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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Little Union Scout, by Joel Chandler Harris
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Little Union Scout
+
+Author: Joel Chandler Harris
+
+Illustrator: George Gibbs
+
+Release Date: December 15, 2007 [EBook #23871]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE UNION SCOUT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A LITTLE UNION SCOUT
+By JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS]
+
+[Illustration: I drank in the melody with a new sense of its wild and
+melancholy beauty (_Page 56_)]
+
+
+
+
+A LITTLE UNION SCOUT
+
+
+
+By
+
+JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
+
+AUTHOR OF GABRIEL TOLLIVER,
+THE MAKING OF A STATESMAN
+AND WALLY WANDEROON
+
+
+
+_Illustrated by George Gibbs_
+
+
+NEW YORK
+McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
+MCMIV
+
+_Copyright, 1904, by_
+JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
+
+Published, April, 1904
+
+Copyright, 1904, by The Curtis Publishing Company
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+I drank in the melody with a new sense of its wild
+and melancholy beauty                                 _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                          Facing page
+
+"He's tryin' to git away!" yelled Forrest in a voice
+that could be heard all over the field                             10
+
+"I want you to catch this fellow and fetch him to me"              38
+
+Whistling Jim ran into him head down like a bull                   64
+
+I was wild with remorse and grief                                  96
+
+"If hate could kill you, you would fall dead from this horse"     110
+
+The leader ... had an evil-looking eye                            138
+
+He had me covered                                                 156
+
+
+
+
+A LITTLE UNION SCOUT
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+A young lady, just returned from college, was making a still-hunt in
+the house for old things--old furniture, old china, and old books. She
+had a craze for the antique, and the older things were the more
+precious they were in her eyes. Among other things she found an old
+scrap-book that her mother and I thought was safe under lock and key.
+She sat in a sunny place and read it page by page, and, when she had
+finished, her curiosity was aroused. The clippings in the old
+scrap-book were all about the adventures of a Union scout whose name
+was said to be Captain Frank Leroy. The newspaper clippings that had
+been preserved were queerly inconsistent. The Northern and Western
+papers praised the scout very highly, and some of them said that if
+there were more such men in the army the cause of the Union would
+progress more rapidly; whereas the Southern papers, though paying a
+high tribute to the dash and courage of the scout, were highly abusive.
+He was "one of Lincoln's hirelings" and as villanous as he was bold.
+
+The girl graduate at once jumped to the conclusion that there was a
+story behind the old scrap-book, else why should it be preserved by her
+father, who had been a Confederate soldier? This idea no sooner took
+shape than she became insistently inquisitive. As for her father, the
+very sight of the scrap-book awoke the echoes of a hundred
+experiences--long and dangerous rides in the lonely night, battles,
+sharp skirmishes and bitter sufferings.
+
+The story, such as it was, took shape in my mind, and I am afraid that
+the young girl had small difficulty in persuading me to tell it. Memory
+brought before me the smiling features of Harry Herndon, my life-long
+friend and comrade, the handsome face of Jack Bledsoe, one of our
+college mates from Missouri, and the beautiful countenance of his
+sister, Katherine Bledsoe. These and a hundred other faces came
+crowding from the past, and the story was told almost before I knew it.
+
+When Harry Herndon and I went to the wars we were somewhat belated. The
+excitement of '61 found us at college, where we had orders to remain
+until we had finished the course, and the orders came from one whom we
+had never dared to disobey--Harry's grandmother. And then, when we were
+ready to go, she cut in ahead of our plans and sent us to the West with
+letters to General Dabney Maury, whom she had known when he was a boy
+and later when he was a young officer in the regular army.
+
+We were not ill-equipped for two raw youngsters; we had Whistling Jim,
+the negro, three fine horses, and more money than I had ever seen
+before. We went to General Maury and were most courteously received.
+The Virginia Herndons--Harry belonged to the Maryland branch--were
+related to him--and he liked the name. We caught the barest glimpse of
+service at Corinth, and were fortunate enough to be in a few
+skirmishes, where we distinguished ourselves by firing at nothing
+whatever.
+
+In the course of a few weeks General Maury was made commander of the
+Department of the Gulf, with headquarters at Mobile, where we saw
+service as clerks and accountants. For my part, the life suited me
+passing well, but Harry Herndon fretted so that we were soon
+transferred to the command of General Forrest, who was sadly in need of
+men. As it happened, we had little difficulty in finding our man. We
+had heard that he was in the neighborhood of Chattanooga, giving his
+men and horses a much-needed rest; but on the way news came to us that,
+in spite of his brilliant achievements in the field, he had been
+deprived of the choicest regiments of his brigade--men whom he had
+trained and seasoned to war. After this mutilation of his command, he
+had been ordered to Murfreesborough to recruit and organize a new
+brigade.
+
+Toward Murfreesborough, therefore, we made our way, falling in with a
+number of Forrest's men who had been on a brief visit to their homes in
+Alabama and were now returning to their command. As we shortly
+discovered, the Union commanders in Tennessee mistook General Forrest's
+movement to the neighborhood of Chattanooga for a retreat; for, shortly
+after he moved in that direction, an ambitious Federal officer asked
+and received permission to enter Northern Alabama with a force large
+enough to worry the Confederate leader if he could be found. The
+organization and equipment of this force required a longer time than
+the Federal commander had counted on, and by the time it was ready to
+move General Forrest, with the remnant of his command, was on his way
+to Murfreesborough.
+
+In some way--the sources of his information were as mysterious as his
+movements--General Forrest learned that a Federal force was making its
+way toward Northern Alabama, and he did not hesitate to give it his
+attention. Within a very short time he had followed and overtaken it,
+passing it on a road that lay parallel to its line of march. Then it
+was that the Federal commander began to hear rumors and reports all
+along his route that Forrest was making a rapid retreat before him. It
+was stated that his men were discontented and that the condition of his
+horses was something terrible.
+
+One day, along toward evening, the Federal commander went into camp in
+the neighborhood of a wooded hill that commanded the approach from the
+south. He felt sure that the next day would witness the rout and
+capture of the Confederate who had for so long harassed the Federals in
+Tennessee. As he came to the hill he passed within a few hundred yards
+of Forrest's men, who were concealed in the woods. The Federals went
+into camp, while Forrest, leaving a part of his command in the enemy's
+rear, silently passed around his right flank.
+
+Now, it happened that Harry Herndon and myself, accompanied by
+Whistling Jim and the companions we had picked up on the way, were
+coming up from the south. It happened also that we were following the
+road leading through the valley to the left of the hill on which the
+opposing forces were stationed. It was very early in the morning, and
+as we rode along there was not a sound to be heard, save the jingling
+of our bridles.
+
+The valley had more length than breadth, and was shaped something like
+a half-moon, the road following the contour of the crescent. We had
+proceeded not more than a hundred yards along the road within the
+compass of the valley when a six-pounder broke the silence with a bang,
+and a shell went hurtling through the valley. It seemed to be so
+uncomfortably near that I involuntarily ducked my head.
+
+"Marse Cally Shannon," said Whistling Jim, the negro, addressing me,
+"what you reckon make dem white folks bang aloose at we-all, when we
+ain't done a blessed thing? When it come ter dat, we ain't ez much ez
+speaken ter um, an' here dey come, bangin' aloose at us. An' mo' dan
+dat, ef dat ar bung-shell had 'a' hit somebody, it'd 'a' fetched sump'n
+mo' dan blood."
+
+Whistling Jim's tone was plaintive, but he seemed no more frightened
+than Harry was. Following the bang of the gun came the sharp rattle of
+musketry. We learned afterward that this firing occurred when the
+advance guard of the Federal commander collided with Forrest's famous
+escort. We had no idea of the result of the collision, or that there
+had been a collision. We had paused to make sure of our position and
+whereabouts. Meanwhile, the little six-pounder was barking away
+furiously, and presently we heard a strident voice cut the morning air:
+"Go and tell Freeman to put his battery right in on that gun. I give
+you five minutes."
+
+"That's our man!" cried one of the troopers who had fallen in with us
+on our journey. Joy shone in his face as he urged his horse forward,
+and we followed right at his heels. In a moment we saw him leap from
+his horse and throw the bridle-reins to a trooper who was holding a
+string of horses. We gave ours to Whistling Jim to hold and ran forward
+with the man we had been following.
+
+We came right upon General Forrest--I knew him from the newspaper
+portraits, poor as they were. He was standing with his watch in his
+hand. He looked us over with a coldly critical eye, but gave us no
+greeting. He replaced the watch in his pocket and waved his hand to a
+bugler who was standing expectantly by his side. The clear notes rang
+out, and instantly there ensued a scene that baffles description. There
+was a rush forward, and Harry and I were carried with it.
+
+I could hear loud commands, and shouting, and the rattle of carbines,
+muskets, and pistols made my ears numb--but what happened, or when or
+where, I could no more tell you than the babe at its mother's breast. I
+could only catch glimpses of the fighting through the smoke, and though
+I was as close to General Forrest as any of his men--right by his side,
+in fact--I could not tell you precisely what occurred. I could hear
+cries and curses and the explosion of firearms, but beyond that all was
+mystery.
+
+I had time during the _melee_ to take note of the actions of General
+Forrest, and I observed that a great change had come over him. His
+face, which was almost as dark as an Indian's when in perfect repose,
+was now inflamed with passion and almost purple. The veins on his neck
+stood out as though they were on the point of bursting, and his blazing
+eyes were bloodshot. Above the din that was going on all around him his
+voice could be heard by friend and foe alike. I cannot even describe my
+own feelings.
+
+A courier rode up. He had lost his hat, and there was a spot of blood
+on his chin. He reported that the Federals were making a desperate
+effort on the extreme right. "He's tryin' to git away!" yelled Forrest
+in a voice that could be heard all over the field. "Tell Freeman to
+take his guns thar and shove 'em in right on top of 'em. We've got the
+bulge on 'em here, and we're coming right along."
+
+[Illustration: "He's tryin' to git away!" yelled Forrest in a voice
+that could be heard all over the field.]
+
+And, sure enough, we began to find less and less resistance in front of
+us, and presently I could see them running out into the valley, filling
+the road by which we had come.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+No pursuit was made at the time, and the Federals, finding that they
+were not harried, proceeded in a leisurely way toward the river. We
+followed slowly and at night went into camp, the men and horses getting
+a good rest. Scouts were coming in to make reports at all hours of the
+night, so that it was practically true, as one of the old campaigners
+remarked, that a horse couldn't whicker in the enemy's camp "but what
+the General 'd hear it sooner or later."
+
+Early the next morning we were on the road, and I had time for
+reflecting that, after all, war was not a matter of flags and music.
+The General was very considerate, however--a fact that was due to a
+letter that General Maury had intrusted to Harry Herndon's care. We
+were permitted to ride as temporary additions to General Forrest's
+escort, and he seemed to single us out from among the rest with various
+little courtesies, which I imagined was something unusual.
+
+He was somewhat inquisitive about Whistling Jim, Harry's body-servant,
+who he thought was a little too free and easy with white men. But he
+seemed satisfied when Harry told him that the negro's forebears for
+many generations back had belonged to the Herndons. We halted for a
+light dinner, and when we had finished General Forrest made a careful
+inspection of his men as they filed into the road.
+
+We had gone but a few miles when we came to a point where the roads
+forked. On one he sent a regiment, with Freeman's battery, with
+instructions to reach the river ahead of the Federals and hold the ford
+at all hazards until the main body could come up. This done, we swung
+into the road that had been taken by the Federals and went forward at a
+somewhat brisker pace.
+
+"I'm going to give your nigger the chance of his life," remarked
+General Forrest somewhat grimly, "and he'll either fling up his hands
+and go to the Yankees, or he'll take to the woods."
+
+"He may do one or the other," replied Harry; "but if he does either
+I'll be very much surprised." General Forrest laughed; he was evidently
+very sure that a negro would never stand up before gun-fire. A scout
+came up to report that the Federals were moving much more rapidly than
+they had moved in the morning.
+
+"I reckon he's got wind of the column on the other road," the General
+commented. "I allowed he'd hear of it. He's a mighty smart man, and
+he's got as good men as can be found--Western fellows. If he had known
+the number of my men in the woods back yander he'd 'a' whipped me out
+of my boots." And then his eye fell again on Whistling Jim, who was
+laughing and joking with some of the troopers. He called to the negro
+in stern tones, and ordered him to ride close to his young master. "We
+are going to have a little scrimmage purty soon, and a nigger that's
+any account ought to be right where he can help his master if he gets
+hurt."
+
+Whistling Jim's face, which had grown very serious when he heard his
+name called by the stern commander, suddenly cleared up and became
+illuminated by a broad grin. "You hear dat, Marse Harry!" he exclaimed.
+"I'm gwine in right behime you!" He reflected a moment, and then
+uttered an exclamation of "Well, suh!"
+
+About four o'clock in the afternoon the troopers under General Forrest
+came in contact with Federals. This was in the nature of a surprise to
+the Union commander, for there were persistent reports that Forrest had
+passed on the other road, with the evident intention of harrying the
+Federals at a point where they had no intention of crossing. So well
+assured was he that these reports were trustworthy that he was
+seriously considering the advisability of detaching a force
+sufficiently large to capture the Confederate. He therefore paid small
+attention to the attacks on his rear-guard. But presently the pressure
+became so serious that he sent a member of his staff to investigate it.
+
+Before the officer could perform this duty the rear-guard was compelled
+to retreat on the main body in the most precipitate manner. Then the
+attack ceased as suddenly as it began, and the Federal commander
+concluded that, under all the circumstances, it would be best to cross
+the river and get in touch with his base of supplies.
+
+He went forward as rapidly as his troops could march, and he had a
+feeling of relief when he came in sight of the river. It was higher
+than it had been when he crossed it three or four days before, but
+still fordable; but as his advance guard began to cross, Freeman's
+battery, operated by young Morton, opened on them from the ambuscade in
+which it had been concealed. The thing to do, of course, was to charge
+the battery and either capture it or silence it, and the Federal
+commander gave orders to that effect. But Forrest, looking at the
+matter from a diametrically opposite point of view, knew that the thing
+to do was to prevent the capture of the battery, and so he increased
+the pressure upon the Federal rear to such an extent that his opponent
+had no time to attend to the Confederate battery.
+
+The Union commander was a very able man and had established a
+reputation as a good fighter. So now, with perfect coolness, he managed
+to present a very strong front where the rear had been, and he made
+desperate efforts to protect his flank. But he was too late. Forrest
+said afterward that it was as pretty a move as he had ever seen, and
+that if it had been made five minutes sooner it would probably have
+saved the day.
+
+Just as the movement was about to be completed it was rendered useless
+by the charge of Forrest's escort, a picked body of men, led by the
+General in person. In the circumstances such charges were always
+irresistible. Before the Federals could recover, the Confederate
+general, by means of a movement so sudden that no commander could have
+foreseen it, joined his force with that which was supporting Freeman's
+battery and charged all along the line, bringing the eight and
+twelve-pounders right to the front. No men, however brave, could stand
+before a battery at close range, and the inevitable result ensued--they
+got out of the way, and stood not on the order of their going. They
+floundered across the river as best they could, and if they had not
+been American troops they would have been demoralized and rendered
+useless for fighting purposes; but, being what they were, they showed
+their courage on many a hard-fought field as the war went on.
+
+When night fell we retired a mile or two from the river and went into
+camp. Forrest was in high good-humor. He had accomplished all that he
+had set out to accomplish, and more. He had emphasized the fact that it
+was dangerous work for the Federals to raid Northern Alabama while he
+was in striking distance, and he had captured army stores and secured
+horses that were comparatively fresh. The most welcome capture was the
+arms, for many of his men were armed with flintlock muskets.
+
+He was very talkative. "That nigger of yours done about as well as any
+of the balance of us," he said to Harry Herndon.
+
+"I didn't see him at all during the fighting," replied Harry, "but I
+told him you'd have him shot if he ran."
+
+"Well, he went right in," remarked the General, "and I expected him to
+go over to the Yankees. Maybe he'd 'a' gone if it hadn't been for the
+water."
+
+At that moment we heard Whistling Jim calling, "Marse Harry! Marse
+Cally Shannon!" I answered him so that he could find us, and he came up
+puffing and blowing. A red handkerchief was tied under his chin and
+over his head.
+
+"Marse Harry!" he exclaimed, "kin I see you an' Marse Cally Shannon by
+yo'se'f? I done done sump'n dat you'll sho kill me 'bout."
+
+"Well, don't make any secret of it," said I. "Out with it!" exclaimed
+Harry.
+
+"Marse Harry, I done gone an' shot Marse Jack Bledsoe."
+
+"Good Lord!" cried Harry.
+
+"Yasser, I done shot 'im, an' he's bad hurt, too. You know dat las'
+time we went at um? Well, suh, I wuz shootin' at a man right at me, an'
+he knock my han' down des ez I pull de trigger, an' de ball cotch him
+right 'twix de hip an' de knee. He call me by my name, an' den it come
+over me dat we done got mix' up in de shuffle an' dat I wuz shootin' at
+you. But 'twuz Marse Jack Bledsoe; I know'd 'im time I look at 'im
+good."
+
+"Good heavens! Is he dead?" inquired Harry, his voice shaking a little
+in spite of himself.
+
+"He ain't dead yit, suh," replied Whistling Jim. "I got down off'n my
+hoss an' pick 'im up an' take 'im out er de paff er de rucus, an' den
+when you-all done des ez much shootin' an' killin' ez you wanter, I
+went back an' put 'im on my hoss an' tuck 'im ter dat little house by
+de river. Dey's a white lady dar, an' she say she'll take keer un' 'im
+twel somebody come. Does you reckon any er his side gwineter come back
+atter 'im, Marse Harry? Kaze ef dey don't, I dunner what de name er
+goodness he gwineter do. Dar he is, an' dar he'll lay. I'm done sick er
+war ef you call dis war--you hear me!"
+
+Harry said nothing, but I knew he was thinking of the fair Katherine,
+Jack's sister, and wondering if he would ever be to her what she was to
+him. He had his face in his hands, and appeared ready to give way to
+grief. General Forrest turned to an orderly: "Go fetch Grissom here;
+tell him to come right away." The surgeon soon came, General Forrest
+told Whistling Jim to lead the way, and we were soon riding through the
+night in the direction of the river.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+A fine mist was falling, and the night was so dark that we would never
+have found our way but for a small dog whose inhospitable bark directed
+us to the cabin. The dog was so disturbed by our approach that a woman
+opened the door to see what the trouble could be. We found Jack Bledsoe
+on a pallet, and saw at a glance that the woman had administered such
+remedies as common-sense and experience had taught her would allay the
+fever of a wound. He recognized us at once, and Harry could hardly keep
+back his tears when he saw his college chum lying helpless on the
+floor. He supported Jack's head while the surgeon was examining the
+wound.
+
+"You are here sooner than I thought," said Jack, gripping Harry's hand
+hard, "but I knew you would--I knew it. And there is Carroll Shannon,"
+he went on, holding out a hand to me. "You never were very fond of me,
+Carroll, but I always liked you."
+
+I hardly knew what to say, and therefore I said nothing. I could only
+take his hand in mine and give him a grip that would tell him more than
+words could tell. "Don't worry, old fellow," Jack continued, observing
+the expression of grief and anxiety in Harry Herndon's countenance.
+"It's all owing to the way the cards fall. Some day your turn may come,
+and then I hope I'll be able to go to you." His eyes were unnaturally
+bright, and his lips trembled with suppressed emotion.
+
+The tension was relieved by the woman, who looked at both the young
+fellows, and then turned to the surgeon and asked almost unconcernedly,
+"Ain't war a hell of a thing?"
+
+It was the surgeon who responded. "It would be hard to find a better
+definition, ma'am."
+
+"I've saw lots wuss'n this," she remarked, as if she would thus find
+excuse for her sudden use of an expression that is rarely heard on the
+lips of a woman.
+
+"Why, yes, ma'am--a great deal worse. This is not a bad case at all. No
+great damage has been done. He will be lame for some weeks--perhaps for
+a longer time. The ball struck the bone, glanced, and is now close to
+the surface."
+
+In a few moments he had deftly extracted it, and the wounded man seemed
+to be greatly relieved. Medicine, strange to say, had been declared a
+contraband of war by the Federals, and the surgeon could spare but a
+driblet of quinine from his small supply; but he left some, and gave
+various directions with respect to the possible symptoms that might
+arise.
