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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cavalier, by George Washington Cable
+
+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: The Cavalier
+
+Author: George Washington Cable
+
+Posting Date: November 15, 2011 [EBook #9839]
+Release Date: February, 2006
+First Posted: October 23, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAVALIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!"]
+
+THE CAVALIER
+
+BY
+
+GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+     I.    She Wanted to Laugh
+    II.    Lieutenant Ferry
+   III.    She
+    IV.    Three Days' Rations
+     V.    Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty
+    VI.    A Handsome Stranger
+   VII.    A Plague on Names!
+  VIII.    Another Curtained Wagon
+    IX.    The Dandy's Task
+     X.    The Soldier's Hour
+    XI.    Captain Jewett
+    XII.    In the General's Tent
+   XIII.    Good-Bye, Dick
+    XIV.    Coralie Rothvelt
+     XV.    Venus and Mars
+    XVI.    An Aching Conscience
+   XVII.    Two Under One Hat-Brim
+  XVIII.    The Jayhawkers
+    XIX.    Asleep in the Death-Trap
+     XX.    Charlotte Oliver
+    XXI.    The Fight on the Bridge
+   XXII.    We Speed a Parting Guest
+  XXIII.    Ferry Talks of Charlotte
+   XXIV.    A Million and a Half
+    XXV.    A Quiet Ride
+   XXVI.    A Salute Across the Dead-Line
+  XXVII.    Some Fall, Some Plunge
+ XXVIII.    Oldest Game on Earth
+   XXIX.    A Gnawing in the Dark
+    XXX.    Dignity and Impudence
+   XXXI.    The Red Star's Warning
+  XXXII.    A Martyr's Wrath
+ XXXIII.    Torch and Sword
+  XXXIV.    The Charge in the Lane
+   XXXV.    Fallen Heroes
+  XXXVI.    "Says Quinn, S'e"
+ XXXVII.    A Horse! A Horse!
+XXXVIII.    "Bear a Message and a Token"
+  XXXIX.    Charlotte Sings
+     XL.    Harry Laughs
+    XLI.    Unimportant and Confidential
+   XLII.    "Can I Get There by Candle-Light?"
+  XLIII.    "Yes, and Back Again"
+   XLIV.    Charlotte in the Tents of the Foe
+    XLV.    Stay Till To-Morrow
+   XLVI.    The Dance at Gilmer's
+  XLVII.    He's Dead--Is She Alive?
+ XLVIII.    In the Hollow of His Right Arm
+   XLIX.    A Cruel Book and a Fool or Two
+      L.    The Bottom of the Whirlwind
+     LI.    Under the Room Where Charlotte Lay
+    LII.    Same Book and Light-Head Harry
+   LIII.    "Captain, They've Got Us"
+    LIV.    The Fight in the Doorway
+     LV.    Rescue and Retreat
+    LVI.    Hôtel des Invalides
+   LVII.    A Yes and a No
+  LVIII.    The Upper Fork of the Road
+    LIX.    Under Charlotte's Window
+     LX.    Tidings
+    LXI.    While Destiny Moved On
+   LXII.    A Tarrying Bridegroom
+  LXIII.    Something I Have Never Told Till Now
+   LXIV.    By Twos. March
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!"
+
+"I surrender," he said, with amiable ease
+
+"Well, you _air_ in a hurry!"
+
+With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the fence like a deer
+
+Ferry saluted with his straight blade
+
+"Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very arch
+
+Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of his
+followers
+
+Springing to the ground between our two candles, she bent over the open
+page
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+SHE WANTED TO LAUGH
+
+Our camp was in the heart of Copiah County, Mississippi, a mile or so
+west of Gallatin and about six miles east of that once robber-haunted
+road, the Natchez Trace. Austin's brigade, we were, a detached body of
+mixed Louisiana and Mississippi cavalry, getting our breath again after
+two weeks' hard fighting of Grant. Grierson's raid had lately gone the
+entire length of the State, and we had had a hard, vain chase after
+him, also.
+
+Joe Johnston's shattered army was at Jackson, about forty-five miles to
+northward; beleaguered Vicksburg was in the Northwest, a trifle farther
+away; Natchez lay southwest, still more distant; and nearly twice as far
+in the south was our heartbroken New Orleans. We had paused to
+recuperate our animals, and there was a rumor that we were to get new
+clothing. Anyhow we had rags with honor, and a right to make as much
+noise as we chose.
+
+It was being made. The air was in anguish with the din of tree-felling
+and log-chopping, of stamping, neighing, braying, whooping, guffawing,
+and singing--all the daybreak charivari beloved of a camp of
+Confederate "critter companies." In the midst of it a chum and I sat
+close together on a log near the mess fire, and as the other boys of the
+mess lifted their heads from their saddle-tree pillows, from two of them
+at once came a slow, disdainful acceptance of the final lot of the
+wicked, made unsolicited on discovering that this chum and I had sat
+there talking together all night. I had the day before been wheedled
+into letting myself be detailed to be a quartermaster's clerk, and this
+comrade and I were never to snuggle under the one blanket again. The
+thought forbade slumber.
+
+"If I go to sleep," I said,--"you know how I dream. I shall have one of
+those dreams of mine to carry around in my memory for a year, like a
+bullet in my back." So there the dear fellow had sat all night to give
+me my hourly powders of reassurance that I could be a quartermaster's
+clerk without shame.
+
+"Certainly you can afford to fill a position which the leader of Ferry's
+scouts has filled just before you."
+
+But my unsoldierly motive for going to headquarters kept my misgivings
+alive. I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare
+was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and
+Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and "Les
+Misérables"--Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation--lent round; and where
+men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs. Ned
+Ferry had been Major Harper's clerk, but had managed in several
+instances to display such fitness to lead that General Austin had lately
+named him for promotion, and the quartermaster's clerk was now
+Lieutenant Ferry, raised from the ranks for gallantry, and followed
+ubiquitously by a chosen sixty or so drawn from the whole brigade. Could
+the like occur again? And could it occur to a chap who could not
+comprehend how it had ever occurred at all?
+
+By and by we breakfasted. After which, my precious horse not having
+finished his corn, I spread my blanket and let myself doze, but was soon
+awakened by the shouts of my companions laughing at me for laughing so
+piteously in my sleep.
+
+"Would I not tell my dream, as nice young men in the Bible always did?"
+
+"No, I would not!" But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had
+told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose
+tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather
+some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his
+example, but having got in, could only stay there. The boys furnished
+the moral; it was not complimentary.
+
+"Well, good-bye, fellows."
+
+"Good-bye, Smith." I have never liked my last name, but at that moment
+the boys contrived to put a kindness of tone into it which made it
+almost pleasing. "Good-bye, Smith, remember your failings."
+
+Remember! I had yet to make their discovery. But I was on the eve of
+making it.
+
+As I passed up the road through the midst of our nearly tentless camp I
+met a leather-curtained spring-wagon to which were attached a pair of
+little striped-legged mules driven by an old negro. Behind him, among
+the curtains, sat a lady and her black maid. The mistress was of
+strikingly graceful figure, in a most tasteful gown and broad Leghorn
+hat. Her small hands were daintily gloved. The mules stopped, and
+through her light veil I saw that she was handsome. Her eyes, full of
+thought, were blue, and yet were so spirited they might as well have
+been black, as her hair was. She, or fate for her, had crowded thirty
+years of life into twenty-five of time.
+
+For many a day I had not seen such charms of feminine attire, and yet I
+was not charmed. Every item of her fragrant drapery was from the world's
+open market, hence flagrantly un-Confederate, unpatriotic,
+reprehensible. Otherwise it might not have seemed to me that her thin
+nostrils had got their passionateness lately.
+
+"Are you not a New Orleans boy?" she asked as I lifted my képi and drew
+rein.
+
+Boy! humph! I frowned, made myself long, and confessed I had the honor
+to be from that city. Whereupon she let her long-lashed eyes take on as
+ravishing a covetousness as though I had been a pretty baby.
+
+"I knew it!" she said delightedly. "But tell me, honor bright,"--she
+sparkled with amusement--"you're not regularly enlisted, are you?"
+
+I clenched my teeth. "I am nineteen, madam."
+
+Her eyes danced, her brows arched. "Haven't you got"--she hid her smile
+with an embroidered handkerchief--"haven't you got your second figure
+upside down?" I glared, but with one look of hurt sisterliness she
+melted me. Then, pensive just long enough to say, "I was nineteen once,"
+she shot me a sidelong glance so roguish that I was dumb with
+indignation and tried to find my mustache, forgetting I had shaved it
+off to stimulate it. She smiled in sweet propitiation and then came
+gravely to business. "Have you come from beyond the pickets?"
+
+"No, madam."
+
+"Have you met any officer riding toward them?"
+
+I had not. Her driver gathered the reins and I drew back.
+
+"Good-bye, New Orleans soldier-boy," she said, gaily, and as I raised my
+cap she gave herself a fetching air and added, "I'll wager I know
+your name."
+
+"Madam,"--my cap went higher, my head lower--"I never bet."
+
+I could not divine what there was ridiculous about me, except a certain
+damage to my dress, of which she could not possibly be aware as long as
+I remained in the saddle. Yet plainly she wanted to laugh. I made it as
+plain that I did not.
+
+"Good-day, sir," she said, with forced severity, but as I smiled
+apologetically and moved my rein, she broke down under new temptation
+and, as the wagon moved away, twittered after me unseen,--"Good-bye, Mr.
+Smith."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+LIEUTENANT FERRY
+
+I passed on, flattered but scandalized, wasting no guesses on how she
+knew me--if she really knew me at all--but taking my revenge by
+moralizing on her, to myself, as a sign of the times, until brigade
+headquarters were in full view, a few rods off the road; four or five
+good, white wall-tents in a green bit of old field backed by a thicket
+of young pines.
+
+Midway of this space I met Scott Gholson, clerk to the Adjutant-general.
+It was Gholson who had first spoken of me for this detail. He was an
+East Louisianian, of Tangipahoa; aged maybe twenty-six, but in effect
+older, having from birth eaten only ill-cooked food, and looking it;
+profoundly unconscious of any shortcoming in his education, which he had
+got from a small church-pecked college of the pelican sort that feed it
+raw from their own bosoms. One of his smallest deficiencies was that he
+had never seen as much art as there is in one handsome dinner-plate.
+Now, here he was, riding forth to learn for himself, privately, he said,
+why I did not appear. Yet he halted without turning, and seemed to wish
+he had not found me.
+
+"Did you"--he began, and stopped; "did you notice a"--he stopped again.
+
+"What, a leather-curtained spring-wagon?"
+
+"No-o!" he said, as if nobody but a gaping idiot would expect anybody
+not a gaping idiot to notice a leather-curtained spring-wagon. "No-o!
+did you notice the brown horse that man was riding who just now passed
+you as you turned off the road?"
+
+No, I barely remembered the rider had generously moved aside to let me
+go by. In pure sourness at the poverty of my dress and the perfection of
+his, I had avoided looking at him higher than his hundred-dollar boots.
+My feet were in uncolored cowhide, except the toes.
+
+"He noticed you," said Gholson; "he looked back at you and your bay.
+Wouldn't you like to turn back and see his horse?"
+
+"Why, hardly, if I'm behindhand now. Is it so fine as that?"
+
+"Well, no. It's the horse he captured the time he got the Yankee who had
+him prisoner."
+
+"Who?" I cried. "What! You don't mean to say--was that Lieutenant
+Ferry?"
+
+"Yes, so called. He wa'n't a lieutenant then, he was a clerk, like you
+or me."
+
+"Oh, I wish I had noticed him!"
+
+"We can see him yet if you--"
+
+"Do you want to see him?" I gathered my horse.
+
+"Me!--No, sir. But you spoke as if--"
+
+I shook my head and we moved toward the tents. This was worse than the
+dream; the rat had not seen the cockerel, but the cockerel had observed
+the rat--dropping into the barrel: the cockerel, yes, and not the
+cockerel alone, for I saw that Gholson was associating him with her of
+the curtained wagon. By now they were side and side. I asked if Ferry
+came often to headquarters. "Yes, quite as often as he's any business
+to." "Ah, ha!" thought I, and presently said I had heard he was a
+great favorite.
+
+"Well,--yes,--he--he is,--with some."
+
+"Don't you like him?"
+
+"Who, me? Oh!--I--I admire Ned Ferry--for a number of things. He's more
+foolhardy than brave; he's confessed as much to me. Women call him
+handsome. He sings; beautifully, I suppose; I can't sing a note; and
+wouldn't if I could. Still, if he only wouldn't sing drinking-songs
+--but, Smith, I think that to sing drinking-songs--and all
+the more to sing them as well as some folks think he does--is to
+advocate drinking, and to advocate drinking is next door to excusing
+drunkenness!"
+
+"Then Ned Ferry doesn't drink?"
+
+"Indeed he does! I don't like to say it, and I don't say he drinks 'too
+much', as they call it; but, Smith, he drinks with men who do! Oh, _I_
+admire him; only I do wish--"
+
+"Wish what?"
+
+"Oh, I--I wish he wouldn't play cards. Smith, I've seen him play cards
+with the shells bursting over us!"
+
+For my part I privately wished this saint wouldn't rub my uninteresting
+surname into me every time he spoke. As we dismounted near the tents I
+leaned against my saddle and asked further concerning the object of his
+loving anxiety. Was Ned Ferry generous, pleasant, frank?
+
+"Why, in outward manner, yes; but, Smith, he was raised to be a Catholic
+priest. I could a heap-sight easier trust him if he'd sometimes show
+distrust, himself. If he ever does I've never seen it. And yet--Oh,
+we're the best of friends, and I'm speaking now only as a friend and
+_toe_ a friend. Oh, if it wa'n't for just one thing, I could admit what
+Major Harper said of him not ten minutes ago to me; that you never
+finish talking to Ned Ferry without feeling a little brighter, happier
+and cleaner than when you began; whereas talking with some men it's just
+the reverse."
+
+I looked carefully at my companion and asked him if the Major had said
+_all_ of that. He had, and Gholson's hide had turned it without taking a
+scratch. "That's fine!--as to Ferry," I said.
+
+"Oh, yes,--it would be--if it was only _iso_. Trouble is, you keep
+remembering he's such a stumbling-block to any real spiritual inquirer.
+Yes, and to himself; for, you know, spiritually there's so much less
+hope for the moralist than what there is for the up-and-down reprobate!
+You know that,--_Smith_."
+
+My silence implied that I knew it, though I did not feel any brighter,
+happier or cleaner.
+
+"Smith, Ned Ferry is not only a Romanist, he's a romanticist. We--you
+and me--are religionists. _Our_ brightness and happiness air the
+brightness and happiness of faith; our cleanness is the cleanness of
+religious scruples. Worst of it with Ned is he's satisfied with the
+difference, I'm afraid! That's what makes him so pleasant to fellows who
+don't care a sou marquee about religion."
+
+I said one might respect religion even if he did not--
+
+"Oh, he's always _polite_ to it; but he's--he's read Voltaire! Oh, yes,
+Voltaire, George Sand, all those men. He questions the Bible, Smith. Not
+to me, though; hah, he knows better! Smith, I can discuss religion and
+not get mad, with any one who don't question the Bible; but if he does
+that, I just tell you, I wouldn't risk my soul in such a discussion!
+Would you?"
+
+I could hardly say, and we moved pensively toward Major Harper's tent.
+Evidently the main poison was still in Gholson's stomach, and when I
+glanced at him he asked, "What d'you reckon brought Ned Ferry here just
+at this time?"
+
+I made no reply. He looked momentous, leaned to me sidewise with a hand
+horizontally across his mouth, and whispered a name. It was new to me.
+"Charlie Toliver?" I murmured, for we were at the tent door.
+
+"The war-correspondent," whispered Gholson; "don't you know?" But the
+flap of the tent lifted and I could not reply.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+SHE
+
+Major Harper was the most capable officer on the brigade staff. I had
+never met a man of such force and dignity who was so modestly affable.
+His new clerk dined with him that first day, at noon in his tent, alone.
+Hot biscuits! with butter! and rock salt. Fried bacon also--somewhat
+vivacious, but still bacon. When the tent began to fill with the smoke
+of his meerschaum pipe, and while his black boy cleared the table for us
+to resume writing, we talked of books. Here was joy! I vaunted my love
+for history, biography, the poets, but spoke lightly of fiction.
+
+The smoker twinkled. "You're different from Ned Ferry," he said.
+
+"Has he a taste for fiction?" I asked, with a depreciative smirk.
+
+"Yes, a beautiful story is a thing Ned Ferry loves with a positive
+passion."
+
+"I suppose we might call him a romanticist," said I, "might we not?"
+
+The patient gentleman smiled again as he said, "Oh--Gholson can attend
+to that."
+
+I took up my pen, and until twilight we spoke thereafter only of
+abstracts and requisitions. But then he led me on to tell him all about
+myself. I explained why my first name was Richard and my second name
+Thorndyke, and dwelt especially on the enormous differences between the
+Smiths from whom we were and those from whom we were not descended.
+
+And then he told me about himself. He was a graduate of West Point, the
+only one on the brigade staff; was a widower, with a widowed brother, a
+maiden sister, two daughters, and a niece, all of one New Orleans
+household. The brothers and sister were Charlestonians, but the two men
+had married in New Orleans, twin sisters in a noted Creole family. The
+brother's daughter, I was told, spoke French better than English; the
+Major's elder daughter spoke English as perfectly as her father; and the
+younger, left in her aunt's care from infancy, knew no French at all. I
+wondered if they were as handsome as their white-haired father, and
+when I asked their names I learned that the niece, Cécile, was a year
+the junior of Estelle and as much the senior of Camille; but of the days
+of the years of the pilgrimage of any of the three "children" he gave me
+no slightest hint; they might be seven years older, or seven years
+younger, than his new clerk.
+
+To show him how little I cared for any girl's age whose father preferred
+not to mention it, I reverted to his sister and brother. She was in New
+Orleans, he said, with her nieces, but might at any moment be sent into
+the Confederacy, being one of General Butler's "registered enemies." The
+brother was--
+
+"Out here somewhere. No, not in the army exactly; no, nor in the navy,
+but--I expect him in camp to-night. If he comes you'll have to work when
+you ought to be asleep. No, he is not in the secret service, only in _a_
+secret service; running hospital supplies through the enemy's lines
+into ours."
+
+I was thrilled. _I_ was taken into the staff's confidence! Me, _Smith!_
+That _Major Harper_ would tell me part of a matter to conceal the rest
+of it did not enter my dreams, good as I was at dreaming. The flattery
+went to my brain, and presently, without the faintest preamble, I asked
+if there was any war-correspondent at headquarters just now. There came
+a hostile flash in his eyes, but instantly it passed, and with all his
+happy mildness he replied, "No, nor any room for one."
+
+Just then entered an ordnance-sergeant, so smart in his rags that the
+Major's affability seemed hardly a condescension. He asked me to supper
+with his mess--"of staff _attatchays_," he said, winking one eye and
+hitching his mouth; at which the Major laughed with kind disapprobation,
+and the jocose sergeant explained as we went that that was only one of
+Scott Gholson's mispronunciations the boys were trying to tease him
+out of.
+
+I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper,
+stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head
+(save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only Gholson
+was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious jests got
+off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind. Never had I
+been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing "All quiet along
+the Potomac to-night," and was courteously praised when I had done so.
+But there is where affliction overtook me; they debated its authorship.
+One said a certain newspaper correspondent, naming him, had proved it to
+be the work--I forget of whom. But I shall never forget what followed.
+Two or three challenged the literary preeminence of that correspondent,
+and from as many directions I was asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying
+back against a pile of saddles with my head in my hands, sodden with
+self-assurance, I replied, magnanimously, "Oh, I don't set up for a
+critic, but--well--would you call him a better man than
+Charlie Toliver?"
+
+"Who--o?" It was not one who asked; the whos came like shrapnel; and
+when, not knowing what else to do, I smiled as one dying, there went up
+a wail of mirth that froze my blood and then heated it to a fever. The
+company howled. They rolled over one another, crying, "Charlie
+Toliver!--Charlie Toliver!--Oh, Lord, where's Scott Gholson!--Charlie
+Toliver!"--and leaped up and huddled down and moaned and rolled and
+rose and looked for me.
+
+But, after all, fortune was merciful, and I was gone; the Major had
+summoned me--his brother had come. I went circuitously and alone. As I
+started, some fellow writhing on the grass cried, "Charlie Tol--oh, this
+is better than a tcharade!" and a flash of divination enlightened me.
+While I went I burned with shame, rage and nervous exhaustion; the name
+Scott Gholson had gasped in my ear was the name of her in the curtained
+wagon, and I cursed the day in which I had heard of Charlotte Oliver.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+THREE DAYS' RATIONS
+
+In the vocabulary of a prig, but in the wrath of a fishwoman, I
+execrated Scott Gholson; his jealousies, his disclosures, his religion,
+his mispronunciations; and Ned Ferry--that cockerel! Here was I in the
+barrel, and able only to squeal in irate terror at whoever looked down
+upon me. I could have crawled under a log and died. At the door of the
+Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve
+when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's
+nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling
+good joke Smith had just got off on Gholson!
+
+"We shall have to get Ned Ferry back here," the Major was saying as I
+entered, "to make you boys let Scott Gholson alone."
+
+The young man laughed and turned to go. "Why doesn't Ned Ferry make
+_her_ let Gholson alone? He can do it; he's got her round his finger as
+tight as she's got Gholson round hers."
+
+"Harry," replied the Major, from his table full of documents, "don't you
+know that any man who's got a woman wrapped round his finger has also
+got her wrapped round his throat?"
+
+The aide-de-camp laughed like a rustic and vanished. "Smith," said the
+Major, "your eyes are--"
+
+"I've been awake for forty-eight hours, Major. But--oh, I'm not
+sleepy."
+
+"Well, go get some sleep.--No, go at once; you'll be called when
+needed."
+
+But I was not needed; while I slept, who should come back and do my work
+in my stead but Ned Ferry. When I awoke it was with a bound of alarm to
+see clear day. The command was breaking camp. I rushed out of the tent
+with canteen, soap and comb, and ran into the arms of the mess-cook. We
+were alone. "Oh, yass, seh," he laughed as he poured the water into my
+hands, "th'ee days' rairtion. Seh? Lawd! dey done drawed and cook' befo'
+de fus' streak o' light. But you all right; here yo' habbersack, full
+up. Oh, I done fed yo' hoss. Here yo' jacket an' cap; and here yo'
+saddle an' bridle--Oh, you welcome; I dess tryin' to git shet of 'em
+so's I kin strak de tent."
+
+As I mounted, our wagonmaster rode by me, busy as a skipper in a storm.
+"Oh, here!" he cried, wheeled, and reaching something to me added,
+"that's your pass. Major Harper wants you as quick as you can show up.
+He says never mind the column, ride straight after him. Keep this road
+to Hazlehurst and then go down the main Brookhaven road till you
+overtake him. He's by himself--nearly."
+
+As the rider wheeled away I blurted out with anxious loudness in the
+general hubbub, "Isn't his brother with him?"
+
+He flashed back a glare of rebuke and then bellowed to heaven and earth,
+"Oh, the devil and Tom Walker! I don't keep run of sutlers and
+citizens!" He took a circuit, standing in his stirrups and calling
+orders to his teamsters, and as he neared me again he said very gently,
+"Good Lord! my boy, don't you know better than to shoot your mouth off
+like that? You'll find nobody with the Major but Ned Ferry, and I don't
+say you'll find him."
+
+I galloped to the road. Away down through the woods it was full of
+horsemen falling into line. With the nearest colonel was Lieutenant
+Helm, the aide-de-camp. I turned away from them toward Hazlehurst, but
+looked back distrustfully. Yes, sure enough, the whole command was
+facing into column the other way! My horse and I whirled and stood
+staring and swelling with indignation--we ordered south, and the brigade
+heading westward! He fretted, tramped, neighed, and began hurriedly to
+paw through the globe to head them off on the other side. He even
+threatened to rear; but when I showed him I was ashamed of that, he bore
+me proudly, and I sat him as proudly as he bore me, for he made me more
+than half my friends. And now as the aide-de-camp wheeled about from the
+receding column and came our way saluting cordially, we turned and
+trotted beside him jauntily. Our first talk was of saddles, but very
+soon I asked where the General was.
+
+"Out on the Natchez Trace waiting for the command. I'm carrying orders
+to Fisher's battery, down here by the cross-roads. Haven't you seen the
+General this morning? What! haven't seen him in his new uniform? Whoop!
+he's a blaze of glory! Look here, Smith, I believe you know who brought
+it to him!"
+
+"How on earth should I know?"
+
+"Oh, how innocent you always are! Look here! just tell me this; was it
+the Major's brother brought it, or was it Ned Ferry?"
+
+"Suppose it wasn't either."
+
+"I knew it! I knew it was her! Ah, you rogue, you know it was her!"
+
+"Well, that _might_ depend on who 'her' is." We had reached the
+cross-roads and he was turning south.
+
+"Look!" he said, and gave the glance and smile of the lady in the
+curtained wagon so perfectly that I cackled like a small boy. "Oh, you
+know that, do you? I dare you to say she didn't bring it!"
+
+"I give you my word I don't know!" called I as the distance grew between
+us. "And I give you my word I don't care!" he crowed back as we
+galloped apart. His speech was two or three words longer, but they are
+inappropriate at the end of a chapter, and I expurgate.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN, TWENTY
+
+On entering Hazlehurst I observed all about the railway-station a
+surprising amount of quartermaster's stores. A large part were cases of
+boots and shoes. Laden with such goods, a train of shabby box-cars stood
+facing south, its beggarly wood-burner engine sniffing and weeping,
+while the cork-legged conductor helped all hands wood up. Though homely,
+the picture was a stirring one. Up through the blue summer morning came
+the sun, bringing to mind the words of the dying Mirabeau, "If that is
+not God, at least it's his first cousin."
+
+Even in the character of the goods there was eloquence, and not a
+drollery in the scene, not even an ugliness, but was touched, was rife,
+with the woe of a war whose burning walls were falling in on us. And
+outward, too, upon others; a few up-ended cottonbales leaned against
+each other ragged and idle, while women and babes starved for want of
+them in far-away Lancaster.
+
+One of the cars furthest from the engine had no freight proper, only a
+number of trunks; and these were nearly hidden by the widely crinolined
+flounces of an elegant elderly lady who sat on the middle one. And now
+she, too, was hidden, and the wide doorway in the side of the car more
+than filled, by the fashionable gowns of three girls. On the ground
+below there stood a lieutenant in a homemade gray uniform, and at his
+back half a dozen big, slouching, barefoot boys squirted tobacco juice
+and gazed at the ladies. The officer scanned me, spoke to the ladies,
+scanned me again, and threw up an arm. "Ho--o! Come here! Hullo! Come
+here--if you please."
+
+If he had not said please he should have ho'd and hullo'd in vain, but
+at that word I turned. Before I had covered half the distance I read New
+Orleans! my dear, dear old New Orleans! in every line of those ladies'
+draperies, and at twenty-five yards I saw one noble family likeness in
+all four of their sweet faces. Oh, but those three maidens were fair!
+and I could name each by her name at a glance: Camille, Cécile, Estelle;
+eighteen, nineteen, twenty!
+
+There was a hush of attention among them as the lieutenant and I
+saluted. His left hand was gone at the wrist and the sleeve pinned back
+on itself. He asked my name; I told him. In the car there was a stir of
+deepening interest. I inquired if he was the post-quartermaster here.
+He was.
+
+"Ain't you Major Harper's quartermaster-sergeant?" he asked.
+
+"I am his clerk." In the car a flash of joy and then great decorum.
+
+As he handed me a writing he glowed kindly. It proved to be from Major
+Harper; a requisition upon this officer for shoes and clothing; not for
+a brigade, regiment or company, but for me alone, from hat to shoes. I
+tendered it back silently, and saw that he knew its purport already from
+the Major, and that the ladies knew it from him. The good fellow looked
+quite happy a moment, but then reddened as they joyfully crowded the
+car's doorway to see me fitted!
+
+"We can select out sev'l pair--" he began, but heard a puerile titter
+and lost his nerve. "Now, you boys that ain't got any business here,
+jest clair out!--Go! I tell you, aw I'll--" The boys loitered off toward
+the engine. "We can select out sev'l si-izes," he drawled, uncovering a
+box, "and fit you ove' in my office. You ain't so pow'ful long nor so
+pow'ful slim, but these-yeh gov'ment contrac's they seldom ev' allow
+fo' anybody so slim in the waist bein' so long in the, eh,--so, eh,--so
+long f'om thah down. But yet still, if you'll jest light off yo' hoss
+and come and look into this-yeh box--"
+
+Hmm! yes! I wouldn't have got off my horse and leaned over that box to
+save the Confederacy. "I thank you, Lieutenant, but I can't stop. If
+you'll hand me up a jacket and pair of shoes I'll sign for them and go.
+I don't want a hat, but I reckon I'd as well include shoes, although
+really,--" I glanced down brazenly at the stirrup-leathers that so
+snugly hid my naked toes.
+
+As the quartermaster lifted out a pair of brogans as broad as they were
+long, there came a cry of protestation from the freight-car group, that
+brought the entire herd of rustics from the woodpile and the locomotive.
+Miss Harper rose behind her nieces, tall, slender, dark, with keen
+black eyes as kind as they were penetrating. "My boy!" she cried, "you
+cannot wear those things!"
+
+Camille, the youngest, whispered to her, whereupon she beckoned.
+"Oh!--oh, do come here!--Mr. Smith, I am the sister of Major Harper.
+You're from New Orleans? Does your mother live in Apollo Street?"
+
+"Yes, madam, between Melpomene and Terpsichore."
+
+"Richard Thorndyke Smith! My dear boy," she cried, while the nieces
+gasped at each other with gestures and looks all the way between
+Terpsichore and Melpomene, and then the four cried in chorus, "We know
+your mother!"
+
+"We've got a letter for you from her!" exclaimed Camille.
+
+"And a suit of unie-fawm!" called Cécile, with her Creole accent.
+
+"We smuggled it through!" chanted the trio, ready to weep for virtuous
+joy. And then they clasped arms like the graces, about their aunt, and
+let her speak.
+
+"We all helped your mother make your uniform," she said. "In the short
+time we've known her we've learned to love her dearly." With military
+brevity she told how they had unexpectedly got a pass and were just out
+of New Orleans--"poor New Orleans!" put in Estelle, the eldest, the
+pensive one; that they had come up from Pontchatoula yesterday and last
+night, and had thrown themselves on beds in the "hotel" yonder without
+venturing to disrobe, and so had let her brother pass within a few
+steps of them while they slept! "Telegraph? My dear boy, we came but ten
+miles an hour, but we outran our despatch!" Now they had telegraphed
+again, to Brookhaven, and thanks to the post-quartermaster, were going
+down there at once on this train. While this was being told something
+else was going on. The youngest niece, Camille, had put herself entirely
+out of sight. Now she reappeared with very rosy cheeks, saying, "Here's
+the letter."
+
+My thanks were few and awkward, for there still hung to the missive a
+basting thread, and it was as warm as a nestling bird. I bent
+low--everybody was emotional in those days--kissed the fragrant thing,
+thrust it into my bosom, and blushed worse than Camille.
+
+"Poor boy!" said the aunt. "It's the first line you've had for months.
+Your sweet mother wrote, but her letters were all intercepted, and the
+last time she was warned that next time she'd be dealt with according to
+military usage! I'm glad we could give you this one at once. We can't
+give you the uniform, for we--why, girls, what--why, what nonsense!"
+
+Maybe I did not say vindictive things inside me just then! The three
+nieces had turned open-mouthed upon one another and sunk down upon their
+luggage with averted faces.
+
+"I say we can't give it to you now," Miss Harper persisted, with a
+motherly smile; "we're wearing it ourselves. We've had no time to take
+it off. I couldn't get the boots off me last night. And even if you had
+the boots, the other things--"
+
+"Aunt Martha!" moaned some one. "Well, in short," said the aunt,
+twinkling like her brother, "we can't deliver the goods, and--" She
+started as though some one had slapped her between the shoulder-blades.
+It was the engine caused it, whistling in the old, lawless way, putting
+a whoop, a howl, a scream and a wail into one. The young ladies quailed,
+the train jerked like several collisions, the bell began tardily to
+clang, and my steed whirled, cleared a packing case, whirled again, and
+stood facing the train, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flapping, not
+half so much frightened as insulted. The post-quartermaster waved to the
+ladies and they to us. For a last touch I lifted my cap high and backed
+my horse on drooping haunches--you've seen Buffalo Bill do it--and
+then, with a leap like a cricket's, and to a clapping of maidens' hands
+that made me whooping drunk, we stretched away, my horse and I, on a
+long smooth gallop, for Brookhaven.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+A HANDSOME STRANGER
+
+Certainly no cricket ever dropped blither music from his legs than did
+my beautiful horse that glorious morning as we clattered in perfect
+rhythm on the hard clean road of the wide pine forest. Ah! the forest is
+not there now; the lumbermen--
+
+For an hour or so the world seemed to have taken me for its center as
+smoothly as a sleeping top. Only after a good seven miles did my
+meditations begin to reveal any bitter in the sweet; but it was in
+recalling for the twentieth time the last sight of Camille, that I
+heard myself say, I know not whether softly or loudly,
+
+"Oh, hang the uniform!"
+
+The morning was almost sultry. As I halted in the clear ripples of a
+gravelly "branch" to let my horse drink, I heard no great way off the
+Harpers' train shrieking at cattle on the track, and looking up I
+noticed just behind me an unfrequented by-road carefully masked with
+brush, according to a new habit of the "citizens". The next moment my
+horse threw up his head to listen. Then I heard hoofs and voices, and
+presently there came trotting through the oak bushes and around the mask
+of brush two horsemen unusually well mounted, clad and armed. Their very
+dark gray uniforms were so trim and so nearly blue that my heart came
+into my throat; but then I noticed they carried neither carbines nor
+sabres, but repeaters only, a brace to each. They splashed lightly to
+either side of me, and the three horses drank together.
+
+"Good-morning," we said. One of the men was a sergeant. He scanned my
+animal, and then me, with a dawning smile. "That's a fightin'-cock of a
+horse you've got, sonny."
+
+"Yes, bub," I replied. The two men laughed so explosively that my horse
+lifted his head austerely.
+
+"Jim," said the younger, "I don't believe all the conscripts we've
+caught these three days are worth the powder they've cost!"
+
+"No," replied Sergeant Jim, "I doubt if the most of 'em are." I turned
+to him and drew down my under eyelid. "Will you kindly tell me, sir, if
+you see any unnatural discoloration in there?"
+
+He smiled. "No, but I can put some there if you want it."
+
+"Thank you, I couldn't let you take so much trouble--or risk."
+
+The three of us pattered out of the stream abreast. "No trouble,"
+replied the sergeant, "it wouldn't take half a minute."
+
+"No," I rejoined, "the first step would be the last."
+
+The men laughed again. "You must a-been born with all your teeth," said
+the private, as we quickened to a trot. "What makes you think we ain't
+after conscripts?"
+
+"Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for
+good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up
+we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all."
+
+The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds. Then
+the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh while
+Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would be
+horn-swoggled!
+
+"I'm willing," I responded, and we all laughed. The younger horseman
+asked my name. "Smith," I said, with dignity, and they laughed again,
+their laugh growing louder when I would not smile.
+
+"Well, say; maybe you'll tell us who this is we're about to meet up
+with."
+
+Through the shifting colonnades of pine, a hundred yards in front of
+us, came two horsemen in the same blue-gray of the pair beside me.
+"Whoever he is," I said, "that gray he's riding is his second best, or
+it's borrowed," for his mount, though good, was no match for him.
+
+"Borrowed!" echoed the sergeant. "If he doesn't own that mare no man
+does."
+
+"Nor no woman?" I asked, and again across the back of my neck my two
+companions gazed at each other.
+
+"By ganny!" exclaimed one, and--"You're a coon," murmured the other, as
+the new-comers drew near. The younger of these also was a private.
+Behind his elbow was swung a Maynard rifle. Both carried revolvers. The
+elder wore a long straight sword whose weather-dimmed orange sash showed
+at the front of a loose cut-away jacket. Under this garment was a shirt
+of strong black silk, made from some lady's gown and daintily corded
+with yellow. On the jacket's upturned collar were the two gilt bars of a
+first lieutenant, but the face above them shone with a combined
+intelligence and purity that drew my whole attention.
+
+A familiar friendship lighted every countenance but mine as this second
+pair turned and rode with us, the lieutenant in front on Sergeant Jim
+Longley's right, and the two privates with me between them behind. For
+some minutes the sergeant, in under-tone, made report to his young
+superior. Then in a small clearing he turned abruptly into a
+neighborhood road, and at his word my two companions pricked after him
+westward. I closed up beside the lieutenant; he praised the weather, and
+soon our talk was fluent though broken, as we moved sometimes at a trot
+and often faster. In stolen moments I scanned him with the jealousy of
+my youth. Five feet, ten; humph! I was five, nine and a thirty-second.
+In weight he looked to be just what I always had in mind in those
+prayers without words with which I mounted every pair of commissary
+scales I came to. The play of his form as our smooth-gaited horses sped
+through the flecking shades was worth watching for its stanch and supple
+grace. Alike below the saddle and above it he was as light as a leaf and
+as firm as a lance. I had long yearned to own a pair of shoulders not
+too square for beauty nor too sloping for strength, and lo, here they
+were, not mine, but his. No matter; the slender mustache he sported he
+was welcome to, I had shaved off nearly as good a one; wished now I
+hadn't. As once or twice he lifted his képi to the warm breeze I took
+new despair from the soft locks of darkest chestnut that lay on his head
+in manly order, ready enough to curl but waiving the privilege.
+
+"Cock-a-doodle-doo," thought I; "if those are not the same
+hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their
+first cousins!"
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+A PLAGUE ON NAMES!
+
+Once more I measured my man. Celerity, valor, endurance, they were his
+iridescent neck and tail feathers. On a certain piece of road where we
+went more slowly I mentioned abruptly my clerkship under Major Harper
+and watched for the effect, but there was none. Did he know the Major?
+Oh, yes, and we fell to piling item upon item in praise of the
+quartermaster's virtues and good looks. Presently, with shrewdest
+intent, I said the Major was fine enough to be the hero of a novel! Did
+not my companion think so?
+
+Yes, he thought so; but I believed the glow in his tone was for novels.
+I extolled the romance of actual life! I denounced that dullness which
+fails to see the poetry of daily experience, and goes wandering after
+the mirages of fiction! And I was ready to fight him if he liked. But he
+agreed with me most cordially.
+
+"And yet," he began to add,--
+
+"Yet what?" I snapped out, with horse eyes.
+
+"Doesn't a good story revive the poetry of our actual lives?" He wiped
+the rim of his cap with a handkerchief of yellow silk enriched at one
+corner with needlework.
+
+"Um-hm!" I thought; "Charlotte Oliver, eh?" I responded tartly that I
+had that very morning met four ladies the poetry of whose actual,
+visible loveliness had abundantly illustrated to me the needlessness and
+impertinence of fiction! By the way, did he not think feminine beauty
+was always in its ripest perfection at eighteen?
+
+Well, he thought a girl might be prettiest at eighteen and handsomest
+much later. And again I said to myself, "Charlotte Oliver!" But when I
+looked searchingly into his eyes their manly sweetness so abashed me
+that I dropped my glance and felt him looking at me. I remembered my
+fable and flinched. "Isn't your name--" I cried, and choked, and when I
+would have said Ferry, another word slipped out instead. He did not hear
+it plainly:
+
+"Cockerel, did you say?"
+
+A sweet color was I. "Yes, that's what I said; Cockerel. Isn't your last
+name Cockerel?"
+
+"No," he said, "my last name is Durand." He gave it the French
+pronunciation.
+
+"Mine is Smith," I said, and we galloped.
+
+A plague on names! But I was not done with them yet. We met other scouts
+coming out of the east, who also gave reports and went on westward,
+sometimes through the trackless woods. At a broad cross-road which
+spanned the whole State from the Alabama line to the Mississippi River
+stood another sergeant, with three men, waiting. They were the last.
+
+Again we galloped alone; and as our horses' hoofs beat drummers' music
+out of the round earth our dialogue drifted into confessions of our own
+most private theories of conduct, character and creation. Now that this
+man's name was not--Cockerel, my heart opened to him and we began to
+admit to each other the perplexities of this great, strange thing called
+Life. Especially we confessed how every waking hour found us jostled and
+torn between two opposite, unappeasable tendencies of soul; one an
+upward yearning after everything high and pure, the other a
+down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence. I was warmed and fed.
+Yet I was pained to find him so steeped in presumptuous error, so
+wayward of belief and unbelief. The sweet ease with which he overturned
+and emptied out some of my arguments gave me worse failure of the
+diaphragm than a high swing ever did. Nevertheless I responded; and he
+rejoined; and I rejoined again, and presently he gave me the notion that
+he was suffering some cruel moral strain.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+ANOTHER CURTAINED WAGON
+
+Upon whatever fundamental scheme we perseveringly concentrate our
+powers, upon whatever main road of occupation we take life's
+journey,--art, politics, commerce, science,--if only we will take its
+upper fork as often as the road divides, then will that road itself, and
+not necessarily any cross-road, lead us to the noblest, truest plane of
+convictions, affections, aspirations. Such a frame of mind may be quite
+without religiosity, as unconscious as health; but the proof of its
+religious reality will be that, as if it were a lighthouse light and we
+its keeper, everybody else, or at any rate everybody _out on the deep_,
+will see it plainer than we. Such is the gist of what this young man was
+saying to me, when our speculations were brought to an end by our
+overtaking a man well mounted, and a woman whose rough-gaited was
+followed by a colt.
+
+The pair took our pace, the man plying me with questions, and his wife,
+in front, telling Lieutenant Durand all the rumors of the day. Her scant
+hair was of a scorched red tone, she was freckled down into her collar,
+her elbows waggled to the mare's jog, and her voice was as flat as a
+duck's. Her nag had trouble to keep up, and her tiny faded bonnet had
+even more to keep on. Yet the day was near when the touch of those
+freckled hands was to seem to me kinder than the breath of flowers, as
+they bathed my foul-smelling wounds, and she would say, in the words of
+the old song, "Let me kiss him for his mother," and I should be helpless
+to prevent her. By and by the man raised his voice:--
+
+"Why, yo' name _is_ Smith, to be sho'! I thought you was jest a-tryin'
+to chaw me. Why, Major Harper alludened to you not mo'n a half-ow ago.
+Why, Miz Wall! oh, Miz Wall!"
+
+But the wife was absorbed. "Yayse, seh," she was saying to the
+lieutenant, "and he told us about they comin' in on the freight-kyahs
+f'om Hazlehurst black with dust and sut and a-smuttyin' him all oveh
+with they kisses and goin's-on. He tol' me he ain't neveh so enjoyed
+havin' his face dirty sence he was a boy. He would a-been plumb happy,
+ef on'y he could a-got his haynds on that clerk o' his'n. And when he
+tol' us what a gay two-hoss turn-out he'd sekyo'ed for the ladies to
+travel in, s' I, Majo', that's all right! You jest go on whicheveh way
+you got to go! Husband and me, we'll ride into Brookhaven and bring 'em
+out to ow place and jest take ca'e of 'em untel yo' clerk is _found_."
+
+"Miz Wall!" cried the husband--"She's busy talkin'.--Miz Wall!--she
+don't hyuh me. I hate to interrupt heh.--Oh, Miz Wall! hyuh's Majo'
+Harper's clerk, right now!"
+
+"Law, you hain't!" cried Mrs. Wall, smiling back as she jounced. "If you
+air, the Majo's sisteh's got written awdehs fo' you."
+
+I shot forward, but had hardly more than sent back my good-bye when
+around a bend of the road, in a wagon larger than Charlotte Oliver's,
+with the curtains rolled up, came the four Miss Harpers, unsooted and
+radiant. The aunt drove. We turned, all four, and rode with them, and
+while the seven chatted gaily I read to myself the Major's note. It bade
+me take these four ladies into my most jealous care and conduct them to
+a point about thirty miles west of where we then were. A dandy's task in
+a soldier's hour! I ground my teeth, but as I lifted my glance I found
+Camille's eyes resting on me and read anxiety in them before she could
+put on a smile of unemotional friendliness that faded rapidly into
+abstraction. She was as pretty as the bough of wild azaleas in her hand,
+yet moving forward I told her aunt the order's purport and that it
+implied the greatest despatch compatible with mortal endurance. The
+whole four seemed only delighted.
+
+But Mrs. Wall protested. No, no, her hospitality first, and a basket of
+refreshments to be stowed in the vehicle, besides. "Why, that'll
+_sa-ave_ ti-ime. You-all goin' to be supprised to find how hungry
+y'all ah, befo' you come to yo' journey's en', to-night, and them col'
+victuals goin' taste pow'ful fi-ine!"
+
+Our acceptance was unanimous. I even decided not to inform Lieutenant
+Durand until after the repast, that ladies under my escort did not pick
+acquaintanceship with soldiers on the public highway. But before the
+brief meal was over I was wishing him hanged. Hang the heaven-high
+theories that had so lately put me in love with him! Hang his melodious
+voice, his modest composure, his gold-barred collar, his easy command of
+topics! Hang the women! they feasted on his every word and look! Ah,
+ladies! if I were mean enough to tell it--that man doesn't believe in
+hell! He has a down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence; he has
+told me so!
+
+How fast acquaintance grew! When he addressed himself to Cécile, the
+cousin of the other two, her black eyes leapt with delight; for as
+calmly as if that were the only way, he spoke to her in French--asked
+her a question. She gave answer in happiest affirmation, and explained
+to her aunt that her Durand schoolmates of a year or two back were
+cousins to the Lieutenant. When the throng came out to the carry-all I
+was there and mounted. Squire Wall took me a few rods to point out where
+a fork of his private road led into the highway. Then the carry-all came
+merrily after, and with a regret that surprised me I answered our
+Lieutenant's farewell wave, forgave him all his charms, and saw him face
+westward and disappear by a bridle-path.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+THE DANDY'S TASK
+
+Westward likewise we soon were bickering. The morning sun shone high;
+the thin, hot dust blew out over the blackened ground of some forest
+"burn" or through the worm fence of some field where a gang of slave men
+and women might be ploughing or hoeing between the green rows of young
+cotton or corn. The level stretches were many, the slopes gradual, and
+to those sweet city-bird ladies everything was new and delightful; a log
+cabin!--with clay chimney on the outside!--a well and its
+well-sweep!--another cabin with its gourd-vines! They knew that blessed
+alchemy which turns all things into the poetry of the moment. Sweet they
+would have been anywhere to any eye or mind; but I was a homeless
+trooper lad, and sweeter to the soldier boy than water on the
+battlefield are short hours with ladies who love him for his banner
+and his rags.
+
+These four were charmed with an old field given up to sedge, its deep
+rain-gullies as red as gaping wounds, its dead trees in tatters of long
+gray moss. Estelle became a student of flowers, Cécile of birds, Camille
+of trees. All my explanations were alike enchantingly strange. To their
+minds it had never occurred that the land sloped the same way the water
+ran! When told that these woods abounded in deer and wild turkey they
+began to look out for them at every new turn of the road. And the turns
+came fast. Happy miles, happy leagues; each hour was of a mellower
+sweetness than the last; they seemed to ripen in the sun. The only
+drawback was my shame of a sentimental situation, but once or twice I
+longed to turn the whole equipage into the woods--or the ditch. As, for
+instance, when three pine-woods cavalrymen had no sooner got by us than
+they set up that ribald old camp-song,
+
+  "We're going to get married, mamma, mamma;
+  We're going to get married, but don't tell pa--"
+
+"Deserters, I don't doubt!" was my comment to the ladies. Tongue revenge
+is poor, but it is something.
+
+Except in such moments, however, the war seemed farther away than it had
+for months and months. But about eleven o'clock we began to find the way
+scored by the fresh ruts of heavy wheels and the dust deepened by
+hundred of hoofs. The tops and faces of the roadside banks were newly
+trampled and torn by clambering human feet. Here was a canteen, smashed
+in a wheel-track; yonder a fragment of harness; here lay a broken hame,
+there was the half of a russet brogan and yonder a ragged sock stained
+and bloody.
+
+"Why, what does all this mean?" asked Miss Harper amid her nieces'
+cries.
+
+I said it meant Fisher's battery hurrying to the front. Twenty miles
+since five that morning was a marvel, horse artillery though they were,
+for, as I pointed out by many signs, their animals were in ill
+condition. "We shall have to go round them by neighborhood roads," I
+said, and presently we were deeper than ever in woodland shades and
+sources of girlish wonderment. The humid depths showed every sort of
+green and gray, their trunks, bushes and boughs, bearded with hanging
+moss, robed with tangled vines and chapleted with mistletoe. We seemed
+to have got this earth quite to ourselves and very much to our liking.
+
+One o'clock. Miss Harper suggested a halt to feed the horses. I, knowing
+what it would cost me to dismount and go walking about, said no, thrice
+no; let us first get back upon the main road in front of that battery.
+On, therefore, we hurried, and soon the reality of the war was vivid to
+us again. In a stretch of wet road where the team had mutely begged
+leave to walk and the ladies had urged me to sing we had at length
+paused in a pebbly rivulet to allow the weary animals to drink, and the
+girls and the aunt and the greenwood and I were all in chorus
+bidding somebody
+
+  "Unloose the west port and let us go free,"
+
+when, just as our last note died among the trees one of us cried,
+"Listen!" and through the stillness there came from far away on our
+right the last three measures of a bugle sounding The March.
+
+My eyes rested in Camille's and hers in mine. A musical license gave us
+the courage. At the last note our gaze did not sink but took on more
+glow, while out of the forest behind us a distant echo answered the last
+measure of the strain. Then our eyes slowly fell; and however it may
+have seemed to her, to me it was as if the vanished strains were not
+only or chiefly of bugle and echo, but as though our two hearts had
+called and answered in that melodious unison.
+
+All that warm afternoon we paid the tiresome penalty of having pushed
+our animals too smartly at the outset. We grew sedate; sedate were the
+brows of the few strangers we met. We talked in pairs. When I spoke with
+Miss Harper the four listened. She asked about the evils of camp life;
+for she was one of that fine sort to whom righteousness seems every
+man's and woman's daily business, one of the most practical items in the
+world's affairs. And I said camp life was fearfully corrupting; that the
+merest boys cursed and swore and stole, or else were scorned as
+weaklings. Then I grew meekly silent and we talked in pairs again, and
+because I yearned to talk most with Camille I talked most with Estelle.
+Three times when I turned abruptly from her to Camille and called,
+"Hark!" the fagged-out horses halted, and as we struck our listening
+pose the bugle's faint sigh ever farther in our rear was but feebly
+proportioned to the amount of our gazing into each other's eyes.
+
+Once, when we were not halted or harkening, we heard overmuch; heard
+that which brought us to an instant stand and caused even Miss Harper to
+gaze on me with dismayed eyes and parted lips, and the blood to go
+thumping through my veins. From a few hundred yards off in the
+northwest, beyond the far corner of an old field and the woods at its
+back, two gunshots together, then a third, with sharp, hot cries of
+alarum and command, and then another and another shot, rang out and
+spread wanderingly across the tender landscape.
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+THE SOLDIER'S HOUR
+
+To regain the highroad we had turned into a northerly fork, and were in
+as lovely a spot as we had seen all day. Before us and close on our
+right were the dense woods of magnolia, water-oak, tupelo and a hundred
+other affluent things that towered and spread or clambered and hung. On
+the left lay the old field, tawny with bending sedge and teeming with
+the yellow rays of the sun's last hour. This field we overlooked through
+a fence-row of persimmon and wild plum. Among these bushes, half fallen
+into a rain-gully, a catalpa, of belated bloom, was loaded with blossoms
+and bees, and I was directing Camille's glance to it when the shots
+came. Another outcry or two followed, and then a weird silence.
+
+"Some of our boys attacked by a rabbit," I suggested, but still
+hearkened.
+
+"That was not play, Mr. Smith," Miss Harper had begun to respond, when a
+voice across the sedge-field called with startling clearness,
+
+"Hi! there goes one of them!--Halt!--Halt, you blue--" pop!--pop!--pop!
+
+"Prisoners making a break!" I forgot all my tatters and stood on tiptoe
+in the stirrups to overpeer the fence-row. The next instant--"Sh--sh!"
+said I and slid to the ground. "Hold this bridle!" I gave it to Camille.
+"Don't one of you make a sound or a motion; there's a Yankee coming
+across this field in the little gully just behind us."
+
+I bent low, ran a few steps, cocking my revolver as I went. Then I rose,
+peeped, bent again, ran, rose, peeped, waited a few seconds behind the
+catalpa, and without rising peeped once more. Here he came! He was an
+officer. His uniform was torn and one whole side of him showed he had at
+some earlier hour ridden through a hedge and fallen from his horse. On
+he came! nearer--nearer--oh, what a giant! Quickly, warily, he crouched
+under the fence where it hung low across the gully, and half through it
+in that huddled posture he found my revolver between his astonished
+eyes. I did not yell at him, for I did not want the men he had escaped
+from to come and take him from me; yet when I said, "Halt, or you die!"
+the four ladies heard me much too plainly. For, frankly, I said more and
+worse. I felt my slenderness, my beardless youth, my rags, and his
+daring, and to offset them all in a bunch, I--I cursed him. I let go
+only one big damn and I've never spoken one since, though I've done many
+a worse thing, of course. I protest it was my modesty prompted it then.
+
+"I surrender," he said, with amiable ease. I stepped back a pace and he
+drew out and straightened up--the tallest man I had ever seen. I laughed,
+he smiled, laughed; my eyes filled with tears, I blazed with rage, and in
+plain sight and hearing of those ladies he said, "That's all right, my
+son, get as scared as you like; only, you don't need to cry about it."
+
+"Hold your tongue!" I barked my wrath like a frightened puppy, drawing
+back a stride and laying my eye closer along the pistol. "If you call me
+your son again I'll send you to your fathers."
+
+His smile darkened. "I am your prisoner," he said, with a sudden
+splendid stateliness, and right then I guessed who he was.
+
+"Yess, sir, you are!" I retorted. "Move to that wagon! And if you take
+one step out of common time you'll never take another."
+
+The aunt and her nieces were standing in the carry-all, she majestic,
+they laughing and weeping in the one act. I waved them into their seats.
+
+"Halt!" We halted. "About face!" As the prisoner eyed me both of us
+listened. His equanimity was almost winsome, and I saw that friendliness
+was going to be his tactics.
+
+"Guess I'm the first Yankee y' ever caught, ain't I?" His smile was
+superior, but congratulatory.
+
+"You'll be the first prisoner I ever shot if you get any funnier!"
+
+We listened again. "They've gone the wrong way," I said, still savage.
+
+"No," he replied, "I came the wrong way."
+
+The ladies smiled; I glowered. "Take those horses by their heads and
+turn them to me!"
+
+An instant his superb eye resented, but then he pleasantly did my
+bidding. "Suits me well; rather chance it with you than with those I've
+just left."
+
+[Illustration: "I surrender," he said, with amiable ease.]
+
+"Easier to get away, you think?" I asked, with a worse frown than ever,
+as he stepped into the carry-all and took the lines.
+
+"No, not so easy; but those fellows are Arkansans, and they're in a bad
+humor with me."
+
+I took the hint and grew less ferocious. "While you," I said, "are
+Captain Jewett."
+
+"I am," was his reply, and my heart leaped for joy. We hurried away. My
+captive was the most daring Union scout between Vicksburg and New
+Orleans; these very Harpers knew that. The thing unknown to us was that
+already his fate was entangled with Ned Ferry's and Charlotte Oliver's,
+as yet more it would be, with theirs and ours, in days close at hand.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+CAPTAIN JEWETT
+
+Once more we were in the by-road which had brought us westward parallel
+with the highway. The prisoner drove. Aunt Martha sat beside him, slim,
+dark, black-eyed, stately, her silver-gray hair rolled high à la
+Pompadour. With a magnanimity rare in those bitter days she incited him
+to talk, first of New Orleans, where he had spent a month in camp on one
+of the public squares, and then of his far northern home, and of loved
+ones there, mother, wife and child. The nieces, too, gave a generous
+attention. Only I, riding beside the hind wheels, held solemnly aloof.
+
+"Front!" I once snapped out with a ring that made the trees reply and
+the ladies catch their breath. "If you steal one more look back here
+I'll put a ball into your leg."
+
+He smiled, chirped the horses up and resumed his chat. I heard him
+praise my horse and compare him not unfavorably with his own which he
+had lost that morning'. He and a few picked men had been surprised in a
+farmhouse at breakfast. They had made a leap and a dash, he said, but
+one horse and rider falling dead, his horse, unhurt, had tumbled over
+them, and here was his rider.
+
+I prompted Camille to ask if he had ever encountered Ned Ferry, and he
+laughed.
+
+"No," he said, but Ned Ferry had lately restored to him, by proxy, some
+lost letters, with an invitation to _come and see him_.
+
+I laughed insolently. The young ladies sparkled, and so did Miss Harper,
+as she asked him who had been the proxy.
+
+He said the proxy was a young woman who had a knack of getting passes
+through the lines, and the three girls exchanged looks as knowing as
+they were delighted.
+
+"I tell her as a friend," he said, "she'll get one into Fortress Monroe
+yet!"
+
+Miss Harper's keen eyes glittered. "You northerners hardly realize our
+feelings concerning the imprisonment of women, I think."
+
+"My dear madam, you don't realize ours. We don't want to imprison
+women."
+
+So there came a silence, and then a gay laugh as three of us at once
+asked if he had ever heard of Lieutenant Durand. "Durand!" he cried, and
+looked squarely around at me. I lifted the cocked revolver, but he kept
+his fine eyes on mine and I rubbed my ear with my wrist. "What?" he
+said, "an elegant, Creole-seeming young fellow, very handsome? Why, that
+fellow saved my life this very afternoon."
+
+The young ladies were in rapture. Miss Harper asked how he had done it.
+
+"If I tell you that," said the Captain, "you won't like me the least
+bit."
+
+Whereat Cécile replied, "Ah--well! we cou'n' like you the leaz bit
+any-'ow."
+
+"I suppose that's so," laughed the officer. "I'll tell you how it was.
+My guard were just about to hang me for saying I thought we had a right
+to make soldiers of the darkies, when your friend came galloping along,
+saw the thing, and rushed in and cut the halter with his sword. And when
+they demanded to know who and what he was, he told them Durand, and that
+they'd hear it again, for he should report them."
+
+"Oh, sir," cried Estelle, whose eyes, brows, lashes and hair were all of
+the same luminous red-brown, and in whose cheeks the rose seemed always
+to burn through the olive, "how can you and your people seek to kill
+such men as that?"
+
+"Such as which?" asked the Yankee, with a twinkle. "There were two
+kinds."
+
+"But, o-oh! sir!" exclaimed the trio, when Miss Harper waved them to
+forbear. There was yet some daylight left as we trundled into a broad
+highroad and turned northward. We passed a picket guard and then a whole
+regiment of cavalry going into camp. They scrambled to the sides of the
+road and stormed us with questions, chaffing us cruelly when I remained
+silent. "Lawd! look a' this-yeh Yank a-bringin' in ow desertehs!" "Hey,
+you big Yank, you jest let that po' little conscrip' go!"
+
+Headquarters, we heard from a courier who said he was the third sent out
+to find us, were at the "Sessions house" two miles further on. We sent
+him galloping back there, and after a while here came Major Harper and
+three or four others of the staff, including Harry Helm. What a flood of
+mirthful compliment there was at sight of us and our captive; Harry was
+positively silly. In the series of introductions that followed he was
+left paired with Camille, and I said things to myself. Major Harper rode
+by the prisoner. "Well, Captain," he said, "you've had some experiences
+since you left me this morning. Don't you want to give us your parole
+this time, temporarily, for an hour or so, and be more comfortable?"
+
+"Thank you, Major," the Federal affably replied, "that would be a great
+relief to this most extraordinary youngster that I've brought with me."
+He gave it and we turned into a lofty grove whitened with our
+headquarters tents.
+
+"Smith," said the Major, "your part is done, and well done. You needn't
+report to me again to-night; the General wishes to see you a moment.
+Captain, will you go with this young man to General Austin's tent?"
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+IN THE GENERAL'S TENT
+
+I went to Gholson. He told me I was relieved of my captive and bade me
+go care for my horse and return in half an hour. In going I passed close
+by the Sessions plantation house. Every door and window was thrown wide
+to the night air, and preparations were in progress for a dance; and as
+I returned, a slave boy ran across my path, toward the house, bearing a
+flaming pine torch and followed by two ambulances filled with daughters
+of the neighborhood in clouds of white gauze. I found the General in
+fatigue dress. His new finery hung on the tent-pole at his back. Old
+Dismukes, the bull-necked colonel of the Arkansans, lounged on a
+camp-cot. Both smoked cigars.
+
+The General asked me a number of idle questions and then said my
+prisoner had called me a good soldier. Old Dismukes smiled so broadly
+that I grew hot, believing the Yankee had told them of my tears.
+
+"Smith," said the Colonel, and then smoked and smiled again till my brow
+beaded,--"tired?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"That's a lie," he pleasantly remarked, and lay back, enjoying my silent
+wrath. "Send him, General," he added, "he's your man."
+
+The General looked at me between puffs of his cigar. "I hear you've
+ridden over fifty miles to-day."
+
+"Yes, General." "If I give you a good fresh horse can you go
+twenty-three miles more by midnight?"
+
+"Yes, General, if I don't have to save the horse."
+
+"The horse may have to save you," drawled the Arkansan.
+
+"I think you know Lieutenant Durand?" asked the General, with a
+quizzical eye.
+
+"Slightly."
+
+"Well, Smith, on his suggestion approved by Major Harper, I have
+detailed another clerk to the Major."
+
+Rills of perspiration tickled my back like flies. "Can't one man do the
+work?"
+
+"Yes, the new man is detailed in your place."
+
+I almost leaped from the ground in consternation. My whole frame
+throbbed, my mouth fell open, my tongue was tied.
+
+The man who had got me into this thing--this barrel--lifted the
+tent-flap. "Mr. Gholson," said the General, "write an order assigning
+Smith to Ferry's scouts."
+
+The flap fell again and my panic was turned into a joy qualified only by
+a reduced esteem for my general as a judge of character.
+
+Old Dismukes rose. "Good-night. Shall I send this boy that Yankee's
+horse?"
+
+"Oh I was forgetting that; yes, do!"
+
+At the door the Colonel gave me a last look. "Good-night, Legs."
+
+I dared not retort, but I looked so hard at his paunch that the General
+smiled. Then he asked me if I knew where we were then camped, and I said
+we were on the Meadville and Fayette road, near Franklin, twenty miles
+southeast of Fayette and--
+
+"That will do. Now, beyond Fayette, about seven miles north, there's a
+place--"
+
+"Clifton?"
+
+"Don't interrupt me, Smith. Yes, Clifton. You're not to reach there
+to-night--"
+
+"I can do it, General."
+
+"You can do as you're told; understand?" I understood.
+
+"The enemy are in Fayette to-night," he continued. "So when you get
+half-way to Fayette, just across Morgan's Creek, you'll take a dim fork
+on the right running north along the creek. Ever travel by the stars?"
+
+I began to tell how well I knew the stars, but he stopped me. "Yes;
+well, keep straight north till you strike the road running east and west
+between Fayette and Union Church. You'll find there a little
+polling-place called Wiggins. Turn west, toward Fayette, and on the
+north side of the main road, opposite the blacksmith's shop, you'll come
+to a small--"
+
+"I see."
+
+"What do you see?" His frown scared me to my finger-tips.
+
+"Why, I suppose I'm to find there a road down Cole's Creek to Clifton."
+
+"Smith, if you interrupt me again, sir, you'll find the road back to
+your regiment. Opposite that blacksmith's shop you'll see a white
+cottage. There's a young lady stopping there to-night, a stranger, a
+traveller. The old lady who lives there has taken her in at my request.
