the front of the line, with yours truly close at their heels,
while behind us the command broke into column again by fours from the
right and set the pink dust afloat as they followed back northward over
their own tracks with Sergeant Jim beside the first four as squadron
right guide. I had got where I was by some mistake which I did not know
how to correct,--I was no drill-master's pride,--and there was much
suppressed amusement at my expense along the front as we rode down it.
At every few steps until the whole line was a column Ned Ferry dropped
some word of cheer, and each time there would come back an equally quiet
and hearty reply. Near the middle he said "Brisk work ahead of us
to-day, boys," and I heard the reiteration of his words run among the
ranks. I also heard one man bid another warm some milk for the baby.
Trotting by a grove where the company had passed the night, we presently
took the walk to break by twos, and as we resumed the trot and turned
westward into a by-road, Lieutenant Quinn dropped back to the column and
sent me forward to the side of Ned Ferry. I went with cold shivers.

[Illustration: With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the
fence like a deer.]



XXIII


FERRY TALKS OF CHARLOTTE

"You have no carbine," said my commander. "And you have but one
revolver; here is another."

I knew it at a glance. "It's Oliver's," I said.

"We'll call it yours now," he replied. "Kendall picked it up, but he has
no need of it."

I remarked irrelevantly that I had not noticed when Sergeant Jim and
Kendall rejoined us, but Ferry stuck to the subject of the captured
weapon. "Take it," he insisted; "if you are not fully armed you will
find yourself holding horses every time we dismount to fight. And now,
Smith, I shall not report to the General this matter of the Olivers; you
shall tell him the whole of it, yourself; you are my scout, but you are
his courier."

"Lieutenant, I--I wish I knew the whole of it."

"Tell him all you know."

"Even things _she_ doesn't want told?"

"Ah!"--he gave a Creole shrug--"that you must decide, on the honor of a
good soldier. She has taken you into her confidence?"

"Only into her service," I said, but he raised his brows. "That is
more; certainly you are honored. What is it you would rather not tell
the General and yet you must; do I know that already?"

"Yes, for one thing, I've got to tell him that old Lucius Oliver can't
be hung too high or too soon. For months he has been--"

Ferry showed pain. "I know; save that for the General. And what else?"

"Why, the other one--the son. Lieutenant, is she that monster's wife?"

Ferry stroked his horse's neck and said very softly, "She is his wife."
I had to wait long for him to say more, but at length, with the same
measured mildness, he spoke on. This amazing Charlotte, bereft of
father, brother and mother, ward of a light-headed married sister, and
in these distracted times lacking any friend with the courage, wisdom
and kind activity to probe the pretensions of her suitor, had been
literally snared into marriage by this human spider, this Oliver, a man
of just the measure to simulate with cunning and patient labor the
character, bearing and antecedents of a true and exceptional gentleman
for the sake of devouring a glorious woman.

"But, eh!" I exclaimed, "how could ever such as she mistake him for--"

"Ah, he is, I doubt not, but the burnt-out ruin of what he was half a
year ago. You perceive, he has not succeeded; he has not devoured her;
actually she has turned his fangs upon himself and has defeated his
designs toward her as if by magic. And yet the only magic has been her
vigilance, her courage, her sagacity. Smith,"--again he stroked the
mane of his charger--"if I tell you--"

I gave him no pledge but a look.

"Since the hour of her marriage she has never gone into her chamber
without locking the door; she has never come out of it unarmed."

I remarked that had I been in her place I should either have sunk into
the mire, so to speak, or thrown myself, literally, into the river.

"Yes," he responded, "but not she! Her life is still hers; she will
neither give it away nor throw it away. She wants it, and she wants
it whole."

"Did she say that to you?"

He looked at me in wide surprise. "Ah! could you think she would speak
with me on that subject? No, I have learned what I know from a man we
shall meet to-day; the brother of Major Harper; and he, he has it
from--" my companion smiled--"somebody you have known a pretty long
time, I think, eh?"

"I see; I see; you mean my mother!"

He let me ponder the fact a long time. "Lieutenant," I asked at length,
"did you know your plot against the two Olivers would cross her wishes?"

"Ah!" was his quick response, "it crossed mine, like-wise. But, you
know, this life we have to live, it is never for two people only."

"No," I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, "no two persons, and
above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or
even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third
person,--"

"Hoh!" interrupted Ferry, in the manner of one to whom the fact was
somehow of the most immediate and lively practical interest, "and to
consider a thousand is better." Then, after a pause, "Yes," he said, "I
know she could not like that move, but you remember our talk of
yesterday, where we first met?"

Indeed I did. Between young men, to whom the principles of living were
still unproved weapons, there was, to my taste, just one sort of talk
better than table-talk, and that was saddle-talk; I remembered vividly.

"You mean when we were saying that on whatever road a man's journey
lies, if he will, first of all, stick to that road, and then every time
it divides take the--I see! you came to where the road divided!"

"Yes, and of course I had to take the upper fork. I am glad you said
that yesterday morning; it came as sometimes the artillery, eh?--just at
the right moment."

"I didn't say it, Lieutenant; you said it."

"No, I think you said it;--sounds like you."

"It was you who said it! and anyhow, it was you who had the strength to
do it!"

He laughed. "Oh!--a little strength, a little
vanity,--pride--self-love--we have to use them all--as a good politician
uses men."

I looked him squarely in the eyes and began to burn. At every new
unfolding of his confidence I had let my own vanity, pride, self-love be
more and more flattered, and here at length was getting ready to esteem
him less for showing such lack of reserve as to use _me_ as an
escape-valve for his pent-up thoughts, when all at once I fancied I saw
what he was trying to do. I believed he had guessed my temptations of
the night and was making use of himself to warn me how to fight them. "I
understand," said I, humbly.

But this only pleasantly mystified him. He glanced all over me with a
playful eye and said, "You must have a carbine the first time our
ordnance-wagon finds us. Drop back, now, into the ranks."

I did so; but I felt sure I should ride beside him again as soon as he
could make an opportunity; for it was plain that by a subtle unconfessed
accord he and _she_ had chosen me to be a true friend between them.

About noon, while taking a brief rest to give our horses a bite, we were
joined by an ambulance carrying Major Harper's brother and some freight
which certainly was not hospital stores. When we remounted, this vehicle
moved on with us, in the middle of the column, and I was called to ride
beside it and tell all about the arrival of Miss Harper and her nieces
at Hazlehurst, and their journey from Brookhaven to camp. Ned Ferry rode
on the side opposite me and I noticed that all the fellows nearest the
ambulance were choice men; Sergeant Jim was not there, but Kendall was
one, and a young chap on a large white-footed pacer was another. Having
finished my task I had gathered my horse to fall back to my place at the
rear, when my distinguished auditor said, "I'm acquainted with your
mother, you know."