+
+Just then the woman's husband entered the door. He was an emaciated,
+unkempt man, whose movements were in strange contrast with his
+appearance. He was one of the most trustworthy of General Forrest's
+scouts, but neither betrayed the fact that he knew the other. On the
+contrary, the man was both angry and rude. "What'd I tell you, Rhody?"
+he exclaimed, turning to his wife. "I know'd they'd crowd us out'n
+house an' home ef they got a chance; I could 'a' took oath to it! Cuss
+'em, an' contrive 'em, both sides on 'em, all an' similar! They'd as
+lief make a hoss-stable out'n the house as not, an' I built it wi' my
+two han's."
+
+"An' what ef you did?" inquired the woman with some show of spirit.
+"Hit ain't sech a beauty that you kin brag on it. An' who made your two
+han's? You made 'em, I reckon, an' nobody else could 'a' done it."
+
+The man made a gesture as though he could in that way weaken the force
+of the woman's words, and he evidently knew when to speak, for he said
+no more. On the contrary, sympathy shone in his eyes when he looked at
+the wounded man. "Don't you worry, Bill; ef ther's any worryin' to be
+done, leave it to me. It takes a 'oman to know how to worry right; an'
+ever'thing oughter be done right."
+
+"Can you get a boat across the river?" inquired General Forrest,
+turning to the man. He was somewhat doubtful until he caught the
+General's eye, and then he thought that nothing would be easier.
+"Well," said the General, "go across and tell the Yankees that there's
+a wounded officer at your house and that he needs attention. Tell 'em
+that General Forrest says they can get him whenever they send after
+him."
+
+"Is this General Forrest?" inquired Jack Bledsoe. "General, I hardly
+know how to thank you. I had just been dreaming of prison."
+
+The General made a deprecatory gesture, and was on the point of saying
+something, when the man of the house spoke up. "Ef you're Gener'l
+Forrest," he said, "you'll be more than pleased to know that the
+Yankees ain't never took time for to cook supper. After they hit the
+furder bank they jest kep' on a-humpin', an' I don't blame 'em myself,
+bekaze 'twuz the only way wet men could keep warm."
+
+"It's up to you, Herndon; he's your prisoner. He ought to be in a
+hospital where he could be looked after, but I reckon he'll have to
+stay where he is for a while."
+
+"He won't put me out a mite ef he stays," said the woman. "He'll be
+company fer me when Bill is pirootin' 'roun'."
+
+General Forrest gave us permission to remain where we were for the
+night. "We move at five," said he. "Bill here will put you across and
+show you which way to go when he has found your horses for you." Just
+how Bill would do that was a mystery, but we asked no questions.
+
+We called for Whistling Jim when General Forrest had gone, but he was
+nowhere to be found. He had shown us the way to the cabin and then
+disappeared. I judged that he was afraid Jack Bledsoe would upbraid him
+or that Harry would give him a scolding; but, whatever his reasons, he
+disappeared when we went in the cabin, and we saw him no more till the
+next morning.
+
+Harry and Jack talked of old times until the woman was compelled to
+warn the wounded man that it would be worse for him if he excited
+himself. But he talked away in spite of the warning. He talked of his
+sister Katherine, much to Harry's delight, and told of his own
+sweetheart in Missouri. His colonel, he said, was very fond of
+Katherine, but he declared that Kate still thought of Harry, whereupon
+the young fellow blushed and looked as silly as a school-girl.
+
+Tom Ryder was the Colonel's name, and he had a sister Lucy. Miss Lucy
+was Jack's choice out of a thousand, he said. The main trouble with
+Jack was that his sweetheart's sister, Jane Ryder, didn't like him--and
+so forth and so on, till I nodded where I sat, and dreamed of Katherine
+and Jane and Lucy Ryder, until someone took me by the arm and told me
+that it was time to be up and going.
+
+We delayed our departure on one excuse and another, until finally Bill,
+who was to be our guide, grew irritable; and even then we made a
+further delay while Jack pencilled a note to his colonel, which Harry
+was to take charge of as long as there was danger of his capture by
+roving bands of Federals, and then it was to be given to the guide, who
+thought he could insure its delivery.
+
+When we were ready, and could invent no further excuse, Harry turned to
+Jack. "The war doesn't touch us, dear boy. Good-by, and don't fail to
+put in a good word for me when you go home."
+
+Jack Bledsoe's face brightened up. "That's so!" he exclaimed; "I can go
+home now. Well, you may depend on me, Harry; but the two Miss Ryders
+are all the other way, and I'll be between two fires. Tell Whistling
+Jim I have no hard feelings. He has really done me a favor, if things
+turn out no worse than they are."
+
+We bade our friend good-by again and went out into the damp morning
+air, each with his various thoughts. I congratulated myself that mine
+had little to do with the troublesome sex. The fog, hanging heavily
+over the river, shut out the sunlight. We had to take the guide's word
+for that, for we could see no sign of the sun. Indeed, it was so dark
+that we had considerable difficulty in making our way. But when we were
+on the other side, and had mounted the somewhat steep bank, the fog
+disappeared and the sun shone out; and not far away we saw Whistling
+Jim and the horses.
+
+He hailed our coming with delight, for he had been waiting some time,
+and he was both cold and frightened. He took off his hat, as he said,
+to old King Sun, and he seemed to feel all the better for it; and we
+all felt better when our horses were between our knees. Even the horses
+felt better, for they whinnied as we mounted, and were for going at a
+more rapid gait than was necessary.
+
+We entered the scrub timber and went through it for half a mile or
+more, and then suddenly came out on the public highway. The guide
+suggested that we smarten up our gait, and we put the horses to a
+canter. I thought surely that the man would give out, but he merely
+caught hold of my stirrup to help him along, and when we came to a
+cross-road, and halted at his suggestion, he showed as little fatigue
+as the horses--this man who seemed too frail to walk a mile.
+
+Here he gave us such instructions as seemed necessary, and was just
+about to so-long us, as he said, when he paused with his hand to his
+ear. "I'll be whopped," he exclaimed, "ef I don't hear buggy-wheels,
+an' they're comin' right this way." With that he slipped into the
+bushes, and, though I knew where he was concealed, it was impossible to
+catch a glimpse of him.
+
+There was a bend in the road about a quarter of a mile ahead of us, and
+we waited expectantly, while Whistling Jim, with a cunning for which I
+did not give him credit, pretended to be fixing his saddle-girth. As we
+waited a top-buggy rounded the bend in the road and came bowling toward
+us. It was surprising to see a buggy, but I was more surprised when its
+occupant turned out to be a woman--a woman in a top-buggy, riding
+between two hostile armies!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The lady made no pause whatever, and apparently was not at all
+surprised to find soldiers in the road ahead of her. She was not large,
+and yet she had a certain dignity of deportment. She was not youthful,
+neither was she old, but she was very grave-looking, as if she had seen
+trouble or was expecting to see it. Under any other circumstances I
+should have paid small attention to her, but the situation was such
+that I was compelled to regard her with both interest and curiosity.
+Almost in a moment my curiosity took the shape of sympathy, for there
+was something in the pale face that commanded it.
+
+She was accompanied by a very clean-looking officer on horseback, and
+he, in turn, was followed by a small escort of cavalry--I did not take
+the trouble to count them, for my eyes were all for the lady; and it
+was left to Harry Herndon to realize the fact that we were in something
+of a pickle should the officer take advantage of the position in which
+he found us. He saw at once that our capture was a certainty unless we
+took prompt measures to provide against it, and he was quick to suggest
+that we adopt the tactics of Forrest and ride at them if they made a
+display of hostilities. I had just time to shift my carbine to the
+front under my overcoat and loosen the flap of my holsters when the
+lady drove up. We raised our hats as she came up, and made way for her
+to pass.
+
+But she did nothing of the sort. She brought her horse to a halt.
+"Good-morning," she said, as cool as a cucumber. "You can't deceive us
+with your blue overcoats; you are both rebels. Oh, I have heard more of
+you Southerners than can be found in the newspapers."
+
+"I'm sure we had no thought of deceiving you," responded Harry with one
+of his engaging smiles. "We are from the South, and you are from the
+North, of course. It may be that we are well met."
+
+"Oh, no! not this time. I have seen prisoners taken before," remarked
+the lady with a little smile.
+
+"Then you'll not flinch to see them taken again," said Harry very
+boldly. "But I shall regret to put you to any inconvenience."
+
+I think the confident air of Harry saved us considerable trouble at the
+moment; but while he was putting on a bold front and trembling in his
+shoes--as he told me afterward--I had my eyes on the lady. She looked
+at me once, and turned her face away; twice, and frowned; thrice, and
+blushed. "I was afraid at first that you were a prisoner," I remarked
+in a tone that was intended to be apologetic, but the lady calmly
+turned her head away and ignored me.
+
+"To what command are you attached?" inquired the Federal officer, very
+brusquely.
+
+"We are serving under General Forrest," replied Harry.
+
+"Why are you so far away from your command?" the officer inquired with
+real curiosity. His tone was so puzzling that Harry hesitated an
+instant--but in that instant a detachment of Forrest's troopers came
+around the bend in the road.
+
+"Are we indeed so very far from our command?" I inquired.
+
+The troopers came rattling up, and the officer turned to the lady,
+somewhat ungraciously, I thought, with the remark that they had been
+led into an ambuscade.
+
+This was so ridiculous that I laughed aloud, though I felt little like
+laughing. "What amuses you?" the lady asked in some surprise. "I am
+sure I can see nothing humorous in our situation."
+
+"Perhaps you have heard ladies placed under such accusations before?" I
+suggested.
+
+"Miss Ryder knows I meant no such thing," said the officer with some
+heat.
+
+"Is this Miss Lucy Ryder?" I inquired.
+
+"What do you know of Lucy Ryder?" the lady asked.
+
+"I know she has a sister Jane," I answered, whereupon the lady blushed
+again. "And I have heard that Miss Jane doesn't like a friend of
+ours--a young fellow named Jack Bledsoe, who is greatly in need of
+sympathy at this time."
+
+"I like him well enough to go on a wild-goose chase in search of him,"
+the lady replied. "We had an idea that he had been left on the
+battle-field."
+
+Harry, who had been consulting with our comrades who had just arrived,
+returned in time to overhear a part of this conversation. He fumbled in
+his pocket and finally produced Jack Bledsoe's note. He lifted his hat
+as he handed it to the lady. She read it very calmly, and then passed
+it to the Federal officer who had escorted her: "You see, I am
+justified in coming."
+
+"We sat up with Jack last night, my friend and I," Harry remarked.
+
+"Well, you know the Bible tells us to love our enemies," remarked the
+lady, dryly.
+
+"It was an easy matter to carry out the commandment in this particular
+instance, for, with the exception of this gentleman here"--indicating
+me--"Jack Bledsoe is the dearest friend I ever had."
+
+"I know you well enough," the lady remarked with a smile. "You are
+Harry Herndon, and your friend there is Carroll Shannon, and the negro
+is Whistling Jim. Why, I know your grandmother, although I have never
+seen her."
+
+"That doesn't help us now. How are we to find Captain Bledsoe?" asked
+the officer. I could have slapped him for the tone he employed.
+
+"It is all provided for," replied Harry Herndon, curtly. "All you have
+to do is to hold on to the pommel of your saddle. There is a
+non-combatant here who will guide you. Bill!"
+
+"I'm a-lis'nin' at ye," responded the guide from the bushes.
+
+"This is one of the natives," Harry explained. "His wife is taking care
+of Jack Bledsoe and he will have no difficulty whatever in showing you
+the way."
+
+The officer thanked us ungraciously, though why he took that attitude I
+was unable to discover, and we were on the point of joining our
+comrades when the lady remarked: "You'll probably know me again when
+you see me, Mr. Carroll Shannon!" This was a rebuke, I knew, and it
+upset me not a little, but there was something in the tone of her voice
+that sounded like a challenge, and I remarked that I should be sure to
+know her. "Then call my attention to the fact when you next see me,"
+she cried as she touched up her horse.
+
+"With great pleasure," I answered, raising my hat, and with that we
+were off to join our waiting comrades. It seemed that General Forrest
+was somewhat concerned for our safety, knowing that the country was
+strange to us, and he had sent William Forrest's company of
+Independents to watch the road for us so that we might come to no harm.
+While engaged in carrying out this order they saw the lady and her
+escort far ahead of them, and a detachment was sent to investigate, the
+rest of the company remaining to see whether other Federals would
+follow. Thus they came upon us in the very nick of time, for I judge
+that the Federal officer would have held us prisoners, in spite of the
+information we had for him, for he was very gruff and surly.
+
+We reached the recruiting camp at Murfreesborough without further
+incident, and Harry and I soon settled down to the routine of duties
+that fell to our share. Harry served General Forrest temporarily as a
+courier, while I was billeted with Captain Bill Forrest's company of
+Independents, sometimes known as the Forty Thieves, owing to their
+ability as foragers.
+
+I had time to ramble about in the woods, and I took advantage of it
+to explore the whole countryside in the neighborhood of the camp.
+Returning one day from a ride that was partly on business and partly
+for pleasure, I was informed that General Forrest had sent for me.
+When I responded to his summons he was reading a late copy of the
+Chattanooga _Rebel_, and was evidently much interested in what he read.
+He handed the paper to me when he had finished, and pointed out an
+article that was printed under a great display of black type.
+
+A Federal scout, Leroy by name, and well known in both armies (so the
+newspaper said), had entered General Bragg's lines under very peculiar
+circumstances and had then managed to escape. Two pickets had been
+found bound and gagged. The whole story appeared to be absurd.
+
+It was stated, among other things, that the scout intended to turn his
+attention to General Forrest. He directed my eye to this, and said he
+wanted me to take the matter in hand. I inquired how the correspondent
+knew the intentions of the scout.
+
+"Why, he guessed 'em," replied General Forrest, "and he guessed right,
+too. I've got information from one of my men who is thick with the
+Yankees that this chap will soon be nosing around here, and I want to
+give him the worth of his money. I don't want the other side to know
+how many men I've got, and I don't want 'em to know that my superior
+officer has refused to honor my requisition for arms and horses. I'd
+cut a purty figure with the Yankees if they know'd that some of my men
+had muskets that were used in the Revolutionary War. If they found this
+out I'd never whip another fight. And there's another thing: I don't
+want to have it said that any Yankee scout can stick his nose in my
+camp and not git it pulled. That's why I sent for you; I want you to
+catch this fellow and fetch him to me."
+
+[Illustration: "I want you to catch this fellow and fetch him to me."]
+
+I tried hard to get out of the difficulty. I protested that I didn't
+know the scout from a side of sole leather. But the General said that
+this was one of his reasons for detailing me to perform this duty. He
+said he would have given it to Jasper Goodrum, of the Independents, but
+everybody in Tennessee knew Goodrum.
+
+"He was born and raised around here," the General said, "and he's got a
+tongue like a bell-clapper. Now, you're not much of a talker, and your
+face gives you the look of a big baby that has got out of its mammy's
+yard and don't know how to git back." I suppose I must have turned red
+under this back-handed compliment, for he went on, "I wish I had a
+thousand like you. I watched you that day on the hill and at the river,
+and you may put it down that I'll trust you anywhere."
+
+I tried to thank the General for his confidence, but he stayed me by a
+gesture. He settled all the details that could be thought of
+beforehand, and, as I turned to go, he rose from his chair and followed
+me to the door. "If you have to shoot that fellow," he said, "do it and
+don't wait too long before you do it; and if you have to shoot two or
+three men, don't let that stand in your way--charge 'em up to me. But
+you must catch that fellow; I want to string him up just to show the
+balance of 'em that they can't fool with me."
+
+As everything had been arranged to my hand I was soon going about the
+camp and the town arrayed in jeans clothes and looking like anything
+but a soldier. I had thought to surprise Whistling Jim, the negro, with
+my garb, but, as it turned out, the surprise was mine, for that night,
+when I went to see whether the horses had been properly groomed and
+fed, I found the door of the stable unlocked. I was not only surprised
+but irritated. Both Harry Herndon and myself had tried hard to impress
+the negro with the necessity of taking unusual precautions to secure
+the safety of the horses, for they had attracted the attention of the
+whole camp, which was full of questionable characters, some of whom
+would have answered to their names if Falstaff had appeared to call the
+roll of his ragamuffins.
+
+The key had been turned in the lock, but the bolt of the lock had
+failed to catch in the socket. It was plain that the negro thought he
+had locked the door, but it was quite as plain that he had been
+careless, and I made a resolution then and there to look after the
+safety of the horses myself. I swallowed more than half of my
+irritation when I found that the horses were in their stalls, warmly
+blanketed, and an abundance of food before them. I was on the point of
+locking the door with my own key, when I heard the sound of approaching
+footsteps. There were two men, civilians, as I judged, and one of them
+stuttered. Their conversation was of a nature to interest me.
+
+They paused near the door of the stable. "This is the place where they
+keep them," remarked one of the men. "They are the finest horses in the
+rebel army, and it would be a good job to run them into the Union lines
+some fine night. I know a man that would pay a cracking good price for
+them."
+
+"But the nigger sleeps in there with 'em," said the other man, "and
+what are you going to do about him?"
+
+"That's as easy as picking up rocks in the road. A nigger will sell his
+immortal soul for ten dollars, and I'll git him to leave the door open
+some night when he's got a job of jiggering on the peanner and
+whistling with his mouth at the tavern in the woods."
+
+"But that's horse-stealing."
+
+"No, it ain't; it's turn and turn about. How many horses has old
+Forrest took from the loyal citizens of Tennessee? You couldn't count
+'em if you was to try. I'll give you three hundred dollars for them
+three horses delivered at my brother's house--three hundred dollars in
+gold--and you'll have two men to help you. Don't you call that picking
+up money?"
+
+"An' whilst I'm a-gittin' the horses, what'll you be doing?"
+
+"Ain't I told you?" answered the man with some display of irritation.
+"I'll be putting up the money, the cold cash. What more do you want?
+I've always heard that good money is good enough for anybody."
+
+They passed on, and I slipped from the stable, taking care to lock it
+behind me, and followed them.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+I have never spent a more disagreeable hour than that which passed
+while I was engaged in following the two men for the purpose of
+identifying them. The weather was cold and the night dark, and there
+were peppery little showers of sleet. The two left the town proper and
+turned into a by-way that I had travelled many times in my rambles in
+the countryside. I knew that it led to a house that had been built for
+a suburban home, but now, in the crowded condition of the town, was
+used as a tavern. It had attracted the suspicion of General Forrest and
+I knew that he had placed it under the surveillance of the
+Independents. It was a very orderly public-house, however, and nothing
+had ever occurred there to justify the suspicions of the General.
+
+The two men I followed could have reached their destination in less
+than twenty minutes if they had gone forward with the briskness that
+the weather justified; but there was an argument of some kind between
+them--I judged that the stuttering man had no stomach for the part he
+was to play as a horse-thief. At any rate, there was a dispute of some
+kind, and they stopped on the road at least half a dozen times to have
+it out. One point settled, another would arise before they had gone
+far, and then they would stop again; and at last, so dark did the wood
+become, and so low their conversation grew, that I passed within three
+feet of them and never knew it until it was too late to betray the
+astonishment I naturally felt.
+
+I simply jogged along the path and pretended that I had not seen them.
+I went along briskly, and in a few minutes came to the tavern. The door
+was shut, the weather being cold, but I knew by the lights shining
+through the windows that a hospitable fire was burning on the hearth.
+There was no need to knock at the door. I heard the jangling piano
+playing an accompaniment to the flute-like whistling of Harry Herndon's
+negro. Remembering his carelessness, I felt like going into the tavern
+and giving him a frailing. The inclination was so strong that I held my
+hand on the door-knob until the first flush of anger had subsided. It
+was a very fortunate thing for me, as it turned out, that Whistling Jim
+was present, but at the moment the turn of a hair would have caused me
+to justify much that the people of the North have said in regard to the
+cruelty of Southerners to the negro.
+
+The guests and visitors--and there were quite a number--made room for
+me at the fire, the landlord provided me with a chair and welcomed me
+very heartily, taking it for granted that I was from the country and
+would want a bed for the night. On the wide hearth a very cheerful fire
+burned, and the place reminded me somehow of home--particularly a big
+rocking-chair in which one of the guests was seated. It had an
+upholstered seat and back, and the high arms were made more comfortable
+by a covering of the same material. It was a fac-simile of a chair that
+we had at home, and I longed to occupy it, if only for the sake of old
+times.