+See that the young lady gets this envelope. It's no great matter, merely
+a pass through our lines; but it's your ostensible business till you get
+there; understand?"
+
+I thought I did until I glanced at the superscription: Miss Coralie
+Rothvelt.
+
+"Now, here is another matter of much more importance." He showed, but
+retained, another envelope. "Behind the house where you're to find Miss
+Rothvelt there's a road into Cole's Creek bottom. The house you're to
+stop at to-night, say from twelve o'clock till three or half-past, is on
+that road, about five miles from Wiggins, from Clifton and from Fayette.
+I'm sending you there expecting the people in that house will rob you if
+you give them half a chance."
+
+"I understand, General; they'll not get it."
+
+"Smith, I want them to get it. I want them to rob you of this." He
+waggled the envelope. "I want this to fall into the hands of the enemy;
+as it will if those people rob you of it."
+
+I snapped my eyes. He smiled and then frowned. "I don't want a clumsy
+job, now, mind! I don't want you to get captured if you can possibly
+avoid it; but all the same they mustn't get this so easily as to suspect
+it's a bait. So I want you to give those villains that half-chance to
+rob you, but not the other half, or they may--oh, it's no play! You must
+manage to have this despatch taken from you totally against your will!
+Then you must reach Clifton shortly after daylight. Ferry's scouts are
+there, and you'll say to Lieutenant Ferry the single word, Rodney.
+Understand?" He pretended to be reconsidering. "I--don't know
+but--after all--I'd better send one of my staff instead of you."
+
+"Oh, General, if you send an officer they'll see the ruse! I can do it!
+I'll do it all right!"
+
+"I'm most afraid," he said, abstractedly, as he read my detail, which
+Gholson brought in. "Here,"--he handed it to me--"and here, here's the
+despatch too."
+
+"What's the name, General, of the man whose house I'm to go to?"
+
+"You'd best not know; I want you to seem to have stumbled upon the
+place. You can't miss it; there's no other house within two miles of it.
+Good-bye, my lad;"--he gave me his hand;--"good luck to you."
+
+Gholson, in the Adjutant-general's tent, told me Ned Ferry had named me
+to the General as a first-class horseman and the most insignificant-
+looking person he knew of who was fit for this venture.
+
+"Ned Ferry! What does Ned Ferry know about my fitness?"
+
+"Read the address on your despatch," said Gholson, resuming his pen.
+
+I snatched the document from my bosom, into which I had thrust it to
+seize the General's hand "Oh, Gholson!" I said, in deep-toned grief, as
+I looked up from the superscription, "is that honest!"
+
+He admitted that by the true religionist's standard it was not honest,
+but reminded me that Ned Ferry--in his blindness--was only a poor
+romanticist. The despatch was addressed to Lieutenant Edgard
+Ferry-Durand.
+
+Major Harper's black boy brought me the Yankee's horse with my bridle
+and saddle on him; an elegant animal as fresh as a dawn breeze. Also he
+produced a parcel, my new uniform, and a wee note whose breath smelt of
+lavender as it said,--
+
+"Papa tells us you are being sent off on courier duty to-night. What a
+heart-breaking thing is war! How full of cruel sepa'--"
+
+That piece of a word was scored out and "dangers" written in its place.
+The missive ended all too soon, with the statement that I was requested
+to call, on my way out of camp, at the side gallery of the house--
+Sessions's--and let the writer and her sister and her cousin and her
+father and her aunt see me in my new uniform and bid me good-bye.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+GOOD-BYE, DICK
+
+I found but one white figure under the dim veranda eaves. "Miss
+Camille?"
+
+"Wh'--who is that?" responded a musical voice. "Why, is that Mr. Smith?"
+as if I were the last person in the world one should have expected to
+see there. The like of those moments I had never known. I saw her eyes
+note the perfect fit of my uniform, though neither of us mentioned it. I
+tried to tell her that Lieutenant Durand was Ned Ferry and that I was
+now one of his scouts, but she had already heard both facts, and would
+not tell me what her father had said about me, it was so good. Standing
+at the veranda's edge a trifle above me, with her cheek against one of
+the posts and her gaze on her slipper, she asked if I was glad I was
+going with Ned Ferry, and I had no more sense than to say I was; but she
+would neither say she was glad nor tell why she was not.
+
+Through the open windows we could see the dancers. Now and then a pair
+of fanning promenaders came down the veranda, but on descrying us turned
+back. I said I was keeping her from the dance. To which she replied,
+drooping her head again, that she shouldn't dance that night.
+
+"Too tired?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Too warm?"
+
+"Oh, no, not too warm."
+
+"Why, then?"
+
+"Oh--I--just don't feel as if I could, that's all."
+
+My heart beat wildly and I wanted to ask if it was on my account; but I
+was too pusillanimous a coward, and when I feebly tried to look into her
+eyes she would not let me, which convinced me that she lacked candor. A
+dance ended. Gold-laced fellows came and sat on the veranda rail wiping
+wrists and brows with over-tasked handkerchiefs, and explaining the
+small mishaps of the floor. Two promenaders mentioned the hour. I gasped
+my amazement and extended my hand. "Good-bye."
+
+"Wait a moment," she murmured, and watched the promenading pair turn
+back. Then she asked if I had read my mother's letter. I said I had. And
+then, very pensively, with head bent and eyes once more down, she
+inquired if I liked to get letters. Which led, quite accidentally, to my
+asking leave to write to her.
+
+She replied that she did not mean that. Nevertheless, I insisted, would
+she? She only bent lower still. I asked the third time; and with nothing
+but the parting of her hair for me to look at, she nodded, and one of
+her braids fell over in front, and I took the pink-ribboned live end of
+it timorously between thumb and finger and felt as if I had hold of an
+electric battery.
+
+She backed half a step, and quite needlessly I let it go. Then she bade
+me not forget I had promised her the words of a certain song. "Want
+them? Indeed, yes! Did you not say it was an unpublished song written
+by a messmate of yours?--oh, Mr. Smith! I see why you stammer! You said
+'a member of your mess'! oh!--oh!--oh!--you wrote it, yourself! And you
+wrote it to-day! That explains--" She drew an awesome breath, rose to
+her toes and knit her knuckles under her throat.
+
+I was in the sweetest consternation. With the end of her braid once more
+in my fingers I made her promise to keep the dark secret, and so
+recited them.
+
+"Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
+  Turn away thine eyes ere my bosom burn,
+Lit with foolish hope to hear thy fondling sighs,
+  Like yon twilight dove's, breathe, Return, return!
+Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+  O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
+
+"Maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!
+  Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn.
+Breathe, O! breathe to me, as these love-languid skies
+  To yon twilight star breathe, Return, return!
+Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+  O maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!"
+
+"Mis-ter Smith! you wrote that?--to-day! Wh'--who is she?"
+
+"One too modest," I murmured, "to know her own portrait." I clutched the
+braid emotionally and let it go intending to retake it; but she dropped
+it behind her and said I was too imaginative to be safe.
+
+I stiffened proudly, turned and mounted my steed, but her eyes drew
+mine. I pressed close, bent over the saddle-bow, and said,
+"Good-bye, Camille."
+
+"Good-bye." I could barely hear it.
+
+"Oh!--good-bye, just anybody?" I asked; and thereupon she gathered up
+all her misplaced trust in me, all her maiden ignorance of what is in
+man, and all her sweet daring, to murmur--
+
+"Good-bye,--Dick."
+
+I caught my breath in rapture and rode away. She was there yet when I
+looked back--once--and again--and again. And when I looked a last time
+still she had not moved. Oh, Camille, Camille! to this day I see you
+standing there in pink-edged white, pure, silent, motionless, a
+summer-evening cloud; while I, my body clad in its unstained--only
+because unused--new uniform, and my soul tricked out in the
+foolhardiness and vanity of a boy's innocence, rode forth into the night
+and into the talons of overmastering temptation.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+CORALIE ROTHVELT
+
+The night was still and sultry. At one of the many camp-fires on the
+edge of the road I saw the Arkansas colonel sitting cross-legged on the
+ground, in trousers, socks and undershirt, playing poker.
+
+Out in the open country how sweet was the silence. Not yet have I
+forgotten one bright star of that night's sky. My mother and I had
+studied the stars together. Lately Camille, her letter said, had learned
+them with her. Now the heavens dropped meanings that were for me and for
+this night alone. While the form of the maiden--passing fair--yet
+glimmered in the firmament of my own mind, behind me in the south soared
+the Virgin; but as some trees screened the low glare of our camp I saw,
+just rising into view out of the southeast, the unmistakable eyes of the
+Scorpion. But these fanciful oracles only flattered my moral
+self-assurance, and I trust that will be remembered which I forgot, that
+I had not yet known the damsel from one sun to the next.
+
+I was moving briskly along, making my good steed acquainted with me,
+testing his education, how promptly for instance, he would respond to
+rein-touch and to leg-pressure, when I saw, in front, coming toward me,
+three riders. Two of them were very genteel chaps, though a hand of each
+was on the lock of his carbine. The third was a woman, veiled, and clad
+in some dark stuff that in the starlight seemed quite black and
+contrasted strongly with the paleness of her horse. Her hat, in
+particular, fastened my attention; if that was not the same soft-brimmed
+Leghorn I had seen yesterday morning, at least it was its twin sister. I
+halted, revolver in hand, and said, as they drew rein,--"Good-evening."
+
+"Good-evening," replied the nearer man. "How far is it to
+camp--Austin's?"
+
+"A short three miles."
+
+"To what command do you belong?" he asked.
+
+"Ferry's scouts. What command is yours, gentlemen?"
+
+"Ferry's scouts." He scrutinized me. "What command do you say you--"
+
+"Ferry's scouts," I repeated. "F-e-r-r-y-apostrophe s,
+Ferry's--s-k-o-w-t-s--scouts."
+
+The trio laughed, the young woman most musically.
+
+"How long have you belonged to Ferry's scouts?" sceptically demanded
+their spokesman.
+
+"About an hour and a quarter."
+
+"Oh! that-a-way."
+
+"Yes," I replied, "in that direction."
+
+The three laughed again and the men sank their carbines across their
+laps, while in a voice as refined as her figure their companion said,
+"Good-evening, Mr. Smith." She laid back her veil and even in the
+darkness I felt the witchery of her glance. "I was just coming to meet
+you," she continued, "to get the letter you're bringing me from General
+Austin. I feared you might try to come around by Fayette, not knowing
+the Yankees are there. These gentlemen didn't know it." "She just did
+save us!" laughed the man hitherto silent.
+
+"I'm Miss Coralie Rothvelt," she added, and then how she sparkled in the
+dark as she said, "I see you remember me."
+
+"I am but human."
+
+"And yet you never take a lady's name for granted?"
+
+"I am to know Miss Rothvelt by finding her in a certain place." My
+honeyed bow implied that her being just now very much out of place was
+no fault of mine.
+
+"Nonsense!" muttered both men, and I liked them the better.
+
+"My dear Smith," said Miss Rothvelt, "keep your trust. But if I part
+here with these two kind gentlemen--"
+
+"Who don't belong to Ferry's scouts at all," I still more sweetly added.
+
+"No," she laughed, "and if I go back with you to Wiggins--to the little
+white cottage, you know, opposite the blacksmith's shop,--you'll give me
+what you've got for me, won't you?" She dropped her head to one side and
+a mocking-bird chuckle rippled in her throat.
+
+"I shall count myself honored," said I, and we went, together and alone.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+VENUS AND MARS
+
+Since those days men have made "fire-proof" buildings. You know them;
+let certain aggravations combine--they burn like straw. We had barely
+started when I began to be threatened with a conflagration against which
+I should have called it an insult to have been warned. The adroit beauty
+at my side set in to explain more fully her presence. From her window
+she had seen those two trim fellows hurrying along in a fair way to
+blunder into the Federal pickets within an hour, had cautioned them, and
+had finally asked leave to come with them, they under her guidance, she
+under their protection.
+
+"You were so anxious to get the General's letter?" I asked.
+
+"I was so anxious about you," she replied, with feeling, and then broke
+into a quizzical laugh.
+
+I had not the faintest doubt she was lying. What was I to her? The times
+were fearfully out of joint; women as well as men were taking war's
+licenses, and with a boy's unmerciful directness I sprang to the
+conclusion that here was an adventuress. Yet I had some better thoughts
+too. While I felt a moral tipsiness going into all my veins, I asked
+myself if it was not mainly due to my own inability to rise in full
+manliness to a most exceptional situation. Her jaunty method of
+confronting it, was I not failing to regard _that_ with due magnanimity?
+Was this the truth, or after all ought I really to see that at every
+turn of her speech, by coy bendings of the head, by the dark seductions
+of dim half-captive locks about her oval temples, and by many an
+indescribable swaying of the form and of the voice, I was being--to
+speak it brutally--challenged? Even in the poetic obscurity of the night
+I lost all steadiness of eye as I pertly said--
+
+"And so here you are in this awful fix."
+
+"I'm enjoying one advantage," she replied, "which you do not."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Why, I can read my safety in your face. You can't read anything in
+mine; you're afraid to look."
+
+All I got by looking then was a mellow laugh from behind her relowered
+veil; but we were going at a swift trot, nearing a roadside fire of
+fence-rails left by some belated foraging team, and as she came into the
+glare of it I turned my eyes a second time. She was revealed in a garb
+of brown enriched by the red beams of the fire, and was on the gray mare
+I had seen that morning under Lieutenant Edgard Ferry-Durand.
+
+"You recognize her?" the rider asked, delightedly. "She's not stolen,
+she's only served her country a little better than usual to-day; haven't
+you, Cousin Sallie?" (Cousin Sallie was short for Confederate States.)
+
+The note of patriotism righted me and I looked a third time. The one art
+of dress worth knowing in '63 was to slight its fashions without
+offending them, and this pretty gift I had marked all day in the
+Harpers. But never have I seen it half so successful as in the veiled
+horsewoman illumined by the side-lights of those burning fence-rails.
+The white apparition at the veranda's edge gleamed in my mind, yet
+swiftly faded out, and a new fascination, more sudden than worthy heaved
+at my heart. Then the fire was behind us and we were in the deep night.
+
+On the crest of a ridge we slackened speed and my fellow-traveller
+lifted her veil and asked exultantly what those two splendid stars were
+that overhung yonder fringe of woods so low and so close to each other.
+The less brilliant one, I said, the red one, was Mars.
+
+"And the one following, almost at his side?"
+
+"Don't you know?" I asked.
+
+Her eyes flashed round upon me like stars themselves. "Not--Venus?" she
+whispered, snatched in her breath, bit her lip, and half averting her
+face, shot me through with both "twinklers" at once. Then she took a
+long look at the planets and suddenly exclaimed with a scandalized air--
+
+"They're going down into the woods together!"
+
+"Yes," I responded, "and without even waiting for Diana."
+
+She dropped the rein and lifted both arms toward them. "Oh, blessings on
+your glorious old heathen hearts, what do you want of Diana, or of any
+one in heaven or earth except each other!"
+
+Foolish, idle cry, and meant for no more, by a heart on fire with
+temptations of which I knew nothing. But then and there my poor
+adolescent soul found out that the preceptive stuff of which it had
+built its treasure-house and citadel was not fire-proof.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+AN ACHING CONSCIENCE
+
+Yet great is precept. Precept is a well. Up from its far depths by slow,
+humble, constant process you may draw, in a slender silver thread, and
+store for sudden use, the pure waters of character.
+
+It has happened, however, that a man's own armor has been the death of
+him. So the moral isolation of a young prig of good red blood who is
+laudably trying to pump his conduct higher than his character--for
+that's the way he gets his character higher--has its own peculiar
+dangers. Take this example: that he does not dream any one will, or can,
+in mere frivolity, coquette, dally, play mud-pies, with a passion the
+sacredest in subjection, the shamefulest in mutiny, and the deepest and
+most perilous to tamper with, in our nature. As hotly alive in the
+nethermost cavern of his heart as in that of the vilest rogue there is a
+kennel of hounds to which one word of sophistry is as the call to the
+chase, and such a word I believed my companion had knowingly spoken. I
+was gone as wanton-tipsy as any low-flung fool, and actually fancied
+myself invited to be valiant by this transparent embodiment of passion
+whose outburst of amorous rebellion had been uttered not because I was
+there, but only in pure recklessness of my presence. Of course I ought
+to have seen that this was a soul only over-rich in woman's love;
+mettlesome, aspiring, but untrained to renunciation; consciously
+superior in mind and soul to the throng about her, and caught in some
+hideous gin of iron-bound--convention-bound--or even law-bound--foul
+play. But I was so besotted as to suggest a base analogy between us and
+those two sinking stars.
+
+Unluckily she retorted with some playful parry that just lacked the
+saving quality of true resentment. How I rejoined would be small profit
+to tell. I had a fearful sense of falling; first like a wounded
+squirrel, dropping in fierce amazement, catching, holding on for a
+panting moment, then dropping, catching and dropping again, down from
+the top of the great tree where I had so lately sat scolding all the
+forest; and then, later, with an appalling passivity. And at every fresh
+exchange of words, while she laughed and fended, and fended and laughed,
+along with this passivity came a yet more appalling perversity; a
+passivity and perversity as of delirium, and as horrid to her as to me,
+though I little thought so then.
+
+We came where a line of dense woods on our left marked the bottom-lands
+of Morgan's Creek. With her two earlier companions my fellow-traveller
+had crossed a ford here shortly after sunset, seeing no one; but a guard
+might easily have been put here since, by the Federals in Fayette.
+Pretty soon the road, bending toward it, led us down between two fenced
+fields and we stealthily walked our horses. Close to a way-side tree I
+murmured that if she would keep my horse I would steal nearer on foot
+and reconnoitre, and I had partly risen from the saddle, when I was
+thrilled by the pressure of her hand upon mine on the saddle-bow. "Don't
+commit the soldier's deadliest sin, my dear Mr. Smith," she said under
+her breath, and smiled at my agitation; "I mean, don't lose time."
+
+I was about to put a false meaning even on that, when she added "We
+don't need the ford this time of year; let us ride back as if we gave up
+the trip--for there may be a vidette looking at us now in the edge of
+those bushes--and as soon as we get where we can't be seen let us take a
+circuit. We can cross the creek somewhere above and strike the Wiggins
+road up in the woods. You can find your way by the blessed stars, can't
+you--being the angel you are?"
+
+My whole nature was upheaved. You may smile, but my plight was awful. In
+the sultry night I grew cold. My bridle-hand, still lying under her
+palm, turned and folded its big stupid fingers over hers. Then our hands
+slid apart and we rode back. "I wish I were good enough to know the
+stars," she said, gazing up. "Tell me some of them."
+
+I told them. Two or three times my voice stuck in my throat, I found the
+sky so filled, so possessed, by constellations of evil name. At our back
+the Dragon writhed between the two Bears; over us hung the Eagle, and in
+the south were the Wolf, the Crow, the Hydra, the Serpent--"Oh, don't
+tell any more," she exclaimed. "Or rather--what are those three bright
+stars yonder? Why do you skip them?"
+
+"Those? That one is the Virgin's sheaf; and those two are the Balances."
+
+I failed to catch her reply. She spoke in a tone of pain and sunk her
+face in her hand. "Head ache?" I asked. "No." She straightened, and
+from under her coquettish hat bent upon me such a look as I had never
+seen. In her eyes, in her tightened lips, and in the lift of her head,
+was a whole history of hope, pride, pain, resolve, strife, bafflement
+and defiance. She could not have chosen to betray so much; she must have
+counted too fully on the shade of her hat-brim. The beautiful frown
+relaxed into a smile. "No," she repeated, "only an aching conscience.
+Ever have one?"
+
+I averted my face and answered with a nod.
+
+"I don't believe you! I don't believe you ever had cause for one!" She
+laid a hand again upon mine.
+
+I covered it fiercely and sunk my brow upon it. And thereupon the wave
+of folly drew back, and on the bared sands of recollection I saw, like
+drowned things, my mother's face, and Gholson's and the General's, and
+Major Harper's, and Ned Ferry's, and Camille's. Each in turn brought its
+separate and peculiar pang; and among those that came a second time and
+with a crueler pang than before was Camille's.
+
+"You're tired!" murmured the voice beside me, and the wave rolled in
+again. I lifted my brow and moved one hand from hers to make room on it
+for my lips, but her fingers slipped away and alighted compassionately
+on my neck. "You must be one ache from head to foot!" she whispered.
+
+I turned upon her choking with anger, but her melting beauty rendered me
+helpless. Black woods were on our left. "Shall we turn in here?"
+I asked.
+
+"Yes." She stooped low under the interlacing boughs and plunged with me
+into the double darkness.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+TWO UNDER ONE HAT-BRIM
+
+"Is this the conservatory?" playfully whispered Miss Rothvelt; and if a
+hot, damp air, motionless, and heavy with the sleeping breath of
+countless growths could make it so, a conservatory it was. Every
+slightest turn had to be alertly chosen, and the tangle of branches and
+vines made going by the stars nearly impossible. The undergrowth crowded
+us into single file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses
+came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were
+much the same until near the end of our détour, when my horse swerved
+abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake sounded almost under foot. The
+mare swerved, too, and hurried forward to my horse's side.
+
+"That was almost an adventure, itself," laughingly murmured my
+companion, as if adventures were what we were in search of. While she
+spoke we came out into a slender road and turned due north. "Did you,"
+she went on, childishly, "ever take a snake up by the tail, in your
+thumb and finger, and watch him try to double on himself and bite you? I
+have, it's great fun; makes you feel so creepy, and yet you know
+you're safe!"
+
+She laughed under her breath as if at hide-and-seek. Then we galloped,
+then trotted again, galloped, walked and trotted again. Two miles,
+three, four, we reckoned off, and slowed to a walk to come out
+cautiously upon the Union Church and Fayette road. A sound brought us
+to a halt. From the right, out on the main road, it came; it was made by
+the wheels of a loaded wagon. I leaned sidewise until her hat-brim was
+over me and whispered "Yankee foragers;" but as I drew my revolver we
+heard voices, I breathed a sigh of relief, and with her locks touching
+mine we chuckled to each other in the dark. The passers were slaves
+escaping to the Federal camp.
+
+Now they came into view, on the broader road, two whole ragged families
+with a four-mule team. They passed on. And then all at once the whole
+situation was too much for me. In the joy of release I groped out
+caressingly and touched my companion's cheek. Whereat she took my
+fingers and drew them to her lips--twice. The next moment I found--we
+found--my lifted wrists in the slender grasp of her two hands and she
+was murmuring incoherent protests. Suddenly she grew eloquent. "Oh,
+think what you are and have always been! Do you think I don't know? Do
+you suppose I would have put myself into this situation, or taken the
+liberties I have taken with you, if I had not known you, and known you
+well, before ever I saw you? Ah! I have heard such good things of you!
+and the moment I saw you I saw they were true!--Yes,--yes, I tell you
+they were, they are! And I'm not going to take my trust away from you
+now! You shall keep my trust as you have kept all others. You shall be
+as miserly of it as of your general's. You will keep it!" Her whispers
+grew more and more gentle. "My dear friend, my dear friend! what is this
+trust compared to the trust I wish I might lay on you?" What did she
+mean by that! Had she some schemer's use for me? I could not ask, for
+her little hands had gradually slipped from my wrists to my fingers and
+were softly, torturingly fondling them. Suddenly she laughed and threw
+her hands behind her back. "I'm blundering! Oh, Richard Smith, be kind
+to a woman's poor wits, and let me say to-morrow that I know one man who
+can be trusted--who I know can be trusted--to make a woman's folly her
+protection. Do you know, dear, that any woman who can say that, is
+richer than any who cannot? And I am but a woman, sometimes a bit silly.
+Trouble is I'm a live one and a whole one!--or else I'm a live one and
+not quite a whole one--I wonder which it is!"
+
+I mumbled something about never wishing to tempt any one.
+
+"Oh, you haven't tempted me," she replied, with kind amusement. "You
+couldn't if you should try. You're a true soldier, with a true soldier's
+ideals; and I'm pledged to help you keep them."
+
+"What do you mean?" I demanded. "To whom are you pledged for any such--"
+
+"Oh!--don't you wish you knew! Why, to myself, for instance. Come! duty
+calls."
+
+"Come!" I echoed. We swung into the broader road and followed the
+contrabands.
+
+We came as close to them as was wise, and had to walk our horses. I
+could discern Miss Rothvelt's features once more, and felt a truer
+deference than I had yet given her. Near the blacksmith's shop, in the
+dusk of some shade-trees, she once more touched my shoulder. I turned
+resentfully to bid her not do it, but her shadowy gaze stopped me.
+
+"Don't be moody," she said; "the whole mistake is four-fifths mine. And
+anyhow, repining is only a counterfeit repentance, you know. Come, I
+don't want to tease you. It's only myself I love to torment. I'm the
+snake I like to hold up by the tail. Did you never have some dull,
+incessant ache that seemed to pain less when you pressed hard on it?"
+She laughed, left me and rode into the cottage gate.
+
+What do you say?--Yes, she might have spoken more wisely. Yet always
+there vibrated in her voice a wealth of thought, now bitter, now sweet,
+and often both at once, and a splendor of emotions, beyond the scope of
+all ordinary natures. How far beyond my own scope they were, even with
+my passions at flood-tide and turbid as a back-street overflow, I
+failed to ponder while I passed around the paling fence alone.
+
+In the edge of the woods at the rear of this enclosure I found the road
+that led into Cole's Creek bottom, and there turned and waited. A corner
+of the cottage was still in view among its cedars and china-trees. In an
+intervening melon-patch blinked the yellow lamps of countless fireflies.
+And now there came the ghost of a sound from beyond the patch, then a
+glimpse of drapery, and I beheld again the subject of my thoughts. Such
+thoughts! Ah! why had I neither modesty, wit nor charity enough to see
+that yonder came a woman whose heart beat only more strongly than the
+hearts of all the common run of us, with impulses both kind and high,
+although society, by the pure defects of its awkward machinery, had
+incurably mutilated her fate; a woman wrestling with a deep-founded love
+that, held by her at arm's length, yielded only humiliations and by its
+torments kept her half ripe for any sudden treason even against that
+love itself.
+
+She came without her horse, pointing eagerly at the brightness of the
+sky above the unrisen moon. "Diana!" she whispered, and tossed a kiss
+toward it. "You saw me put the mare into the stable and go into the
+house by the back door?"
+
+"Yes," I said, and handed her, as I dismounted, the General's gift, the
+pass.
+
+She snatched it gaily, loosed a fastening at her throat and dropped the
+missive into her bosom. Then with passionate gravity she asked, "Now,
+are you going straight on to Clifton to-night--without stopping?"
+
+"I haven't been ordered to tell any one where I'm going."
+
+"Neither was Lieutenant Ferry," she dryly responded, "yet I have it from
+him."
+
+"He told you?--Ah! you're only guessing," I said, and saw that I was
+helping her to guess more correctly.
+
+"Pooh!" she replied, ever so prettily, "do you suppose I don't know?
+Ferry's scouts are at Clifton, and you've got a despatch for
+Lieutenant--eh,--Durand--hem!" She posed playfully. "Now, tell me;
+you're not to report to him till daylight, are you? Then why need you
+hurry on now? This house where I am is the only safe place for you to
+sleep in between here and Clifton. I'll wake you, myself, in good time."
+My heart pounded and rose in my throat, yet I managed to say, "My
+orders are plain." I flinched visibly, for again I had told too much. I
+pretended to listen toward the depths of the wood.
+
+She struck a mock-sentimental attitude and murmured musically--
+
+  "'The beating of our own hearts
+  Was all the sound we heard.'
+
+"Yes,"--she put away gaiety--"your orders are plain; and they're as
+cruel as they are plain!"
+
+"Cruel to you?" I took her hand from my arm and held it.
+
+"Oh! cruel to you, Richard, dear; to you! And--yes!--yes!--I'll
+confess. I'll confess--if only you'll do as I beg! Yes, ah yes, cruel to
+me! But don't ask how, and we'll see if you are man enough to keep a
+real woman's real secret! And first, promise me not to put up at that
+house which the General and Lieutenant Ferry--"
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry is not sending me to any house."
+
+"Pardon me, I know better. This is his scheme." She laid her free hand
+on our two. "Tell me you will not go to that house!"
+
+I attempted an evasion. "Oh--a blanket on the ground--face covered up in
+it from the mosquitos--is really--"
+
+"Right!" She laughed. "I wish a woman could choose that way. Oh! if
+you'll do that I'll go with you and stand guard over you!"
+
+Dolt that I was, I would have drawn her close, but she put me off with
+an outstretched arm and forbidden smile. "No!--No! this is a matter of
+life and death."
+
+I stepped back, heaving. "Who and what are you? Who and what are you?"
+
+"Why, who and what should I be?"
+
+"Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+"Hmm; Charlotte Oliver. Are you sure you have the name just right?"
+
+"Why haven't I got it right?"
+
+"Oh, I don't doubt you have; though I didn't know but it might be
+Charlie Toliver or something."
+
+I dilated. "Who told--did Ned Ferry tell you that story?"
+
+"He did. Or, to be accurate, Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. My dear Richard,
+we cannot be witty and remain un-talked-about."
+
+"I--I believe it yet! You are Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+She became frigid. "Do you know who and what Charlotte Oliver is?--No?
+Well, to begin with, she's a married woman--but pshaw! you believe
+nothing till it's proved. If I tell you who and what I am will you do
+what I've asked you; will you promise not to stop at Lucius Oliver's
+house?" She softly reached for my hand and pressed and stroked it.
+"Don't stop there, dear. Oh, say you will not!"
+
+"Is it so dangerous?"
+
+"General Austin believes it is. You're being used to bait a trap,
+Richard."
+
+I laughed a gay disdain. "Who is Lucius; is he Charlotte's husband?"
+
+The reply came slowly. "No; her husband is quite another man; this
+man's wife has been dead for years. No, Charlotte Oliver lives
+in--hark!"
+
+The sound we had heard was only some stir of nature in her sleep. "I
+must go," I said.
+
+"Oh, no, no! I cannot let you!" She clutched the hand she had been
+stroking.
+
+"Coralie! Coralie Rothvelt!"--my cry was an honest one--"you tempt me
+beyond human endurance."
+
+She threw my hand from her. "I know I do! I'm so unworthy to do it that
+I wouldn't have believed I could. You thought I was Charlotte
+Oliver--Heavens! boy, if you should breathe the atmosphere Charlotte
+Oliver has to live in! But understand again, for your soul's comfort,
+you haven't tempted me. Go, if you must; go, take your chances; and if
+you're spared ever to see your dear, dear little mother--"
+
+"My mother! Do you know my mother?"
+
+"Tell her I tried to keep my promise to her."
+
+"You promised her--what did you promise her?"
+
+"Only to take care of you whenever I had the chance. Go, now, you must!"
+
+"And was care for me your only motive in--"
+
+"No; no, Richard, I wanted, and I still want, you to take care of me!
+But go, now, go! at once or not at all! Good-bye!" She laughed and
+fluttered away. I sprang upon my horse and sped into the forest.
+
+Another mile, another half; then my horror and dismay broke into gesture
+and speech, and over and over I reviled myself as a fool, a traitorous
+fool, to be fooled into confession of my errand! I moaned with physical
+pain; every fatigue of the long day now levied payment, and my back,
+knees, shoulders, ached cruelly. But my heart ached most, and I bowed in
+the saddle and cried--
+
+"What have I done, oh, what have I done? My secret! my general's, my
+country's secret! That woman has got it--bought it with flatteries and
+lies! She has drawn it from my befouled soul like a charge from a gun!"
+
+For a moment I quite forgot how evident it was that she had gathered
+earlier inklings of it from some one else. Suddenly my thought was of
+something far more startling. It stopped my breath; I halted; I held my
+temples; I stared. What would she do with a secret she had taken such
+hazards to extort? Ah! she'd carry it straight to market--why not? She
+would give it to the enemy! Before my closed eyes came a vision of the
+issue--disaster to our arms; bleeding, maiming, death, and widows' and
+orphans' tears.
+
+"My God! she shall not!" I cried, and whirled about and galloped back.
+
+At the edge of the wood, where we had parted, I tied my horse, and crept
+along the moonlight shadows of the melon-patch to the stable. The door
+was ajar. In the interior gloom I passed my hands over the necks and
+heads of what I recognized to be the pair of small mules I had seen at
+Gallatin. Near a third stall were pegs for saddle and bridle, but they
+were empty. So was the stall; the mare was gone.
+
+"Gone to the Yankees at Fayette!" I moaned, and hurried back to my
+horse. To attempt to overtake one within those few miles would only make
+failure complete, and I scurried once more into the north with such a
+burden of alarm and anguish as I had never before known.
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+THE JAYHAWKERS
+
+IT was well that I was on the Federal captain's horse. He knew this sort
+of work and could do it quicker and more quietly than mine. Mine would
+have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it. Another
+advantage was the moon, and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I
+saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge
+of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins.
+Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young
+white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to
+startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the
+rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay
+ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw--for
+the excited dogs had pushed the door open--that two of the men were
+white, though but one wore shoes. On him the light fell revealingly as
+he and the yellow girl before him passed each other in the dance and
+faced again. He was decidedly blond. The other man, though silhouetted
+against the glare of burning pine-knots, I knew to be white by the
+flapping of his lank locks about his cheeks as he lent his eyes to the
+improvisation of his steps. His partner was a young black girl. I
+burned with scorn, and doubtless showed it, although I only asked whose
+plantation this was.
+
+"This-yeh pla-ace?" The rustic dragged his words lazily, chewed tobacco
+with his whole face, and looked my uniform over from cap to spur. "They
+say this-yeh place belong to a man which his name Lu-ucius Ol-i-veh."
+
+So! I honestly wished myself back in my old rags, until I reflected that
+my handsome mount was enough to get me all the damage these wretches
+could offer. Still I thought it safest to show an overbearing frown.
+
+"To what command do you fellows belong?"
+
+He spurted a pint to reply, "Fishe's batt'ry."
+
+"Oh! And where is the battery?"
+
+"You sa-ay 'Whah is it?'--ow batt'ry"--he champed noisily--"I dunno.
+Does you? Whah is it?"
+
+"It's twenty miles off; why are you not with it? What are you doing
+here?"
+
+"You sa-ay 'What we a-doin' hyuh?' Well, suh, I mought sa-ay we ain't
+a-doin' nuth'n'; but I"--he squirted again--"_will_ sa-ay that so fah as
+you _see_ what we a-doin', you _kin_ see, an' welcome; an' so fah as you
+don't see, it ain't none o' yo' damn' busi-ness."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, I was only asking a friendly question."
+
+"Yaas; well, that's all right, too, suh; I uz on'y a-givin' you a
+frien'ly aynsweh. I hope you like it."
+
+Our intercourse became more amiable and the fellow dragged in his advice
+that I spend the rest of the night at the house of Mr. Oliver. His
+acquaintance with that gentleman seemed to grow while we talked, and
+broke into bloom like a magician's rosebush. He described him as a kind
+old bird who made hospitality to strangers his meat and drink. A
+conjecture darted into my mind. "Why, yes! that is his married son, is
+he not, yonder in the cabin; the one with the fair hair?"
+
+"Who?--eh,--ole man Ol-i-veh? You sa--ay 'Is that his ma'-ied son, in
+yondeh; the one 'ith the fah hah? '--Eh,--no--o, suh,--eh,--yass,
+suh,--yass! Oh, yass, suh, thass his--tha'--thass his ma'ied son, in
+thah; yass, suh, the one 'ith the fah hah; yass, suh. I thought you
+meant the yetheh one."
+
+"I don't believe," said I, "I'd better put myself on the old gentleman
+when the mistress of the house is away."
+
+"_She_ ain't awa-ay."
+
+"Is she not! Isn't she the Mrs. Oliver--Charlotte Oliver--who is such
+friends--she and her husband, I mean, of course,--"
+
+"_Uv_ co'se!" The reptile giggled, squirted and nodded.
+
+"--With General Austin," I continued, "--and with Lieutenant Ferry?"
+
+"She air!" He was pleased. "Yass, we all good frien's togetheh."
+
+"But if she--oh, yes!--Yes, to be sure; she could easily have got here
+yesterday afternoon."
+
+"Thass thess when she arrove!" It was fascinating to watch the animal's
+cunning play across his face. The fiddle's tune changed and the dance
+quickened.
+
+"I naturally thought," resumed I, with a smile meant to refer to the
+blond dancer, "that the madam _must_ be away somewhere."
+
+My hearer grinned. "Oh, that ain't no sign. Boys will be boys. You know
+that, yo'se'f. An' o' co'se she know it. Oh, yass, she at home."
+
+"Well, I reckon I'll stop all night." I began to move on. His eyes
+followed greedily.
+
+"Sa-ay! I'll wrastle you fo' them-ah clo'es."
+
+I waved a pleasant refusal and rode toward the house.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+ASLEEP IN THE DEATH-TRAP
+
+The dwelling was entirely dark. I came close in the bright moonlight and
+hallooed. At my second hail the door came a small way open, and after a
+brief parley a man's voice bade me put up my horse and come in. The
+stable was a few steps to the right and rear. Returning, I took care to
+notice the form of the house: a hall from front to rear; one front and
+one rear room on each side of it; above the whole a low attic, probably
+occupied by the slave housemaids.
+
+I was met in the bare unpainted hall by a dropsical man of nearly sixty,
+holding a dim candle, a wax-myrtle dip wrapped on a corncob. He had a
+retreating chin, a throat-latch beard and a roving eye; stepped with one
+foot and slid with the other, spoke in a dejected voice, and had very
+poor use of his right hand. I followed him to the rear corner chamber,
+the one nearest the stable, feeling that, poor as the choice was, I
+should rather have him for my robber and murderer than those villains
+down at the quarters. I detained him in conversation while I drew off my
+boots and threw my jacket upon the back of a chair in such a way as to
+let my despatch be seen. The toss was a lucky one; the document, sealed
+with red wax, stuck out arrogantly from an inside pocket. Then, asking
+lively questions the while as if to conceal a blunder and its
+correction, I moved quickly between him and it and slipped the missive
+under a pillow of the fourpost bedstead.
+
+He was not wordy, and he tarried but a moment, yet he explained his
+paralysis. In the dreary monotone of a chronic sour temper he related
+that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing
+horses, and their officer, on being called by him "no gentleman," had
+struck him behind the ear with the butt of a carbine. I asked what
+punishment the officer received, and I noticed the plural pronoun as he
+icily replied, "We didn't enter any complaint."
+
+I said with genuine warmth that if he would give me that man's
+name--etc.
+
+He waited on the threshold with his dropsical back to me for my last
+word, and then, still in the same attitude, droned, "O-oh, he's dead.
+And anyhow," he finished out of sight in the hall, "that's not our way."
+
+I sat on the edge of the bed, in the moonlight, wishing I knew what
+their way was. I considered my small stock of facts. The one that
+appalled me most was the inward guilt which I brought with me to this
+ordeal. I wanted to say my childhood prayers and I could not. For I
+could not repent; at least the _emotion_ of repentance would not come.
+Moreover, every now and then there leapt across this blackness of guilt
+a forked lightning of fright, as I realized that I could no more plan
+than I could pray. No doubt Coralie Rothvelt, by this time in Fayette,
+was telling some Federal commander that a certain Confederate courier,
+now asleep at the house of Lucius Oliver, had let slip to her the fact
+that his despatches were written to be captured, and that, read with
+that knowledge, they would be of guiding value. What mine host himself
+might have in view for me I could not guess, but most likely those three
+rapscallions down at the quarters were already plotting my murder. So
+now for a counterplot--alas! the counterplot would not unfold for me!
+
+I rallied all my wits. Here was an open window. Through it the moonlight
+poured in upon the lower half of the bed. If I should lie with my eyes
+in the shadow of the headboard no one entering by the door opposite
+could see that I was looking. Good! but what to do when the time should
+come--ah me!--and "Oh, God!" and "Oh, God!" again. Ought I, now, to let
+the enemy get the despatch, or must I not rather keep it from him at
+whatever risk of death or disgrace? Ah! if I might only fight, and let
+the outcome decide for me! And why not? Yes, I would fight! And oh! how
+I would fight! If by fighting too well I should keep the despatch, why,
+that, as matters now stood, was likely to be the very best for my
+country's cause. On the other hand, should I fight till I fell dead or
+senseless and only then lose it, surely then it would be counted genuine
+and retain all its value to mislead. Oh, yes,--I could contrive nothing
+better--I would fight!
+
+I drew the counterpane aside, lay down under it revolver in hand, and
+then, for the first time since I had put on the glorious gray, found I
+could not face the thought of death. I grew steadily, penetratingly,
+excruciatingly cold, and presently--to the singular satisfaction of my
+conscience--began to shake from head to foot with a nervous chill. It
+was agonizing, but it was so much better than the spiritual chill of
+which it took the place! I felt as though I should never be warm again.
+Yet the attack slowly passed away, and with my finger once more close to
+the trigger, I lay trying to use my brain, when, without prayer or plan,
+I solved the riddle, what I should do, by doing the only thing I knew I
+ought not to do. I slept.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+CHARLOTTE OLIVER
+
+An envelope sealed with sealing-wax, unless it has also a wrapping of
+twine or tape whose only knot is under the seal, can be opened without
+breaking the seal. Gholson had once told me this. Hold a thin, sharp
+knife-blade to the spout of a boiling tea-kettle; then press the
+blade's edge under the edge of the seal. Repeat this operation many
+times. The wax will yield but a hair's-breadth each time, but a
+hair's-breadth counts, and in a few minutes the seal will be lifted
+entire. A touch of glue or paste will fasten it down again, and a seal
+so tampered with need betray the fact only to an eye already suspicious.
+
+As I say, I slept. The door between me and the hall had a lock, but no
+key; another door, letting from my room to the room in front of it, had
+no lock, but was bolted. I slept heavily and for an hour or more. Then I
+was aware of something being moved--slowly--slyly--by littles--under my
+pillow. The pillow was in a case of new unbleached cotton. When I first
+lay down, the cotton had so smelt of its newness that I thought it was
+enough, of itself, to keep me awake. Now this odor was veiled by
+another; a delicate perfume; a perfume I knew, and which brought again
+to me all the incidents of the night, and all their woe. I looked, and
+there, so close to the bedside that she could see my eyes as plainly as
+I saw hers, stood Coralie Rothvelt. In the door that opened into the
+hall were two young officers, staff swells, in the handsomest Federal
+blue. The moonlight lay in a broad flood between them and me. It
+silvered Miss Rothvelt from the crown of her hat to the floor, and
+brightened the earnest animation of her lovely face as she daintily
+tiptoed backward with one hand delicately poised in the air behind her,
+and the other still in the last pose of withdrawing from under the
+pillow--empty!
+
+My problem was indeed simplified. The despatch had been stolen, opened,
+read, re-sealed and returned. All I now had to do was to lie here till
+daybreak and then get away if I could, deliver the despatch to Ned
+Ferry, and tell him--ah! what?--how much? Oh, my bemired soul, how much
+must I tell? My shame I might bear; I might wash it out in blood at the
+battle's front; but my perfidy! how much was it perfidy to withhold; how
+much was it perfidy to confess?
+
+The heaviness of my soul, by reacting upon my frame and counterfeiting
+sleep better than I could have done it in cold blood, saved me, I fancy,
+from death or a northern prison. When I guessed my three visitors were
+gone I stirred, as in slumber, a trifle nearer the window, and for some
+minutes lay with my face half buried in the pillow. So lying, there
+stole to my ear a footfall. My finger felt the trigger, my lids lifted
+alertly, and as alertly reclosed. Outside the window one of the
+officers, rising by some slender foothold, had been looking in upon me,
+and in sinking down again and turning away had snapped a twig. He
+glanced back just as I opened my eyes, but once more my head was in
+shadow and the moonlight between us. When I peeped again he was
+moving away.
+
+Five, ten, fifteen minutes dragged by. Counting them helped me to lie
+still. Then I caught another pregnant sound, a mumbling of male voices
+in the adjoining front room. I waited a bit, hearkening laboriously, and
+then ever so gradually I slid from the bed, put on everything except my
+boots, and moved by inches to the door between the two rooms. It was
+very thin; "a good sounding-board," thought I as I listened for life or
+death and hoped my ear was the only one against it.
+
+The discussion warmed and I began to catch words and meanings. Oftenest
+they were old Lucius Oliver's, whose bad temper made him incautious.
+While his son and the other two jayhawkers obstinately pressed their
+scheme he kept saying, sourly, "That's--not--our--wa-ay!"
+
+At length he lost all prudence. "Nn--o!--Nnno--o, sir! Not in this house
+you don't; and not on this place! Wait till he's off my land; I'm not
+goin' to have the infernal rebels a-turpentinin' my house and a-burnin'
+it over my head. What _air_ you three skunks in such a sweat to git
+found out for, like a pack o' daymn' fools! I've swone to heaven and
+hell to git even ef revenge can ever git me even, and this ain't the way
+to git even. It's not--our--wa-ay!"
+
+His son's attitude exasperated him. "_You_ know this ain't ever been our
+way; you'd say so, yourself, ef you wa'n't skin full o' china-ball
+whiskey! What in all hell is the reason we can't do him as we've always
+done the others?"
+
+"Oh, shut your dirty face!" replied the son, while one of his cronies
+warned both against being overheard. But when this one added something
+further the old man snarled:
+
+"What's that about the horse?--The horse might git away and be evidence
+ag'inst us?--What?--Oh, now give the true reason; you want the horse,
+that's all! You two lickskillets air in this thing pyo'ly for the
+stealin's. Me and my son ain't bushwhackers, we're gentlemen! At least
+I'm one. Our game's revenge!"
+
+Not because of this speech, but of a soft rubbing sound on the
+window-sill behind me, my heart turned cold. Yet there I saw a most
+welcome sight. Against the outer edge of the sill an unseen hand was
+moving a forked stick to and fro. The tip of one of its tines was slit,
+in the slit was a white paper, and in the fork hung the bridle of my
+horse. I glided to the window. But there bethinking me how many a man
+had put his head out at just such a place and never got it back, I made
+a long sidewise reach, secured the paper, and read it.
+
+It was the envelope which had contained Coralie Rothvelt's pass. Its
+four flaps were spread open, and on the inside was scrawled in a large
+black writing the following:
+
+_Yankees gone, completely fooled. Do not stir till day, then ride for
+your life. We're not thwarting Lieutenant Ferry's plan, we're only
+improving upon it. When you report to him don't let blame fall upon the
+father and son whose roof this night saves you from a bloody death. Do
+this for the sake of her who is risking her life to save yours. We serve
+one cause; be wary--be brave--be true_.
+
+I stood equally amazed and alert. The voices still growled in the next
+room, and my horse's bridle still hung before the window. I peered out;
+there stood the priceless beast. I came a sly step nearer, and lo! in
+his shadow, flattened against the house, face outward, was Coralie
+Rothvelt comically holding the forked stick at a present-arms.
+Throbbing with a grateful, craving allegiance, I seized the rein. Then I
+bent low out the window and with my free hand touched her face as it
+turned upward into a beam of moonlight. She pressed my fingers to her
+lips, and then let me draw her hand as far as it could come and cover it
+with kisses. Then she drew me down and whispered "You'll do what
+I've asked?"
+
+When I said I would try she looked distressfully unassured and I added
+"I'll do whatever risks no life but mine."
+
+Her face spoke passionate thanks. "That's all I can ask!" she said,
+whispered "When you go--_keep the plain road,"_--and vanished.
+
+I sat by the window, capped, booted, belted, my bridle in one hand,
+revolver in the other. In all the house, now, there was no sound, and
+without there was a stillness only more vast. I could not tell whether
+certain sensations in my ear were given by insects in the grass and
+trees or merely by my overwrought nerves and tired neck. The moon sailed
+high, the air was at last comfortably cool, my horse stood and slept. I
+thought it must be half-past two.
+
+"Now it must be three." Miss Rothvelt's writing lay in my bosom beside
+my despatch. At each half-hour I re-read it. At three-and-a-half I
+happened to glance at the original superscription. A thought flashed
+upon me. I stared at her name, and began to mark off its letters one by
+one and to arrange them in a new order. I took C from Coralie and h from
+Rothvelt; after them I wrote a from Coralie and r from Rothvelt, l and o
+from Coralie and two t's and an e from Rothvelt, and behold, Charlotte!
+while the remaining letters gave me Oliver.
+
+Ah! where had my wits been? Yet without a suspicion that she was
+Charlotte Oliver one might have let the anagram go unsuspected for a
+lifetime. Evidently it concealed nothing from General Austin or Ned
+Ferry; most likely it was only the name she used in passing through the
+lines. At any rate I was convinced she was a good Confederate, and my
+heart rose.
+
+But why, then, this ardent zeal to save the necks of the two traitors
+"whose roof this night--" etc.? Manifestly she was moved by passion, not
+duty; love drove her on; but surely not love for them. "No," I guessed
+in a reverent whisper, "but love for Ned Ferry." It must have been
+through grace of some of her nobility and his, caught in my heart even
+before I was quite sure of it in theirs, that I sat and framed the
+following theory: Ned Ferry, loving Charlotte Oliver, yet coerced by his
+sense of a soldier's duty, had put passion's dictates wholly aside and
+had set about to bring these murderers to justice; doing this though he
+knew that she could never with honor or happiness to either of them
+become the wife of a man who had made her a widow, while she, aware of
+his love, a love so true that he would not breathe it to her while this
+hideous marriage held her, had ridden perilously in the dead of night to
+circumvent his plans if, with honor to both of them, it could be done.
+
+The half-hour dragged round to four. My horse roused up but kept as
+quiet as a clever dog. I heard a light sound in the hall; first a step
+and then a slide, then a step again and then a slide; Lucius Oliver was
+coming toward my door. The cords gathered in my throat and my finger
+stole to the trigger; Heaven only knew what noiseless feet might be
+following behind that loathsome shuffle. It reached the door and was
+still. And now the door opened, softly, slowly, and the paralytic stood
+looking in. The moonlight had swung almost out of the room, but a band
+of it fell glittering upon the revolver lying in my lap with my fingers
+on it, each exactly in place. Also it lighted my other hand, on the
+window-sill, with the bridle in it. Old Lucius was alone. In the gloom I
+could not see his venom gathering, but I could almost smell it.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+THE FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE
+
+"Good-morning," I murmured.
+
+"Good-morning," he responded, tardily and grimly. "Well, you _air_ in a
+hurry."
+
+"Not at all, sir. I'm sorry to seem so; it's not the tip-top of
+courtesy,--"
+
+"No, it ain't too stinkin' polite."
+
+"True; but neither are the enemy, and they're early risers, you know."
+
+"Well, good Lord! don't hang back for my sake!"
+
+I put on an offended esteem. "My dear sir, you've no call to take
+offence at me. I'm waiting because my business is too--well, if I must
+explain, it's--it's too important to be risked except by good safe
+daylight; that's all."
+
+[Illustration: "Well, you _air_ in a hurry!"]
+
+Oh, he wasn't taking offence. His reptile temper crawled into hiding,
+and when I said day was breaking, he said he would show me my way.
+
+"Why, I keep the plain road, don't I?"
+
+No, he would not; only wagons went that way, to cross the creek by a
+small bridge. I could cut off nearly two miles by taking the bridle-path
+that turned sharply down into the thick woods of the creek-bottom about
+a quarter of a mile from the house and crossed the stream at a sandy
+ford. "Ride round," he said, "and I'll show you from the front of
+the house."
+
+Thence he pointed out a distant sycamore looming high against the soft
+dawn. There was the fence-corner at which the bridle-path left the road.
+He icily declined pay for my lodging. "We never charge a Confederate
+soldier for anything; that's not our way."
+
+Day came swiftly. By the time I could trot down to the sycamore it was
+perfectly light even in the shade of an old cotton-gin house close
+inside the corner of the small field around which I was to turn. The
+vast arms of its horse-power press, spreading rigidly downward, offered
+the only weird aspect that lingered in the lovely morning. I have a
+later and shuddering memory of it, but now the dewy air was full of
+sweet odors, the squirrel barked from the woods, the woodpecker tapped,
+and the lark, the cardinal and the mocking-bird were singing all around.
+The lint-box of the old cotton-press was covered with wet
+morning-glories. I took the bridle-path between the woods and the field
+and very soon was down in the dense forest beyond them. But the moment
+I was hid from house and clearing I turned my horse square to the left,
+stooped to his neck, and made straight through the pathless tangle.
+
+Silence was silver this time, speed was golden. But every step met its
+obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers,
+brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held
+dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath,
+footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait
+were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road by that way as
+soon as they found I was flanking them. And so I strove on at the best
+speed I could make, and burst into the road with a crackle and crash
+that might have been heard a hundred yards away. One glance up the
+embowered alley, one glance down it, and I whirled to the right, drove
+in the spur, and flew for the bridge. A wild minute so--a turn in the
+road--no one in sight! Two minutes--another turn--no one yet!
+Three--three--another turn--no one in front, no one behind--
+
+The thunder of our own hoofs
+  Was all the sound we heard.
+
+A fourth turn and no one yet! A fifth--more abrupt than the others--and
+there--here--yonder now behind--was the path I had feared, but no one
+was in it, and the next instant the bridge flashed into view. With a
+great clatter I burst upon it, reached the middle, glanced back, and
+dropped complacently into a trot. Tame ending if--but as I looked
+forward again, what did I see? A mounted man. At the other end of the
+bridge, in the shade of overhanging trees, he moved into view, and well
+I knew the neat fit of that butternut homespun. He flourished a revolver
+above his head and in a drunken voice bade me halt.
+
+I halted; not making a point of valor or discretion, but because he was
+Charlotte Oliver's husband. I read his purpose and listened behind me as
+we parleyed. "Don't halt me, sir, I'm a courier and in a hurry."
+
+He hiccoughed. "Let's--s'--see y' orders."
+
+I took my weapon into my bridle-hand by the barrel and began to draw
+from my bosom the empty envelope addressed Coralie Rothvelt. At the same
+time I let my horse move forward again, while I still listened backward
+with my brain as busy as a mill. Was there here no hidden succor? Was
+that no part of Ned Ferry's plan--if the plan was his? Were those
+villains waiting yet, up at the ford? I could hear nothing at my back
+but the singing of innumerable birds.
+
+"Halt!" the drunkard growled again, and again I halted, wearing a look
+of timid awe, but as full of guile as a weasel. I reined in abruptly so
+as to make the reach between us the fullest length of my outstretched
+arm with the paper in two fingers as I leaned over the saddle-bow. He
+bent and reached unsteadily, and took the envelope; but hardly could his
+eye light upon the superscription before it met the muzzle of my weapon.
+
+"Don't move." My tone was affectionate. "Don't holla, or I'll give you
+to the crows. Back. Back off this bridge--quick! or I'll--" I pushed
+the pistol nearer; the danger was no less to him because I was
+thoroughly frightened. He backed; but he glared a devilish elation, for
+behind me beat the hoofs of both his horsemen. I had to change
+my tactics.
+
+"Halt! Turn as I turn, and keep your eye on _this."_
+
+Glad was I then to be on a true cavalryman's horse that answered the
+closing of my left leg and moved steadily around till I could see down
+the bridge. Oliver, after a step or two, stopped. "Turn!" I yelled, and
+swelled. "One, two,--"
+
+He turned. There was not a second to spare. The two long-haired fellows
+came nip and tuck. I see yet their long deer-hunters' rifles. But I
+remembered my pledge to this man's wife, and proudly found I had the
+nerve to hold the trigger still unpressed when at the apron of the
+bridge the rascals caught their first full sight of us as we sat
+humpshouldered, eye to eye, like one gray tomcat and one yellow one.
+They dragged their horses back upon their haunches. One leaped to the
+ground, the other aimed from the saddle; but the first shot that woke
+the echoes was neither theirs nor mine, but Sergeant Jim Langley's,
+though that, of course, I did not know. It came from a tree on our side
+of the water, some forty yards downstream. The man in the saddle fired
+wild, and as his horse wheeled and ran, the rider slowly toppled over
+backward out of saddle and stirrups and went slamming to the ground.
+
+His companion had no time to fire. Instantly after these two shots came
+a third, and some willows upstream filled with its white smoke. The
+second long rifle fell upon the bridge and its owner sank to his knees
+heaving out long cries of agony that swelled in a tremor of echoes up
+and down the stream. Another voice, stalwart, elated, cut through it
+like a sword. "Don't shoot, Smith, we're coming; save that hound for
+the halter!"
+
+The groans of the wounded man closed in behind it, a flood of agony, and
+my own outcry increased the din as I called "Come quick, come quick! the
+wounded fellow's remounting!"
+
+The wretch had lifted himself to his feet by a stirrup. Then, giving
+out, he had sunk prone, and now, still torturing the air with his horrid
+cries, was crawling for his rifle. Oliver saw I had a new inspiration.
+All the drunkenness left his eyes and they became the eyes of a snake,
+but too quickly for him to guess my purpose I turned my weapon from his
+face and fired. His revolver flew from his bleeding hand, a stream of
+curses started from his lips, and as I thrust my pistol into his face
+again and snatched his bridle he screamed to the crawling woodman
+"Shoot! shoot! Kill one or the other of us! Oh! shoot! shoot!"
+
+The rifle cracked, but its ball sang over us; a shot answered it behind
+me; the howling man's voice died in a gurgle, and Sergeant Jim ran by
+me, leaped upon the horse that had stayed beside his fallen rider, and
+was off hot-footed after the other. "Turn your prisoner over to Kendall,
+Smith," he cried, "and put out like hell for Clifton!"
+
+I gave no assent, and I believe Oliver guessed my purpose to save him,
+though his eyes were as venomous as ever. I flirted the rein off his
+horse's neck and said, savagely "Come! quick! trot! gallop!" The
+sergeant's young companion of the morning before dashed out of the
+bushes on his horse with Jim's horse in lead. "I've got him safe,
+Kendall," I cried, and my captive and I sped by him at a gallop on our
+way to Ned Ferry's command.
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+WE SPEED A PARTING GUEST
+
+Rising to higher ground, we turned into the Natchez, and Port Gibson
+road where a farm-house and country "store" constituted Clifton. Still
+at a gallop we left these behind and entered a broad lane between fields
+of tasselling corn, where we saw a gallant sight. In the early sunlight
+and in the pink dust of their own feet, down the red clay road at an
+easy trot in column by fours, the blue-gray of their dress flashing with
+the glint of the carbines at their backs, came Ferry's scouts with Ned
+Ferry at their head. There was his beautiful brown horse under him, too.
+My captive and I dropped to a walk, the column did the same, and Ferry
+trotted forward, beckoning us to halt. His face showed triumph and
+commendation, but no joy. Oliver answered his scrutiny with a blaze
+of defiance.
+
+"Good-morning, Smith, who is your prisoner?"
+
+"His name is Oliver."
+
+Ferry looked behind to the halted column. "Lieutenant Quinn, send two
+men to guard this one. Smith, where's Sergeant Langley; where's Kendall?
+Kendall?"
+
+While I told of the scrimmage, the guard relieved me of Oliver, and as I
+finished, three men galloped up and reined in. "All right," said
+one, saluting.
+
+"South?" asked our leader.
+
+"Before day," replied the new-comer, glowing with elation, and I grasped
+the fact that the enemy had taken our bait and I had not betrayed my
+country. The three men went to the column, and Ferry, looking up from
+the despatch which I had delivered to him, said--
+
+"Of course no one has seen this despatch, eh?--Oh!"--a smile--"yes?
+who?"
+
+"Two Federal officers."
+
+"Two--what?" His smile broadened. "You _know_ that?"
+
+"I saw them, Lieutenant, looking in at the door to see the despatch put
+back under my pillow. Yes, sir, by the same hand that had shown it
+to them."
+
+"Whose hand was it; that fellow's, yonder?" Oliver was several paces
+away.
+
+"No, Lieutenant, I don't believe he had anything to do with it; and I've
+no absolute proof, either, that he was at the bridge to rob or kill me.
+I threatened his life first, sir. At any rate that hand under my pillow
+was neither his nor his father's."
+
+"But they were present, eh?"
+
+"They were neither of them present, Lieutenant; that hand was Miss
+Coralie Rothvelt's."
+
+"Oh, no!" he murmured, "that cannot be!" "I saw her face, Lieutenant,
+nearer to mine than yours is now. But she did it to help us--oh, but I
+know that, sir! She came under my window and told me she had done it!
+She told me to tell you she hadn't thwarted your plan, but only improved
+on it, and I believe--Lieutenant, if you will hear me patiently through
+a confession which--" I choked with emotion.
+
+He lighted up with happy relief. "No, you need not make it. And you need
+not turn so pale." Whereat I turned red. "She saw the despatch was a
+trap for the Yankees, and used it so, you think? Ah, yes, Smith, I see
+it all, now; she pumped you dry."
+
+I could not speak, I shook my head, and for evidence in rebuttal I
+showed in my eyes two fountains of standing tears.
+
+"How, then, did she know?"
+
+"Lieutenant, she guessed! She must have just put two and two together
+and guessed! Or else, Lieutenant,--"
+
+"She must have pumped others before she pumped you, eh?" There was
+confession in his good humor. "But tell me; did she not see also this
+other trap, for this man and his father, and try to save them out of
+it?--oh, if you don't want--never mind." He laid a leg over the front of
+his saddle and sat thinking. So I see him to-day: his chestnut locks,
+his goodly limbs and shoulders, the graceful boots, cut-away jacket,
+faded sash, straight sword, and that look of care on his features which
+intensified the charm of their spiritual cleanness; behind him his band
+of picked heroes, and for background the June sky. Whenever I smell
+dewy corn-fields smitten with the sun that picture comes back to me.
+
+"No," he said again, "you need not tell me." By a placid light in his
+face I saw he understood. He drew his watch, put it back, thought on,
+and smiled at my uniform. "It has not the blue of the others," he said,
+"but indeed they are not all alike, and it will match the most of
+them--after a rain or two--and some dust. You have been trading horses?"
+
+I explained. While doing so I saw one of the guard reaching the
+prisoner's bridle to the other. Hah! Oliver had slapped the bridle free.
+In went his spurs! By a great buffet on the horse's neck he wheeled him,
+and with the rein dangling under the bits went over the fence like a
+deer. "Bang! bang! bang!"
+
+It was idle; a magic seems to shield a captive's leap for life. Away
+across the corn he went to the edge of a tangled wood, over the fence
+there again, and into the brush. "Halt! bang!" and "Halt! bang!" it was,
+at every bound, but now the pursuers came back empty-handed, some
+contemptuously silent, some laughing. Ferry glanced again at the time,
+and I was having within me a quarrel with him for his indifference at
+the prisoner's escape, when with cold severity he asked--
+
+"Why did you not fire?"
+
+I flushed with indignation, and my eye retorted to his that I had only
+followed his example. His answer was a smile. "You, also, have been
+guessing, eh?" he said, and when I glowed with gratitude he added,
+
+"Never mind, we must have a long talk. At present there is a verbal
+message for me; what is it?"
+
+"Verbal message? No, Lieutenant, she didn't--oh!--from the General! Yes!
+the General says--'Rodney.'"
+
+He turned and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, "Left
+into line wheel--march!" chanted our second in command.
+"Backwards--march!" and then "Right dress!" and the line, that had been
+a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning
+sun in their faces. Then Ferry called "Fours from the right, to march to
+the left--march!" and he and Quinn passed up the middle of the road
+along the front of the line, with yours truly close at their heels,
+while behind us the command broke into column again by fours from the
+right and set the pink dust afloat as they followed back northward over
+their own tracks with Sergeant Jim beside the first four as squadron
+right guide. I had got where I was by some mistake which I did not know
+how to correct,--I was no drill-master's pride,--and there was much
+suppressed amusement at my expense along the front as we rode down it.
+At every few steps until the whole line was a column Ned Ferry dropped
+some word of cheer, and each time there would come back an equally quiet
+and hearty reply. Near the middle he said "Brisk work ahead of us
+to-day, boys," and I heard the reiteration of his words run among the
+ranks. I also heard one man bid another warm some milk for the baby.
+Trotting by a grove where the company had passed the night, we presently
+took the walk to break by twos, and as we resumed the trot and turned
+westward into a by-road, Lieutenant Quinn dropped back to the column and
+sent me forward to the side of Ned Ferry. I went with cold shivers.