He was not so handsome as his brother, though younger. His affability
came by gleams. I asked how that good fortune had come to my mother, and
he replied that there was hardly time now for another story; we might
be interrupted--by the Yankees. "Ask the young lady you met yesterday
evening," he added, with a knowing gleam, and smiled me away; and when
by and by the enemy did interrupt, I had forgiven him. Whoever failed to
answer my questions, in those days, incurred my forgiveness.



XXIV


A MILLION AND A HALF

About mid-afternoon I awoke from deep sleep on a bed of sand in the
roasting shade of a cottonwood jungle. A corporal was shaking me and
whispering "Make no noise; mount and fall in."

Round about in the stifling thicket a score of men were doing so.
Lieutenant Quinn stood by, and at his side Sergeant Jim seemed to have
just come among us. The place was pathless; only in two directions could
one see farther than a few yards. Through one narrow opening came an
intolerable glare of sunlight from a broad sheet of gliding water, while
by another break in the motionless foliage could be seen in milder
light, filling nearly the whole northern view, the tawny flood of the
Mississippi. A stretch of the farther shore was open fields lying very
low and hidden by a levee.

As we noiselessly fell into line, counting off in a whisper and rubbing
from ourselves and our tortured horses the flies we were forbidden to
slap, I noticed rising from close under that farther levee and some two
miles upstream, a small cloud of dust coming rapidly down the hidden
levee road. It seemed to be raised entirely by one or two vehicles.
Behind us our own main shore was wholly concealed by this mass of
cottonwoods on the sands between it and the stream, on a spit of which
we stood ambushed. On the water, a hundred and fifty yards or so from
the jungle, pointed obliquely across the vast current, was a large skiff
with six men in it. Four were rowing with all their power, a fifth sat
in the bow and the other in the stern. Quinn, in the saddle, watched
through his glass the cottonwoods from which the skiff had emerged at
the bottom of a sheltered bay. Now he shifted his gaze to the little
whirl of dust across the river, and now he turned to smile at Jim, but
his eye lighted on me instead. I risked a knowing look and motioned with
my lips, "Just in time!"

"No," he murmured, "they're late; we've been waiting for them."

The sergeant's low order broke the platoon into column by file, Quinn
rode toward its head with his blade drawn, and as he passed me he handed
me his glass. "Here, you with no carbine, stay and watch that boat till
I send for you. If there's firing, look sharp to see if any one there is
hit, and who, and how hard. Watch the boat, nothing else."

He moved straight landward through the cottonwoods, followed by the men
in single file, but halted them while the rear was still discernible in
the green tangle. Presently they unslung carbines, and I distinctly
heard galloping. It was not far beyond the cottonwoods. The Yankees were
after us. Suddenly it ceased. Over yonder, shoreward in the thicket,
came a sharp command and then a second, and then, right on the front of
the jungle, at the water's edge, the shots began to puff and crack, and
the yellow river out here around the boat to spit!--spit!--in wicked
white splashes. Every second their number grew. Behind me Quinn and his
men stole away. But orders are orders and I had no choice but to watch
the boat. The man in the stern had his back to me, and no face among the
other five did I know. They were fast getting away, but the splashes
came thick and close and presently one ball found its mark. The man at
the stern hurriedly changed places with an oarsman; and as the relieved
rower took his new seat he turned slowly upon his face as if in mortal
pain, and I saw that the fresh hand at the oar was the brother of Major
Harper. Just as I made the discovery "Boom!" said my small dust-cloud
across the river, and "hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry--" like
a train on a trestle-work--"boom!"--a shell left its gray track in the
still air over the skiff and burst in the tops of the cottonwoods. The
green thicket grew pale with the bomb's white smoke, yet "crack! crack!"
and "spit! spit!" persisted the blue-coats' rifles. "Boom!" said again
the field-piece on yonder side the water. Its shell came rattling
through the air to burst on this side, out of the flashing and cracking
of rifles and the sulphurous bomb smoke arose cries of men getting
mangled, and I whimpered and gnawed my lips for joy, and I watched the
boat, but no second shot came aboard, and--"Boom!--hurry-hurry-hurry-
hurry"--ah! the frightful skill of it! A third shell tore the
cottonwoods, its smoke slowly broadened out, a Federal bugle beyond
the thicket sounded the Rally, and the cracking of carbines ceased.

Now Major Harper's brother passes a word to the man at the boat's bow,
whereupon this man springs up and a Confederate officer's braids flash
on his sleeve as he waves to the western shore to cease firing. I still
watch the boat, but I listen behind me. I hear voices of command, the
Federal sergeants hurrying the troop out of the jungle and back to their
horses. Then there comes a single voice, the commander's evidently; but
before it can cease it is swallowed up in a low thunder of hoofs and
then in a burst of cries and cheers which themselves the next moment are
drowned in a rattle of carbine and pistol shots--Ferry is down on them
out of hiding. Thick and silent above the din rises the dust of the
turmoil, and out of all the hubbub under it I can single out the voice
of the Federal captain yelling curses and orders at his panic-stricken
men. And now the mêlée rolls southward, the crackle of shots grows less
and then more again, and then all at once comes the crash of Quinn's
platoon out of ambush, their cheer, their charge, the crackle of pistols
again, and then another cheer and charge--what is that! Ferry re-formed
and down on them afresh? No, it was the hard-used but gallant foe
cutting their way out and getting off after all.

The skiff was touching the farther shore and the three oarsmen lifting
their stricken comrade out and bearing him to the top of the levee, when
Kendall came to recall me. On our way back he told me of the fight,
beginning with the results: none of our own men killed outright, but
four badly wounded and already started eastward in the ambulance left us
by the Major's brother; some others more slightly hurt. My questions
were headlong and his answers quiet; he was a slow-spoken daredevil; I
wish he came more than he does into this story.