+
+Among those who were taking their ease at this suburban inn was Jasper
+Goodrum, one of my comrades. He was a noted scout as well as a seasoned
+soldier. He looked at me hard as I entered, and continued to watch me
+furtively for some time, and then his face cleared up and I knew that
+he had recognized me. He was in civilian's clothes, and I knew by that
+that he did not care to be recognized. So I turned my attention
+elsewhere. But in a little while he seemed to have changed his mind,
+and, suddenly rising from his chair, came to me with outstretched hand.
+
+It was a mixed company around the fire. There was a big Irishman, who
+leaned calmly back in a small chair and smoked a short pipe. More than
+once I caught his bright eyes studying my face, but his smile was ample
+apology for his seeming rudeness. He was as handsome a man as I had
+ever seen, and if I had been searching for a friend on whom to depend
+in an emergency I should have selected him out of a thousand.
+
+There was a short-haired man who was built like a prize-fighter. He
+wore a sarcastic smile on his face, and his shifty eyes seemed to be
+constantly looking for a resting-place. He had a thick neck and jaw
+like a bull-dog. I marked him down in my mental note-book as dangerous.
+There was a tall and pious-looking man, and two or three civilians who
+had no particular points about them; and then there was a burly man,
+who sat with his hands in his pockets and did nothing but chew tobacco
+and gaze in the fire, uttering not one word until some of the company
+fell to discussing Captain Leroy, the famous Union scout. When Leroy's
+name was mentioned the burly man was quick to join in the conversation.
+
+"There ain't a word of truth in all this stuff you hear about Leroy,"
+he said, and his manner was more emphatic than the occasion seemed to
+demand. "He's in the newspapers, and he ain't anywhere else on top of
+the ground. I know what I'm a-talking about. Leroy is the invention of
+Franc Paul, of the Chattanooga _Rebel_. He as good as told me so. He
+said that when he wanted to stir up talk and create a sensation he had
+something written about this Captain Frank Leroy. He's a paper man and
+he's able to do anything the newspapers want done."
+
+"You talk like you had gray hair," said the man that looked like a
+prize-fighter; "but you're givin' away a mighty big secret. What are
+you doin' it for? Say!"
+
+"Oh, because I'm tired of all this talk about a man that doesn't live
+outside of the mind of a newspaper man."
+
+The big Irishman, who had been smoking and watching me with a shrewd
+smile hovering about his mouth, began to chuckle audibly. He kept it up
+so long that it attracted the attention of the company.
+
+"What tickles you, my friend?" the burly man asked.
+
+"Maybe ye know Franc Paul?" he inquired. His countenance was an
+interrogation-point. The man answered somewhat sullenly in the
+affirmative. "Is there anny risimblance bechune him an' me?"
+
+"Not the slightest in the world," the man answered.
+
+"Thin ye'd have a quarrel wit' his wife an' she'd have all the
+advantages," said the Irishman with a laugh. "F'r no longer than the
+last time I was at Chattanooga, Missus Paul says, 'It's a good thing,
+Mr. O'Halloran,' she says, 'that ye're a hair's breadth taller than me
+beloved husband,' she says, 'or I'd niver tell ye apart. Only the sharp
+eyes av a wife or a mither,' she says, 'could pick out me husband if he
+stood be your side,' she says."
+
+"I must say," remarked the pious-looking man, "that you gentlemen were
+never more mistaken in your lives when you hint that there is no such
+person as Frank Leroy. I knew him when he was a boy--a beardless boy,
+as you may say. In fact, his father was my next-door neighbor in
+Knoxville, and I used to see Frank reading old Brownlow's paper."
+
+"Don't think ut!" replied the Irishman, and with that all joined in the
+conversation and I heard more of the perilous adventures and
+hair-breadth escapes of Captain Frank Leroy than you could put in a
+book. It seemed that his identity was a mystery, but he was none the
+less a hero in men's minds because his very existence had been called
+in question; for people will hug delusions to their bosoms in the face
+of religion itself, as we all know.
+
+The door of an inner room was open, and I could hear a conversation
+going on. One of the participants was the stuttering man, whose voice I
+had heard before the stable-door, and at a moment when I thought that
+my movements would attract no attention I took advantage of the freedom
+of a public-house and sauntered aimlessly into the room as if I had no
+particular business there. I saw with surprise that the chap who had
+proposed to steal the horses was one of the merchants of the town at
+whose store I had occasionally traded. In the far end of the room,
+reading a newspaper by the light of a small fire, sat a slip of a
+youth. He wore a military cloak that covered his figure from his neck
+to his top-boots.
+
+I saw that he was not so absorbed in the paper that he failed to make a
+note of my presence in the room, and he shifted himself around in his
+chair so that he could get a better view of me, and still leave his
+face in the shadow. Near him sat a motherly-looking woman of fifty. She
+was well preserved for her age, and wore a smile on her face that was
+good to look at. The youngster said something to her in a low tone, and
+she immediately turned her attention to me. Some other words passed
+between the two, and then the woman beckoned to me. I obeyed the
+summons with alacrity, for I liked her face.
+
+"You seem to be lonely," she said. "Have a seat by our little fire.
+This is not a guest-room, but we have been so overrun lately that we
+have had to turn it over to the public." She paused a moment and then
+went on. "You are over-young to be in the army," she suggested.
+
+She had turned so that she looked me full in the face, and there was a
+kindly, nay, a generous light in her eyes, and I could no more have
+lied to her in the matter than I could have lied to my own mother if
+she had been alive. "I do not have a very hard time in the army," I
+replied.
+
+"No, I suppose not," she remarked. "You are one to make friends
+wherever you go. Few are so fortunate; I have known only one or two."
+
+There was a note of sadness in her tones that touched me profoundly.
+The cause I can't explain, and the effect was beyond description. I
+hesitated before making any reply, and when I did I tried to turn it
+off lightly. "I never saw but one," I answered, "on whom I desired to
+make an impression."
+
+"And who was that?" the woman inquired with a bright smile of sympathy.
+
+"You will think it a piece of foolishness," I replied; "but it was a
+lady riding in a top-buggy. I had never seen her before and never
+expect to see her again."
+
+The youngster clutched his paper in his hand and turned in his chair.
+"The light is detestable," he said. "Please throw on a piece of pine,
+mother."
+
+"You can't read by such a light," the woman replied. "Put your paper in
+your pocket and read it to-morrow." Then she turned to me. "If you are
+in the army," she said, "why do you wear such clothes? They are not
+becoming at all." She had such a kindly smile and betrayed such a
+friendly interest that it was not in human nature to suspect her--at
+least, it was not in my nature to do so.
+
+"Why, mainly for comfort," I answered; "and while I am wearing them I
+am having my uniform, such as it is, furbished up and cleaned a bit. I
+have a few days' leave, and I am taking advantage of it in this way."
+
+"I wish my son here would take advantage of his short furlough to wear
+the clothes he used to wear," she remarked, and her tone was so
+significant that I could but regard her with a look of inquiry. I
+suppose the puzzled expression of my face must have amused her, for she
+laughed heartily, while the son, as if resenting his mother's words,
+arose and swaggered to the other end of the room.
+
+We had more conversation, and then I returned to the public room. Some
+of the guests had retired, but their places had been taken by others,
+and there was a goodly company gathered around the fire. I found the
+big arm-chair unoccupied, and, seating myself on its comfortable
+cushion, soon forgot the wonder I had felt that the woman in the next
+room had known me for a soldier. I had accomplished one thing--the
+identification of the prospective horse-thief--and I satisfied myself
+with that. As for Leroy, I knew I should have to trust to some stroke
+of good fortune.
+
+The comfort of the rocker appealed to me, and, with my hands on its
+arms, I leaned back and, in spite of the talking all around me, was
+soon lost in reflection. Through long usage the upholstering on the
+arms of the chair had become worn, and in places the tufts of moss or
+horse-hair were showing. I fell to fingering these with the same
+impulse of thoughtlessness that induces people to bite their
+finger-nails. Suddenly I felt my finger in contact with a small roll of
+paper that had been carefully pushed under the leather, and then I
+remembered that the last occupant of the chair was the short-haired
+man--the man who had the general appearance of a prize-fighter.
+
+Now, it had occurred to me in a dim way that this man might be
+identical with Leroy, and I suspected that he had left in the chair a
+communication for some of his accomplices. I determined to transfer the
+roll of paper to my pocket and examine it at my leisure. But no sooner
+had I come to this determination than I imagined that every person in
+the room had his eyes fixed on me. And then the problem, if you can
+call it so, was solved for me.
+
+A stranger who had evidently arrived while I was in the next room
+appeared to be regarding Whistling Jim with some curiosity, and
+presently spoke to him, inquiring if he was the negro that played on
+the piano. Whistler replied that he could "sorter" play. "If you are
+Whistling Jim," I said, "play us a plantation tune. I heard a man say
+the other day that the finest tune he ever heard was one you played for
+him. It was something about 'My gal's sweet.'"
+
+The negro looked at me hard, but something in my countenance must have
+conveyed a warning to him. "I 'member de man, suh; he say he wuz fum
+Cincinnati, an' he gun me a fi'-dollar bill--a green one."
+
+Without more ado, he went to the piano and plunged into the
+heart-breaking melody of--
+
+    "_Yo' gal's a neat gal, but my gal's sweet--
+      Sweet-a-little, sweet-a-little, sweet, sweet, sweet!
+    Fum de crown er her head ter de soles er her feet--
+      Feet-a-little, feet-a-little, feet, feet, feet!_"
+
+Naturally all eyes were turned on the performer, and I took advantage
+of that fact to rise from the rocking-chair with the roll of paper safe
+in my pocket, and saunter across the room in the direction of the
+piano. Leaning against a corner of the ramshackle old instrument, I
+drank in the melody with a new sense of its wild and melancholy beauty.
+The room in which I stood seemed transformed into what it never could
+be, and the old piano shed its discord and was glorified by the
+marvellous playing of the negro.
+
+The foolish little song runs along for several stanzas, simulating the
+sound of dancing feet. Alternately the negro sang the air and whistled
+the chorus, but whether he did one or the other, the effect was the
+same. The silly song struck the home note and sent it vibrating through
+my brain so invitingly that I was almost sorry that Whistling Jim had
+played it.
+
+I returned to earth when he ceased playing. He looked hard at me when
+he had finished, but I did not glance at him. At the other end of the
+piano, leaning against it, and apparently lost in thought, was the
+young fellow I had seen in the other room. His cloak was thrown back
+from his throat, and the red lining gave a picturesque touch to his
+small, lithe figure. His face was partly in the shadow, but I could see
+that his expression was one of profound melancholy. He aroused himself
+at last, and, looking toward me, said with a smile that had no heart in
+it, "If all the negroes in the South are so gifted you must have a
+happy time down there."
+
+"So it would seem," I answered, "but this negro is an exception. He
+tells me that he learned to play while his old mistress was away from
+home looking after her plantation interests. He can whistle better than
+he can play."
+
+"He has great gifts," said the lad, "and I trust he is treated
+accordingly; but I doubt it," and with that he turned away from the
+piano with a snap of thumb and finger that sounded for all the world
+like a challenge. He turned and went swaggering across the room, and
+seated himself in the rocking-chair of which I have spoken. In a word,
+and with a snap of the finger, he had thrown mud at the whole South,
+and with no more excuse than I should have had had I made an attack on
+the North. Yet curiosity, and not irritation, was uppermost in my mind.
+
+His conduct was so puzzling that I determined to have another taste of
+it if possible, and so discover what he would be at. So I went back to
+the fire and took a seat close to his elbow, while Whistling Jim passed
+around his hat, as was his custom when he played for company. He held
+it out to all except the young fellow and myself, and then returned to
+the piano and played for his own amusement, but so softly that
+conversation could flow on undisturbed.
+
+I had a good look at the lad, and liked him all the better. His face
+had in it that indescribable quality--a touch of suffering or of
+sorrow--that always draws me, and I thought how strange it was that he
+should sit there ignorant of the fact that a word or two would make me
+his friend for life. I had a great pity for him, and there arose in me
+the belief that I had met him before, but whether in reality or only in
+a dream I could not make out. It was a foolish and a romantic notion,
+but it nibbled around my mind so persistently that I turned my gaze on
+the fire and fell into reflections that were both teasing and pleasing.
+
+While thus engaged I suddenly became aware of the fact that the young
+fellow was fingering at the worn place on the chair-arm. Conversation
+was going on very briskly. The genial landlord, who had joined the
+group at the fire, was relating to a listening and an eager guest
+another story of the almost superhuman performances of the Union scout,
+Leroy, when suddenly the lad arose from the rocker and began to search
+the floor with his eyes. He had had the color of youth in his cheeks,
+in spite of the swarthiness of his skin, and I had admired the
+combination--your light-haired man is for everything that has a touch
+of the brunette--but now he had gone white.
+
+As he stooped to search under my chair, I jumped up and drew it back
+politely. "Pardon me for disturbing you," he said; "I have lost a
+paper."
+
+"Is it of importance?" I inquired, endeavoring to show an interest in
+the matter.
+
+"You would hardly think so," he replied. "It involves the safety of a
+woman." I regarded him with unfeigned astonishment, and he, in turn,
+looked at me with a face as full of anger and disappointment as I had
+ever beheld.
+
+"Why, you young rascal!" I exclaimed; "what do you know of me that you
+should speak so? For less than nothing I'll give you a strapping and
+send you to your daddy."
+
+"You couldn't do me a greater service. He is in heaven." You may
+imagine my feelings, if you can, when, as he said this, he turned
+toward me a countenance from which all feeling had died out save that
+of sadness. If he had plunged a knife in my vitals he could not have
+hurt me worse. "Well, sir," he insisted, "proceed with your strapping."
+
+"You are more than even with me, my lad," I said, "and I humbly
+apologize for my words. But why should you be so short with one who
+certainly wishes you no harm?"
+
+"I am unable to tell you. You seem to be always smiling, while I am in
+trouble: perhaps that is why I am irritable." He looked at me hard as
+he resumed his seat in the rocker, and again I had the curious feeling
+that I had met him somewhere before--perhaps in some sphere of former
+existence. Memory, however, refused to disgorge the details, and I
+could only gaze helplessly into the fire.
+
+After a little the lad hitched his chair closer to mine, and I could
+have thanked him for that. He drew on his glove and drew it off again.
+"Will you shake hands with me?" he inquired. "I feel that I am all to
+blame." As I took his hand in mine I could but notice how small and
+soft it was.
+
+"No, you are not all to blame," I said. "I am ill-mannered by nature."
+
+"I never will believe it," he declared with something like a smile.
+"No, it is not so."
+
+Before I could make any reply, in walked Jasper Goodrum, of the
+Independents, and, following hard at his heels, was the man who had the
+appearance of a prize-fighter. This last comer appeared to be in a
+state of great excitement, and his brutal, overbearing nature was
+clearly in evidence. He walked across the room to my lad--I was now
+beginning to feel a proprietary interest in him--and seized him roughly
+by the arm.
+
+"Come 'ere!" he said, and his voice was thick with anger. "You've got
+more'n you bargained for. Come into the next room; you better had! Say,
+ain't you comin'?" He tried to pull the lad along, but the youngster
+was not to be pulled.
+
+"Don't touch me!" he exclaimed. "Don't you dare to put your hands on
+me. You have lied to me, and that is enough!" The short-haired man was
+almost beside himself with anger, and I could see that the lad would be
+no match for him. He was not at all frightened, but when he turned his
+eyes toward me, with a little smile, I saw the face of Jane Ryder, the
+little lady I had seen in a top-buggy on her way to carry aid to Jack
+Bledsoe. And instantly I was furious with a blind rage that stung me
+like a thousand hornets.
+
+I rose and slapped the ruffian on the shoulder in a way that would have
+knocked an ordinary man down. "You dirty brute!" I cried, "say to me
+what you have to say to the lad!"
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The man regarded me with an amazement that soon flamed up into anger.
+His under-jaw stuck out ferociously, and the veins on his neck and
+forehead were swollen with indignation. Before he could say anything
+Jasper Goodrum intervened. "This is partly my affair," he said to the
+short-haired man, "and you'd better leave this countryman alone."
+
+"You're wrong," said the man; "it is not your affair. How can it be
+when I don't know you?"
+
+"Still," insisted Goodrum, "you'd better not bother the countryman.
+You'll git yourself in trouble."
+
+"Trouble!" he snorted. "Say! that's what I'm after. He's waded into the
+creek and he can't git out without wettin' his feet." Then he turned to
+me, his eyes full of venomous rage. "Say! what do you take me for?" He
+came closer and stuck his ugly mug near my face.
+
+My reply was made with an exceedingly willing mind. I struck him on the
+jaw with my open hand and sent him reeling. He recovered his balance
+almost instantly and made at me with a roar of rage and pain, but he
+never reached me, for Whistling Jim ran into him head down like a bull.
+The result was a collision that put the man out of business and knocked
+all the fight out of him. He lay on the floor and rolled about in an
+agony of pain, and the negro stood over him, apparently waiting for a
+fitting opportunity to put in the finishing touch, but his hard head
+had done the work for the time being.
+
+[Illustration: Whistling Jim ran into him head down like a bull.]
+
+I judged that the ruffian had friends among the guests, but when I
+turned to keep an eye on them the room was clear. Even the landlord had
+retired. The lad was standing by my side, and my impression is that he
+was holding me by the sleeve of my coat. I turned to him, and I was
+more certain than ever that he was either Jane Ryder or her brother.
+But it was only when she spoke again that I was sure--for not even a
+twin brother could simulate that round and singularly mellow voice. "I
+am afraid you have made matters somewhat hard for me," she said,
+somewhat sadly, "and heaven knows that I have had trouble enough for
+one night."
+
+"Well, you will have no more trouble here, at any rate," I said.
+
+"I'd feel easier if I were sure of that," she remarked.
+
+"Be assured," I answered. "When I leave this house you will go with me.
+I propose to take you to your friends, if you have any in the
+neighborhood; otherwise you go with me. You shall not stay here for
+that ruffian to abuse and misuse you."
+
+"I'll go with you as far as the door if only to thank you for the
+unnecessary protection you have given me. There are many things that
+you do not understand."
+
+"And many that I do," I replied as significantly as I dared. "I want no
+thanks, and you shall not remain in this house to-night. That is
+settled." She made a birdlike movement with her head and shoulders,
+looked me up and down, and smiled, but she saw that I was in earnest,
+and the smile left her face.
+
+"Where shall I go?" she asked.
+
+"Anywhere but here," I answered. "Anywhere away from that," I pointed
+to the man on the floor. He had raised himself to a sitting posture,
+and was rocking himself to and fro with his arms hugging his knees,
+apparently in great pain.
+
+"He is not always as you see him to-night," she insisted. Then she
+turned to me impulsively, "I'll go with you; I know a house where I
+have very dear friends. But I must tell my friend here good-night--the
+lady you spoke with." She ran into the inner room, and then I heard her
+going lightly upstairs. She came down in a moment with color in her
+face and with some agitation in her manner. She seized me by the sleeve
+in a way that no man would have thought of, exclaiming, "Let us go at
+once--come!" Her sudden anxiety to be off took me entirely by surprise.
+
+"You have a horse?" I said, hearing the jingling of her spurs. But she
+declared that her horse was well enough off where he was. "Come!" she
+said; "let us be off!"
+
+"With all my heart," I replied. I was so highly elated that I forgot
+for the moment that I was dealing with a woman, and I threw my arm
+lightly over her shoulder with a gesture of friendliness and
+protection.
+
+She threw it off and shrank from it as if it were a serpent. "What do
+you mean?" she cried. Her face was red with anger, and her eyes were
+blazing with scorn. "Don't dare to touch me!" For an instant I knew not
+what to do or say, and then it suddenly occurred to me that it would be
+well to hide from her the fact that I knew who she was and so I made a
+great pretence of anger. I seized her by the arm. "If you give me
+another word of your impertinence I'll carry out my threat of half an
+hour ago."
+
+All the anger died out of her eyes. "You hurt me," she said almost in a
+whisper. "Oh, pray pardon me; I have travelled far to-day, and I am
+weak and nervous. Why did you come here to-night? But for you----" she
+paused and glanced up into my face, and placed her hand on mine. And
+then I would have known if I had not known before that she was no other
+than Jane Ryder, the little lady of the top-buggy. I looked in her
+eyes, and they fell; in her face, and it was covered with blushes; and
+somehow I was happier than I had been in many a long day.
+
+"Come!" said I with some sternness, and held out my hand to her.