+
+[Illustration: With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the
+fence like a deer.]
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+FERRY TALKS OF CHARLOTTE
+
+"You have no carbine," said my commander. "And you have but one
+revolver; here is another."
+
+I knew it at a glance. "It's Oliver's," I said.
+
+"We'll call it yours now," he replied. "Kendall picked it up, but he has
+no need of it."
+
+I remarked irrelevantly that I had not noticed when Sergeant Jim and
+Kendall rejoined us, but Ferry stuck to the subject of the captured
+weapon. "Take it," he insisted; "if you are not fully armed you will
+find yourself holding horses every time we dismount to fight. And now,
+Smith, I shall not report to the General this matter of the Olivers; you
+shall tell him the whole of it, yourself; you are my scout, but you are
+his courier."
+
+"Lieutenant, I--I wish I knew the whole of it."
+
+"Tell him all you know."
+
+"Even things _she_ doesn't want told?"
+
+"Ah!"--he gave a Creole shrug--"that you must decide, on the honor of a
+good soldier. She has taken you into her confidence?"
+
+"Only into her service," I said, but he raised his brows. "That is
+more; certainly you are honored. What is it you would rather not tell
+the General and yet you must; do I know that already?"
+
+"Yes, for one thing, I've got to tell him that old Lucius Oliver can't
+be hung too high or too soon. For months he has been--"
+
+Ferry showed pain. "I know; save that for the General. And what else?"
+
+"Why, the other one--the son. Lieutenant, is she that monster's wife?"
+
+Ferry stroked his horse's neck and said very softly, "She is his wife."
+I had to wait long for him to say more, but at length, with the same
+measured mildness, he spoke on. This amazing Charlotte, bereft of
+father, brother and mother, ward of a light-headed married sister, and
+in these distracted times lacking any friend with the courage, wisdom
+and kind activity to probe the pretensions of her suitor, had been
+literally snared into marriage by this human spider, this Oliver, a man
+of just the measure to simulate with cunning and patient labor the
+character, bearing and antecedents of a true and exceptional gentleman
+for the sake of devouring a glorious woman.
+
+"But, eh!" I exclaimed, "how could ever such as she mistake him for--"
+
+"Ah, he is, I doubt not, but the burnt-out ruin of what he was half a
+year ago. You perceive, he has not succeeded; he has not devoured her;
+actually she has turned his fangs upon himself and has defeated his
+designs toward her as if by magic. And yet the only magic has been her
+vigilance, her courage, her sagacity. Smith,"--again he stroked the
+mane of his charger--"if I tell you--"
+
+I gave him no pledge but a look.
+
+"Since the hour of her marriage she has never gone into her chamber
+without locking the door; she has never come out of it unarmed."
+
+I remarked that had I been in her place I should either have sunk into
+the mire, so to speak, or thrown myself, literally, into the river.
+
+"Yes," he responded, "but not she! Her life is still hers; she will
+neither give it away nor throw it away. She wants it, and she wants
+it whole."
+
+"Did she say that to you?"
+
+He looked at me in wide surprise. "Ah! could you think she would speak
+with me on that subject? No, I have learned what I know from a man we
+shall meet to-day; the brother of Major Harper; and he, he has it
+from--" my companion smiled--"somebody you have known a pretty long
+time, I think, eh?"
+
+"I see; I see; you mean my mother!"
+
+He let me ponder the fact a long time. "Lieutenant," I asked at length,
+"did you know your plot against the two Olivers would cross her wishes?"
+
+"Ah!" was his quick response, "it crossed mine, like-wise. But, you
+know, this life we have to live, it is never for two people only."
+
+"No," I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, "no two persons, and
+above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or
+even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third
+person,--"
+
+"Hoh!" interrupted Ferry, in the manner of one to whom the fact was
+somehow of the most immediate and lively practical interest, "and to
+consider a thousand is better." Then, after a pause, "Yes," he said, "I
+know she could not like that move, but you remember our talk of
+yesterday, where we first met?"
+
+Indeed I did. Between young men, to whom the principles of living were
+still unproved weapons, there was, to my taste, just one sort of talk
+better than table-talk, and that was saddle-talk; I remembered vividly.
+
+"You mean when we were saying that on whatever road a man's journey
+lies, if he will, first of all, stick to that road, and then every time
+it divides take the--I see! you came to where the road divided!"
+
+"Yes, and of course I had to take the upper fork. I am glad you said
+that yesterday morning; it came as sometimes the artillery, eh?--just at
+the right moment."
+
+"I didn't say it, Lieutenant; you said it."
+
+"No, I think you said it;--sounds like you."
+
+"It was you who said it! and anyhow, it was you who had the strength to
+do it!"
+
+He laughed. "Oh!--a little strength, a little
+vanity,--pride--self-love--we have to use them all--as a good politician
+uses men."
+
+I looked him squarely in the eyes and began to burn. At every new
+unfolding of his confidence I had let my own vanity, pride, self-love be
+more and more flattered, and here at length was getting ready to esteem
+him less for showing such lack of reserve as to use _me_ as an
+escape-valve for his pent-up thoughts, when all at once I fancied I saw
+what he was trying to do. I believed he had guessed my temptations of
+the night and was making use of himself to warn me how to fight them. "I
+understand," said I, humbly.
+
+But this only pleasantly mystified him. He glanced all over me with a
+playful eye and said, "You must have a carbine the first time our
+ordnance-wagon finds us. Drop back, now, into the ranks."
+
+I did so; but I felt sure I should ride beside him again as soon as he
+could make an opportunity; for it was plain that by a subtle unconfessed
+accord he and _she_ had chosen me to be a true friend between them.
+
+About noon, while taking a brief rest to give our horses a bite, we were
+joined by an ambulance carrying Major Harper's brother and some freight
+which certainly was not hospital stores. When we remounted, this vehicle
+moved on with us, in the middle of the column, and I was called to ride
+beside it and tell all about the arrival of Miss Harper and her nieces
+at Hazlehurst, and their journey from Brookhaven to camp. Ned Ferry rode
+on the side opposite me and I noticed that all the fellows nearest the
+ambulance were choice men; Sergeant Jim was not there, but Kendall was
+one, and a young chap on a large white-footed pacer was another. Having
+finished my task I had gathered my horse to fall back to my place at the
+rear, when my distinguished auditor said, "I'm acquainted with your
+mother, you know."
+
+He was not so handsome as his brother, though younger. His affability
+came by gleams. I asked how that good fortune had come to my mother, and
+he replied that there was hardly time now for another story; we might
+be interrupted--by the Yankees. "Ask the young lady you met yesterday
+evening," he added, with a knowing gleam, and smiled me away; and when
+by and by the enemy did interrupt, I had forgiven him. Whoever failed to
+answer my questions, in those days, incurred my forgiveness.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+A MILLION AND A HALF
+
+About mid-afternoon I awoke from deep sleep on a bed of sand in the
+roasting shade of a cottonwood jungle. A corporal was shaking me and
+whispering "Make no noise; mount and fall in."
+
+Round about in the stifling thicket a score of men were doing so.
+Lieutenant Quinn stood by, and at his side Sergeant Jim seemed to have
+just come among us. The place was pathless; only in two directions could
+one see farther than a few yards. Through one narrow opening came an
+intolerable glare of sunlight from a broad sheet of gliding water, while
+by another break in the motionless foliage could be seen in milder
+light, filling nearly the whole northern view, the tawny flood of the
+Mississippi. A stretch of the farther shore was open fields lying very
+low and hidden by a levee.
+
+As we noiselessly fell into line, counting off in a whisper and rubbing
+from ourselves and our tortured horses the flies we were forbidden to
+slap, I noticed rising from close under that farther levee and some two
+miles upstream, a small cloud of dust coming rapidly down the hidden
+levee road. It seemed to be raised entirely by one or two vehicles.
+Behind us our own main shore was wholly concealed by this mass of
+cottonwoods on the sands between it and the stream, on a spit of which
+we stood ambushed. On the water, a hundred and fifty yards or so from
+the jungle, pointed obliquely across the vast current, was a large skiff
+with six men in it. Four were rowing with all their power, a fifth sat
+in the bow and the other in the stern. Quinn, in the saddle, watched
+through his glass the cottonwoods from which the skiff had emerged at
+the bottom of a sheltered bay. Now he shifted his gaze to the little
+whirl of dust across the river, and now he turned to smile at Jim, but
+his eye lighted on me instead. I risked a knowing look and motioned with
+my lips, "Just in time!"
+
+"No," he murmured, "they're late; we've been waiting for them."
+
+The sergeant's low order broke the platoon into column by file, Quinn
+rode toward its head with his blade drawn, and as he passed me he handed
+me his glass. "Here, you with no carbine, stay and watch that boat till
+I send for you. If there's firing, look sharp to see if any one there is
+hit, and who, and how hard. Watch the boat, nothing else."
+
+He moved straight landward through the cottonwoods, followed by the men
+in single file, but halted them while the rear was still discernible in
+the green tangle. Presently they unslung carbines, and I distinctly
+heard galloping. It was not far beyond the cottonwoods. The Yankees were
+after us. Suddenly it ceased. Over yonder, shoreward in the thicket,
+came a sharp command and then a second, and then, right on the front of
+the jungle, at the water's edge, the shots began to puff and crack, and
+the yellow river out here around the boat to spit!--spit!--in wicked
+white splashes. Every second their number grew. Behind me Quinn and his
+men stole away. But orders are orders and I had no choice but to watch
+the boat. The man in the stern had his back to me, and no face among the
+other five did I know. They were fast getting away, but the splashes
+came thick and close and presently one ball found its mark. The man at
+the stern hurriedly changed places with an oarsman; and as the relieved
+rower took his new seat he turned slowly upon his face as if in mortal
+pain, and I saw that the fresh hand at the oar was the brother of Major
+Harper. Just as I made the discovery "Boom!" said my small dust-cloud
+across the river, and "hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry--" like
+a train on a trestle-work--"boom!"--a shell left its gray track in the
+still air over the skiff and burst in the tops of the cottonwoods. The
+green thicket grew pale with the bomb's white smoke, yet "crack! crack!"
+and "spit! spit!" persisted the blue-coats' rifles. "Boom!" said again
+the field-piece on yonder side the water. Its shell came rattling
+through the air to burst on this side, out of the flashing and cracking
+of rifles and the sulphurous bomb smoke arose cries of men getting
+mangled, and I whimpered and gnawed my lips for joy, and I watched the
+boat, but no second shot came aboard, and--"Boom!--hurry-hurry-hurry-
+hurry"--ah! the frightful skill of it! A third shell tore the
+cottonwoods, its smoke slowly broadened out, a Federal bugle beyond
+the thicket sounded the Rally, and the cracking of carbines ceased.
+
+Now Major Harper's brother passes a word to the man at the boat's bow,
+whereupon this man springs up and a Confederate officer's braids flash
+on his sleeve as he waves to the western shore to cease firing. I still
+watch the boat, but I listen behind me. I hear voices of command, the
+Federal sergeants hurrying the troop out of the jungle and back to their
+horses. Then there comes a single voice, the commander's evidently; but
+before it can cease it is swallowed up in a low thunder of hoofs and
+then in a burst of cries and cheers which themselves the next moment are
+drowned in a rattle of carbine and pistol shots--Ferry is down on them
+out of hiding. Thick and silent above the din rises the dust of the
+turmoil, and out of all the hubbub under it I can single out the voice
+of the Federal captain yelling curses and orders at his panic-stricken
+men. And now the mêlée rolls southward, the crackle of shots grows less
+and then more again, and then all at once comes the crash of Quinn's
+platoon out of ambush, their cheer, their charge, the crackle of pistols
+again, and then another cheer and charge--what is that! Ferry re-formed
+and down on them afresh? No, it was the hard-used but gallant foe
+cutting their way out and getting off after all.
+
+The skiff was touching the farther shore and the three oarsmen lifting
+their stricken comrade out and bearing him to the top of the levee, when
+Kendall came to recall me. On our way back he told me of the fight,
+beginning with the results: none of our own men killed outright, but
+four badly wounded and already started eastward in the ambulance left us
+by the Major's brother; some others more slightly hurt. My questions
+were headlong and his answers quiet; he was a slow-spoken daredevil; I
+wish he came more than he does into this story.
+
+Not slow-spoken did we find the command when we reached the road where
+they were falling into line. After a brief but vain pursuit, here were
+almost the haste and tumult of the onset; the sweat of it still reeked
+on everyone; the ground was strewn with its wreckage and its brute and
+human dead, and the pools of their blood were still warm. Squarely
+across the middle of the road, begrimed with dust, and with a dead
+Federal under him and another on top, lay the big white-footed pacer. At
+one side the enemy's fallen wounded were being laid in the shade to be
+left behind. In our ranks, here was a man with an arm in a bloody
+handkerchief, there one with his head so bound, and yonder a young
+fellow jesting wildly while he let his garments be cut and a flesh-wound
+in his side be rudely stanched. Here there was laughter at one who had
+been saved by his belt-buckle, and here at one who had dropped like dead
+from his horse, but had caught another horse and charged on. But these
+details imply a delay where in fact there was none; the moment Ferry
+spied me he asked "Did he get across?" and while I answered he motioned
+me into the line. Then he changed it into a column, commanded silence,
+and led us across country eastward. For those few wounded who would not
+give up their places in the ranks it was a weary ten miles that brought
+us swiftly back to a point within five miles of that Clifton which we
+had left in the morning. And yet a lovely ten miles it was, withal. You
+would hardly have known this tousled crowd for the same dandy crew that
+had smiled so flippantly upon me at sunrise, though they smiled as
+flippantly now with faces powder-blackened, hair and eyelashes matted
+and gummed with sweat and dust, and shoulders and thighs caked with
+grime. Yet to Ned Ferry as well as to me--I saw it in his eye every time
+he looked at them--these grimy fellows did more to beautify those ten
+miles than did June woods beflowered and perfumed with magnolia, bay and
+muscadine, or than slant sunlight in glade or grove.
+
+In a stretch of timber where we broke ranks for a short rest, unbitting
+but not unsaddling, a lot of fellows pressed me to tell them about the
+boat on the river. "You heard what was in it, didn't you?" asked one
+nearly as young as I.
+
+"Besides the men? No. Same that was in the ambulance, I suppose; what
+was it?"
+
+"Don't you know? Oh, I remember, you were asleep when Quinn told us.
+Well, sir,"--he tried to speak calmly but he had to speak somehow or
+explode--"it was soldiers' pay--for Dick Taylor's army, over in the
+Trans-Mississippi; a million and a half dollars!" He was as proud to
+tell the news as he would have been to own the money.
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+A QUIET RIDE
+
+Where Ferry's scouts camped that night I do not know, for we had gone
+only two or three miles beyond our first momentary halting-place when
+their leader left them to Quinn and sprang away southward over fence,
+hedge, road, ditch--whatever lay across his bee-line, and by his order I
+followed at his heels.
+
+In a secluded north-and-south road he looked back and beckoned me to his
+side: "You saw Major Harper's brother land safe and sound, you say? He
+told you this morning he is acquainted with your mother, eh; but
+not how?"
+
+"No, except that it was through--"
+
+"Yes, I know. But you don't know even how your mother is acquainted with
+her."
+
+"No, though of course if she lived in the city, common sympathies might
+easily bring them together."
+
+"She did not live in the city; she lived across the river from the city.
+'Tis but a year ago her father died. He was an owner of steamboats. She
+made many river trips with him, and I suppose that explains how she
+knows the country about Baton Rouge, Natchez, Grand Gulf, Rodney, better
+than she knows the city. But the boats are gone now; some turned into
+gunboats, one burnt when the city fell, another confiscated. I think
+they didn't manage her bringing-up very well."
+
+"Maybe not," I replied, being nothing if not disputatious, "and she does
+strike me as one thrown upon her own intuitions for everything; but if
+she's the lady she is entirely by her own personal quality, Lieutenant,
+she's a wonder!"
+
+"Ah, but she is a wonder. In a state of society more finished--"
+
+"She would be incredible," I said for him, and he accepted the clause by
+a gesture, and after a meditative pause went on with her history. The
+subject of our conversation had first met Oliver, it seemed, when by
+reason of some daring performance in the military field--near Milliken's
+Bend, in the previous autumn--he was the hero of the moment. Even so it
+was strange enough that he should capture her; one would as soon look to
+see Vicksburg fall; but the world was upside down, everything was
+happening as if in a tornado, and he cast his net of lies; lies of his
+own, and lies of two or three match-making friends who chose to believe,
+at no cost to themselves, that war, with one puff of its breath, had
+cleansed him of his vices and that marriage would complete the happy
+change. This was in Natchez, Ferry went on to say. Most fortunately for
+the bride one of the bridegroom's wedding gifts was a certain young
+slave girl; before the wedding was an hour past--before the
+orange-blossoms were out of the bride's hair--this slave maid had told
+her what he was, "And you know what that is."
+
+We rode in silence while I tried to think what it must be to a woman of
+her warmth--of her impulsive energies--to be, week in, week out, month
+after month, besieged by that man's law-protected blandishments and
+stratagems. "I wish you would use me in her service every time there is
+a chance," I said.
+
+"The chances are few," he answered; "even to General Austin she laughs
+and says we must let the story work itself out; that she is the fool in
+it, but there is a chance for the fool to win if not too much burdened
+with help."
+
+"How did you make her acquaintance?" I ventured to ask.
+
+"You remember the last time the brigade was in this piece of country?"
+he rejoined.
+
+I did; it had been only some five weeks earlier; Grant had driven us
+through Port Gibson, General Bowen had retired across the north fork of
+Bayou Pierre, and we had been cut off and forced to come down here.
+
+"Yes; well, she came to us that night, round the enemy's right, with a
+letter from Major Harper's brother--he was then in New Orleans--and with
+information of her own that saved the brigade. I had just got my
+company. I took it off next morning on my first scout, whilst the
+brigade went to Raymond. She was my guide all that day; six times she
+was my guide before the end of May. Yet the most I have learned about
+her has come to me in the last few days."
+
+"She has a fearful game to play."
+
+"Oh!--yes, that is what she would call it; but me, I say--though not as
+Gholson would mean it, you know,--she has a soul to save. If it is a
+game, it is a very delicate one; let her play it as nearly alone as she
+can." "Yes," said I, "a man's hand in it would be only his foot in it;"
+and Ferry was pleased. He scanned me all over in the same bright way he
+had done it in the morning, and remarked "This time I see they have
+given you a carbine."
+
+We went down into some low lands, crossed a creek or two, and in one of
+them gave our horses and ourselves a good scrubbing. On a dim path in
+thick woods we paused at a worm fence lying squarely across our way. It
+was staked and ridered and its zig-zags were crowded with brambles and
+wild-plum. A hundred yards to our left, still overhung by the woods, it
+turned south. Beyond it in our front lay a series of open fields, in
+which, except this one just at hand, the crops were standing high. The
+nearer half of this one, a breadth of maybe a hundred yards, though
+planted in corn, was now given up to grass, and live-stock, getting into
+it at some unseen point, had eaten and trampled everywhere. The farther
+half was thinly covered with a poor stand of cotton, and between the
+corn and the cotton a small, trench-like watercourse crossed our line of
+view at right angles and vanished in the woods at the field's eastern
+edge. The farther border of this run was densely masked by a growth of
+brake-cane entirely lacking on the side next us. Between the cotton and
+the next field beyond, a double line of rail fence indicated the Fayette
+and Union Church road. Suddenly Ferry looked through his field-glasses,
+and my glance followed the direction in which they were pointed. Dust
+again; one can get tired of dust! Some two miles off, a little southward
+of the setting sun, a golden haze of it floated across a low
+background of trees.
+
+"'Tis the enemy, I think," he said, "but only scouts, I suppose."
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+A SALUTE ACROSS THE DEAD-LINE
+
+I was not seeking enemies just then and was not pleased. "Didn't the
+Yankees fall back this morning before day and move southward?" I asked.
+
+"For what would they do that?" inquired my leader, still using the
+glass, but before I could reply he gave a soft hiss, dropped the glass,
+and turned his unaided eye upon a point close beyond our field, in the
+road. Now again he lifted the glass, and I saw over there two small,
+black, moving objects. They passed behind some fence-row foliage,
+reappeared nearer, and suddenly bobbed smartly up to the roadside
+fence--the dusty hats of two Federal horsemen. The wearers sat looking
+over into the field between them and us. I asked Ferry if he wasn't
+afraid they would see us.
+
+"That is what we want," was his reply; "only, they must not know we want
+it. Keep very still; don't move." At that word they espied us and
+galloped back.
+
+We turned to our left and hurried along our own fence-line, first
+eastward, then south, and reined up behind some live brush at the edge
+of the public road. "Soon know how many they are, now," he said, smiling
+back at me.
+
+"Are you going to count them?" It seemed so much easier to let them
+count us.
+
+"Yes," he replied. "Wish we had our boys here," he added, and did not
+need to tell me how he would have posted them; the place was so
+favorable for an ambush that those Yankees had no doubt been looking for
+us before they saw us. Half of us would be in the locks of these
+highroad fences to lure them on, and half in the little gully masked
+with canes to take them in the flank. "We would count many times our own
+number before they should pass," he added.
+
+"Can't we make them think our men are here?" I suggested. "Couldn't I go
+back to where this fence crosses the gully and let them see me opening a
+gap in it?"
+
+He was amused. "Go if you want; but be quick; here they come already, a
+small bunch of them."
+
+By the time I reached the spot they were in plain view, six men and an
+officer. I leaped to the ground, tugged at a rail and threw one end off.
+I thought I had never handled rails so heavy and slippery in my life. As
+I got a second one down I looked across to the road. The officer was
+distributing his men. Barely a mile behind was the dust of their column.
+The third rail stuck and the sweat began to pour down into my eyes and
+collar. Two of the blue-coats easily let down a panel of fence on the
+far side of the road and pushed into the tall corn; three others came
+galloping across the thin cotton to reconnoitre the fringe of canes; the
+officer and the remaining man cantered on up the road toward the spot
+where I could see Ferry observing everything from the saddle behind his
+mask of leaves. Of a sudden the Federal commander descried me wildly at
+work. He paused and pointed me out to the man at his back, but had no
+glass and seemed puzzled. At his word the man pricked up to the fence
+to come over it, but his horse was of another mind, and the impatient
+officer, crowding him away, cleared the fence himself and came across
+the furrows at a nimble trot. Still I tussled with the rails, and grew
+peevish. The enemy was counted, closely enough! one troop. Their dust
+showed it, the small advance guard proved it.
+
+"Hello!" called the Federal officer, "who are you, over there?"
+
+He might have known by looking a trifle more narrowly; I saw plainly,
+thrillingly, who he was; but his attention was diverted by some signal
+from the men he had sent to the fringe of cane; they had found the
+tracks of horses leading through the canes into the corn. But now he
+hailed me again. "Here, you! what are you doing at that fence? Who
+are you?"
+
+He was within easy range and was still trotting nearer. I snatched up my
+carbine, aimed, and then recovered, looking sharply to my left as if
+restrained by the command of some one behind the canes. The Federal's
+cool daring filled me with admiration. Had the foes he was looking for
+been actually in hiding here they could have picked him out of his
+saddle like a bird off a bush. His only chance was that they would not
+let themselves be teased into firing prematurely on any one man or six.
+Ferry beckoned me. I mounted and trotted down the woods side of the
+fence, at the same time the Federal's six men approached from three
+directions, and down the road the main column entered upon the scene.
+
+The officer halted with revolver drawn and sent a man back with some
+order to the main body. And then Ferry's beautiful brown horse, as
+though of his own choice, reared straight up where he stood, dropped his
+forelegs upon his breast, rose, over the fence, master and all, as
+unlaboriously as a kite, trotted out from the brush and halted in the
+open field. His rider's outdrawn sword flashed to the setting sun. The
+Federal, pointing here and there was deploying his remaining five men
+toward the spot I had left, but glancing round and seeing Ferry he
+trotted toward him. Thereupon Ferry advanced at a walk, and I--for I had
+followed him--moved at the same gait a few paces behind. "Halt him,"
+said my leader.
+
+"Halt!" I yelled with carbine at a ready, and the Federal halted. In
+fact he had come to a small hollow full of bushes and grapevines and had
+no choice but to halt or go round it.
+
+"Don't swallow him," said Ferry, smilingly, "this isn't your private
+war."
+
+"He's on my private horse!" I retorted.
+
+"Well, you're on his," replied my commander. The giant before us,
+mounted on Cricket, was my prisoner of the previous day.
+
+"Who are you?" he was calling imperiously.
+
+"Captain Jewett ought to know," Ferry called back, and on that the
+questioner recognized us both. He became very stately. "Lieutenant
+Durand, I believe."
+
+"At times," said Lieutenant Durand.
+
+"And at other times--?"
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry--Ferry's scouts."
+
+The Federal expanded with surprise and then with austere pleasure. He
+glanced toward his five men galloping back to him having found no enemy,
+and then at his column, which had just halted. Frowning, he motioned the
+advance guard to the road again and once more hailed Ferry while he
+pointed at me. He straightened and swelled still more as he began his
+question, but as he finished it a smile went all over him. "Is that your
+entire present force?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Then what the devil do you want?" he thundered.
+
+"We have what we wanted," said Ferry, "only now we desire to cross the
+road."
+
+"You're not asking my permission?"
+
+"I am afraid not."
+
+"I admit you are quite able to cross without."
+
+"Thank you," said Ferry; "will you pardon me for passing in front of
+you?"
+
+The Federal's pistol slid into its holster and his sabre flashed out. He
+threw its curved point up in a splendid salute. Ferry saluted with his
+straight blade. Then both swords rang back into their scabbards, and
+Jewett whirled away toward his column. For a moment we lingered, then
+faced to the left, trotted, galloped. Over the fence and into the road
+went he--went I. Down it, as we crossed, the blue column was just moving
+again. Then the woods on the south swallowed us up.
+
+[Illustration: Ferry saluted with his straight blade.]
+
+"If Captain Jewett will only go on to Union Church," said Ferry, "Quinn
+will see that he never gets back."
+
+"But you think he will not go on?"
+
+"Ah, now he is discovered, surely not. I think he will turn back at
+Wiggins."
+
+"Why Wiggins? does he know Coralie Rothvelt?"
+
+"Yes, he does; and if since last night he has maybe found out she is
+Charlotte Oliver,--"
+
+"Oh! Lieutenant Ferry, oh! would such a man as that come hunting down a
+woman, with a troop of cavalry?"
+
+"He is not hunting her; yet, should he find her, I have the fear he
+would do his duty as a soldier, anyhow. No, he _was_ looking, I think,
+for Ferry's scouts."
+
+"But if she should be at Wiggins--"
+
+My leader smiled at my simplicity. "She is not at Wiggins."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+SOME FALL, SOME PLUNGE
+
+At a farm-house well hidden in the woods of a creek we got a brave
+supper for the asking and had our uniforms wonderfully cleaned and
+pressed, and at ten that evening we dismounted before the three brightly
+illumined tents of General Austin, Major Harper and that amiable cipher
+our Adjutant-general. On the front of the last the shadow of a deeply
+absorbed writer showed through the canvas, and Ferry murmured to me "The
+ever toiling." It was Scott Gholson. I had heard the same name for him
+the evening before, from her whose own lovely shadow fell so visibly and
+so often upon the bright curtain of Ned Ferry's thought.
+
+My leader went in while I held our horses. Then he and Gholson came out
+and entered the General's tent; from which Gholson soon emerged again
+and sent an orderly away into the gloom of the sleeping camp, and I
+heard a small body of men mount and set off northward. Presently Ferry
+came out and sent me in, and to my delight I found, on standing before
+the General, that I did not need to tell what Charlotte Oliver wanted
+kept back.
+
+"No, never mind that," he said, "Miss Rothvelt was here and saw me this
+afternoon, herself." Up to the point of my arrival at the bridge I had
+merely to fumble my cap and answer his crisp questions. But there he
+lighted a fresh cigar and said "Now, go on."
+
+Gholson dropped in with something to be signed, and the General waved
+him to wait and hear. For Gholson, despite the sappy fetor of his mental
+temperament, had abilities that made him almost a private secretary to
+the General. Who, nevertheless, knew him thoroughly. When I had
+described Oliver's escape and would have hurried on to later details,
+General Austin raised a hand.
+
+"Hold on; you say nearly everybody fired at Oliver; who did not?" "I
+did not, General."
+
+"Did Lieutenant Ferry fire?"
+
+I said he did not. The General turned his strong eyes to Gholson's and
+kept them there while he took three luxurious puffs at his cigar. Then
+he took the waiting paper, and as he wrote his name on it he said,
+smiling, "I wish you had been in Lieutenant Ferry's place, Mr. Gholson;
+you would have done your duty."
+
+The flattered Gholson received the signed paper and passed out, and the
+General smiled again, at his back. I hope no one has ever smiled the
+same way at mine.
+
+Ferry and I slept side by side that night, and he told me two companies
+of our Louisianians were gone to cut off Jewett and his band. "Still, I
+think they will be much too late," he said, and when I rather violently
+turned the conversation aside to the subject of Scott Gholson, saying,
+to begin with, that Gholson had wonderful working powers, he replied,
+"'Tis true. Yet he says the brigade surgeon told him to-day he is on the
+verge of a nervous break-down." But on my inquiring as to the cause of
+our friend's condition, my bedmate pretended to be asleep.
+
+We rose at dawn and rode eastward, he and I alone, some fourteen miles,
+to the Sessions's, where the dance had been two nights earlier. On
+entering the stable to put up our horses we suddenly looked at each
+other very straight, while Ferry's countenance confessed more pleasure
+than surprise, though a touch of care showed with it. "I did not know
+this," he said, "and I did not expect it."
+
+What we saw was the leather-curtained spring-wagon and its little
+striped-legged mules. The old negro in charge of them bowed gravely to
+me and smiled affectionately upon Ferry. About an hour later Gholson
+appeared. He took such hurried pains to explain his coming that any fool
+could have seen the real reason. The brigade surgeon had warned him--Oh!
+had I heard?--Oh! from Ned Ferry, yes. The cause of his threatened
+breakdown, he said, was the perpetual and fearful grind of work into
+which of late he had--fallen.
+
+"Did the doctor say 'fallen'?" I shrewdly asked.
+
+"No, the doctor said 'plunged,' but--did Ned Fer'--who put that into
+your head?"
+
+"Nobody; some fall, you know, some plunge." I did not ask the cause of
+the plunge; the two little mules told me that. He would never have come,
+Gholson hurried on to say, had not Major Harper kindly suggested that a
+Sabbath spent with certain four ladies would be a timely preventive.
+
+"What!" I cried, "are they here t'--too? Why,--where's their carryall?
+'Tisn't in the stable; I've looked!"
+
+"No, it was here, but yesterday, when the fighting threatened to be
+heavy, it was sent to the front. Smith, I didn't know Charlie Tolliver
+was here!"
+
+I believed him. But I saw he was not in search of a preventive. Ah, no!
+he was ill of that old, old malady which more than any other abhors a
+preventive. Waking in the summer dawn and finding Ned Ferry risen and
+vanished hitherward, a rival's instinct had moved him to follow, as the
+seeker for wild honey follows the bee. He had come not for the cure of
+his honey-sickness, but for more--more--more--all he could find--of the
+honey. "Smith," he said, with a painful screw of his features, "I'm
+mightily troubled about Ned Ferry!"
+
+"Yes," I dishonestly responded, "his polished irreligion--"
+
+"Oh, no! No," he groaned, "it isn't that so much just now, though I know
+that to a true religionist like you the society of such a mere
+romanticist--"
+
+We were interrupted.
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+OLDEST GAME ON EARTH
+
+The cause of our interruption was Camille Harper. We had been pacing the
+side veranda and she came out upon it with an unconscious song on her
+lips, and on one finger a tiny basket.
+
+Her gentle irruption found me standing almost on the spot where she had
+stood two evenings before and said good-bye to me. From this point a
+path led to the rear of the house, where within a light paling fence
+bloomed a garden. She gave us a blithe good-morning as she passed,
+descended the two or three side steps, and tripped toward the garden
+gate, a wee affair which she might have lifted off its hinges with one
+thumb. I saw her try its latch two or three times and then turn back
+discomfited because the loose frame had sagged a trifle and needed to be
+raised half an inch. I did not understand the helplessness of girls as
+well then as I do now; I ran and opened the gate; and when I shut it
+again she and I were alone inside.
+
+She let me cut the flowers. "You know who's here?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," I guilefully replied, "I came with him."
+
+"I don't mean Lieutenant Ferry," she responded, "nor anybody you'd ever
+guess if you don't know; but you do, don't you?"
+
+I said I knew and went on gathering sweet-pea blossoms.
+
+"Did you ever see her?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, stepping away for some roses, "I--saw her--by
+chance--for a moment--she was in the wagon she's got here--last
+--eh,--Thursday--morn'--" I came back trimming the roses, and
+as she reached for them and our glances met, she laughed and replied,
+with a roguish droop of the head--
+
+"She told us about it. And you needn't look so disturbed; she only
+praised you."
+
+Still I frowned. "How does it come that she's here, anyhow?"
+
+"Why! she's got to be everywhere! She's a war-correspondent! She was at
+the front yesterday nearly the whole time, near enough to see some of
+the fighting, and to hear it all! she calls it 'only a skirmish'!"
+
+"When did she get here?"
+
+"About five in the morning. But we didn't see her then; she shut herself
+up and wrote and wrote and wrote! They say she runs the most daring
+risks! And they say she's so wise in finding out what the Yankees are
+going to do and why they're going to do it, that they'd be nearly as
+glad to catch her as to catch Lieutenant Ferry! Didn't you know? Ah, you
+knew!" She attempted a reproachful glance, but exhaled happiness like a
+fragrance. I asked how she had heard these things.
+
+"How did I hear them? Let me see. Oh, yes! from--from Harry."
+
+I flinched angrily. "From what?"
+
+She looked into her basket and fingered its flowers. "That's what he
+asked me to call him."
+
+I stiffened up as though I heard a thief picking the lock of my lawful
+treasure. She threw me, side wise, a bantering smile and then a more
+winsome glance, but I refused to see either. I burned with so many
+feelings at once that I could no more have told them than I could have
+raised a tune. "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be
+very arch.
+
+"Like whom?"
+
+"You know perfectly well," she replied.
+
+"No, I do not like him. Do you?"
+
+"Why,--yes,--I do. I--I thought everybody did." She averted her face and
+toyed with the sweet-pea vines. Suddenly she gulped, faced me, blinked
+rapidly, and said "If I oughtn't to call him--that,--then I oughtn't to
+have called--" she dropped her eyes and bit her lip.
+
+"_That_," I replied, "is a very different matter! At least I had hoped
+it was!"
+
+Her rejoinder came in a low, grieved monotone: "Did you say _had_
+hoped?"
+
+It was the sweetest question my ear had ever caught, and I asked her, I
+scarce know how, if I might still say "do hope".
+
+"Why, I--I didn't know you ever did say it. I don't see that I have any
+right to forbid you saying things--to--to yourself."
+
+So we played the game--oldest game on earth--and loveliest. Bungling
+moves we made, as you see, and sometimes did not know whose move it was.
+At length she admitted that this _is_ a very unsafe world in which to be
+kind to soldiers. I told how _fickle_ some of them were. She would not
+say she would--or wouldn't--make my case a permanent exception or a
+solitary one; yet with me she blissfully pooh-poohed the idea that our
+acquaintance was new, she being so wonderfully like my mother, and I
+being so wonderfully ditto, ditto. And when I burst into a blazing
+eulogy of my mother, my listener gave me kinder looks than I ever
+deserved of any woman alive. On my trying to reciprocate, she asked me
+for more flowers and hurried back to our earlier theme.
+
+"And really, you know, they say she's almost as truly a scout as Ned
+Fer'--as Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. She's from New Orleans, you know, and
+she's like us, half-Creole; but her other half is Highland Scotch--isn't
+that romantic! When she told us about it she laughed and said it
+explained some things in her which nothing else could excuse! Wasn't
+that funny!--oh, pshaw! it doesn't sound a bit funny as I tell it, but
+she said it in such a droll way! She was so full of fun and frolic that
+day! You can't conceive how full of them she is--sometimes; how soberly
+she _can_ say the funniest things, and how _funnily_ she can say the
+soberest things!"
+
+[Illustration: "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very
+arch.]
+
+"You say she was so full of fun that day; what day?"
+
+The young thing gaped at me, gasped, and melted half to the ground:
+"O--oh--I've let it out!"
+
+"Yes, you may as well go right on, now."
+
+She straightened to her toes, covered her open mouth an instant, and
+then said "Yes, we knew her--at our house--in New Orleans--poor New
+Orleans! Your mother--oh, your splendid, lovely little mother is such a
+brave Confederate!"
+
+"My mother brought her to your house?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes! and that's why it isn't wrong to tell _you_. Charlotte's
+been three times through the lines, to and from the city; once by way of
+Natchez and twice through Baton Rouge. And oh, the things she's brought
+out to our poor boys in the hospitals!"
+
+"Generals' uniforms, for example?"
+
+"Oh, now you're real mean! No! what she's brought the most of is--guess!
+You'll never guess it in the world!"
+
+"Hindoo grammars!--No? Well, then,--perfumery!"
+
+"Ah, you! No, I'll tell you." She spoke prudently; I had to bow my ear
+so close that it tingled: "Dolls!"
+
+My amazement was genuine. "For our sick soldiers!" I sighed.
+
+Her eyes danced; she leaned away and nodded. Then she drew nearer than
+before: "Dolls!" she murmured again;--"and pincushions!--and
+emeries!--and 'rats'! you know, for ladies' hair--and chignon-cushions!"
+
+"For our sick soldiers!"
+
+"Yes!--stuffed with quinine!" She laughed in her handkerchief till the
+smell of the sweet-peas was lost in the odor of frangipani, and she
+staggered almost into my arms. But that sobered her. "And when we speak
+of the risk she runs of being sent to Ship Island she laughs and says,
+'Life is strife.' She says she'd like it long, but she's got to have
+it broad."
+
+"Life is strife indeed to her," I said.
+
+"Oh! do you know that too?--and another reason she gives for taking
+those awful risks is that 'it's the best use she can make of her silly
+streak'--as if she had any such thing!"
+
+"Why did my mother bring her to you?"
+
+"Oh! she had letters from uncle to aunt Martha! He thinks she's
+wonderful!"
+
+"Does your father think so, too?"
+
+"My father? no; but he's prejudiced! That's one of the things I can
+never understand--why nearly all the girls I know have such
+prejudiced fathers."
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+A GNAWING IN THE DARK
+
+On our return to the veranda, Camille and I, we found on its front the
+house's entire company except only the children of the family. Mrs.
+Sessions, Estelle and Cécile formed one group, Squire Sessions and
+Charlotte Oliver made a pair, and Ferry and Miss Harper another. Our
+posies created a lively demonstration; Camille yielded them to Estelle,
+and Estelle took them into the house to arrange them in water. Gholson
+went with her; it was painful to see her zest for his society.
+
+Miss Harper "knocked me down," as we boys used to say, to Charlotte
+Oliver; "Charlotte, my dear, you already know Mr. Smith, I believe?"
+
+I had expected to see again, and to feel, as well, the starry charms of
+Coralie Rothvelt; but what I confronted was far different. The charms
+were here, unquenched by this stare of daylight, but from them shone a
+lustre of womanliness wholly new. It seemed to grow on even when a
+tricksy gleam shot through it as she replied, "Yes, our acquaintance
+dates from Gallatin."
+
+With a spasm of eagerness I said it did: "Our
+acquai'--hh--Gallatin--hh--" But my soul cried like a culprit, "No, no,
+it begins only now!" and my whole being stood under arrest before the
+accusing truth that from Gallatin till now my acquaintance had been
+solely with that false phase of her which I knew as Coralie Rothvelt. At
+the same her kind eyes sweetly granted me a stripling's acquittal--oh!
+why did it have to be a stripling's?
+
+Wonderful eyes she had; deep blue, as I have said, in color; black, in
+spirit; never so wonderful as when having sparkled black they quieted to
+blue again. Always then there came the slightest of contractions at the
+outer corners of the delicate lids, that gave a fourfold expression of
+thought, passion, tenderness and intrepidity. I never saw that silent
+meaning in but one other pair of eyes; wherever it turned it said--at
+the same time saying many other things but saying this always
+plainest--"I see both out and in; I know myself--and thee." Never but in
+one other pair of eyes? no; and whose were those? Ned Ferry's.
+
+"Don't you love to see Charlotte and him look at each other in that
+steady way when they're talking together?" Camille asked me later. But
+rather coldly I inquired why I should; I felt acutely enough without
+admitting it to Camille, that Charlotte and Ferry were meeting on ground
+far above me; and when Gholson, in his turn, called to my notice, in
+Charlotte's case, this unique gaze, and contrasted it with her beautiful
+yet strangely childish mouth, I asked a second time why she was
+here, anyhow.
+
+"She's here," murmured Gholson, "because she has to live! To live she
+must have means, Smith, and to have means she must either get them
+herself or she must--" and again he poised his hand horizontally across
+his mouth and whispered--"live with her hus'--"
+
+I jerked my head away--"Yes, yes." Scott Gholson was the only one of us
+who could give that wretch that title. "Gholson," I said, for I kept him
+plied with questions to prevent his questioning me, "how did that man
+ever get her?"
+
+The rest of the company were going into the house; he glanced furtively
+after them and grabbed my arm; you would have thought he was about to
+lay bare the whole tragedy in five words; "Smith,--nobody knows!"
+
+"Do you believe she has told Ned Ferry anything?"
+
+"Never! About herself? no, sir!" He bent and whispered: "She despises
+him; she keeps in with him, but it's to get the news, that's all; that's
+positively all." On our way to the stable to saddle up--for we were all
+going to church--he told me what he knew of her story. I had heard it
+all and more, but I listened with unfeigned interest, for he recited it
+with flashes of heat and rancor that betrayed a cruel infatuation eating
+into his very bone and brain, the guilt of which was only intensified by
+the sour legality of his moral sense.
+
+The church we went to was in Franklin, but the preacher was a man of
+note, a Vicksburg refugee. On the way back Gholson and I rode for a time
+near enough to Squire Sessions and Ned Ferry to know the sermon was
+being discussed by them, and something they said gave my companion
+occasion to murmur to me in a tone of eager censure that Ned Ferry's
+morals were better than his religion.
+
+I said I wished mine were.
+
+"Ah, Smith, be not deceived! Whenever you see a man bringing forth the
+fruits of the Spirit while he neglects the regularly appointed means of
+grace, you _know_ there's something wrong, don't you? He went to church
+this morning--_of course_; but how often does he go? What's wrong with
+our dear friend--I don't like to say it, for I admire him so; I don't
+like to say it, and I never have said it, but, Smith,--Ned Ferry's a
+romanticist. We are relig'--what?"
+
+"O--oh, nothing!"
+
+At one point our way sloped down to a ramshackle wooden bridge that
+spanned a narrow bit of running water at the edge of a wood. Beyond it
+the road led out between two fields whose high worm-fences made it a
+broad lane. The farther limit of this sea of sunlight was the grove that
+hid the Sessions house on the left; on the right it was the
+woods-pasture in which lay concealed a lily-pond. As Gholson and I
+crossed the bridge we came upon a most enlivening view of our own
+procession out in the noonday blaze before us; the Sessions buggy; then
+Charlotte' little wagon; next the Sessions family carriage full of
+youngsters; and lastly, on their horses, Squire Sessions--tall, fleshy,
+clean-shaven, silver-haired--and Ned Ferry. Mrs. Sessions and Miss
+Harper, in the buggy, were just going by a big white gate in the
+right-hand fence, through which a private way led eastward to the
+lily-pond. A happy sight they were, the children in the rear vehicle
+waving handkerchiefs back at us, and nothing in the scene made the
+faintest confession that my pet song, which I was again humming, was pat
+to the hour:
+
+  "To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
+   Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be broke."
+
+"Gholson, if it isn't Ned Ferry's religion that's worrying you just now
+about him, what is it?"
+
+My companion looked at me as if what he must say was too large for his
+throat. He made a gesture of lament toward Ferry and broke out, "O--oh
+Smith,"--nearly all Gholson's oh's were groans--"why is he here? The
+scout is 'the eyes of the army'! a man whose perpetual vigilance at the
+very foremost front--"
+
+"Why, what do you mean? You know we're here to rejoin the company as it
+comes down from Union Church to camp here to-night. _That's_ what we're
+here for."
+
+"Yes,--yes,--but, oh, don't you _see_, Smith? For you, yourself, that's
+all right; you've got to stay with him, and I'm glad you have. But
+he--oh why did he not go on hours ago, to meet them?"
+
+"Why should he? Isn't it good to leave one's lieutenant sometimes in
+command; isn't it bad not to?"
+
+Gholson's eyes turned green. "Does Ned Ferry give that as his reason?"
+
+"I haven't asked his reason; I've asked you a question."
+
+"Well, I'll answer it. Do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?"
+
+"Of course I do, and Ned Ferry does; don't you?"
+
+"No! Smith, there ain't a braver man in Grant's army than that one
+right now a-straddle of your horse. Why, just the way he got your horse
+night before--"
+
+"Oh, hang him and the horse! you've told me that three times; what of
+it?"
+
+"Smith, he's out here to make a new record for himself, at whatever
+cost!"
+
+"And do you imagine Ned Ferry hasn't thought of that?"
+
+"Ah-h, there are times when a man hasn't got his thinking powers; you
+ought to know that, Smith,--"
+
+"Mr. Gholson, what do you mean by that?"
+
+"Oh! I certainly didn't mean anything against you, Smith. Why is your
+manner so strange to me to-day? Oh, Smith, if you knew what--if I could
+speak to you in sacred confidence--I--I wouldn't injure Ned Ferry in
+your eyes, nor in anybody's; I only tell you what I do tell so you may
+help me to help him. But he's staying here, Smith, and keeping you here,
+to be near one whose name--without her a-dreaming of it--is already
+coupled with--why,--why, what made you start that a-way again, Smith?"
+
+"Nothing; I didn't start. 'Coupled with somebody's name,' you say. With
+whose? Go on."
+
+"With his, Smith, and most injuriously. He's here to tempt her to forget
+she's not--" He faltered.
+
+"Free?" said I, and he nodded with tragic solemnity.
+
+"You know who I mean, of course?"
+
+"Certainly; you mean Mrs. Sessions."
+
+He shook his head bitterly. "Oh, well, then, of course I know. How am I
+to help you to help him; help him to do what?"
+
+"O--oh! to tear himself away from her, Smith. I want you to appeal to
+him. He's taken a great shine to you. You can appeal to his feeling for
+romance--poetry--whatever he calls his hell-fired--I mean his
+unfortunate impiety. You know how, and I don't. And there you reach the
+foundations of his character, as far as it's got any; there's his
+conscience if it's anywhere!"
+
+I find myself giving but a faint impression of the spirit in which
+Gholson spoke; it went away beyond a mere backbiting mood and became a
+temper so vindictive and so venomously purposeful that I was startled;
+his condition seemed so fearfully like that of the old paralytic when he
+whined "That's not our way."
+
+"Smith," my companion went on, "we ought to protect Ned Ferry from
+himself!" The words came through his clenched teeth. "And even more we
+ought to protect her. Who's to do it if we don't? Smith, I believe
+Providence has been a-preparing you to do this, all through these last
+three nights and days!"
+
+He looked at me for an answer until I became frightened. Was my late
+folly known to this crawling maligner after all? A sweet-scented
+preparation I've had, thought I, but aloud I said only, "If Ned Ferry
+clears out, I suppose we must clear out, too."
+
+"Why, eh,--I--I don't know that my movements need have anything to do
+with his. Yours, of course,--"
+
+"Yes," I interrupted, beginning to boil.
+
+"I know," he said, "that comes hard; you'll have to tear _yourself_
+away--"
+
+He stared at me and hushed. A panic was surging through me; must I be
+brought to book by such as he? "Mr. Gholson," I cried, all scorn
+without, all terror within; "Mr. Gholson, I--Mr. Gholson, sir!--" and
+set my jaws and heaved for breath.
+
+"Why, Smith,--" He extended a soothing hand.
+
+"No explanation, sir, if you please! I can get away from here without
+tearing myself, which is more than you can boast. Any fool can see why
+_you_ are here. Stop, I take that back, sir! I don't play tit-for-tat
+with my tongue."
+
+Gholson turned red on the brow and ashen about the lips. "I don't call
+that tit-for-tat, Mr. Smith. I remind you of an innocent attachment for
+a young girl; you accuse me of harboring a guilty passion for--" All at
+once he ceased with open lips, and then said as he drew a long breath of
+relief, "Smith, I beg your pardon! We've each misunderstood the other; I
+see, now, who you meant; you meant Miss Estelle Harper!"
+
+"Whom else could I mean?" Disdain was in my voice, but he ought to have
+seen the falsehood in my eye, for I could feel it there.
+
+"_Of_ course!" he said; "of course! But, Smith, my mind was so
+full--just for the moment, you know,--of her we were speaking of in
+connection with Ned Ferry--Do you know? she's so unprotected and tagged
+after and talked about that it seems to me sometimes, in this nervous
+condition of mine, that if I could catch the entire gang of her
+pursuers in one hole I'd--I'd _end 'em_ like so many rats. That sort of
+feeling is mere impulse, of course," he went on, "and only shows how
+near I am to that nervous breakdown. Yes, the Harper ladies are mighty
+lovely and hard enough to leave, but that's all I meant to you, and I'm
+sorry I touched your feelings. I'm _tchagrined_. Anyhow, all this is
+between us, you know. I wouldn't ever have confessed such feelings as I
+did just now except to a friend who knows as well as you do that if I
+ever should do a man a mortal injury I wouldn't do it in a spirit of
+resentment. You know that, don't you? No, that's not my way--Why,
+Smith, what gives you those starts? That's the third time you've done
+that this morning."
+
+I said that entering the cool shade of the Sessions grove after the
+blazing heat of that long lane gave any one the right to a little
+shudder, and as we turned toward the house Gholson murmured "If you say
+you'll speak to Ned as I've asked you, I'll sort o' toll Squire Sessions
+off with me so's to give you the chance. It's for his own sake, you
+know, and you're the only one can do it."
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE
+
+I knew Ned Ferry was having that inner strife with which we ought always
+to credit even Gholson's sort, and I had a loving ambition to help him
+"take the upper fork." So doing, I might help Charlotte Oliver fulfil
+the same principle, win the same victory. When, therefore, Gholson put
+the question to me squarely, Would I speak to Ferry? I consented, and as
+the four of us, horsemen, left our beasts in the stable munching corn,
+Gholson began a surprisingly animated talk with our host, and Ferry,
+with a quizzical smile, said to me "Talk with you?--shall be happy to;
+we'll just make a slight _détour_ on this side the grove and
+woods-pasture, eh?"
+
+He meant the north side, opposite that one by which we had come from
+church. Here the landscape was much the same as there; wide fields on
+each side the fenced highway that still ran north and south, and woods
+for the sky-line everywhere. We chose an easy footpath along the
+northern fence of the grove, crossed the highway, and passed on a few
+steps alongside the woods-pasture fence. We talked as we went, he giving
+the kindest heed to my every word though I could see that, like any good
+soldier, he was scanning all the ground for its fighting values, and,
+not to be outdone, I, myself, pointed out, a short way up the public
+road, a fence-gap on the left, made by our camping soldiers two nights
+before. It was at another such gap, in the woods-pasture fence, that we
+turned back by a path through it which led into the wood and so again
+toward the highway and the house-grove. The evening General Austin sent
+me to Wiggins it was at this gap that I saw old Dismukes sitting
+cross-legged on the ground, playing poker; and here, now, I summoned the
+desperation to speak directly to my point.
+
+I had already tried hard to get something said, but had found myself at
+every turn entangled in generalities. Now, stammering and gagging I
+remarked that our experiences of the morning, both in church and out,
+had in some way combined with an earlier word of his own to me, and
+given me a valuable thought. "You remember, when I wanted to shoot that
+Yankee off my horse?"
+
+"Yes; and I said--what?"
+
+"You said 'This isn't your private war.' Lieutenant, I hope those words
+may last in my memory forever and come to me in every moral situation in
+which I may find myself."
+
+"Yes? Well, I think that's good."
+
+"It seems to me, Lieutenant Ferry, that in every problem of moral
+conduct we confront we really hold in trust an interest of all mankind.
+To solve that problem bravely and faithfully is to make life just so
+much easier for everybody; and to fail to do so is to make it just so
+much harder to solve by whoever has next to face it." Whurroo! my blood
+was up now, let him look to himself!
+
+"Yes?" said Ferry, picking at the underbrush as we sauntered, and for
+some time he said no more. Then he asked, "You want me to apply that to
+myself, in--in the present case?" and to my tender amazement, while his
+eyes seemed to count his slackening steps, he laid his arm across my
+shoulders.
+
+An hour of avowal could not have told me more; could not have filled me
+half so full of sympathy, admiration and love, as did that one slight
+motion. It befitted the day, a day outwardly so quiescent, yet in which
+so much was going on. A realization of this quiet activity kept us
+silent until we had come through the woods-pasture to its southern
+border, and so through the big white field-gate into the public road;
+now we turned up toward the grove-gate, and here I spoke again. "Do you
+still think we ought to wait here for the command?"
+
+That from a private soldier to his captain! Yet all my leader answered
+was "You think there's cause to change our mind?"
+
+"I don't know, Lieutenant; do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?"
+
+"Yes, I think so; and you?"
+
+"Why, eh,--Lieutenant, I don't believe there's a braver man in Grant's
+army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why, just the way he
+got him, night before last,--you've heard that, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, the General told me. And so you think--"
+
+"Lieutenant, I can't help believing he's out here to make a new record
+for himself, at whatever cost!"
+
+We went on some steps in silence and entered the gate of the
+house-grove; and just as Ferry would have replied we discovered before
+us in the mottled shade of the driveway, with her arm on Cécile's
+shoulders as his lay on mine, and with _her_ eyes counting _her_
+slackening steps, Charlotte Oliver. They must have espied us already out
+in the highway, for they also were turned toward the house, and as we
+neared them Charlotte faced round with a cheery absence of surprise and
+said "Mr. Smith, don't we owe each other a better acquaintance? Suppose
+we settle up."
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+THE RED STAR'S WARNING
+
+It seemed quite as undeniable, as we stood there, that Ned Ferry owed
+Cécile a better acquaintance. Every new hour enhanced her graces, and
+were I, here, less engrossed with her companion, I could pitch the
+praises of Cécile upon almost as high and brilliant a key--there may be
+room for that yet. Ferry moved on at her side. Charlotte stayed a moment
+to laugh at a squirrel, and then turned to walk, saying with eyes on
+the earth--
+
+"If I tell you something, will you never tell?"
+
+I looked down too. "Suppose I should feel sure it ought to be told."
+
+"If you wait till you do you may tell it; that will suit me well
+enough."
+
+"I will always suit you the best I can."
+
+"I don't know why you should," she said.
+
+"You risked your life to save mine; and you risked it when I did not
+deserve so much as your respect."
+
+"Oh!--we must never talk about that again, Richard; you saw me in the
+evilest guise I ever wore, and that is saying much."
+
+"But," I responded, "you put it on for a better reason than you could
+tell me then or can tell me now, though now I know your story."
+
+"Please don't forget," she murmured, "that you know too much." "No, no!
+I don't know half enough; I know only what Miss Camilla
+and--and--Gholson could tell me," was my tricky reply, and I tried to
+look straight into her eyes, but they took that faint introspective
+contraction of which I have spoken, and gazed through me like sunlight
+through glass. Then again she bent her glance upon her steps, saying--
+
+"Ah, Richard, you have found out all you could, and I am glad of it,
+except of what I, myself, have had to betray to you; for _that_ was more
+than one would want to tell her twin brother. But I had to create you
+_my_ scout, and I had only two or three hours for my whole work of
+creation."
+
+"Well, you completed it." We went on some steps, and then she said--
+
+"You tell me I risked my life to save yours; I risked more than life,
+and I risked it for more than to save yours. Yet I did not save your
+life; you saved it, yourself, and--" here her low tone thrilled like a
+harp-string--"you risked it--frightfully--at that bridge--merely to save
+the promise you made me that you need not have made at all--oh, you
+needn't shake your head; I _know_."
+
+"Ah, how you gild my base metal!"
+
+"No, no, I have the story exactly, and from one who has no mind to
+praise you."
+
+"From Gholson?"
+
+"Gholson! no! I have it from Lucius Oliver, who had it from his son. He
+told me carefully, quietly and entirely, in pure spleen, so that I might
+know that they know--think they know, that is,--why you and--he in front
+of us yonder--would not shoot his son when--"
+
+"When as soldiers it was our simple du'--"
+
+"Yes; and also that I may understand that he--the son--has sworn by that
+right hand you mutilated that the 'pair of you' shall die before
+he does."
+
+"I ought not to have shown him that envelope addressed to you."
+
+"Ah, but if it saved your life!"
+
+"And this is what you don't want me to tell? Ah, I see; for me to know
+it is enough; I can put it to him as a theory. I can say Oliver is not a
+man to be put upon the defensive, and that he is more than likely to be
+hunting 'the pair of us'--" All at once I thought of something.
+
+"What made you give that sudden start?" she asked as we faced about in
+the driveway to make our walk a moment longer; "that's a bad habit
+you've got; why do you do it?"
+
+I fancied the thrilling freshness of the question I was about to put
+would be explanation enough. "Do you believe Jewett has gone back into
+his own lines?"
+
+"I don't know; hasn't he?"
+
+"Oh, I don't _know_, either, but--well, I don't believe there's a braver
+man in Grant's army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why,
+just the way he got him, night before last,--you've heard that, have
+you not?"
+
+"Yes, I've heard it; he is a very daring man; what of it?"
+
+"Why, I can't help thinking he's out here to make a new record for
+himself, at whatever cost!"
+
+A note of distress hung on my hearer's stifled voice; her head went
+lower and she laid her fingers pensively to her lips. "It would be like
+him," I heard her murmur, and when I asked if she meant Jewett she
+shook her head.
+
+"No," I said, "you mean it would be like Oliver to join him," and with
+that the sudden start was hers. "He wouldn't have to touch Ned Ferry or
+me," I went on, heartlessly, "nor to come near us, to make us rue the
+hour we let ourselves forget this wasn't our private war."
+
+She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she
+looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it,
+won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do
+I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her
+eyes began forewith.
+
+A light footfall sounded behind us, and Camille gave both her hands to
+my companion. "I was in the hall," she said, "telling Cécile she was
+like a white star that had come out by day, when I saw you here looking
+like a great red one; and you're still more like a red, red rose, and
+I've come to get some of your fragrance."
+
+"I'd exchange for yours any day, and thank you, dear," responded
+Charlotte; "you're a bunch of sweet-peas. Isn't she, Mr. Smith?"
+
+The bunch beamed an ecstatic bliss. What was the explanation; had her
+father arrived, or--or somebody else? The question went through me like
+an arrow. Was the cause of this heavenly radiance somebody else?--that
+was the barb; or was it I?--that was the soothing feather.
+
+In gratitude for Charlotte's word she sank backward in a long obeisance.
+"May it please your ladyship, dinner is served. Oh, Mr. Smith, I've been
+listening to Mr. Gholson talking with aunt Martha and Estelle; I don't
+wonder you and he are friends; I think his ideas of religion are
+perfectly beautiful!"
+
+At our two-o'clock dinner I found that our company had been reinforced.
+On one side of Camille sat I; but on the other side sat "Harry."
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+A MARTYR'S WRATH
+
+Great news the aide-de-camp brought us; from Lee, from Longstreet, Bragg
+and Johnston. Johnston was about to fall upon Grant's rear. Across the
+Mississippi Dick Taylor was expected this very day to deal the same
+adversary a crippling blow, and it was partly to mask this movement that
+we had made our feint upon the Federals near Natchez. Now these had
+fallen back, and our force had cunningly slipped away southward. Only
+General Austin and his staff had not gone when Lieutenant Helm left the
+front, and they were about to go.
+
+Toward the end of the meal Mrs. Sessions, in her amiable plantation
+drawl, said she hoped the bearer of so much good tidings had not come to
+take away Lieutenant Ferry; and when Harry, flushing, asked what had
+given her such a thought, the simple soul replied that Mr. Gholson had
+told her he "suspicioned as much."
+
+At once there arose the prettiest clamor all round the board, in which
+Charlotte and Cécile joined for the obvious purpose of making confusion.
+Gholson turned yellow and spoke things nobody heard, and Ferry tried to
+drown Harry's loud declarations that the word he had brought to Ferry
+was for him to stay, and that he had found him saddling up to go in
+search of his company. "Isn't that so, Ned?--Now,--now,--isn't that so?"
+
+We left the table all laughing but Gholson. He tried to say something to
+Harry, which the latter waved away with mock gaiety until on the side
+veranda we got beyond view of the ladies, when the aide-de-camp reddened
+angrily and turned his back. As the two lieutenants were lighting
+cigarettes together, Harry, thinking Gholson had left us, blurted out,
+"Oh, that's all very well for you to say, Ned, but, damn him, he's not
+the sort of man that has the right to 'suspicion' me of anything;
+slang-whanging, backbiting sneak, I know what _he's_ here for."
+
+On that the blood surged to Ferry's brow, but he set his mouth firmly,
+locked arms with the speaker and led him down the veranda. Gholson took
+on an uglier pallor than before and went back into the house. I followed
+him. He moved slowly up the two flights of hall stairs and into a room
+close under the roof, called the "soldiers' room". It had three double
+beds, one of them ours. Without a fault in the dreary rhythm of his
+motions he went to the bedpost where hung his revolver, and turning to
+me buckled the weapon at his waist with hands that kept the same
+unbroken measure though they trembled and were as pallid as his face. In
+the same slow beat he shook his head.
+
+"Smith, I rejoice! O--oh! I rejoice and am glad when I'm reviled and
+persecuted by the hounds of hell, and spoken evil against falsely for my
+religion's sake."
+
+"Now, Gholson, that's nonsense!"
+
+"O--oh! that's what it's for! that's what he meant by 'slang-whanging.'
+That's what it's for from first to last, no matter what it's for in
+between; and I know what it's for in between, too, and Ned Ferry knows.
+Did you see Ned Ferry take him under his protection? O--oh! they're two
+of one hell-scorched kind!" My companion stood gripping the bedpost and
+fumbling at his holster. I sank to the bed, facing him, expecting his
+rage to burn itself out in words, but when he began again his teeth
+were clenched. "You heard him tell Ned Ferry he knows why I'm here. It's
+true! he does know! he knows I'm here to protect a certain person from
+him and--"
+
+"From whom? from Harry Helm? Oh, Gholson, that's too fantastical!"
+
+"From him and the likes of him! Not that he loves her; that's the
+difference between them two cotton-mouth moccasins; Ned Ferry, hell
+grind him! does--or thinks he does; that other whelp _don't,_ and knows
+he don't; he's only enam'--"
+
+"HUSH!" He ceased. "I swear, Scott Gholson, you must choose your words
+better when you allude--Lieutenant Helm is the last man in the brigade
+to be under _my_ protection, but--oh, you're crazy, man, and blind
+besides. Harry Helm is not in love, but he thinks he is, though with
+quite another person!"
+
+"O--oh! whether he loves or not, or whoever he loves, I know who he
+hates; he hates me and my religion; our religion, Smith, mine and yours;
+because it's put me between him and her. What was that the preacher said
+this morning? 'The carnal mind, being enmity against God, is enmity
+against them that serve God.' O--oh, I accept his enmity! it proves my
+religion isn't vain! I'm glad to get it!"
+
+All this from his oscillating head, through his set teeth, in one malign
+monotone. As he quoted the preacher he mechanically drew his revolver.
+There was no bravado in this; he might lie, but he did not know how to
+sham; did not know, now, that his face was drawn with pain. Holding the
+weapon in one hand, under his absent gaze he turned it from side to side
+on the palm of the other. I put out my hand for it, but he dropped it
+into the holster and tried to return my smile.