Not slow-spoken did we find the command when we reached the road where
they were falling into line. After a brief but vain pursuit, here were
almost the haste and tumult of the onset; the sweat of it still reeked
on everyone; the ground was strewn with its wreckage and its brute and
human dead, and the pools of their blood were still warm. Squarely
across the middle of the road, begrimed with dust, and with a dead
Federal under him and another on top, lay the big white-footed pacer. At
one side the enemy's fallen wounded were being laid in the shade to be
left behind. In our ranks, here was a man with an arm in a bloody
handkerchief, there one with his head so bound, and yonder a young
fellow jesting wildly while he let his garments be cut and a flesh-wound
in his side be rudely stanched. Here there was laughter at one who had
been saved by his belt-buckle, and here at one who had dropped like dead
from his horse, but had caught another horse and charged on. But these
details imply a delay where in fact there was none; the moment Ferry
spied me he asked "Did he get across?" and while I answered he motioned
me into the line. Then he changed it into a column, commanded silence,
and led us across country eastward. For those few wounded who would not
give up their places in the ranks it was a weary ten miles that brought
us swiftly back to a point within five miles of that Clifton which we
had left in the morning. And yet a lovely ten miles it was, withal. You
would hardly have known this tousled crowd for the same dandy crew that
had smiled so flippantly upon me at sunrise, though they smiled as
flippantly now with faces powder-blackened, hair and eyelashes matted
and gummed with sweat and dust, and shoulders and thighs caked with
grime. Yet to Ned Ferry as well as to me--I saw it in his eye every time
he looked at them--these grimy fellows did more to beautify those ten
miles than did June woods beflowered and perfumed with magnolia, bay and
muscadine, or than slant sunlight in glade or grove.

In a stretch of timber where we broke ranks for a short rest, unbitting
but not unsaddling, a lot of fellows pressed me to tell them about the
boat on the river. "You heard what was in it, didn't you?" asked one
nearly as young as I.

"Besides the men? No. Same that was in the ambulance, I suppose; what
was it?"

"Don't you know? Oh, I remember, you were asleep when Quinn told us.
Well, sir,"--he tried to speak calmly but he had to speak somehow or
explode--"it was soldiers' pay--for Dick Taylor's army, over in the
Trans-Mississippi; a million and a half dollars!" He was as proud to
tell the news as he would have been to own the money.



XXV


A QUIET RIDE

Where Ferry's scouts camped that night I do not know, for we had gone
only two or three miles beyond our first momentary halting-place when
their leader left them to Quinn and sprang away southward over fence,
hedge, road, ditch--whatever lay across his bee-line, and by his order I
followed at his heels.

In a secluded north-and-south road he looked back and beckoned me to his
side: "You saw Major Harper's brother land safe and sound, you say? He
told you this morning he is acquainted with your mother, eh; but
not how?"

"No, except that it was through--"

"Yes, I know. But you don't know even how your mother is acquainted with
her."

"No, though of course if she lived in the city, common sympathies might
easily bring them together."

"She did not live in the city; she lived across the river from the city.
'Tis but a year ago her father died. He was an owner of steamboats. She
made many river trips with him, and I suppose that explains how she
knows the country about Baton Rouge, Natchez, Grand Gulf, Rodney, better
than she knows the city. But the boats are gone now; some turned into
gunboats, one burnt when the city fell, another confiscated. I think
they didn't manage her bringing-up very well."

"Maybe not," I replied, being nothing if not disputatious, "and she does
strike me as one thrown upon her own intuitions for everything; but if
she's the lady she is entirely by her own personal quality, Lieutenant,
she's a wonder!"

"Ah, but she is a wonder. In a state of society more finished--"

"She would be incredible," I said for him, and he accepted the clause by
a gesture, and after a meditative pause went on with her history. The
subject of our conversation had first met Oliver, it seemed, when by
reason of some daring performance in the military field--near Milliken's
Bend, in the previous autumn--he was the hero of the moment. Even so it
was strange enough that he should capture her; one would as soon look to
see Vicksburg fall; but the world was upside down, everything was
happening as if in a tornado, and he cast his net of lies; lies of his
own, and lies of two or three match-making friends who chose to believe,
at no cost to themselves, that war, with one puff of its breath, had
cleansed him of his vices and that marriage would complete the happy
change. This was in Natchez, Ferry went on to say. Most fortunately for
the bride one of the bridegroom's wedding gifts was a certain young
slave girl; before the wedding was an hour past--before the
orange-blossoms were out of the bride's hair--this slave maid had told
her what he was, "And you know what that is."

We rode in silence while I tried to think what it must be to a woman of
her warmth--of her impulsive energies--to be, week in, week out, month
after month, besieged by that man's law-protected blandishments and
stratagems. "I wish you would use me in her service every time there is
a chance," I said.

"The chances are few," he answered; "even to General Austin she laughs
and says we must let the story work itself out; that she is the fool in
it, but there is a chance for the fool to win if not too much burdened
with help."

"How did you make her acquaintance?" I ventured to ask.

"You remember the last time the brigade was in this piece of country?"
he rejoined.

I did; it had been only some five weeks earlier; Grant had driven us
through Port Gibson, General Bowen had retired across the north fork of
Bayou Pierre, and we had been cut off and forced to come down here.

"Yes; well, she came to us that night, round the enemy's right, with a
letter from Major Harper's brother--he was then in New Orleans--and with
information of her own that saved the brigade. I had just got my
company. I took it off next morning on my first scout, whilst the
brigade went to Raymond. She was my guide all that day; six times she
was my guide before the end of May. Yet the most I have learned about
her has come to me in the last few days."

"She has a fearful game to play."

"Oh!--yes, that is what she would call it; but me, I say--though not as
Gholson would mean it, you know,--she has a soul to save. If it is a
game, it is a very delicate one; let her play it as nearly alone as she
can." "Yes," said I, "a man's hand in it would be only his foot in it;"
and Ferry was pleased. He scanned me all over in the same bright way he
had done it in the morning, and remarked "This time I see they have
given you a carbine."

We went down into some low lands, crossed a creek or two, and in one of
them gave our horses and ourselves a good scrubbing. On a dim path in
thick woods we paused at a worm fence lying squarely across our way. It
was staked and ridered and its zig-zags were crowded with brambles and
wild-plum. A hundred yards to our left, still overhung by the woods, it
turned south. Beyond it in our front lay a series of open fields, in
which, except this one just at hand, the crops were standing high. The
nearer half of this one, a breadth of maybe a hundred yards, though
planted in corn, was now given up to grass, and live-stock, getting into
it at some unseen point, had eaten and trampled everywhere. The farther
half was thinly covered with a poor stand of cotton, and between the
corn and the cotton a small, trench-like watercourse crossed our line of
view at right angles and vanished in the woods at the field's eastern
edge. The farther border of this run was densely masked by a growth of
brake-cane entirely lacking on the side next us. Between the cotton and
the next field beyond, a double line of rail fence indicated the Fayette
and Union Church road. Suddenly Ferry looked through his field-glasses,
and my glance followed the direction in which they were pointed. Dust
again; one can get tired of dust! Some two miles off, a little southward
of the setting sun, a golden haze of it floated across a low
background of trees.