+Instinctively she seized it and clung to it as we went out into the
+night, followed by Whistling Jim.
+
+"I have a friend who lives farther up the road," she said. "It is not
+far, but perhaps it is farther than you care to come--and you have no
+overcoat." I was not thinking of what she was saying, but of the warm
+little hand that nestled so confidingly in mine. I knew then, or
+thought I knew, that this little hand so soft and white, nestling in my
+big paw like a young bird under its mother's wing, had the power to
+make or mar my life. But, as is ever the way with birdlike things, the
+hand slipped from its nest and left it empty.
+
+She was worrying about the ruffian we had left on the floor. "The
+trouble with him," I said, "is that he is selling information to both
+sides. He is an impostor. I think he is the scout they call Leroy."
+Whereupon she gave utterance to a laugh so merry that it sounded out of
+place in the gloomy woods. It brought Whistling Jim alongside to see
+what the trouble was. He said he thought the young master was crying.
+She laughed again, and then suddenly paused.
+
+"We are very near the house," she said, "and all who live there are my
+friends. I shall be perfectly safe there. You have been very kind to
+me--kinder than you know. We have both seen each other at our very
+worst. Should we meet again, I hope we shall appear to better
+advantage."
+
+She had entirely recovered her self-possession, but in doing so she
+forgot the part she was playing, forgot that she was arrayed in the
+toggery of a man, and was now altogether a woman. I do not remember all
+that was said, but I tried as hard as I could to conceal from her the
+fact that I had discovered her sex and her identity; I had not the
+least desire to humiliate her by airing my penetration. She stood
+silent for a while, as if in thought, or perhaps she was waiting for me
+to say farewell.
+
+"You will do well to go in," I said. "The night is cold and damp."
+
+"The cold and the damp are nothing to me," she replied. "I am warm
+enough. You were speaking a while ago of Frank Leroy. Don't forget that
+he is the best friend I have in the world except my mother.
+Good-night!" She held out her hand, and again it nestled, white and
+soft and warm, in my great paw, and stayed there a moment. The little
+hand must have been frightened, for it fluttered slightly and then flew
+back to its mistress.
+
+I said good-night, but it was not a very gracious farewell, I am
+afraid. "I knew I had something to say to you," she remarked. "In the
+house there is a young Federal officer who was wounded some time ago.
+He has been in a very bad way, but he is better now. While he was at
+the worst of his illness he was constantly calling the names of some
+friends he has among the rebels. One of them he seems to be specially
+fond of--he calls him Harry Herndon. The other he calls Carroll
+Shannon. It may be that you know them."
+
+"I am acquainted with Herndon," I replied. "Shannon I have never met,
+and I have no desire to meet him."
+
+She was silent a moment, and then went on: "I thought that if the two
+would take the trouble to call on the wounded man it would do him
+good--though I am astonished that he should desire to see rebels and
+traitors. I hate them all without exception, and the more I see of them
+the more I hate them."
+
+The little lady had worked herself into a grand fury against the
+rebels, and I am sure she believed what she said for the moment. "I
+shall take pleasure in informing Herndon that his friend is here," said
+I. "Shannon, as I have told you, I never met."
+
+"You are fortunate," she replied. "I met him once, and it needed only a
+glance to tell me what he was."
+
+"And what was he?" I inquired.
+
+"The matter is not worth speaking of," she said. "I have just as much
+contempt for him as you have. Good-night!" and once more the little
+fluttering hand touched mine, and away she marched into the darkness.
+At the steps she turned and listened, but, as neither Whistling Jim nor
+I had stirred out of our tracks, she could hear nothing. "Why don't you
+go?" she called.
+
+"I want to see you safe in the house," I said.
+
+"You are taking a deal of responsibility on yourself," she responded.
+"You must think me a child or a woman." With that she slipped through
+the door, which yielded to her touch, and disappeared in the house.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Now, when the foolish girl disappeared behind the door, I turned away
+from the gate full of anger at all mundane things. But the only human
+being near at hand was Whistling Jim, and him I seized by the collar.
+
+"You scoundrel!" I exclaimed, shaking him vigorously; "what do you mean
+by going off and leaving the stable-door unlocked?"
+
+"Mar--Marse Cal--Cally--lem--lemme tell you 'bout it!" he cried,
+affrighted; and then, ashamed of my silly display of temper, I turned
+him loose. "What make you so fractious ter-night, Marse Cally? A little
+mo' an' you'd 'a' shuck my head off. I declar' ter gracious, Marse
+Cally, I thought I locked dat stable-door. I know I turned de key--dey
+ain't no two ways 'bout dat. I tuck de key out'n de lock when I went
+in, an' put it back in de lock when I come out--I put it in de lock an'
+turned it des like I allers do."
+
+"But what you didn't do," said I, now angry with myself, "was to make
+sure that the bolt of the lock had caught. It didn't catch, and when I
+went there to-night the door yielded to my hand. It was a piece of pure
+carelessness, and if you ever do the like again----"
+
+"Don't talk dat way, Marse Cally; you sho is been mighty good ter me,
+an' I don't want ter make you mad. I never is ter do dat trick ag'in."
+
+Then I told him that there was a plot on foot to steal the horses, and
+advised him as to the identity of the two men. He knew them
+both--especially did he know the prominent citizen, who, on various
+occasions, had invited him into the store and made him presents of pipe
+and tobacco, and had even hinted to him that he could find a good job
+for him when he grew tired of working for nothing. He had also given
+him whiskey, which was a contraband article in the recruiting camp.
+
+We walked along very friendly, for I was ashamed of myself for giving
+way to my temper. When the negro thought I was in a sufficiently good
+humor, he endeavored to ease his own curiosity on a matter that had
+evidently been worrying him. "Marse Cally," he said, "who wuz dat
+little chap we tuck home des now?"
+
+"I don't know his name. Why do you ask?"
+
+"Kaze he look so funny an' done so funny. He ain't look like no man ter
+me."
+
+"Why, of course not; he is little more than a boy; that's the reason I
+made him come out of that house."
+
+"He moughter been a boy," remarked Whistling Jim, after taking some
+time to think the matter over. "He wuz right knock-kneed, an' when he
+walked he walked des like de flo' wuz burnin' his foots."
+
+I could only pretend to laugh, but I wondered at the negro's keep
+observation. Seeing that I made no reply, he went on: "You know what I
+think, Marse Cally? Dat uppity li'l chap is des ez much a man ez you is
+a 'oman."
+
+"Well, it may be so," I replied. "He is nothing to me."
+
+Whistling Jim laughed one of his irritating laughs. "Dat's so, suh, but
+I tuck notice dat you helt han's wid 'im a mighty long time."
+
+This was intolerable, and I remarked with some severity that I proposed
+to make it my special business to inform Harry Herndon how his negro
+had neglected his duty. "Now, don't do dat, Marse Cally, please, suh!
+You know mighty well dat Marse Harry can't keep his temper like you
+does. I dunner when you been ez fractious ez you is ter-night."
+
+"You are the cause of it," I declared, "you and no one else. First you
+leave the stable-door unlocked, and then you say that this young fellow
+is neither man nor boy."
+
+"Did I say dat, Marse Cally?" exclaimed Whistling Jim, apparently
+almost as much amazed as if I had drawn a pistol on him. He stood a
+moment, as if trying to remember the circumstances under which the
+remark had been made, but he shook his head sadly. "Ef I said dat,
+Marse Cally, I must 'a' been dreamin'; I wuz mighty nigh fast asleep
+when we started back des now, an' ef you'd 'a' lissened right close I
+speck you'd 'a' hearn me a sno'in'. Ef you say I said it, den I reckon
+I must 'a' said it, but I wan't at myse'f, kaze ef dey ever wuz a grown
+man on top er de groun', dat chap is one."
+
+"You are sharper than I thought you were," I remarked.
+
+"You must be makin' fun er me, Marse Cally, kaze dey ain't nothin'
+sharp 'bout knowin' a man fum a 'oman. Ef I didn't know de diffunce I'd
+turn myse'f out ter graze wid de dry cattle, an' stay wid um all thoo
+de season."
+
+"Now, that's the way to talk," said I with some heartiness; "but if I
+ever find the stable-door unlocked again I'll take it for granted that
+you have changed your opinion about our young friend."
+
+"I may leave de stable-door onlocked time an' time ag'in," remarked
+Whistling Jim solemnly, "but I never is ter b'lieve dat dat boy is
+anything but a man."
+
+I made haste to inform Harry Herndon that Jack Bledsoe was in the
+neighborhood, and, as was perfectly natural, he was keen to see him,
+less for Jack's sake, I imagine, though he loved the young fellow well,
+than for the sake of having some news of the fair Katherine. As the
+heaviest part of his work at headquarters was over, and as pretty much
+everything had depended on the reply to General Forrest's requisition
+on his superior officer--who, unfortunately, chanced to be General
+Bragg--for arms and ammunition, Harry had no difficulty in securing
+leave of absence for the day; and so, when all the arrangements had
+been made, we set out the next evening for the house where Jack Bledsoe
+lay.
+
+On the way, I suggested that perhaps Jack's mother and the fair cousin
+would probably be found there; and this possibility was in Harry's mind
+also, for he leaned from his horse toward me and extended his hand,
+uttering not a word. I gripped it with mine, and hoped that before I
+died I should have the opportunity of shaking another hand as true. One
+other I found--but only one.
+
+Jack's mother met us at the door, and not far behind her was the fair
+Katherine, more beautiful than ever. I saw at a glance that the ladies
+were expecting us, for they were rigged out in their best, which was
+not very bad, considering that they had been caught between the lines
+with a wounded man on their hands. Another face that I had expected to
+see was not in evidence, and whatever enthusiasm I may have felt in the
+beginning soon died away, and I was sorry that I had been foolish
+enough to accompany Harry.
+
+We were taken at once to Jack's room, and it was very evident that he
+was glad to see us again. He had changed a great deal; he looked older,
+and appeared to be worn by illness. He had been removed from the cabin
+on the river at a critical period, and, as a result, he was compelled
+to go through a long and drastic illness. He was on the high road to
+recovery, but I thought he would never be the same handsome Jack again,
+so cadaverous was his countenance and so changed his voice. The two
+ladies and myself left the friends together and went into the room that
+had been the parlor, where there was a brisk fire burning.
+
+The house was a very commodious country home and had evidently been
+built by some prosperous person whose heart and mind turned to the
+country after he had acquired wealth in the town. But the owner had
+deserted it when the Federals took possession of Murfreesborough,
+leaving furniture and everything to the mercy of circumstance--the
+cruel circumstance that goes hand in hand with war. But everything was
+intact. The old piano stood in the corner as glossy as if it had been
+newly bought, and the carpets on the floor wore a clean look, though
+some of them were threadbare.
+
+After a while, Harry came in search of Kate--she was more important
+than his wounded friend--and Mrs. Bledsoe went to take her place by
+Jack's bedside. This arrangement would have left me very much alone,
+but for the thoughtfulness of Kate, who intimated that I should find
+very interesting company in the next room. "Don't be afraid," she said.
+But I was very much afraid, I know not why, and hesitated a long time
+before I ventured into the room.
+
+And when I did venture to wander in casually, I was more afraid than
+ever, for at a window a small lady sat reading. I knew her at once for
+Jane Ryder, but that fact made me no bolder. On the contrary, I felt a
+timidity that was almost childish; it was a feeling that carried me
+away back to my boyhood, when I refused to go into a room where there
+was a company of little girls.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said I, and began to back toward the door.
+
+"Oh, no harm is done," the lady declared, closing the book, but keeping
+the place with her fore-finger. "Did you desire to see me? Or perhaps
+you would see Miss Bledsoe?"
+
+"No, ma'am--I--that is, Miss Bledsoe is talking with a friend of mine,
+and I just wandered in here, having nothing else to do."
+
+"To be sure! I believe that is a custom of Southern gentlemen."
+
+"What is?" I asked, rather abruptly.
+
+"Why, to go to houses and wander from room to room until their
+curiosity is satisfied."
+
+I was angry, though I knew that she meant not a word she said. "Does
+Mrs. Bledsoe indulge in that habit?" I asked.
+
+"Habit? I said custom. Mrs. Bledsoe is a changed woman since she has
+lived among people who know something of the world and its ways, and
+who are not slave-drivers."
+
+"I believe this is Miss Jane Ryder," I said.
+
+"Your memory is better than your manners," she replied, and though I
+tried hard to keep my temper, her words stung me to the quick.
+
+"I assure you I had not the least desire to disturb you. I came in here
+with the hope, though not the expectation, of finding a lad who came
+here last night."
+
+"He is not here," she asserted, "and if he were, he has no desire to
+see you. He told me something of his encounter with you, and if that is
+the way you treat a young lad, I wonder how you would have treated an
+unprotected woman."
+
+I would not trust myself to speak to her. I made her a low obeisance
+and retired from the room; but I was not to escape so easily. She
+pursued her advantage; she followed me out into the hall. "Is it true
+that the young man compelled you to accompany him to this house last
+night?"
+
+"If he told you so, madam, it is true," I replied.
+
+"After threatening to give you a strapping?" she asked. Her mood was
+almost exultant, though she had been gloomy enough when I first
+disturbed her.
+
+"If he says so, madam."
+
+"He didn't say so, but I believe he slapped your face, for it is still
+red."
+
+"Perhaps he did, madam."
+
+"I am no madam, I'll let you know; why do you call me so?"
+
+"It is simply a term of respect, ma'am. Our young people are taught to
+be respectful to ladies."
+
+"You may be sure that the young man would have remained to see you, but
+I was afraid you'd run away and leave your friend." Women can be very
+childish sometimes, and this was pure childishness.
+
+"Why, I had no idea that he bore me any ill-will," I remarked. "He
+trotted along by my side in perfect good-humor when I was fetching him
+home. If he has any grudge against me, I do not think the fault is
+mine. Say to him that I apologize most humbly for any offence I may
+have given him." Jane Ryder was now sure that I did not connect her
+with the lad--was sure that I had not pierced her disguise, and she
+became at once very much friendlier. Her relief was apparent in voice
+and gesture.
+
+"The truth is," she went on, "the young man is very fond of you, much
+to my surprise. It is a strange fancy," she mused; "there is no
+accounting for it. I believe you could prevail on him to leave his
+friends and go with you to the South; that is why I am keeping him away
+from you."
+
+"I have had few friends," I said, "and if you could add the young man
+to the list and place him above all the rest, I should be happy. But as
+for persuading him to desert his principles, I should never think of
+it; and I should think ill of him if he could be persuaded."
+
+"He really thinks that you are one of the finest men he ever met,"
+pursued Jane Ryder. "He says that a young woman would be as safe from
+insult with you as she would be with her mother."
+
+"And why not?" I inquired. "I thank your friend for his good opinion of
+me; but it is no great compliment to me to say that I should protect a
+woman with my life, if need be. Back yonder there are gathered three or
+four thousand men, and out of that four thousand you will not find ten
+who would not do the same and think it nothing to boast of."
+
+"I wouldn't trust them," she declared.
+
+"Would you trust me?" I asked. The words were out of my mouth before I
+could recall them. They meant more than she would think or than she
+would care for them to mean.
+
+"I certainly would," she said, clenching her hands in a strange little
+gesture.
+
+"I thank you for saying that much," I declared. "The time may come--not
+soon, perhaps--when I shall have to ask you to trust me."
+
+"Soon or late," she replied, "my answer will be the same."
+
+I never was more shaken with the excitement of temptation than at that
+moment. She must have known it; they say women are quick at reading the
+thoughts of a man, but, instead of drawing away from me, she drew
+nearer. In another instant I should have seized her in my arms, the
+pale and lonely creature, but just then the sound of footsteps came
+along the hall, and I heard the happy laughter of Katherine Bledsoe. I
+had raised my arms, but now I lowered them and she had seized my hand.
+
+"Good-by!" she said, and as soon as she could tear her hand from mine
+she was gone--gone by another door, and Harry and her companion came
+plump upon me standing in the hallway, gazing at the door through which
+Jane Ryder had disappeared. Then I turned and gazed at them, first at
+one and then at the other.
+
+"What have you done with her?" inquired Kate, with just a shade of
+solicitude in her voice. "Oh, I hope you haven't hurt her," she cried.
+"She has the tenderest heart in the world."
+
+"Hurt her? Hurt her?" It was all that I could say, and then all of a
+sudden I came to myself and stood there laughing very foolishly. "She
+ran away," I explained. "I don't know why. I am sure I didn't want her
+to go!"
+
+Whereupon Kate fell to laughing, and kept it up until the tears came
+into her eyes. "Oh, men are such simpletons!" she exclaimed; "I don't
+know what I should do for amusement if I didn't see the lords of
+creation once in a great while."
+
+We bade good-by to the household--though Jane Ryder was nowhere to be
+found--and went to our horses, which we had left in charge of Whistling
+Jim. That worthy was in quite a flutter. He had heard strange noises,
+and he was almost sure that he had caught a glimpse of more than one
+man in the darkness. We paid little enough attention to what he said,
+for we knew that the ladies were safe so far as the Confederates were
+concerned, and Jack Bledsoe would answer for their safety with the
+Federals.
+
+Nevertheless, there was no one to answer for our safety, and we had no
+more than mounted our horses before we discovered that we were
+surrounded. We heard the tramp of cavalry on all sides. A quiet voice
+in the darkness made itself heard: "Don't shoot unless they resist!"
+
+"Ride them down!" exclaimed Harry. My horse ran full into another
+horse, and he and his rider went down just as I used my pistol. Some
+one with an oath whacked me over the head with a sabre, my horse
+stumbled in the darkness, and down I went into chaos. I thought I heard
+someone singing, and then it seemed as if there was a free concert in
+progress, while I lay helpless in a great gully out of which I could
+not climb.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Making a great effort to climb from the gully into which I had fallen,
+my foot slipped, and I fell again, and continued to fall till I knew no
+more. When I came to life again I was not in a gully at all, but
+stretched out on a bed, with my boots on, and this fact fretted me to
+such an extent that I threw back the covering and rose to a sitting
+posture. My head was throbbing somewhat wildly, and I soon found that
+the cause of the pain was a towel that had been too tightly bound
+around my forehead. The towel changed into a bandage under my fingers,
+and I found that I could not compass the intricacies of the fastenings.
+I remembered that I had disposed safely of the papers I had found in
+the chair-arm. One was a passport signed by one of the biggest men in
+the country, authorizing Francis Leroy to pass in and out of the Union
+lines at any time, day or night, and the other--there were but two--was
+some useless information with respect to the movements of the Federal
+forces between Murfreesborough and Memphis.
+
+As I came more and more to my senses, I knew that these papers had been
+the cause of my undoing; I could see in it, as plain as day, the hand
+of Jane Ryder, and I was truly sorry. I thought I had been around the
+world and back again, and I should have been very wise, but the bandage
+and Jane Ryder were too much for me. How did she know that I had
+secured the papers? And why did she permit the soldiers to attack me. I
+was feeling very foolish and childish.
+
+Then I observed that a large man was sitting in front of the small
+fireplace, and his long legs were stretched completely across the
+hearth. His head was thrown back, his mouth was open, and he was sound
+asleep. There was half a handful of some kind of medicine in a saucer
+on the table, and I judged that the man would be better off for a dose
+of it. I suppose it was common table salt, but, whatever it was, the
+notion remained with me that it would be a help to the man. It was a
+fantastic notion, but it persisted, and finally I lifted the saucer,
+emptied the medicine in my palm, and transferred it to the open mouth
+of the man. It failed to arouse him; he merely closed his jaws on the
+dose and slept on.
+
+I enjoyed the man's discomfiture before it occurred; I knew what a
+terrible splutter there would be when the stuff began to melt and run
+down his windpipe. I should have laughed aloud, but the bandage was
+hurting me terribly. With a vague hope of getting some relief from
+pain, I opened the door as softly as I could, went out and closed it
+behind me. Another door was open directly in front of me, and through
+this I went. In the room a woman was sitting at a window, her head in
+her hands. She looked up when she heard the slight noise I made, and I
+was surprised to find myself face to face with Jane Ryder. Her eyes
+were red and swollen with weeping, and her hands were all of a tremble.
+
+"Will you please, ma'am, take this off?" I said, pointing to the
+bandage.
+
+She placed her finger on her lip. "Sh-sh!" she whispered, and then,
+whipping around me, closed the door with no more noise than the wing of
+a night-bird might make. "In there, and don't move on your life."
+
+She pointed to a closet, but I shook my head.