+
+"Do you propose to call him out?" I asked. "You can't call out an
+officer; you'll be sent to the water-batteries at Mobile."
+
+"I've thought of all that," he droned.
+
+"Then why do you put that thing on?"
+
+"Why do I put it on? Why, I--you know what I told you about that
+Yankee--"
+
+"Gholson," I exclaimed, for I saw that murder, even double murder, was
+hatching in his heart, with Charlotte Oliver for its cause, and looked
+hard into his evil eyes until they overmatched mine; whereupon I made as
+if suddenly convinced. "You're right!" I turned, whipped on my own belt
+with its two "persuaders," and blandly smoothing my ribs, added "Now!
+here are two ready, Yankees or no Yankees."
+
+I never saw a face so unconsciously marked with misery as Gholson's was
+when we started downstairs. I stopped him on a landing. "Understand, you
+and I are friends,--hmm? I think Lieutenant Helm owes you an apology,
+and if you'll keep away from him I'll try to bring it to you."
+
+The reply began with a vindictive gleam. "You needn't; I ain't got any
+more use for it than for him. I never apologized to a man in my life,
+Smith, nor I never accepted an apology from one; that's not my way."
+
+Near the bottom of the second flight we met Charlotte, who, to make bad
+worse, would have passed with no more than a smile, but the look of
+Gholson startled her and she noticed our arms. With an arresting eye I
+offered a sprightly comment on the heat of the day, and while she was
+replying with the same gaiety I whispered "Take him with you."
+
+How nimbly her mind moved! "Oh Mr. Gholson!" she said, and laughed to
+gain an instant for invention.
+
+"Mr. Gholson, can _you_ tell me the first line of the last hymn we sang
+this morning?" Her beam was irresistible, and they went to the large
+parlor. I turned into the smaller one, opposite, where Squire Sessions
+started from a stolen doze and, having heard of my feeling for books,
+thrust into my hands, and left me with, the "Bible Defense of Slavery."
+
+As I moved to a window which let out upon the side veranda the two
+lieutenants came around from the front and stood almost against it,
+outside; and as I intended to begin upon Harry as soon as Squire
+Sessions was safely upstairs, this suited me well enough. But the moment
+they came to the spot I heard Ned Ferry doing precisely what I had
+planned to do. At the same time, from across the hall came the sound of
+the piano and of Charlotte's voice, now a few bars, then an interval of
+lively speech, again a few bars, then more speech, and then a sustained
+melody as she lent herself to the kind flattery of Gholson's
+songless soul.
+
+"But he is!" I overheard the aide-de-camp say; "he is a backbiting
+sneak, and I tell you again he's backbitten nobody more than he
+has you!"
+
+"And I tell you again, Harry, that is my business."
+
+"If he wants to fight me he can; I'll waive my rank."
+
+"No, you will not, you have no right; our poor little rank, it doesn't
+belong to us, Harry, 'tis we belong to it. 'If he wants to fight!'--Do
+you take him for a rabbit? He is a brave man, you know that, old fellow.
+Of course he wants to fight. But he cannot! For the court-martial he
+would not care so much; I would not, you would not; 'tis his religion
+forbids him."
+
+"O--oh!" groaned Harry in Gholson's exact tone, "'Hark from the tombs'!"
+
+"Ah!" said Ferry, "he does not live up to it? Well, of course! who
+does? But we will pass that; the main question is, Will you express the
+regret, and so forth, as I have suggested, and do yourself credit,
+Harry, as an officer and a gentleman, or--will you fight?"
+
+"But you say his religion, so called, won't let him fight!"
+
+"That's what I think; but if it forbids him, and if consequently he will
+not, well,--Harry,--I will."
+
+"You will what!"
+
+"I will have to fight you in his place."
+
+"Why, Ned!--Ned!--you--you astound me! Wha'--what do you mean?"
+
+"That is what I mean, Harry. You know--many times you have heard me
+say--I don't believe in that kind of thing; I find that worse than the
+religion of Gholson; yet still,--what shall I say?--we are but soldiers
+anyhow--this time I make an exception in your favor. And of course this
+is confidential, on both sides; but you must make peace with Gholson, or
+you must fight with me."
+
+"Oh, good Lord!--Ned!--Good Lord A'mighty! but this is too absurd. Why,
+Ned, don't you see that the bottom cause of this trouble isn't--"
+
+"I know what is the bottom cause of this trouble very well, Harry; you
+can hear her in yonder, now, singing. Wherever Gholson is he hears her,
+too, like-wise. Perchance 'tis to him she is singing. If she can sing to
+him, are you too good to apologise?"
+
+"Oh, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, Ned, damned if I don't!
+George! I'll apologize! Rather than lose your friendship I'd apologize
+to the devil!"
+
+Ferry's thanks came eagerly. "Well, anyhow, old boy," he added, "in such
+a case to back down is braver than to fight; but to apologize to the
+devil--that is not hard; on the contrary, to keep _from_ apologizing to
+the devil--ah! I wish I could always do that!--I wonder where is
+Dick Smith."
+
+I stealthily laid down the "Bible Defense of Slavery" and was going
+upstairs three steps at a stride, when I came upon Camille and Estelle.
+My aim was to get Harry's revolver to him before he should have the
+exasperating surprise of finding Gholson armed, and to contrive a
+pretext for so doing; and happily a word from the two sisters gave me my
+cue. With the fire-arms of both officers I came downstairs and out upon
+the veranda loud-footed, humming--
+
+  "'To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
+  Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be--'
+
+"Gentlemen, I hope I'm not too officious; they say we're all going for a
+walk in the lily-pond woods, and I reckon you'd rather not leave these
+things behind."
+
+Both thanked me and buckled on their belongings, but Ferry's look was
+peculiarly intelligent; "I was in the small parlor, looking for you," he
+said; "I thought you would be near the music." And so he had seen
+Gholson with his revolver on him, and must have understood it!
+
+"Smith," said Harry, "will you be so kind as to say to Gholson--oh,
+Lord! Ned, this is heavy drags on a sandy road! I--"
+
+"That's all right, Harry, I withdraw the request."
+
+"Well, you needn't; I was in the wrong. Smith, will you say to
+Gholson--" His voice dropped to a strictly private rumble.
+
+"Yes, Lieutenant, I'll do so with pleasure, and I'm sure what you say
+will have the proper--here are the ladies."
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+TORCH AND SWORD
+
+"Now give me your hand, Miss Camille; now jump!" So twice and once again
+the rivulet was passed which ran from the lily-pond, she and I leading
+all the others on the return from the woodland afternoon walk. We turned
+and faced away from the declining sun and across the clear pool to where
+its upper end, dotted with lily-pads, lay in a deep recess of the woods.
+There were green and purple garlands of wild passion-flower around her
+hat and about the white and blue fabrics at her waist. At the head of
+the pond, with Ferry beside her, stood black-haired Cécile canopied by
+overhanging boughs, her hat bedecked with the red spikes of the
+Indian-shot and wound with orange masses of love-vine. Nearer to us
+around the shore was Estelle of the red-brown hair and red-brown eyes
+and brows and lashes, whose cheek seemed always to glow with ever rising
+but never confessed emotion; and with her walked Gholson. Near the
+waterside also, but farthest up the path, came Miss Harper and
+Charlotte Oliver.
+
+Harry was not with us. The settlement of his trouble with Gholson
+awaited his return out of the region north of us, whither Ferry had
+suggested his riding on an easy reconnaissance. Camille and I were just
+turning again, when there came abruptly into our scene the last gallant
+show of martial finery any of us ever saw until the war was over and
+there was nothing for our side to make itself fine for. On the road from
+the house we heard a sound of galloping, and the next moment General
+Austin and his entire staff (less only Harry) reined up at the edge of
+the pond, ablaze with all the good clothes they could muster and
+betraying just enough hard usage to give a stirring show of the war's
+heroic reality. The General, on a beautiful cream-colored horse, wore
+long yellow gauntlets and a yellow sash; from throat to waist the
+sunlight glistened upon the over-abundant gold lace of his new uniform,
+his legs were knee-deep in shining boots, and his soft gray hat was
+looped up on one side and plumed according to Regulations with one
+drooping ostrich feather. Behind halted in pleasing confusion captains
+and captains, flashing with braids, bars, buckles, buttons, bands,
+sword-knots, swords and brave eyes, and gaily lifting hats and caps,
+twice, and twice again, and once more, to the ladies--God bless them!
+Major Harper, the oldest, most refined and most soldierly of them all,
+was also the handsomest. Old Dismukes was with them; burly, bushy,
+dingy, on a huge roan charger. Camille asked me who he was, and I was
+about to reply that he was a bloodthirsty brute without a redeeming
+trait, when he lifted his shaggy brows at me and smiled, and as I smiled
+back I told her he was our senior colonel, rough at times, but the
+bravest of the brave. Meantime the General rode forward over a stretch
+of shallow water, Ned Ferry ran back along the margin to meet him, and
+at the saddlebow they spoke a moment together privately, while at more
+distance but openly to us all Major Harper informed his sister that with
+one night's camp and another day's dust the brigade would be down in
+Louisiana. Camille turned upon me and hurrahed, the Arkansas colonel
+smiled upon her approvingly, the ladies all waved, the General lifted
+his plumed hat, faced about, passed through his turning cavalcade and
+drew it after him at a gallop.
+
+Our promenaders hurried into close order and with quick step and eager
+converse we moved toward the house. In raptures scintillant with their
+own beauty the three Harper girls inflated each item of the day's news
+and the morrow's outlook, and it was almost as pretty to see Miss
+Harper's keen black eyes and loving-tolerant smile go back and forth
+from Camille to Estelle, from Estelle to Cécile, and round again, as
+each maiden added some new extravagance to the glad vaunting of the
+last, and looked, for confirmation, to the gallant who toiled to keep
+her under her parasol. Suddenly the three girls broke into song with an
+adaptation of "Oh, carry me back" which substituted "Louisiana" for
+"Virginia," but whose absurd quaverings I will not betray in words to a
+generation that never knew the frantic times to which they belonged. I
+felt a shamefacedness for them even then, yet when I glanced behind,
+Miss Harper was singing with us in the most exalted earnest. We had
+nearly reached the field-gate, the big white one on the highway, and
+were noting that the dust of the General and his retinue had barely
+vanished from the southern stretch of the road, when one feminine voice
+said "What's that?" another exclaimed "See yonder!" and Miss Harper
+cried "Why, gentlemen, somebody's house is burning!"
+
+Beyond the grove and the fields north of it, and beyond their farther
+bound of trees, in the northwest, was rising and unfolding into the
+peaceful Sabbath heavens a massive black column of the peculiar heavy
+smoke made by the burning of baled and stored cotton. We ran, two and
+two, into the road and up toward the grove-gate. "Don't stumble," I
+warned Camille as she looked back to see if any one besides me was
+holding his partner's hand. Inside the gate we paused, we two, still
+hand in hand. Her brown hair had shaken low upon her temples in two
+voluptuous masses between which she lifted her eyes to mine, my hand
+tightened on hers, and hers gave a little spasm of its own.
+
+"Oh, Dick!" she whispered; but before I could rally from the blissful
+shock of it to reply, her face changed distressfully, and pointing
+beyond me, she drank a great breath, and cried, "Look!"
+
+Sure enough, out there on the sky-line, in the north-east this time,
+another column of smoke was lifting its first billow over the tree-tops.
+"Oh, Dick!" she exclaimed, in beautiful alarm, "what does it mean?"
+
+"It means the Yankees,--love," I said, and when she gasped her dismay
+without letting on to have heard the last word, I felt that fires were
+cheap at any price.
+
+"There are others there besides Yankees," said Gholson to the general
+company as they joined us; "Yankees have got more sense than to start
+fires ahead of their march." On the same instant with Ned Ferry I sprang
+half-way to the top of the grove fence and peered out across road and
+fields upon the farthest point in line with the second fire. There we
+saw two horsemen reconnoitring, one a very commanding figure, the other
+mean enough. Ferry used his glass, but no glass was needed to tell
+either of us that Gholson's reckoning was true; those two were
+not Federals.
+
+The ladies flew to the house and the rest of us to the stable. In its
+door Ferry stopped to look back upon the road while Gholson and I darted
+in, but now he, too, sprang to his horse's side. "How many, Lieutenant?"
+I cried, as the three of us saddled up.
+
+"About a hundred; same we saw yesterday; captain at the rear; that means
+our fellows are close behind them."
+
+For a moment more I could hear the thunder of their speeding column;
+then the grove seemed to swallow it up, and the stillness was grim.
+"Come on!" cried Ferry, swinging up, and after him we sprang. "They've
+dismounted on the far edge of the grove," said Gholson to me as we rode
+abreast, with Ferry a length ahead; "they'll form line on each side the
+road at right angles to it!" and again he was right. Ferry led
+northeastward, but hardly had we made half a dozen leaps when he waved
+me to a near corner of the flower-garden palings and I saw Miss Harper
+beckoning and Charlotte holding up my carbine and his sword. Miss Harper
+was drawn up as straight as a dart, her black eyes flashing and her lips
+charged with practical information that began to flow the moment I was
+near enough to hear her guarded voice. "They've all put their horses in
+the locks of the road fence, just beyond the big white gate--"
+
+"We know," I interrupted, leaning and snatching the weapons from
+Charlotte's hands. She kissed them good-bye.
+
+"Ah, yes, yes!" she said, "they know all we can tell them and all we
+can't!"
+
+The only response I could give was the shower of loose earth thrown upon
+both women by my horse's heels as I whirled and sped after my leader. He
+and Gholson were half a broad field ahead of me, but I followed only at
+their speed, designing to hand over the sword so nearly at the moment of
+going into action that I might stay by its owner's side unrebuked; and
+my plan was not in vain. Up the highway our Louisianians burst into view
+in column at full speed; I knew them by their captain, a man noted
+throughout the brigade for the showiness of his dress; and the next
+instant, away across the fields beyond the highroad, Quinn and his
+scouts broke out of the woods, heading for the gap in the woods-pasture
+fence. As each friendly column caught sight of the other, long cheers
+rang across the narrowing interval between them. Through that other gap
+which I had noted in my walk with Ferry he and Gholson reached the road,
+sped forward on it to a rise that overlooked the fields, and halted.
+Ferry rose on tiptoe in the stirrups, lifted his cap in air, pointed
+triumphantly backward to the grove, and was recognized by both columns
+at once. Again they cheered; at a full run I reached his side and threw
+his sword into his hand. Both columns saw him belt it on and flash it
+out, their cheers swelled again, the Louisianians hurtled down upon us,
+and we turned and were at the front of the onset.
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+THE CHARGE IN THE LANE
+
+The instant Ferry wheeled at the flaming captain's side you could see he
+was unwelcome. I heard him tell what we knew of the foe and the ground;
+I saw him glance back at the blown condition of the speeding column and
+then say "You've got them anyhow, Captain; you'll get every man of them
+without a scratch, only if you will take your time."
+
+But the Captain answered headily; "No, sir! I've tried that twice
+already; this time I'll cut them in two and be in their rear at one
+dash! Bring in your company behind mine, if you choose."
+
+Ferry drew back a few ranks but stayed with the column; Quinn had had
+the toil of the chase, he should have also the glory of the fight. So
+Ferry sent Gholson--whose horsemanship won a cheer from the passing
+Louisianians as he cleared the roadside fence--across to Quinn, bidding
+the Lieutenant slacken speed and count himself a reserve. And then into
+the broad lane between grove and woods-pasture, with the charging yell,
+the Louisianians thundered. Ah! but my Creole gentleman was a sight,
+with his straight blade lifted in air and his face turned back on us
+aglow with the joy of battle! I was huzzaing back at him and we were
+passing the front gate of the grove avenue, when down through it came
+from the house, with a tremor of echoes, the first shot; a shot and then
+a woman's scream, and his blazing eyes said to me, "He is there! That
+was Oliver!"
+
+There was no time for speech. The shot was not a signal, yet on the
+instant and in our very teeth, on our right and our left, the cross-fire
+of the hidden and waiting foe flashed and pealed, and left and right, a
+life for a life, our carbines answered from the saddle. For a moment the
+odds against us were awful. In an instant the road was so full of fallen
+horses and dismounted men that the jaded column faltered in confusion.
+Our cunning enemy, seeing us charge in column, had swung the two
+extremes of their line forward and inward. So, crouching and firing upon
+us mounted, each half could fire toward the other with impunity, and
+what bullets missed their mark buzzed and whined about our ears and
+pecked the top rails of either fence like hail on a window. A wounded
+horse drove mine back upon his haunches and caused him to plant a hoof
+full on the breast of one of our Louisianians stretched dead on his back
+as though he had lain there for an hour. Another man, pale, dazed,
+unhurt, stood on the ground, unaware that he was under point-blank fire,
+holding by the bits his beautiful horse, that pawed the earth
+majestically and at every second or third breath blew from his flapping
+nostrils a cloud of scarlet spray. They blocked up half the road. As we
+swerved round them the horse of the company's first lieutenant slid
+forward and downward with knees and nose in the dust, hurling his rider
+into a lock of the fence, and the rider rose and rushed to the road
+again barely in time to catch a glittering form that dropped rein and
+sword and reeled backward from the saddle. It was his captain, shot
+through the breast. An instant later our tangled column parted to right
+and left, dashed into the locks of the two fences, sprang to the ground,
+and began to repay the enemy in the coin of their own issue. Only a
+dozen or so did otherwise, and it was my luck to be one of these.
+Espying Ned Ferry at the very front, in the road, standing in his
+stirrups and shouting back for followers to carry the charge on through,
+we spurred toward him and he turned and led. Then what was my next
+fortune but to see, astride of my stolen horse, the towering leader of
+the foe, Captain Jewett.
+
+He came into the road a few rods ahead of us through a gap his men had
+earlier made opposite the big white gate. He answered our fierce halloo,
+as he crossed, by a pistol-shot at Ferry, but Ferry only glanced around
+at me and pointed after him with his sword. A number of blue-coats afoot
+followed him to the gap but at our onset scattered backward, sturdily
+returning our fire. Into the gap and into the enemy's left rear went
+Ferry and his horsemen, but I turned the other way and spurred through
+the woods-pasture gate after the Federal leader, he on my horse and I on
+his. Down the highway, on either side, stood his brave men's horses in
+the angles of the worm-fence, and two or three horse-holders took a shot
+at me as I sped in after the man who was bent on reaching the right of
+his divided force before Quinn should strike it, as I was bent on
+foiling him. Twice I fired at his shapely back, and twice, while he kept
+his speed among the tree-trunks, he looked back at me as coolly as at an
+odd passer-by and sent me a ball from his revolver. A few more bounds
+carried him near enough to his force to shout his commands, but half a
+hundred cheers suddenly resounded in the depth of the woods-pasture, and
+Quinn and his men charged upon the foe's right and rear. I joined the
+shout and the shouters; in a moment the enemy were throwing down their
+arms, and I turned to regain the road to the pond. For I had marked
+Jewett burst through Quinn's line and with a score of shots ringing
+after him make one last brave dash--for escape. Others, pursuing him,
+bent northward, but my instinct was right, his last hope was for his
+horse-holders, and at a sharp angle of the by-road, where it reached the
+pond, exactly where Camille and I had stood not an hour before, I came
+abruptly upon Cricket--riderless. I seized his rein, and as I bent and
+snapped the halter of one horse on the snaffle of the other I saw the
+missing horseman. Leaping from the saddle I ran to him. He was lying on
+his face in the shallow water where General Austin and his staff had so
+gaily halted a short while before, and as I caught sight of him he
+rolled upon his back and tried to lift his bemired head.
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+FALLEN HEROES
+
+I dropped to my knee in the reddening pool and passed my arm under his
+head.
+
+"Thank you," he said, and repeated the word as I wet my handkerchief and
+wiped the mire from his face; "thank you;--no, no,"--I was opening his
+shirt--"that's useless; get me where you can turn me over; you've hit me
+in the back, my lad."
+
+"I?--I hit you? Oh, Captain Jewett, thank God, I didn't hit you at all!"
+
+"What's the difference, boy; you didn't aim to miss, did you? I didn't.
+It's not my only hurt; I think I broke something inside when I fell from
+the sad'--ah! that's _your_ bugle, isn't it? It's my last fight--oh, the
+devil! my good boy, don't begin to cry again; war's war; give me some
+water.... Thank you! And now, if you don't want me to bleed to death get
+me out of this slop, and--yes,--easy!--that's it--easy--oh, God! oh, let
+me down, boy, let me _down, you're killing me!_ Oh!--" he fainted away.
+
+With his unconscious head still on my arm I faced toward the hundred
+after-sounds of the fray and hallooed for help. To my surprise it
+promptly came. Three blundering boys we were who lifted him into the
+saddle and bore him to the house reeling and moaning astride of Cricket,
+the poor beast half dead with hard going. The sinking sun was as red as
+October when we issued into the highroad and moved up it to the grove
+gate through the bloody wreckage of the fray. The Louisianians were
+camping in the woods-pasture, Ferry's scouts in the grove, and the
+captive Federals were in the road between, shut in by heavy guards. At
+our appearance they crowded around us, greeting their undone commander
+with proud words of sympathy and love, and he thanked them as proudly
+and lovingly, though he could scarcely speak, more than to ask every
+moment for water. A number of our Sessions house group crowded out to
+meet us at the veranda steps; Camille; Harry Helm with his right hand
+bandaged; Cécile, attended by two or three Sessions children; and behind
+all Miss Harper exclaiming "Ah, my boy, you're a welcome sight--Oh! is
+that Captain Jewett!"
+
+Two or three bystanders helped us bear him upstairs, where, turning from
+the bedside, I pressed Camille with eager questions.
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry? he's unhurt--and so is Mr. Gholson! Mr. Gholson's
+gone to Franklin for doctors; Lieutenant Ferry sent him; he's been
+sending everybody everywhere faster than anybody else could think of
+anything!"
+
+I asked where Ferry was now. Her eyes refilled--they were red from
+earlier distresses--and she motioned across the hall: "The captain of
+the Louisianians, you know, has sent for him!"
+
+"Yes," I said, "the Captain's hit hard. I saw him when he was struck."
+
+"Oh, Dick! then you were at the very front!"
+
+"Did you think I was at the rear?"
+
+She looked down. "I couldn't help hoping it."
+
+"Then you were thinking of me."
+
+"I prayed for you."
+
+Such news seemed but ill-gotten gains, to come before I had gathered
+courage to inquire after Charlotte Oliver. "Wh'--where is--where are
+the others?"
+
+"They're all about the house, tending the wounded; Mrs. Sessions is with
+the Squire, of course,--dear, brave old gentleman! we thought he was
+killed, but Charlotte found the ball had glanced."
+
+I asked if it was Oliver who shot him, and she nodded. "It was down at
+the front door; the Squire said he'd shoot him if he shot Charlotte, and
+Charlotte declared she'd shoot him if he shot the Squire, and all at
+once he shot at her and struck him."
+
+"Who was it that screamed; was it she?"
+
+My informant's head drooped low and she murmured, "It was I."
+
+"Then _you_ were at the front."
+
+"Did you think I was at the rear?"
+
+I fear I answered evasively. I added that I must go to Lieutenant Ferry,
+and started toward the door, but she touched my arm. "Oh, Dick, you
+should have heard him praise you to her!--and when he said you had
+chased Captain Jewett and was missing, she cried; but now I'll tell her
+you're here." She started away but returned. "Oh, Dick, isn't it
+wonderful how we're always victorious! why don't those poor Yankees give
+up the struggle? they must see that God is on our side!"
+
+As she left me, Ned Ferry came out with a sad face, but smiled gladly on
+me and caught me fondly by the arm. On hearing my brief report he
+saddened more than ever, and when I said I had promised Jewett he should
+hand his sword to none but him, "Oh!"--he smiled tenderly--"I don't want
+to refuse it; go in and hang it at the head of his bed as he would do in
+his own tent; I'll wait here."
+
+I pointed to the door he had softly closed behind him: "How is it in
+there?"
+
+"Ah, Richard, in there the war is all over."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"So called."
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+"SAYS QUINN, S'E"
+
+Lieutenant Helm came out as I went in, and I paused an instant to ask
+him in fierce suspicion if he had bandaged his hand himself. "No," he
+whispered, "Miss Camille." It was a lie, but I did not learn that until
+months after. "Come downstairs as soon as you can," he added, "there's a
+hot supper down there; first come first served." We parted.
+
+I found Miss Harper fanning the wounded giant and bathing his brows,
+and my smiles were ample explanation of my act as I hung the sword up.
+Then I brought in my leader. "Captain Jewett," he said after a nearly
+silent exchange of greetings, "I wish we had you uninjured."
+
+"Ah, no, Lieutenant, this is bad enough. Lieutenant, there is one
+matter--"
+
+"Yes, Captain, what is that?"
+
+"The villain who set those fires--you know who he is, I hope."
+
+"Yes, Captain, I know."
+
+"He didn't begin that until after he left me. I had some private reasons
+for not killing him when I might have done it."
+
+"Yes, Captain, I know that, too."
+
+"Yet if I had caught him again I would have strung him up to the first
+limb."
+
+"I have sent some picked men to catch him if they can," said Ferry, and
+the racked sufferer lifted a hand in approval. Camille came to her aunt
+and whispered "Mr. Gholson with two doctors." The wounded captive
+heard her.
+
+"Lieutenant," he panted, "I hope you'll--do me the favor--to let my turn
+with those gentlemen--come last,--after my boys,--will you?"
+
+"Ah! Captain, even our boys wouldn't allow that; no, here's a doctor,
+now."
+
+I went down to the supper-table. Camille was there, dispensing its
+promiscuous hospitality to men who ate like pigs. I would as leave have
+found her behind a French-market coffee-stand. Harry Helm, nursing his
+bandaged hand, was lolling back from the board and quizzing her with
+compliments while she cut up his food. A fellow in the chair next mine
+said he had seen me with Ferry when we joined the Louisianians' charge.
+"Your aide-de-camp friend over yonder's a-gitt'n' lots o' sweetenin'
+with his grub; well, he deserves it."
+
+I asked how he deserved it. "Why, we wouldn't 'a' got here in time if he
+hadn't 'a' met-up with us. That man Gholson, he's another good one."
+
+The latter remark seemed to me a feeler, and I ignored it, and inquired
+how Lieutenant Helm had got that furlough. (Furlough was our slang for a
+light wound.) "Oh, he got it mighty fair! Did you see that Yankee
+lieutenant with the big sabre-cut on his shoulder? Well, your friend
+yonder gave him that--and got the Yankee's pistol-shot in his hand. But
+that saved Gholson's life, for that shot was aimed to give Gholson a
+furlough to kingdom-come. Are they kinfolks?"
+
+I mumbled that they were not even friends. "Well, now, I suspicioned
+that,--when I first see 'em meet at the head of our column! But the
+aide-de-camp he took it so good-natured that, thinks I,--"
+
+Another of Ferry's men, seated opposite, swallowed hurriedly, and
+covertly put in--"Y' ought to hear what Quinn said to Gholson just now
+as they met-up out here in the hall. Quinn thought they were alone. Says
+Quinn, as cold as a fish, s's'e 'Mr. Gholson,' s'e, 'you're not a
+coward, sir, and that's why I'm curious to ask you a question,' s'e. And
+says Gholson, just as cold, s'e 'I'm prepared, Lieutenant Quinn, to
+answer it.' And says Quinn, s'e 'Why was it, that when Harry Helm struck
+that blow which saved your life, and which you knew was meant to save
+it, and you seen his sword shot out of his hand and three or four
+Yankees makin' a dead set to kill him, and nothin' else in any
+particular danger at all, why was it, Mr. Gholson, that you never turned
+a hand nor an eye to save him?'"
+
+"Great Scott! wha'd Gholson say?"
+
+"Gholson, s'e, 'I done as I done, sir, from my highest sense o' duty.
+This ain't Lieutenant Helm's own little private war, Lieutenant Quinn,
+nor mine, nor yours.'"
+
+"Jo'! that to Quinn! wha'd Quinn answer?"
+
+"Why, with that Quinn popped them big glass eyes o' his'n till the
+whites showed clear round the blue, and s'e 'I know it better than you
+do; that's just what it suited you to forget. Oh! I'd already seen
+through you in one flash, you sneak. It's good for you you're not in my
+command; I'd lift you to a higher sense of whose war this is, damn you,
+if I had to hang you up by the thumbs.' With that he started right on
+by, Gholson a-keepin' his face to him as he passed, when Ned Ferry
+and--her--came out o' the parlor, and Ned turned out on the rear gallery
+with Quinn while she sort o' smiled at Gholson to come to her and sent
+him off on some business or other. George! I never seen her so
+beautiful."
+
+Thereupon occurred a brief exchange of comments which seemed to me to
+carry by implication as fine a praise as could possibly come from two
+rough fellows of the camp. Speaking the names of Ferry and Charlotte in
+undertone, of course, but with the unrestraint of soldiers, they said
+their say without a shadow of inuendo in word or smile. Her presence,
+they agreed, always made them feel as though something out of the common
+"was bound to happen pretty quick," while his, they said, assured them
+that "whatever did happen would happen right." I turned with a frown as
+Harry laughed irrelevantly, and saw Camille and him smiling at me with
+childish playfulness. Then suddenly their smile changed and went beyond
+me, two or three men softly said "Smith!" and I was out of my chair and
+standing when Charlotte Oliver, in a low voice, tenderly accosted me.
+
+"Oh, Richard Thorndyke Smith!--alive and well! Lieutenant Ferry wants
+you; he has just gone to his camp-fire."
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+A HORSE! A HORSE!
+
+Night had fully come. A few bivouac fires burned low in the grove, and
+at one of them near the grove gate I found our young commander. On a
+bench made of a fence-rail and two forked stakes he sat between Quinn
+and the first-lieutenant of the Louisianians. The doctor whom I had seen
+before sat humped on his horse, facing the three young men and making
+clumsy excuses to Ferry for leaving. The other physician would stay for
+some time yet, he said, and he, himself, was leaving his instruments,
+such as they were, and would return in the morning. "Fact is, my son's a
+surgeon, and he taken all my best instruments with _him._"
+
+"When; where is he?" eagerly asked Quinn, seeing Ferry was not going to
+ask.
+
+"My son? Oh, he's in Virginia, with General Lee."
+
+"Hell!" grunted Quinn, but the doctor pretended to listen to Ferry.
+
+"Ah, but we move south at day-light; the prisoners and wounded we send
+east, to Hazlehurst," said our leader, with a restraining hand on
+Quinn's knee. The other lieutenant made some inquiry of him, and the
+doctor was ignored, but stayed on, and as I stood waiting to be noticed
+I gathered a number of facts. The lightly injured would go in a
+plantation wagon; for the few gravely hurt there was the Harpers'
+ambulance, which had just arrived to take the ladies back to Squire
+Wall's, near Brookhaven, alas! instead of to Louisiana. For the ladies
+Charlotte's spring-wagon was to be appropriated, one of them riding
+beside it on horseback, and there was to be sent with them, besides
+Charlotte's old black driver, "a reliable man well mounted." Whoever
+that was to be it was not Harry, for he was to go south with a small
+guard, bearing the body of the Louisiana captain to his home between the
+hostile lines behind Port Hudson.
+
+"Good-night, gentlemen," said the doctor at last. As he passed into the
+darkness Quinn bent a mock frown upon his young superior.
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry, the next time I have to express my disgust please to
+keep your hand off my knee, will you?"
+
+Ferry's response was to lay it back again and there ensued a puerile
+tussle that put me in a precious pout, that I should be kept waiting by
+such things. But presently the three parted to resume their several
+cares, and the moment Ferry touched my arm to turn me back toward the
+house I was once more his worshipper. "Well!" he began, "you have now
+_two_ fine horses, eh?"
+
+"Oh, by Regulations, I suppose, I ought to turn one of them over to
+Major Harper. I wish it were to you, Lieutenant; I'd keep my own--he'll
+be all right in a day or two--and give you Captain Jewett's."
+
+"Well,--just for a day or two,--do that, while I lend my horse to a
+friend."
+
+I had already asked myself what was to become of Charlotte Oliver while
+the Harpers were preempting her little wagon, and now I took keen alarm.
+"Why, Lieutenant, I shall be glad! But why not lend Captain Jewett's
+horse and keep yours? Yours is right now the finest and freshest mount
+in the command."
+
+"Yes, 'tis for that I lend him."
+
+We went on in silence. Startled and distressed, I pondered. What was her
+new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this
+from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would
+know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like
+smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry
+with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now,
+unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse
+to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing himself to speed
+Beauty--oh, how different! What was the all-subordinating need?
+
+As we entered the hall I came to a conviction which lightened my heart;
+the all-subordinating need was--Oliver. I thought I could see why. The
+spring of all his devilish behavior lay in those relations to her for
+which I knew she counted herself chargeable through her past mistakes.
+Unless I guessed wrong her motives had risen. I believed her aim was
+now, at whatever self-hazard, to stop this hideous one-woman's war, and
+to speed her unfinished story to the fairest possible outcome for all
+God's creatures, however splendidly or miserably the "fool in it" should
+win or lose. We stopped and waited for Cécile and the remaining doctor,
+she with a lighted candle, to come down the stairs. From two rooms
+below, where most of the wounded lay, there came women's voices softly
+singing, and Charlotte's was among them. Their song was one listening to
+which many a boy in blue, many a lad in gray, has died: "Rock me to
+sleep, mother."
+
+Cécile and the doctor had come from the bedside of the Union captain,
+where Miss Harper remained. "I've done all I can," he said to Ferry; "we
+old chill-and-fever doctors wa'n't made for war-times; he may get well
+and he may not."
+
+"Smith," said Ferry, "go up and stay with him till further orders."
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+"BEAR A MESSAGE AND A TOKEN"
+
+Late in the night Gholson came to the Union captain's bedside for Miss
+Harper. Charlotte had sent him; the doctor had left word what to do if a
+certain patient's wound should re-open, and this had happened. The three
+had succeeded in stanching it, but Charlotte had prevailed upon Miss
+Harper to lie down, and the weary lady had, against all her intentions,
+fallen asleep. I was alone with the wounded captain. He did not really
+sleep, but under the weight of his narcotics drowsed, muttered, stirred,
+moaned, and now and then spoke out.
+
+Sitting in the open window, I marked the few red points of dying
+firelight grow fewer in the bivouac under the grove. Out there by the
+gate Ned Ferry slept. Fireflies blinked, and beyond the hazy fields rose
+the wasted moon, by the regal slowness of whose march I measured the
+passage of time as I had done two nights before. My vigil was a sad one,
+but, in health, in love, in the last of my teens and in the silent
+company of such a moon, my straying thoughts lingered most about the
+maiden who had "prayed for me." My hopes grew mightily. Yet with them
+grew my sense of need to redouble a lover's diligence. I resolved never
+again to leave great gaps in my line of circumvallation about the city
+of my siege, as I had done in the past--two days. I should move to the
+final assault, now, at the earliest favorable moment, and the next
+should see the rose-red flag of surrender rise on her temples; in war it
+is white, but in love it is red.
+
+First favorable moment; ah! but when would that be? Who was to convey
+the Harpers to Hazlehurst? Well, thank Heaven! not Harry. Scott Gholson?
+Gholson was due at headquarters. Poor Gholson! much rest for racked
+nerves had he found here; what with Ferry, and Harry, and the fight, and
+Quinn, I wondered he did not lie down and die under the pure suffocation
+of his "tchagrin." Even a crocodile, I believed, could suffer from
+chagrin, give him as many good causes as Gholson had accumulated. But
+no, the heaven of "Charlie Tolliver's" presence and commands--she seemed
+to have taken entire possession of him--lifted and sustained him above
+the clouds of all unkinder things.
+
+A faint stir at the threshold caught my ear and I discerned in the hall
+a young negro woman. The light of an unseen candle made her known at a
+glance; she had been here since the previous evening, as I knew, though
+it chanced that I had not seen her; Oliver's best wedding-gift, the
+slave maid whom I had seen with Charlotte in the curtained wagon at
+Gallatin. I stole out to her; she courtesied. "Miss Charlotte say ef you
+want he'p you fine me a-sett'n' on de step o' de stairs hafe-ways down."
+
+I inquired if she was leaving us. "She a-gitt'n' ready, suh; Misteh
+Goshen done gone to de sta-able to git de hosses." The girl suddenly
+seemed pleased with herself. "Mis' Charlotte would 'a' been done gone
+when de yethehs went--dem-ah two scouts what was sent ayfteh _him_--ef I
+hadn' spoke' up when I did."
+
+"Indeed! how was that?"
+
+"Why, I says, s' I, 'Mis' Charlotte, how we know he ain' gwine fo' to
+double on his huntehs? Betteh wait a spell, and den ef no word come back
+dat he a-doublin', you kin be sho' he done lit out fo' to jine de
+Yankees roun' Pote Hudsom.'"
+
+"Why did you tell her that? You want him caught; so do I; but you know
+she doesn't want to catch him, and you don't want her to. Neither do I.
+Nor neither do we want Lieutenant Ferry to catch him."
+
+"No, suh, dass so. But same time, while she no notion o' gitt'n' him
+cotch, she believe she dess djuty-bound to head-off his devilment. 'Tis
+dess like I heah' Mr. Goshen say to Miss Hahpeh, 'Dis ain't ow own
+li'l pri'--'"
+
+I waved her away and went back into the room; the Captain had called. He
+asked the time of night; I said it was well after two; he murmured, was
+quiet, and after a moment spoke my name. I answered, and he whispered
+"Coralie Rothvelt--she's here; I--recognized her voice--when they were
+singing. Did you know I knew her?"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"Daring game that was you fellows let her put up on us night before
+last, my boy,--and it hung by a thread. If our officers had only asked
+the old man his name--it would have been--a flash of light. If I had
+dreamed, when I saw--you and Ned Ferry--yesterday,--that Coralie
+Rothvelt was--Charlotte Oliver,--and could have known her then--as
+I've--learned to know her--to-day--from her--worst enemy,--you know,--"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"I should--have turned back, my boy." After a silence the hero said more
+to himself than to me "Ah, if my brother were here to-night--I
+might live!"
+
+Many days afterward I thought myself dull not to have guessed what that
+speech meant, but now I was too distressed by the change I saw coming
+over him to do any surmising. He began to say things entirely to
+himself. "Home!" he murmured; "sweet, sweet home!--my home! my
+country!--My God, my country, my home!--Smith,--you know what that is
+you're--wiping off my brow,--don't you?"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"I--I didn't want you to be--taken too unpleasantly by surprise--just at
+the--end. You know what's--happening,--don't you?"
+
+"Yes, Captain." As I wiped the brow again I heard the tread of two
+horses down in front of the house; they were Gholson's, and Ned Ferry's
+for Charlotte. "Captain, may I go and bring her--tell her what you say,
+and bring her?"
+
+"Do you think she'd come? She'd have gone to Ship Island if I had caught
+her."
+
+"I know she'll come."
+
+"I wish she would; she could 'bear a message and a token,' as the song
+says."
+
+She came. I met her outside the door, and for a moment I feared she
+would come no farther. "How can I, Richard! Oh, how can I?" she
+whispered; "this is my doing!" But presently she stood at the bedside
+calm and compassionate, in the dark dress and limp hat of two nights
+before. The dying man's eyes were lustrous with gratitude.
+
+"I have one or two things," he said, after a few words of greeting,
+"that I'd like to send home--to my mother--and my wife; some
+trifles--and a message or two; if I--if--if I--"
+
+"Will you let me take them?" Charlotte asked. I did not see or hear what
+they were; Gholson beckoned me into the hall. He did not whisper; there
+are some people, you know, who can never exercise enough
+self-suppression to whisper; he mumbled. He admitted the dying had some
+rights, but--he feared the delay might result unfortunately; wanted me
+to tell Charlotte so, and was sure I was ever so wrong to ask to have
+Ned Ferry awakened for the common incident of a prisoner's death; he
+would let him know the moment he awoke.
+
+When I came back into the room the captive had asked Charlotte to pray.
+"Tisn't that I'm--the least bit afraid," he was saying.
+
+"Oh, no," she responded, wiping his brow, "why should you be? Dying
+isn't nearly so fearful a thing as living. I'd rather, now, you'd pray
+for me; I'm such an unbeliever--in the beliefs, I mean, the beliefs the
+church people think we can't get on without. My religion is scarcely
+anything but longings and strivings"--she sadly smiled--"longings and
+strivings and hopes."
+
+"Yet you wouldn't--"
+
+"Part with it? Oh, not for the world beside!"
+
+"Neither would I--with mine." The soldier folded his hands in
+supplication. "Neither would I--though mine, O Lord--is only
+the--old-fashioned sort--for whose beliefs our fathers--used to kill one
+another; God have mercy--on them--and us."
+
+There was a great stillness. Against the bedside Charlotte had sunk to
+her knees, and under the broad brim of her Leghorn hat leaned her brow
+upon her folded hands. Thus, presently, she spoke again.
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+CHARLOTTE SINGS
+
+"I know, Captain," she said, "that we can't have longings, strivings, or
+hopes, without beliefs; beliefs are what they live on. I believe in
+being strong and sweet and true for the pure sake of being so; and yet
+more for the world's sake; and as much more again for God's sake as God
+is greater than his works. I believe in beauty and in joy. I believe
+they are the goal of all goodness and of all God's work and wish. As to
+resurrection, punishment, and reward, I can't see what my noblest choice
+has to do with them; they seem to me to be God's part of the matter;
+mine is to love perfect beauty and perfect joy, both in and infinitely
+beyond myself, with the desiring love with which I rejoice to believe
+God loves them, and to pity the lack of them with the loving pity with
+which God pities it. And above all I believe that no beauty and no joy
+can be perfect apart from a love that loves the whole world's joy better
+than any separate joy of any separate soul."
+
+"Thank you," was murmured from the pillow. Then, as Charlotte once more
+wiped the damp brow, the captive said, with much labor, "After that--war
+seems--an awful thing. I suppose it isn't half so much a crime--as it is
+a--penalty--for the crimes that bring it on. But anyhow--you
+know--being--" The bugle rang out the reveillé.
+
+"Being a soldier," said Charlotte, "you want to die like one?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!--the best I can. I'd like to sit half up--and hold my
+sword--if there's--no objection. I've loved it so! It would almost be
+like holding--the hand that's far away. Of course, it isn't really
+necessary, but--it would be more like--dying--for my country."
+
+He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his
+hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing
+from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts
+had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled
+close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of
+Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly:
+"Dying--really?" He turned to his fellows--"Boys, Captain's dying."
+
+Every Northern eye was lifted to the window and I turned away.
+"Richard!" gently called Charlotte, and I saw the end was at hand; a new
+anguish was on the brow; yet the soldier was asking for a song; "a
+soldier's song, will you?"
+
+"Why, Captain," she replied, "you know, we don't sing the same words to
+our soldier-songs that you do--except in the hymns. Shall I sing 'Am I a
+soldier of the cross?'"
+
+He did not answer promptly; but when he did he said "Yes--sing that."
+
+She sang it. As the second stanza was begun we heard a responsive swell
+grow softly to fuller and fuller volume beneath the windows; the
+prisoners were singing. I heard an austere voice forbid it, but it rose
+straight on from strength to strength:
+
+"Sure I must fight if I would win,
+   Increase my courage, Lord.
+I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
+   Supported by thy word."
+
+The dying man lifted a hand and Charlotte ceased. He had not heard the
+muffled chorus of his followers below; or it may be that he had, and
+that the degree of liberty they seemed to be enjoying prompted him to
+seek the new favor he now asked. I did not catch his words, but
+Charlotte heard, and answered tenderly, yet with a thrill of pain so
+keen she could not conceal it even from him.
+
+"Oh! you wouldn't ask a rebel to sing that," she sighed, "would you?"
+
+He made no rejoinder except that his eyes were insistent. She wiped his
+temples. "I hate to refuse you."
+
+His gaze was grateful. She spoke again: "I suppose I oughtn't to mind
+it."
+
+Miss Harper came in, and Charlotte, taking her hand without a glance,
+told the Captain's hard request under her voice. Miss Harper, too, in
+her turn, gave a start of pain, but when the dying eyes and smile turned
+pleadingly to her she said, "Why, if you can, Charlotte, dear, but oh!
+how can you?"
+
+Charlotte addressed the wounded man: "Just a little bit of it, will that
+do?" and as he eagerly assented she added, to Miss Harper, "You know,
+dear, in its history it's no more theirs than ours."
+
+"No, not so much," said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and
+thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing:
+
+  "O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
+  What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"
+
+But guardedly as she began, the effect on the huddled crowd below was
+instant and electrical. They heard almost the first note; looking down
+anxiously, I saw the wonder and enthusiasm pass from man to man. They
+heard the first two lines in awed, ecstatic silence; but at the third,
+warily, first one, then three, then a dozen, then a score, bereft of
+arms, standard, and leader, little counting ever again to see freedom,
+flag, or home, they raised their voices, by the dawn's early light, in
+their song of songs.
+
+Our main body were out in the highway, just facing into column, and the
+effect on them I could not see. The prisoners' guards, though instantly
+ablaze with indignation, were so taken by surprise that for two or three
+seconds, with carbines at a ready, they--and even their sergeant in
+command--only darted fierce looks here and there and up at me. The
+prisoners must have been used to singing in ordered chorus, for one of
+them strode into their middle, and smiling sturdily at the maddened
+guard and me, led the song evenly. "No, sir!" he cried, as I made an
+angry sign for them to desist, "one verse through, if every damned fool
+of us dies for it--let the Captain hear it boys--sing!
+
+  "'The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air--'"
+
+Charlotte had ceased, in consternation not for the conditions without
+more than for those within. With the first strong swell of the song from
+below, the dying leader strove to sit upright and to lift his blade, but
+failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss
+Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching
+his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face
+untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into and over
+the strain.
+
+"Club that man over the head!" cried the sergeant of the guard, and one
+of his men swung a gun; but the Yankee sprang inside of its sweep,
+crying, "Sing her through, boys!" grappled his opponent, and hurled him
+back. In the same instant the sergeant called steadily, "Guard,
+ready--aim--"
+
+There sounded a clean slap of levelled carbines, yet from the prisoners
+came the continued song in its closing couplet:
+
+  "The star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave!--"
+
+and out of the midst of its swell the oaths and curses and defiant
+laughter of a dozen men crying, with tears in their eyes, "Shoot! shoot!
+why don't you shoot?"
+
+But the command to fire did not come; suddenly there was a drumming of
+hoofs, then their abrupt stoppage, and the voice of a vigilant commander
+called, "Attention!"
+
+With a few words to the sergeant, more brief than harsh, and while the
+indomitable singers pressed on to the very close of the stanza without a
+sign from him to desist, Ferry bade the subaltern resume his command,
+and turned toward me at the window. He lifted his sword and spoke in a
+lowered tone, the sullen guard stood to their arms, and every captive
+looked up for my reply.
+
+"Shall I come?" he inquired; but I shook my head.
+
+"What!--gone?" he asked again, and I nodded. He turned and trotted
+lightly after the departing column. I remember his pensive mien as he
+moved down the grove, and how a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above
+his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender
+mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and
+let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his
+place under the window and was beckoning for my attention.
+
+"Is she coming?" he called up, and Charlotte, at my side, spoke
+downward:
+
+"I shall be with you in a moment."
+
+While he waited the second lieutenant of the Louisianians came, and as
+guard and prisoners started away she came out upon the veranda steps.
+Across her knee, as she and Gholson galloped off by a road across
+fields, lay in a wrapping of corn-husks the huge sabre of the dead
+northerner.
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+HARRY LAUGHS
+
+The first hush of the deserted camp-ground was lost in the songs of
+returning birds. Captain Jewett, his majestic length blanket-bound from
+brow to heel as trimly as a bale, had been laid under ground, and the
+Harpers stood in prayer at the grave's head and foot with hats on for
+their journey. The burial squad, turned guard of honor to the dead
+captain of the Louisianians, were riding away on either side of a light
+wagon that bore his mortal part. I, after all, was to be the Harpers'
+guardian on their way.
+
+Day widened into its first perfection as we moved down the highroad
+toward a near fork whose right was to lead Harry and his solemn cortége
+southward, while the left should be our eastward course. Camille and I
+rode horseback, side by side, with no one near enough to smile at my
+sentimental laudations of the morning's splendors, or at her for
+repaying my eloquence with looks so full of tender worship, personal
+acceptance and self-bestowal, that to tell of them here would make as
+poor a show as to lift a sea-flower out of the sea; they call for
+piccolo notes and I am no musician.
+
+The familiar little leather-curtained wagon was just ahead of us,
+bearing the other three Harpers, the old negro driver and--to complete
+its overloading--his daughter, Charlotte's dark maid. Beside the wheels
+ambled and babbled Harry Helm. At the bridge he fell back to us and
+found us talking of Charlotte. Camille was telling me how well Charlotte
+knew the region south of us, and how her plan was to dine at mid-day
+with such a friend and to pass the night with such another; but the
+moment Harry came up she began to upbraid him in her mellowest
+flute-notes for not telling us that he had got his wound in saving--
+
+"Now, you ladies--" cried the teased aide-de-camp, "I--I didn't save
+Gholson's life! I didn't try to save it! I only tried to split a
+Yankee's head and didn't even do that! Dick Smith, if you tell anybody
+else that I saved--Well, who did, then? Good Lordy! if I'd known that to
+save a man's life would make all this fuss I wouldn't 'a' done it! Why,
+Quinn and I had to sit and listen to Ned Ferry a solid half-hour last
+night, telling us the decent things he'd known Gholson to do, and the
+allowances we'd ought to make for a man with Gholson's sort of a
+conscience! And then, to cap--to clap--to clap the ki'--to cap--the
+_climax_--consound that word, I never did know what it meant--to clap
+the climax, Ned sends for Gholson and gets Quinn to speak to him
+civilly--aw, haw, haw!--Quinn showing all the time how he hated the job,
+like a cat when you make him jump over a stick! And then he led us on,
+with just a word here and there, until we all agreed as smooth as glass,
+that all Quinn had said was my fault, and all I had done was Gholson's
+fault, and all Gholson had said or done or left undone was our fault,
+and the rest was partly Ned's fault, but mostly accident."
+
+Camille declared she did not and would not believe there had been any
+fault with any one, anywhere, and especially with Mr. Gholson, and I
+liked Lieutenant Helm less than ever, noticing anew the unaccountable
+freedom with which Camille seemed to think herself entitled to rebuke
+him. "Oh, I'm in your power," he cried to her, "and I'll call him a
+spotless giraffe if you want me to! that's what he is; I've always
+thought so!" The spring-wagon was taking the left fork and he cantered
+ahead to begin his good-byes there and save her for the last. When he
+made his adieu to her he said, "Won't you let Mr. Smith halt here with
+me a few moments? I want to speak of one or two matters that--"
+
+She resigned me almost with scorn; which privately amused me, and, I
+felt sure, hoodwinked the aide-de-camp.
+
+"Say, Dick!" he began, as she moved away, "look here, I'm going to tell
+you something; Ned Ferry's in love with Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"Yes, I do, mean it! Smith, Ned's a grand fellow. I'm glad I came here
+yesterday."
+
+"Yes, you've secured a furlough."
+
+"Oh, this thing, yes; don't you wish you had it! No, I'm glad I came,
+for what I've learned. I'm glad for what Ned Ferry has taught me a man
+can do, and keep from doing, when he's got the upper hold of himself.
+And I'm glad for what she--you know who--by George! any man would know
+who ever saw her, for she draws every man who comes within her range, as
+naturally as a rose draws a bee. I'm glad for what she has taught me a
+woman can _be_, and can keep from being, so long as she knows there's
+one real man to live up to! just _up to_, mind you, I don't even say to
+live _for_."
+
+I stared with surprise. Was this the trivial Harry talking? Fact is, the
+pair we were talking about had by some psychical magic rarified the
+atmosphere for all of us until half our notes were above our
+normal pitch.
+
+"Do you mean she loves him; what sign of such a thing did she show
+yesterday or last evening?"
+
+"Not a sign of a sign! And yet I'll swear it! Do you know where she's
+gone?"
+
+"To-day? I think I do."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Well, Lieutenant, if I were she, _I_ should go straight into the Yankee
+lines behind Port Hudson. She's got Jewett's messages and his sword, and
+the Yank's won't know her as a Confederate any better than they ever
+did; for it's only these men whom we've captured who have found out
+she's Charlotte Oliver, or that she had any knowing part in General
+Austin's ruse."
+
+"If Oliver doesn't tell," said Harry, lifting his bad hand in pain.
+
+"He will not dare! If she can only get her word in first and tell them,
+herself, that he's Charlotte Oliver's husband and has just led the
+finest company of Federal scouts in the two States to destruction--"
+
+"Hi! that ought to cook his dough!--with her face--and her voice!"
+
+"Yes," I responded, "--and his breath."
+
+"And why do you think she wants to do this?" asked Harry.
+
+"She doesn't want to do it; but she feels she must, knowing that every
+blow he strikes from now on is struck on her account. I believe she's
+gone to warn the Yankees that his whole animus is personal revenge and
+that he will sacrifice anything or anybody, any principle or pledge or
+cause, at any moment, to wreak that private vengeance, in whole or
+in part."
+
+"Dick Smith, yes! But don't you see, besides, what she _does_ want? Why,
+she wants to keep Oliver and Ferry apart until somebody else for whom
+she doesn't care as she cares for Ned, say you, or I, or--or--"
+
+"Gholson?"
+
+"Gholson, no! she can't trust Gholson, Gholson's conscience is too
+vindictive; that's why she's keeping him with her as long as she can.
+No, but until some of us, I say, can give Oliver a thousand times better
+than he ought ever to get--except for her sake--"
+
+"Yes, you mean a soldier's clean death; and what you want of me is for
+me to say that I, for one, will lose no honest chance to give it to him,
+isn't it?"
+
+"What I want of you, Smith, is to tell you that _I_ shall lose no such
+chance."
+
+"Well, neither shall I."
+
+"Bully for you, Dick; bully boy with the glass eye! You see, you're one
+of only half a dozen or so that know Oliver when they see him; so Ned
+will soon be sending you after him. Ned's got a conscience, too, you
+know, as squirmy as Gholson's. Oh, Lord! yes, you don't often _see_ it,
+but it's as big and hard as a conscript's ague-cake." The Lieutenant
+gathered his rein; "Smith, I want Ned and her to get one another;
+that's me!"
+
+I was tempted to say it was me, too, but I forbore and only said it was
+I.
+
+"All the same," said Harry, "I'm sorry for the little girl!"
+
+"Little girl?"
+
+"Oh, come, now, you know!" He leaned to me and whispered, "Miss Cécile!"
+
+"Lieutenant," I replied, with a flush, realizing what I owed to the
+family as a prospective member of it, "you're mistaking a little
+patriotic ardor--"
+
+"Pat who--oh? I tell you, my covey,--and of course, you understand, I
+wouldn't breathe it any further--"
+
+"I'd rather you would not."
+
+"Phew-ew! I don't know why in the devil _you'd_ rather I would not,
+but--Smith,--she's so dead-gone in love with Ned Ferry, that if she
+doesn't get him--I George! it'll e'en a'most kill her!"
+
+I guffawed in derision. "And she didn't even have to tell you so! She
+can't even hide its deadly intensity from the casual bystander! haw!
+haw! haw! And it's all the outcome of a _three-days acquaintance_! It
+beats Doctor Swiftgrow's Mustache Invigor'--aw, haw! haw!" "Oh, you
+think so? Pity you couldn't get a few barrels of it--aw, haw! haw!" said
+Harry, and my laughter left off where his began. But, some way hurting
+his hand, he, too, stopped short. I drew my horse back.
+
+"Is that all you've noticed?" I smilingly inquired. "Isn't anybody else
+mortally in love with anybody else? You can't make me believe that's all
+you know!"
+
+"Well, then, I sha'n't try. I do know one thing more; heard it
+yesterday. Like to hear it?"
+
+"Like! Why, I'm just that dead-gone with curiosity that if I don't hear
+it it'll e'en a'most kill me--aw, haw! haw! haw!"
+
+"Well, I'm tired saving people's lives, but we won't count this one; you
+say you want to hear it--I can't give you all of it but it begins:
+
+"'Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair!
+  O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!'--
+
+"Haw! haw! haw! Good-bye, Smith,--aw, haw! haw! haw!--and it's all the
+outcome of a three-days acquaintance!--haw! haw! haw!--Oh,
+say!--Smith!"--I was leaving him--"that's right, go back and begin
+over!--'Return! return!'--aw, haw! haw! haw!"
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+UNIMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIAL
+
+On the second night after that morning of frantic mortification I was
+riding at Ned Ferry's side, in Louisiana. The camp of the brigade was a
+few miles behind us. Somewhere in front of us, fireless and close hid,
+lay our company of scouts, ahead of whose march he had pushed the day
+before to confer with the General, and we were now on our way to rejoin
+them. Under our horses' feet was that old Plank-road which every
+"buttermilk ranger" must remember--whether dead or not, I am tempted to
+say,--who rode under either flag in the Felicianas in '63 and '64.
+
+Late in the evening of the day on which I had conducted the Harpers to
+Squire Wall's I had received a despatch ordering me to board the next
+morning's train at Brookhaven with my horse. On it I should find a
+number of cases of those shoes I had seen at Hazlehurst. At Tangipahoa I
+was to transfer them to one or two army-wagons which would by that time
+have reached there, and bring them across to Clinton, where a guard
+would meet and join me to conduct the wagons to camp. And thus I had
+done, bearing with me a sad vision of dear dark Miss Harper fluttering
+her handkerchief above her three nieces' heads, one of whom refrained
+until the opportunity had all but gone, to wave good-bye to the visibly
+wretched author of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes." My
+lucky Cricket had gone three nights and two whole days with no harness
+but his halter, and to-night, beside the Yankee's horse, that still bore
+Ned Ferry, he was as good as new. My leader and I talked of Charlotte.
+In the middle of this day's forenoon Gholson had come into camp
+reporting at the General's tent the long ride she had made on Monday; as
+good a fifty miles as Ferry's own. We called it, now, Ferry and I, a
+most clever achievement for a woman. "Many women," he said, "know how to
+ride, but she knows how to march."
+
+"I think you must have taught her," I responded, and he enjoyed his
+inability to deny it. So I ventured farther and said she seemed to me
+actually to have reached, in the few days since I had first seen her, a
+finer spiritual stature.
+
+"She?" he asked; "ah! she is of the kind that must grow or die. Yes, you
+may be right; but in that time she has kept me so occupied growing,
+myself, that I did not notice she was doing the same. But also, I think,
+the eyes with which we look at her have grown."
+
+"She has outgrown this work," I insisted.
+
+"Those letters--to the newspapers?"
+
+"No, this other; this work which she has to do by craft and wiles and
+disguises. Lieutenant, I don't believe she can go on doing that now with
+her past skill, since life has become to her a nobler story than it
+promised to be."
+
+My companion lifted higher in the saddle with delight. Then soberly he
+said, "We have got to lose her." I turned inquiringly and he continued:
+"She has done me the honor to tell me--Miss Harper and me--that if she
+succeeds in what she is now trying to do--you know?--"
+
+"I think I do. It's to prevent Oliver from making himself useful to the
+enemy, isn't it?"
+
+"Well--like that; and she says if she comes out all right she will leave
+us; yes, for the hospital service."
+
+"Hosp'--Oh--oh! gangrene, typhoid, lock-jaw, itch, small-pox! Isn't she
+deep enough in the hospital service already, with her quinine dolls?"
+
+"Ah! but she cannot continue to play dolls that way; she must find
+something else. I see you have my temptation; yes, the desire to see her
+always doing something splendid. That is not 'real life,' as you call
+it. And besides, was not that you said one time to me 'No splendor
+shines at last so far as a hidden splendor'?"
+
+"No, sir! I suppose it's true, but I never want to see her splendor
+shining through pock-marks." The reply won from him a gesture of
+approval, and this gave me a reckless tongue. "Why, if I were you,
+Lieutenant, she simply shouldn't go! Good Heaven! isn't she far enough
+away at the nearest? How can you tamely--no, I don't mean tamely,
+but--how can you _endure_ to let this matter drift--how can you
+endure it?"
+
+At the beginning of my question he straightened exactly as I had seen
+him do in the middle of the lane when our recoiled column was
+staggering; but as my extravagance flamed up he quieted rebukingly, and
+with a quieter smile than ever asked "Is that a soldier's question?
+Smith, is there not something wrong with you to-night?"
+
+"There always is," I replied.
+
+"No, but to-night I think you are taking that 'lower fork' you talk
+sometimes about. Of course, if you don't want to tell--"
+
+"_May_ I tell you?"
+
+"Ah, certainly! Is it that little Harper girl?"
+
+I nodded, all choked up. When I could speak I had to drop the words by
+ones and twos, and did not so much as say them as let them bleed from my
+lips; and never while I live shall I forget the sweet, grave, perfect
+sympathy with which my friend listened and led me on, and listened and
+led me on. I said I had never believed in love at first sight until now
+when it had come upon me to darken and embitter my life henceforth.
+
+He replied that certainly love sometimes _germinated_ at first sight,
+and I interrupted greedily that that was all I claimed--except that love
+could also, at times, _grow to maturity_ with amazing speed, a speed I
+never could have credited previous to these last four days. And he
+admitted as much, but thought time only could prove such love; whereto I
+rejoined that that was what she had answered.
+
+He glanced at me suddenly, then smoothed his horse's mane, and said,
+gently, "That means you have declared yourself to her?"
+
+I confessed I had, and told him how, on our journey to Squire Wall's,
+being stung to desperation by the infantile way in which she had drooled
+out to others what my love had sacredly confided to her alone, I had
+abruptly confronted her with the fact, and in the ensuing debate,
+carried away by the torrent of my emotions, had offered her my love, for
+life and all.
+
+"And she--ah, yes. I see; and I see, too, that in all she ever said or
+did or seemed, before, she never made herself such a treasure to be
+longed for and fought and lived for as in the way in which she--"
+He paused.
+
+"Refused me! Oh, it's so; it's so! Ah! if you could have witnessed her
+dignity, her wisdom, her grace, her compassionate immovableness, you'd
+never think of her as the little Harper girl again. She said that if the
+unpremeditated, headlong way in which I had told my passion were my only
+mistake, and if it were only for my sake, she would not, if she could,
+answer favorably, and that I, myself, at last, would not have a girl who
+would have a man who would offer his love in that way, and that she
+would not have a man who would have a girl who would have a man who
+should offer his love in that way."
+
+I call it one of the sweetest kindnesses ever done me, that Ned Ferry
+heard me to the end of that speech and did not smile. Instead he asked
+"Did she say that as if a'--as if--amused?"
+
+"No, Lieutenant, she nearly cried. Oh, I wish we were on some dangerous
+errand to-night, instead of just camp and bed!"
+
+"Well, that's all right, Richard; we are."
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+"CAN I GET THERE BY CANDLE-LIGHT?"
+
+After a few minutes we quitted the public way by an obscure path in the
+woods on our right. When we had followed this for two or three miles we
+turned to the left again and pressed as softly as we could into a low
+tangled ground where the air seemed stagnant and mosquitoes stung
+savagely. We wiped away the perspiration in streams. I pushed forward to
+Ferry's side and whispered my belief that at last we were to see rain.
+
+"Yes," he said, "and with thunder and lightning; just what we want
+to-night."
+
+I asked why. "Oh, they hate our thunder-storms, those Yankee patrols."
+
+Presently we were in a very dark road, and at a point where it dropped
+suddenly between steep sides we halted in black shadow. A gleam of pale
+sand, a whisper of deep flowing waters, and a farther glimmer of more
+sands beyond them challenged our advance. We had come to a "grapevine
+ferry." The scow was on the other side, the water too shoal for the
+horses to swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the
+blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering,
+long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little
+sinner the screech-owl. Ferry murmured to me to answer it and I sent the
+same faint horror-stricken tremolo back. Again it came to us, from not
+farther than one might toss his cap, and I followed Ferry down to the
+water's edge. The grapevine guy swayed at our side, we heard the scow
+slide from the sands, and in a few moments, moved by two videttes, it
+touched our shore. Soon we were across, the two videttes riding with us,
+and beyond a sharp rise, in an old opening made by the swoop of a
+hurricane, we entered the silent unlighted bivouac of Ferry's scouts.