"'Tis the enemy, I think," he said, "but only scouts, I suppose."



XXVI


A SALUTE ACROSS THE DEAD-LINE

I was not seeking enemies just then and was not pleased. "Didn't the
Yankees fall back this morning before day and move southward?" I asked.

"For what would they do that?" inquired my leader, still using the
glass, but before I could reply he gave a soft hiss, dropped the glass,
and turned his unaided eye upon a point close beyond our field, in the
road. Now again he lifted the glass, and I saw over there two small,
black, moving objects. They passed behind some fence-row foliage,
reappeared nearer, and suddenly bobbed smartly up to the roadside
fence--the dusty hats of two Federal horsemen. The wearers sat looking
over into the field between them and us. I asked Ferry if he wasn't
afraid they would see us.

"That is what we want," was his reply; "only, they must not know we want
it. Keep very still; don't move." At that word they espied us and
galloped back.

We turned to our left and hurried along our own fence-line, first
eastward, then south, and reined up behind some live brush at the edge
of the public road. "Soon know how many they are, now," he said, smiling
back at me.

"Are you going to count them?" It seemed so much easier to let them
count us.

"Yes," he replied. "Wish we had our boys here," he added, and did not
need to tell me how he would have posted them; the place was so
favorable for an ambush that those Yankees had no doubt been looking for
us before they saw us. Half of us would be in the locks of these
highroad fences to lure them on, and half in the little gully masked
with canes to take them in the flank. "We would count many times our own
number before they should pass," he added.

"Can't we make them think our men are here?" I suggested. "Couldn't I go
back to where this fence crosses the gully and let them see me opening a
gap in it?"

He was amused. "Go if you want; but be quick; here they come already, a
small bunch of them."

By the time I reached the spot they were in plain view, six men and an
officer. I leaped to the ground, tugged at a rail and threw one end off.
I thought I had never handled rails so heavy and slippery in my life. As
I got a second one down I looked across to the road. The officer was
distributing his men. Barely a mile behind was the dust of their column.
The third rail stuck and the sweat began to pour down into my eyes and
collar. Two of the blue-coats easily let down a panel of fence on the
far side of the road and pushed into the tall corn; three others came
galloping across the thin cotton to reconnoitre the fringe of canes; the
officer and the remaining man cantered on up the road toward the spot
where I could see Ferry observing everything from the saddle behind his
mask of leaves. Of a sudden the Federal commander descried me wildly at
work. He paused and pointed me out to the man at his back, but had no
glass and seemed puzzled. At his word the man pricked up to the fence
to come over it, but his horse was of another mind, and the impatient
officer, crowding him away, cleared the fence himself and came across
the furrows at a nimble trot. Still I tussled with the rails, and grew
peevish. The enemy was counted, closely enough! one troop. Their dust
showed it, the small advance guard proved it.

"Hello!" called the Federal officer, "who are you, over there?"

He might have known by looking a trifle more narrowly; I saw plainly,
thrillingly, who he was; but his attention was diverted by some signal
from the men he had sent to the fringe of cane; they had found the
tracks of horses leading through the canes into the corn. But now he
hailed me again. "Here, you! what are you doing at that fence? Who
are you?"

He was within easy range and was still trotting nearer. I snatched up my
carbine, aimed, and then recovered, looking sharply to my left as if
restrained by the command of some one behind the canes. The Federal's
cool daring filled me with admiration. Had the foes he was looking for
been actually in hiding here they could have picked him out of his
saddle like a bird off a bush. His only chance was that they would not
let themselves be teased into firing prematurely on any one man or six.
Ferry beckoned me. I mounted and trotted down the woods side of the
fence, at the same time the Federal's six men approached from three
directions, and down the road the main column entered upon the scene.

The officer halted with revolver drawn and sent a man back with some
order to the main body. And then Ferry's beautiful brown horse, as
though of his own choice, reared straight up where he stood, dropped his
forelegs upon his breast, rose, over the fence, master and all, as
unlaboriously as a kite, trotted out from the brush and halted in the
open field. His rider's outdrawn sword flashed to the setting sun. The
Federal, pointing here and there was deploying his remaining five men
toward the spot I had left, but glancing round and seeing Ferry he
trotted toward him. Thereupon Ferry advanced at a walk, and I--for I had
followed him--moved at the same gait a few paces behind. "Halt him,"
said my leader.

"Halt!" I yelled with carbine at a ready, and the Federal halted. In
fact he had come to a small hollow full of bushes and grapevines and had
no choice but to halt or go round it.

"Don't swallow him," said Ferry, smilingly, "this isn't your private
war."

"He's on my private horse!" I retorted.

"Well, you're on his," replied my commander. The giant before us,
mounted on Cricket, was my prisoner of the previous day.

"Who are you?" he was calling imperiously.

"Captain Jewett ought to know," Ferry called back, and on that the
questioner recognized us both. He became very stately. "Lieutenant
Durand, I believe."

"At times," said Lieutenant Durand.

"And at other times--?"

"Lieutenant Ferry--Ferry's scouts."

The Federal expanded with surprise and then with austere pleasure. He
glanced toward his five men galloping back to him having found no enemy,
and then at his column, which had just halted. Frowning, he motioned the
advance guard to the road again and once more hailed Ferry while he
pointed at me. He straightened and swelled still more as he began his
question, but as he finished it a smile went all over him. "Is that your
entire present force?"

"It is."

"Then what the devil do you want?" he thundered.

"We have what we wanted," said Ferry, "only now we desire to cross the
road."

"You're not asking my permission?"

"I am afraid not."

"I admit you are quite able to cross without."

"Thank you," said Ferry; "will you pardon me for passing in front of
you?"

The Federal's pistol slid into its holster and his sabre flashed out. He
threw its curved point up in a splendid salute. Ferry saluted with his
straight blade. Then both swords rang back into their scabbards, and
Jewett whirled away toward his column. For a moment we lingered, then
faced to the left, trotted, galloped. Over the fence and into the road
went he--went I. Down it, as we crossed, the blue column was just moving
again. Then the woods on the south swallowed us up.

[Illustration: Ferry saluted with his straight blade.]

"If Captain Jewett will only go on to Union Church," said Ferry, "Quinn
will see that he never gets back."

"But you think he will not go on?"

"Ah, now he is discovered, surely not. I think he will turn back at
Wiggins."

"Why Wiggins? does he know Coralie Rothvelt?"

"Yes, he does; and if since last night he has maybe found out she is
Charlotte Oliver,--"

"Oh! Lieutenant Ferry, oh! would such a man as that come hunting down a
woman, with a troop of cavalry?"