+
+"Not if I can help myself," I said. "I have just come out of a deep,
+deep ditch, and I want to hear the splutter." I was whispering, too,
+such was the woman's influence. She looked at me in amazement; she
+tried to understand me; but she must have thought me out of my head,
+for her lips were twitching pitifully and her hands trembling. "It's
+the man in the next room," I whispered with a grin. "I put a handful of
+medicine in his mouth. Wait! you'll hear him directly."
+
+"Oh, I am so sorry for you," she cried, wringing her hands. "I am as
+sorry for you as I am for myself."
+
+"Then please take this bandage off and have my horse brought round."
+
+"I can't! I can't! You're wounded. Go in the closet there."
+
+"I'll go where you go, and I'll stay where you stay," I said; and I
+must have been talking too loud, for she placed her hand on my
+lips--and what should I do but hold it there and kiss it, the poor
+little trembling hand!
+
+And then there came from the next room the famous splutter for which I
+had been waiting. The soldier made a noise as if he were drowning. He
+gasped and coughed, and tried to catch his breath; he strangled and
+lost it, and, when he caught it again, made a sound as if he had a
+violent case of the whooping-cough. And all this time I was laughing
+silently, and I came near strangling myself.
+
+Jane Ryder was far from laughter. She was as cool as a cucumber. With
+one quick movement, and with surprising strength, she had shoved me
+into the closet. Then she flung the door wide open. As she did so the
+guard cried out at the top of his voice that the prisoner had escaped.
+And if ever a man was berated it was that big soldier who had fallen
+asleep at the post of duty. "You drunken wretch!" she cried; "I knew
+how it would be; I knew it!" He tried to make an explanation, but she
+would not hear it. "Oh, I'll make you pay for this! Go--go and find
+him, and if you fail take your cut-throats away from here and never let
+me see them again. Report to my brother, and tell him how you carried
+out your orders. You were to take them all without a struggle, but you
+took only one, and you bring him here more dead than alive. He is
+wandering about in the woods now, out of his head."
+
+"But he shot one of my men. Haven't you any feeling for the man that'll
+be cold and stiff by sun-up?"
+
+"For the man, yes. You should have been the one to pay for your
+blundering. You failed to carry out your orders, and you had a dozen
+against three, and one of the three a negro."
+
+The man started away, but his lagging footsteps showed that he had
+something on his mind, and in a few moments I heard him coming back.
+"'Tain't no use to hunt for the man in the dark, and by sun-up his
+friends'll be buzzin' around here worse'n a nest of hornets. We are
+going back--going back," he repeated, "and you may report what you
+please."
+
+Then the man went away, mumbling and mouthing to himself. As for me, I
+should have preferred to go with him. Pretty much everything is fair in
+war, and Jane Ryder was on the Union side. She knew of the ambuscade
+and had not told me; it was her duty not to tell. She would have made
+no sign if we had been going to our deaths. I have never felt more
+depressed in my life than I did at that moment. Something had slipped
+from under me, and I had nothing to stand on. I came out of the closet
+both angry and sorry. "I shall be obliged to you if you will find my
+hat," I said.
+
+I tried hard to hide my real feelings, and with anyone else the effort
+would have been successful; but she knew. She came and stood by me and
+caught me by the arm. "Where would you go?" There was a baffled look in
+her eyes, and her voice was uneasy.
+
+"Call your man," I said; "I will go with him; it is not his fault that
+he cannot find me; it is not his fault that I am hiding here in a
+woman's closet. Nor shall he be punished for it."
+
+"Your hat is not here," she declared. "It must be where you fell. Do
+you know," she cried, "that you have killed a man? Do you know that?"
+Her tone was almost triumphant.
+
+"Well, what of that?" I asked. "You set them on us, and the poor fellow
+took his chance with the rest. Gladly would I take his place." My head
+was hurting and I was horribly depressed.
+
+She had turned away from me, but now she flashed around with surprising
+quickness. "You are the cause of it all--yes, you! And, oh, if I could
+tell you how I hate you! If I could only show you what a contempt I
+have for you!" She was almost beside herself with anger, passion--I
+know not what. She shrank back from me, drew in a long breath, and fell
+upon the floor as if a gust of wind had blown her over; and then I
+began to have a dim conception of the power that moved and breathed in
+the personality of this woman. She fell, gave a long, shivering sigh,
+and, to all appearance, lay before me dead.
+
+In an instant I was wild with remorse and grief. I seized a chair and
+sent it crashing into the hallway to attract attention. To this noise I
+added my voice, and yelled for help with lungs that had aroused the
+echoes on many a hunting-field. There were whisperings below, and
+apparently a hurried consultation, and then a young woman came mincing
+up the stairs. I must have presented a strange and terrifying spectacle
+with my head bandaged and my wild manner, for the woman, with a shriek,
+turned and ran down the stairs again. I cried again for someone to come
+to the aid of the lady, and presently someone called up the stairs to
+know what the trouble was.
+
+[Illustration: I was wild with remorse and grief.]
+
+"Come and see," I cried. "The lady has fainted, and she may be dead."
+
+I went into the room again, and, taking Jane Ryder in my arms, carried
+her into the next room and laid her on the bed. There was a pitcher of
+water handy, and I sprinkled her face and began to chafe her cold
+hands. After what seemed an age, the landlord came cautiously along the
+hall. "Call the woman," I commanded; "call the woman, and tell her to
+come in a hurry."
+
+This he did, and then peeped in the room, taking care not to come
+inside the door. "What is the matter?" he said uneasily.
+
+"Can't you see that the lady is ill?" I answered.
+
+The woman--two women, indeed--came running in response to his summons.
+"Go in there and see what the trouble is. See if he has killed her. I
+told her he was dangerous. You shall pay for this," he said, shaking a
+threatening hand at me, though he came no farther than the door. "You
+think she has no friends and that you may use her as you please. But I
+tell you she has friends, and you will have to answer to them."
+
+"Why talk like a fool?" said the elder of the two women--the woman with
+whom I had talked in the inner room of the tavern. "You know as well as
+I do that this man has not hurt her. If it were some other man I'd
+believe you. She has only fainted."
+
+"But fainting is something new to her. He has hurt her, and he shall
+pay for it," the man insisted.
+
+"And I tell you," the woman repeated, "that he has not harmed a hair of
+her head. If he had do you think I'd be standing here denying it? Don't
+you know what I'd be doing?"
+
+"If I am wrong I am quite ready to apologize. I was excited--was beside
+myself."
+
+"I want none of your apologies," I said to the man. "I have a crow to
+pick with you, and I'll furnish a basket to hold the feathers."
+
+"It is better to bear no malice," remarked the younger woman, calmly.
+"The Bible will tell you so."
+
+"It is better to tell me the cause of the trouble," interrupted her
+elder.
+
+"Why, I hardly know. I asked for my hat, and from one word to another
+we went till she flamed out at me, and said she hated me, and had a
+great contempt for me; and then she fell on the floor in a faint. I
+thought she was dead, but when I laid her on the bed there I saw her
+eyelids twitching."
+
+The two women eyed each other in a way that displeased me greatly. "I
+told you so," said one. "It's the world's wonder," replied the other.
+And then Jane Ryder opened her eyes. It was natural that they should
+fall on me. She closed them again with a little shiver and then the
+natural color returned to her face. "I thought you were gone," she
+whispered.
+
+"Did you think I would go and leave you like this? Do you really think
+I am a brute--that I have no feeling?" She closed her eyes again, as if
+reflecting.
+
+"But I told you I hated you. Didn't you hear me? Couldn't you
+understand?"
+
+"Perfectly," I replied. "I knew it before you told me; but, even so,
+could I go and leave you as you were just now? Consider, madam. Put
+yourself in my place--I who have never done you the slightest injury
+under the blue sky----" I was going on at I know not what rate, but she
+refused to listen.
+
+"Oh, don't! don't! Oh, please go away!" she cried, holding her arms out
+toward me in supplicating fashion. It was an appeal not to be resisted,
+least of all by me. I looked at her--I gave her one glance, as the
+elderly woman took me by the arm.
+
+"Come with me," she said; "you shall have a hat, though I hardly think
+it will fit you with the bandage round your head."
+
+She led me downstairs, and, after some searching, she fished out a hat
+from an old closet, and it did as well as another. She asked me many
+questions as she searched. How long had I known the poor lady upstairs?
+and where did I meet her? She would have made a famous cross-questioner.
+I answered her with such frankness that she seemed to take a fancy to
+me.
+
+"Some say that the poor lady upstairs is demented," she volunteered.
+
+"Whoever says so lies," I replied. "She has more sense than nine-tenths
+of the people you meet."
+
+"And then, again, some say she can mesmerize folks." Then, seeing that
+the information failed to interest me, "What do you think of them--the
+mesmerizers?"
+
+"I think nothing of them. If they could mesmerize me, I should like to
+see them do it."
+
+"Oh, would you, you poor young man," she said, with a strange smile.
+"How would you know that you were mesmerized, and how would you help
+yourself?"
+
+I know not what reply I made. A fit of dejection had seized me, and I
+could think of nothing but Jane Ryder. "You mustn't think of that young
+lady upstairs as hating you," said the woman, after she had brushed the
+hat and had asked me if I felt strong enough to walk a mile or more.
+"All she means is that she hates your principles. She hates secession,
+and she hates Secessionists. But something has upset her of late; she
+is not herself at all. I'm telling you the truth."
+
+"She hates me; you may depend on that; but her hate makes no difference
+to me. I love her, and I'd love her if she were to cut my throat."
+
+"Is that true? Are you honest? May I tell her so some time--not
+now--but some time when you are far away?"
+
+"To what end?" I asked. "She would tear her hair out if she knew it;
+she would never be happy again."
+
+"You don't happen to love her well enough to join her side, do you?"
+This question was put hesitatingly, and, as I thought, with some shy
+hope that it would receive consideration.
+
+"Madam, you have tried to be kind to me in your way, and therefore I
+will say nothing to wound your feelings; but if a man were to ask me
+that question he would receive an answer that would prevent him from
+repeating it in this world."
+
+"Humpty-dumpty jumped over the wall!" exclaimed the woman with a laugh.
+"I knew what you'd say, but I had my reasons for asking the question;
+you must go now; and bear in mind," she went on with a sudden display
+of feeling, "that the war has made such devil's hags of the women, and
+such devil's imps of the men, that everything is in a tangle. You'll
+know where you are when you go in the next room. And you must forgive
+me. I am Jane Ryder's mother."
+
+And, sure enough, I was in the tavern in the woods, and sitting by the
+hearth was Whistling Jim. To say that he was glad to see me would
+hardly describe the outward manifestation of his feelings. Someone in
+the camp, he didn't know who, had sent him word that he'd find me at
+this house, and he had been waiting for more than an hour, the last
+half of it with many misgivings. He and Harry had escaped without any
+trouble, and my horse had followed them so closely that they thought I
+was on his back. But when they saw that he was riderless, they thought
+that I had either been captured or killed. Once at camp, Harry Herndon
+drummed up as many of the Independents as would volunteer, and they had
+gone in search of me; Whistling Jim heard them riding along the road as
+he was coming to the tavern.
+
+The faithful negro had a hundred questions to ask, but I answered him
+in my own way. I was determined that none but those directly concerned
+should ever know that I had been held a prisoner or that Miss Ryder had
+a hand in the night's work; and I wished a thousand times over that I
+had not known it myself. The old saying, worn to a frazzle with
+repetition, came to me with new force, and I was sadly alive to the
+fact that where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise.
+
+The night was now far advanced, and once at my quarters I flung myself
+on the rude bed that had been provided for me, and all the troubles and
+tangles in this world dissolved and disappeared in dreamless slumber.
+When morning broke I felt better. My head was sore, but the surgeon
+removed the bandage, clipped the hair about the wound, took a stitch or
+two that hurt worse than the original blow, and in an hour I had
+forgotten the sabre-cut.
+
+Singular uneasiness pervaded my thoughts. More than once I caught
+myself standing still as if expecting to hear something. I tried in
+vain to shake off the feeling, and at last I pretended to trace it to
+feverishness resulting from the wound in the scalp; but I knew this was
+not so--I knew that one of the great things of life was behind it all;
+I knew that I had come to the hour that young men hope for and older
+men dread; I knew that for good or evil my future was wrapped in the
+mystery and tangle of which Jane Ryder was the centre. My common-sense
+tried to picture her forth as the spider waiting in the centre of her
+web for victims, but my heart resented this and told me that she
+herself had been caught in the web and found it impossible to get away.
+
+I wandered about the camp and through the town with a convalescent's
+certificate in my pocket and the desperation of a lover in my heart;
+and at the very last, when night was falling, it was Jasper Goodrum, of
+the Independents, who gave me the news I had been looking for all day.
+
+"You'd better pick up and go with us, Shannon; our company is going to
+raid the tavern to-night, and to-morrow we take the road. Oh, you are
+not hurt bad," he said, trying to interpret the expression on my face;
+"you can go and I think I can promise you a little fun. They say a spy
+is housed there, and we propose to smoke him out to-night. Get your
+horse; we start in half an hour."
+
+He went off down the street, leaving me staring at him open-mouthed.
+When he was out of sight I turned and ran toward the camp as if my life
+depended on it.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+I knew no more what I intended to do than the babe unborn. What I did
+know was that Jane Ryder was in that house, in all probability; and
+that fact stung me. She had aided me to escape, even though she had had
+a hand in my capture, and I felt that the least I could do would be to
+take her away from there, willingly if she could come, forcibly if she
+hesitated.
+
+On the way to the camp I met Whistling Jim, and he stopped me. He was
+astride his horse and leading mine. "Dey er gwine on a ride now
+terreckly, Marse Cally, an' I lowed maybe you'd want ter go 'long wid
+um."
+
+For answer I swung myself on my horse and, bidding the negro to follow
+if he desired, put spurs to the sorrel and went flying in the direction
+of the tavern. I did not turn my head to see whether Whistling Jim was
+following, but rode straight ahead. It strikes me as curious, even yet,
+that the darkness should have fallen so suddenly on that particular
+day. When Goodrum spoke to me I supposed that the sun was still
+shining; when I turned into the road that led to the house it was dark.
+I reached the place in the course of a quarter of an hour, and as I
+leaped from my horse I heard the negro coming close behind me. I waited
+for him to come up and dismount, and then I bade him knock at the door,
+and when it was opened I told him to stand by the horses.
+
+The door was opened by the woman who had spoken so kindly with me. "You
+here again?" she cried with an air of surprise. "You would make it very
+hard for her if she were here, but I think she is gone. You'll not see
+her again, my dear, and I, for one, am glad of it. There's no one here
+but myself and my son."
+
+"Your son is the one I want," I replied. "Tell him to come at once. I
+have news for him." The woman had no need to call him, however, for the
+inner door opened as I spoke, and out came Jane Ryder in the garb of a
+man--cloak, boots, and all.
+
+I had an idea that she would shrink from me or show some perturbation;
+but I was never more mistaken in my life. In a perfectly easy and
+natural manner--the manner of a young man--she came up and held out her
+hand. "I think this is Mr. Shannon; Miss Ryder told me your name. I
+have to thank you for some recent kindness to her."
+
+I shook her hand very cordially, saying that nothing I could do for
+Miss Ryder would be amiss. "As it happens," I went on, "I can do
+something for you now. Will you come with me?"
+
+For one fleeting moment her woman's hesitation held her, and then her
+woman's curiosity prevailed. "With pleasure," she said.
+
+As we started for the door the woman interfered. "I wouldn't go with
+him," she declared with some bluntness. "You don't have to go and you
+sha'n't. You don't know what he's up to."
+
+This failed to have the effect I feared it would. "Don't you suppose I
+can take care of myself, mother?"
+
+"I know what I know," replied the woman, sullenly, "and it wouldn't
+take much to make me tell it."
+
+"Then, for heaven's sake, say what you have to say and be done with
+it," I exclaimed. "Only a very few minutes lie between this person and
+safety. If you have anything to tell out with it."
+
+"Your blue eyes and baby face fooled me once, but they'll not fool me
+again. You know more than you pretend to know," said the woman.
+
+"I know this: if this person remains here ten minutes longer he will
+regret it all the days of his life. Now, trust me or not, just as you
+please. If he is afraid to come with me let him say so, and I will bid
+him farewell forever and all who are connected with him. Do you trust
+me?" I turned to Jane Ryder and held out my hand.
+
+"I do," she replied. She came nearer, but did not take my hand.
+
+"Then, in God's name, come with me!" I cried. She obeyed my gesture and
+started for the door.
+
+"Where are you going?" wailed the mother. "Tell me--tell me!"
+
+I was sorry for her, but I made her no answer.
+
+I anticipated this scene as little as I did the fact that Jane Ryder
+would come with me. I was prepared to carry her off if she refused, but
+I was ill prepared for the rumpus that this quiet-looking woman kicked
+up. She followed us to the door and stood wailing while I tried to
+persuade Jane Ryder to mount my horse. She hesitated, but I fairly
+lifted her into the saddle. The stirrup-straps were too short, but that
+made no difference. I sprang on the horse behind her, and, reaching
+forward, seized the reins and turned the horse's head in a direction
+that would bring us into the town by a detour, so that we should miss
+the Independents, who would follow the road that I had followed in
+coming.
+
+"Where are you taking me?" inquired Jane Ryder.
+
+"To safety," I replied. "The house is to be raided to-night, and I
+decided to bring you away. You saved me from a prison, and now I
+propose to save you."
+
+"I saved you? You are mistaken; it was that foolish woman, Miss Ryder."
+
+"Well, she said that you are her dearest friend, and I'm saving you to
+please her."
+
+"You needn't hold me so tight. I'm in no danger of falling off. Where
+are you taking me?"
+
+"To General Forrest." She caught her breath, and then did her utmost to
+fling herself from the horse. When she found that her strength was not
+equal to the task of removing my arms or lifting them so she could slip
+from the saddle, she began to use her tongue, which has ever been
+woman's safest weapon.
+
+"You traitor!" she cried; "oh, you traitor! I wish I had died before I
+ever saw you."
+
+"But this is the safest course," I insisted. "You will see, and then
+you will thank me for bringing you away."
+
+"And I thought you were a gentleman; I took you for an honest man. Oh,
+if hate could kill you you would fall dead from this horse. What have I
+done that I should come in contact with such a villain?"
+
+[Illustration: "If hate could kill you, you would fall dead from this
+horse."]
+
+"You have a pistol," I said--I had felt it against my arm--"and it is
+easy for you to use it. If you think so meanly of me why not rid the
+earth of such a villain?"
+
+"Do you know who I am?" she asked with a gasp of apprehension.
+
+"Why, certainly," I answered. "Do you think I'd be taking the trouble
+to save you else?"
+
+"Trouble to save me? Save me? Why, I hope your savage General will hang
+me as high as Haman."
+
+"He would if he were a savage," I said, "and he would if you were a
+man. And he may put you in prison as it is; you would certainly go
+there if captured by the Forty Thieves. I am taking one chance in a
+thousand. But better for you to be in prison, where you will be safe,
+than for you to be going around here masquerading as a man and
+subjecting yourself to the insults of all sorts of men."
+
+"You are the only man that has ever insulted me. Do you hear?
+You--gentleman!" she hissed. "Can't you see that I despise you? Won't
+you believe it? Does it make no difference?"
+
+"Not the least in the world," I replied. "Now, you must compose
+yourself; you can be brave enough when you will--I think you are the
+bravest woman I ever saw----"
+
+"I wish I could say you are a brave man; but you are an arrant coward:
+you, the soldier that plans to capture women."
+
+"You must compose yourself," I repeated.
+
+"In a few minutes we shall be in the presence of General Forrest, and I
+should like to see you as calm as possible. I don't know, but I think
+you will be safe. It was our only chance." The nearer we drew to
+headquarters the more my anxiety rose; yes, and my sympathy. "By the
+living Lord," I cried, "you _shall_ be safe!"
+
+"Noble gentleman! to entrap a woman and then declare she shall not be
+entrapped! To gain whatever honor there may be in a woman's capture by
+running ahead of his ruffians and capturing her himself! This is
+Southern manliness--this is Southern chivalry! I am glad I know it for
+what it really is. Do you know," she went on, "that I really
+thought--that--I--I---- You are the first man I was ever deceived
+in--I----"
+
+"Come now," said I, not unmoved, for my feelings ran far ahead of hers
+and I knew what she would say and how hurt she was; "come now, you must
+be calm. Everything depends on that--everything."