+Ferry got down and sat on the earth talking with Quinn, while the
+sergeants quietly roused the sleepers to horse.
+
+Now we marched, and when we had gone a mile or so Ned Ferry turned
+aside, taking with him only Sergeant Jim, Kendall, another private, and
+me. We went at an alert walk single-file for the better part of an hour
+and stopped at length in a narrow untilled "deadening." Beyond it at our
+left a faint redness shone just above the tree-tops. At our right, in
+the northwest, a similar glow was ruddier, the heavens being darker
+there except when once or twice they paled with silent lightnings.
+Sergeant Jim went forward alone and on foot, and presently was back
+again, whispering to Ferry and remounting.
+
+Ferry led Kendall and me into the woods, the other two remaining. We
+found rising ground, and had ridden but a few minutes when from its
+crest we looked upon a startling sight. In front of us was a stretch of
+specially well farmed land. Our woods swept round it on both sides,
+crossed a highway, and gradually closed in again so as to terminate the
+opening about half a mile away. Always the same crops, bottom cause of
+the war: from us to the road an admirable planting of cotton, and from
+there to the farther woods as goodly a show of thick corn. The whole
+acreage swept downward to that terminus, at the same time sinking inward
+from the two sides. On the highway shone the lighted rear window of a
+roadside "store," and down the two sides of the whole tract stretched
+the hundred tent-fires of two brigade camps of the enemy's cavalry.
+Their new, white canvases were pitched in long, even alleys following
+the borders of the wood, from which the brush had been cut away far
+enough for half of them to stand under the trees. The men had quieted
+down to sleep, but at one tent very near us a group of regimental
+officers sat in the light of a torch-basket, and by them were planted
+their colors. A quartet of capital voices were singing, and one who
+joined the chorus, standing by the flag, absently yet caressingly spread
+it at such breadth that we easily read on it the name of the command.
+Let me leave that out.
+
+As they sang, and as we sat in our saddles behind the low fence that ran
+quite round the opening, Ferry turned from looking across into the
+lighted window on the road and handed me his field-glass. "How many
+candles do you see in there?"
+
+I saw two. "Yes," he said, dismounting and motioning me to do the same.
+Kendall took our bridles. Leaving him with the animals we went over the
+fence, through the cotton, across the road at a point terribly near the
+lighted and guarded shop, and on down the field of corn, to and over its
+farthest fence; stooping, gliding, halting, crouching, in the
+cotton-rows and corn-rows; taking every posture two upright gentlemen
+would rather not take; while nevertheless I swelled with pride, to be
+alone at the side--or even at the heels--of one who, for all this
+apparent skulking and grovelling, and in despite of all the hidden
+drawings of his passion for a fair woman at this hour somewhere in
+peril, kept his straight course in lion-hearted pursuit of his duty (as
+he saw it) to a whole world of loves and lovers, martyrs and fighters,
+hosts of whom had as good a right to their heart's desire as I to mine
+or he to his; and I remembered Charlotte Oliver saying, on her knees, "I
+believe no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart from a love that loves
+the whole world's joy better than any separate joy of any
+separate soul."
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+"YES, AND BACK AGAIN"
+
+One matter of surprise to me was that this whole property had escaped
+molestation. I wondered who could be so favored by the enemy and yet be
+so devoted to our cause as to signal us from his window with their
+sentinels at his doors; and as we passed beyond the cornfield's farther
+fence I ventured to ask Ferry.
+
+"Aaron Goldschmidt," he whispered, as we descended into a dry, tangled
+swamp. In the depths of this wild, beside a roofed pen of logs stored
+with half a dozen bales of cotton, we were presently in the company of a
+very small man who tossed a hand in token of great amusement.
+
+"Hello, Ned!" he whispered in antic irony; "what an accident is dat,
+meeding so! Whoever is expecting someding like dis!"
+
+"Well, I hope nobody, Isidore; I hardly expected it myself, your father
+set those candles so close the one behind the other."
+
+Isidore doubled with mirth and as suddenly straightened. "Your horse is
+here since yesterday. _She_ left him--by my father. She didn't t'ink t'e
+Yankees is going to push away out here to-night. But he is a pusher,
+t'at Grierson! You want him to-night, t'at horse? He is here by me, but
+I t'ink you best not take him, hmm? To cross t'e creek and go round t'e
+ot'er way take you more as all night; and to go back t'is same way you
+come, even if I wrap him up in piece paper you haven't got a lawch
+insite pocket you can carry him?" He laughed silently and the next
+instant was more in earnest than ever.
+
+"_She_ is in a tight place! She hires my mother's pony to ride in to
+headquarters." He called them hatekvartuss, but we need not. "I t'ink
+she is not a prisoner--_unless_--she wants to come back." He doubled
+again. "Anyhow, I wish you can see her to-night; she got another
+doll-baby for t'e gildren, and she give you waluable informations by de
+hatfull.... Find her? I tell you how you find her in finfty-nine
+minutes--vedder permitting, t'at is."
+
+The last phrase was fitted to a listening pose, and the first mutter of
+the pending thunder-storm came out of the northwest. Then Isidore
+hastened through the practical details of his proposition. Ferry drew a
+breath of enthusiasm. "Can I have my horse, bridled and saddled, in
+three minutes?"
+
+"I pring um in two!" said Isidore, and vanished. Ferry turned with an
+overmastering joy in every note of his whispered utterance. "After all!"
+he said, and I could have thrown my arms around him in pure delight to
+hear duty and heart's desire striking twelve together.
+
+"Smith," he asked, "can you start back without me? Then go at once; I
+shall overtake you on my horse."
+
+I stole through the cornfield safely; the frequent lightnings were still
+so well below the zenith as to hide me in a broad confusion of monstrous
+shadows. But when I came to cross the road no crouching or gliding would
+do. I must go erect and only at the speed of some ordinary official
+errand. So I did, at a point between two opposite fence-gaps, closely
+after an electric gleam, and I was rejoicing in the thick darkness that
+followed, when all at once the whole landscape shone like day and I
+stood in the middle of the road, in point-blank view of a small squad, a
+"visiting patrol". They were trotting toward me in the highway, hardly a
+hundred yards off. As the darkness came again and the thunder crashed
+like falling timbers, I started into the cotton-field at an easy
+double-quick. The hoofs of one horse quickened to a gallop. A strong
+wind swept over, big rain-drops tapped me on the shoulder and pattered
+on the cotton-plants, the sound of the horse's galloping ceased as he
+turned after me in the soft field, and presently came the quiet call
+"Halt, there, you on foot." I went faster. I knew by my pursuer's
+coming alone that he did not take me for a Confederate, and that the
+worst I should get, to begin with, would be the flat of his sabre.
+Shrewdly loading my tongue with that hard northern _r_ which I hated
+more than all unrighteousness, I called back "Oh, I'm under orders! go
+halt some fool who's got time to halt!"
+
+I obliqued as if bound for the headquarters fire where we had seen the
+singers, the lightning branched over the black sky like tree-roots, the
+thunder crashed and pounded again, the wind stopped in mid-career, and
+the rain came straight down in sheets. "Halt!" yelled the horseman. He
+lifted his blade, but I darted aside and doubled, and as he whirled
+around after me, another rider, meeting him and reining in at such close
+quarters that the mud flew over all three of us, lifted his hand
+and said--
+
+"He is right, sergeant, he is carrying out my orders." Ferry's black
+silk handkerchief about his neck covered his Confederate bars of rank,
+and the Federal may or may not have noted the absence of
+shoulder-straps; our arms remained undrawn; and so the sergeant,
+catching a breath or two of disconcertion, caught nothing else. While
+Ferry spoke on for another instant I showed my heels; then he left the
+dripping Yankee mouthing an angry question and loped after me, and over
+the low fence went the two of us almost together.
+
+Kendall was not there, the Federal camp-makers had tardily repaired
+their blunder by posting guards; but these were not looking for their
+enemies from the side of their own camp, and as we cleared the fence in
+the full blaze of a lightning flash, only two or three wild shots sang
+after us. In the black downpour Ferry reached me an invisible hand. I
+leapt astride his horse's croup, and trusting the good beast to pick his
+way among the trees himself, we sped away. Soon we came upon our three
+men waiting with the horses, and no great while afterward the five of us
+rejoined our command. The storm lulled to mild glimmerings and a gentle
+shower, and the whole company, in one long single file, began to sweep
+hurriedly, stealthily, and on a wide circuit of obscurest byways, deeper
+than ever into the enemy's lines.
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+CHARLOTTE IN THE TENTS OF THE FOE
+
+From certain rank signs of bad management in the Federal camp one could
+easily guess that our circuit was designed to bring us around to its
+rear. That a colonel's tent--the one where the singers were--was not
+where the colonel's tent belonged was a trifle, but the slovenliness
+with which the forest borders of the camp were guarded was a graver
+matter. Evidently those troops were at least momentarily in unworthy
+hands, and I was so remarking to Kendall when a murmured command came
+back from Ferry, to tell Dick Smith to stop that whispering. I was
+sorry, for I wanted to add that I knew we were not going to attack the
+camp itself. That was on Wednesday night. Charlotte and Gholson had
+made their ride of fifty miles on Monday. The friends with whom she
+stopped at nightfall contrived to cram him into their crowded soldiers'
+room, and he had given the whole company of his room-mates, as they sat
+up in their beds, a full account of the fight at Sessions's, Charlotte's
+care of the sick and dying, and the singing, by her and the blue-coats,
+of their battle-song. Next morning Charlotte, without Gholson--who
+turned off to camp--rode on to Goldschmidt's store, just beyond which
+there was then still a Confederate picket. Here she hired Mrs.
+Goldschmidt's pony, rode to the picket, and presented the Coralie
+Rothvelt pass.
+
+"Miss Coralie Rothvelt; yes, all right," said the officer, "the men that
+rode with you this morning told me all about you." He went with her as
+far as his videttes, and thence she rode alone to a picket of the
+Federal army and by her request was conducted under guard to the
+headquarters of a corps commander. To him and his chief-of-staff she
+told the fate of Jewett's scouts and delivered the messages of their
+dying leader; and then she tendered the hero's sword.
+
+The staff-officer cut away its cornhusk wrapping and read aloud the
+owner's name on the hilt. The General laid the mighty weapon across his
+palm and sternly shut his lips. "How did you get through the enemy's
+pickets with this?"
+
+"I had a Confederate general's pass."
+
+"Ah! Is the Confederate general as nameless as yourself?"
+
+"I am not nameless; I only ask leave to withhold my name until I have
+told one or two other things."
+
+"But you don't mind confessing you're an out-and-out rebel sympathizer?"
+
+Under the broad-brimmed hat her smile grew to a sparkle. "No, I enjoy
+it."
+
+The chief-of-staff smiled, but the General darkened and pressed his
+questions. At length he summed up. "So, then, you wish me to believe
+that you did all you did, and now have come into our lines at a most
+extraordinary and exhausting speed and running the ugliest kinds of
+risks, in mere human sympathy for a dying stranger, he being a Union
+officer and you a secessionist of"--a courtly bow--"the very elect;
+that's your meaning, is it not?"
+
+"No, General; in the first place, I am not one of any elect."
+
+A flattering glimmer of amusement came into the two men's faces, but
+some change in Charlotte's manner arrested it and brought an enhanced
+deference.
+
+"In the second place, I am not here merely on this errand."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"No, General. And in the last place, my motive in this errand is no mere
+sympathy for any one person; I am here from a sense of public duty--"
+The speaker seemed suddenly overtaken by emotions, dropped her words
+with pained evenness, and fingered the lace handkerchief in her lap.
+
+"Pardon," interrupted the General, "the sunlight annoys you. Major, will
+you drop that curtain?" "Thank you. One thing I am here for, General,
+is to tell you something, and I have to begin by asking that neither of
+you will ever say how you learned it."
+
+The two men bowed.
+
+"Thank you. Please understand, also, I have never uttered this but to
+one friend, a lady. There was no need; I have not wanted aid or counsel,
+even from friends. But I feel duty bound to tell it to you, now,
+because, for one thing, the brave soldier who wore that sword--" Her
+eyes rose to the weapon and fell again; she bit her lip.
+
+"Yes--well--what of him?"
+
+"He was lured to disaster and death by a man whose supreme purpose was,
+and is to-day, revenge upon me. That man drew him to his ruin purely in
+search of my life." Charlotte sat with her strange in-looking,
+out-looking gaze holding the gaze of her questioner until for relief
+he spoke.
+
+"Why, young lady, it's hard to doubt anything you say, but really that
+sounds rather fanciful. Why should you think it?"
+
+"I do not think it, I know it. He sends me his own assurance of it by
+his own father, so that his revenge may be fuller by my knowing daily
+and hourly that he is on my trail."
+
+"And you appeal to me for protection?"
+
+She smiled. "No. I am not seeking to divert his fury from myself, but to
+confine it to myself. Fancy yourself a human-hearted woman, General, and
+murder being done day by day because you are alive." "Oh, this is
+incredible! What is its occasion, its origin? How are you in any way
+responsible?"
+
+"Why, largely I am not. Yet in degree I am, General, because of
+shortcomings of mine--faults--errors--that--oh--that have their bearing
+in the case, don't you see?"
+
+"No, I don't; pray don't ask me to draw inferences; I might infer too
+much."
+
+"Yes, you might, easily," said Charlotte; "for I only mean shortcomings
+of the kind we readily excuse in others though we never can or should
+pardon them in ourselves."
+
+The General turned an arch smile of perplexity upon his chief-of-staff.
+"I don't think we're quite up to that line of perpetual snow,
+Walter, are we?"
+
+The chief-of-staff "guessed they were not."
+
+Charlotte resumed. "I have come to you in the common interest, to warn
+you against that man. I believe he is on his way here to offer his
+services as a guide. He is fearless, untiring, and knows all this region
+by heart."
+
+"Union man, I take it, is he not?"
+
+"No, he's Federal, Confederate or guerilla as it may suit his bloody
+ends."
+
+"And you want me not to make use of him."
+
+"Oh, more than that; I want him stopped!--stopped from killing and
+burning on his and my private account. But I want much more than that,
+too. I know how you commonly stop such men."
+
+"We hang them to the first tree."
+
+"Yes, our side does the same. If I wanted such a fate to overtake him I
+should only have to let him alone. At risks too hideous to name I have
+saved him from it twice. I am here to-day chiefly to circumvent his
+purposes; but if I may do so in the way I wish to propose to you, I
+shall also save him once more. I am willing to save him--in that
+way--although by so doing I shall lose--fearfully." She dropped her
+glance and turned aside.
+
+"How do you propose to circumvent and yet save him?"
+
+"By getting you to send him so far to your own army's rear that he
+cannot get back; to compel him to leave the country; to go into your
+country, where law and order reign as they cannot here between
+the lines."
+
+"And you consider that a reasonable request?"
+
+"Oh, sir, I must make it! I can ask no less!"
+
+"But you say if this scheme works you lose by it. What will you lose?"
+
+"I may lose track of him! If I lose track of him I may have to go
+through a long life not knowing whether he is dead or alive."
+
+"And suppose--why,--young lady, I thought you were unmarried. I--oh,
+what do you mean; is he--?"
+
+Charlotte's head drooped and her hands trembled. "Yes, by law and church
+decree he is my husband."
+
+"Good Heaven!" murmured the General, drew a breath, and folded his arms.
+"But, madam! if a man _abandons_ his wife--"
+
+"I abandoned him."
+
+"Good for you!" "It was vital for me. But I did it on evidence which
+our laws ignore, the testimony of slaves. Oh, General, don't try to
+untangle me; only stop him!"
+
+"Ah! madam, I'll do the little I can. How am I to know him?"
+
+"By a pistol-wound in his right hand, got last week. He would have got
+it in his brain but for my pleading. His name is Oliver."
+
+"Oliver; hmm! any relation to Charlotte Oliver, your so called newspaper
+correspondent? I'd like to stop her.--How?--I don't quite hear you."
+
+"I am Charlotte Oliver."
+
+The two officers glanced sharply at each other. When the General turned
+again he flushed resentfully. "Have you never resumed your maiden name?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then, madam, tell me this! With a whole world of other people's names
+to choose from, why _have_ you borrowed Charlotte Oliver's? Have you
+come here determined to be sent to prison, Miss Coralie Rothvelt?"
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+STAY TILL TO-MORROW
+
+Charlotte did not move an eyelash. Gradually a happy confidence lighted
+her face. "Freedom or prison is to me a secondary question. I came here
+determined to use only the truth. No wild creature loves to be free more
+than I do. I want to go back into our lines, and to go at once; but--I
+am Charlotte Oliver."
+
+"Young lady, listen to me. I know your story is nearly all true. I know
+some good things about you which you have modestly left out; one of the
+rebels who stopped where you did last night and rode with you this
+morning was brought to me a prisoner half an hour ago. But he said your
+name was Rothvelt. How's that?"
+
+"Unfortunately, General, my name is Charlotte Oliver. Two or three times
+I have had use for so much concealment as there was in the childish
+prank of turning my name wrong side out." The speaker made a sign to the
+chief-of-staff: "Write the two names side by side and see if they
+are not one."
+
+He was already doing so, and nodded laughingly to his superior.
+Charlotte spoke on. "I tell you the truth only, gentlemen, though I tell
+you no more of it than I must. I have run many a risk to get the truth,
+and to get it early. If it is your suspicion that by so doing, or in any
+other way, I have forfeited a lady's liberty, let me hear and answer.
+If not--"
+
+"Oh, I'll have to send you to the provost-martial at Baton Rouge and let
+you settle that with him."
+
+"Ah, no, General! By the name of the lady you love best, I beg you to
+see my need and let me go. I promise you never henceforth to offend your
+cause except in that mere woman's sympathy with what you call rebellion,
+for which women are not so much as banished by you--or if they are, then
+banish me! Treat me no better, and no worse, than a 'registered enemy'!"
+
+The General shook his head. "Your registration has been in the open
+field of military action; sometimes, I fear, between the lines. At least
+it has been with your pen."
+
+"General, I have laid down the pen."
+
+"Indeed! to take up what?"
+
+"The spoon!" said Charlotte, with that smile which no man ever wholly
+resisted. "I leave the sword and its questions to my brother man, in the
+blue and in the gray--God save it!--and have pledged myself to the gray,
+to work from now on only under the yellow flag of mercy and healing."
+
+"Yes, of course; mercy--and comfort--and every sort of unarmed aid--to
+rebels."
+
+"To the men you call so, yes. Yet I pledge you, General, to deal as
+tenderly with every man in blue who comes within range of my care as I
+did with Captain Jewett."
+
+"Oh, I know you did even better than you've told me, but I'd be a fool
+to send you back on the instant, so. Stay till to-morrow or next day."
+The captor smiled. "Major, I think we owe the lady that much
+hospitality."
+
+The Major thought so, and that she must need a day's rest, more than she
+realized. She could be made in every way comfortable--under guard at
+"Mr. Gilmer's." The Gilmers were Unionists, whose fine character had
+been their only protection through two years of ostracism, yet he
+believed they would treat her well. "Oh! not there, please," said
+Charlotte; "I hear they are to give some of your officers a dance
+to-morrow evening!" and there followed a parley that called forth all
+her playfullest tact. "Oh, no," she said, at one critical point, "I'm
+not so narrow or sour but I could dance with a blue uniform; but
+suppose--why, suppose one's friends in gray should catch one dancing
+with one's enemies in blue. Such things have happened, you know."
+
+"It sha'n't happen to-morrow night," laughed the General.
+
+She offered to nurse the Federal sick, instead, in the command's
+field-hospital, but no, the General rose to end the interview. "My dear
+young lady, the saintliest thing we can let you do is to dance at that
+merrymaking."
+
+She rose. "As a prisoner under guard, General, I can nurse the sick, but
+I will not dance."
+
+The General smiled. "I'll take your parole."
+
+"Oh! exact a parole from a woman?"
+
+"Good gracious, why shouldn't I! As for you,--ha!--I'd as soon turn a
+commissioned rebel officer loose in my camp unparoled as you."
+
+"Then take my parole! I give it! you have it! I'll take the chances."
+
+"And the dances?" asked the Major.
+
+"Very good," said the General, "you are now on parole. See the lady
+conducted to Squire Gilmer's, Major. And now, Miss--eh,--day after
+to-morrow morning I shall either pass you beyond my lines or else send
+you to Baton Rouge. Good-day." When Charlotte found herself alone in a
+room of the Gilmer house she lay down upon the bed staring and sighing
+with dismay; she was bound by a parole! If within its limit of time
+Oliver should appear, "It will mean Baton Rouge for me!" she cried under
+her breath, starting up and falling back again; "Baton Rouge, New
+Orleans, Ship Island!" She was in as feminine a fright as though she had
+never braved a danger. Suddenly a new distress overwhelmed her:
+if--if--someone to deliver her should come--"Oh Heaven! I am
+paroled!--bound hand and foot by my insane parole!"
+
+Softly she sprang from the bed, paced the floor, went to the window,
+seemed to look out upon the landscape; but in truth she was looking in
+upon herself. There she saw a most unaccountable tendency for her
+judgment--after some long overstrain--momentarily, but all at once, to
+swoon, collapse, turn upside down like a boy's kite and dart to earth;
+an impulse--while fancying she was playing the supremely courageous or
+generous or clever part--suddenly to surrender the key of the situation,
+the vital point in whatever she might be striving for. "Ah me, ah me!
+why did I give my parole?"
+
+At the close of the next day--"Walter," said the General as the
+chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--"oh, thud
+devil!--you going to that dance?"
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+THE DANCE AT GILMER'S
+
+All the while that I recount these scenes there come to me soft
+orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking
+of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music
+which I heard first--and last--in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other
+so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the
+daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into
+a roof; wail and huzza, camp-fire, litter and grave; battlefield stench;
+fiddle and flame; and ever in the midst these impromptu merrymakings to
+keep us from going stark mad, one and all,--as so many literally did.
+
+The Gilmer daughters were fair, but they were only three, and the
+Gilmers were the sole Unionists in their neighborhood. "Still, a few
+girls will come," said Charlotte, sparkling first blue and then black at
+a sparkling captain who said that, after all, the chief-of-staff had
+decided he couldn't attend. I know she sparkled first blue and then
+black, for she always did so when she told of it in later days.
+
+"They say," responded the captain, "that in this handy little world
+there are always a few to whom policy is the best honesty; is that the
+few who will come?"
+
+"You are cynical," said Charlotte, "this is only their unarmed way of
+saving house and home for the brothers to come back to when you are
+purged out of the land."
+
+When the time came there were partners for eight gallants, and the
+gallants numbered sixteen. They counted off by twos; the evens waited
+while the odds danced the half of each set, and then the odds waited and
+cooled, tried to cool, out on the veranda. But when a reel was called
+the whole twenty-four danced together, while the fiddler (from the
+contraband camp) improvised exultant words to his electrifying tunes.
+
+      "O _ladies_ ramble in,
+          Whilst de _beaux_ ramble out,
+For to guile[1] dat golden _cha--ain._
+      My _Lawdy!_ it's a sin
+          Fo' a _fiddleh_ not to shout!
+Miss _Charlotte's_ a-comin' down de _la--ane_!"
+
+[Footnote 1: Coil.]
+
+Now the dance is off, but now it is on again, and again. The fiddler
+toils to finer and finer heights of enthusiasm; slippers twinkle,
+top-boots flash, the evens come in (to the waltz) and the odds, out on
+the veranda, tell one another confidentially how damp they are. Was ever
+an evening so smotheringly hot! Through the house-grove, where the
+darkness grows blacker and blacker and the tepid air more and more
+breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their
+horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet
+for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.]
+One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture:
+the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room,
+and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and
+fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, and on
+their haunches at every door, the squalid field-hands making grotesque
+silhouettes against the yellow glow that streamed out into the trees.
+
+Now the lightning seems nearer. Hark, that was thunder; soft, but real.
+At last the air moves; there is a breeze, and the girls come out on the
+gallants' arms to drink it in. As they lift their brows and sigh their
+comfort the lightning grows brighter, the thunder comes more promptly
+and louder, and the maidens flinch and half scream, yet linger for one
+more draft of the blessed coolness. Suddenly an inverted tree of
+blinding light branches down the sky, and the thunder crashes in one's
+very ears; the couples recoil into a group at the door, the lightning
+again fills heaven and earth, it shows the bending trees far afield, and
+the thunders peal at each other as if here were all Vicksburg and Port
+Hudson, with Porter and Farragut going by. So for a space; then the wind
+drops to a zephyr, and though the sky still blazes and crashes, and
+flames and roars, the house purrs with content under the sweet strokings
+of the rain.
+
+Let it pour! the dining-room is the centre of all things; the ladies sip
+the custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the
+punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs
+on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat;
+and the couples are again on the floor. The departing thunders grumble
+as they go, the rain falls more and more sparingly, and now it is a
+waltz, and now a quadrille, and now it's a reel again, with Miss Sallie
+or Louise or Laura or Lucille or Miss Flora "a-comin' down de lane!"
+
+So come the stars again, one by one. In a pause between dances Charlotte
+and the staff captain go to the veranda's far end and stand against the
+rail. The night is still very dark, the air motionless. Charlotte is
+remarking how far they can hear the dripping of the grove, when she
+gives a start and the captain an amused grunt; a soft, heart-broken,
+ear-searching quaver comes from just over yonder by the horses. "One of
+those pesky little screech-owls," he says. "Don't know as I ever heard
+one before under just these condi'--humph! there's another, around on
+this side."
+
+"I think I will go in," says Charlotte, with a pretence of languor. As
+they do so the same note sounds a third time; her pace quickens, and in
+passing a bright window, with a woman's protecting impulse she changes
+from his left arm to his right so as to be on the side next the owls. A
+moment later she is alone in the middle of her room, a lighted candle in
+one hand, a regally dressed doll in the other, and in her heart the cry,
+"Oh, Edgard, Edgard, my parole, my parole!"
+
+Once more she is downstairs, in the lane which the dancers are making
+for their last reel. Two of the gallants have gone out to see the
+horses, and something keeps them, but there is no need to wait. The
+fiddle rings a chord! the merry double line straightens down the hall
+from front door to rear, bang! says the fiddler's foot--"hands
+round!"--and hands round it is! In the first of the evening they had
+been obliged to tell the fiddler the names of the dancers, but now he
+knows them all and throws off his flattering personalities and his
+overworked rhymes with an impartial rotation and unflagging ardor. Once
+in a while some one privately gives him a new nickname for the next man
+"a-comin' down de lane," and as he yawps it out the whole dance gathers
+new mirth and speed.
+
+Now the third couple clasp hands, arch arms, and let the whole
+countermarching train sweep through; and a beautiful arch they make, for
+they are the aforesaid captain and Charlotte Oliver. "Hands
+round!"--hurrah for the whirling ellipse; and now it's "right and left"
+and two ellipses glide opposite ways, "to quile dat golden chain." In
+the midst of the whirl, when every hand is in some other and men and
+girls are tossing their heads to get their locks out of their eyes, at
+the windows come unnoticed changes and two men loiter in by the front
+hall door, close to the fiddler. One has his sword on, and each his
+pistols, and their boots and mud-splashed uniforms of dubious blue are
+wet and steamy. The one without the sword gives the fiddler a fresh name
+to sing out when the spinning ring shall straighten into its two gay
+ranks again, and bids him--commandingly--to yell it; and with never a
+suspicion of what it stands for, the stamping and scraping fiddler
+shouts the name of a man who "loves a good story with a
+positive passion."
+
+    "Come _a-left_, come a-right,
+       Come yo' _lily_-white hand,
+Fo' to _quile_ dat _golden cha--ain_.
+    O _ladies_ caper light--
+       Sweetest _ladies_ in de land--
+NED FERRY's a-comin' down de la--ane!"
+
+[Illustration: Musical Notation]
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+HE'S DEAD.--IS SHE ALIVE?
+
+Cries of masculine anger and feminine affright filled the hall, but one
+ringing order for silence hushed all, and the dance stood still with Ned
+Ferry in its centre. In his right hand, shoulder high, he held not his
+sword, but Charlotte's fingers lightly poised for the turn in the
+arrested dance. "Stand, gentlemen, every man is covered by two; look at
+the doors; look at the windows." The staff captain daringly sprang for
+the front door, but Ferry's quick boot caught his instep and he struck
+the floor full length. Like lightning Ferry's sword was out, but he only
+gave it a deferential sweep. "Sir! better luck next time!--Lieutenant
+Quinn, put the Captain in your front rank."
+
+Quinn hustled the captives "down a lane," as the fiddler might have
+said, of Ferry's scouts, mounted them on their own horses at the door,
+and hurried them away. Charlotte had vanished but was back again in hat
+and riding-skirt. Ferry caught her hand and they ran to the front
+veranda steps just as the prisoners and guard rode swiftly from them.
+Kendall and I had the stirrup ready for her; the saddle was a man's, but
+she made a horn of its pommel, and in a flash the four of us were
+mounted. Nevertheless before we could move the grove resounded with
+shots, and Ferry, bidding us ride on after the fleeing guard, wheeled
+and galloped to where half our troop were holding back their assailants
+in the dark. But then, to our distraction, Charlotte would not fly.
+"Richard, I'm paroled!"--"Charlotte Oliver, you're my prisoner!" I
+reached for her bridle, but she avoided me and with a cry of
+recollection wheeled and was on her way back. "I forgot something! I can
+get it, I left the room lighted!"
+
+I remember vividly yet the high purpose and girlish propitiation that
+rang together in her voice. Kendall dashed after her while I went
+against a wet bough that all but threw me; but before he could reach her
+she flew up the steps, crying "Hold my horse!"
+
+"Mine, too!" I cried, springing up after her. How queerly the inner
+house stood alight and silent, its guests and inmates hidden, while
+outside pistols and carbines flashed and cracked. I came upon Charlotte,
+just recrossing her chamber to leave it, with her doll in her arms.
+"Come!" I cried, "our line is falling back behind the house!" Her head
+flinched aside, a bit of her hat flew from it, and a pistol-ball buried
+itself in the ceiling straight over my head. We ran downstairs together,
+pulling, pushing and imploring each other in the name of honor, duty and
+heaven to let him--let her--go out first through the bright hall door.
+Kendall was not in sight, but in a dim half-light a few yards off we saw
+Oliver. He was afoot, bending low, and gliding toward us with his
+revolver in his left hand. He fired as I did; her clutch spoiled my aim;
+with eager eyes she straightened to her finest height, cried "Richard!
+tell Lieutenant Ferry he--" and with a long sigh sank into my arms. A
+rush of hoofs sounded behind Oliver, he glanced up, and Ferry's blade
+fell across his brow and launched him face upward to the ground. I saw
+a bunch of horses, with mine, at the foot of the steps, and a bunch of
+men at the top; Ferry snatched Charlotte's limp form from me and said
+over his shoulder as he went down the steps, "Go get him and bring him
+along, dead or alive!"
+
+I called a man to my aid and was unlucky in not getting the cool-headed
+Kendall, for my own wits were gone. The next moment all had left us and
+I was down on the ground toiling frantically, with no help but one hand
+of my mounted companion, to heave the stalwart frame of Oliver up to
+my saddle.
+
+"Why, he's dead!" cried the lad, letting him slide half-way down when we
+had all but got him up; "don't you see he's dead? His head's laid wide
+open! He's as dead as a mackerel! I'll _swear_ we ain't got any right to
+get captured trying to save a dead Yankee."
+
+I was in despair; our horses had caught our frenzy and were plunging to
+be after their fellows, and a fresh body of the enemy were hurtling into
+the grove. Dropping my burden I vaulted up, and we scurried away, saved
+only by the enemy's healthy fear of an ambush. The first man we came up
+with was Quinn, with the rear-guard. "Is he dead?" he growled.
+
+"Dead as Adam!" said I, and my comrade put in "Head laid wide open!"
+
+"Drop back into the ranks," said Quinn to him. "Smith, ride on to
+Lieutenant Ferry. Corporal,"--to a man near him--"you know the way so
+well, go with him."
+
+The two of us sprang forward. How long or what way we went I have now
+no clear idea, but at length we neared again the grapevine ferry. The
+stream was swollen, we swam our horses, and on the farther side we found
+Kendall waiting. To the corporal's inquiry he replied that Ferry had
+just passed on. "You know Roy's; two miles off the Plank Road by the
+first right? He expects to stop there."
+
+"Is she alive, Kendall?" I interrupted. "Is she alive?"
+
+"No," said he, to some further question of the corporal; "I'm to wait
+here for the command."
+
+"Is she alive, Kendall?" I asked again.
+
+"Hello, Smith." He scanned my dripping horse. "Your saddle's slipped,
+Smith. Yes, she's alive."
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+
+IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS RIGHT ARM
+
+"There they are!" said the corporal and I at the same moment, when we
+had been but a few minutes on the Plank-road. Two men were ahead of us
+riding abreast, and a few rods in front of them was a third horseman,
+apparently alone. Two others had pushed on, one to the house, the other
+for surgical aid. The two in the rear knew us and let us come up
+unchallenged; the corporal stayed with them, and I rode on to my
+leader's side.
+
+Charlotte lay in his double clasp balanced so lightly on the horse's
+crest as hardly to feel the jar of his motion, though her head lay as
+nearly level with it as Ferry's bending shoulders and the hollow of his
+lowered right arm would allow; from under his other arm her relaxed
+figure, in its long riding-skirt, trailed down over his knee and
+stirrup; her broad limp hat, as if it had been so placed in sport, hung
+at his back with its tie-ribbons round his throat, while the black
+masses of her hair spread in ravishing desolation over and under his
+supporting arm. Her face was fearfully pale, the brows glistened with
+the damp of nervous shock, and every few moments she feebly brought a
+handkerchief to her lips to wipe away the blood that rose to them with
+every sigh. Steadfastly, except when her eyes closed now and then in
+deathly exhaustion, her gaze melted into his like a suffering babe's
+into its mother's. From time to time a brief word passed between them,
+and with joy I noticed that it was always in French; I hoped with my
+whole heart and soul that they had already said things, and were saying
+things yet, which no one else ought to hear. I waited some time for his
+notice, and when he gave it it was only by saying to her in a full voice
+and in English "Dick Smith is here, alongside of us."
+
+Her response was a question, which he repeated: "Is he hurt? no, Richard
+never gets hurt. Shall he tell us whatever he knows?"
+
+He bent low for the faint reply, and when it came he sparkled with
+pride. "'It matters little,' she says, 'to either of us, now.' Give your
+report; but _I_ tell you"--there came a tiger look in his eyes--"there
+is now no turning back; we shall go on." I answered with soft elation:
+"My news needn't turn you back: Oliver is dead."
+
+He drew a long breath, murmured "My God!" and then suddenly asked "You
+found him so, or--?"
+
+"We found him so; had to leave him so; head laid wide open; we were
+about to be captured--thought the news would be better than nothing--"
+
+"Certainly, yes, certainly. Now I want you to ride to the brigade camp
+and telegraph Miss Harper this: 'She needs you. Come instantly.
+Durand.'"--I repeated it to him.--"Right," he said. "Send that first;
+and after that--here is a military secret for you to tell to General
+Austin; I think you like that kind, eh? Tell him I would not send it
+verbally if I had my hands free. You know that regiment at whose
+headquarters we saw them singing; well, tell him they are to make a move
+to-day, a bad mistake, and I think if he will stay right there where he
+is till they make it, we can catch the whole lot of them. As soon as
+they move I shall report to him."
+
+Two gasping words from Charlotte brought his ear down, and with a
+worshipping light in his eyes he said to her "Yes,--yes!" and then to
+me, "Yes, I shall report to him _in person_. Now, Smith, the top of
+your speed!"
+
+Reveillé was sounding as I entered the camp. In the middle of my story
+to the General--"Saddle my horse," he said to an attendant, "and send
+Mr. Gholson to me. Yes, Smith, well, what then?"--I resumed, but in a
+minute--"Mr. Gholson, good-morning. My compliments to Major Harper, Mr.
+Gholson, and ask him if he wouldn't like to take a ride with me; and
+let me have about four couriers; and send word to Colonel Dismukes that
+I shall call at his headquarters to see him a moment, on my way out of
+camp. Now, Smith, you've given me the gist of the matter, haven't you?
+Oh, I think you have; good-morning."
+
+Gholson had helped me get the despatch off to Miss Harper, whose coming
+no one could be more eager to hasten. Before leaving camp I saw him
+again. He was strangely reticent; my news seemed to benumb and sicken
+him. But as I remounted he began without connection--"You see, she'll be
+absolutely alone until Miss Harper gets there; not a friend within call!
+_He_ won't be there, she won't let him stay; she dislikes him too much;
+I _know_ that, Smith. Why, Smith, she wouldn't ever 'a' let him carry
+her off the field if she'd been conscious; she'd sooner 'a' gone to Ship
+Island, or to death!" He looked as though he would rather she had. His
+tongue, now it had started, could not stop. "Ned Ferry can't stay by
+her; he mustn't! he hadn't ought to use around anywheres near her."
+
+I gave a sort of assent--attended with nausea--and turned to my saddle,
+but he clung. "Why, how can he hang around that way, Smith, and he a
+suitor who's just killed her husband? Of course, now, he'd ought to know
+he can't ever be one henceforth. I'm sorry for him, but--"
+
+"Good-morning," I interrupted, quite in the General's manner, and made a
+spirited exit, but it proved a false one; one thing had to be said, and
+I returned. "Gholson, if she should be worse hurt than--" "Ah! you're
+thinking of the chaplain; I've already sent him. Yonder he goes, now;
+you can show him the way."
+
+"Understand," I said as I wheeled, "I fully expect her to recover."
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!" replied my co-religionist, with feverish zest; "we must
+have faith--for her sake! But o--oh! Smith, what a chastening judgment
+this is against dancing!"
+
+I moved away, looking back at him, and seeing by his starved look how he
+was racking his jaded brain for some excuse to go with me, I honestly
+believe I was sorry for him. The chaplain was a thick-set, clean-shaven,
+politic little fellow whose "Good-mawning, brothah?" had the heavy
+sweetness of perfumed lard. We conversed fluently on spiritual matters
+and also on Ned Ferry. He asked me if the Lieutenant was "a believer."
+
+"Why," said I, "as to that, Lieutenant Ferry believes there's something
+right about everything that's beautiful, and something wrong about
+everything that isn't. Now, of course that's a very dangerous idea, and
+yet--" So I went on; ah me! the nightmare of it hangs over me yet,
+"religionist" though I am, after a fashion, unto this day. In Ferry's
+defence I maintained that only so much of any man's religion as fitted
+him, and fitted him not as his saddle or his clothes, but as his nervous
+system fitted him, was really his, or was really religion. I said I knew
+a man whose ready-made religion, small as it was, bagged all over him
+and made him as grotesque as a child in his father's trousers. The
+chaplain tittered so approvingly that I straightened to spout again, but
+just then we saw three distant figures that I knew at a glance.
+
+"There he is, now!--Excuse me, sir--" I clapped in the spurs, but the
+chaplain clattered stoutly after me. The two horsemen moving from us
+were the General and Major Harper, and the one meeting them was Ned
+Ferry. Between the three and us rose out of a hollow the squad of
+couriers. And yonder came the sun.
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+
+A CRUEL BOOK AND A FOOL OR TWO
+
+I could see by Ferry's face that there was no worse news. He met me
+aside, and privately bade me go to Roy's (where Charlotte was). "Kendall
+is there," he said; "I leave you and him in charge. That will rest your
+horses. Kendall has your Yankee horse, his own is sick. You and Kendall
+get all the sleep you can, you may get none to-night."
+
+"Lieutenant," I began eagerly as he was drawing away, "is--?"
+
+"Yes! oh, yes, yes!" His eyes danced, and a soft laugh came, as happy as
+a child's. "The surgeon is yonder, he will tell you."
+
+This person Kendall and I had the luck to meet at the Roy's
+breakfast-table. "Yes, left lung," he said. "No, hardly 'perforated,'
+but the top deeply grazed." The ball, he said, had passed on and out,
+and he went into particulars with me, while I wondered if Kendall knew,
+as I did, what parts of the body the pleura, the thorax, the clavicle
+and the pyemia were.
+
+We lay down to sleep on some fodder in the Widow Roy's stable, while
+around three sides of the place, in a deep wooded hollow, Quinn and the
+company, well guarded by hidden videttes, drowsed in secret bivouac. I
+dreamed. I had feared I should, and it would have been a sort of bitter
+heart's-ease to tell Kendall of my own particular haunting trouble. For
+now, peril and darkness, storm, hard riding, the uproar and rage of
+man-killing, all past and gone, my special private wretchedness came
+back to me bigger than ever, like a neglected wound stiffened and
+swollen as it has grown cold. But Kendall would not talk, and when I
+dreamed, my dream was not of Camille. It seemed to me there was a hot
+fight on at the front, and that I, in a sweat of terror, was at the
+rear, hiding among the wagons and telling Gholson pale-faced lies as to
+why I was there. All at once Gholson became Oliver, alive,
+bloody-handed, glaring on me spectrally, cursing, threatening, and
+demanding his wife. His head seemed not "laid wide open," but to have
+only a streak of the skull bared by Ferry's glancing left-cut and a
+strip of the scalp turned inside out. Cécile drew his head down and
+showed it to me, in a transport of reproaches, as though my false report
+had wronged no one else so ruinously as her.
+
+I awoke aghast. If Kendall had still been with me I might, in the first
+flush of my distress, have told my vision; but in the place where
+Kendall had lain lay Harry Helm. Kendall was gone; a long beam of
+afternoon sunlight shone across my lair through a chink in the log
+stable. I sprang half up with an exclamation, and Harry awoke with a
+luxurious yawn and smile. Kendall, he said, had left with the company,
+which had marched. Quinn was in command and had told Harry that he was
+only going to show the enemy that there was no other hostile force in
+their front, and get himself chased away southeastward.
+
+"I don't know whether he was telling me the truth or not," said Helm, as
+we led our saddled horses toward the house; "I reckon he didn't want me
+alongside of him with this arm in a sling." The hand was bad; lines of
+pain were on the aide's face. He had taken the dead Louisianian home,
+got back to camp, and ridden down here to get the latest news concerning
+Charlotte. Kendall had already given him our story of the night; I had
+to answer only one inquiry. "Oh, yes," was my reply, "head laid wide
+open!" But to think of my next meeting with Ned Ferry almost made
+me sick.
+
+Harry was delighted. "That lays their way wide open--Ned's and hers!
+Smith, some God-forsaken fool brought a chaplain here to talk religion
+to her! He hasn't seen her--Doctor wouldn't let him; but he's here yet,
+and--George! if I was them I'd put him to a better use than what he came
+here for, and I'd do it so quick it would make his head swim!" He went
+on into all the arguments for it; the awkwardnesses of Charlotte's new
+situation, her lack of means for even a hand-to-mouth daily existence,
+and so on. Seeing an ambulance coming in through the front gate, and in
+order not to lose the chance for my rejoinder, I interrupted.
+"Lieutenant, she will not allow it! She will make him wait a proper time
+before he may as much as begin a courtship, and then he will have to
+begin at the beginning. She's not going to let Ned Ferry narrow or lower
+her life or his--no, neither of them is going to let the other do
+it--because a piece of luck has laid the way wide open!" I ended with a
+pomp of prophecy, yet I could hear Ned Ferry saying again, with
+Charlotte's assenting eyes in his, "There is no turning back."
+
+The driver of the ambulance did not know why he had been ordered to
+report here, but when the Widow Roy came to the door she brought
+explanation enough. A courier had come to her and gone again, and the
+chaplain and the surgeon and every one else of any "army sort" except us
+two had "put out," and she was in a sad flurry. "The Lieutenant," she
+said, "writes in this-yeh note that this-yeh place won't be safe f'om
+the Yankees much longer'n to-day, and fo' us to send the wounded lady in
+the avalanch. Which she says, her own self, it'd go rough with her to
+fall into they hands again. My married daughter she's a-goin' with her,
+and the'd ought to be a Mr. Sm'--oh, my Lawdy! you ain't reg-lahly in
+the ahmy, air you?"
+
+With some slave men to help us, Harry and I bore Charlotte out and laid
+her in the ambulance, mattress and all, on an under bedding of fodder.
+She had begged off from opiates, and was as full of the old starlight as
+if the day, still strong, were gone. I helped the married daughter up
+beside the driver, Harry and I mounted, and we set forth for the
+brigade camp. Mrs. Roy's daughter had with her a new romance, which she
+had been reading to Charlotte. Now she was eager to resume it, and
+Charlotte consented. It was a work of some merit; I have the volume yet,
+inscribed to me on the fly-leaf "from C.O.," as I have once already
+stated, in my account of my friend "The Solitary." At the end of a mile
+we made a change; Harry rode a few yards ahead with an officer who
+happened to overtake us, I took the reins from the ambulance driver, and
+he followed on my horse; I thought I could drive more smoothly than he.
+
+And so I began to hear the tale. I was startled by its strong reminder
+of Charlotte's own life; but Charlotte answered my anxious glance with a
+brow so unfretted that I let the reading go on, and so made a cruel
+mistake. At every turning-point in the story its reader would have
+paused to talk it over, but Charlotte, with a steadily darkling brow,
+murmured each time "Go on," and I was silent, hoping that farther along
+there would be a better place to stop for good. Not so; the story's
+whirling flood swept us forward to a juncture ever drawing nearer and
+clearer, clearer and crueler, where a certain man would have to choose
+between the woman he loved and that breadth and fruitfulness of life to
+which his splendid gifts imperiously pointed him. Oh, you story-tellers!
+Every next page put the question plainer, drove the iron deeper: must a
+man, or even may a man, wed his love, when she stands between him and
+his truest career, a drawback and drag upon his finest service to his
+race and day? And, oh, me! who let my eye quail when Charlotte searched
+it, as though her own case had brought that question to me before ever
+we had seen this book. And, oh, that impenetrable woman reading! Her
+husband was in Lee's army, out of which, she boasted, she would steal
+him in a minute if she could. She was with us, now, only because, at
+whatever cost to others, she was going where no advancement of the
+enemy's lines could shut her off from him; and so stop reading a moment
+she must, to declare her choice for Love as against all the careers on
+earth, and to put that choice fairly to shame by the unworthiness of her
+pleadings in its defence. I intervened; I put her grovelling arguments
+aside and thrust better ones in, for the same choice, and then, in the
+fear that they were not enough, stumbled into special pleading and
+protested that the book itself had put the question unfairly.
+
+"Shut it," said Charlotte, with a sigh like that which had risen when
+the lead first struck her. "If I could be moved ever so little,--"
+she said.
+
+I had the driver tie my horse behind the vehicle and resume the lines.
+Then the soldier's wife and I moved Charlotte, and when the reader began
+to handle the book again wishfully our patient said, with the kindest
+voice, "Read the rest of it to yourself; I know how it will end; it will
+end to please you, not as it ought; not as it ought."
+
+For a while we went in silence, and she must have seen that my heart was
+in a rage, for with suffering on her brow, amusement on her lips, and a
+sweet desperation in her eyes, she murmured my name. "Richard:--what
+fun it must have been to live in those old Dark Ages--when all you had
+to do--was to turn any one passion into--one splendid virtue--at the
+expense--of all the rest."
+
+I could answer pleadingly that it were far better not to talk now. But
+she would go on, until in my helplessness I remarked how beautiful the
+day had been. Her eyes changed; she looked into mine with her calm
+inward-outward ken, and once more with smiling lips and suffering brow
+murmured, "Yes." I marvelled she should betray such wealth of meaning to
+such as I; yet it was like her splendid bravery to do it.
+
+At the brigade's picket, where I was angry that Ferry did not meet us,
+and had resumed the saddle and stretched all the curtains of the
+ambulance, who should appear but Scott Gholson. Harry and I were riding
+abreast in advance of the ambulance. Gholson and he barely said
+good-evening. I asked him where was Lieutenant Ferry, and scarcely noted
+his words, so promptly convinced was I by their mere tone that he had
+somehow contrived to get Ferry sent on a distant errand. "Is she
+better?" he inquired; "has the hemorrhage stopped?"
+
+"It's begun again," growled Harry, who wanted both of us to suffer all
+we could. Gholson led us through the camp. A large proportion of the men
+were sleeping when as yet it was hardly night.
+
+"Has the brigade got marching orders?" I asked, and he said the three
+regiments had, though not the battery. He passed over to me two pint
+bottles filled, corked, and dangling from his fingers by a stout double
+twine on the neck of each. "Every man has them," he said; "hang one on
+each side of your belt in front of your pistol."
+
+I held them up and scowled from them to Harry, and we both laughed, so
+transparent was Gholson's purpose to get every one away from our patient
+who yearned to be near her. "One in front of each pistol," I said, so
+tying them; "but use the pistols first, I suppose."
+
+"Yes," replied Gholson, "pistols first, and then the turpentine."
+Whereat Harry and I exchanged glances again, it came so pat that Scott
+Gholson should be a dispenser of inflammables. At a house a mile behind
+the camp the surgeon stood waiting for us. He frowned at me the instant
+he saw Charlotte, and I heard him swear. As we bore her in with Gholson
+and me next her head she murmured to him:
+
+"Mr. Gholson, when does the command move?"
+
+"At twelve," he replied, and I bent and softly added "That's why--"
+
+"Yes," she said, with a quick, understanding look, and wiped her lips as
+daintily as if it were with wine they were crimsoned.
+
+
+
+L
+
+
+THE BOTTOM OF THE WHIRLWIND
+
+On my way back through camp with Gholson I saw old Dismukes. He called
+me to him, quit his cards, and led me into his tent. There, very
+beguilingly, he questioned me at much length, evidently seeking to draw
+from the web of my replies the thread of Ferry's and Charlotte's story;
+and as I saw that he believed in both of them with all his brutal might,
+I let him win a certain success. "Head laid wide open!" he said
+gleefully, and boiled over with happy blasphemings.
+
+I left him, found supper, and had been long asleep tinder a tree, when I
+grabbed savagely at some one for silently shaking me, and found it was
+Ned Ferry. His horse's bridle was in his hand; his face was more filled
+with the old pain than I had ever seen it; he spoke low and hurriedly.
+"Come, tell me what this means."
+
+In an envelope addressed to him in the handwriting I had first seen at
+Lucius Oliver's I found a scripture-text, a heading torn from a tract
+which the chaplain may have sent in to Charlotte in the morning. I
+turned it to the light of my fire. Under this printed line she had
+pencilled her name.
+
+I asked if he had seen her. "Ah, no! the Doctor has drugged her to
+sleep; but that woman who came with you was still in the parlor, reading
+a book, and she gave me this. What does it mean?"
+
+"Lieutenant," I replied, choking with dismay, "why mind her meanings
+now? Ought you not rather to ignore them? She is fevered, dejected,
+overwrought. Why, sir, she is the very woman to say and mean things now
+which she would never say or mean at any other time!" But my tone must
+have shown that I was only groping in desperation after anything
+plausible, and he waved my suggestions away.
+
+"The Doctor says that woman has been reading her an exciting story."
+
+"Yes, and that helps to account--"
+
+"Richard, it helps the wrong way; _I know that story_. After hearing
+that story she is, yes! the one woman of all women to send me _this_."
+
+I took it again. The signature was extended in full, with the surname
+blackly underlined. The first clause of the print, too, was so treated.
+"_Keep thy heart_," it read; "_Keep thy heart_ with all diligence; for
+out of it are the issues of life.--Charlotte _Oliver_."
+
+"Why, Lieutenant, that is just what you have done--"
+
+"You think so? But I _have done_. I will keep it no longer! Ah, I never
+kept it; 'twas she! Without taking it from me she kept it--'with all
+diligence'; otherwise I should have lost it--and her, too--and all that
+is finest and hardest to keep--long ago. Give me that paper; come;
+saddle up; you may go with me if you want, as my courier." No bugle had
+sounded, yet the whole camp was softly and diligently astir. We rode
+toward the staff tents; the pulse of enterprise enlivened him once more,
+though he clung to the same theme. "I have _her_ heart now, Smith, and I
+will keep _that_ with all diligence, for out of _that_ are the issues
+of _my_ life--if I live. And if I do live I will have her if I have to
+steal her even from herself, as last night from the Yankees."
+
+Three hours later the stars still gleamed down through the balmy night
+above the long westward-galloping column of our brigade, that for those
+three hours had not slackened from the one unmitigated speed. The
+Federal regiment of whose plans Charlotte had apprised Ferry had been
+camped well to southward of this course, but in the day just past they
+had marched to the north, intending a raid around our right and into our
+rear. To-night they were resting in a wide natural meadow through the
+middle of which ran this road we were on. Around the southern edge of
+this inviting camp-ground by a considerable stream of water; the
+northern side was on rising ground and skirted by woods, and in these
+woods as day began to break stood our brigade, its presence utterly
+unsuspected in all that beautiful meadow whitened over with lane upon
+lane of the tents of the regiment of Federal cavalry, whose pickets we
+had already silently surprised and captured. Now, as warily as quails,
+we moved along an unused, woodcutters' road and began to trot up a
+gentle slope beyond whose crest the forest sank to the meadow. We were
+within a few yards of this crest, when a small mounted patrol came up
+from the other side, stood an instant profiled against the sky, bent
+low, gazed, wheeled and vanished.
+
+Over the crest we swept after them at a gallop and saw them half-way
+down an even incline, going at a mad run and yelling "Saddle up! saddle
+up! the rebels are coming! saddle up!" The bugles had begun the
+reveillé; it ceased, and the next instant they were sounding the call To
+Arms. It was only a call to death; already we were half across the short
+decline and coming like a tornado; in the white camp the bluecoats were
+running hither and yon deaf to the brave shoutings of their captains;
+above the swelling thunder of our hoofs rose the mad yell of the onset;
+and now carbines peal and pistols crack, and here are the tents so close
+you may touch them, and yonder is one already in a light blaze, and at
+every hand and under every horse's foot is the crouching, quailing,
+falling foe, the air is one crash of huzzas and groans, screams, shots
+and commands, horses with riders and horses without plunge through the
+flames and smoke of the burning tents, and again and again I see Ned
+Ferry with the flat of his unstained sword strike pistol or carbine from
+hands too brave to cast them tamely down, and hear him cry "Throw down
+your arms! For God's sake throw down your arms and run to the road! run
+to the public road!"
+
+And still every moment men fell, and what could we do but smite while
+the foe's bugles still rang out from beside his unfurled standard.
+Thitherward sprang a swarm of us and found a brave group massed on foot
+around the colors, men and officers shoulder to shoulder in sudden
+equality. I saw Ned Ferry make straight for their commander, who alone
+had out his sabre; the rest stood with cocked revolvers, and at twenty
+yards fired low. Ferry's horse was hit; he reared, but the spur carried
+him on; his rider's sword flashed up and then down, the Federal's sabre
+turned it, the pistols cracked in our very faces, and down went my
+leader and his horse into the bottom of the whirlwind, right under the
+standard. I saw the standard-bearer bring down one of our men on top of
+Ferry, and as Ferry half regained his feet the Federal aimed point-blank
+against his breast. But it was I who fired and the Federal who fell. As
+he reeled I stretched out for the standard, and exactly together Ned
+Ferry and I seized it--the same standard we had seen the night before.
+But instantly, graciously, he thrust it from him. "Tis yours!" he cried
+in the midst of a general huzza, smiling up at it and me as I swung the
+trophy over my head. Then he turned ghastly pale, his smile faded to an
+unmeaning stare, two or three men leaped to his side, and he sank
+lifelessly into their arms beside his dying horse.
+
+I was swinging from the saddle to my leader's relief, when a familiar
+voice forbade it, and old Dismukes came by at a long trot, pointing
+forward with the reddest sabre I ever saw, and bellowing to right and
+left with oaths and curses "Fall in, every man, on yon line! Ride to yon
+line and fall in, there's more Yankees coming! Ride down yonder and
+fa'--_here_, you, Legs, there! follow me, and shoot down every man that
+stops to plunder!"
+
+Now I saw the new firing-line, out on our left, and as the rattle of it
+quickened, the Colonel galloped, still roaring out his rallying-cries
+and wiping his reeking blade across his charger's mane. Throngs gathered
+after him; the high-road swarmed with prisoners double-quicking to the
+rear under mounted guards; here, thinly stretched across the road at
+right-angles, were our horse-holders, steadily, coolly falling back;
+farther forward, yet vividly near, was our skirmish-line, crackling and
+smoking, and beyond it the enemy's, in the edge of a wood, not yet quite
+venturing to fling itself upon us. We passed General Austin standing,
+mounted, at the top of the rise, with a number of his staff about him.
+Minie balls had begun to sing about them and us, and some officer was
+telling me rudely I had no business bringing that standard--when
+something struck like a sledge high up on my side, almost in the
+arm-pit; I told one of our men I was wounded and gave him the trophy,
+our horse-holders suddenly came forward, every man afoot rose into his
+saddle, and my horse wheeled and hurried rearward at a speed I strove in
+vain to check. Then the old messmate to whom I had said good-bye at this
+very hour just a week before, came and held me by the right arm, while I
+begged him like a drunk-and-disorderly to let me go and find Ned Ferry.
+
+But he said Lieutenant Ferry was in a captured ambulance ahead of us and
+of our hundreds of prisoners, that a full creek and a burning bridge
+were between us and the foe, and that the fight was over.
+
+
+
+LI
+
+
+UNDER THE ROOM WHERE CHARLOTTE LAY
+
+The fight was over only in degree. Our brigade was drawing away into the
+north and the enemy were pressing revengefully after them. Our hundreds
+of prisoners and our few wounded were being taken back eastward over the
+road by which we had come in the night, and even after we had turned
+into it I saw a Yankee shell kill a wounded man and his horse not thirty
+yards from me.
+
+Before we had gone another mile I met Harry Helm. The General had left
+him in camp with flat orders to remain, but at daylight he had ridden
+out to find us. He was in two tremendous moods at once; lifted to heaven
+on the glory of our deeds, yet heart-broken over the fate of Ned Ferry.
+"Surgeon's told him he can't live, Dick! And all the effect that's
+had--'No opiates, then, Doctor,' s'e, 'till I get off these two or three
+despatches.' So there he lies in that ambulance cross-questioning
+prisoners and making everybody bring him every scrap of information, as
+if he were General Austin and Major Harper rolled into one and they were
+wounded instead of him--By George! Dick, he knows you're hit and just
+how you're hit, and has sent me to find you!"
+
+I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we
+were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about
+it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn,
+and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now
+remounting, both of them openly in tears. "Hello, Kendall."
+
+"Hello, Smith." He turned sharply from me, horse and all.
+
+"Good-morning, sergeant, is Lieutenant Ferry--worse?"
+
+The sergeant only jabbed in the spurs, and leapt away with Kendall,
+bearing despatches to the brigade. Harry, looking back to me from the
+ambulance, called softly, "All right again; it was only a bad swoon!"
+
+"Hello, Smith," said some one whom I was too sick and dizzy to
+recognize, "one of those prisoners says he saw Oliver dead."
+
+They say two or three men sprang to catch me, but the first thing I knew
+was that the ambulance was under way and I in it on my back within
+elbow-touch of Ferry, looking up into a surgeon's face. "How's the
+Lieutenant?" I asked.
+
+"Oh--getting on, getting on," he replied. Doctors think patients are
+fools.
+
+In a parlor under the room where Charlotte lay they made a bed for Ferry
+and one for me, and here, lapped in luxury and distinction, I promptly
+fell asleep, and when I reopened my eyes it was again afternoon. In the
+other bed Ferry was slumbering, and quite across the room, beside a
+closed door, sat Cécile and Camille. The latter tiptoed to me. Her
+whispers were as soft as breathing, and when I answered or questioned,
+her ear sank as near as you would put a rose to smell it. "The
+Lieutenant, sleeping? yes, this hour past; surgeons surprised and more
+hopeful. Miss Estelle? in another room with other wounded. Her aunt?
+upstairs with Charlotte, who was--oh--getting on, getting on." That made
+me anxious.
+
+"Does Charlotte," I asked, "know--everything?"
+
+Camille allowed herself all the motions of a laugh, and said "No, not
+quite everything;" and then with solemn tenderness she added that
+Charlotte knew about Ferry. "And she knows about _you,"_ the whisperer
+went on; "they all know."
+
+I thought she was alluding to the verses, and had an instant of terror
+and rage before I saw what she meant. She glided back to the door and
+the two opened it an inch or so to answer some inquirer without. I saw
+her no more until bedtime, when she stood at her aunt's elbow to hand
+and hold things, while Miss Harper, to my all but screaming
+embarrassment, bared the whole upper half of one side of me and washed
+and dressed my wound anew. Ferry it was imperative to let alone, but
+when I awoke the next morning there was a radiance of joy throughout all
+the house; for he had slept and improved. The next morning again he was
+ever so much stronger, and Harry Helm rode off in simulated disgust, not
+seeing "any fun in hanging round girls who were hanging round
+other fellows."
+
+Another day arose. A courier brought passes for our three or four other
+wounded to go home as soon as they were fit to travel, and by night they
+were all gone. At early bedtime came two surgeons of high rank all the
+way from Johnston's army up in Mississippi. General Austin had asked
+this favor by telegraph. Harry had been gone thirty-six hours, and Ferry
+was just asking if he had not yet got back, when the surgeons came in to
+the room. A pleasantry or two consumed a few moments. Then the surgeon
+in charge of us told of a symptom or two, to which they responded only
+"hmm," and began the examination. Miss Harper sent her three nieces
+away. I lay and listened in the busy stillness. Presently one of the
+examiners murmured with a certain positiveness to the other, who after a
+moment's silence replied with conviction; Miss Harper touched our
+surgeon's arm inquiringly and he looked back in a glad way and nodded.
+Miss Harper nodded to me; they had located the ball! Now the
+conversation turned upon men and events of the day, while one of the
+visitors, with his back to the patient, opened a case of glittering
+knives. Presently the professional heads came so close together as quite
+to hide the patient; they spoke once or twice in a manly soothing tone.
+Miss Harper stroked my temples to keep me down, one of the busy ones
+spoke again, and lo! the thing was done, there was the ball in the
+basin. As the men of blood sped through their kind after-work the news
+flew to and fro; Camille wept,--since she could not hurrah,--Cécile told
+Charlotte, the heavenly-minded Estelle was confirmed in her faith, Miss
+Harper's black eyes, after a brief overflow, were keener and kindlier
+than ever, and as the surgeons spoke the word "done," Ferry asked again
+if Harry had not got back yet. Pretty soon Harry did arrive, with news
+of great feats by our cavalry against our old enemy Grierson, in which
+Austin's brigade had covered themselves with glory, and in which he had
+had his own share; his hand was swelled as big as his heart. In all the
+Confederacy no houseful went to sleep that night in sweeter content. I
+sank into perfect bliss planning a double wedding.
+
+
+
+LII
+
+
+SAME BOOK AND LIGHT-HEAD HARRY
+
+The next day found me so robustly happy that I was allowed to dress and
+walk out to the front door. Three days later the surgeons were gone, all
+three, and at the approach of dew-fall Cécile and Harry, Camille and I,
+walked in a field-path, gathered hedge roses, and debated the problem of
+Mrs. Roy's daughter's book, which all of us were reading and none
+had finished.
+
+"A woman," I remarked, "who, for very love of a man, can say to him, 'Go
+on up the hill without me, I have a ball and chain on my foot and you
+shall not carry them and me, you have a race to run,'--a woman so
+wonderfully good as to say that--"
+
+"Ah, no!" interrupted Cécile, with her killing Creole accent, "not a
+woman so _good_ to say that, only with the so-good _sanse_ to say it."