"He is not hunting her; yet, should he find her, I have the fear he
would do his duty as a soldier, anyhow. No, he _was_ looking, I think,
for Ferry's scouts."

"But if she should be at Wiggins--"

My leader smiled at my simplicity. "She is not at Wiggins."

"Where is she?"

"I do not know."



XXVII


SOME FALL, SOME PLUNGE

At a farm-house well hidden in the woods of a creek we got a brave
supper for the asking and had our uniforms wonderfully cleaned and
pressed, and at ten that evening we dismounted before the three brightly
illumined tents of General Austin, Major Harper and that amiable cipher
our Adjutant-general. On the front of the last the shadow of a deeply
absorbed writer showed through the canvas, and Ferry murmured to me "The
ever toiling." It was Scott Gholson. I had heard the same name for him
the evening before, from her whose own lovely shadow fell so visibly and
so often upon the bright curtain of Ned Ferry's thought.

My leader went in while I held our horses. Then he and Gholson came out
and entered the General's tent; from which Gholson soon emerged again
and sent an orderly away into the gloom of the sleeping camp, and I
heard a small body of men mount and set off northward. Presently Ferry
came out and sent me in, and to my delight I found, on standing before
the General, that I did not need to tell what Charlotte Oliver wanted
kept back.

"No, never mind that," he said, "Miss Rothvelt was here and saw me this
afternoon, herself." Up to the point of my arrival at the bridge I had
merely to fumble my cap and answer his crisp questions. But there he
lighted a fresh cigar and said "Now, go on."

Gholson dropped in with something to be signed, and the General waved
him to wait and hear. For Gholson, despite the sappy fetor of his mental
temperament, had abilities that made him almost a private secretary to
the General. Who, nevertheless, knew him thoroughly. When I had
described Oliver's escape and would have hurried on to later details,
General Austin raised a hand.

"Hold on; you say nearly everybody fired at Oliver; who did not?" "I
did not, General."

"Did Lieutenant Ferry fire?"

I said he did not. The General turned his strong eyes to Gholson's and
kept them there while he took three luxurious puffs at his cigar. Then
he took the waiting paper, and as he wrote his name on it he said,
smiling, "I wish you had been in Lieutenant Ferry's place, Mr. Gholson;
you would have done your duty."

The flattered Gholson received the signed paper and passed out, and the
General smiled again, at his back. I hope no one has ever smiled the
same way at mine.

Ferry and I slept side by side that night, and he told me two companies
of our Louisianians were gone to cut off Jewett and his band. "Still, I
think they will be much too late," he said, and when I rather violently
turned the conversation aside to the subject of Scott Gholson, saying,
to begin with, that Gholson had wonderful working powers, he replied,
"'Tis true. Yet he says the brigade surgeon told him to-day he is on the
verge of a nervous break-down." But on my inquiring as to the cause of
our friend's condition, my bedmate pretended to be asleep.

We rose at dawn and rode eastward, he and I alone, some fourteen miles,
to the Sessions's, where the dance had been two nights earlier. On
entering the stable to put up our horses we suddenly looked at each
other very straight, while Ferry's countenance confessed more pleasure
than surprise, though a touch of care showed with it. "I did not know
this," he said, "and I did not expect it."

What we saw was the leather-curtained spring-wagon and its little
striped-legged mules. The old negro in charge of them bowed gravely to
me and smiled affectionately upon Ferry. About an hour later Gholson
appeared. He took such hurried pains to explain his coming that any fool
could have seen the real reason. The brigade surgeon had warned him--Oh!
had I heard?--Oh! from Ned Ferry, yes. The cause of his threatened
breakdown, he said, was the perpetual and fearful grind of work into
which of late he had--fallen.

"Did the doctor say 'fallen'?" I shrewdly asked.

"No, the doctor said 'plunged,' but--did Ned Fer'--who put that into
your head?"

"Nobody; some fall, you know, some plunge." I did not ask the cause of
the plunge; the two little mules told me that. He would never have come,
Gholson hurried on to say, had not Major Harper kindly suggested that a
Sabbath spent with certain four ladies would be a timely preventive.

"What!" I cried, "are they here t'--too? Why,--where's their carryall?
'Tisn't in the stable; I've looked!"

"No, it was here, but yesterday, when the fighting threatened to be
heavy, it was sent to the front. Smith, I didn't know Charlie Tolliver
was here!"

I believed him. But I saw he was not in search of a preventive. Ah, no!
he was ill of that old, old malady which more than any other abhors a
preventive. Waking in the summer dawn and finding Ned Ferry risen and
vanished hitherward, a rival's instinct had moved him to follow, as the
seeker for wild honey follows the bee. He had come not for the cure of
his honey-sickness, but for more--more--more--all he could find--of the
honey. "Smith," he said, with a painful screw of his features, "I'm
mightily troubled about Ned Ferry!"

"Yes," I dishonestly responded, "his polished irreligion--"

"Oh, no! No," he groaned, "it isn't that so much just now, though I know
that to a true religionist like you the society of such a mere
romanticist--"

We were interrupted.



XXVIII


OLDEST GAME ON EARTH

The cause of our interruption was Camille Harper. We had been pacing the
side veranda and she came out upon it with an unconscious song on her
lips, and on one finger a tiny basket.

Her gentle irruption found me standing almost on the spot where she had
stood two evenings before and said good-bye to me. From this point a
path led to the rear of the house, where within a light paling fence
bloomed a garden. She gave us a blithe good-morning as she passed,
descended the two or three side steps, and tripped toward the garden
gate, a wee affair which she might have lifted off its hinges with one
thumb. I saw her try its latch two or three times and then turn back
discomfited because the loose frame had sagged a trifle and needed to be
raised half an inch. I did not understand the helplessness of girls as
well then as I do now; I ran and opened the gate; and when I shut it
again she and I were alone inside.

She let me cut the flowers. "You know who's here?" she asked.

"Yes," I guilefully replied, "I came with him."

"I don't mean Lieutenant Ferry," she responded, "nor anybody you'd ever
guess if you don't know; but you do, don't you?"

I said I knew and went on gathering sweet-pea blossoms.

"Did you ever see her?"

"Yes," I replied, stepping away for some roses, "I--saw her--by
chance--for a moment--she was in the wagon she's got here--last
--eh,--Thursday--morn'--" I came back trimming the roses, and
as she reached for them and our glances met, she laughed and replied,
with a roguish droop of the head--

"She told us about it. And you needn't look so disturbed; she only
praised you."

Still I frowned. "How does it come that she's here, anyhow?"