+
+Near General Forrest's headquarters I dismounted and walked by the side
+of my horse. Then when Whistling Jim came up, and I would have helped
+her from the saddle, "Don't touch me!" she exclaimed. She jumped from
+the saddle to the ground and stood before me, and for the first time I
+was ashamed and afraid. "This way," I said. Then to the guard at the
+door, "Private Shannon, of Captain Forrest's company, to see the
+General."
+
+"He's right in there," said the guard with good-natured informality. I
+rapped at the inner door, and heard the well-known voice of General
+Forrest bidding me to enter.
+
+I saluted, and he made some motion with his hand, but his eye wandered
+over me and rested on my companion. Then, after a moment, they returned
+to me. "What's the matter, Shannon?"
+
+"I have brought to you here one who came to my rescue last night when I
+had been captured by a scouting party. We had gone to see the young
+fellow who, you will remember, was wounded in our last affair at the
+river--you saw him in the cabin. He was carried away the next day by
+his friends, but grew so ill that he could be taken no farther than the
+house on the turnpike two miles from town."
+
+"You didn't let 'em git you just dry so, did you?" he asked. And then I
+gave him the details of the affair from beginning to end. "I thought
+Herndon was mighty keen to go," he remarked with a laugh. "You say this
+young fellow fixed it so you could git away? And then you went back and
+captured him? That don't look fair, does it?" He regarded me with
+serious countenance.
+
+"It is a lady, General, and I did not want her to fall in rough hands."
+He uttered an exclamation of impatience and surprise, and made an
+indignant gesture. "Now, look here, Shannon, that is a matter that I
+won't tolerate. I've a great mind to----" He paused, hearing the voice
+of his wife, who was visiting him. "Go back in there and tell Mrs.
+Forrest to come in here a minute, and do you stay out till I call you.
+I'm going to look into this business, and if it ain't perfectly square
+all the way through you'll pay for it."
+
+I hunted for Mrs. Forrest, hat in hand, and soon found her. I must have
+had a queer expression on my face, for she observed it. "You must be
+frightened," she said.
+
+"I am, madam, for another as well as myself," and then I told her, as
+we walked along very slowly, just how the matter lay. She regarded me
+very seriously for a moment, and then smiled. She was a handsome lady,
+and this smile of hers, full of promise as it was, made her face the
+most beautiful I have ever seen before or since. It is a large saying,
+but it is true.
+
+I remember that I remained in the corridor cooling my heels a weary
+time, but finally Mrs. Forrest came out. "You may go in now," she said.
+"It is all right; I'm glad I was called; I think I have made the
+General understand everything as I do. There are some things that men
+do not understand as well as women, and it is just as well that they do
+not. I am sure you will be very kind to that little woman in there."
+
+I tried to thank her, but there is a gratitude that cannot be expressed
+in words, and I could but stand before her mumbling with my head bent.
+"I know what you would say," she remarked, graciously. "The General and
+I have perfect confidence in you."
+
+I went into the room where General Forrest and Jane Ryder were.
+"Shannon, what are you and Herndon up to? What do you mean by going on
+in this way?" He spoke with some severity, but there was a humorous
+twinkle in his blue-gray eyes. "More than that, you took occasion to
+prejudice the jury. What did you say to Mrs. Forrest?"
+
+"I simply asked her to be kind to the lady in here."
+
+"Well, she was all of that," said the General, "and she threatened me
+with her displeasure if I wasn't kind to you, and as she's the only
+human being that I'm really afeared of, I reckon I'll have to let you
+off this time. Oh, you needn't look so smiling; you are to be punished,
+and that heavily. You are to be responsible for this young woman. You
+are to take charge of her and restore her to her own people--mind you,
+to her own people. You are responsible to me, and I reckon you know
+what that means; if you don't you can just ask somebody that knows me."
+
+I knew what it meant well enough, and I knew what his words meant. "The
+lady is as safe with me, General, as if she were in her mother's arms."
+
+"Now, that's the way to talk, and I believe you," said General Forrest.
+
+All this time Jane Ryder had said not a word. She sat very quietly, but
+there was not a sign of gloom or dejection in her face. But uneasiness
+looked from her eyes. She spoke presently, while General Forrest was
+looking through a large morocco memorandum-book that was a little the
+worse for wear. "If you please," she said, "I should like to go back to
+my friends to-night, if they are not all killed. They can do you no
+harm even if they are alive. They are only a couple of women."
+
+"Well, they are not killed," replied General Forrest without looking
+up. "Wimmen make war on me and do a lot of damage, but I don't make war
+on them. I'm letting you off on a technicality, Miss Ryder. You are not
+a spy; you have never been inside my lines until to-night; and yet you
+were in a fair way to find out a good many things that the other side
+would like to know."
+
+"I never found out as much as I'd like to know," she replied; "and
+since he came bothering me I haven't found out anything."
+
+Apparently General Forrest ignored the remark. He turned to me with a
+slip of paper in his hand. "You'll have to change your name, Shannon.
+This passport is made out to someone else. Read it."
+
+He handed it to me, and I read aloud: "The bearer of this, Captain
+Francis Leroy, is authorized to pass in and out the Federal lines,
+night or day, without let or hindrance." It was signed by a great man
+at Washington and counter-signed by one almost as great.
+
+"Why, that belongs to me," said Jane Ryder; "where did you find it?"
+
+"I reckon it's just a duplicate," said the General, smiling. "I've had
+it some time."
+
+A little frown of perplexity appeared above Jane Ryder's eyes, and if
+it had never gone away until she solved the mystery of this passport it
+would have been there yet, for neither one of us ever knew where
+General Forrest obtained the precious document.
+
+"You will want to go out of my lines, Shannon, and you'll want to come
+back, so I'll fix it up for you." He went into the next room and
+dictated to an orderly, and presently brought me a paper signed with
+his own name, and I have it yet.
+
+Everything was ready for us to take our leave, and we did so. "You are
+a different man from what I thought you," said Jane Ryder to General
+Forrest, "and I have to thank you for your kindness and consideration."
+
+"It ain't what people think of you--it's what you are that counts,"
+replied General Forrest. I have thought of this homely saying hundreds
+of times, and it rings truer every time I repeat it to myself. It
+covers the whole ground of conscience and morals.
+
+As I was going out, Jane Ryder being in advance, the General said to me
+again, "Don't make no mistake about what I mean. You are responsible to
+me for the safety of that young lady. I believe in you, but I may be
+wrong. If I am wrong you'd just as well go out and hang yourself and
+save me the trouble."
+
+"You needn't worry about me, General. I can take care of myself,"
+declared Jane Ryder. We went out of the house and came to where
+Whistling Jim was holding the horses. I dismissed him then and there,
+and told him to put his horse in the stable and have plenty of feed for
+mine. But Jane Ryder, for reasons of her own, preferred to walk, so
+that Whistling Jim went away with the two horses and we were left to
+ourselves.
+
+I remember that I said very little during that long walk, and all the
+burden of the conversation fell on the young woman. She was not at all
+elated over the narrow escape she had had, and preferred to make light
+of it, but I knew that, under different circumstances, she would have
+been put in prison in Richmond, and I think that her nature would have
+succumbed to close confinement.
+
+"You have had your way, after all, but I am not sure that I like it,"
+she said. She waited for me to make some reply, but none was
+forthcoming. "I hope you don't think you have won a great victory. If I
+had been a man, perhaps the victory would have been the other way."
+
+"I didn't compel you to come with me," I remarked.
+
+"You mean I came of my own accord. If I did, it was to avoid a scene
+before my mother--the lady you saw at the house. I didn't want her to
+hear you bluster and threaten; and, besides, I wanted to tell you what
+I think of you. We have both had our way. My mother thinks you are a
+gentleman in a way, and I know what I know."
+
+I trudged along by her side silently; I had no relish for an argument
+in which I was sure to get the worst of it. In some matters a man is no
+match for a woman: he cannot cope with her in a war of words. Nor will
+silence discomfit them. At least, it had no such effect in this
+instance, for the more I was silent, the louder and faster she talked,
+and, apparently, the angrier she became.
+
+"You will boast, no doubt," said she, "and tell your comrades how you
+lorded it over a young fellow who turned out to be a woman--how you
+compelled her to go with you to General Forrest's headquarters. But how
+did you know me? How did you know who I was?"
+
+I laughed aloud. "Why, I'd know you through a thousand disguises, as I
+knew you here that first night."
+
+"I don't believe it; you didn't know me that first night; you had never
+seen me but once before, and you couldn't have known me. How did you
+know me to-night? You won't answer, or if you do you'll say you knew me
+by my swagger. Anything to insult a woman. I'd like to be a man for a
+few hours just to see how they feel toward women--just how much more
+contempt they feel than they show. I tell you, you didn't know me that
+first night."
+
+"Then why did I insist on going home with you?"
+
+This rather stumped her. "Because--because you thought I was a slip of
+a lad, and you knew you could impose on me. If you had known I was a
+woman, you wouldn't have called me a little devil--Yes, you would!" she
+quickly added. "You would have abused me worse than that if you had
+known I was a woman. How did you know--if you knew?"
+
+"By your eyes; the moment I looked into them fairly I said to myself,
+'Here's Jane Ryder again; no one has eyes like hers!'"
+
+She was silent for a little space, and then, "Did it never occur to you
+that it would be politer to refer to me as _Miss_ Jane Ryder?" Now, I
+had never thought of her as Miss Jane Ryder, and I told her so. "Are my
+eyes so peculiar that you would know them anywhere? Are they positively
+hideous, as the young women say?" I hesitated, and she went on, "But
+why do I ask? No matter what you think, it can never, never make any
+difference to me, after the way you have treated me to-night, and I
+hope that when you bid me good-by, as you will have to do directly,
+that I shall never see you again."
+
+"That is the talk of a child, and you are supposed to be a grown
+woman," I replied. "You know very well that I am obliged to carry out
+the orders of my General, no matter how much they go against the
+grain."
+
+She stopped in the road and tried to read my face even in the dark. "Do
+you really mean that?" and then, without waiting for an answer, she
+turned and ran, and I followed the best I could.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+It soon dawned on me that this surprising young woman was as nimble
+with her feet as a schoolboy. She scampered away from me in a way to
+put me on my mettle, and she must have run nearly half a mile before I
+could come up with her. I touched her on the shoulder lightly, crying
+"Caught!"
+
+"There is no getting rid of you," she answered.
+
+"Oh, but there is, as you will discover," I said. "Once with your
+kin-people, you will see no more of me." I was vexed, but my ill-humor
+seemed to add to her high spirits, and she talked away quite blithely.
+When we came to the door it was open, and the mother, who had been kind
+to me, stood there waiting. She was crying and wringing her hands, and,
+for a moment, I thought she had been maltreated by those whose duty it
+was to raid the house. But her trouble was of quite another kind.
+
+"What have you done with her?" she asked.
+
+"She is here with me," I replied. But when I turned to confirm my
+words, Jane Ryder had disappeared. I could only stare at the woman
+blankly and protest that she had been at my side a moment ago before.
+"I knew it!" wailed the woman. "First comes you to wheedle her away,
+and then come your companions to search the house for her. I knew how
+it would be. I never knew but one man you could trust with a woman, and
+he was so palsied that a child could push him over. And the little fool
+was fond of you, too." And with that she wailed louder than ever.
+
+"But, my good woman----" I began.
+
+"Don't good woman me!" she cried. "You don't look like that kind of a
+man, but I knew it; I knew how it would be!"
+
+"Fiddlesticks and frog's eggs!" I cried. "Stop your crying. She is here
+somewhere. You know well enough that I wouldn't have returned without
+her. She came to the door with me. I'd have you to know, madam, that
+I'm not the man you take me for. Do you think I'd injure a hair of her
+head? It is you that have injured her by allowing her to masquerade as
+a man--a little thing like that, with nobody to advise her. You are her
+mother and pretend to be fond of her; why didn't you advise her against
+all this? Why didn't you take a hickory to her and compel her to
+remember her sex? You are the cause of it all--yes, you!"
+
+I spoke in a very loud tone, for I was very angry, and I knew that the
+only way to contend with a woman was to make more noise than she could.
+Just as I was about to continue my railing protest, Jane Ryder came
+through an inner door, dressed, as she should be, in the garb of her
+sex. Her toilette would have been complete but for the fact that in her
+haste her hair had fallen loose from its fastenings and now flowed over
+her shoulders and down to her waist, black as night and as shiny as
+silk.
+
+"I thank you both for your good opinions," she said, making a mock
+courtesy, "especially the chivalrous Mr. Carroll Shannon, with his
+straps, and his hickories, and his riding-whips, and I hope he will
+soon get a woman on whom he can use them all."
+
+"Oh, Jane! Jane!" cried the other, "why will you worry those who love
+you? Why will you try them so?"
+
+The young woman's face fell at that, and she seemed to be very
+contrite. She went quickly across the room and never paused until she
+found herself in the woman's arms, and showed her love by so many
+quaint and delicate little caresses, and had such a dainty and
+bewitching way about her, that no human could have held out against
+her. The woman's face had cleared on the instant and was no more
+clouded with grief and anxiety. "You see how she is," said the woman to
+me; "hurting you to the heart one minute and making you forget it the
+next."
+
+"I see," I replied; "but you should control her. You should make her
+remember who and what she is, and not permit her to go about as a man
+or boy. Don't you know how dangerous it is?"
+
+"Oh, but she's her own mistress," the woman explained. "She can
+wheedle, and no one can say her nay. But I'm glad she went away
+to-night, though I was terribly afraid for her. She had no more than
+got out of hearing before there came a pack of troopers, and nothing
+must do but they must search the whole house from top to bottom. They
+were hunting for Leroy, too, and if she had been here there would have
+been trouble."
+
+"What did I tell you?" I exclaimed. "I captured her ahead of them,
+carried her to General Forrest, and now she is my prisoner. I am
+responsible for her."
+
+"I believe I had rather the others had captured me," Jane Ryder
+declared. The woman looked at me and shook her head, as much as to say,
+"Never believe her."
+
+"Why did you trouble yourself?" Jane Ryder inquired. "I am sure I never
+gave you any cause to worry yourself about me. If you think you have
+done me a service you were never more mistaken in your life. You have
+simply destroyed my usefulness for the time being; but you have given
+me an opportunity to show you what I think of your intermeddling."
+
+"Jane! you know that he has meddled with you only for your own good,"
+said the older woman. "You ought to thank him on your knees."
+
+"On my knees!" she exclaimed angrily. "On my knees! I dare say he would
+like to see me on my knees before him, but he'll see me dead first." I
+was surprised at the heat she showed over the matter.
+
+"Your mother," I said, "has simply used an unfortunate expression. You
+owe me nothing--and if you owed me everything a kind word would more
+than repay me."
+
+She bit her lip, but made no reply. "It's her way," explained the
+mother, "and I'm free to say it's a very poor way. It has always been
+her way. Love her and she'll hurt you; do her a favor and she'll
+pretend to despise you. Her kind words are as scarce as pearls among
+the poor. Scarce, but when they are spoken they make up for all the
+rest. Don't be angry with her; a big man like you shouldn't care what a
+child like her says."
+
+"Child! I am older than he is," said Jane Ryder.
+
+"But age is not age unless it has experience and judgment," remarked
+the older woman, serenely. "Without them, age is another form of
+childishness."
+
+"What are you going to do with me?" asked Jane Ryder, turning to me.
+She was evidently weary of a discussion of which she was the subject.
+
+She had placed her finger squarely on my perplexity, for this was
+indeed the great problem that I had to solve--what should I do with
+her? Not to-morrow, nor the day after, but now--to-night. The question
+had occurred to me a dozen times, but I had put it aside, trusting its
+solution to the moment when it could be no longer postponed. I
+hesitated so long that both of the women sat staring at me. "You have
+not answered my question," said Jane Ryder, "and it is important that I
+should know."
+
+"I might give you your parole for the night," I answered.
+
+"You persist in regarding me as your prisoner?"
+
+"I have my orders," I replied. "You know that as well as I do."
+
+"Thank you for your information. Good-night!" and she was gone before I
+could say a word, even if I had known what to say. All I could do was
+to stare blankly at the door through which she had disappeared. I had
+known all along that if she once took the matter in her own hands I
+should be powerless, for she was a woman--and such a woman! I could no
+more hold her prisoner against her will than I could fly. My whole
+nature revolted at the thought of it. She was a woman--a dangerous
+woman, no doubt, but still a woman--and that settled it for me.
+
+And then, after I had looked at the door long enough to stare it out of
+countenance, if it had had one, I turned to the mother and stared at
+her. There was just the shadow of a smile hovering around her lips, and
+it nettled me. "She is parading as a man," I said, "and I think I shall
+treat her as one. A man can be rapped on the head, tied up, and bundled
+about, without regard for his comfort."
+
+"And yet," said the mother, with her knowing smile, "you wouldn't hurt
+a hair of her head, nor give her a moment's discomfort." She made the
+statement with so much complacency that I was more than irritated; I
+was vexed.
+
+"If you knew me," I declared, "you wouldn't say that. I have no
+patience with women who try to play the man."
+
+"I know you well enough to say what I have said," she replied. "You
+have a face that tells no lies--and more's the pity."
+
+"Where has she gone?" I inquired.
+
+"That I can't tell you," the mother replied; "but it would be the
+wonder of the world if she had gone to bed. We who love her have no
+power to control her. She needs a stronger hand than ours."
+
+"I could tell you something if I would," she remarked presently; "but
+it would be like feeling my way in the dark, and I dare not. Yet there
+is another thing I will tell you that can do no harm, though I promised
+to keep it to myself. If you stay here you will get in trouble. The man
+you shot night before last has a brother, and this brother is
+determined to capture you. I'm telling you this because I think you are
+a good young man. I had a son once who, if he had lived, should be
+about your age, and I would have thanked any woman in the world to have
+given him the warning I have given you. You can gain nothing by
+remaining here. You can return in the morning. Jane will be here; she
+is not going to run away from you."
+
+"Nevertheless, I must do my duty," I said. "With your permission, I
+shall remain here. Does Jane Ryder know of the purpose of this fellow?"
+
+"Oh, no; I wouldn't tell her. She has trouble enough." She paused and
+hesitated. "Why not go? There is the door; it is unlocked and you will
+still have time to join your friends. This is all I can say to you--all
+I can do for you."
+
+"No; you can pray for me. And another thing: if you hear any noise
+cover up your head and make Jane Ryder cover hers."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know what to make of you," she said, puckering her
+forehead as she stood in the door.
+
+"But I think I know what to make of you and your daughter," I replied,
+with a laugh.
+
+"Above all things, don't misjudge us," and with that she was gone,
+closing the door behind her.
+
+How long I sat there I know not; it may have been one hour or it may
+have been many; but some time during the night there came a rap at the
+door and the pictures of Jane Ryder were blotted out of the fire and
+went flitting up the chimney. The knocking was on the outer door, which
+was unlocked, as the woman had said, and I cried out, "Come in!"
+Responsive to the invitation, Whistling Jim made his appearance, and I
+was more than glad to see him. I discovered for the first time that I
+had been oppressed by my loneliness, for my spirits rose to a great
+height.
+
+He seemed very glad to see me, for he laughed aloud. "I bet a dollar
+you ain't had no supper," he said, "an' I tuck an' brung you some.
+'Tain't much, but it's better'n none." But I had no appetite. "I'm
+mighty glad I brung yo' pistols, too, kaze dey's sump'n wrong gwine on
+'roun' here. I seed two er th'ee men prowlin' roun' in de bushes ez I
+come 'long. Marse Cally, how come you ter leave yo' pistols in yo'
+saddle? You ain't been a-doin' dataway. I speck dat ar little man you
+had up in front er you had sump'n ter do wid it." He laughed, but I
+found nothing humorous in the allusion. "Did I say 'oman, Marse Cally?"
+I shook my head. "Kaze ef I did, it slipped out des dry so. I wuz
+comin' atter you anyhow, but Marse Harry holla'd at me an' tol' me fer
+ter fin' you an' say dat de troops gwineter move in de mornin' an' our
+comp'ny starts fust."
+
+I nibbled the food he had brought me, with some particularly heavy
+thoughts in regard to the course we were to take. Yesterday I was a
+boy, and a very foolish one, but to-day I felt myself to be a man. The
+feeling was the growth of a night, but it gave me new confidence in
+myself, and, coupled with it, an assurance that I had never had before,
+and that has remained with me all through the long years that have
+intervened. I think it must have caught the eye of Whistling Jim--the
+change, I mean--for he regarded me curiously and closely.