+
+Harry was openly vexed. "Well, either way! would any true man leave
+_that_ woman behind?" and I tried to put in that that was what I had
+been leading up to; but it makes me smile yet, to recall how jauntily
+she discomfited us both. She triumphed with the airy ease of a king-bird
+routing a crow in the upper blue. Camille had more than once told me
+that Cécile was wise beyond the hope of her two cousins to emulate her;
+which had only increased my admiration for Camille; yet now I began to
+see how the sisters came by their belief. In the present discussion she
+was easily first among the four of us. At the same time her sensuous
+graces also took unquestionable preëminence; city-bred though she was,
+she had the guise of belonging to the landscape, or, rather, of the
+landscape's belonging, by some fairy prerogative, to her. She seemed
+just let loose into the world, yet as ready and swift to make right use
+of it as any humming-bird let into a garden; as untimorous as any such,
+and as elusive. In this sultry June air she had all the animation both
+of mind and of frame that might have been expected of her on a keen,
+clear winter day. Her face never bore the same expression at the
+beginning and middle, or at either of these and the close, of any of her
+speeches, yet every change was lovely, the sign of a happy play of
+feeling, and proof of a mercurial intelligence. No report of them by
+this untrained pen would fully bear me out, and the best tribute I can
+offer is to avoid the task.
+
+It was a sweet mercy in her to change the subject, and tactful to change
+it to Charlotte, as if Charlotte were quite an unrelated theme. The
+cousins vied with each other ever so prettily in telling how beautiful
+the patient was on her couch of enfeeblement and pain, how her former
+loveliness had increased, and what new nobility it had taken on. That
+any such problem overhung her life as that which we had just been
+weighing, seemed never to have entered their thought, and if they had
+ever conceived of a passion already conscious between Charlotte and
+Ferry, they veiled the fact with charming feminine art.
+
+When we got back to the house Harry detained me on the veranda alone.
+Camille told me how long I might tarry. It was heaven to have her bit in
+my mouth, and I found it hard to be grum even when Harry beat with his
+good hand the rhythm of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes."
+
+"Dick," he said, suddenly grave as he walked me down the veranda, "her
+cousin Cécile! isn't it awful? Now that poor girl's gone back to Ned's
+bedside; back to her torture! Why _do_ they let her? My George! it's
+merciless! Has her aunt no eyes?"
+
+"But, Lieutenant, you don't know she loves him; there are signs, I
+admit; but proofs, no. She's lost color, and her curves are more
+slender, but, my goodness! a dozen things might account for that."
+
+"Dick Smith,"--my questioner worked himself up over the rail and sat out
+on the shelf that held the bucket of drinking-water and its gourd--"do
+you imagine she didn't know, when we were talking about that book, that
+she was arguing against the union of Ned Ferry and Charlotte Oliver?
+_Didn't_ she do it bravely! Richard, my friend, she couldn't have done
+it if she had suspected us of suspecting her. It's a bleeding pity! And
+yet you can't side with her, for I just swear Ned's got to have
+Charlotte Ol'--what? No, he won't overhear a blank word; here's his
+window shut, right here. He's got to have her, I say, and he's got to
+have her just as soon as the two of 'em can stand up together to be
+sworn in! Don't you say so?"
+
+I replied that I was not aware of any one who did not say so.
+
+"Well, I can name several! I don't call Scott Gholson anybody, but
+there's Major Harper--No, I'm not talking too loud, Ned isn't hearing a
+word. Major Harper's so hot against this thing that he brought it up,
+with me, yesterday on the battlefield."
+
+"Major Harper doesn't really know her," I softly remarked.
+
+Harry swore with military energy. "I told him he didn't, and he fairly
+snorted. _We_ don't know her, he says; you nor I nor his sister nor his
+niece nor his daughters, oh, we don't know her at all; and neither do we
+know Ned; Ned has graceful manners, and she's a born actress, and we're
+simply infatuated by their romantic situation. Good Lordy! he got up on
+his Charleston pride-of-family like a circus-girl on stilts, and 'Edgard
+Ferry-Durand has got a great public career before him,' s's he, 'and no
+true friend will let him think of taking a wife who is all history and
+no antecedents, a blockade-runner, a spy, and the brand-new widow of a
+blackguard and a jayhawker she had run away from practically on her
+wedding-night.' Hy Jo'! the way he went on, you'd 'a' thought he was
+already Ned's uncle-in-l'--" The speaker's face took a sudden
+distress--"Great Caesar!" He pointed up to the second-story front room
+and slipped down from the shelf just as Estelle came out to us with her
+aunt's message for me to come in.
+
+"How's the fair patient?" I hurried to ask as the three of us went.
+
+"Why, Mr. Smith, she's actually been sitting up--in the twilight--at
+the open window--while Aunt Martha and I smoothed up her bed."
+Harry groaned.
+
+"She's still very weak," said Aunt Martha when we came to her; "the
+moment her bed was made up she asked to lie down again."
+
+"Yes," softly exclaimed Camille, "but, oh, aunt Martha, with such
+courage in those eyes!"
+
+"Smith," privately asked the agonized Harry, "what would you do if you
+were in my place; go and cut your throat from ear to ear?"
+
+"No," I said, as black as an executioner, "but I wish you'd done it
+yesterday."
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+
+"CAPTAIN, THEY'VE GOT US"
+
+More days slipped by. Neighbors pressed sweet favors upon us; calls,
+joyful rumors, delicacies, flowers. One day Major Harper paid us a
+flying visit, got kisses galore, and had his coat sponged and his
+buttons reanimated. In the small town some three miles northwest of us
+he was accumulating a great lot of captured stuff. On another day came
+General Austin and stayed a whole hour. Ferry took healing delight in
+these visits, asking no end of questions about the movements afield,
+and about the personal fortunes of everyone he knew. When the General
+told him Ferry's scouts were doing better without him than with him--"I
+thought he would smile himself into three pieces," said the General at
+the supper-table.
+
+On a second call from Major Harper, when handed a document to open and
+read, he went through it carefully twice, and then dropping it on the
+coverlet asked--"and Quinn?"
+
+"Oh, Quinn's turn will come."
+
+"Ah! Major, that is not fair to Quinn!" said Ferry. Yet when he took up
+the paper again he gazed on it with a happy gravity; it made him a
+captain. "By the by," he said, "that Yankee horse that Dick Smith
+captured at Sessions's; I'd like to buy that horse from you, Major."
+They made the sale. "And there's that captured ambulance still here,
+Major, with its team eating their heads off."
+
+"Yes, I'm going to take that away with me to-day."
+
+This meant that Charlotte's negro man and his daughter, her maid, had
+come with her spring-wagon, and Harry and I would have liked the Major
+better if he had smiled at this point, as he did not. Yet he was most
+lovable; sent so kind a message up to Charlotte that Harry and I
+wondered; and received back from her a reply so gracious that--since we
+could not wonder--we worshipped. In the evening of that day Ferry and
+Charlotte were transferred, she into the room behind her, and he
+upstairs into the one out of which she was taken. That night a slave and
+his wife, belonging to the place, ran away to the enemy. If they should
+tell the Yankees Ned Ferry was here--! "By Jo'!" said Harry Helm, "I'm
+glad I didn't cut my throat; I told that darkey, yesterday, Ned's name
+was O'Brien!"
+
+Toward the close of that day came tidings of the brigade's splendid work
+at a steamboat-landing on the Mississippi River, how they had stolen in
+by night between two great bodies of the enemy, burned a vast store of
+military supplies, and then brilliantly cut their way out; yet we were
+told to be ready to withdraw into Mississippi again as soon as our newly
+made captain could safely be moved. Pooh! what of that? Lee was on his
+way into Pennsylvania; the war was nearly over, sang the Harper girls,
+and we were the winners! They cheerily saw Helm and me, next morning,
+ride southward in search of further good news. At a cross-roads I
+proposed that we separate, and meet there again near the end of the day.
+He turned west; I went an hour's ride farther south and then turned
+west myself.
+
+When we met again I knew that he--while he did not know that I--had been
+to Gilmer's plantation. We wanted to see if the Federals had left a
+grave there. They had left three, and a young girl who had been one of
+the dancers told me she had seen Oliver's body carried off by two blue
+troopers who growled and cursed because they had been sent back to bury
+it. Neither Harry nor I mentioned the subject when we met at the
+cross-roads again, for we came on our horses' necks at a stretched out
+run; the Federals were rolling up from the south battalion after
+battalion, hoping to find Major Harper's store of supplies feebly
+guarded and even up with us for that steamboat-landing raid. Presently
+as we hurried northward we began to hear, off ahead of us on our left,
+the faint hot give-and-take of two skirmish lines. We came into the
+homestead grove at a constrained trot and found the ladies out on the
+veranda in liveliest suspense between scepticism and alarm.
+
+"Yes, they're fighting, now, on the edge of town," we said, "but our
+boys will keep them there." Our host and hostess moaned their unbelief.
+"However," added Harry, "I'll go tell the old man to hitch up the little
+mules and--"
+
+"You dawn't need," said Cécile, "'tis done!" and Camille confirmed her
+word, while the planter and his wife returned to the kitchen yard, where
+the servants were loading the smokehouse meat into a wagon to hide it in
+the woods; Miss Harper and Estelle went into the house, summoned by
+Charlotte's maid. On Ferry's chamber floor sounded three measured thumps
+of his scabbarded sword.
+
+"Dick, you answer that," exclaimed Harry, reining in half wheeled; "but
+keep him on his back, if you have to hold him down!" He spurred away to
+learn whether we had better stay or fly. I threw my rein to Camille and
+flew up the hall stairs.
+
+Ferry lay in bed with three pillows behind him and his sheathed sword
+across his lap. "Good-evening, Richard," he said, "you are returned just
+in time; will you please hand me my two pistol' from yonder?--thank
+you." He laid one beside each thigh. "Now please turn the head of my
+bed a little bit, to face the door--thank you; and now, good-bye. You
+hear those footstep' there in the room behind? she is dressing to go;
+the other ladies they are helping her. Richard, I place them in your
+charge; have them all ready to get into her wagon at a moment's notice,
+with you on your horse--and you better take that Jewett horse, too; he
+came to-day."
+
+I hesitated, but a single flash of authority from his eye was enough and
+I had passed half-way to the door, when, through the window over the
+front veranda, I saw a small body of horsemen trotting up through the
+grove. The dusk of the room hid me, but there was no mistaking them.
+"Too late, Captain," I said, "they've got us."
+
+"How many do you see?"
+
+"About sixteen. Our two horses will be Yankees again to-morrow."
+
+"Ah! not certainly. Where is your carbine?"
+
+"Just outside this door. They know you're here, Captain, they're
+surrounding the house." As I reached toward the door I heard his sword
+crawl out, the doorknob clicked without my touching it, the door swung
+and closed again, and Charlotte Oliver was with us. The light of the
+western window shone full upon her; she was in the same dress, hat and
+all, in which I had seen her the night we rode together alone. Though
+wasted and pale, she betrayed a flush on either cheek and a smile that
+mated with the sweet earnest of her eyes. She tendered me my carbine,
+patted my hand caressingly, and glided onward to Ferry's bedside. With
+my back to them and my ear to the door I hearkened outward. In the front
+doorway below sounded the jingling tread of cavalry-boots and a clank
+of sabres.
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+
+THE FIGHT IN THE DOORWAY
+
+Charlotte's whisper came to me: "Richard!" Standing by Ferry's pillow
+she spoke for him. "If they start upstairs come and stand like me, on
+the other side."
+
+I nodded and slyly opened the door enough to pass half-way out. Some man
+was parleying with Miss Harper. "Now, madam, you know you haven't locked
+up your parlor to maintain an abstract right; you've locked it up
+because you've got the man in there that I've come for."
+
+"Whom have you come for, sir?"
+
+"Lieutenant O'Brien, of the rebel army. Shall I order this man to kick
+that door in? Answer quickly."
+
+"Sir, there is no Lieutenant O'Brien in there, nor elsewhere in this
+house; there never has been."
+
+"Stand aside, madam."
+
+"Stop, sir! I command you! There is no Lieutenant of any name on this
+place!"
+
+"Oh, yes there is; he goes by various names, but one of them is Ned
+Ferry. Sergeant, we'll kick together; now!"--Bang!
+
+I leaned back into the room to say "It's all right! Oh, but that sweet
+woman's a 'coon! Let them batter!" As I thrust my head out again Miss
+Harper was exclaiming "Oh, sirs, don't do that!"--Bang!--"For the honor
+of your calling and your flag--" Bang!
+
+"There's no Lieutenant in there." Bang!
+
+"Corporal, go find an axe or something."
+
+"Oh, you need not, sirs, I'll unlock the door."
+
+"Well, be quick about it, and then stand clear; we don't want any woman
+hurt." The key rattled at the keyhole and then dropped to the floor.
+"You did that by intention! Give me that key!" He tried the lock. "We've
+jammed it, corporal, but another good kick will fetch it;
+now!"--Bang!--crash!--open flew the door.
+
+"Well, I will be damned!" said the officer.
+
+"Sir," said Miss Harper, "you give me no occasion to doubt it." She
+followed the men upstairs. "Estelle, go back to your sister and cousin;
+and if you, my dear,"--to our hostess--"will kindly go also, and stay
+with them--"
+
+I closed the door. It had no key, but there was a small catch to the
+knob and I turned it on while the men were looking into the adjacent
+rooms. When they reached ours Miss Harper was again at their front.
+Inside, the three of us silently noted our strategic advantages: we were
+in the darkest part of the room, the bed's covering was a dull red,
+Ferry had on his shirt of black silk, the white pillows were hidden at
+his back, Charlotte and I were darkly clad, the light from our west
+window would be in our assailants' faces as they entered, and they would
+be silhouetted against a similar light from the hall's front. We
+noiselessly cocked our weapons and Charlotte and I each sank to one
+knee. "The door is very thin," murmured Ferry, "we can fire before they
+enter; they will get, anyhow, our smoke, and if they fire as they rush
+in we can aim under their flash."
+
+It was only then that I observed that Charlotte was armed. But the fact
+made her seem only the more a true woman, since I knew that only for her
+honor or his life would she ever take deadly aim. Her weapon was the
+slender revolver she had carried ever since the day which had made her
+Charlotte Oliver, the thing without which she never could have reached
+this hour of blissful extremity.
+
+"In here there is a lady, ill," we heard Miss Harper say.
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+Ferry prompted in a whisper, the three of us cried "Yes!" and he added
+"Pass one side from the door, Miss Harper, we are going to shoot
+through it."
+
+"Hello, in there! Lieutenant Ferry, of Ferry's scouts,"--
+
+"_Captain_ Ferry," retorted Miss Harper, and I echoed the amendment.
+
+"Damn the difference; I give you one half-minute, Captain Ferry, to say
+you surrender! If you weren't wounded I wouldn't give you that.
+Corporal, go get a log out of that fireplace downstairs."
+
+"Oh, shame!" wailed Miss Harper, half-way down the hall.
+
+"Captain," called Ferry, "I give you one quarter-minute to get away from
+that door." He whispered to Charlotte, pointing to a panel of it higher
+than any one's head.
+
+"Oh, sirs," we again heard Miss Harper cry, "withhold! Captain Ferry,
+they have called in four more men!" We heard the four downstairs coming
+at a run. "Oh, sir--"
+
+"Go away, madam!" bellowed the officer as his men thundered into the
+upper hall. "Now, Captain Ferry, there are six of us here and three
+under each of your windows. Do you--?"
+
+"Oh, sir, the lady! the sick lady!"
+
+"That's his look-out, madam. If the sick lady isn't Charlotte Oli'--"
+
+"And if she is?" called Ferry, depressing Charlotte's weapon to an aim
+barely breast high.
+
+"Then throwing away your life won't save hers! Do you surren'--?"
+
+Ferry made a quick gesture for her to shoot low, but she solemnly shook
+her head and fired through the top of the uppermost panel, and the
+assault came.
+
+The log burst the door in at a blow, Ferry and I fired, and our foes
+sprang in. Certainly they were brave; the doorway let them in only by
+twos, and the fire-log, falling under foot, became a stumbling-block;
+yet in an instant the room was ringing and roaring with the fray and
+benighted with its smoke. Their first ball bit the top of my shoulder
+and buried itself in the wall--no, not their first, but the first save
+one; for the bureau mirror stood in dim shade, and the Federal leader
+made the easy mistake of firing right into it. The error sealed his
+fate; Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of
+his followers. They replied hotly but blindly, and in a moment the room
+was void of assailants. Ferry started to spring from the bed, but
+Charlotte threw her arms about him, and as she pressed her head hard
+down on his breast I could not help but hear "No, my treasure, my
+heart's whole treasure, no!"
+
+
+
+LV
+
+
+RESCUE AND RETREAT
+
+I sprang for the door, but the fire-log sent me sprawling with my
+shoulder on the threshold. As I went down I heard in the same breath the
+wounded officer wailing "Go back! go in! there are only four of them!
+don't leave one alive!" and Miss Harper all but screaming "Our men! our
+men! God be praised, our men are coming, they are here! Fly spoilers,
+for your lives, fly!"
+
+And it was true. Their hoofs rumbled, their carbines banged, and their
+charge struck three sides of the house at once. Rising only to my
+elbows,--and how I did that much, stiffened with my wound, the doctors
+will have to explain,--I laid my cheek to my rifle, and the light of two
+windows fell upon my gunsights. Every blue-coat in the hall was between
+me and its rear window, but one besides the officer was wounded, and
+with these two three others were busy; only the one remaining man saw
+me. Twice he levelled his revolver, and twice I had almost lined my
+sights on him, but twice Miss Harper unaware came between us. A third
+time he aimed, fired and missed. I am glad he fired first, for our two
+shots almost made one report, and-he plunged forward exactly as I had
+done over the fire-log, except that he reached the floor dead.
+
+[Illustration: Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the
+arms of his followers.]
+
+Thereupon came more things at once than can be told: Miss Harper's
+outcry of horror and pity; Charlotte's cry from the bedside--"Richard!
+Richard!" a rush of feet and shouts of rage in the hall below; and my
+leap to the head of the stairs, shouting to half a dozen gray-jackets
+"Two men, no more! two men to guard prisoners, no more! go back, all but
+you two! go back!"
+
+A sabreless officer with a bandaged hand flew up the stair and into my
+face. It was Helm. "The ladies! Smith, good God! Smith, where are
+the girls?"
+
+"In the smokehouse," cried Miss Harper from her knees beside the
+prostrate Federal officer; "go bring them!--Richard, Charlotte is
+calling you!"
+
+I ran to Ferry's door; Charlotte was leaning busily over his bared
+chest, while he, still holding a revolver in his right hand, caressed
+her arm with his left. "Dick, his wound has opened again, but we must
+get him away at once anyhow. Isn't my wagon still here?--oh, thank God!
+there it comes now, I hear it in the back yard!"
+
+A Confederate waiting on Miss Harper with basin and towels barely dodged
+me as I sprang to the far end of the hall and shouted down into the yard
+for Harry. The little mules, true enough, were just rattling round a
+half turn at the lower hall's back door, having been in hiding behind
+the stables. A score or so of cavalry were boisterously hurrying off
+across the yard with a few captured horses and prisoners, and I had to
+call the Lieutenant angrily a second time, to make him hear me amid
+their din and a happy confusion which he was helping to keep up in a
+fairer group. For here were all the missing feminine members of the
+household, white and colored, and Harry was clamorous with joy,
+compassion and applause, while Camille and Cécile, pink with weeping,
+stepped out across the high doorsill of the smokehouse, leading Ned
+Ferry's horse and mine.
+
+However, there was not the urgency for instant flight that Charlotte had
+thought there was; night fell; a whole regiment of our mounted infantry
+came silently up from the rear of the plantation and bivouacked without
+lights behind a quarter of a mile of worm-fence; our two wounded and
+three unharmed prisoners, or Miss Harper's, I should say, for it was in
+response to her entreaties that the latter had thrown down their arms,
+were taken away; the dead man was borne out; lights glowed in every
+room, the servants returned to their tasks, a maddening fragrance came
+from the kitchen, and the three nieces flitted everywhere in their
+benign activities, never discovering the hurt on my shoulder until
+everything else on earth had been discovered, and then--"Oh, Richard,
+Richard!" from Estelle, with "Reach-hard, Reach-hard!" from Cécile, and
+"Mr. Smith!" from Camille, as they bathed and bound it. At length a
+surgeon arrived, gave a cheering opinion of Ferry and of Charlotte, and
+scolded Harry savagely for the really bad condition of his hand. Then
+sounds grew few and faint, our lights went out, we lay down fully
+dressed, and nearly all of us, for a while, slept.
+
+But about two in the morning Harry awakened me, murmuring "Reach-hard!
+Reach-hard! come! our sick-train's moving. Ssh! General Austin's asleep
+in the next room!" I asked where Ferry was. "Already started," he
+whispered, "--in the General's own ambulance, with Charlotte Oliver in
+hers, on a mattress, like Ned, and the four Harpers in theirs." While we
+stole downstairs he murmured on "Our brigade's come up and General
+Austin will attack at daylight with this house as his headquarters."
+
+As we mounted I asked whither we were bound. "Tangipahoa," he said;
+"then by railroad to Brookhaven, and then out to Squire Wall's."
+
+At the first streak of dawn our slow caravan caught the distant notes of
+the battle opening behind us. "That's Fisher's battery!" joyously cried
+the aide-de-camp as we paused and hearkened back. "Well, thank the Lord,
+this time nobody's got to go back for her doll; she's got it with her; I
+saw her, just now, combing its hair." We descended into a woody hollow,
+the sounds of human strife died away, and field and forest offered us
+only beauty, fragrance, peace, and the love-songs of birds.
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+
+HÔTEL DES INVALIDES
+
+A shattered crew we were when in the forenoon of the third day we
+reached our goal. Harry's hand was giving him less trouble, but both my
+small wounds were misbehaving as stoutly as their limitations would
+allow; my aches were cruel and incessant, my side was swollen and my
+shoulder hot. Miss Harper was "really ill," said the surgeon, but for
+whose coming with us we should hardly have brought our whole number
+through alive. Both Ferry and Charlotte were in a critical condition.
+"Take you in!" said our tearfully smiling Mrs. Wall; "why, we'd take yo'
+whole crowd in ef we had to go out and bunk undeh the trees owse'v's!...
+Oh, Mr. Smith, you po' _chi--ild!_... Oh, my Lawd! is this Lieutenant
+Do-wrong! Good Lawd, good Lawd! I think this waugh's gone on now jess
+long enough!"
+
+In the house she gave the younger Harpers a second kiss all round. "You
+po' dears, yo're hero-ines, now, and hencefo'th fo'evehmo'!" Harry and I
+agreed they were; it was one of the few points on which we thought
+alike. We even agreed that Estelle's grasp of earthly realities was not
+so feeble as we had thought it.
+
+"Fact is," I said to him, on our first day at the Walls', as he was
+leaving the soldiers' room, where I sat under the surgeon's inspection,
+"you were totally mistaken about her."
+
+"Yes, I was," he replied; "she's got more sense in a minute than
+Camille's got in a week," and shut the door between us.
+
+My blood leaped with rage, yet I sat perfectly calm, while the surgeon
+laughed like a hyena. "As soon as you can let me go, Doctor," I frigidly
+said, "I shall look up the Lieutenant. I consider that remark
+ungentlemanly, and his method of making it as worthy only of a coward."
+
+The surgeon cackled again. "If that man," I dispassionately resumed,
+"was not perfectly sure that I am too honorable a gentleman to give Miss
+Camille the faintest hint of what he has said, sooner than say it he
+would go out and cut his throat from ear to ear."
+
+"Well! you oughtn't to get mad at him for thinking you a gentleman."
+
+"He sha'n't take a low advantage of my being one. You think he's open
+and blunt--he's as sly as a mink. He praises the older sister at the
+younger's expense, when it's the younger one that he's so everlastingly
+stuck on that he can't behave _like_ a gentleman to any man to whom she
+shows the slightest preference." We heard a coming step, but I talked
+on: "Sense! poor simpleton! he knows he hasn't got"--the door opened and
+Harry stepped partly in, but I only raised my voice,--"hasn't got as
+much brains in his whole head as there is in one of her tracks."
+
+With something between a sob, a sputter and a shriek he shut himself out
+again. Harry was never deep but in a shallow way, and never shallow
+without a certain treacherous depth. When Ned Ferry the next day
+summoned me to his bedside I went with a choking throat, not doubting I
+was to give account of this matter,--until I saw the kindness of his
+pallid face. Then my silly heart rose as much too high as it had just
+been too low and I thought "Charlotte has surrendered!" All he wanted
+was to make me his scribe. But when we were done he softly asked, "That
+business of yours we talked about on the Plank-road--it looks
+any better?"
+
+I bit my lip, turned away and shook my head. "Well, anyhow," he said,
+"I am told there is nobody in your way."
+
+I faced him sharply--"Who told you that?" and felt sure he would name
+the tricky aide-de-camp. But he pointed to the room overhead, which
+again, as in the other house, was Charlotte's. I blushed consciously
+with gratitude. "Well," I said, "it makes me happy to see you beginning
+again to get well."
+
+Within the same hour I met unexpectedly two other persons. First, Harry
+Helm; who, before I could speak, was deluging me with words, telling me
+for the twentieth time how, on that evening of the indoor fight, coming
+with a platoon of Mississippians which he had procured merely as a
+guard, he was within a hundred yards of the house before our shots in
+the bedroom told him he was riding to a rescue. Then suddenly he began
+to assure me that in what he had said about the two sisters he had
+sought only to mislead the surgeon, who, he declared, was more utterly
+dead-gone on Camille than both of us put together. We parted, and
+within the next five minutes I confronted the maiden herself.
+
+She came from upstairs with a mixed armful of papers, books and sewing,
+said she had been with Charlotte, and said no more, only made a
+mysterious mouth. I inquired how Charlotte was. She shrugged, sank into
+a seat on the gallery, let her arm-load into her lap, and replied, "Ah!
+she lies up there and smiles and smiles, and calls us pet names, and
+says she's perfectly contented, and then cannot drop half asleep without
+looking as though she were pressing a knife into her own heart. Oh,
+Dick, what is the matter with her?"
+
+"What do you think,--Camille?"
+
+"Oh--I--I'm afraid to say it--even to Estelle, or aunt Martha, or--"
+
+"Say it to me," I murmured.
+
+"Oh, if I could only trust you!" she said, shaking her head sadly and
+trying to lift her arm's burden again without taking her eyes from mine.
+It went to her feet in a landslide, and out of one of the books
+fluttered three stems of sweet-pea each bearing two mated blossoms. I
+knew them in an instant, and in the next I had them. She would not let
+me pile the fallen freight anywhere but into her arm again, nor recover
+her eye before she was fully re-laden. Then she set her lips freezingly
+and said "Now give me back my flowers."
+
+I meekly gave them and she turned to go into the house; her head
+gradually sank forward as she went, and her unparagoned ear and neck
+flushed to a burning red. On the threshold, by some miscalculation, her
+burdened arm struck the jamb, and the whole load fell again. I sprang
+and began to gather the stuff into a chair, but she walked straight on
+as though nothing had occurred, and shut the nearest door behind her.
+
+In those days used to come out to see us Gregory, in his long-skirted
+black coat and full civilian dress; of whom I have told a separate
+history elsewhere. Very pointed was Camille's neglect of both Harry and
+me, to make herself lovely to the dark and diffident new-comer, while
+Estelle positively pursued me with compensatory sweetness; and Gregory,
+whenever he and I were alone together, labored to reassure me of his
+harmlessness by expatiating exclusively upon the charms of Cécile. She
+seemed to him like a guardian angel of Ferry and Charlotte, while yet
+everything she said or did was wholly free from that quality of
+other-worldliness which was beautiful in Estelle, but which would not
+have endured repetition in the sister or the cousin. There Harry and I,
+also, once more agreed. Cécile never allowed herself to reflect a spirit
+of saintliness, or even of sacrifice, but only of maidenly wisdom and
+sweet philosophy.
+
+"If it weren't for Charlotte," whispered the Lieutenant, "I could swear
+she was created for Ned Ferry!" and when I shook my head he, too,
+declared "No, no! if ever a match was made on high Charlotte was made
+for him and he for Charlotte; but, oh, Lord, Lord! Reach-hard Thorndyke
+Smith, how is this thing going to end?"
+
+That was the problem in the mind of every looker on, and the lookers-on
+were legion; the whole wide neighborhood came to see us. Gregory and
+others outstayed their furloughs; the surgeon lingered shamelessly. Of
+course, there were three girls besides Charlotte, and it was pure
+lying--as I told Helm--for some of those fellows to pretend that Captain
+Ferry's problem was all they stayed for; and yet it was the one
+heart-problem which was everybody's, and we were all in one fever to see
+forthwith a conclusion which "a decent respect to the opinions of
+mankind" required should not come for months.
+
+"Pooh!" said Harry, "'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind'
+requires just the reverse!" and the surgeon avowed that it was required
+by a decent respect to her powers of endurance; he was every day afraid
+her slow improvement would stop and she would begin to sink. He admitted
+the event could wait, but he wished to gracious we could have
+her decision.
+
+I said suppose it should be negative. "Oh, it won't!" exclaimed both he
+and Harry. "When it comes to the very point--"
+
+Gregory's approach interrupted us, but I remembered a trait in Charlotte
+of which I have spoken, and gave myself the hope that their prediction
+might prove well founded.
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+
+A YES AND A NO
+
+But now Charlotte's recovery took on new speed. Maybe her new brightness
+meant only that her heart was learning to bear its load; but we hoped
+that was just what it was unlearning, as she and Ferry sat at chess on
+the gallery in the afternoons.
+
+One night the fellows gave a dance in Brookhaven. We went in two wagons
+and by the light of mounted torch-bearers, and Charlotte and Ferry stood
+at the dooryard gate and sent after us their mirthful warnings and
+good-byes. It set some of us a-hoping--to see them there--a dooryard
+gate means so much. We fairly prayed he might compel her decision before
+she should turn to re-enter the house. But the following morning it was
+evident we had prayed in vain.
+
+On the next afternoon but one we heard that a great column of our
+soldiers was approaching on the nearest highway, bound up the railroad
+to Joe Johnston's army from the region about Port Hudson, and Charlotte
+instantly proposed that our ladies deal out food and drink from some
+shady spot on the roadside. It was one of those southern summer days
+when it verily seems hotter in the shade than in the sun--unless you are
+in the sun. The force was wholly artillery and infantry, the last
+Confederate infantry that region ever saw in column under arms; poor,
+limping, brown-faced, bloody-footed boys! their weapons were the only
+clean things, the only whole things, about them except their unbroken
+spirit; and when the very foremost command chanced to be one which the
+Harpers had seen in New Orleans the day it left there marching in
+faultless platoons and spotless equipments through the crowds that
+roared acclaim and farewell, our dear ladies, for one weak moment, wept.
+
+"Here come the real heroes, Harry," said my crippled leader; "we are
+dandies and toy-soldiers, by the side of those infantry boys, Doctor, we
+cavalry fellows;" and we cavalry fellows would have hid if we honorably
+could. Yet hardly had he spoken when he and a passing field-officer
+cried out in mutual recognition, and from that time until the rear-guard
+was clear gone by we received what the newspapers call "a continuous
+ovation." A group of brigade officers went back with us to Squire
+Wall's, to supper, and you could see by the worship they paid Charlotte
+that they knew her story. Her strength was far overtaxed, and the moment
+the last fond straggler had gone we came in out of the splendid
+moonlight.
+
+"Now, Charlotte, my dear," began Miss Harper, "you are too terribly
+tired to--why, where is Charlotte; did she not come in with us from
+the--gate?"
+
+Ferry, too, was missing. Mrs. Wall made eyes at the inquirer, Estelle
+and Cécile began to speak but deferred to each other, and Camille,
+putting on a deadly exhaustion, whined as she tottered to her smiling
+guardian, "Kiss your sweet baby good-night, auntie dear, and"--with a
+hand reached out to Estelle--"make Naughty come, too." She turned to say
+good-night to Cécile but spoiled her kiss with an unintended laugh. The
+surgeon, Harry and I bowed from the room and stepped out to the
+water-bucket and gourd. From there we could see the missing two,
+lingering at the dooryard gate, in the bright moonlight. As we finished
+drinking, "Gentlemen," murmured Harry, "I fear our position is too
+exposed to be tenable."
+
+The surgeon started upstairs. "I'll join you directly, Doctor," Harry
+said, and in a lower voice added "Smith and I will just lounge in and
+out of the hall here to sort o' show nobody needn't be in any hurry,
+don't you see?"
+
+But the other jerked his thumb toward the half-closed parlor, where
+Miss Harper and Cécile sat close, to each other absorbed in some matter
+of the tenderest privacy. "They'll attend to that," he muttered; "come
+on to bed and mind your own business."
+
+Harry huffed absurdly. "You go mind yours," he retorted, and then more
+generously added, "we'll be with you in a minute." The surgeon went, and
+the aide-de-camp, as we began to pace the hall, fairly took my breath by
+remarking without a hint of self-censure, "Damn a frivolous man!" Then
+irrelatively he added, "Those two out at that gate--this is a matter of
+life and death with them;" and when I would have qualified the
+declaration, he broke in upon me--"Right, Dick, you're right, it _is_
+worse; it's a choice between true life and death-in-life; whether
+they'll make life's long march in sunshine together or in
+darkness apart."
+
+Well, of course, it was no such simple question, and never could be
+while life held so many values more splendid than any wilfulness could
+win. There lay the whole of Charlotte's real difficulty--for she had
+made it all hers. But when I tried in some awkward way to say this Harry
+cut me short. "Oh, Dick, I--eh--you bother me! I want to tell you
+something and if I don't hurry I can't. Something's happened to me, old
+fellow, something that's sobered me more than I ever would 'a' thought
+anything could. I want to tell you because I can trust you with a
+secr'--wh'--what's the matter, did I hurt your wound? Honestly, I want
+to tell you because--well--because I've been deceiving you all along:
+I've deceived you shamefully, letting on to like this girl more than
+that, and so on and so on."
+
+"Yes, you thought you were deceiving me."
+
+"Oh, well, maybe I wasn't, but I want to tell you to-night because I'm
+going to camp in the morning. Oh, yes,"--he named the deepest place
+known--"the sight of those webfoot boys to-day was too much for me; I'm
+going; and Dick, when I told her I was going--"
+
+"_Told whom_?"
+
+"Aw, come, now, Dick, you know every bit as well as I know. Well, when I
+told her I was going I didn't dream I was going to tell her anything
+else; I give you my word! Where in the"--same place again--"I ever got
+the courage I'll never tell you, but all of a sudden thinks I, 'I'm
+never going to get anything but no, anyhow, and so, Dick, I've been and
+gone and done it!"
+
+I leaned on the stair-newel, sorry for the poor fool, but glad of this
+chance. "Why, Lieutenant, not many men would have done as well. You felt
+honor-bound not to slip away uncommitted, so you took your dose like a
+hero and licked the spoon." I felt that I was salting his wound, but we
+were soldiers and--I had the salt.
+
+He drew a sigh. "Yes, I took my dose--of astonishment. Dick, she said
+yes! Oh, good Lord, Dick, do you reckon they'll ever be such full-blown
+idiots as to let me have her?"
+
+I sank upon the steps; every pore in my body was a fountain of cold
+sweat: "Have whom?"
+
+"Cécile." He was going on to declare himself no more fit for her than
+for the presidency of the Confederate States, which was perfectly true;
+but I sprang up, caught him (on my well side) by one good hand, and had
+begun my enthusiastic congratulations, when Charlotte appeared and we
+swerved against the rail to let her pass upstairs. In some way as she
+went by it was made plain to us that she had said no. "Good-night,"
+ventured both of us, timorously.
+
+"Good-night," she responded, very musically, but as if from a great
+distance.
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+
+THE UPPER FORK OF THE ROAD
+
+Ferry, as he passed us, called my name, and I started after him. At
+Charlotte's door we heard the greeting of her black maid. The maid's
+father, who of late had been nightly dressing Ferry's wound and mine,
+came to us in Ferry's room; and there my Captain turned to greet me, his
+face white with calamity. He took me caressingly by a button of my
+jacket. "Can you have your wound washed to-night before mine?"
+
+"Why, certainly, if it's the least--"
+
+"Yes, thank you. And down here in this room instead of upstairs?"
+
+"Captain Ferry! if you knew how horribly it smells, you--"
+
+"Ah! don't I know?" he said, and as I sat naked from throat to waist
+with the old negro laving the sores, Ferry scanned them narrowly. "They
+are not so bad, Dick; you think a few hours in the saddle will not make
+them worse?"
+
+"Not if they're spent for you, Captain."
+
+"Yes, for me; also for much better. We shall ride for--"
+
+"You ride? Oh, Captain, you are in no condition--"
+
+"Tst!" he laid a finger on my lips; "'twill not be hard; we are not
+going on a scout--to jump fences." He began to make actual preparations,
+and presently helped me draw my shirt into place again over the clean
+bandages, while the old man went out after fresh water. "I am a hundred
+times more fit to go than to stay," he suddenly resumed. "I must go. Ah,
+idleness, there is nothing like idleness to drive a man mad; I must have
+something to do--to-night--at once." I wish I knew how to give the words
+with his quiet intensity.
+
+I began to unclothe his wound. "May I ask one thing?"
+
+"Ah! I know you; you want to ask am I taking that upper fork of the
+road. I am; 'tis for that I want you; so go you now to the stable,
+saddle our horses and bring them."
+
+When I reached the front steps with them Ferry was at the gallery's
+edge, Miss Harper, Cécile and Harry were on three sides of him, and he
+was explaining away our astonishing departure. We were going to
+Hazlehurst, to issue clothing and shoes to those ragged and barefoot
+fellows we had seen that afternoon, and the light of whose tentless camp
+was yonder in the sky, now, toward Brookhaven. We were to go that way,
+confer with their officers, telegraph from town for authorizations to be
+sent to us at Hazlehurst, and then to push on to that place and be ready
+to issue the stuff when the trains should come up from Brookhaven
+bringing the brigade. While he spoke Camille and Estelle joined us.
+"No," he said, "to start any later, 'twould be too late."
+
+To Harry's imploring protest that he, Ferry, was not fit to go to
+Hazlehurst horseback, he replied "Well! what we going to do? Those boys
+can't go to Big Black swamp bare-foot."
+
+Our dear friends were too well aware of the untold trouble to say a word
+about his coming back, but Miss Harper's parting injunction to me was to
+write them.
+
+The whole night and the following day were a toilsome time for us, but
+by fall of the next night the brigade had come in rags and passed newly
+clothed and shod, and in a room of the town tavern we dressed each
+other's hurts and sank to sleep on one bed. The night was hot, the pain
+of my wounds was like a great stone lying on them, and at the tragic
+moment of a frightful dream I awoke. "Captain," I murmured.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Did she give no reason?"
+
+"No." A silence followed; then he said, "You know the reason, I think."
+
+"Yes, I think I do; I think--"
+
+"Well? don't be afraid to say it."
+
+I got the words out in some form, that I believed Charlotte loved him
+deeply, as deeply, passionately, exaltedly, as ever a true woman loved
+a man--
+
+"Ah, me!" he lifted his arms wide and knitted his fingers on his brow.
+
+"And there is the whole trouble," I added. "She will not let you marry
+the woman whose--"
+
+"Whose husband I have killed.... Ah, God!... Ah, my God! why was I
+chosen to do that?... And you think, Dick, it was not a question of
+time; that I did not ask, maybe a little too soon?"
+
+"No, not as between sooner and later; and yet, in another way, possibly,
+yes." Without either of us stirring from the pillow I tried to explain.
+I pointed out that trait in Charlotte which I called an impulse suddenly
+to surrender the key of her situation, the vital point in her
+fortunes and fate.
+
+"Yes.... Yes," Ferry kept putting in.
+
+I went on to say that she seemed now to have learned, herself, that it
+was on this shoal she grounded at every low water of her physical and
+mental powers; as when over-fatigued, for instance; and that I should
+not wonder if she had bound herself never again at such a time to let
+her judgment follow her impulses. He laid his hand on me: "Stop; stop;
+you stab too deep. I thought to take her by surprise at that very point,
+and right there she has countermined. My God! can it be that I am served
+only right?"
+
+"No," I replied, although it was a thing I would have said Ned Ferry
+would not do, "no, no, it is she who has served both you and herself
+cruelly wrong. Captain, I believe that when Miss Harper has talked it
+over with her she will see her mistake as we all see it, and will call
+you back."
+
+"Ah, me! Ah, me! Do you believe that, Dick?"
+
+"I do, Captain; but at the same time--"
+
+"What, what? Speak out, Dick. You blame me some other way?"
+
+"Oh, no, indeed! I am the one to blame, the only one. If you had not,
+both of you, been so blameless--so splendidly blameless--I should hardly
+have let myself sink so deep into blame; but I knew you would never take
+the last glad step until you had seen the last sad proof that you might
+take it. Oh, Captain, to-night is the third time that in my dreams I
+have seen _that man_ alive."
+
+I do not know how long after that we lay silent, but it seemed an
+endless time before he exclaimed at last "My God! Dick, you should
+have told me."
+
+"I know it; I know I should! But it was only a dream, and--"
+
+"Ah! 'twas your doubt first and the dream after! But let us think no
+more of blame, we must settle the doubt. We shall begin that to-morrow."
+On my venturing to say more he interrupted. "Well, we can do nothing
+now; at the present, sleep is our first business." However, after a
+little, he spoke again, and, I believe, purely in order to soothe me to
+slumber, speculated and counselled with me for the better part of an
+hour concerning my own poor little love affair.
+
+At breakfast he told me the first step in his further plans would be for
+us to take the train for Tangipahoa, with our horses, on our way to our
+own camp; but just before the train came the telegraph brought General
+Austin's request--which, of course, carried all the weight of an
+order--for Ferry to remain here and make ready for further issues of
+quartermaster's stores. He turned on his heel and twisted his small
+mustache: "That means we are kept here to be kept here, Richard."
+
+It was a mistaken kindness, from our point of view, but it had the merit
+that it kept us busy. In two days the post-quartermaster's affairs and
+supplies were reduced to perfect order for the first time in their
+history. For two days more we ran a construction train and with a swarm
+of conscripts repaired two or three miles of road-bed and some
+trestle-work in a swamp; and at every respite in our strenuous
+activities we discoursed of the girls we'd left behind us; their minds,
+their manners, their features, figures, tastes and talents, and their
+walk and talk. So came the end of the week, and while the sun was still
+above the trees we went on down, inspecting the road beyond our repairs,
+on our own hand-car to Brookhaven. With heads bare, jackets in our laps,
+and muddy boots dangling over the car's front edge, and with six big
+negroes at the levers behind us, we watched the miles glide under our
+wheels and grow fewer and fewer between us and the shrine of our hearts.
+"Sing, Dick," said Ferry, and we chanted together, as we had done at
+every sunset these three days, "O my love is like a red, red rose." We
+could not have done it had we known that yonder glorious sun was setting
+forever upon the fortunes of our Southern Confederacy. It was the fourth
+of July; Lee was in full retreat from Gettysburg, Vicksburg was gone,
+Port Hudson was doomed, and all that was left for us now was to
+die hard.
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+
+UNDER CHARLOTTE'S WINDOW
+
+At the tavern, where we went to smarten up and to eat, we chanced upon
+Gregory. He was very shy of Ferry, because Ferry was a captain, but told
+me the latest news from the Wall place, where he had spent the previous
+evening. Harry and the surgeon were gone to camp, the Harpers were well,
+Charlotte was--better, after a bad turn of several days. We felt in duty
+bound to stay within hail of the telegraph office until it should close
+for the night; and when the operator was detained in it much beyond the
+usual time, Ferry, as we hovered near, said at length, "Well, I'm sorry
+for you, Dick; 'tis now too late for you to go yonder--this evening."
+
+"Didn't you intend to call, too?" "No," he said; yet the moment the
+operator turned the key in his door we sauntered away from the station,
+tavern, town, and out into the rain-famished country. We chose a road on
+high ground, under pines; the fact that a few miles of it would bring us
+to Squire Wall's was not sufficient reason for us to shun it, and we
+loitered on and on, discoursing philosophically on man and woman and the
+duties of each to other. Through habit we went softly, and so, in time,
+came up past a small garden under the house's southern side. Here
+silence was only decorum, for every window in the dark upper rooms was
+thrown open to the sultry air. The house's front was away from the
+direction of the town, and at a corner of this garden, where the road
+entered the open grove, the garden fence turned north at a right angle,
+while the road went on through the grove into wide cornfields beyond.
+
+We kept to the garden fence till it brought us along the dooryard front,
+facing the house. Thus far the whole place seemed fast asleep. Along the
+farthest, the northern, side a line of planted trees ran close to a
+narrow wing of but one room on each of its two stories, and the upper of
+these two rooms was Charlotte's. Where we paused, at the dooryard gate,
+we could not see this wing, but we knew its exterior perfectly; it had a
+narrow window in front, looking into the grove, and a broader one at the
+rear, that overlooked an open stretch of the Wall plantation. The place
+seemed fast asleep, I say, but we had not a doubt we were being
+watched--by the two terrible dogs that guarded the house but never
+barked. By this time they should have recognized us and ought to be
+coming forward and wagging faintly, as who should say "Yes, that's all
+right, but we have our orders."
+
+"Ah!"--Ferry guardedly pointed to the ground at the corner of the house
+nearest Charlotte's room; there were both the dogs, dim as phantoms and
+as silent, standing and peering not toward us but around to the wing
+side in a way to make one's blood stop. We drew deeper into the grove
+and made a short circuit that brought us in line with Charlotte's two
+windows, and there, at the farther one, with her back to us, sat
+Charlotte, looking toward Hazlehurst. The bloodthirsty beasts at the
+corner of the house were so intently waiting to spring upon something,
+somebody, between them and the nearer window, that we were secure from
+their notice. We had hardly more than become aware of these things when,
+in the line of planted trees, out of the depths of the one nearest the
+nearer window, sounded a note that brought Charlotte instantly to her
+feet; the same feeble, smothered cry she had heard the night she was
+wounded. She crossed to the front window and listened, first standing
+erect, and then stooping and leaning out. When we saw her do that we
+knew how little she cared for her life; Ferry beckoned me up from behind
+him; neither of us needed to say he feared the signal was from Oliver.
+"Watch here," he whispered, and keeping the deepest shade, started
+eagerly, with drawn revolver, toward the particular tree. I saw the dogs
+discover and recognize him and welcome his aid, yet I kept my closest
+watch on that tree's boughs and on Charlotte. She was wondering, I
+guessed, whether the call was from some messenger of Ferry, or was only
+a bird's cry. As if she decided it was the latter, she moved away, and
+had nearly re-crossed the room, when the same sad tremolo came searching
+the air again. Nevertheless she went on to the farther window and stood
+gazing out for the better part of a minute, while in my heart I besought
+her not to look behind. For Ferry and the dogs had vanished in shadow,
+and outside her nearer window, wavering now above and now below the
+sill, I could just descry a small pale object that reminded me of that
+missive Coralie Rothvelt had passed up to me outside the window-sill at
+old Lucius Oliver's house exactly a month before. From the upper depths
+of the nearest tree this small thing was being proffered on the end of a
+fishing-rod. Presently the rod must have tapped the sill, with such a
+start did she face about. Silently she ran, snatched the dumb messenger,
+and drew down the window-shade. A moment later the room glowed with a
+candle, while her shadow, falling upon the shade, revealed her scanning
+a letter, lifting her arms with emotion, and so passing out of the
+line of view.
+
+I waited on. So absorbed was I that I did not hear the coming of a
+horseman in the fields beyond the grove, nor the click of a field gate;
+but when the strange quietude of Ferry and the dogs had begun to
+reassure me I became aware of this new-comer approaching the dooryard.
+There he reined in and hallooed. I knew the voice. An answer came from
+an upper window. "Is this Squire Wall's?" asked the traveller. "Well,
+Squire, I'm from General Austin's headquarters, with orders to
+Captain Ferry."
+
+"Captain Ferry ain't stopping with us now, sir, he's 'way up at
+Hazlehurst."
+
+"Yes, sir. I didn't know but he might 'a' come down to spend to-morrow
+with you, it being the Sabbath. My name's Gholson, sir; I've got letters
+for the Miss Harpers; yes, sir; and one for Private Smith, from his
+mother, in New Orleans."
+
+"My sakes! yo' pow'ful welcome, Mr. Wholesome; just wait till I call off
+my dogs, sir, and I'll let you in."
+
+When the dogs came at the Squire's call I breathed relief. Ferry
+appeared behind me and beckoned me deeper into the grove. He sank upon a
+stump, whispering "That was worse than ten fights."
+
+"Who was it?" I asked. "Where is he?"
+
+He pointed to the field gate through which Gholson had come. In the
+field a small man was re-closing it cautiously, and now he mounted and
+rode away; it was Isidore Goldschmidt, of the Plank-road swamp. I was
+wondering why he had behaved in this skulking way, when Ferry, as if
+reading my thought, said, "Isidore can't afford to be found seventy-five
+miles inside our lines with no papers except a letter from a Yankee
+officer--and not knowing, himself, what's in it."
+
+"Oh! why should he risk his life to bring such a thing to her?"
+
+"Because three months ago she risked her life to save the life of his
+father, and now, since only last week, that Yankee has saved the life of
+his mother." I asked who this Yankee might be. "Well, that is yet more
+strange; he is the brother of Captain Jewett."
+
+We were moving to the house; at the steps we halted; the place was all
+alight and the ladies were arriving in the parlor. A beam of light
+touching Ferry's face made his smile haggard. I asked if this Jewett was
+another leader of scouts.
+
+"No, he is a high-rank surgeon. Yet I think he must have heard all about
+her; he wouldn't send that letter, that way, just for gratitude."
+
+"Yes," I responded, pondering, "he may easily have learned about her,"
+and I called to mind that chief-of-staff of whom Charlotte had told us.
+Then, remembering her emotional shadow-play on the window-shade, I
+added, "He knew at least what would be important news to her--Captain,
+I have it!"
+
+He made a motion of pain--"Don't say it!" and we read in each other's
+eyes the one conviction that from a surgeon's personal knowledge this
+man had written to warn Charlotte that Oliver was alive.
+
+
+
+LX
+
+
+TIDINGS
+
+All the glad difference between hope stark drowned and hope sighing back
+into life lightened Ferry's heart; he gripped my shoulder--the sound
+one, by good luck,--and drew me into the dining-room, where the whole
+company were gathered to see Gholson eat. Our entry was a fresh
+surprise. As we drank the flatteries of seven lovely welcomes, from
+behind Gholson I reconnoitred Charlotte, and the fullest confirmation of
+our guess was in the peaceful resolve of her eyes. I noted the Harpers,
+all, and dear Mrs. Wall's sweet freckled face, take new gladness of the
+happy change, while unable to define its cause.
+
+But now came raptures and rhapsodies over the opened letters. Ferry's
+orders had not been expected to reach him to-night, Gholson said, and so
+we insisted they and my letter should remain in the saddle-pockets while
+Gholson ate, and while the good news, public and personal, of the
+Harpers' letters went round.
+
+"But I thought the' was fi-ive letters," said the Squire as we were
+about to leave the board; at which Mrs. Wall mumbled to him to "hush
+up;" for the fifth was to Cécile.
+
+"Yes," guilefully said Charlotte, "Richard's letter!" and we all
+followed Gholson to where his saddle lay on the gallery. There he handed
+out Ferry's document and went on rummaging for mine.
+
+"The two were right here together," he said, "and Mr. Smith's was marked
+'valuable' and had something hard in one corner of it." Camille brought a
+candle, Estelle another; Gholson rose from his knee: "Smith, it's gone!
+I've lost it! And yet"--he slapped his breast-pockets--"no, it's
+somewhere in the grove; it's between here and that cornfield gate! I
+counted all the papers just this side of that gate, and I must 'a'
+dropped yours then!" Cécile brought a third light and we sallied forth
+into the motionless air, Estelle with a candle and Gholson, Camille
+with a candle and me, Cécile with a candle and Mrs. Wall, Miss Harper
+and the Squire, and Charlotte and Ferry. In the heart of the grove
+Estelle gave a soft cry, sprang, stooped, straightened, and handed me
+the letter.
+
+"Yes," exclaimed Camille as the three candle-bearers gathered close,
+"that's your mother's writing," and as we fell into marching order
+again, with the lights still in the front files, I opened it. It was
+thick and soft with sheet after sheet of thinnest paper. With these was
+a sealed letter, unaddressed, containing in one corner what seemed to be
+a ring. Around all was a sheet of writing of later date than any other.
+Wonderful, my mother's lines declared, was the Providence that had
+brought her wounded boy among such priceless friends; and wonderful that
+same Providence that now gave her the chance to send three weeks' daily
+letters in one, and to send them by a hand so sure that she ventured to
+add this other note, a matter so secret that it must be delivered only
+by my own hands, or hands which I could trust as my own, to Charlotte
+Oliver. We glanced back in search of Charlotte. She and Ferry were well
+in the rear of the procession, moving with laggard steps, she lighting
+his page with a borrowed candle, and he evidently reading not his
+orders, but the Federal surgeon's letter. "Oh, don't speak yet,"
+murmured Camille, "let them alone!"
+
+At the garden gate the most of the company passed on into the house,
+Gholson among them. His face, as for an instant he turned aside to me,
+betrayed a frozen rage; for Ferry and Charlotte tarried just at our
+backs, she seated on the "horse-block" and he leaning against it. A stir
+of air brought by the rising moon had blown out their light. Gholson
+left me, and Camille waited at my side while I tried to read by the
+flare of her guttering candle. "Come, my dear," said Miss Harper from
+half-way up the walk, but Charlotte called Miss Harper.
+
+"You'd better go in, Camille," insisted the aunt as she passed us, but
+Charlotte had just asked for our candle to relight her own, and she said
+to Miss Harper, "Let them stay, won't you?" and then to Ferry, "They
+might as well, mightn't they? Oh, now,"--as Camille handed her my
+mother's letter--"they must!" She toyed with the envelope's thinner edge
+without noticing the ring in the corner. "My dears," she said, looking
+frail and distressed, yet resolute, "I have positive intelligence--not
+through Captain, nor Richard, nor Mr. Gholson,--I'll tell you how some
+day--positive intelligence that--the dead--is not dead; the blow,
+Richard, glanced. I was foolish never to think of that possibility, it
+occurs so often. He was profoundly stunned, so that he didn't come-to
+until he was brought to a surgeon. It's from that surgeon I have the
+news; here's his letter."
+
+"Charlotte, my dear," interrupted Miss Harper, "tell us the remainder
+to-morrow, but now--"
+
+"No, sweetest friend, there will never be another chance like this;
+Captain Ferry's orders carry him to Jackson at daylight to-morrow,
+and--and we may not meet again for years; let me go on. When the gash
+was sewed up, the hand was really the worse hurt of the two, and after
+a few days he was sent down on a steamer to New Orleans with a great lot
+of other sick and wounded, and with the commanding general's warning not
+to come back on peril of his life. 'Tisn't easy to tell this, but you
+four have a particular right to know it from me and at once. So let me
+say"--she handed Ferry my mother's letter as if it were a burdensome
+distraction--"I'm not sorry for the mistake, Richard, which we all so
+innocently made; and you mustn't be sorry for me and be saying to
+yourselves that my captivity is on me again; for I'm happier tonight
+than I've been since the night the mistake was made."
+
+She dropped a hand to Ferry's to receive again the neglected letter, and
+chanced to take it by the corner that held the ring. With that she
+stared at us, fingered it, rended the envelope, gave one glance to her
+own name engraved inside a plain gold ring of the sort New Orleans girls
+bestow upon those to whom they are betrothed, and springing to the
+ground between our two candles, bent over the open page and cried
+through a flood of tears, "Oh, God, have mercy on him, he is gone! He is
+gone, Edgard! Oh, Edgard, he is gone at last; gone beyond all doubt, and
+our hands--our hands and our hearts are clean!"
+
+Ferry tossed away his candle and turned upon her, but she retreated into
+Miss Harper's arms laughing through her tears. "Oh, no, no! we've never
+hurried yet, never yet, my master in patience, and we'll not hurry now!
+Go and come again. Go, wait, hide your eyes till I cry 'whoop,' and
+come again and find me, and, I pledge you before these dear witnesses,
+I'll be 'it' for the rest of my life!"
+
+With the letter again held open, and bidding Miss Harper and Camille
+read with her, she swept a fleet glance along the close lines that told
+how Oliver, half cured of his wounds, had died in a congestive chill, of
+swamp-fever, the day he landed in New Orleans. "See, see, Richard, here
+your mother has copied the hospital's certificate."
+
+She read on aloud how two private Federal soldiers, hospital
+convalescents, had come to my mother telling her of his death, and how
+he had named my mother over and over in his delirium, desiring that she
+should be given charge of the small effects on his person and that she
+would return them to his father in the Confederacy. My mother wrote how
+she had been obliged secretly to buy back from the hospital steward a
+carte-de-visite photograph of Charlotte, and this ring; how, Oliver not
+being a Federal soldier, she had been allowed to assume the expense and
+task of his burial; how she had found the body already wrapped and
+bound, in the military way, when she first saw it, but heard the two
+convalescents praising to each other the strong, hard-used beauty of the
+hidden face, and was shown the suit of brown plantation jeans we all
+knew so well; and how, lastly, when her overbearing conscience compelled
+her to tell them she might find it easier to send the relics to the wife
+rather than the father, they had furtively advised her to do as
+she pleased.
+
+[Illustration: Springing to the ground between our two candles, she
+bent over the open page]
+
+"Charlotte," said Miss Harper, "the thing is an absolute certainty!
+Even without your likeness or--"
+
+"Ah, no, no, not without this! the ring, the ring! But with it, yes!
+This is the crowning proof! my ring to him! Oh, see my name inside it,
+Camille; this little signet is Heaven's own testimony and acquittal!
+Look, Richard, look at it now, for no living soul, no light of day,
+shall ever see it again--"
+
+"Sweet heart," replied Miss Harper, "very good! very good! but now say
+no more of that sort. God bless you, dear, just let yourself be happy.
+Good-night--no, no, sit still; stay where you are, love, while Camille
+and I go in and Richard steps around to the stable and puts our team
+into the road-wagon; for, Captain Ferry, neither you nor he is fit to
+walk into Brookhaven; we can bring the rig back when we come from church
+to-morrow."
+
+"No, Richard," said Charlotte, "get my wagon and the little Mexicans."
+Then to Miss Harper and Camille, "Good-night, dears; I'll wait here that
+long, if Captain Ferry will allow me." She turned to him with the
+moonlight in her eyes, that danced riotously as she said in her softest,
+deepest note, "You're afraid!" and I thanked Heaven that Coralie
+Rothvelt was still a pulsing reality in the bosom of Charlotte
+Oliver.
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+
+WHILE DESTINY MOVED ON
+
+Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the
+next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and
+Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited
+Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther
+to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him
+and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if
+our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was
+not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in
+practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh,
+the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the
+scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the
+groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood
+and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from
+sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long
+dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our
+brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring,
+with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the
+Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was
+kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried
+swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade
+going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge
+might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its
+captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be,
+in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called
+back to his commander, "Ferry's scouts!" the whole column cheered us. I
+feel the thrill of it to this hour.
+
+How busy we were kept, and how much oftener I wrote to Ferry, and to
+Camille, than to my mother. And how much closer I watched the trend of
+things that belonged only to this small story than I did that great
+theatre of a whole world's fortunes, whose arches spread and resounded
+from the city of Washington to the city of Mexico. In mid-August one of
+Camille's heartlessly infrequent letters brought me a mint of blithe
+news. Harry and Cécile were really engaged; Major Harper, aunt Martha,
+General Austin, Captain Ferry and Charlotte had all written the distant
+father in his behalf, and the distant father had capitulated.
+Furthermore, Captain Ferry's latest letter to Charlotte had brought word
+that in spite of all backsets he was promised by his physician that in
+ten days more he could safely take the field again. But, best of all,
+Major Harper, having spent a week with his family--not on leave, but on
+some mysterious business that somehow included a great train of pontoon
+bridges--had been so completely won over to Charlotte by her own sweet
+ways that, on his own suggestion to his sister, and their joint
+proposition, by correspondence, to Ferry, another group of letters,
+from Miss Harper, the Major and the General, had been sent to the
+Durands in New Orleans--father, mother, and grandmother--telling them
+all about Charlotte; her story, her beauty, her charms of manner, mind,
+and heart. And so, wrote my correspondent, the Wall household were
+living in confident hope and yet in unbearable suspense; for these
+things were now full two weeks old, and would have been told me sooner
+only that she, Camille, had promised never to tell them to any one
+whomsoever.
+
+A week later came another of these heartlessly infrequent letters. Mr.
+Gregory, it said,--oh, _hang_ Mr. Gregory!--had called the previous
+evening. Then followed the information that poor Mr. Gholson--oh, dear!
+the poor we have always with us!--had arrived again from camp so wasted
+with ague as to be a sight for tears. He had come consigned to "our
+hospital," an establishment which the Harpers, Charlotte and the Walls
+had set up in the old "summer-hotel" at Panacea Springs, and had
+contrived to get the medical authorities to adopt, officer and--in a
+manner--equip. They were giving dances there, to keep the soldiers
+cheerful, said the letter, in which its writer took her usual patriotic
+part, and Mr. Gregory--oh, save us alive! And now I was to prepare
+myself: the Durands had got the bunch of letters and had written a
+lovely reply to Captain Ferry, who had sent it to Charlotte, claiming
+her hand, and Charlotte had answered yes. If I thought I had ever seen
+her beautiful or blithe, or sweet, or happy, I ought to see her now;
+while as for the writer herself, nothing in all her life had ever so
+filled her with bliss, or ever could again.
+
+Ferry did not arrive, but day by day, night by night, we stalked the
+enemy, longing for our Captain to return to us. Quinn was fearless,
+daring, indefatigable; but Quinn was not Ferry. Often we talked it over
+by twos or fours; the swiftness of Ferry's divinations, the brilliant
+celerity with which he followed them out, the kindness of his care;
+Quinn's care of us was paternal, Ferry's was brotherly and motherly. We
+loved Quinn for the hate and scorn that overflowed from his very gaze
+upon everything false or base. But we loved Ferry for loving each and
+every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther
+yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious
+atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the
+carbonic-acid gas of Gholson's cant. We made great parade of recognizing
+his defects; it had all the fine show of a motion to reconsider. For
+example, we said, his serene obstinacy in small matters was equally
+exasperating and ridiculous; or, for another instance,--so and so; but
+in summing up we always lumped such failings as "the faults of his
+virtues," and neglected to catalogue them. Thinking it all over a
+thousand times since, I have concluded that the main source of his
+charm, what won our approval for whatever he did, however he did it, was
+that he seemed never to regard any one as the mere means to an
+end--except himself.
+
+If this history were more of war than of love--and really at times I
+fear it is--we might fill pages telling of the brigade's September and
+early October operations in that long tongue of devastated country which
+narrowed from northeast to southwest between Big Black on our front and
+the Tallahala and Bayou Pierre behind us. At Baker's Creek it had a
+bloody all-day fight, in which we took part after having been driven in
+upon the brigade. It was there that at dusk, to the uproarious delight
+of half the big camp, and with our Captain once more at our head, for he
+had rejoined us that very morning, we came last off the field, singing
+"Ned Ferry's a-comin' down de lane."
+
+On a day late in October our company were in bivouac after some hard
+night-riding. Some twenty-five miles west of us the brigade had been
+resting for several days on the old camp-ground at Gallatin, but now
+they were gone to Union Springs. Ferry, with a few men, was scouting
+eastward. Quinn awaited only his return in order to take half a dozen or
+so of picked fellows down southward and westward about Fayette. Between
+ten and eleven that night a corporal of the guard woke me, and as I
+flirted on my boots and jacket and saddled up, said Ferry was back and
+Quinn gone. I reported to Ferry, who handed me a despatch: "Give that to
+General Austin; he has gone back to Gallatin--without the brigade--to
+wait--with the others"--his smile broadened.
+
+"Captain,"--I swallowed a lump--"what others?"