"Why! she's got to be everywhere! She's a war-correspondent! She was at
the front yesterday nearly the whole time, near enough to see some of
the fighting, and to hear it all! she calls it 'only a skirmish'!"

"When did she get here?"

"About five in the morning. But we didn't see her then; she shut herself
up and wrote and wrote and wrote! They say she runs the most daring
risks! And they say she's so wise in finding out what the Yankees are
going to do and why they're going to do it, that they'd be nearly as
glad to catch her as to catch Lieutenant Ferry! Didn't you know? Ah, you
knew!" She attempted a reproachful glance, but exhaled happiness like a
fragrance. I asked how she had heard these things.

"How did I hear them? Let me see. Oh, yes! from--from Harry."

I flinched angrily. "From what?"

She looked into her basket and fingered its flowers. "That's what he
asked me to call him."

I stiffened up as though I heard a thief picking the lock of my lawful
treasure. She threw me, side wise, a bantering smile and then a more
winsome glance, but I refused to see either. I burned with so many
feelings at once that I could no more have told them than I could have
raised a tune. "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be
very arch.

"Like whom?"

"You know perfectly well," she replied.

"No, I do not like him. Do you?"

"Why,--yes,--I do. I--I thought everybody did." She averted her face and
toyed with the sweet-pea vines. Suddenly she gulped, faced me, blinked
rapidly, and said "If I oughtn't to call him--that,--then I oughtn't to
have called--" she dropped her eyes and bit her lip.

"_That_," I replied, "is a very different matter! At least I had hoped
it was!"

Her rejoinder came in a low, grieved monotone: "Did you say _had_
hoped?"

It was the sweetest question my ear had ever caught, and I asked her, I
scarce know how, if I might still say "do hope".

"Why, I--I didn't know you ever did say it. I don't see that I have any
right to forbid you saying things--to--to yourself."

So we played the game--oldest game on earth--and loveliest. Bungling
moves we made, as you see, and sometimes did not know whose move it was.
At length she admitted that this _is_ a very unsafe world in which to be
kind to soldiers. I told how _fickle_ some of them were. She would not
say she would--or wouldn't--make my case a permanent exception or a
solitary one; yet with me she blissfully pooh-poohed the idea that our
acquaintance was new, she being so wonderfully like my mother, and I
being so wonderfully ditto, ditto. And when I burst into a blazing
eulogy of my mother, my listener gave me kinder looks than I ever
deserved of any woman alive. On my trying to reciprocate, she asked me
for more flowers and hurried back to our earlier theme.

"And really, you know, they say she's almost as truly a scout as Ned
Fer'--as Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. She's from New Orleans, you know, and
she's like us, half-Creole; but her other half is Highland Scotch--isn't
that romantic! When she told us about it she laughed and said it
explained some things in her which nothing else could excuse! Wasn't
that funny!--oh, pshaw! it doesn't sound a bit funny as I tell it, but
she said it in such a droll way! She was so full of fun and frolic that
day! You can't conceive how full of them she is--sometimes; how soberly
she _can_ say the funniest things, and how _funnily_ she can say the
soberest things!"

[Illustration: "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very
arch.]

"You say she was so full of fun that day; what day?"

The young thing gaped at me, gasped, and melted half to the ground:
"O--oh--I've let it out!"

"Yes, you may as well go right on, now."

She straightened to her toes, covered her open mouth an instant, and
then said "Yes, we knew her--at our house--in New Orleans--poor New
Orleans! Your mother--oh, your splendid, lovely little mother is such a
brave Confederate!"

"My mother brought her to your house?"

"Yes, oh, yes! and that's why it isn't wrong to tell _you_. Charlotte's
been three times through the lines, to and from the city; once by way of
Natchez and twice through Baton Rouge. And oh, the things she's brought
out to our poor boys in the hospitals!"

"Generals' uniforms, for example?"

"Oh, now you're real mean! No! what she's brought the most of is--guess!
You'll never guess it in the world!"

"Hindoo grammars!--No? Well, then,--perfumery!"

"Ah, you! No, I'll tell you." She spoke prudently; I had to bow my ear
so close that it tingled: "Dolls!"

My amazement was genuine. "For our sick soldiers!" I sighed.

Her eyes danced; she leaned away and nodded. Then she drew nearer than
before: "Dolls!" she murmured again;--"and pincushions!--and
emeries!--and 'rats'! you know, for ladies' hair--and chignon-cushions!"

"For our sick soldiers!"

"Yes!--stuffed with quinine!" She laughed in her handkerchief till the
smell of the sweet-peas was lost in the odor of frangipani, and she
staggered almost into my arms. But that sobered her. "And when we speak
of the risk she runs of being sent to Ship Island she laughs and says,
'Life is strife.' She says she'd like it long, but she's got to have
it broad."

"Life is strife indeed to her," I said.

"Oh! do you know that too?--and another reason she gives for taking
those awful risks is that 'it's the best use she can make of her silly
streak'--as if she had any such thing!"

"Why did my mother bring her to you?"

"Oh! she had letters from uncle to aunt Martha! He thinks she's
wonderful!"

"Does your father think so, too?"

"My father? no; but he's prejudiced! That's one of the things I can
never understand--why nearly all the girls I know have such
prejudiced fathers."



XXIX


A GNAWING IN THE DARK

On our return to the veranda, Camille and I, we found on its front the
house's entire company except only the children of the family. Mrs.
Sessions, Estelle and Cécile formed one group, Squire Sessions and
Charlotte Oliver made a pair, and Ferry and Miss Harper another. Our
posies created a lively demonstration; Camille yielded them to Estelle,
and Estelle took them into the house to arrange them in water. Gholson
went with her; it was painful to see her zest for his society.

Miss Harper "knocked me down," as we boys used to say, to Charlotte
Oliver; "Charlotte, my dear, you already know Mr. Smith, I believe?"

I had expected to see again, and to feel, as well, the starry charms of
Coralie Rothvelt; but what I confronted was far different. The charms
were here, unquenched by this stare of daylight, but from them shone a
lustre of womanliness wholly new. It seemed to grow on even when a
tricksy gleam shot through it as she replied, "Yes, our acquaintance
dates from Gallatin."

With a spasm of eagerness I said it did: "Our
acquai'--hh--Gallatin--hh--" But my soul cried like a culprit, "No, no,
it begins only now!" and my whole being stood under arrest before the
accusing truth that from Gallatin till now my acquaintance had been
solely with that false phase of her which I knew as Coralie Rothvelt. At
the same her kind eyes sweetly granted me a stripling's acquittal--oh!
why did it have to be a stripling's?