+
+"Marse Cally," he said after a while, "I b'lieve you done got mo'
+settled, sence--dog ef I don't b'lieve dat it's been sence yistiddy! I
+dunner wharbouts de change is, but it sho' is dar. It mought be de way
+you look at me, an' it mought be de way you don't look at me--an' ef
+you ain't done grow'd bigger I ain't no nigger."
+
+"I have only ceased to be giddy for the time being," I said. "I am
+afraid I have some serious work cut out for me to-night. If you want to
+go you are welcome to do so, and if you stay I'll be glad to have you.
+I don't know anyone I had rather have near me when a row springs up."
+
+"Me, Marse Cally? You sholy don't mean me." It was plain that he was
+delighted. "You know how skeery I is, Marse Cally, when dey's a row
+gwine on. I can't he'p gittin' skeer'd ter save my life. But it's de
+same way 'bout leavin' you; I'm skeer'd ter leave you. I couldn't go
+out dat door fer ter save my life." Whistling Jim held out his long,
+slim hands where he could look at them. Then he ran the scale of an
+imaginary piano, once, twice, and shivered again. "I tell you, Marse
+Cally, I'm a-gittin' skeerder an' skeerder. I wish dey'd come on ef dey
+comin'."
+
+"Well," said I, "I'll place the key of the door on the mantel here, and
+you can go out whenever you want to."
+
+But he protested almost violently. "Don't you dast ter do dat, Marse
+Cally! You put dat key in yo' pocket, an' let it stay dar."
+Nevertheless, I laid it on the mantel. The negro looked at it more than
+once, and finally, as if taking leave of the temptation it represented,
+blew it a kiss from his long fingers.
+
+As he sat down, four men filed into the room through the inner door,
+which had opened almost noiselessly.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The men came in treading on one another's heels. The leader was a
+thick-set, heavily built fellow, and he had an evil-looking eye. He was
+evidently a soldier, or had been one, for he had the air and bearing
+that is unmistakable in a man who has seen service. He had a heavy jaw,
+and I noticed that his hair was cropped close to his head. The others
+appeared to be civilians, plain honest men, but ready, as were many men
+in Tennessee in those days, to help the Union cause in a quiet way.
+
+[Illustration: The leader ... had an evil-looking eye.]
+
+"You said thar was only one," remarked one of them to the short-haired
+man.
+
+"I only told you what Captain Leroy said," replied the leader.
+
+"Well, you better had 'a' fetched Leroy along," commented the man, and
+I judged that he had small stomach for the work before him.
+
+I realized that the time had come for me to speak up. "State your
+business," said I. "What do you want with me?"
+
+"We want you to go with us," replied the short-haired man; "and we'll
+get our wants, too."
+
+"Where am I to go?"
+
+"You'll know when you get there," was the answer.
+
+"By which road?" I asked. "I am very careful about the roads I travel."
+
+"We'll look after the roads all right," he replied. "Will you go
+peaceable or not?"
+
+"Just for the looks of the thing," I replied, "I'd rather have it said
+that I surrendered only after a struggle." Glancing at the three men
+the ruffian had brought with him, I was confirmed in my impression that
+the affair was by no means to their taste. If they had made a rush all
+together it would have been the easiest matter in the world to
+overpower me, but somehow they hung back.
+
+"Come on," the man cried to his companions, making as if he would lead
+them. They hesitated, and it was then that I gave them my views of the
+situation.
+
+"Gentlemen," I said, "I take you for honest, fair-minded men, and I
+would advise you to have no hand in this business. This man's orders
+are from no competent authority, and I give you fair warning that you
+will bitterly regret your part in this night's work if you live through
+it."
+
+I could see anxiety, not fear, creep into their faces, and a wholesome
+doubt of their leader's good faith. I was satisfied that my words had
+taken the edge off their eagerness, and this was all I hoped to do. I
+think the ruffian must have felt that his companions were weakening,
+for he paused and turned toward them, with his hand under his coat, as
+if in the act of drawing a weapon. What he intended to say I never
+knew, for, as he turned toward them, still watching me out of the
+corner of his evil eye, Whistling Jim was upon him.
+
+Seizing the man in his arms, he whirled him around until he could get
+sufficient impetus, and then threw him against the wall as if he had
+been fired from a catapult. If you have never witnessed the fury of
+genuine fright it is to be hoped you never will, for there is something
+hideous about it. The ruffian had hardly hit the wall before the negro
+was upon him again, making a noise in his throat like some wild animal,
+his face distorted and the muscles of his arms and body standing out as
+prominently as if he were covered with huge wens or tumors.
+
+The man had not been so badly stunned by his collision with the wall
+but that he could turn over, and by the time the negro reached him he
+had drawn his pistol half-way from his pocket; but that was all.
+Whistling Jim seized the hand and held it, and, using his head as a
+battering-ram, jammed it into the man's stomach and into his face. Then
+he dragged the limp body toward the fireplace, crying, "Git out de way,
+Marse Cally. I'm gwine ter put 'im whar he can't pester nobody else. Ef
+I don't he sho will shoot me, kaze I done seed his pistol."
+
+While the negro was thus engaged with the most dangerous of the men, it
+is not to be supposed that I was idle. The three companions of the
+ruffian started to his aid when Whistling Jim began operations--their
+hesitation suddenly turning into indignation when they beheld the
+spectacle of a negro assaulting a white man. The foremost went down
+under the chair with which I struck him, the second one tripped over
+the fallen body and also went down with my assistance. The third man
+suddenly found the frame of the well-made chair fitting around his neck
+like the yoke of an ox. I did my best to pull his head off in order to
+recover my weapon, but his neck was tougher than the joints of white
+oak, and the two long legs that went to make up the back of the chair
+came off in my hand, thus giving me a bludgeon very much to my taste.
+
+It was at this juncture that the negro came dragging the body of the
+ruffian and declaring his intention of giving him a foretaste of
+torment. My anger was of such a blind and unreasoning sort that I had
+no objections to the horrible proceeding, and if there had been no
+sudden diversion I should, in all probability, have aided him in
+carrying out his purpose. But there came a tremendous knocking at the
+door, and I could hear someone rapping and kicking at the panels trying
+to force an entrance. So I laid a restraining hand on the negro and
+bade him drop the almost lifeless body.
+
+Giving him one of the chair-legs, and bidding him keep an eye on the
+three men, who evidently had had enough of the rough things of life, I
+went to the door. The key was in a position to reflect the light, and I
+had the door open in a moment; but whoever had rapped to get in seemed
+to have changed his mind. No one came in and no one made an effort to
+enter, but in another moment I heard the voice of Jane Ryder. "Run!
+run!" she cried. "Run, if you want to escape! The back yard is full of
+Union soldiers!"
+
+But I thought that this was only a ruse on the part of the little lady
+to get rid of me, and, instead of getting away, as I should have done,
+I stepped out into the hallway. The sight that I saw filled me with
+indignation, for there stood Jane Ryder, leaning against her mother,
+and rigged out in the toggery of a man.
+
+I took her by the arm, and I must have gripped it roughly, for she
+winced. "If you know what is good for you," I said, very sternly, "you
+will get yourself out of this wretched garb and throw it in the fire.
+Will you go?"
+
+"How can I go when you are holding me?" she asked piteously. I released
+her and she went up the stairway sobbing.
+
+Half-way up the stairs, she turned to me. "You will be sorry you didn't
+go when I told you. You couldn't go now if you wanted to," and with
+that she disappeared.
+
+I could have cracked my silly pate at the sight of her weeping. I felt
+a hand on my arm, and found her mother standing at my side, laughing
+softly. Seeing that I regarded her with unfeigned astonishment, she
+laughed the louder. "You are the first that has ever mastered her. She
+is beyond me. When I married my second husband she declared that I had
+sold my interest in her for a pair of side-whiskers."
+
+The mother said this so pathetically that I could but laugh, seeing
+that there was so much incongruity between the remark and the situation
+all about us. My laughter must have jarred her, for she said with some
+asperity, "You are laughing now, but in a minute you will be laughing
+on the other side of your mouth!"
+
+And it was even as she said. A file of soldiers entered from the rear,
+and before I had time to move or raise a hand they had me surrounded.
+Their leader was a man full of laughter and good-humor. "Consider
+yourself a prisoner," he said to me. "How are you, mother? You are
+looking well. Where is sister? Upstairs? Well, get her down, for we
+must be moving away from here. What is all this?" He looked into the
+room out of which I had come, and saw there the evidences of a
+struggle, as well as the victims thereof.
+
+He bustled about with an alertness that seemed to be prepared for
+anything that might happen. I saw at once that he was a West Pointer. I
+had seen not more than a dozen graduates of the great military academy,
+but enough to recognize the characteristics that marked them all. These
+characteristics are wellnigh indescribable, but they are all included
+in the terms "soldier and gentleman."
+
+"The bruiser has been bruised," he laughed. "You are looking well,
+mother; keep it up for the sake of the children. Tell sister to hurry
+up; we are in a tight place here."
+
+As he spoke, there was the noise of another scuffle in the room. I
+turned just in time to see Whistling Jim fling himself upon the man,
+who had risen to a sitting position and was making an effort to draw
+his pistol. The negro wrenched the weapon from him, threw it out of
+reach, seized the hand that had held it and crunched it between his
+teeth with such savage ferocity that the ruffian howled with pain.
+
+"Oh, come!" cried the officer. "This won't do, you know; this won't do
+at all. I won't put up with it."
+
+"Ef I hadn't er ketched him when I did he'd er shot me daid," Whistling
+Jim explained; "me er Marse Cally one. You don't know dat man, suh. He
+been follerin' atter we-all fer de longest."
+
+"I know him well enough," remarked the officer. "Still----" He paused
+as if listening. The noise he heard was Jane Ryder coming from above.
+He met her half-way up the stairs. "My dear old sis!" he exclaimed as
+he clasped her in his arms. She said nothing, but sobbed on his
+shoulder in a hysterical way that was a surprise to me. "Brace up, dear
+girl," he said, trying to soothe her.
+
+"They were always like that," said the mother in her placid way. "I
+think it is so nice for brother and sister to be fond of each other.
+Don't forget that she gave you fair warning." Her attitude and the tone
+of her voice were so out of tune with all my thoughts and surroundings
+that I regarded her with amazement. She paid no attention to the look,
+however, but folded her hands across her ample bosom and smiled at her
+children in a motherly way.
+
+These children, I knew, were speaking of me, though I could not hear
+all they said, for the officer--he was Colonel Ryder--laughed and said,
+"Oh, he'll be in good company. I picked up another fellow in the woods.
+He says his name is Jasper Goodrum." Then she said something in a low
+tone, something that caused her brother to regard me with considerable
+interest.
+
+"Is that so?" he exclaimed. "You must tell me the particulars later; I
+have no time to hear them now. We must get away from here."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+As he said, so it was; he hustled everything before him, permitting me
+to keep my horse and allowing Whistling Jim to go along. "Good-by,
+mother," he said; "I'm sorry to leave you in such a place as this. I
+suppose you are waiting for Major Whiskers." He laughed gayly as he
+said this, and his mother slapped him playfully as she kissed him.
+
+He invited me to ride with him at the head of his little squad of
+troops, saying that when a colonel started out to command a corporal's
+guard he assuredly needed assistance. He was perhaps thirty years old,
+but he had a tremendous fund of animal spirits, so that he had all the
+ways of a gay youth of twenty. He paid no more attention to the man who
+had been knocked about by Whistling Jim than if he had been a log of
+wood, and yet he was very tender-hearted. Whatever was in the line of
+war appealed to his professional instincts. War was his trade, and he
+seemed to love it; and he had a great relish for the bustle and stir
+that are incident thereto.
+
+His sister rode in the top-buggy in which I had first seen her, and she
+might have been the commander of the men, judging from the way she gave
+instructions. She seemed to know all the roads, for she went ahead
+without the slightest hesitation. She was driving a good horse, too;
+his trot was sufficient to keep our horses in a canter; and whenever he
+heard us coming up behind him he would whisk the buggy away as if he
+scorned company. Perhaps this was due to the little lady who was
+driving him.
+
+I had no grudge against her, heaven knows, but somehow I resented my
+present plight, for which I thought she was responsible. She had given
+me fair warning, but she should have known that it was my purpose to
+carry out the orders of General Forrest; and if I was to be warned at
+all she should have told me the precise nature of the danger. In that
+case, I could not only have escaped, but I could have been instrumental
+in the capture of her brother and his whole party. Perhaps she knew
+this--and perhaps this was why she would give me no definite
+information.
+
+But if she knew at all she must have known everything; her brother must
+have come in response to a summons from her or her mother. In any case
+I had been tricked--I had been made a fool of--and after what I had
+done for her, I felt that I had a right to feel aggrieved. Colonel
+Ryder observed my sullenness and commented on it.
+
+"Don't be down-hearted, my boy. It is the fortune of war; there is no
+telling when it may turn its sunny side to you. In your place I should
+whistle and sing and make the best of it. Still, I know how you feel,
+and I sympathize with you."
+
+"I should not have gone to that house last night," he went on, "but I
+knew that my mother was there, and I had received information that one
+of our scouts by the name of Leroy was in great danger of capture. What
+I did discover was that Miss Ryder had been captured." He laughed as he
+said this, and gave me a peculiar look.
+
+"As to Leroy," I asked, "was he at that house? I am very much
+interested in knowing, for General Forrest detailed me to capture him."
+
+"Under the circumstances, you acquitted yourself wonderfully well, and
+General Forrest has no right to be displeased with you," remarked
+Colonel Ryder.
+
+"But you have not answered my question," I said.
+
+"In the nature of things," he replied, enigmatically, "I prefer not to
+tell you. Of one thing you may be sure--Leroy is not likely to bother
+the rebels for some time to come. I think you have put him out of
+business, as the boys say."
+
+"Then Leroy must be the name of the man that tried to capture me at the
+tavern. It was the negro that put him out of business."
+
+"But Leroy is a very dear friend of mine," laughed the Colonel, "and
+you may be sure I should not have left him there. You observed, of
+course, that I was very attentive to the man your negro had whipped."
+He was still laughing, and I could not imagine for the life of me why
+he was tickled.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+We rode along without adventure of any kind, though I momentarily
+expected to hear the tramp of Forrest's outriders behind us. They never
+came, and about ten o'clock--my stomach was my clock in this instance,
+for I had had no breakfast--we suddenly turned off from the main road
+and plunged into the shadows of the finest wood I had ever seen. There
+were giant chestnuts, giant poplars, giant oaks, and giant pines. They
+were so large that human beings seemed small and insignificant beside
+them, and I realized that we were in the primeval forest.
+
+The thought, however, did not satisfy my hunger, and I wondered when
+and where a halt was to be called and rations parcelled out. It is a
+vexatious feeling for the young to feel the pangs of hunger, and I was
+not used to a long fast. My feelings were relieved by Whistling Jim,
+who informed me that he had placed a very substantial ration in my
+holsters; and I am free to say that, after Colonel Ryder, the negro was
+the most thoughtful and considerate person I have ever seen. He had an
+easy explanation for it, and spoke of it very lightly, remarking that
+all he had to do was to think of himself first "an' de white folks
+nex'."
+
+In turning into the wood, we were following the lead of the little lady
+in the top-buggy, and I think that Colonel Ryder had no idea whither
+she was leading him. Yet he yielded himself and his men to her guidance
+with a confidence that few soldiers would have displayed. We had come
+very rapidly until we turned out of the main road, and then we went
+along more leisurely. This gave me time to overcome my natural
+stupidity, for I finally realized that our rapid movements on the main
+road were intended to place us beyond the reach of Forrest's advance
+guard.
+
+The by-way that we were now following appeared to be little used, yet
+it was a wide road and a good one, and probably served as the means of
+communication between isolated farms, or it may have led to some lonely
+grist-mill which had been built for the convenience of that thinly
+populated region. Though it was but little used, it was plain to the
+eye, and I thought with a smile that if Captain Bill Forrest's company
+should happen to have any leisure a dozen or more of them would be sure
+to see where it led, in which event----
+
+The smile faded away as soon it came, for I thought of the little lady
+in the top-buggy who was driving ahead with so much confidence. She
+would be safe in any event, but what would she think of me if her
+brother should be captured or killed? I shrunk from facing such a
+contingency; I shrunk without knowing why. Being a young fellow, and
+feeling my importance as I have never felt it since, I imagined she
+would hold me responsible. I had interfered with her plans in more ways
+than one, and I felt that she owed me a grudge that would grow to
+enormous proportions should any harm come to her brother.
+
+I was suddenly recalled to the affairs of the moment by hearing the
+screams of a woman, followed by a rifle-shot. I saw Jane Ryder urging
+her horse forward, and, without waiting to see what Colonel Ryder
+proposed to do, I put spurs to my horse, followed by Whistling Jim. The
+scream of the woman had sent a cold chill all through me, and I was in
+no humor for waiting to see what the others would do. I thought I heard
+shouts behind me, but I paid no attention to them. I turned my horse to
+the left and headed him in the direction from which the sounds had
+come.
+
+Keeping a sharp eye ahead, I soon came in sight of a cabin sitting
+lonely and forlorn in the middle of a small clearing. I saw more than
+this, for three men were engaged in a desperate effort to batter down
+the door. My horse bore me past the little lady in a flash, although
+she was using the whip. With a cry of "Halt and surrender!" I rode at
+the men pistol in hand. They whipped around the house without turning
+their heads, and ran off into the thick undergrowth, where it would
+have been both useless and dangerous to pursue them.
+
+They left one of their number on the ground, the victim of the
+rifle-shot we had heard. He begged lustily for both mercy and water. If
+he had been compelled to choose between the two I think he would have
+taken water. I gave him my canteen, which he emptied at a gulp and
+called for more. There was a strange silence in the house--a silence in
+decided contrast to the screams I had heard, and I wondered if the
+wretches had shot the woman. I started to knock on the door with the
+butt of my pistol, but Jane Ryder was before me.
+
+"Only children do such foolish things," she exclaimed, and I thought
+she had scorn in her voice. "Sally! Sally Rodgers! Open the door if you
+are alive! Don't you know me? Your friends are here."
+
+"Pardon me!" I said, pushing past Jane Ryder as the door opened. For a
+moment I could see nothing whatever, not even the woman who had opened
+the door, but when my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom that pervaded
+the house--all the windows were closed--I saw the big Irishman whom I
+had met at the tavern a few nights before. He was sitting very quietly
+in the chimney-corner, but I observed that he had me covered with his
+rifle. I stared at him without a word, and he was equally as silent,
+but something in the situation--or in his face, for he had as pleasing
+a countenance as I have ever seen--caused me to laugh.
+
+[Illustration: He had me covered.]
+
+"'Tis a long mile from a joke," he declared. "Ye see before ye Private
+O'Halloran av the sharpshooters. Wan av us is a prisoner, an' I'm
+thinkin' it's not meself."
+
+"It is not given to every man," I replied, "to be taken prisoner while
+he is still a prisoner. You will have to speak to Colonel Ryder."
+
+The woman had come from behind the door to greet Jane Ryder, and now
+she was giving her all the details of her troubles, her voice pitched
+in a very high key. Meanwhile, half a dozen children in various stages
+of undress swarmed from under the bed and stood staring at us. "The
+sound of the woman's screams," said I, turning to Jane Ryder, "caused
+me to forget that I am a prisoner. I hope your brother doesn't think
+that I made that an excuse for running away."
+
+"And why shouldn't a prisoner escape--if he can?" she asked, after a
+moment's hesitation. "You'll never have a better opportunity to rejoin
+your command. You are not under parole, and you are under no
+obligations to my brother. You have only to mount your horse, beckon to
+your negro, and follow the path you will find at the back of the house.
+It leads by a grist-mill. A part of your command has already passed on
+the road beyond the mill, but if you will go now you will fall in with
+the rear-guard."
+
+"Beggin' pardon," said O'Halloran, taking off his hat to the lady, "the
+lad has engagements wit' me. He's me twenty-ninth, all told, an'
+there's luck in odd numbers. If it's all the same to you, mum, he'll
+stay here."
+
+"But it's not all the same to me, Mr. O'Halloran," she said, turning to
+the Irishman. "I prefer that he should go."
+
+His eyes grew bigger as he stared at the lady. "Oh----" he exclaimed,
+and then paused with his mouth open. "Niver did I hope to see me
+gallant Captain in this rig. It doesn't become ye at all. The trimmin's
+make ye a fut shorter, an' be me soul! ye was short enough to begin
+wit'." His amazement made her laugh, but she made no reply.