+
+"Well,--all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm,
+Squire Wall, Mrs. Wall, the four Harper ladies, and--eh,--let me see, is
+that all?--ah, no, the old black man and his daughter, and--eh,--the
+two little mule'! that's all--stop! I was forgetting! What is that
+fellow's name we used to know? ah, yes; Charlie Toliver!" In a moment he
+sobered: "Yes, all will be yonder, and I wait only for Quinn to get back
+in the morning, to come myself." In the fulness of his joy he had to
+give my horse a parting slap. "Good-night! good-bye--till to-morrow!"
+
+I galloped away filled with an absurd foreboding that he was too sure,
+which may have come wholly from my bad temper at being started too late
+to see our ladies before morning. However, at two that night, my saddle
+laid under my head, and haversack under the saddle, I fell asleep with
+all Gallatin for my bedchamber, the courthouse square for my bed, the
+sky for my tester, the pole-star for my taper, hogs for mosquitoes and a
+club for a fan.
+
+
+
+LXII
+
+
+A TARRYING BRIDEGROOM
+
+Joyous was the dawn. With their places in the hospital filled for the
+brief time by Brookhaven friends, here were all our fairs, not to speak
+of the General, the Colonel, the Major, idlers of the town and region,
+and hospital bummers who had followed up unbidden and glaringly without
+wedding-garments. Cécile, Harry, Camille "and others" prepared the
+church. The General kept his tent, the Major rode to Hazlehurst, and the
+Colonel, bruised and stiffened by a late fall from his horse, lounged
+amiably just beyond talking range of the ladies and grumbled jokes to
+Chaplain Roly-poly, whose giggling enjoyment of them made us hope they
+were tempered to that clean-shaven lamb.
+
+However, there came a change. By mid-forenoon our gaiety ran on only by
+its momentum. The wedding was to be at eleven. At ten the Colonel,
+aside, told me, with a ferocious scowl, that my Captain ought to have
+arrived. At half-past he told me again, but Major Harper, returning from
+Hazlehurst, said, "Oh, any of a hundred trifles might have delayed him a
+short time; he would be along." The wedding-hour passed, the
+wedding-feast filled the air with good smells. Horsemen ambled a few
+miles up the road and came back without tidings. Then a courier, one of
+Ferry's scouts, galloped up to the General's tent, and presently the
+Major walked from it to the tavern and up to Charlotte's room, to say
+that Ferry was only detained by Quinn's non-arrival. "It's all right,"
+said everyone.
+
+Another hour wore on, another followed. The General and old Dismukes
+played cards and the latter began to smell of his drams, Harry and
+Cécile walked and talked apart, Camille kept me in leash with three
+other men, and about two o'clock came another courier with another bit
+of Ferry's writing; Quinn had returned. He had had a brush with
+jayhawkers in the night, had captured all but their leader, and had sent
+his prisoners in to brigade headquarters at Union Church, while he
+returned to Ferry's camp bringing with him, mortally wounded--"O--oh!
+Oh--oh!" exclaimed Charlotte, gazing at the missive,--"Sergeant
+Jim Langley!"
+
+"Does Ned say when he will start?" asked the Colonel, and Charlotte,
+reading again, said the sergeant, at the time of the writing, was not
+expected to live an hour. Whereupon the word went through town that
+Ferry was on his way to us.
+
+"Smith," said the Colonel, just not too full to keep up a majestic
+frown, "want to saddle my horse and yours?" and very soon we were off to
+meet the tardy bridegroom. The October sunshine was fiery, but the road
+led us through our old camp-ground for two or three shady miles before
+it forked to the right to cross the Natchez Trace, and to the left on
+its way to Union Springs, and at the fork we halted. "Smith, I reckon
+we'd best go back." I mentioned his bruises and the torrid sun-glare
+before us, but he cursed both with equal contempt; "No, but I must go
+back; I--I've left a--oh, I must go back to wet my whistle!"
+
+We had retraced our way but a few steps, when, looking behind me as a
+scout's habit is, I saw a horseman coming swiftly on the Union Church
+road. "Colonel," I said, "here comes Scott Gholson."
+
+Without pausing or turning an eye my hearer poured out a slow flood of
+curses. "If that whelp has come here of his own accord he's come for no
+good! Has he seen us?"
+
+Gholson had not seen us; we had been in deep shade when he came into
+sight, and happened at that moment to turn an angle that took us out of
+his line of view. In a minute or so we were again at the small bridge
+over the embowered creek which ran through the camping-ground. The water
+was low and clear, and the Colonel turned from the bridge as if to cross
+beneath it and let his beast drink, yet motioned back for me to go upon
+it. As I reached its middle he came under it in the stream and halted.
+Guessing his wish I turned my horse across the bridge and waited.
+Gholson was almost within hail before he knew me. He was a heaving lump
+of dust, sweat and pain.
+
+"Has Ned Ferry come?" was his first call. I shook my head. "Oh, thank
+God!" he cried with a wild gesture and sank low in the saddle; but
+instantly he roused again: "Oh, don't stop me, Smith; if I once stop I'm
+afraid I'll never get to her!"
+
+I stopped him. "Why, Gholson, you're burning up with fever."
+
+"Yes, I started with a shaking chill. I'm afraid, every minute, I'll go
+out of my head. Oh, Smith, Oliver's alive! He's alive, he's alive, and
+I've come to save his poor wife from a fate worse than death!"
+
+"Gholson, you are out of your head."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes, yes! and yet I know what I'm saying, I know what I'm
+saying!"
+
+"You do not! Gholson, Oliver's been food for worms these four months. I
+know he wasn't dead at Gilmer's; but he died--now, let me tell
+you--he--"
+
+"Smith, I know the whole story and you know only half!"
+
+"No, no! I know all and you know only half; I have seen the absolute--"
+
+"Proofs? no! you saw things taken from the body of another man in
+Oliver's clothes! Oliver swapped places with him on the boat going down
+to the city so's he could come back to these parts without being hung by
+the Yankees; swapped with a sick soldier, one of a pair that wanted to
+desert; swapped names, clothes, bandages, letters, everything. It was
+that soldier that died of the congestive chill and was buried by your
+mother with his face in a blanket--as, like enough, mine will be before
+another day is done--Oh, Lord, Lord! my head will burst!"
+
+"Gholson, you're mistaken yet! That soldier came to my mother--"
+
+"No, he never! the other one went to her, in cahoots with Oliver, and
+worked the thing all through so's to have the news of Oliver's death, so
+called, come back here to the Yankees and us; and to his wife, so's she
+_would_ marry Ned Ferry to her everlasting shame, and people would say
+they was served right when he killed 'em at last! O--oh! Smith,--"
+
+"Listen to me!" I had tried twice to interrupt and now I yelled; "was it
+Oliver, and a new gang, that Quinn fought last night, and have you got
+him at Union Church?"
+
+"Quinn didn't know it, for Oliver got away, but they got the Yankee
+deserter, and brought him in when everybody was asleep but me, and I
+cross-examined him. Oh, my friend, God's arm is not shortened that he
+cannot save! He maketh the wrath of the wicked to praise him! The man
+was dying then, but thank God, I choked the whole truth out of him with
+a halter over a limb, and then for three mortal hours I couldn't start
+because the squad that took him out to--Who--who is that?"
+
+The Colonel moved from under the bridge, spurred up the bank, and turned
+to us with a murderous smile. "Howdy, Gholson." The smile grew. "Had to
+stay with the hanging-squad to keep his mouth shut, you was going to
+say, wa'n't you? But you knew Captain Ferry would be delayed waiting for
+Quinn, too; yes. Does any one know this now besides us three; no! Good,
+we're well met! Smith and me are going to Union Church, and you'd better
+go with us; I've got a job that God A'mighty just built you two saints
+and me for; come, never mind Gallatin, Ferry's not there, and when he
+gets there Heaven ain't a-going to stop that wedding, and hell sha'n't."
+Gholson had barely caught his breath to demur when old Dismukes, roaring
+and snarling like a huge dog, whipped out his revolver, clutched the
+sick man's bosom, and hanging over him and bellowing blasphemies, yelled
+into his very teeth "Come!"
+
+We galloped. A courier from the brigade-camp met us, and the Colonel
+scribbled a purely false explanation of our absence, begging that no
+delay be made because of it. As the man left us, who should come up from
+behind us but Harry, asking what was the matter. "Matter enough for you
+to come along," said the Arkansan, and we went two and two, he and
+Gholson, Harry and I. We reached camp at sundown, and stopped to feed
+and rest our horses and to catch an hour's sleep. Gholson's fatigue was
+pitiful, but he ate like a wolf, slept, and awoke with but little fever.
+The Colonel kept him under his eye, forcing on him the honors of his
+own board, bed and bottle, and at nine we galloped again.
+
+Between eleven and twelve the Colonel, Harry and I were in a dense wood,
+moving noiselessly toward a clearing brilliantly lighted by the moon. I
+was guide. A few rods back in the woods Gholson was holding our horses
+and with cocked revolver detaining a young mulatto woman from whom the
+Colonel had extorted the knowledge which had brought us to this spot.
+The clearing was fenced, but was full of autumn weeds. Near the two
+sides next us, tilted awry on its high basement pillars, loomed an old
+cotton-gin house, its dark shadows falling toward us. A few yards beyond
+towered and gleamed a white-boled sycamore, and between the two the
+titanic arms of the horse-power press widened broadly downward out of
+the still night sky. The tree was the one which old Lucius Oliver had
+once pointed out to me at dawn.
+
+
+
+LXIII
+
+
+SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER TOLD TILL NOW
+
+At the fence I ceased to lead, and we crept near the gin-house from
+three sides, warily, though all the chances were that wherever Oliver
+lay he was heavy with drink. The Colonel stole in alone. He was lost to
+us for, I should say, five minutes; they seemed thirty; then there
+pealed upon the stillness an uproarious laugh mingled with oaths and
+curses, sounds of a plunge, a struggle, a groan, and old Dismukes
+calling "Come, boys, I've got him! Take it easy, take it easy, I've got
+him on the floor by the hair of his head; call Gholson!"
+
+Gholson brought the mulatress. In the feeble rays of an old tin lantern,
+on some gunny-sacking that lay about the gin-room floor, sat old
+Dismukes cross-legged and smiling, with arms folded and revolver
+dangling from his right hand, at full cock. On one side crouched Harry
+and I, on the other side Gholson and the slave woman. Facing him, half
+sat, half knelt Oliver, bound hand and foot, and gagged with his own
+knotted handkerchief. The lantern hung from a low beam just above his
+face; his eyes blazed across the short interval with the splendor of a
+hawk's. The dread issue of the hour seemed all at once to have taken
+from his outward aspect the baser signs of his habits and crimes, and I
+saw large extenuation for Charlotte's great mistake. From the big
+Colonel's face, too, the heaviness of drink was gone, and its smile grew
+almost fine as he spoke.
+
+"Ten minutes for prayer is a good while to allow you, my amiable friend;
+we ain't heard for our much speaking, are we, Brother Gholson? Still,
+we've given you that, and it's half gone. If you don't want the other
+half we won't force it on you; we've got that wedding to go to, and I'm
+afraid we'll be late."
+
+The bound man sat like a statue. The slave girl went upon her knees and
+began to pray for her master,--with whom she had remained after every
+other servant on the place had run off to the Federals, supplicating
+with a piteous fervor that drew tears down Harry's cheeks. "Humph!" said
+the Arkansan, still smiling straight into Oliver's eyes, "she'd better
+be thanking God for her freedom, for that's what we're going to give her
+to-night; we're going to take her and your poor old crippled father to
+the outposts and turn 'em loose, and if either of 'em ever shows up
+inside our lines after to-night, we'll hang 'em. You fixed the date of
+your death last June, and we're not going to let it be changed; that's
+when you died. Ain't it, Gholson? Whoever says it ain't fixes the date
+of his own funeral, eh, boys? I take pleasure in telling you we're not
+going to hang your father, because I believe in my bones you'd rather
+we'd hang him than not. Mr. Gholson, you're our most pious believer in
+obedience to orders; well, I'm going to give you one, and if you don't
+make a botch of it I sha'n't have to make a botch of you; understand?"
+
+Gholson's lips moved inaudibly, his jaws set hard, and he blanched; but
+the Colonel smiled once more: "I've heard that at one time you said, or
+implied, that Captain Ferry had betrayed his office, because when he had
+a fair chance to shoot this varmint he omitted, for private reasons, to
+do it. And I've heard you say, myself, that this isn't your own little
+private war. So,--just change seats with me."
+
+They exchanged. The slave girl sank forward upon her face moaning and
+sobbing. Harry silently wept. "Now, Gholson, you know me; draw--pistol."
+
+Gholson drew; I grew sick. "Ready,"--Gholson came to a ready and so did
+the Colonel; "aim," Gholson slowly aimed, the Colonel kept a ready, and
+Oliver, for the first time took his eyes from him and gazed at Gholson.
+"Fire!" Gholson fired; Oliver silently fell forward; with a stifled cry
+the girl sprang to him and drew his head into her lap, and he softly
+straightened out and was still. "Oh, sweet Jesus!" she cried, "Oh,
+sweet Jesus!"
+
+The amused Colonel held the lantern close down. "He's all right, Brother
+Gholson," was his verdict; the ball had gone to the heart. "Still, just
+to clinch the thing, we'll calcine him, gin-house and all."
+
+Gin-house and all, we burned him up. On our horses out in the open road
+to the house, we sat, the girl perched behind the Colonel, and watched
+the fire mount and whirl and crackle behind the awful black arms of the
+cotton-press. The Arkansan shook his head: "It's too fine; 'tain't a
+dog's death, after all. Lord! why didn't I think of it in time? we'd
+ought to 'a' just dropped him alive into that lint-box and turned the
+press down onto him with our horses!"
+
+When the pile was in one great flame we rode to the dwelling, and the
+girl was sent in to bid old Lucius begone. The doors stood open, a soft
+firelight shone from his room. We saw her form darken his chamber
+threshold and halt, and then she wailed: "Oh, Lawd God A'mighty! Oh,
+Lawd God A'mighty!"
+
+"Stop that noise! Gholson, hold the horses. Come. Lieutenant, come
+Smith, maybe he's killed himself, but it seems too good to be true.
+Here, girl, go cram what you can get into a pillow-case, and mount
+behind my saddle again; be quick, we're going to burn this hornet's
+nest too." Harry and I had already run to the old man's room, and, sure
+enough, there lay the aged assassin hideous in his fallen bulk, with his
+own bullet in his brain.
+
+Once more the Arkansan shook his head at the leaping flames. "Too good,
+too good for either of 'em, entirely; we've let 'em settle at five cents
+on the dollar. Here girl,"--he reached back and handed her a wad of
+greenbacks,--"here's your dividend; you're a preferred creditor." He had
+rifled the pockets of both the dead men, and this was their contents.
+"Now, boys, we'll dust, or we'll be getting shot at by some fool or
+other. We're leaving a fine horse hid away somewhere hereabouts, but we
+can't help that; come on."
+
+In due time the Colonel, with the slave girl, and Harry with her
+pillow-case of duds, turned toward Fayette, and Gholson and I toward the
+brigade, at Union Church. Then, at last, my old friend and
+co-religionist let his wrath loose. He began with a flood of curses,
+lifting high a loaded carbine which we had found with Oliver and which
+he was ordered to turn in. As he gave his ecstasy utterance it grew; he
+brandished the weapon like a Bedouin, dug the rowels into his overspent
+beast and curbed him back to his haunches, fisted him about the ears,
+gnashed with the pain of his own blows, and howled, and stood up in the
+stirrups and cursed again. I had heard church-members curse, but they
+were new church-members, camp converts, and their curses were an
+infant's cooing, to this. Unwittingly he caused his horse to stumble,
+and the torrent of his passion gathered force like rain after a peal of
+thunder; he clubbed the gun to bring it down upon the beautiful
+creature's head, and when I caught it on the rise he wrenched it from me
+as if I were a girl, threw it fifty feet away, sprang to the ground and
+caught it up, fired it in the air, and with one blow against a tree sent
+the stock flying, threw the barrel underfoot, leapt upon it, tore his
+hair and his hat, and cursed and champed and howled. I sat holding his
+horse and feeling my satisfaction rise like the mercury in a warmed
+thermometer. Contrasting this mood with the cold malignancy and resolve
+of his temper in the soldiers' room at Sessions's, I saw, to my delight,
+that our secret was forever imprisoned in his breast, gagged and chained
+down by the iron of his own inextricable infamy. At dawn he awakened me
+that he might persuade me to reject the evidences brought against his
+character by his doings and endurings of the night, and that he might
+rebuild the old house of words in which habitually he found shelter, too
+abysmally self-conceited ever to see his own hypocrisy. We breakfasted
+with the "attatchays"; after which he had barely secured my final
+assurance that our friendship remained unmarred, when old Dismukes and
+Harry mounted at the Colonel's tent, and the old brute, as they trotted
+out into the Gallatin road, beckoned me to join them.
+
+
+
+LXIV
+
+
+BY TWOS. MARCH
+
+The Arkansan was happy. "Come up, Legs," he bawled to me as soon as we
+were beyond the pickets, "come up from behind there; this ain't no
+dress parade."
+
+"Are they married?" I softly asked Harry at the first opportunity, but
+he could not tell me. He knew only that Ferry had been expected to
+arrive about an hour before midnight; if he arrived later the wedding
+would be deferred until to-day. On our whole ride we met no one from
+Gallatin until near the edge of the town we passed a smiling rider who
+called after us, "You-all a-hurryin' for nothin'!"
+
+We dropped to a more dignified gait and moved gayly in among our
+gathering friends, asking if we were in time. "No--o! you're too
+late!--but still we've waited for you; couldn't help ourselves; she
+wouldn't stir without you."
+
+The happy hubbub was bewildering. "Where's this one?" "Where's that
+one?" "See here, I'm looking for you!" "Now, you and I go together--"
+"Dick Smith! where's Dick Sm'--Miss Harper wants you, Smith, up at the
+bride's door." But Miss Harper only sent me in to Charlotte.
+
+"Richard, tell me," the fair vision began to say, but there the cloud
+left her brow. "No," she added, "you couldn't look so happy if there
+were the least thing wrong, could you?" Her fathoming eyes filled while
+her smile brightened, and meeting them squarely I replied "There's
+a-many a thing wrong, but not one for which this wedding need wait
+another minute."
+
+"God bless you, Richard!" she said; "and now _you_ may go tell Edgard I
+am coming."
+
+Old Gallatin is no more. I would not mention without reverence the
+perishing of a town however small, though no charm of antiquity, of art
+or of nature were lost in its dissolution. Yet it suits my fancy that
+old Gallatin has perished. Neither war nor famine, flood nor fever were
+the death of it; the railroad and Hazlehurst sapped its life. Some years
+ago, on a business trip for our company--not cavalry, insurance,--I went
+several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick,
+of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its
+square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In
+place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and
+houses had utterly vanished; a solitary "store," as transient as a
+toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling calico and molasses, shoes
+and snuff. But that was the only discord, and by turning my back on it I
+easily called up the long past scene: the wedding, the feast, the fiery
+punch, the General's toast to the bridal pair, and the heavy-eyed
+Colonel's bumper to their posterity! It was hardly drunk when a courier
+brought word that the enemy were across Big Black, and the brigade
+pressing north to meet them. Charlotte glided away to her room to be
+"back in a moment"; into their saddles went the General, the Colonel,
+the Major and the aide-de-camp, and thundered off across the bridge in
+the woods; Charlotte came back in riding-habit, and here was my horse
+with her saddle on him, and the Harpers and Mrs. Wall clasping and
+kissing her; and now her foot was in Ferry's hand and up she sprang to
+her seat, he vaulted to his, and away they galloped side by side, he for
+the uttermost front of reconnoissance and assault, she for the slow but
+successful uplifting of Sergeant Jim back to health and into his place
+in the train of our hero and hers. In the little leather-curtained
+wagon, with the old black man and his daughter, and all her mistress's
+small belongings, and with my saddle and bridle, I followed on to the
+house where lay the sergeant, and where my horse would be waiting to
+bear me on to Ferry's scouts.
+
+I saw the Harpers only twice again before the war was over. Nearly all
+winter our soldiering was down in the Felicianas, but by February we
+were once more at Big Black when Sherman with ten thousand of his
+destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three
+or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had
+fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went
+back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers
+set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were
+occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department
+headquarters in that State capital; yet Harry and Cécile did not wed
+until after the surrender. Gholson's passion far Charlotte really did
+half destroy him, while it lasted; nevertheless, one day about a year
+after her marriage, when I had the joy of visiting the Harpers, I saw
+that Gholson's heart was healed of that wound and had opened in a new
+place. That is why Estelle, with that danger-glow of emotion ever
+impending on her beautiful cheek, never married. She was of that kind
+whose love, once placed, can never remove itself, and she loved Gholson.
+Both Cécile and Camille had some gift to discern character, and some
+notion of their own value, and therefore are less to be excused for not
+choosing better husbands than they did; but Estelle could never see
+beyond the outer label of man, woman or child, and Gholson's label was
+his piety. She believed in it as implicitly, as consumingly, as he
+believed in it himself; and when her whole kindred spoke as one and said
+no, and she sent him away, _she_ knew she was a lifelong widow from that
+hour. Gholson found a wife, a rich widow ten years his senior, and so
+first of all, since we have reached the page for partings, good-bye
+Gholson. "Whom the gods love die young"--you must be sixty years old
+now, for they say you're still alive. And good-bye, old Dismukes; the
+Colonel made a fortune after the war, as a penitentiary lessee, but they
+say he has--how shall we phrase it?--gone to his reward? Let us
+hope not.
+
+But what is this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks?
+Our rocket has scaled the sky, poised, curved, burst, spread out all its
+stars, and dropped its stick. All is done unless we desire to watch the
+fading sparks slowly sink and melt into darkness. The General, the
+Major, his brother, their sister, my mother, Quinn, Kendall, Sergeant
+Jim, the Sessionses, the Walls--do not inquire too closely; some have
+vanished already, and soon all will be gone; then--another rocket; it is
+the only way, and why is it not a good one? Harry and Cécile--yes, they
+still shine, in "dear old New Orleans." Camille kept me on the
+tenter-hooks while she "turned away her eyes" for years; but one evening
+when we were reading an ancient book together out dropped those same old
+sweet-pea blossoms; whereupon I took her hand and--I have it yet. There,
+we have counted the last spark--stop, no! two lights beam out again;
+Edgard and Charlotte, our neighbors and dearest friends through all our
+life; they glow with nobility and loveliness yet, as they did in those
+young days when his sword led our dying fortunes, and she, in her gypsy
+wagon, followed them, binding the torn wound, and bathing the aching
+bruise and fevered head. Oh, Ned Ferry, my long-loved partner, as dear a
+leader still as ever you were in the days of bloody death, life's
+choicest gifts be yours, and be hers whose sons and daughters are yours,
+and the eldest and tallest of whom is the one you and she have
+named Richard.
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+OTHER BOOKS BY MR. CABLE
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+There are few living American writers who can reproduce for us more
+perfectly than MR. CABLE does, in his best moments, the speech, the
+manners, the whole social atmosphere of a remote time and peculiar
+people. A delicious flavor of humor permeates his stories.--_The New
+York Tribune_.
+
+STRONG HEARTS
+
+12mo, $1.25
+
+"Under the title "_Strong Hearts_," MR. CABLE has grouped three stories
+of varying length, which we think must stand as among the most charming
+things he has written. Not even in "_Old Creole Days_," is there found
+more delicate work, and yet underneath it there is felt the strong grasp
+of the master. There is so much delicacy, such a fine touch that one is
+wholly captivated by the handiwork until it is realized how much this is
+part and parcel of this picture."--_Brooklyn Eagle_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+_A New Edition of Mr. Cable's Romances comprising the following 5 vols.,
+printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt top and bound in sateen with full
+gilt design. Each 12mo, $1.50. The set, 5 volumes, in a box, $7.50_.
+
+JOHN MARCH SOUTHERNER
+
+12mo, $1.50
+
+"The most careful and thorough going study of the reconstruction period
+in the South which has yet been offered in the world of
+fiction.--_The Outlook_.
+
+"In many respects MR. CABLE'S finest work."--_Boston Advertiser_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE GRANDISSIMES
+
+A STORY OF CREOLE LIFE
+
+12mo, $1.50.
+
+"Such a book goes far towards establishing an epoch in fiction, and it
+places it beyond a doubt that we have in MR. CABLE a novelist of
+positive originality, and of the very first quality."--_The
+Boston Journal_.
+
++The Grandissimes.+ with 12 full-page illustrations and 8 head and tail
+pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
+original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.
+
+A Special limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net, $12.00_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+OLD CREOLE DAYS
+
+12mo, $1.50.
+
+Cameo Edition with an etching by Percy Moran, $1.25
+
+"These charming stories attract attention and commendation by their
+quaint delicacy of style, their faithful delineation of Creole
+character, and a marked originality."--_The New Orleans Picayune_.
+
++Old Creole Days.+ _With 8 full-page illustrations and 14 head and tail
+pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
+original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.
+
+A Special Limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net $12.00_.
+
+BONAVENTURE
+
+A PROSE PASTORAL OF ACADIAN LOUISIANA 12mo, $1.50
+
+"A noble, tender, beautiful tale."--MRS. L. C. MOULTON in _Boston
+Herald_.
+
+"MR. CABLE has never produced anything so delightful and so artistic as
+"Bonaventure." The charm of the pastoral life of these unlearned,
+unsuspicious people in rude homes far away from the stir of modern life
+is as novel as it is indescribable."--_North American Review_.
+
+DR. SEVIER 12mo, $1.50
+
+"The story contains a most attractive blending of vivid descriptions of
+local scenery, with admirable delineations of personal character."--_The
+Congregationalist_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA
+
+Illustrated. 12mo, $2.00
+
+"What a field of romance, of color, of incident, of delicate feeling,
+and unique social conditions these stories show!"--_Hartford Courant_.
+
+"They are tales whose interest and variety seem inexhaustible.--MR.
+CABLE has done lasting service to literature in giving us this
+remarkable and delightful collection. In themselves they are memorably
+charming."--_Boston Transcript_.
+
+MADAME DELPHINE
+
+16mo, 75 cents
+
+"This is one of the gems of a collection of exquisite stories of the old
+Creole days in Louisiana."--_Boston Advertiser_.
+
+Ivory series edition, 16mo, 75c.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA
+
+ILLUSTRATED FROM DRAWINGS BY FENNEL
+
+Square 12mo, $2.50
+
+"As a history of the Louisiana Creoles, it occupies a field in which it
+will not find a competitor. Mr. Cable has given us an exceedingly
+attractive piece of work."--_The Nation_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE SILENT SOUTH
+
+Together with the Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease
+System. _Revised and Enlarged Edition_. With portrait.
+
+12mo, $1.00
+
+"Whatever other literature on these themes may arise Mr. Cable's book
+must be a permanent influence impossible for writers on either side to
+ignore."--_The Critic_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE NEGRO QUESTION
+
+12mo, 75c
+
+"Mr. Cable has the Puritan conscience, the agitator's courage, and the
+Anglo-Saxon's fearless adhesion to what he deems right."--_The
+Churchman_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE CABLE STORY BOOK
+
+Selections for School Reading. Edited by Mary E. Burt and Lucy L. Cable.
+[_The Scribner Series of School Reading_]. Illustrated. 12mo, _net_ 60c.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cavalier, by George Washington Cable
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cavalier, by George Washington Cable
+
+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
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+
+
+Title: The Cavalier
+
+Author: George Washington Cable
+
+Posting Date: November 15, 2011 [EBook #9839]
+Release Date: February, 2006
+First Posted: October 23, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAVALIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<table width="80%"><tr><td>
+<a name="imgone" id="imgone"></a><img src="images/001.jpg" alt="Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!" />
+</td>
+<td>
+<center>
+<h1>THE CAVALIER</h1>
+<h2>BY
+</h2>
+<h2>GEORGE W. CABLE
+</h2>
+<h2>1901
+</h2>
+</center>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="4">
+      <div align="center"><strong>CONTENTS</strong> </div>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>
+      <div align="right"><strong>CHAPTER</strong> </div>
+    </td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+
+    <td>
+      <div align="right"><strong>CHAPTER</strong></div>
+    </td>
+    <td>&nbsp; </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>
+      <p align="right"><strong>I. <br />
+        II.<br />
+        III. <br />
+        IV. <br />
+        V. <br />
+        VI.<br />
+        VII.<br />
+        VIII.<br />
+        IX.<br />
+        X.<br />
+        XI.<br />
+        XII.<br />
+        XIII.<br />
+        XIV.<br />
+        XV.<br />
+        XVI.<br />
+        XVII.<br />
+        XVIII.<br />
+        XIX.<br />
+        XX.<br />
+        XXI.<br />
+        XXII.<br />
+        XXIII.<br />
+        XXIV.<br />
+        XXV.<br />
+        XXVI.<br />
+        XXVII.<br />
+        XXVIII.<br />
+        XXIX.<br />
+        XXX.<br />
+        XXXI.<br />
+        XXXII.</strong></p>
+    </td>
+    <td align="left"><a href="#I">She Wanted to Laugh</a><br />
+      <a href="#II">Lieutenant Ferry</a><br />
+      <a href="#III">She</a><br />
+      <a href="#IV">Three Days' Rations</a><br />
+      <a href="#V">Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty</a><br />
+      <a href="#VI">A Handsome Stranger</a><br />
+      <a href="#VII">A Plague on Names!</a><br />
+      <a href="#VIII">Another Curtained Wagon</a><br />
+      <a href="#IX">The Dandy's Task</a><br />
+      <a href="#X">The Soldier's Hour</a><br />
+      <a href="#XI">Captain Jewett</a><br />
+      <a href="#XII">In the General's Tent</a><br />
+      <a href="#XIII">Good-Bye, Dick</a><br />
+      <a href="#XIV">Coralie Rothvelt</a><br />
+      <a href="#XV">Venus and Mars</a><br />
+      <a href="#XVI">An Aching Conscience</a><br />
+      <a href="#XVII">Two Under One Hat-Brim</a><br />
+      <a href="#XVIII">The Jayhawkers</a><br />
+      <a href="#XIX">Asleep in the Death-Trap</a><br />
+      <a href="#XX">Charlotte Oliver</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXI">The Fight on the Bridge</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXII">We Speed a Parting Guest</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXIII">Ferry Talks of Charlotte</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXIV">A Million and a Half</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXV">A Quiet Ride</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXVI">A Salute Across the Dead-Line</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXVII">Some Fall, Some Plunge</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXVIII">Oldest Game on Earth</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXIX">A Gnawing in the Dark</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXX">Dignity and Impudence</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXI">The Red Star's Warning</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXIII">A Martyr's Wrath</a></td>
+
+    <td>
+      <div align="right"><strong>XXXIII.<br />
+        XXXIV.<br />
+        XXXV.<br />
+        XXXVI.<br />
+        XXXVII.<br />
+        XXXVIII.<br />
+        XXXIX.<br />
+        XL.<br />
+        XLI.<br />
+        XLII.<br />
+        XLIII.<br />
+        XLIV.<br />
+        XLV.<br />
+        XLVI.<br />
+        XLVII.<br />
+        XLVIII.<br />
+        XLIX.<br />
+        L.<br />
+        LI.<br />
+        LII.<br />
+        LIII.<br />
+        LIV.<br />
+        LV.<br />
+        LVI.<br />
+        LVII.<br />
+        LVIII.<br />
+        LIX.<br />
+        LX.<br />
+        LXI.<br />
+        LXII.<br />
+        LXIII.<br />
+        LXIV.</strong></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="left"><a href="#XXXIII">Torch and Sword</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXIV">The Charge in the Lane</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXV">Fallen Heroes</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXVI">&quot;Says Quinn, S'e&quot;</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXVII">A Horse! A Horse!</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXVIII">&quot;Bear a Message and a Token&quot;</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXIX">Charlotte Sings</a><br />
+      <a href="#XL">Harry Laughs</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLI">Unimportant and Confidential</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLII">&quot;Can I Get There by Candle-Light?&quot;</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLIII">&quot;Yes, and Back Again&quot;</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLIV">Charlotte in the Tents of the Foe</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLV">Stay Till To-Morrow</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLVI">The Dance at Gilmer's</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLVII">He's Dead--Is She Alive?</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLVIII">In the Hollow of His Right Arm</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLIX">A Cruel Book and a Fool or Two</a><br />
+      <a href="#L">The Bottom of the Whirlwind</a><br />
+      <a href="#LI">Under the Room Where Charlotte Lay</a><br />
+      <a href="#LII">Same Book and Light-Head Harry</a><br />
+      <a href="#LIII">&quot;Captain, They've Got Us&quot;</a><br />
+      <a href="#LIV">The Fight in the Doorway</a><br />
+      <a href="#LV">Rescue and Retreat</a><br />
+      <a href="#LVI">H&ocirc;tel des Invalides</a><br />
+      <a href="#LVII">A Yes and a No</a><br />
+      <a href="#LVIII">The Upper Fork of the Road</a><br />
+      <a href="#LIX">Under Charlotte's Window</a><br />
+      <a href="#LX">Tidings</a><br />
+      <a href="#LXI">While Destiny Moved On</a><br />
+      <a href="#LXII">A Tarrying Bridegroom</a><br />
+      <a href="#LXIII">Something I Have Never Told Till Now</a><br />
+      <a href="#LXIV">By Twos. March</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td>
+<h3>ILLUSTRATIONS</h3>
+<h4><a href="#imgone">&quot;Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!&quot;</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgtwo">&quot;I surrender,&quot; he said, with amiable ease</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgthree">&quot;Well, you <em>air</em> in a hurry!&quot;
+</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgfour">With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the fence like a deer
+</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgfive">Ferry saluted with his straight blade
+</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgsix">&quot;Don't you like him?&quot; she asked, and tried to be very arch
+</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgseven">Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of his followers
+</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgeight">Springing to the ground between our two candles, she bent over the open
+page
+</a></h4>
+<br />
+<br />
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<table width="75%" align="center">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<h2><a name="I" id="I">I</a></h2>
+<p><strong>SHE WANTED TO LAUGH</strong></p>
+
+<p>Our camp was in the heart of Copiah County, Mississippi, a mile or so
+west of Gallatin and about six miles east of that once robber-haunted
+road, the Natchez Trace. Austin's brigade, we were, a detached body of
+mixed Louisiana and Mississippi cavalry, getting our breath again after
+two weeks' hard fighting of Grant. Grierson's raid had lately gone the
+entire length of the State, and we had had a hard, vain chase after
+him, also.
+</p>
+<p>Joe Johnston's shattered army was at Jackson, about forty-five miles to
+northward; beleaguered Vicksburg was in the Northwest, a trifle farther
+away; Natchez lay southwest, still more distant; and nearly twice as far
+in the south was our heartbroken New Orleans. We had paused to
+recuperate our animals, and there was a rumor that we were to get new
+clothing. Anyhow we had rags with honor, and a right to make as much
+noise as we chose.
+</p>
+<p>It was being made. The air was in anguish with the din of tree-felling
+and log-chopping, of stamping, neighing, braying, whooping, guffawing,
+and singing--all the daybreak charivari beloved of a camp of
+Confederate &quot;critter companies.&quot; In the midst of it a chum and I sat close together on a log near the mess fire, and as the other boys of the mess lifted their heads from their saddle-tree pillows, from two of them at once came a slow, disdainful acceptance of the final lot of the
+wicked, made unsolicited on discovering that this chum and I had sat
+there talking together all night. I had the day before been wheedled
+into letting myself be detailed to be a quartermaster's clerk, and this
+comrade and I were never to snuggle under the one blanket again. The
+thought forbade slumber.
+</p>
+<p>&quot;If I go to sleep,&quot; I said,--&quot;you know how I dream. I shall have one of those dreams of mine to carry around in my memory for a year, like a bullet in my back.&quot; So there the dear fellow had sat all night to give me my hourly powders of reassurance that I could be a quartermaster's clerk without shame.
+</p>
+<p>&quot;Certainly you can afford to fill a position which the leader of Ferry's scouts has filled just before you.&quot;
+</p>
+<p>But my unsoldierly motive for going to headquarters kept my misgivings
+alive. I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare
+was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and
+Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and &quot;Les
+Mis&eacute;rables&quot;--Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation--lent round; and where men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs. Ned Ferry had been Major Harper's clerk, but had managed in several
+instances to display such fitness to lead that General Austin had lately
+named him for promotion, and the quartermaster's clerk was now
+Lieutenant Ferry, raised from the ranks for gallantry, and followed
+ubiquitously by a chosen sixty or so drawn from the whole brigade. Could
+the like occur again? And could it occur to a chap who could not
+comprehend how it had ever occurred at all?
+</p>
+<p>By and by we breakfasted. After which, my precious horse not having
+finished his corn, I spread my blanket and let myself doze, but was soon
+awakened by the shouts of my companions laughing at me for laughing so
+piteously in my sleep.
+</p>
+<p>&quot;Would I not tell my dream, as nice young men in the Bible always did?&quot;
+</p>
+<p>&quot;No, I would not!&quot; But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his example, but having got in, could only stay there. The boys furnished the moral; it was not complimentary.
+</p>
+<p>&quot;Well, good-bye, fellows.&quot;
+</p>
+<p>&quot;Good-bye, Smith.&quot; I have never liked my last name, but at that moment the boys contrived to put a kindness of tone into it which made it
+</p>almost pleasing. &quot;Good-bye, Smith, remember your failings.&quot;
+
+<p>Remember! I had yet to make their discovery. But I was on the eve of
+making it.
+</p>
+<p>As I passed up the road through the midst of our nearly tentless camp I
+met a leather-curtained spring-wagon to which were attached a pair of
+little striped-legged mules driven by an old negro. Behind him, among
+the curtains, sat a lady and her black maid. The mistress was of
+strikingly graceful figure, in a most tasteful gown and broad Leghorn
+hat. Her small hands were daintily gloved. The mules stopped, and
+through her light veil I saw that she was handsome. Her eyes, full of
+thought, were blue, and yet were so spirited they might as well have
+been black, as her hair was. She, or fate for her, had crowded thirty
+years of life into twenty-five of time.
+</p>
+<p>For many a day I had not seen such charms of feminine attire, and yet I
+was not charmed. Every item of her fragrant drapery was from the world's
+open market, hence flagrantly un-Confederate, unpatriotic,
+reprehensible. Otherwise it might not have seemed to me that her thin
+nostrils had got their passionateness lately.
+</p>
+<p>&quot;Are you not a New Orleans boy?&quot; she asked as I lifted my k&eacute;pi and drew
+rein.</p>
+
+<p>Boy! humph! I frowned, made myself long, and confessed I had the honor
+to be from that city. Whereupon she let her long-lashed eyes take on as
+ravishing a covetousness as though I had been a pretty baby.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew it!&quot; she said delightedly. &quot;But tell me, honor bright,&quot;--she
+sparkled with amusement--&quot;you're not regularly enlisted, are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I clenched my teeth. &quot;I am nineteen, madam.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes danced, her brows arched. &quot;Haven't you got&quot;--she hid her smile
+with an embroidered handkerchief--&quot;haven't you got your second figure
+upside down?&quot; I glared, but with one look of hurt sisterliness she
+melted me. Then, pensive just long enough to say, &quot;I was nineteen once,&quot;
+she shot me a sidelong glance so roguish that I was dumb with
+indignation and tried to find my mustache, forgetting I had shaved it
+off to stimulate it. She smiled in sweet propitiation and then came
+gravely to business. &quot;Have you come from beyond the pickets?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, madam.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you met any officer riding toward them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had not. Her driver gathered the reins and I drew back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-bye, New Orleans soldier-boy,&quot; she said, gaily, and as I raised my
+cap she gave herself a fetching air and added, &quot;I'll wager I know
+your name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madam,&quot;--my cap went higher, my head lower--&quot;I never bet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could not divine what there was ridiculous about me, except a certain
+damage to my dress, of which she could not possibly be aware as long as
+I remained in the saddle. Yet plainly she wanted to laugh. I made it as
+plain that I did not.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-day, sir,&quot; she said, with forced severity, but as I smiled apologetically and moved my rein, she broke down under new temptation and, as the wagon moved away, twittered after me unseen,--&quot;Good-bye, Mr. Smith.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="II" id="II">II</a></h2>
+<p><strong>LIEUTENANT FERRY</strong></p>
+
+<p>I passed on, flattered but scandalized, wasting no guesses on how she
+knew me--if she really knew me at all--but taking my revenge by
+moralizing on her, to myself, as a sign of the times, until brigade
+headquarters were in full view, a few rods off the road; four or five
+good, white wall-tents in a green bit of old field backed by a thicket
+of young pines.</p>
+
+<p>Midway of this space I met Scott Gholson, clerk to the Adjutant-general.
+It was Gholson who had first spoken of me for this detail. He was an
+East Louisianian, of Tangipahoa; aged maybe twenty-six, but in effect
+older, having from birth eaten only ill-cooked food, and looking it;
+profoundly unconscious of any shortcoming in his education, which he had
+got from a small church-pecked college of the pelican sort that feed it
+raw from their own bosoms. One of his smallest deficiencies was that he
+had never seen as much art as there is in one handsome dinner-plate.
+Now, here he was, riding forth to learn for himself, privately, he said,
+why I did not appear. Yet he halted without turning, and seemed to wish
+he had not found me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you&quot;--he began, and stopped; &quot;did you notice a&quot;--he stopped again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What, a leather-curtained spring-wagon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No-o!&quot; he said, as if nobody but a gaping idiot would expect anybody not a gaping idiot to notice a leather-curtained spring-wagon. &quot;No-o! did you notice the brown horse that man was riding who just now passed you as you turned off the road?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No, I barely remembered the rider had generously moved aside to let me
+go by. In pure sourness at the poverty of my dress and the perfection of
+his, I had avoided looking at him higher than his hundred-dollar boots.
+My feet were in uncolored cowhide, except the toes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He noticed you,&quot; said Gholson; &quot;he looked back at you and your bay.
+Wouldn't you like to turn back and see his horse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, hardly, if I'm behindhand now. Is it so fine as that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, no. It's the horse he captured the time he got the Yankee who had
+him prisoner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who?&quot; I cried. &quot;What! You don't mean to say--was that Lieutenant
+Ferry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, so called. He wa'n't a lieutenant then, he was a clerk, like you
+or me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I wish I had noticed him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We can see him yet if you--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you want to see him?&quot; I gathered my horse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me!--No, sir. But you spoke as if--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head and we moved toward the tents. This was worse than the
+dream; the rat had not seen the cockerel, but the cockerel had observed
+the rat--dropping into the barrel: the cockerel, yes, and not the
+cockerel alone, for I saw that Gholson was associating him with her of
+the curtained wagon. By now they were side and side. I asked if Ferry
+came often to headquarters. &quot;Yes, quite as often as he's any business
+to.&quot; &quot;Ah, ha!&quot; thought I, and presently said I had heard he was a
+great favorite.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,--yes,--he--he is,--with some.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you like him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who, me? Oh!--I--I admire Ned Ferry--for a number of things. He's more
+foolhardy than brave; he's confessed as much to me. Women call him
+handsome. He sings; beautifully, I suppose; I can't sing a note; and
+wouldn't if I could. Still, if he only wouldn't sing drinking-songs
+--but, Smith, I think that to sing drinking-songs--and all
+the more to sing them as well as some folks think he does--is to
+advocate drinking, and to advocate drinking is next door to excusing
+drunkenness!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then Ned Ferry doesn't drink?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed he does! I don't like to say it, and I don't say he drinks 'too
+much', as they call it; but, Smith, he drinks with men who do! Oh, <em>I</em>
+admire him; only I do wish--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wish what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I--I wish he wouldn't play cards. Smith, I've seen him play cards
+with the shells bursting over us!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For my part I privately wished this saint wouldn't rub my uninteresting
+surname into me every time he spoke. As we dismounted near the tents I
+leaned against my saddle and asked further concerning the object of his
+loving anxiety. Was Ned Ferry generous, pleasant, frank?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, in outward manner, yes; but, Smith, he was raised to be a Catholic
+priest. I could a heap-sight easier trust him if he'd sometimes show
+distrust, himself. If he ever does I've never seen it. And yet--Oh,
+we're the best of friends, and I'm speaking now only as a friend and
+<em>toe</em> a friend. Oh, if it wa'n't for just one thing, I could admit what
+Major Harper said of him not ten minutes ago to me; that you never
+finish talking to Ned Ferry without feeling a little brighter, happier
+and cleaner than when you began; whereas talking with some men it's just
+the reverse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked carefully at my companion and asked him if the Major had said
+<em>all</em> of that. He had, and Gholson's hide had turned it without taking a
+scratch. &quot;That's fine!--as to Ferry,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes,--it would be--if it was only <em>iso</em>. Trouble is, you keep
+remembering he's such a stumbling-block to any real spiritual inquirer.
+Yes, and to himself; for, you know, spiritually there's so much less
+hope for the moralist than what there is for the up-and-down reprobate!
+You know that,--<em>Smith</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My silence implied that I knew it, though I did not feel any brighter,
+happier or cleaner.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, Ned Ferry is not only a Romanist, he's a romanticist. We--you
+and me--are religionists. <em>Our</em> brightness and happiness air the
+brightness and happiness of faith; our cleanness is the cleanness of
+religious scruples. Worst of it with Ned is he's satisfied with the
+difference, I'm afraid! That's what makes him so pleasant to fellows who
+don't care a sou marquee about religion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said one might respect religion even if he did not--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, he's always <em>polite</em> to it; but he's--he's read Voltaire! Oh, yes,
+Voltaire, George Sand, all those men. He questions the Bible, Smith. Not
+to me, though; hah, he knows better! Smith, I can discuss religion and
+not get mad, with any one who don't question the Bible; but if he does
+that, I just tell you, I wouldn't risk my soul in such a discussion!
+Would you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could hardly say, and we moved pensively toward Major Harper's tent.
+Evidently the main poison was still in Gholson's stomach, and when I
+glanced at him he asked, &quot;What d'you reckon brought Ned Ferry here just
+at this time?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I made no reply. He looked momentous, leaned to me sidewise with a hand
+horizontally across his mouth, and whispered a name. It was new to me.
+&quot;Charlie Toliver?&quot; I murmured, for we were at the tent door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The war-correspondent,&quot; whispered Gholson; &quot;don't you know?&quot; But the
+flap of the tent lifted and I could not reply.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="III" id="III">III</a></h2>
+<p><strong>SHE</strong></p>
+
+<p>Major Harper was the most capable officer on the brigade staff. I had
+never met a man of such force and dignity who was so modestly affable.
+His new clerk dined with him that first day, at noon in his tent, alone.
+Hot biscuits! with butter! and rock salt. Fried bacon also--somewhat
+vivacious, but still bacon. When the tent began to fill with the smoke
+of his meerschaum pipe, and while his black boy cleared the table for us
+to resume writing, we talked of books. Here was joy! I vaunted my love
+for history, biography, the poets, but spoke lightly of fiction.</p>
+
+<p>The smoker twinkled. &quot;You're different from Ned Ferry,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has he a taste for fiction?&quot; I asked, with a depreciative smirk.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, a beautiful story is a thing Ned Ferry loves with a positive
+passion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose we might call him a romanticist,&quot; said I, &quot;might we not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The patient gentleman smiled again as he said, &quot;Oh--Gholson can attend
+to that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took up my pen, and until twilight we spoke thereafter only of
+abstracts and requisitions. But then he led me on to tell him all about
+myself. I explained why my first name was Richard and my second name
+Thorndyke, and dwelt especially on the enormous differences between the
+Smiths from whom we were and those from whom we were not descended.</p>
+
+<p>And then he told me about himself. He was a graduate of West Point, the
+only one on the brigade staff; was a widower, with a widowed brother, a
+maiden sister, two daughters, and a niece, all of one New Orleans
+household. The brothers and sister were Charlestonians, but the two men
+had married in New Orleans, twin sisters in a noted Creole family. The
+brother's daughter, I was told, spoke French better than English; the
+Major's elder daughter spoke English as perfectly as her father; and the
+younger, left in her aunt's care from infancy, knew no French at all. I
+wondered if they were as handsome as their white-haired father, and
+when I asked their names I learned that the niece, C&eacute;cile, was a year
+the junior of Estelle and as much the senior of Camille; but of the days
+of the years of the pilgrimage of any of the three &quot;children&quot; he gave me
+no slightest hint; they might be seven years older, or seven years
+younger, than his new clerk.</p>
+
+<p>To show him how little I cared for any girl's age whose father preferred
+not to mention it, I reverted to his sister and brother. She was in New
+Orleans, he said, with her nieces, but might at any moment be sent into
+the Confederacy, being one of General Butler's &quot;registered enemies.&quot; The
+brother was--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Out here somewhere. No, not in the army exactly; no, nor in the navy,
+but--I expect him in camp to-night. If he comes you'll have to work when
+you ought to be asleep. No, he is not in the secret service, only in <em>a</em>
+secret service; running hospital supplies through the enemy's lines
+into ours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was thrilled. <em>I</em> was taken into the staff's confidence! Me, <em>Smith!</em>
+That <em>Major Harper</em> would tell me part of a matter to conceal the rest
+of it did not enter my dreams, good as I was at dreaming. The flattery
+went to my brain, and presently, without the faintest preamble, I asked
+if there was any war-correspondent at headquarters just now. There came
+a hostile flash in his eyes, but instantly it passed, and with all his
+happy mildness he replied, &quot;No, nor any room for one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Just then entered an ordnance-sergeant, so smart in his rags that the
+Major's affability seemed hardly a condescension. He asked me to supper
+with his mess--&quot;of staff <em>attatchays</em>,&quot; he said, winking one eye and
+hitching his mouth; at which the Major laughed with kind disapprobation,
+and the jocose sergeant explained as we went that that was only one of
+Scott Gholson's mispronunciations the boys were trying to tease him
+out of.</p>
+
+<p>I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper,
+stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head
+(save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only Gholson
+was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious jests got
+off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind. Never had I
+been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing &quot;All quiet along
+the Potomac to-night,&quot; and was courteously praised when I had done so.
+But there is where affliction overtook me; they debated its authorship.
+One said a certain newspaper correspondent, naming him, had proved it to
+be the work--I forget of whom. But I shall never forget what followed.
+Two or three challenged the literary preeminence of that correspondent,
+and from as many directions I was asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying
+back against a pile of saddles with my head in my hands, sodden with
+self-assurance, I replied, magnanimously, &quot;Oh, I don't set up for a
+critic, but--well--would you call him a better man than
+Charlie Toliver?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who--o?&quot; It was not one who asked; the whos came like shrapnel; and
+when, not knowing what else to do, I smiled as one dying, there went up
+a wail of mirth that froze my blood and then heated it to a fever. The
+company howled. They rolled over one another, crying, &quot;Charlie
+Toliver!--Charlie Toliver!--Oh, Lord, where's Scott Gholson!--Charlie
+Toliver!&quot;--and leaped up and huddled down and moaned and rolled and
+rose and looked for me.</p>
+
+<p>But, after all, fortune was merciful, and I was gone; the Major had
+summoned me--his brother had come. I went circuitously and alone. As I
+started, some fellow writhing on the grass cried, &quot;Charlie Tol--oh, this
+is better than a tcharade!&quot; and a flash of divination enlightened me.
+While I went I burned with shame, rage and nervous exhaustion; the name
+Scott Gholson had gasped in my ear was the name of her in the curtained
+wagon, and I cursed the day in which I had heard of Charlotte Oliver.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<a name="IV" id="IV">IV</a>
+<p><strong>THREE DAYS' RATIONS</strong></p>
+
+<p>In the vocabulary of a prig, but in the wrath of a fishwoman, I
+execrated Scott Gholson; his jealousies, his disclosures, his religion,
+his mispronunciations; and Ned Ferry--that cockerel! Here was I in the
+barrel, and able only to squeal in irate terror at whoever looked down
+upon me. I could have crawled under a log and died. At the door of the
+Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve
+when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's
+nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling
+good joke Smith had just got off on Gholson!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall have to get Ned Ferry back here,&quot; the Major was saying as I
+entered, &quot;to make you boys let Scott Gholson alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young man laughed and turned to go. &quot;Why doesn't Ned Ferry make
+<em>her</em> let Gholson alone? He can do it; he's got her round his finger as
+tight as she's got Gholson round hers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Harry,&quot; replied the Major, from his table full of documents, &quot;don't you
+know that any man who's got a woman wrapped round his finger has also
+got her wrapped round his throat?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The aide-de-camp laughed like a rustic and vanished. &quot;Smith,&quot; said the
+Major, &quot;your eyes are--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been awake for forty-eight hours, Major. But--oh, I'm not
+sleepy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, go get some sleep.--No, go at once; you'll be called when
+needed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But I was not needed; while I slept, who should come back and do my work
+in my stead but Ned Ferry. When I awoke it was with a bound of alarm to
+see clear day. The command was breaking camp. I rushed out of the tent
+with canteen, soap and comb, and ran into the arms of the mess-cook. We
+were alone. &quot;Oh, yass, seh,&quot; he laughed as he poured the water into my
+hands, &quot;th'ee days' rairtion. Seh? Lawd! dey done drawed and cook' befo'
+de fus' streak o' light. But you all right; here yo' habbersack, full
+up. Oh, I done fed yo' hoss. Here yo' jacket an' cap; and here yo'
+saddle an' bridle--Oh, you welcome; I dess tryin' to git shet of 'em
+so's I kin strak de tent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As I mounted, our wagonmaster rode by me, busy as a skipper in a storm.
+&quot;Oh, here!&quot; he cried, wheeled, and reaching something to me added,
+&quot;that's your pass. Major Harper wants you as quick as you can show up.
+He says never mind the column, ride straight after him. Keep this road
+to Hazlehurst and then go down the main Brookhaven road till you
+overtake him. He's by himself--nearly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As the rider wheeled away I blurted out with anxious loudness in the
+general hubbub, &quot;Isn't his brother with him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He flashed back a glare of rebuke and then bellowed to heaven and earth,
+&quot;Oh, the devil and Tom Walker! I don't keep run of sutlers and
+citizens!&quot; He took a circuit, standing in his stirrups and calling
+orders to his teamsters, and as he neared me again he said very gently,
+&quot;Good Lord! my boy, don't you know better than to shoot your mouth off
+like that? You'll find nobody with the Major but Ned Ferry, and I don't
+say you'll find him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I galloped to the road. Away down through the woods it was full of
+horsemen falling into line. With the nearest colonel was Lieutenant
+Helm, the aide-de-camp. I turned away from them toward Hazlehurst, but
+looked back distrustfully. Yes, sure enough, the whole command was
+facing into column the other way! My horse and I whirled and stood
+staring and swelling with indignation--we ordered south, and the brigade
+heading westward! He fretted, tramped, neighed, and began hurriedly to
+paw through the globe to head them off on the other side. He even
+threatened to rear; but when I showed him I was ashamed of that, he bore
+me proudly, and I sat him as proudly as he bore me, for he made me more
+than half my friends. And now as the aide-de-camp wheeled about from the
+receding column and came our way saluting cordially, we turned and
+trotted beside him jauntily. Our first talk was of saddles, but very
+soon I asked where the General was.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Out on the Natchez Trace waiting for the command. I'm carrying orders
+to Fisher's battery, down here by the cross-roads. Haven't you seen the
+General this morning? What! haven't seen him in his new uniform? Whoop!
+he's a blaze of glory! Look here, Smith, I believe you know who brought
+it to him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How on earth should I know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, how innocent you always are! Look here! just tell me this; was it
+the Major's brother brought it, or was it Ned Ferry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Suppose it wasn't either.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew it! I knew it was her! Ah, you rogue, you know it was her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, that <em>might</em> depend on who 'her' is.&quot; We had reached the
+cross-roads and he was turning south.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look!&quot; he said, and gave the glance and smile of the lady in the
+curtained wagon so perfectly that I cackled like a small boy. &quot;Oh, you
+know that, do you? I dare you to say she didn't bring it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I give you my word I don't know!&quot; called I as the distance grew between
+us. &quot;And I give you my word I don't care!&quot; he crowed back as we
+galloped apart. His speech was two or three words longer, but they are
+inappropriate at the end of a chapter, and I expurgate.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="V" id="V">V</a></h2>
+<p><strong>EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN, TWENTY</strong></p>
+
+<p>On entering Hazlehurst I observed all about the railway-station a
+surprising amount of quartermaster's stores. A large part were cases of
+boots and shoes. Laden with such goods, a train of shabby box-cars stood
+facing south, its beggarly wood-burner engine sniffing and weeping,
+while the cork-legged conductor helped all hands wood up. Though homely,
+the picture was a stirring one. Up through the blue summer morning came
+the sun, bringing to mind the words of the dying Mirabeau, &quot;If that is
+not God, at least it's his first cousin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Even in the character of the goods there was eloquence, and not a
+drollery in the scene, not even an ugliness, but was touched, was rife,
+with the woe of a war whose burning walls were falling in on us. And
+outward, too, upon others; a few up-ended cottonbales leaned against
+each other ragged and idle, while women and babes starved for want of
+them in far-away Lancaster.</p>
+
+<p>One of the cars furthest from the engine had no freight proper, only a
+number of trunks; and these were nearly hidden by the widely crinolined
+flounces of an elegant elderly lady who sat on the middle one. And now
+she, too, was hidden, and the wide doorway in the side of the car more
+than filled, by the fashionable gowns of three girls. On the ground
+below there stood a lieutenant in a homemade gray uniform, and at his
+back half a dozen big, slouching, barefoot boys squirted tobacco juice
+and gazed at the ladies. The officer scanned me, spoke to the ladies,
+scanned me again, and threw up an arm. &quot;Ho--o! Come here! Hullo! Come
+here--if you please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If he had not said please he should have ho'd and hullo'd in vain, but
+at that word I turned. Before I had covered half the distance I read New
+Orleans! my dear, dear old New Orleans! in every line of those ladies'
+draperies, and at twenty-five yards I saw one noble family likeness in
+all four of their sweet faces. Oh, but those three maidens were fair!
+and I could name each by her name at a glance: Camille, C&eacute;cile, Estelle;
+eighteen, nineteen, twenty!</p>
+
+<p>There was a hush of attention among them as the lieutenant and I
+saluted. His left hand was gone at the wrist and the sleeve pinned back
+on itself. He asked my name; I told him. In the car there was a stir of
+deepening interest. I inquired if he was the post-quartermaster here.
+He was.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ain't you Major Harper's quartermaster-sergeant?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am his clerk.&quot; In the car a flash of joy and then great decorum.</p>
+
+<p>As he handed me a writing he glowed kindly. It proved to be from Major
+Harper; a requisition upon this officer for shoes and clothing; not for
+a brigade, regiment or company, but for me alone, from hat to shoes. I
+tendered it back silently, and saw that he knew its purport already from
+the Major, and that the ladies knew it from him. The good fellow looked
+quite happy a moment, but then reddened as they joyfully crowded the
+car's doorway to see me fitted!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We can select out sev'l pair--&quot; he began, but heard a puerile titter
+and lost his nerve. &quot;Now, you boys that ain't got any business here,
+jest clair out!--Go! I tell you, aw I'll--&quot; The boys loitered off toward
+the engine. &quot;We can select out sev'l si-izes,&quot; he drawled, uncovering a
+box, &quot;and fit you ove' in my office. You ain't so pow'ful long nor so
+pow'ful slim, but these-yeh gov'ment contrac's they seldom ev' allow
+fo' anybody so slim in the waist bein' so long in the, eh,--so, eh,--so
+long f'om thah down. But yet still, if you'll jest light off yo' hoss
+and come and look into this-yeh box--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hmm! yes! I wouldn't have got off my horse and leaned over that box to
+save the Confederacy. &quot;I thank you, Lieutenant, but I can't stop. If
+you'll hand me up a jacket and pair of shoes I'll sign for them and go.
+I don't want a hat, but I reckon I'd as well include shoes, although
+really,--&quot; I glanced down brazenly at the stirrup-leathers that so
+snugly hid my naked toes.</p>
+
+<p>As the quartermaster lifted out a pair of brogans as broad as they were
+long, there came a cry of protestation from the freight-car group, that
+brought the entire herd of rustics from the woodpile and the locomotive.
+Miss Harper rose behind her nieces, tall, slender, dark, with keen
+black eyes as kind as they were penetrating. &quot;My boy!&quot; she cried, &quot;you
+cannot wear those things!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Camille, the youngest, whispered to her, whereupon she beckoned.
+&quot;Oh!--oh, do come here!--Mr. Smith, I am the sister of Major Harper.
+You're from New Orleans? Does your mother live in Apollo Street?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, madam, between Melpomene and Terpsichore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Richard Thorndyke Smith! My dear boy,&quot; she cried, while the nieces
+gasped at each other with gestures and looks all the way between
+Terpsichore and Melpomene, and then the four cried in chorus, &quot;We know
+your mother!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We've got a letter for you from her!&quot; exclaimed Camille.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a suit of unie-fawm!&quot; called C&eacute;cile, with her Creole accent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We smuggled it through!&quot; chanted the trio, ready to weep for virtuous
+joy. And then they clasped arms like the graces, about their aunt, and
+let her speak.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We all helped your mother make your uniform,&quot; she said. &quot;In the short
+time we've known her we've learned to love her dearly.&quot; With military
+brevity she told how they had unexpectedly got a pass and were just out
+of New Orleans--&quot;poor New Orleans!&quot; put in Estelle, the eldest, the
+pensive one; that they had come up from Pontchatoula yesterday and last
+night, and had thrown themselves on beds in the &quot;hotel&quot; yonder without
+venturing to disrobe, and so had let her brother pass within a few
+steps of them while they slept! &quot;Telegraph? My dear boy, we came but ten
+miles an hour, but we outran our despatch!&quot; Now they had telegraphed
+again, to Brookhaven, and thanks to the post-quartermaster, were going
+down there at once on this train. While this was being told something
+else was going on. The youngest niece, Camille, had put herself entirely
+out of sight. Now she reappeared with very rosy cheeks, saying, &quot;Here's
+the letter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My thanks were few and awkward, for there still hung to the missive a
+basting thread, and it was as warm as a nestling bird. I bent
+low--everybody was emotional in those days--kissed the fragrant thing,
+thrust it into my bosom, and blushed worse than Camille.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor boy!&quot; said the aunt. &quot;It's the first line you've had for months.
+Your sweet mother wrote, but her letters were all intercepted, and the
+last time she was warned that next time she'd be dealt with according to
+military usage! I'm glad we could give you this one at once. We can't
+give you the uniform, for we--why, girls, what--why, what nonsense!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Maybe I did not say vindictive things inside me just then! The three
+nieces had turned open-mouthed upon one another and sunk down upon their
+luggage with averted faces.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say we can't give it to you now,&quot; Miss Harper persisted, with a
+motherly smile; &quot;we're wearing it ourselves. We've had no time to take
+it off. I couldn't get the boots off me last night. And even if you had
+the boots, the other things--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aunt Martha!&quot; moaned some one. &quot;Well, in short,&quot; said the aunt,
+twinkling like her brother, &quot;we can't deliver the goods, and--&quot; She
+started as though some one had slapped her between the shoulder-blades.