Wonderful eyes she had; deep blue, as I have said, in color; black, in
spirit; never so wonderful as when having sparkled black they quieted to
blue again. Always then there came the slightest of contractions at the
outer corners of the delicate lids, that gave a fourfold expression of
thought, passion, tenderness and intrepidity. I never saw that silent
meaning in but one other pair of eyes; wherever it turned it said--at
the same time saying many other things but saying this always
plainest--"I see both out and in; I know myself--and thee." Never but in
one other pair of eyes? no; and whose were those? Ned Ferry's.

"Don't you love to see Charlotte and him look at each other in that
steady way when they're talking together?" Camille asked me later. But
rather coldly I inquired why I should; I felt acutely enough without
admitting it to Camille, that Charlotte and Ferry were meeting on ground
far above me; and when Gholson, in his turn, called to my notice, in
Charlotte's case, this unique gaze, and contrasted it with her beautiful
yet strangely childish mouth, I asked a second time why she was
here, anyhow.

"She's here," murmured Gholson, "because she has to live! To live she
must have means, Smith, and to have means she must either get them
herself or she must--" and again he poised his hand horizontally across
his mouth and whispered--"live with her hus'--"

I jerked my head away--"Yes, yes." Scott Gholson was the only one of us
who could give that wretch that title. "Gholson," I said, for I kept him
plied with questions to prevent his questioning me, "how did that man
ever get her?"

The rest of the company were going into the house; he glanced furtively
after them and grabbed my arm; you would have thought he was about to
lay bare the whole tragedy in five words; "Smith,--nobody knows!"

"Do you believe she has told Ned Ferry anything?"

"Never! About herself? no, sir!" He bent and whispered: "She despises
him; she keeps in with him, but it's to get the news, that's all; that's
positively all." On our way to the stable to saddle up--for we were all
going to church--he told me what he knew of her story. I had heard it
all and more, but I listened with unfeigned interest, for he recited it
with flashes of heat and rancor that betrayed a cruel infatuation eating
into his very bone and brain, the guilt of which was only intensified by
the sour legality of his moral sense.

The church we went to was in Franklin, but the preacher was a man of
note, a Vicksburg refugee. On the way back Gholson and I rode for a time
near enough to Squire Sessions and Ned Ferry to know the sermon was
being discussed by them, and something they said gave my companion
occasion to murmur to me in a tone of eager censure that Ned Ferry's
morals were better than his religion.

I said I wished mine were.

"Ah, Smith, be not deceived! Whenever you see a man bringing forth the
fruits of the Spirit while he neglects the regularly appointed means of
grace, you _know_ there's something wrong, don't you? He went to church
this morning--_of course_; but how often does he go? What's wrong with
our dear friend--I don't like to say it, for I admire him so; I don't
like to say it, and I never have said it, but, Smith,--Ned Ferry's a
romanticist. We are relig'--what?"

"O--oh, nothing!"

At one point our way sloped down to a ramshackle wooden bridge that
spanned a narrow bit of running water at the edge of a wood. Beyond it
the road led out between two fields whose high worm-fences made it a
broad lane. The farther limit of this sea of sunlight was the grove that
hid the Sessions house on the left; on the right it was the
woods-pasture in which lay concealed a lily-pond. As Gholson and I
crossed the bridge we came upon a most enlivening view of our own
procession out in the noonday blaze before us; the Sessions buggy; then
Charlotte' little wagon; next the Sessions family carriage full of
youngsters; and lastly, on their horses, Squire Sessions--tall, fleshy,
clean-shaven, silver-haired--and Ned Ferry. Mrs. Sessions and Miss
Harper, in the buggy, were just going by a big white gate in the
right-hand fence, through which a private way led eastward to the
lily-pond. A happy sight they were, the children in the rear vehicle
waving handkerchiefs back at us, and nothing in the scene made the
faintest confession that my pet song, which I was again humming, was pat
to the hour:

  "To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
   Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be broke."

"Gholson, if it isn't Ned Ferry's religion that's worrying you just now
about him, what is it?"

My companion looked at me as if what he must say was too large for his
throat. He made a gesture of lament toward Ferry and broke out, "O--oh
Smith,"--nearly all Gholson's oh's were groans--"why is he here? The
scout is 'the eyes of the army'! a man whose perpetual vigilance at the
very foremost front--"

"Why, what do you mean? You know we're here to rejoin the company as it
comes down from Union Church to camp here to-night. _That's_ what we're
here for."

"Yes,--yes,--but, oh, don't you _see_, Smith? For you, yourself, that's
all right; you've got to stay with him, and I'm glad you have. But
he--oh why did he not go on hours ago, to meet them?"

"Why should he? Isn't it good to leave one's lieutenant sometimes in
command; isn't it bad not to?"

Gholson's eyes turned green. "Does Ned Ferry give that as his reason?"

"I haven't asked his reason; I've asked you a question."

"Well, I'll answer it. Do you think Jewett has run back into his own
lines?"

"Of course I do, and Ned Ferry does; don't you?"

"No! Smith, there ain't a braver man in Grant's army than that one
right now a-straddle of your horse. Why, just the way he got your horse
night before--"

"Oh, hang him and the horse! you've told me that three times; what of
it?"

"Smith, he's out here to make a new record for himself, at whatever
cost!"

"And do you imagine Ned Ferry hasn't thought of that?"

"Ah-h, there are times when a man hasn't got his thinking powers; you
ought to know that, Smith,--"

"Mr. Gholson, what do you mean by that?"

"Oh! I certainly didn't mean anything against you, Smith. Why is your
manner so strange to me to-day? Oh, Smith, if you knew what--if I could
speak to you in sacred confidence--I--I wouldn't injure Ned Ferry in
your eyes, nor in anybody's; I only tell you what I do tell so you may
help me to help him. But he's staying here, Smith, and keeping you here,
to be near one whose name--without her a-dreaming of it--is already
coupled with--why,--why, what made you start that a-way again, Smith?"

"Nothing; I didn't start. 'Coupled with somebody's name,' you say. With
whose? Go on."

"With his, Smith, and most injuriously. He's here to tempt her to forget
she's not--" He faltered.

"Free?" said I, and he nodded with tragic solemnity.

"You know who I mean, of course?"

"Certainly; you mean Mrs. Sessions."

He shook his head bitterly. "Oh, well, then, of course I know. How am I
to help you to help him; help him to do what?"

"O--oh! to tear himself away from her, Smith. I want you to appeal to
him. He's taken a great shine to you. You can appeal to his feeling for
romance--poetry--whatever he calls his hell-fired--I mean his
unfortunate impiety. You know how, and I don't. And there you reach the
foundations of his character, as far as it's got any; there's his
conscience if it's anywhere!"