+
+"Are you going?" she inquired, turning to me. I hesitated. Undoubtedly
+here was an opportunity, but something or other--some feeling or
+sentiment--call it what you will--held me back.
+
+"Not now," I said, finally. "Some other time, perhaps, but not now." I
+did not realize at the time why I held back--why I refused to be free.
+
+She turned away from me with a petulant shrug of the shoulders, as much
+as to say that she was no longer under obligations to me for preventing
+her capture by the party that had raided the tavern. The big Irishman,
+who had evidently recognized the little lady as a person of some
+importance, went so far as to try to persuade me to make my escape, or,
+rather, to take advantage of the escape I had already made.
+
+"If ye're stayin' thinkin' he's a woman, don't do ut. Don't stop for to
+say good-by, but straddle yure horse an' be off wit' ye."
+
+But the little lady had a mind of her own, as I was shortly to
+discover. After she had talked with the woman for a few minutes, she
+turned to me.
+
+"Will you ride with me a few miles?" she inquired. "Your negro can lead
+your horse."
+
+I agreed with such promptness and eagerness that a faint tinge of color
+came into her face. But, in the bustle of getting away, I paid little
+attention to her appearance until we were on the move again, and then I
+observed that she was very pale. I thought it was cold, and said so.
+
+"The wind is certainly chilly," she replied, and then, moved by
+embarrassment, or stirred by the motherly instinct that constitutes
+more than half the charm of womanhood, she leaned over and tucked the
+lap-robe about my knees, and then fell back in her place, laughing
+gleefully, as a child might have laughed. Indeed, for a woman grown,
+this little lady had more of the cunning tricks of childhood than
+anyone I had ever seen--the cute little ways that endear children to
+those who love them. At the time, this fact did not add to my
+happiness, for, what with her womanliness and her childishness, she
+presented a problem that puzzled and dazzled me, for my mind was
+wofully lacking in the nimbleness necessary to follow the swift changes
+of her moods.
+
+She had turned the buggy into the woods, and was driving along with no
+road to guide her. I had not the remotest idea whither she was carrying
+me, but by way of saying something I protested against the way she was
+pushing her horse. "You will need him after to-day," I explained.
+
+"I have reason to be in a hurry," she said. "Horses are cheap enough
+with us. They are furnished by the Government."
+
+"Still, he is a fairly good horse," I remarked, "and he deserves some
+consideration on his own account."
+
+"Do you think so?" she cried. "I am sure you are very kind--to horses.
+If I am driving him too hard you have yourself to thank. You have upset
+all my plans, and I am not very happy. Don't you think a woman deserves
+as much consideration as a horse?"
+
+"They are to be treated according to their deserts," I answered,
+gravely. "They know what duty is. Private O'Halloran says that you are
+no woman, and I say that you are no man. Where does consideration fall
+in your case?"
+
+"I ask for no more consideration than you would accord to a human
+being. Mr. O'Halloran has never seen me in my proper dress before, and
+he knows only how I appear at night when I am working for the cause of
+the Union. But who are you that you should judge of the deserts of men
+and women? You are nothing but a boy, and you'll not be different when
+you are a man. Instead of marching with your comrades, here you are
+riding in a buggy with a woman--and for what? In the name of heaven,
+tell me for what?"
+
+She seemed to be overcome by quite a little flurry of passion, and her
+manner irritated me. "You know why as well as I do," I replied, soberly
+enough. "You heard the orders my General gave me in the first place,
+and, in the second place, you know that I am a prisoner. It is odd that
+you can play a game and forget the score. I imagined when I started
+that my duty would be the greatest pleasure of my life."
+
+"Do you know where you are going now?" she inquired, very seriously.
+
+"It is a matter of indifference to me," I answered. "Wherever I go, I
+am in the hands of Providence."
+
+"If you could believe that," she remarked, "it would do you a world of
+good."
+
+I laughed at her serious manner. "Believe it!" I exclaimed. "Why, it is
+too plain for mere belief. I do not believe it--I know it."
+
+She was silent for a long time, and when she did speak her words,
+showed that the matter was still on her mind. "It seems to me very
+peculiar," she said, "that one so young should have such solemn
+thoughts."
+
+"Why do you call them solemn thoughts?" I asked. "Can anything be more
+cheerful than to know that you are altogether in the hands of a higher
+Power--to know that you will be taken care of; or, if you perish, to
+know that it will be in the very nick of time?"
+
+"You are too serious to be romantic," she said. "I should like to see
+you making love."
+
+"I can gratify your humor with a right good will--only the lady I would
+make love to despises me."
+
+"I'll never believe it," she declared, and it was evident that she
+meant what she said.
+
+"That is because you have only a vague idea of the cruelty of woman
+when she has a man at her mercy--and knows it."
+
+"I should like to see some woman at your mercy," she said. "No doubt
+you would give free play to the strap and the rawhide and other
+implements of the slave-driver."
+
+Her words made me wince, and I must have shown the wound, for when I
+looked at her her countenance wore an expression of regret and
+repentance. "You must forgive me," she declared. "If we were to be
+thrown together you would have to forgive me fifty times a day."
+
+"Well, I thank heaven," I exclaimed, with some feeling, "that I was
+never at the mercy of more than one woman, and that fact was mitigated
+somewhat. She was arrayed in the garb of a man, and I was so sorry for
+her that I forgot she had me at her mercy."
+
+"You should have told her," the little lady declared. "Perhaps if she
+had known her conduct would have been vastly different. You never know
+what a woman will do until she has been put to the test."
+
+"She did a good deal," I said, sullenly. "She called me a coward, a
+rebel, and a traitor."
+
+"Then she must have been in despair," replied the little lady in the
+most matter-of-fact way. "When you are a little older you will discover
+that despair has an anger all its own. But I hope you will never feel
+it," she sighed. "Anyone can I see that you know very little about
+women."
+
+"I hope my ignorance does me no harm," I suggested.
+
+"Not the slightest," she answered. "It is a help to you. It is the sort
+that goes with youth, and I had rather have your youth than all the
+experience in the world."
+
+The answer I made I shall always regard as an inspiration. "You can
+have my youth," I said, "if you will take all that goes with it." For
+one or two little moments she either doubted her ears or failed to
+catch my meaning. But when she could no longer doubt--when she was
+obliged to understand me--she hid her face in her hands to conceal the
+result of her emotions. I seized her hands and compelled her to look at
+me. She was blushing like a school-girl. "Is my youth, with all its
+appurtenances, worth your acceptance?" I asked. She made no reply, and
+I think she would have maintained silence the rest of the way but for
+my persistent chattering.
+
+To me her embarrassment was very beautiful--thrilling, indeed--and in
+some mysterious way her youth came back to her, and she seemed to be no
+more than sixteen. "My youth is not too youthful for you," I insisted.
+"I have grown very much older lately, and you have become a girl again
+in the last five minutes." She was still silent, and I took advantage
+of it to draw her hands under the lap-robe. "There is no reason why
+your fingers should freeze," I said.
+
+"They are not likely to--now," she declared, and, though it may have
+been pure imagination, I thought she leaned a little nearer, and the
+bare idea of such graciousness on her part seemed to change my whole
+nature. All the folly of youth went out of me, and love came in and
+took its place and filled my whole being. What I had been belonged to
+the remote past; I knew that I should never be the same again.
+
+"I offered you my youth," I said, "and now I offer you my manhood, such
+as it is. You must answer yea or nay."
+
+She gave me a quick, inquiring glance, and her face told me all that I
+desired to know. "Neither yea nor nay," she replied. "We are both very
+foolish, but, of the two, I am the more foolish. We are trying to look
+too far ahead; we are prying into the future, and the future is away
+beyond us. Everything you say and everything I have in my mind is
+absurd, no matter how agreeable it may be. Do you care enough for me to
+desert your comrades and fling your principles to the four winds? Do I
+care enough for you to leave my people and give my sympathies to your
+side?" She was smiling as she spoke, but I knew that she was very
+serious, and I made no reply. "I am going to tell you the simple
+truth," she went on. "I do care enough for you to leave everything for
+your sake, for there can be no real love where there is not a
+willingness to sacrifice all---- Oh, I don't know why women are
+compelled to make all the sacrifices."
+
+"She not only does that," I replied, "but she is compelled to bear the
+burden of them alone. Ordinarily, man is a hindrance rather than a
+help, but I am here to help you."
+
+"Then help me in the right way," she implored.
+
+"I will," I replied; "but here is an argument that is worth all the
+rest," and with that I drew her to me and pressed my lips to hers. She
+made no resistance whatever, but somehow the argument did not appeal to
+her reason.
+
+"I could kiss you twice ten thousand times," she declared, "but facts
+would remain the same. I have heard that your people have great notions
+of honor, and I hope it is true in your case."
+
+Well, it was only too true, and I knew it, but, manlike, I must take
+some reprisal from the truth. "Your mother told me," I said, "that you
+have a great knack of hurting those you love."
+
+She leaned against me with a sigh. "If I thought that the truth could
+really hurt you," she declared, "I should never be happy again in this
+world, but it is something else that hurts, and it is hurting me a
+great deal worse than it is hurting you."
+
+I suppose I am not the only man in the world that has been caught in
+the desert that sometimes stretches its barren wastes between love and
+duty. I knew that if I but held out my hand to this little woman she
+would give up all, and, assuredly, had she held out her hand to me I
+should have flung duty to the winds. But she was of a different mould.
+The only comfort I had at the moment was in feeling that the sacrifice
+was mutual.
+
+I longed for her brother to ride up behind us, so that I might still be
+a prisoner, but she had provided against that. I realized at last that
+I had never been regarded as a prisoner. I should have been grateful,
+but I was not--at least, not at the moment. If, as has been said, a man
+cuts a ridiculous figure when he is sulking, my appearance must have
+been truly laughable. But the little lady was very sweet and patient.
+Her eyes were so full of tears, as she afterward confessed, that she
+could hardly see to guide her horse.
+
+When I came to take note of my surroundings I could not refrain from
+uttering an exclamation of surprise. We had issued from the forest,
+when or how I knew not, and were now ascending a very steep hill.
+Looking back, I saw a mill behind me, and noticed that Whistling Jim
+was engaged in conversation with the miller. He was evidently
+negotiating for meal or flour; but it all came to me as in a dream.
+
+"Did you see the mill as we came by?" I asked.
+
+"Certainly," the little lady replied. "Didn't you hear me speak to the
+miller?"
+
+"I don't know how I am to forgive you for seeing and hearing things. I
+didn't know we had come out of the wood."
+
+She laughed merrily and laid her face against my arm, but when she
+lifted it she was crying. "Oh, don't make it too hard for me," she
+pleaded. "I am not myself to-day. Duty has been poisoned for me, and I
+shall be wretched until this war is over. Surely it can't last long."
+
+"Not longer than a century," I replied, bitterly.
+
+"Look yonder!" she exclaimed.
+
+We had now reached the top of the hill, and when I looked in the
+direction in which she pointed, I saw a sight that thrilled me.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+From the crest of the hill a vast panorama, bare but beautiful,
+stretched out before us. The hill was not a mountain--indeed, from the
+direction of our approach, it seemed to be rather an insignificant
+hill; but on the farther side the land fell away from it quite
+unexpectedly, so that what seemed to be a hill from one side developed
+the importance almost of a mountain on the other side. The road dropped
+into a valley that ran away from the hill and spread out for miles and
+miles until it faded against the horizon and was lost in the distance.
+The season was winter, and the view was a sombre one, but its extent
+gave it a distinction all its own. Far to the left a double worm-fence
+ran, and we knew that a road lay between, for along its lazy length a
+troop of cavalry trailed along.
+
+I knew it instantly for the rear-guard of my command, and the sight of
+it thrilled me. I suppose something of a glow must have come into my
+face, for the little woman at my side stirred impatiently. "That is
+your command," she said, "and you are glad to see them." She was silent
+a moment, and then, as if she had suddenly lost all control of herself,
+cried out, "Oh, what shall I do now?"
+
+"You knew what my duty was," I said, with a sustaining arm about her,
+"and you brought me here."
+
+"But if I had it to do over again I couldn't--I couldn't!" she wailed.
+
+"If you had it to do over again you shouldn't," I answered; and then I
+seized her and held her tight in my arms. Nor did I release her until
+Whistling Jim, coming up and realizing the situation, celebrated it by
+whistling a jig. "If you'll say the word," I declared, "I'll go with
+you."
+
+"I can't! I can't!" she cried. "Do you say it, and I'll go with you."
+
+But neither of us said it; something beyond ourselves held us back. I
+am not sure, after all, that it was a sense of duty; but, whatever it
+was, it was effectual.
+
+"I am afraid something dreadful will happen to you," she declared. "I
+have dreamed and dreamed about it. You have made a coward of me. I'm
+not afraid for myself, but for you."
+
+"One year after the war is over," I said, "I shall be at the old tavern
+in Murfreesborough. One year to a day. Will you meet me there?"
+
+"I'll be there," she replied, "or send a messenger to tell you that I
+am dead."
+
+And so we parted. I mounted my horse, and she turned her buggy around.
+I watched her until she passed out of sight, and I knew that one of her
+little hands must be cold, for she waved it constantly until a turn in
+the road hid her from view. On the road toward which she was going I
+could see a group of men and horses, and I knew that her brother
+awaited her. With a heavy heart, I turned my horse's head, and went
+galloping after my comrades, followed by Whistling Jim.
+
+I had but one thought, and that was to report to General Forrest as
+promptly as possible and receive the reprimand that I knew I deserved.
+At that time it was the general opinion, even among those of his
+command who were not thrown into daily contact with him, that this
+truly great man was of a grim and saturnine disposition. But it was an
+opinion that did him great injustice. There were times when he fairly
+bubbled over with boyish humor, and though these moments were rare, he
+was unfailingly cordial to those that had met his expectations or who
+had his confidence. He could be grim enough when circumstances demanded
+a display of temper, but he had never made me the victim of his
+displeasure.
+
+I looked forward with no little concern to our next meeting, for I felt
+that I merited a reprimand, and I knew how severe he could be on such
+occasions. He was far to the front, as I knew he would be. "Hello,
+Shannon!" he exclaimed, in response to my salute. His countenance was
+serious enough, but there was a humorous twinkle in his eye. "Did you
+fetch me the fellow I sent you for?"
+
+Thereupon, I related my adventures as briefly as I could. He seemed to
+be amused at something or other--I have thought since that it must have
+been at my attitude of self-depreciation--and called two or three of
+his favorite officers so that they might enjoy it with him. He was
+highly tickled by the narrative of my experience with the little lady
+in the top-buggy, though, as a matter of course, I suppressed some of
+the details.
+
+"Now, I want you all to look at this boy," he said to his officers when
+I had concluded. "He ain't anything but a boy, and yet he did what no
+other man in my command could have done. He captured Leroy, the fellow
+you have been reading about, and fetched him to me, and I've put him
+out of business. There's Goodrum, an old campaigner, a man who knows
+every man, woman, and child in this part of Tennessee. I put Goodrum on
+the same trail, and Goodrum's a prisoner. This boy was a prisoner, too,
+and yet he turns up all right and puts up a poor mouth about what he
+failed to do. If every man in my command would fail in the same way
+I'd have the finest body of troops in the army. And look at him blush.
+Why, if these other fellows were in your place"--indicating the
+officers--"they'd be strutting around here like peacocks."
+
+"But, General," I protested, "what I did was through my blundering."
+
+"Then I hope you'll go right ahead with your blunders; you couldn't
+please me better. I'm going to take you away from the Independents, and
+I'll put you where I can get my hands on you any hour of the night or
+day."
+
+And as he said so it was--and so it remained until the close of the
+war. Especially was it so when Forrest was ordered to cover Hood's
+retreat after the disastrous affair at Nashville. History has not made
+very much of this achievement, but I have always thought that it was
+the most remarkable episode of the war. Under the circumstances, no
+other leader could have accomplished it. No other man could have
+imposed his personality between the defeated Confederates and their
+victorious foe, bent on their total destruction. It was little short of
+wonderful.
+
+I remember that I was shoeless, along with the greater part of my
+command, though the weather was bitter cold, and my feet were bleeding,
+and yet when I heard that trumpet voice, ordering us from the wagons to
+make one more stand, I never thought of my feet. Nor was there a
+shirker among the men--and all because the leader was Forrest. Nothing
+but death would have prevented us from responding to his summons. And
+we saved that defeated army from annihilation, holding the enemy at bay
+and driving him back, when, if he had known the true condition of
+affairs, he would have ridden over us roughshod. There were times when
+we were upon the point of giving way and fleeing before the numbers
+that were hurled against us. But always the imposing figure of Forrest
+appeared at the weak point, and then it would be the enemy would give
+way.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+At this point, with only a few more words, my story would have been
+ended, but the young lady to whom it was first told would not permit it
+to end there. Her Boston education had not eliminated her curiosity.
+She sat looking at her mother with an indescribable expression on her
+face. I knew not whether she was on the point of laughing or crying,
+and I think that for a moment the mother was as doubtful as I. She did
+neither the one nor the other, but went to her mother's chair and
+kneeled on the floor beside her.
+
+"Hasn't Dad left something out?"
+
+"Why, I think not," replied the mother. "Indeed, I think he has told
+too much."
+
+"Oh, no, not too much," replied the young woman. "I know he has left
+out something, and I think it is the most important part."
+
+"What I have not told," I remarked, "has been strongly intimated. It is
+best to leave some things to the imagination."
+
+"I think not," replied the young woman, with decision. "You haven't
+told anything about what happened after the war."
+
+"That's true," commented the mother, with something like a blush; "but
+I think that is almost too personal."
+
+"No, no," the girl insisted with a smile; "you know how the public take
+such things. If Dad writes his story and has it put in a book the
+readers will think it is pure fiction."
+
+"But if it were fiction," said I, "it would be a bad thing for all of
+us."
+
+Fiction or not, I was compelled to tell the story until there was no
+more story to tell.
+
+In the middle of April, one year after the surrender, I made all my
+preparations to return to Murfreesborough, and it was no surprise to me
+that Harry Herndon was keen to go with me. His grandmother made no
+objection, especially when he explained that he desired to be my best
+man. His real reason for going, however, was a lively hope that
+Katherine Bledsoe would accompany Jane Ryder. And then there was
+Whistling Jim to be taken into account. He made known his intention of
+accompanying me whether or no. He was free, and he had money of his
+own, and there was no reason why he shouldn't visit Murfreesborough if
+he cared to. He settled the matter for himself, and, once on the way, I
+was very glad to have him along.
+
+But for the subtle changes made by peace, the town was the same, and
+even the old tavern in the woods had survived all the contingencies of
+war and stood intact, but tenantless. I made haste to escape from the
+old house, and was sorry that I had ventured there before the appointed
+time. The sight of it gave me a feeling of depression, and I had a
+foretaste of the emptiness there would be in life should Jane Ryder
+fail to come.
+
+The only consolation I had was in the hopefulness of Whistling Jim.
+"She'll be dar ez sho' ez de worl'," he said, and his earnestness was
+so vital that it was the means of lifting me across a very bad place in
+my experience; yet it did not cure me of the restlessness that had
+seized me. The night before the appointed day, I wandered far beyond
+the limit of the town, and presently, without knowing how I got there,
+I found myself near the house where Jack Bledsoe had lain when he was
+wounded. I went to the gate and would have gone in on the pretence of
+inquiring the way to the town; but a woman was standing there in the
+darkness.
+
+I hesitated, but I should have known her among a thousand--I should
+have known her if the darkness had been Egyptian. I opened the gate and
+held her in my arms. Neither said a word, and the silence was unbroken
+until someone in the house came out upon the veranda and called:
+
+"Jane! Jane! Are you out there? Where are you?" It was the voice of
+Katherine Bledsoe, and I was glad for Harry's sake.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+"I don't think that is a very pretty way to end a story," said the
+mother of the college graduate, perceiving that I had nothing more to
+say. "You should by all means get your sweetheart out of your arms."
+
+"Since that day," I replied, "she hasn't been out of them long at a
+time."
+
+"But you will have to change that part of it when you write the story
+out."
+
+"Oh, no!" cried the daughter.
+
+I refilled my pipe and listened to their tender arguments until I was
+sleepy, and when I went to bed they were still arguing.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Little Union Scout, by Joel Chandler Harris
+
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