I find myself giving but a faint impression of the spirit in which
Gholson spoke; it went away beyond a mere backbiting mood and became a
temper so vindictive and so venomously purposeful that I was startled;
his condition seemed so fearfully like that of the old paralytic when he
whined "That's not our way."

"Smith," my companion went on, "we ought to protect Ned Ferry from
himself!" The words came through his clenched teeth. "And even more we
ought to protect her. Who's to do it if we don't? Smith, I believe
Providence has been a-preparing you to do this, all through these last
three nights and days!"

He looked at me for an answer until I became frightened. Was my late
folly known to this crawling maligner after all? A sweet-scented
preparation I've had, thought I, but aloud I said only, "If Ned Ferry
clears out, I suppose we must clear out, too."

"Why, eh,--I--I don't know that my movements need have anything to do
with his. Yours, of course,--"

"Yes," I interrupted, beginning to boil.

"I know," he said, "that comes hard; you'll have to tear _yourself_
away--"

He stared at me and hushed. A panic was surging through me; must I be
brought to book by such as he? "Mr. Gholson," I cried, all scorn
without, all terror within; "Mr. Gholson, I--Mr. Gholson, sir!--" and
set my jaws and heaved for breath.

"Why, Smith,--" He extended a soothing hand.

"No explanation, sir, if you please! I can get away from here without
tearing myself, which is more than you can boast. Any fool can see why
_you_ are here. Stop, I take that back, sir! I don't play tit-for-tat
with my tongue."

Gholson turned red on the brow and ashen about the lips. "I don't call
that tit-for-tat, Mr. Smith. I remind you of an innocent attachment for
a young girl; you accuse me of harboring a guilty passion for--" All at
once he ceased with open lips, and then said as he drew a long breath of
relief, "Smith, I beg your pardon! We've each misunderstood the other; I
see, now, who you meant; you meant Miss Estelle Harper!"

"Whom else could I mean?" Disdain was in my voice, but he ought to have
seen the falsehood in my eye, for I could feel it there.

"_Of_ course!" he said; "of course! But, Smith, my mind was so
full--just for the moment, you know,--of her we were speaking of in
connection with Ned Ferry--Do you know? she's so unprotected and tagged
after and talked about that it seems to me sometimes, in this nervous
condition of mine, that if I could catch the entire gang of her
pursuers in one hole I'd--I'd _end 'em_ like so many rats. That sort of
feeling is mere impulse, of course," he went on, "and only shows how
near I am to that nervous breakdown. Yes, the Harper ladies are mighty
lovely and hard enough to leave, but that's all I meant to you, and I'm
sorry I touched your feelings. I'm _tchagrined_. Anyhow, all this is
between us, you know. I wouldn't ever have confessed such feelings as I
did just now except to a friend who knows as well as you do that if I
ever should do a man a mortal injury I wouldn't do it in a spirit of
resentment. You know that, don't you? No, that's not my way--Why,
Smith, what gives you those starts? That's the third time you've done
that this morning."

I said that entering the cool shade of the Sessions grove after the
blazing heat of that long lane gave any one the right to a little
shudder, and as we turned toward the house Gholson murmured "If you say
you'll speak to Ned as I've asked you, I'll sort o' toll Squire Sessions
off with me so's to give you the chance. It's for his own sake, you
know, and you're the only one can do it."



XXX


DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE

I knew Ned Ferry was having that inner strife with which we ought always
to credit even Gholson's sort, and I had a loving ambition to help him
"take the upper fork." So doing, I might help Charlotte Oliver fulfil
the same principle, win the same victory. When, therefore, Gholson put
the question to me squarely, Would I speak to Ferry? I consented, and as
the four of us, horsemen, left our beasts in the stable munching corn,
Gholson began a surprisingly animated talk with our host, and Ferry,
with a quizzical smile, said to me "Talk with you?--shall be happy to;
we'll just make a slight _détour_ on this side the grove and
woods-pasture, eh?"

He meant the north side, opposite that one by which we had come from
church. Here the landscape was much the same as there; wide fields on
each side the fenced highway that still ran north and south, and woods
for the sky-line everywhere. We chose an easy footpath along the
northern fence of the grove, crossed the highway, and passed on a few
steps alongside the woods-pasture fence. We talked as we went, he giving
the kindest heed to my every word though I could see that, like any good
soldier, he was scanning all the ground for its fighting values, and,
not to be outdone, I, myself, pointed out, a short way up the public
road, a fence-gap on the left, made by our camping soldiers two nights
before. It was at another such gap, in the woods-pasture fence, that we
turned back by a path through it which led into the wood and so again
toward the highway and the house-grove. The evening General Austin sent
me to Wiggins it was at this gap that I saw old Dismukes sitting
cross-legged on the ground, playing poker; and here, now, I summoned the
desperation to speak directly to my point.

I had already tried hard to get something said, but had found myself at
every turn entangled in generalities. Now, stammering and gagging I
remarked that our experiences of the morning, both in church and out,
had in some way combined with an earlier word of his own to me, and
given me a valuable thought. "You remember, when I wanted to shoot that
Yankee off my horse?"

"Yes; and I said--what?"

"You said 'This isn't your private war.' Lieutenant, I hope those words
may last in my memory forever and come to me in every moral situation in
which I may find myself."

"Yes? Well, I think that's good."

"It seems to me, Lieutenant Ferry, that in every problem of moral
conduct we confront we really hold in trust an interest of all mankind.
To solve that problem bravely and faithfully is to make life just so
much easier for everybody; and to fail to do so is to make it just so
much harder to solve by whoever has next to face it." Whurroo! my blood
was up now, let him look to himself!

"Yes?" said Ferry, picking at the underbrush as we sauntered, and for
some time he said no more. Then he asked, "You want me to apply that to
myself, in--in the present case?" and to my tender amazement, while his
eyes seemed to count his slackening steps, he laid his arm across my
shoulders.

An hour of avowal could not have told me more; could not have filled me
half so full of sympathy, admiration and love, as did that one slight
motion. It befitted the day, a day outwardly so quiescent, yet in which
so much was going on. A realization of this quiet activity kept us
silent until we had come through the woods-pasture to its southern
border, and so through the big white field-gate into the public road;
now we turned up toward the grove-gate, and here I spoke again. "Do you
still think we ought to wait here for the command?"

That from a private soldier to his captain! Yet all my leader answered
was "You think there's cause to change our mind?"

"I don't know, Lieutenant; do you think Jewett has run back into his own
lines?"

"Yes, I think so; and you?"

"Why, eh,--Lieutenant, I don't believe there's a braver man in Grant's
army than that one a

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