+It was the engine caused it, whistling in the old, lawless way, putting
+a whoop, a howl, a scream and a wail into one. The young ladies quailed,
+the train jerked like several collisions, the bell began tardily to
+clang, and my steed whirled, cleared a packing case, whirled again, and
+stood facing the train, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flapping, not
+half so much frightened as insulted. The post-quartermaster waved to the
+ladies and they to us. For a last touch I lifted my cap high and backed
+my horse on drooping haunches--you've seen Buffalo Bill do it--and
+then, with a leap like a cricket's, and to a clapping of maidens' hands
+that made me whooping drunk, we stretched away, my horse and I, on a
+long smooth gallop, for Brookhaven.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI">VI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A HANDSOME STRANGER</strong></p>
+
+<p>Certainly no cricket ever dropped blither music from his legs than did
+my beautiful horse that glorious morning as we clattered in perfect
+rhythm on the hard clean road of the wide pine forest. Ah! the forest is
+not there now; the lumbermen--</p>
+
+<p>For an hour or so the world seemed to have taken me for its center as
+smoothly as a sleeping top. Only after a good seven miles did my
+meditations begin to reveal any bitter in the sweet; but it was in
+recalling for the twentieth time the last sight of Camille, that I
+heard myself say, I know not whether softly or loudly,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, hang the uniform!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The morning was almost sultry. As I halted in the clear ripples of a
+gravelly &quot;branch&quot; to let my horse drink, I heard no great way off the
+Harpers' train shrieking at cattle on the track, and looking up I
+noticed just behind me an unfrequented by-road carefully masked with
+brush, according to a new habit of the &quot;citizens&quot;. The next moment my
+horse threw up his head to listen. Then I heard hoofs and voices, and
+presently there came trotting through the oak bushes and around the mask
+of brush two horsemen unusually well mounted, clad and armed. Their very
+dark gray uniforms were so trim and so nearly blue that my heart came
+into my throat; but then I noticed they carried neither carbines nor
+sabres, but repeaters only, a brace to each. They splashed lightly to
+either side of me, and the three horses drank together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning,&quot; we said. One of the men was a sergeant. He scanned my
+animal, and then me, with a dawning smile. &quot;That's a fightin'-cock of a
+horse you've got, sonny.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, bub,&quot; I replied. The two men laughed so explosively that my horse
+lifted his head austerely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jim,&quot; said the younger, &quot;I don't believe all the conscripts we've
+caught these three days are worth the powder they've cost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; replied Sergeant Jim, &quot;I doubt if the most of 'em are.&quot; I turned
+to him and drew down my under eyelid. &quot;Will you kindly tell me, sir, if
+you see any unnatural discoloration in there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled. &quot;No, but I can put some there if you want it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you, I couldn't let you take so much trouble--or risk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The three of us pattered out of the stream abreast. &quot;No trouble,&quot;
+replied the sergeant, &quot;it wouldn't take half a minute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I rejoined, &quot;the first step would be the last.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The men laughed again. &quot;You must a-been born with all your teeth,&quot; said
+the private, as we quickened to a trot. &quot;What makes you think we ain't
+after conscripts?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for
+good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up
+we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds. Then
+the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh while
+Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would be
+horn-swoggled!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm willing,&quot; I responded, and we all laughed. The younger horseman
+asked my name. &quot;Smith,&quot; I said, with dignity, and they laughed again,
+their laugh growing louder when I would not smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, say; maybe you'll tell us who this is we're about to meet up
+with.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Through the shifting colonnades of pine, a hundred yards in front of
+us, came two horsemen in the same blue-gray of the pair beside me.
+&quot;Whoever he is,&quot; I said, &quot;that gray he's riding is his second best, or
+it's borrowed,&quot; for his mount, though good, was no match for him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Borrowed!&quot; echoed the sergeant. &quot;If he doesn't own that mare no man
+does.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nor no woman?&quot; I asked, and again across the back of my neck my two
+companions gazed at each other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By ganny!&quot; exclaimed one, and--&quot;You're a coon,&quot; murmured the other, as
+the new-comers drew near. The younger of these also was a private.
+Behind his elbow was swung a Maynard rifle. Both carried revolvers. The
+elder wore a long straight sword whose weather-dimmed orange sash showed
+at the front of a loose cut-away jacket. Under this garment was a shirt
+of strong black silk, made from some lady's gown and daintily corded
+with yellow. On the jacket's upturned collar were the two gilt bars of a
+first lieutenant, but the face above them shone with a combined
+intelligence and purity that drew my whole attention.</p>
+
+<p>A familiar friendship lighted every countenance but mine as this second
+pair turned and rode with us, the lieutenant in front on Sergeant Jim
+Longley's right, and the two privates with me between them behind. For
+some minutes the sergeant, in under-tone, made report to his young
+superior. Then in a small clearing he turned abruptly into a
+neighborhood road, and at his word my two companions pricked after him
+westward. I closed up beside the lieutenant; he praised the weather, and
+soon our talk was fluent though broken, as we moved sometimes at a trot
+and often faster. In stolen moments I scanned him with the jealousy of
+my youth. Five feet, ten; humph! I was five, nine and a thirty-second.
+In weight he looked to be just what I always had in mind in those
+prayers without words with which I mounted every pair of commissary
+scales I came to. The play of his form as our smooth-gaited horses sped
+through the flecking shades was worth watching for its stanch and supple
+grace. Alike below the saddle and above it he was as light as a leaf and
+as firm as a lance. I had long yearned to own a pair of shoulders not
+too square for beauty nor too sloping for strength, and lo, here they
+were, not mine, but his. No matter; the slender mustache he sported he
+was welcome to, I had shaved off nearly as good a one; wished now I
+hadn't. As once or twice he lifted his k&eacute;pi to the warm breeze I took
+new despair from the soft locks of darkest chestnut that lay on his head
+in manly order, ready enough to curl but waiving the privilege.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cock-a-doodle-doo,&quot; thought I; &quot;if those are not the same
+hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their
+first cousins!&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII">VII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A PLAGUE ON NAMES!</strong></p>
+
+<p>Once more I measured my man. Celerity, valor, endurance, they were his
+iridescent neck and tail feathers. On a certain piece of road where we
+went more slowly I mentioned abruptly my clerkship under Major Harper
+and watched for the effect, but there was none. Did he know the Major?
+Oh, yes, and we fell to piling item upon item in praise of the
+quartermaster's virtues and good looks. Presently, with shrewdest
+intent, I said the Major was fine enough to be the hero of a novel! Did
+not my companion think so?</p>
+
+<p>Yes, he thought so; but I believed the glow in his tone was for novels.
+I extolled the romance of actual life! I denounced that dullness which
+fails to see the poetry of daily experience, and goes wandering after
+the mirages of fiction! And I was ready to fight him if he liked. But he
+agreed with me most cordially.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet,&quot; he began to add,--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet what?&quot; I snapped out, with horse eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Doesn't a good story revive the poetry of our actual lives?&quot; He wiped
+the rim of his cap with a handkerchief of yellow silk enriched at one
+corner with needlework.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Um-hm!&quot; I thought; &quot;Charlotte Oliver, eh?&quot; I responded tartly that I
+had that very morning met four ladies the poetry of whose actual,
+visible loveliness had abundantly illustrated to me the needlessness and
+impertinence of fiction! By the way, did he not think feminine beauty
+was always in its ripest perfection at eighteen?</p>
+
+<p>Well, he thought a girl might be prettiest at eighteen and handsomest
+much later. And again I said to myself, &quot;Charlotte Oliver!&quot; But when I
+looked searchingly into his eyes their manly sweetness so abashed me
+that I dropped my glance and felt him looking at me. I remembered my
+fable and flinched. &quot;Isn't your name--&quot; I cried, and choked, and when I
+would have said Ferry, another word slipped out instead. He did not hear
+it plainly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cockerel, did you say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A sweet color was I. &quot;Yes, that's what I said; Cockerel. Isn't your last
+name Cockerel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he said, &quot;my last name is Durand.&quot; He gave it the French
+pronunciation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mine is Smith,&quot; I said, and we galloped.</p>
+
+<p>A plague on names! But I was not done with them yet. We met other scouts
+coming out of the east, who also gave reports and went on westward,
+sometimes through the trackless woods. At a broad cross-road which
+spanned the whole State from the Alabama line to the Mississippi River
+stood another sergeant, with three men, waiting. They were the last.</p>
+
+<p>Again we galloped alone; and as our horses' hoofs beat drummers' music
+out of the round earth our dialogue drifted into confessions of our own
+most private theories of conduct, character and creation. Now that this
+man's name was not--Cockerel, my heart opened to him and we began to
+admit to each other the perplexities of this great, strange thing called
+Life. Especially we confessed how every waking hour found us jostled and
+torn between two opposite, unappeasable tendencies of soul; one an
+upward yearning after everything high and pure, the other a
+down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence. I was warmed and fed.
+Yet I was pained to find him so steeped in presumptuous error, so
+wayward of belief and unbelief. The sweet ease with which he overturned
+and emptied out some of my arguments gave me worse failure of the
+diaphragm than a high swing ever did. Nevertheless I responded; and he
+rejoined; and I rejoined again, and presently he gave me the notion that
+he was suffering some cruel moral strain.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII">VIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>ANOTHER CURTAINED WAGON</strong></p>
+
+<p>Upon whatever fundamental scheme we perseveringly concentrate our
+powers, upon whatever main road of occupation we take life's
+journey,--art, politics, commerce, science,--if only we will take its
+upper fork as often as the road divides, then will that road itself, and
+not necessarily any cross-road, lead us to the noblest, truest plane of
+convictions, affections, aspirations. Such a frame of mind may be quite
+without religiosity, as unconscious as health; but the proof of its
+religious reality will be that, as if it were a lighthouse light and we
+its keeper, everybody else, or at any rate everybody <em>out on the deep</em>,
+will see it plainer than we. Such is the gist of what this young man was
+saying to me, when our speculations were brought to an end by our
+overtaking a man well mounted, and a woman whose rough-gaited was
+followed by a colt.</p>
+
+<p>The pair took our pace, the man plying me with questions, and his wife,
+in front, telling Lieutenant Durand all the rumors of the day. Her scant
+hair was of a scorched red tone, she was freckled down into her collar,
+her elbows waggled to the mare's jog, and her voice was as flat as a
+duck's. Her nag had trouble to keep up, and her tiny faded bonnet had
+even more to keep on. Yet the day was near when the touch of those
+freckled hands was to seem to me kinder than the breath of flowers, as
+they bathed my foul-smelling wounds, and she would say, in the words of
+the old song, &quot;Let me kiss him for his mother,&quot; and I should be helpless
+to prevent her. By and by the man raised his voice:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, yo' name <em>is</em> Smith, to be sho'! I thought you was jest a-tryin'
+to chaw me. Why, Major Harper alludened to you not mo'n a half-ow ago.
+Why, Miz Wall! oh, Miz Wall!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the wife was absorbed. &quot;Yayse, seh,&quot; she was saying to the
+lieutenant, &quot;and he told us about they comin' in on the freight-kyahs
+f'om Hazlehurst black with dust and sut and a-smuttyin' him all oveh
+with they kisses and goin's-on. He tol' me he ain't neveh so enjoyed
+havin' his face dirty sence he was a boy. He would a-been plumb happy,
+ef on'y he could a-got his haynds on that clerk o' his'n. And when he
+tol' us what a gay two-hoss turn-out he'd sekyo'ed for the ladies to
+travel in, s' I, Majo', that's all right! You jest go on whicheveh way
+you got to go! Husband and me, we'll ride into Brookhaven and bring 'em
+out to ow place and jest take ca'e of 'em untel yo' clerk is <em>found</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miz Wall!&quot; cried the husband--&quot;She's busy talkin'.--Miz Wall!--she
+don't hyuh me. I hate to interrupt heh.--Oh, Miz Wall! hyuh's Majo'
+Harper's clerk, right now!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Law, you hain't!&quot; cried Mrs. Wall, smiling back as she jounced. &quot;If you
+air, the Majo's sisteh's got written awdehs fo' you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I shot forward, but had hardly more than sent back my good-bye when
+around a bend of the road, in a wagon larger than Charlotte Oliver's,
+with the curtains rolled up, came the four Miss Harpers, unsooted and
+radiant. The aunt drove. We turned, all four, and rode with them, and
+while the seven chatted gaily I read to myself the Major's note. It bade
+me take these four ladies into my most jealous care and conduct them to
+a point about thirty miles west of where we then were. A dandy's task in
+a soldier's hour! I ground my teeth, but as I lifted my glance I found
+Camille's eyes resting on me and read anxiety in them before she could
+put on a smile of unemotional friendliness that faded rapidly into
+abstraction. She was as pretty as the bough of wild azaleas in her hand,
+yet moving forward I told her aunt the order's purport and that it
+implied the greatest despatch compatible with mortal endurance. The
+whole four seemed only delighted.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Wall protested. No, no, her hospitality first, and a basket of
+refreshments to be stowed in the vehicle, besides. &quot;Why, that'll
+<em>sa-ave</em> ti-ime. You-all goin' to be supprised to find how hungry
+y'all ah, befo' you come to yo' journey's en', to-night, and them col'
+victuals goin' taste pow'ful fi-ine!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Our acceptance was unanimous. I even decided not to inform Lieutenant
+Durand until after the repast, that ladies under my escort did not pick
+acquaintanceship with soldiers on the public highway. But before the
+brief meal was over I was wishing him hanged. Hang the heaven-high
+theories that had so lately put me in love with him! Hang his melodious
+voice, his modest composure, his gold-barred collar, his easy command of
+topics! Hang the women! they feasted on his every word and look! Ah,
+ladies! if I were mean enough to tell it--that man doesn't believe in
+hell! He has a down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence; he has
+told me so!</p>
+
+<p>How fast acquaintance grew! When he addressed himself to C&eacute;cile, the
+cousin of the other two, her black eyes leapt with delight; for as
+calmly as if that were the only way, he spoke to her in French--asked
+her a question. She gave answer in happiest affirmation, and explained
+to her aunt that her Durand schoolmates of a year or two back were
+cousins to the Lieutenant. When the throng came out to the carry-all I
+was there and mounted. Squire Wall took me a few rods to point out where
+a fork of his private road led into the highway. Then the carry-all came
+merrily after, and with a regret that surprised me I answered our
+Lieutenant's farewell wave, forgave him all his charms, and saw him face
+westward and disappear by a bridle-path.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX">IX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE DANDY'S TASK</strong></p>
+
+<p>Westward likewise we soon were bickering. The morning sun shone high;
+the thin, hot dust blew out over the blackened ground of some forest
+&quot;burn&quot; or through the worm fence of some field where a gang of slave men
+and women might be ploughing or hoeing between the green rows of young
+cotton or corn. The level stretches were many, the slopes gradual, and
+to those sweet city-bird ladies everything was new and delightful; a log
+cabin!--with clay chimney on the outside!--a well and its
+well-sweep!--another cabin with its gourd-vines! They knew that blessed
+alchemy which turns all things into the poetry of the moment. Sweet they
+would have been anywhere to any eye or mind; but I was a homeless
+trooper lad, and sweeter to the soldier boy than water on the
+battlefield are short hours with ladies who love him for his banner
+and his rags.</p>
+
+<p>These four were charmed with an old field given up to sedge, its deep
+rain-gullies as red as gaping wounds, its dead trees in tatters of long
+gray moss. Estelle became a student of flowers, C&eacute;cile of birds, Camille
+of trees. All my explanations were alike enchantingly strange. To their
+minds it had never occurred that the land sloped the same way the water
+ran! When told that these woods abounded in deer and wild turkey they
+began to look out for them at every new turn of the road. And the turns
+came fast. Happy miles, happy leagues; each hour was of a mellower
+sweetness than the last; they seemed to ripen in the sun. The only
+drawback was my shame of a sentimental situation, but once or twice I
+longed to turn the whole equipage into the woods--or the ditch. As, for
+instance, when three pine-woods cavalrymen had no sooner got by us than
+they set up that ribald old camp-song,</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;We're going to get married, mamma, mamma;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;We're going to get married, but don't tell pa--&quot;<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Deserters, I don't doubt!&quot; was my comment to the ladies. Tongue revenge
+is poor, but it is something.</p>
+
+<p>Except in such moments, however, the war seemed farther away than it had
+for months and months. But about eleven o'clock we began to find the way
+scored by the fresh ruts of heavy wheels and the dust deepened by
+hundred of hoofs. The tops and faces of the roadside banks were newly
+trampled and torn by clambering human feet. Here was a canteen, smashed
+in a wheel-track; yonder a fragment of harness; here lay a broken hame,
+there was the half of a russet brogan and yonder a ragged sock stained
+and bloody.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, what does all this mean?&quot; asked Miss Harper amid her nieces'
+cries.</p>
+
+<p>I said it meant Fisher's battery hurrying to the front. Twenty miles
+since five that morning was a marvel, horse artillery though they were,
+for, as I pointed out by many signs, their animals were in ill
+condition. &quot;We shall have to go round them by neighborhood roads,&quot; I
+said, and presently we were deeper than ever in woodland shades and
+sources of girlish wonderment. The humid depths showed every sort of
+green and gray, their trunks, bushes and boughs, bearded with hanging
+moss, robed with tangled vines and chapleted with mistletoe. We seemed
+to have got this earth quite to ourselves and very much to our liking.</p>
+
+<p>One o'clock. Miss Harper suggested a halt to feed the horses. I, knowing
+what it would cost me to dismount and go walking about, said no, thrice
+no; let us first get back upon the main road in front of that battery.
+On, therefore, we hurried, and soon the reality of the war was vivid to
+us again. In a stretch of wet road where the team had mutely begged
+leave to walk and the ladies had urged me to sing we had at length
+paused in a pebbly rivulet to allow the weary animals to drink, and the
+girls and the aunt and the greenwood and I were all in chorus
+bidding somebody</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Unloose the west port and let us go free,&quot;<br />
+
+<p>when, just as our last note died among the trees one of us cried,
+&quot;Listen!&quot; and through the stillness there came from far away on our
+right the last three measures of a bugle sounding The March.</p>
+
+<p>My eyes rested in Camille's and hers in mine. A musical license gave us
+the courage. At the last note our gaze did not sink but took on more
+glow, while out of the forest behind us a distant echo answered the last
+measure of the strain. Then our eyes slowly fell; and however it may
+have seemed to her, to me it was as if the vanished strains were not
+only or chiefly of bugle and echo, but as though our two hearts had
+called and answered in that melodious unison.</p>
+
+<p>All that warm afternoon we paid the tiresome penalty of having pushed
+our animals too smartly at the outset. We grew sedate; sedate were the
+brows of the few strangers we met. We talked in pairs. When I spoke with
+Miss Harper the four listened. She asked about the evils of camp life;
+for she was one of that fine sort to whom righteousness seems every
+man's and woman's daily business, one of the most practical items in the
+world's affairs. And I said camp life was fearfully corrupting; that the
+merest boys cursed and swore and stole, or else were scorned as
+weaklings. Then I grew meekly silent and we talked in pairs again, and
+because I yearned to talk most with Camille I talked most with Estelle.
+Three times when I turned abruptly from her to Camille and called,
+&quot;Hark!&quot; the fagged-out horses halted, and as we struck our listening
+pose the bugle's faint sigh ever farther in our rear was but feebly
+proportioned to the amount of our gazing into each other's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when we were not halted or harkening, we heard overmuch; heard
+that which brought us to an instant stand and caused even Miss Harper to
+gaze on me with dismayed eyes and parted lips, and the blood to go
+thumping through my veins. From a few hundred yards off in the
+northwest, beyond the far corner of an old field and the woods at its
+back, two gunshots together, then a third, with sharp, hot cries of
+alarum and command, and then another and another shot, rang out and
+spread wanderingly across the tender landscape.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="X" id="X">X</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE SOLDIER'S HOUR</strong></p>
+
+<p>To regain the highroad we had turned into a northerly fork, and were in
+as lovely a spot as we had seen all day. Before us and close on our
+right were the dense woods of magnolia, water-oak, tupelo and a hundred
+other affluent things that towered and spread or clambered and hung. On
+the left lay the old field, tawny with bending sedge and teeming with
+the yellow rays of the sun's last hour. This field we overlooked through
+a fence-row of persimmon and wild plum. Among these bushes, half fallen
+into a rain-gully, a catalpa, of belated bloom, was loaded with blossoms
+and bees, and I was directing Camille's glance to it when the shots
+came. Another outcry or two followed, and then a weird silence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some of our boys attacked by a rabbit,&quot; I suggested, but still
+hearkened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That was not play, Mr. Smith,&quot; Miss Harper had begun to respond, when a
+voice across the sedge-field called with startling clearness,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hi! there goes one of them!--Halt!--Halt, you blue--&quot; pop!--pop!--pop!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Prisoners making a break!&quot; I forgot all my tatters and stood on tiptoe
+in the stirrups to overpeer the fence-row. The next instant--&quot;Sh--sh!&quot;
+said I and slid to the ground. &quot;Hold this bridle!&quot; I gave it to Camille.
+&quot;Don't one of you make a sound or a motion; there's a Yankee coming
+across this field in the little gully just behind us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bent low, ran a few steps, cocking my revolver as I went. Then I rose,
+peeped, bent again, ran, rose, peeped, waited a few seconds behind the
+catalpa, and without rising peeped once more. Here he came! He was an
+officer. His uniform was torn and one whole side of him showed he had at
+some earlier hour ridden through a hedge and fallen from his horse. On
+he came! nearer--nearer--oh, what a giant! Quickly, warily, he crouched
+under the fence where it hung low across the gully, and half through it
+in that huddled posture he found my revolver between his astonished
+eyes. I did not yell at him, for I did not want the men he had escaped
+from to come and take him from me; yet when I said, &quot;Halt, or you die!&quot;
+the four ladies heard me much too plainly. For, frankly, I said more and
+worse. I felt my slenderness, my beardless youth, my rags, and his
+daring, and to offset them all in a bunch, I--I cursed him. I let go
+only one big damn and I've never spoken one since, though I've done many
+a worse thing, of course. I protest it was my modesty prompted it then.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I surrender,&quot; he said, with amiable ease. I stepped back a pace and he
+drew out and straightened up--the tallest man I had ever seen. I laughed,
+he smiled, laughed; my eyes filled with tears, I blazed with rage, and in
+plain sight and hearing of those ladies he said, &quot;That's all right, my
+son, get as scared as you like; only, you don't need to cry about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold your tongue!&quot; I barked my wrath like a frightened puppy, drawing
+back a stride and laying my eye closer along the pistol. &quot;If you call me
+your son again I'll send you to your fathers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His smile darkened. &quot;I am your prisoner,&quot; he said, with a sudden
+splendid stateliness, and right then I guessed who he was.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yess, sir, you are!&quot; I retorted. &quot;Move to that wagon! And if you take
+one step out of common time you'll never take another.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The aunt and her nieces were standing in the carry-all, she majestic,
+they laughing and weeping in the one act. I waved them into their seats.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt!&quot; We halted. &quot;About face!&quot; As the prisoner eyed me both of us
+listened. His equanimity was almost winsome, and I saw that friendliness
+was going to be his tactics.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Guess I'm the first Yankee y' ever caught, ain't I?&quot; His smile was
+superior, but congratulatory.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll be the first prisoner I ever shot if you get any funnier!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We listened again. &quot;They've gone the wrong way,&quot; I said, still savage.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he replied, &quot;I came the wrong way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The ladies smiled; I glowered. &quot;Take those horses by their heads and
+turn them to me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>An instant his superb eye resented, but then he pleasantly did my
+bidding. &quot;Suits me well; rather chance it with you than with those I've
+just left.&quot;</p>
+<a name="imgtwo" id="imgtwo"></a><img src="images/002.jpg" alt="I surrender, he said, with amiable ease." align="left" />
+
+<p>&quot;Easier to get away, you think?&quot; I asked, with a worse frown than ever,
+as he stepped into the carry-all and took the lines.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not so easy; but those fellows are Arkansans, and they're in a bad
+humor with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took the hint and grew less ferocious. &quot;While you,&quot; I said, &quot;are
+Captain Jewett.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am,&quot; was his reply, and my heart leaped for joy. We hurried away. My
+captive was the most daring Union scout between Vicksburg and New
+Orleans; these very Harpers knew that. The thing unknown to us was that
+already his fate was entangled with Ned Ferry's and Charlotte Oliver's,
+as yet more it would be, with theirs and ours, in days close at hand.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI">XI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>CAPTAIN JEWETT</strong></p>
+
+<p>Once more we were in the by-road which had brought us westward parallel
+with the highway. The prisoner drove. Aunt Martha sat beside him, slim,
+dark, black-eyed, stately, her silver-gray hair rolled high &agrave; la
+Pompadour. With a magnanimity rare in those bitter days she incited him
+to talk, first of New Orleans, where he had spent a month in camp on one
+of the public squares, and then of his far northern home, and of loved
+ones there, mother, wife and child. The nieces, too, gave a generous
+attention. Only I, riding beside the hind wheels, held solemnly aloof.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Front!&quot; I once snapped out with a ring that made the trees reply and
+the ladies catch their breath. &quot;If you steal one more look back here
+I'll put a ball into your leg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, chirped the horses up and resumed his chat. I heard him
+praise my horse and compare him not unfavorably with his own which he
+had lost that morning'. He and a few picked men had been surprised in a
+farmhouse at breakfast. They had made a leap and a dash, he said, but
+one horse and rider falling dead, his horse, unhurt, had tumbled over
+them, and here was his rider.</p>
+
+<p>I prompted Camille to ask if he had ever encountered Ned Ferry, and he
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he said, but Ned Ferry had lately restored to him, by proxy, some
+lost letters, with an invitation to <em>come and see him</em>.</p>
+
+<p>I laughed insolently. The young ladies sparkled, and so did Miss Harper,
+as she asked him who had been the proxy.</p>
+
+<p>He said the proxy was a young woman who had a knack of getting passes
+through the lines, and the three girls exchanged looks as knowing as
+they were delighted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tell her as a friend,&quot; he said, &quot;she'll get one into Fortress Monroe
+yet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Harper's keen eyes glittered. &quot;You northerners hardly realize our
+feelings concerning the imprisonment of women, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear madam, you don't realize ours. We don't want to imprison
+women.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So there came a silence, and then a gay laugh as three of us at once
+asked if he had ever heard of Lieutenant Durand. &quot;Durand!&quot; he cried, and
+looked squarely around at me. I lifted the cocked revolver, but he kept
+his fine eyes on mine and I rubbed my ear with my wrist. &quot;What?&quot; he
+said, &quot;an elegant, Creole-seeming young fellow, very handsome? Why, that
+fellow saved my life this very afternoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young ladies were in rapture. Miss Harper asked how he had done it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I tell you that,&quot; said the Captain, &quot;you won't like me the least
+bit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whereat C&eacute;cile replied, &quot;Ah--well! we cou'n' like you the leaz bit
+any-'ow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose that's so,&quot; laughed the officer. &quot;I'll tell you how it was.
+My guard were just about to hang me for saying I thought we had a right
+to make soldiers of the darkies, when your friend came galloping along,
+saw the thing, and rushed in and cut the halter with his sword. And when
+they demanded to know who and what he was, he told them Durand, and that
+they'd hear it again, for he should report them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sir,&quot; cried Estelle, whose eyes, brows, lashes and hair were all of
+the same luminous red-brown, and in whose cheeks the rose seemed always
+to burn through the olive, &quot;how can you and your people seek to kill
+such men as that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such as which?&quot; asked the Yankee, with a twinkle. &quot;There were two
+kinds.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, o-oh! sir!&quot; exclaimed the trio, when Miss Harper waved them to
+forbear. There was yet some daylight left as we trundled into a broad
+highroad and turned northward. We passed a picket guard and then a whole
+regiment of cavalry going into camp. They scrambled to the sides of the
+road and stormed us with questions, chaffing us cruelly when I remained
+silent. &quot;Lawd! look a' this-yeh Yank a-bringin' in ow desertehs!&quot; &quot;Hey,
+you big Yank, you jest let that po' little conscrip' go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Headquarters, we heard from a courier who said he was the third sent out
+to find us, were at the &quot;Sessions house&quot; two miles further on. We sent
+him galloping back there, and after a while here came Major Harper and
+three or four others of the staff, including Harry Helm. What a flood of
+mirthful compliment there was at sight of us and our captive; Harry was
+positively silly. In the series of introductions that followed he was
+left paired with Camille, and I said things to myself. Major Harper rode
+by the prisoner. &quot;Well, Captain,&quot; he said, &quot;you've had some experiences
+since you left me this morning. Don't you want to give us your parole
+this time, temporarily, for an hour or so, and be more comfortable?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you, Major,&quot; the Federal affably replied, &quot;that would be a great
+relief to this most extraordinary youngster that I've brought with me.&quot;
+He gave it and we turned into a lofty grove whitened with our
+headquarters tents.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; said the Major, &quot;your part is done, and well done. You needn't
+report to me again to-night; the General wishes to see you a moment.
+Captain, will you go with this young man to General Austin's tent?&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII">XII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>IN THE GENERAL'S TENT</strong></p>
+
+<p>I went to Gholson. He told me I was relieved of my captive and bade me
+go care for my horse and return in half an hour. In going I passed close
+by the Sessions plantation house. Every door and window was thrown wide
+to the night air, and preparations were in progress for a dance; and as
+I returned, a slave boy ran across my path, toward the house, bearing a
+flaming pine torch and followed by two ambulances filled with daughters
+of the neighborhood in clouds of white gauze. I found the General in
+fatigue dress. His new finery hung on the tent-pole at his back. Old
+Dismukes, the bull-necked colonel of the Arkansans, lounged on a
+camp-cot. Both smoked cigars.</p>
+
+<p>The General asked me a number of idle questions and then said my
+prisoner had called me a good soldier. Old Dismukes smiled so broadly
+that I grew hot, believing the Yankee had told them of my tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; said the Colonel, and then smoked and smiled again till my brow
+beaded,--&quot;tired?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's a lie,&quot; he pleasantly remarked, and lay back, enjoying my silent
+wrath. &quot;Send him, General,&quot; he added, &quot;he's your man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The General looked at me between puffs of his cigar. &quot;I hear you've
+ridden over fifty miles to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, General.&quot; &quot;If I give you a good fresh horse can you go
+twenty-three miles more by midnight?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, General, if I don't have to save the horse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The horse may have to save you,&quot; drawled the Arkansan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you know Lieutenant Durand?&quot; asked the General, with a
+quizzical eye.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Slightly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Smith, on his suggestion approved by Major Harper, I have
+detailed another clerk to the Major.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Rills of perspiration tickled my back like flies. &quot;Can't one man do the
+work?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, the new man is detailed in your place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I almost leaped from the ground in consternation. My whole frame
+throbbed, my mouth fell open, my tongue was tied.</p>
+
+<p>The man who had got me into this thing--this barrel--lifted the
+tent-flap. &quot;Mr. Gholson,&quot; said the General, &quot;write an order assigning
+Smith to Ferry's scouts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The flap fell again and my panic was turned into a joy qualified only by
+a reduced esteem for my general as a judge of character.</p>
+
+<p>Old Dismukes rose. &quot;Good-night. Shall I send this boy that Yankee's
+horse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh I was forgetting that; yes, do!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the door the Colonel gave me a last look. &quot;Good-night, Legs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I dared not retort, but I looked so hard at his paunch that the General
+smiled. Then he asked me if I knew where we were then camped, and I said
+we were on the Meadville and Fayette road, near Franklin, twenty miles
+southeast of Fayette and--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That will do. Now, beyond Fayette, about seven miles north, there's a
+place--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Clifton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't interrupt me, Smith. Yes, Clifton. You're not to reach there
+to-night--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can do it, General.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can do as you're told; understand?&quot; I understood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The enemy are in Fayette to-night,&quot; he continued. &quot;So when you get
+half-way to Fayette, just across Morgan's Creek, you'll take a dim fork
+on the right running north along the creek. Ever travel by the stars?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I began to tell how well I knew the stars, but he stopped me. &quot;Yes;
+well, keep straight north till you strike the road running east and west
+between Fayette and Union Church. You'll find there a little
+polling-place called Wiggins. Turn west, toward Fayette, and on the
+north side of the main road, opposite the blacksmith's shop, you'll come
+to a small--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you see?&quot; His frown scared me to my finger-tips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I suppose I'm to find there a road down Cole's Creek to Clifton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, if you interrupt me again, sir, you'll find the road back to
+your regiment. Opposite that blacksmith's shop you'll see a white
+cottage. There's a young lady stopping there to-night, a stranger, a
+traveller. The old lady who lives there has taken her in at my request.
+See that the young lady gets this envelope. It's no great matter, merely
+a pass through our lines; but it's your ostensible business till you get
+there; understand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thought I did until I glanced at the superscription: Miss Coralie
+Rothvelt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, here is another matter of much more importance.&quot; He showed, but
+retained, another envelope. &quot;Behind the house where you're to find Miss
+Rothvelt there's a road into Cole's Creek bottom. The house you're to
+stop at to-night, say from twelve o'clock till three or half-past, is on
+that road, about five miles from Wiggins, from Clifton and from Fayette.
+I'm sending you there expecting the people in that house will rob you if
+you give them half a chance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand, General; they'll not get it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, I want them to get it. I want them to rob you of this.&quot; He
+waggled the envelope. &quot;I want this to fall into the hands of the enemy;
+as it will if those people rob you of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I snapped my eyes. He smiled and then frowned. &quot;I don't want a clumsy
+job, now, mind! I don't want you to get captured if you can possibly
+avoid it; but all the same they mustn't get this so easily as to suspect
+it's a bait. So I want you to give those villains that half-chance to
+rob you, but not the other half, or they may--oh, it's no play! You must
+manage to have this despatch taken from you totally against your will!
+Then you must reach Clifton shortly after daylight. Ferry's scouts are
+there, and you'll say to Lieutenant Ferry the single word, Rodney.
+Understand?&quot; He pretended to be reconsidering. &quot;I--don't know
+but--after all--I'd better send one of my staff instead of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, General, if you send an officer they'll see the ruse! I can do it!
+I'll do it all right!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm most afraid,&quot; he said, abstractedly, as he read my detail, which
+Gholson brought in. &quot;Here,&quot;--he handed it to me--&quot;and here, here's the
+despatch too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the name, General, of the man whose house I'm to go to?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd best not know; I want you to seem to have stumbled upon the
+place. You can't miss it; there's no other house within two miles of it.
+Good-bye, my lad;&quot;--he gave me his hand;--&quot;good luck to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson, in the Adjutant-general's tent, told me Ned Ferry had named me
+to the General as a first-class horseman and the most insignificant-
+looking person he knew of who was fit for this venture.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ned Ferry! What does Ned Ferry know about my fitness?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Read the address on your despatch,&quot; said Gholson, resuming his pen.</p>
+
+<p>I snatched the document from my bosom, into which I had thrust it to
+seize the General's hand &quot;Oh, Gholson!&quot; I said, in deep-toned grief, as
+I looked up from the superscription, &quot;is that honest!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He admitted that by the true religionist's standard it was not honest,
+but reminded me that Ned Ferry--in his blindness--was only a poor
+romanticist. The despatch was addressed to Lieutenant Edgard
+Ferry-Durand.</p>
+
+<p>Major Harper's black boy brought me the Yankee's horse with my bridle
+and saddle on him; an elegant animal as fresh as a dawn breeze. Also he
+produced a parcel, my new uniform, and a wee note whose breath smelt of
+lavender as it said,--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Papa tells us you are being sent off on courier duty to-night. What a
+heart-breaking thing is war! How full of cruel sepa'--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That piece of a word was scored out and &quot;dangers&quot; written in its place.
+The missive ended all too soon, with the statement that I was requested
+to call, on my way out of camp, at the side gallery of the house--
+Sessions's--and let the writer and her sister and her cousin and her
+father and her aunt see me in my new uniform and bid me good-bye.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII">XIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>GOOD-BYE, DICK</strong></p>
+
+<p>I found but one white figure under the dim veranda eaves. &quot;Miss
+Camille?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wh'--who is that?&quot; responded a musical voice. &quot;Why, is that Mr. Smith?&quot;
+as if I were the last person in the world one should have expected to
+see there. The like of those moments I had never known. I saw her eyes
+note the perfect fit of my uniform, though neither of us mentioned it. I
+tried to tell her that Lieutenant Durand was Ned Ferry and that I was
+now one of his scouts, but she had already heard both facts, and would
+not tell me what her father had said about me, it was so good. Standing
+at the veranda's edge a trifle above me, with her cheek against one of
+the posts and her gaze on her slipper, she asked if I was glad I was
+going with Ned Ferry, and I had no more sense than to say I was; but she
+would neither say she was glad nor tell why she was not.</p>
+
+<p>Through the open windows we could see the dancers. Now and then a pair
+of fanning promenaders came down the veranda, but on descrying us turned
+back. I said I was keeping her from the dance. To which she replied,
+drooping her head again, that she shouldn't dance that night.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too tired?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too warm?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, not too warm.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh--I--just don't feel as if I could, that's all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My heart beat wildly and I wanted to ask if it was on my account; but I
+was too pusillanimous a coward, and when I feebly tried to look into her
+eyes she would not let me, which convinced me that she lacked candor. A
+dance ended. Gold-laced fellows came and sat on the veranda rail wiping
+wrists and brows with over-tasked handkerchiefs, and explaining the
+small mishaps of the floor. Two promenaders mentioned the hour. I gasped
+my amazement and extended my hand. &quot;Good-bye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait a moment,&quot; she murmured, and watched the promenading pair turn
+back. Then she asked if I had read my mother's letter. I said I had. And
+then, very pensively, with head bent and eyes once more down, she
+inquired if I liked to get letters. Which led, quite accidentally, to my
+asking leave to write to her.</p>
+
+<p>She replied that she did not mean that. Nevertheless, I insisted, would
+she? She only bent lower still. I asked the third time; and with nothing
+but the parting of her hair for me to look at, she nodded, and one of
+her braids fell over in front, and I took the pink-ribboned live end of
+it timorously between thumb and finger and felt as if I had hold of an
+electric battery.</p>
+
+<p>She backed half a step, and quite needlessly I let it go. Then she bade
+me not forget I had promised her the words of a certain song. &quot;Want
+them? Indeed, yes! Did you not say it was an unpublished song written
+by a messmate of yours?--oh, Mr. Smith! I see why you stammer! You said
+'a member of your mess'! oh!--oh!--oh!--you wrote it, yourself! And you
+wrote it to-day! That explains--&quot; She drew an awesome breath, rose to
+her toes and knit her knuckles under her throat.</p>
+
+<p>I was in the sweetest consternation. With the end of her braid once more
+in my fingers I made her promise to keep the dark secret, and so
+recited them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Turn away thine eyes ere my bosom burn,<br />
+Lit with foolish hope to hear thy fondling sighs,
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Like yon twilight dove's, breathe, Return, return!<br />
+Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+&nbsp;&nbsp;O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!<br />
+
+</p><p>&quot;Maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn.<br />
+Breathe, O! breathe to me, as these love-languid skies
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To yon twilight star breathe, Return, return!<br />
+Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+&nbsp;&nbsp;O maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!&quot;<br />
+
+</p><p>&quot;Mis-ter Smith! you wrote that?--to-day! Wh'--who is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One too modest,&quot; I murmured, &quot;to know her own portrait.&quot; I clutched the
+braid emotionally and let it go intending to retake it; but she dropped
+it behind her and said I was too imaginative to be safe.</p>
+
+<p>I stiffened proudly, turned and mounted my steed, but her eyes drew
+mine. I pressed close, bent over the saddle-bow, and said,
+&quot;Good-bye, Camille.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-bye.&quot; I could barely hear it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!--good-bye, just anybody?&quot; I asked; and thereupon she gathered up
+all her misplaced trust in me, all her maiden ignorance of what is in
+man, and all her sweet daring, to murmur--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-bye,--Dick.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I caught my breath in rapture and rode away. She was there yet when I
+looked back--once--and again--and again. And when I looked a last time
+still she had not moved. Oh, Camille, Camille! to this day I see you
+standing there in pink-edged white, pure, silent, motionless, a
+summer-evening cloud; while I, my body clad in its unstained--only
+because unused--new uniform, and my soul tricked out in the
+foolhardiness and vanity of a boy's innocence, rode forth into the night
+and into the talons of overmastering temptation.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV">XIV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>CORALIE ROTHVELT</strong></p>
+
+<p>The night was still and sultry. At one of the many camp-fires on the
+edge of the road I saw the Arkansas colonel sitting cross-legged on the
+ground, in trousers, socks and undershirt, playing poker.</p>
+
+<p>Out in the open country how sweet was the silence. Not yet have I
+forgotten one bright star of that night's sky. My mother and I had
+studied the stars together. Lately Camille, her letter said, had learned
+them with her. Now the heavens dropped meanings that were for me and for
+this night alone. While the form of the maiden--passing fair--yet
+glimmered in the firmament of my own mind, behind me in the south soared
+the Virgin; but as some trees screened the low glare of our camp I saw,
+just rising into view out of the southeast, the unmistakable eyes of the
+Scorpion. But these fanciful oracles only flattered my moral
+self-assurance, and I trust that will be remembered which I forgot, that
+I had not yet known the damsel from one sun to the next.</p>
+
+<p>I was moving briskly along, making my good steed acquainted with me,
+testing his education, how promptly for instance, he would respond to
+rein-touch and to leg-pressure, when I saw, in front, coming toward me,
+three riders. Two of them were very genteel chaps, though a hand of each
+was on the lock of his carbine. The third was a woman, veiled, and clad
+in some dark stuff that in the starlight seemed quite black and
+contrasted strongly with the paleness of her horse. Her hat, in
+particular, fastened my attention; if that was not the same soft-brimmed
+Leghorn I had seen yesterday morning, at least it was its twin sister. I
+halted, revolver in hand, and said, as they drew rein,--&quot;Good-evening.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-evening,&quot; replied the nearer man. &quot;How far is it to
+camp--Austin's?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A short three miles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To what command do you belong?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ferry's scouts. What command is yours, gentlemen?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ferry's scouts.&quot; He scrutinized me. &quot;What command do you say you--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ferry's scouts,&quot; I repeated. &quot;F-e-r-r-y-apostrophe s,
+Ferry's--s-k-o-w-t-s--scouts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The trio laughed, the young woman most musically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long have you belonged to Ferry's scouts?&quot; sceptically demanded
+their spokesman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About an hour and a quarter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! that-a-way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I replied, &quot;in that direction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The three laughed again and the men sank their carbines across their
+laps, while in a voice as refined as her figure their companion said,
+&quot;Good-evening, Mr. Smith.&quot; She laid back her veil and even in the
+darkness I felt the witchery of her glance. &quot;I was just coming to meet
+you,&quot; she continued, &quot;to get the letter you're bringing me from General
+Austin. I feared you might try to come around by Fayette, not knowing
+the Yankees are there. These gentlemen didn't know it.&quot; &quot;She just did
+save us!&quot; laughed the man hitherto silent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm Miss Coralie Rothvelt,&quot; she added, and then how she sparkled in the
+dark as she said, &quot;I see you remember me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am but human.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet you never take a lady's name for granted?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am to know Miss Rothvelt by finding her in a certain place.&quot; My
+honeyed bow implied that her being just now very much out of place was
+no fault of mine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nonsense!&quot; muttered both men, and I liked them the better.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Smith,&quot; said Miss Rothvelt, &quot;keep your trust. But if I part
+here with these two kind gentlemen--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who don't belong to Ferry's scouts at all,&quot; I still more sweetly added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; she laughed, &quot;and if I go back with you to Wiggins--to the little
+white cottage, you know, opposite the blacksmith's shop,--you'll give me
+what you've got for me, won't you?&quot; She dropped her head to one side and
+a mocking-bird chuckle rippled in her throat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall count myself honored,&quot; said I, and we went, together and alone.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV">XV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>VENUS AND MARS</strong></p>
+
+<p>Since those days men have made &quot;fire-proof&quot; buildings. You know them;
+let certain aggravations combine--they burn like straw. We had barely
+started when I began to be threatened with a conflagration against which
+I should have called it an insult to have been warned. The adroit beauty
+at my side set in to explain more fully her presence. From her window
+she had seen those two trim fellows hurrying along in a fair way to
+blunder into the Federal pickets within an hour, had cautioned them, and
+had finally asked leave to come with them, they under her guidance, she
+under their protection.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You were so anxious to get the General's letter?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was so anxious about you,&quot; she replied, with feeling, and then broke
+into a quizzical laugh.</p>
+
+<p>I had not the faintest doubt she was lying. What was I to her? The times
+were fearfully out of joint; women as well as men were taking war's
+licenses, and with a boy's unmerciful directness I sprang to the
+conclusion that here was an adventuress. Yet I had some better thoughts
+too. While I felt a moral tipsiness going into all my veins, I asked
+myself if it was not mainly due to my own inability to rise in full
+manliness to a most exceptional situation. Her jaunty method of
+confronting it, was I not failing to regard <em>that</em> with due magnanimity?
+Was this the truth, or after all ought I really to see that at every
+turn of her speech, by coy bendings of the head, by the dark seductions
+of dim half-captive locks about her oval temples, and by many an
+indescribable swaying of the form and of the voice, I was being--to
+speak it brutally--challenged? Even in the poetic obscurity of the night
+I lost all steadiness of eye as I pertly said--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so here you are in this awful fix.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm enjoying one advantage,&quot; she replied, &quot;which you do not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I can read my safety in your face. You can't read anything in
+mine; you're afraid to look.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All I got by looking then was a mellow laugh from behind her relowered
+veil; but we were going at a swift trot, nearing a roadside fire of
+fence-rails left by some belated foraging team, and as she came into the
+glare of it I turned my eyes a second time. She was revealed in a garb
+of brown enriched by the red beams of the fire, and was on the gray mare
+I had seen that morning under Lieutenant Edgard Ferry-Durand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You recognize her?&quot; the rider asked, delightedly. &quot;She's not stolen,
+she's only served her country a little better than usual to-day; haven't
+you, Cousin Sallie?&quot; (Cousin Sallie was short for Confederate States.)</p>
+
+<p>The note of patriotism righted me and I looked a third time. The one art
+of dress worth knowing in '63 was to slight its fashions without
+offending them, and this pretty gift I had marked all day in the
+Harpers. But never have I seen it half so successful as in the veiled
+horsewoman illumined by the side-lights of those burning fence-rails.
+The white apparition at the veranda's edge gleamed in my mind, yet
+swiftly faded out, and a new fascination, more sudden than worthy heaved
+at my heart. Then the fire was behind us and we were in the deep night.</p>
+
+<p>On the crest of a ridge we slackened speed and my fellow-traveller
+lifted her veil and asked exultantly what those two splendid stars were
+that overhung yonder fringe of woods so low and so close to each other.
+The less brilliant one, I said, the red one, was Mars.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the one following, almost at his side?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you know?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes flashed round upon me like stars themselves. &quot;Not--Venus?&quot; she
+whispered, snatched in her breath, bit her lip, and half averting her
+face, shot me through with both &quot;twinklers&quot; at once. Then she took a
+long look at the planets and suddenly exclaimed with a scandalized air--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They're going down into the woods together!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I responded, &quot;and without even waiting for Diana.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She dropped the rein and lifted both arms toward them. &quot;Oh, blessings on
+your glorious old heathen hearts, what do you want of Diana, or of any
+one in heaven or earth except each other!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Foolish, idle cry, and meant for no more, by a heart on fire with
+temptations of which I knew nothing. But then and there my poor
+adolescent soul found out that the preceptive stuff of which it had
+built its treasure-house and citadel was not fire-proof.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI">XVI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>AN ACHING CONSCIENCE</strong></p>
+
+<p>Yet great is precept. Precept is a well. Up from its far depths by slow,
+humble, constant process you may draw, in a slender silver thread, and
+store for sudden use, the pure waters of character.</p>
+
+<p>It has happened, however, that a man's own armor has been the death of
+him. So the moral isolation of a young prig of good red blood who is
+laudably trying to pump his conduct higher than his character--for
+that's the way he gets his character higher--has its own peculiar
+dangers. Take this example: that he does not dream any one will, or can,
+in mere frivolity, coquette, dally, play mud-pies, with a passion the
+sacredest in subjection, the shamefulest in mutiny, and the deepest and
+most perilous to tamper with, in our nature. As hotly alive in the
+nethermost cavern of his heart as in that of the vilest rogue there is a
+kennel of hounds to which one word of sophistry is as the call to the
+chase, and such a word I believed my companion had knowingly spoken. I
+was gone as wanton-tipsy as any low-flung fool, and actually fancied
+myself invited to be valiant by this transparent embodiment of passion
+whose outburst of amorous rebellion had been uttered not because I was
+there, but only in pure recklessness of my presence. Of course I ought
+to have seen that this was a soul only over-rich in woman's love;
+mettlesome, aspiring, but untrained to renunciation; consciously
+superior in mind and soul to the throng about her, and caught in some
+hideous gin of iron-bound--convention-bound--or even law-bound--foul
+play. But I was so besotted as to suggest a base analogy between us and
+those two sinking stars.</p>
+
+<p>Unluckily she retorted with some playful parry that just lacked the
+saving quality of true resentment. How I rejoined would be small profit
+to tell. I had a fearful sense of falling; first like a wounded
+squirrel, dropping in fierce amazement, catching, holding on for a
+panting moment, then dropping, catching and dropping again, down from
+the top of the great tree where I had so lately sat scolding all the
+forest; and then, later, with an appalling passivity. And at every fresh
+exchange of words, while she laughed and fended, and fended and laughed,
+along with this passivity came a yet more appalling perversity; a
+passivity and perversity as of delirium, and as horrid to her as to me,
+though I little thought so then.</p>
+
+<p>We came where a line of dense woods on our left marked the bottom-lands
+of Morgan's Creek. With her two earlier companions my fellow-traveller
+had crossed a ford here shortly after sunset, seeing no one; but a guard
+might easily have been put here since, by the Federals in Fayette.
+Pretty soon the road, bending toward it, led us down between two fenced
+fields and we stealthily walked our horses. Close to a way-side tree I
+murmured that if she would keep my horse I would steal nearer on foot
+and reconnoitre, and I had partly risen from the saddle, when I was
+thrilled by the pressure of her hand upon mine on the saddle-bow. &quot;Don't
+commit the soldier's deadliest sin, my dear Mr. Smith,&quot; she said under
+her breath, and smiled at my agitation; &quot;I mean, don't lose time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was about to put a false meaning even on that, when she added &quot;We
+don't need the ford this time of year; let us ride back as if we gave up
+the trip--for there may be a vidette looking at us now in the edge of
+those bushes--and as soon as we get where we can't be seen let us take a
+circuit. We can cross the creek somewhere above and strike the Wiggins
+road up in the woods. You can find your way by the blessed stars, can't
+you--being the angel you are?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My whole nature was upheaved. You may smile, but my plight was awful. In
+the sultry night I grew cold. My bridle-hand, still lying under her
+palm, turned and folded its big stupid fingers over hers. Then our hands
+slid apart and we rode back. &quot;I wish I were good enough to know the
+stars,&quot; she said, gazing up. &quot;Tell me some of them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told them. Two or three times my voice stuck in my throat, I found the
+sky so filled, so possessed, by constellations of evil name. At our back
+the Dragon writhed between the two Bears; over us hung the Eagle, and in
+the south were the Wolf, the Crow, the Hydra, the Serpent--&quot;Oh, don't
+tell any more,&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;Or rather--what are those three bright
+stars yonder? Why do you skip them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Those? That one is the Virgin's sheaf; and those two are the Balances.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I failed to catch her reply. She spoke in a tone of pain and sunk her
+face in her hand. &quot;Head ache?&quot; I asked. &quot;No.&quot; She straightened, and
+from under her coquettish hat bent upon me such a look as I had never
+seen. In her eyes, in her tightened lips, and in the lift of her head,
+was a whole history of hope, pride, pain, resolve, strife, bafflement
+and defiance. She could not have chosen to betray so much; she must have
+counted too fully on the shade of her hat-brim. The beautiful frown
+relaxed into a smile. &quot;No,&quot; she repeated, &quot;only an aching conscience.
+Ever have one?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I averted my face and answered with a nod.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't believe you! I don't believe you ever had cause for one!&quot; She
+laid a hand again upon mine.</p>
+
+<p>I covered it fiercely and sunk my brow upon it. And thereupon the wave
+of folly drew back, and on the bared sands of recollection I saw, like
+drowned things, my mother's face, and Gholson's and the General's, and
+Major Harper's, and Ned Ferry's, and Camille's. Each in turn brought its
+separate and peculiar pang; and among those that came a second time and
+with a crueler pang than before was Camille's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're tired!&quot; murmured the voice beside me, and the wave rolled in
+again. I lifted my brow and moved one hand from hers to make room on it
+for my lips, but her fingers slipped away and alighted compassionately
+on my neck. &quot;You must be one ache from head to foot!&quot; she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>I turned upon her choking with anger, but her melting beauty rendered me
+helpless. Black woods were on our left. &quot;Shall we turn in here?&quot;
+I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot; She stooped low under the interlacing boughs and plunged with me
+into the double darkness.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII">XVII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>TWO UNDER ONE HAT-BRIM</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is this the conservatory?&quot; playfully whispered Miss Rothvelt; and if a
+hot, damp air, motionless, and heavy with the sleeping breath of
+countless growths could make it so, a conservatory it was. Every
+slightest turn had to be alertly chosen, and the tangle of branches and
+vines made going by the stars nearly impossible. The undergrowth crowded
+us into single file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses
+came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were
+much the same until near the end of our d&eacute;tour, when my horse swerved
+abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake sounded almost under foot. The
+mare swerved, too, and hurried forward to my horse's side.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That was almost an adventure, itself,&quot; laughingly murmured my
+companion, as if adventures were what we were in search of. While she
+spoke we came out into a slender road and turned due north. &quot;Did you,&quot;
+she went on, childishly, &quot;ever take a snake up by the tail, in your
+thumb and finger, and watch him try to double on himself and bite you? I
+have, it's great fun; makes you feel so creepy, and yet you know
+you're safe!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed under her breath as if at hide-and-seek. Then we galloped,
+then trotted again, galloped, walked and trotted again. Two miles,
+three, four, we reckoned off, and slowed to a walk to come out
+cautiously upon the Union Church and Fayette road. A sound brought us
+to a halt. From the right, out on the main road, it came; it was made by
+the wheels of a loaded wagon. I leaned sidewise until her hat-brim was
+over me and whispered &quot;Yankee foragers;&quot; but as I drew my revolver we
+heard voices, I breathed a sigh of relief, and with her locks touching
+mine we chuckled to each other in the dark. The passers were slaves
+escaping to the Federal camp.</p>
+
+<p>Now they came into view, on the broader road, two whole ragged families
+with a four-mule team. They passed on. And then all at once the whole
+situation was too much for me. In the joy of release I groped out
+caressingly and touched my companion's cheek. Whereat she took my
+fingers and drew them to her lips--twice. The next moment I found--we
+found--my lifted wrists in the slender grasp of her two hands and she
+was murmuring incoherent protests. Suddenly she grew eloquent. &quot;Oh,
+think what you are and have always been! Do you think I don't know? Do
+you suppose I would have put myself into this situation, or taken the
+liberties I have taken with you, if I had not known you, and known you
+well, before ever I saw you? Ah! I have heard such good things of you!
+and the moment I saw you I saw they were true!--Yes,--yes, I tell you
+they were, they are! And I'm not going to take my trust away from you
+now! You shall keep my trust as you have kept all others. You shall be
+as miserly of it as of your general's. You will keep it!&quot; Her whispers
+grew more and more gentle. &quot;My dear friend, my dear friend! what is this
+trust compared to the trust I wish I might lay on you?&quot; What did she
+mean by that! Had she some schemer's use for me? I could not ask, for
+her little hands had gradually slipped from my wrists to my fingers and
+were softly, torturingly fondling them. Suddenly she laughed and threw
+her hands behind her back. &quot;I'm blundering! Oh, Richard Smith, be kind
+to a woman's poor wits, and let me say to-morrow that I know one man who
+can be trusted--who I know can be trusted--to make a woman's folly her
+protection. Do you know, dear, that any woman who can say that, is
+richer than any who cannot? And I am but a woman, sometimes a bit silly.
+Trouble is I'm a live one and a whole one!--or else I'm a live one and
+not quite a whole one--I wonder which it is!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I mumbled something about never wishing to tempt any one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you haven't tempted me,&quot; she replied, with kind amusement. &quot;You
+couldn't if you should try. You're a true soldier, with a true soldier's
+ideals; and I'm pledged to help you keep them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean?&quot; I demanded. &quot;To whom are you pledged for any such--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!--don't you wish you knew! Why, to myself, for instance. Come! duty
+calls.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come!&quot; I echoed. We swung into the broader road and followed the
+contrabands.</p>
+
+<p>We came as close to them as was wise, and had to walk our horses. I
+could discern Miss Rothvelt's features once more, and felt a truer
+deference than I had yet given her. Near the blacksmith's shop, in the
+dusk of some shade-trees, she once more touched my shoulder. I turned
+resentfully to bid her not do it, but her shadowy gaze stopped me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't be moody,&quot; she said; &quot;the whole mistake is four-fifths mine. And
+anyhow, repining is only a counterfeit repentance, you know. Come, I
+don't want to tease you. It's only myself I love to torment. I'm the
+snake I like to hold up by the tail. Did you never have some dull,
+incessant ache that seemed to pain less when you pressed hard on it?&quot;
+She laughed, left me and rode into the cottage gate.</p>
+
+<p>What do you say?--Yes, she might have spoken more wisely. Yet always
+there vibrated in her voice a wealth of thought, now bitter, now sweet,
+and often both at once, and a splendor of emotions, beyond the scope of
+all ordinary natures. How far beyond my own scope they were, even with
+my passions at flood-tide and turbid as a back-street overflow, I
+failed to ponder while I passed around the paling fence alone.</p>
+
+<p>In the edge of the woods at the rear of this enclosure I found the road
+that led into Cole's Creek bottom, and there turned and waited. A corner
+of the cottage was still in view among its cedars and china-trees. In an
+intervening melon-patch blinked the yellow lamps of countless fireflies.
+And now there came the ghost of a sound from beyond the patch, then a
+glimpse of drapery, and I beheld again the subject of my thoughts. Such
+thoughts! Ah! why had I neither modesty, wit nor charity enough to see
+that yonder came a woman whose heart beat only more strongly than the
+hearts of all the common run of us, with impulses both kind and high,
+although society, by the pure defects of its awkward machinery, had
+incurably mutilated her fate; a woman wrestling with a deep-founded love
+that, held by her at arm's length, yielded only humiliations and by its
+torments kept her half ripe for any sudden treason even against that
+love itself.</p>
+
+<p>She came without her horse, pointing eagerly at the brightness of the
+sky above the unrisen moon. &quot;Diana!&quot; she whispered, and tossed a kiss
+toward it. &quot;You saw me put the mare into the stable and go into the
+house by the back door?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said, and handed her, as I dismounted, the General's gift, the
+pass.</p>
+
+<p>She snatched it gaily, loosed a fastening at her throat and dropped the
+missive into her bosom. Then with passionate gravity she asked, &quot;Now,
+are you going straight on to Clifton to-night--without stopping?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I haven't been ordered to tell any one where I'm going.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Neither was Lieutenant Ferry,&quot; she dryly responded, &quot;yet I have it from
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He told you?--Ah! you're only guessing,&quot; I said, and saw that I was
+helping her to guess more correctly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pooh!&quot; she replied, ever so prettily, &quot;do you suppose I don't know?
+Ferry's scouts are at Clifton, and you've got a despatch for
+Lieutenant--eh,--Durand--hem!&quot; She posed playfully. &quot;Now, tell me;
+you're not to report to him till daylight, are you? Then why need you
+hurry on now? This house where I am is the only safe place for you to
+sleep in between here and Clifton. I'll wake you, myself, in good time.&quot;
+My heart pounded and rose in my throat, yet I managed to say, &quot;My
+orders are plain.&quot; I flinched visibly, for again I had told too much. I
+pretended to listen toward the depths of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>She struck a mock-sentimental attitude and murmured musically--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;'The beating of our own hearts<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Was all the sound we heard.'<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot;--she put away gaiety--&quot;your orders are plain; and they're as
+cruel as they are plain!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cruel to you?&quot; I took her hand from my arm and held it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! cruel to you, Richard, dear; to you! And--yes!--yes!--I'll
+confess. I'll confess--if only you'll do as I beg! Yes, ah yes, cruel to
+me! But don't ask how, and we'll see if you are man enough to keep a
+real woman's real secret! And first, promise me not to put up at that
+house which the General and Lieutenant Ferry--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant Ferry is not sending me to any house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardon me, I know better. This is his scheme.&quot; She laid her free hand
+on our two. &quot;Tell me you will not go to that house!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I attempted an evasion. &quot;Oh--a blanket on the ground--face covered up in
+it from the mosquitos--is really--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Right!&quot; She laughed. &quot;I wish a woman could choose that way. Oh! if
+you'll do that I'll go with you and stand guard over you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dolt that I was, I would have drawn her close, but she put me off with
+an outstretched arm and forbidden smile. &quot;No!--No! this is a matter of
+life and death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stepped back, heaving. &quot;Who and what are you? Who and what are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, who and what should I be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Charlotte Oliver!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hmm; Charlotte Oliver. Are you sure you have the name just right?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why haven't I got it right?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I don't doubt you have; though I didn't know but it might be
+Charlie Toliver or something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I dilated. &quot;Who told--did Ned Ferry tell you that story?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He did. Or, to be accurate, Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. My dear Richard,
+we cannot be witty and remain un-talked-about.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I--I believe it yet! You are Charlotte Oliver!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She became frigid. &quot;Do you know who and what Charlotte Oliver is?--No?
+Well, to begin with, she's a married woman--but pshaw! you believe
+nothing till it's proved. If I tell you who and what I am will you do
+what I've asked you; will you promise not to stop at Lucius Oliver's
+house?&quot; She softly reached for my hand and pressed and stroked it.
+&quot;Don't stop there, dear. Oh, say you will not!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it so dangerous?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;General Austin believes it is. You're being used to bait a trap,
+Richard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed a gay disdain. &quot;Who is Lucius; is he Charlotte's husband?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The reply came slowly. &quot;No; her husband is quite another man; this
+man's wife has been dead for years. No, Charlotte Oliver lives
+in--hark!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sound we had heard was only some stir of nature in her sleep. &quot;I
+must go,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, no! I cannot let you!&quot; She clutched the hand she had been
+stroking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Coralie! Coralie Rothvelt!&quot;--my cry was an honest one--&quot;you tempt me
+beyond human endurance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She threw my hand from her. &quot;I know I do! I'm so unworthy to do it that
+I wouldn't have believed I could. You thought I was Charlotte
+Oliver--Heavens! boy, if you should breathe the atmosphere Charlotte
+Oliver has to live in! But understand again, for your soul's comfort,
+you haven't tempted me. Go, if you must; go, take your chances; and if
+you're spared ever to see your dear, dear little mother--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My mother! Do you know my mother?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell her I tried to keep my promise to her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You promised her--what did you promise her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only to take care of you whenever I had the chance. Go, now, you must!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And was care for me your only motive in--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; no, Richard, I wanted, and I still want, you to take care of me!
+But go, now, go! at once or not at all! Good-bye!&quot; She laughed and
+fluttered away. I sprang upon my horse and sped into the forest.</p>
+
+<p>Another mile, another half; then my horror and dismay broke into gesture
+and speech, and over and over I reviled myself as a fool, a traitorous
+fool, to be fooled into confession of my errand! I moaned with physical
+pain; every fatigue of the long day now levied payment, and my back,
+knees, shoulders, ached cruelly. But my heart ached most, and I bowed in
+the saddle and cried--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What have I done, oh, what have I done? My secret! my general's, my
+country's secret! That woman has got it--bought it with flatteries and
+lies! She has drawn it from my befouled soul like a charge from a gun!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I quite forgot how evident it was that she had gathered
+earlier inklings of it from some one else. Suddenly my thought was of
+something far more startling. It stopped my breath; I halted; I held my
+temples; I stared. What would she do with a secret she had taken such
+hazards to extort? Ah! she'd carry it straight to market--why not? She
+would give it to the enemy! Before my closed eyes came a vision of the
+issue--disaster to our arms; bleeding, maiming, death, and widows' and
+orphans' tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My God! she shall not!&quot; I cried, and whirled about and galloped back.</p>
+
+<p>At the edge of the wood, where we had parted, I tied my horse, and crept
+along the moonlight shadows of the melon-patch to the stable. The door
+was ajar. In the interior gloom I passed my hands over the necks and
+heads of what I recognized to be the pair of small mules I had seen at
+Gallatin. Near a third stall were pegs for saddle and bridle, but they
+were empty. So was the stall; the mare was gone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gone to the Yankees at Fayette!&quot; I moaned, and hurried back to my
+horse. To attempt to overtake one within those few miles would only make
+failure complete, and I scurried once more into the north with such a
+burden of alarm and anguish as I had never before known.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII">XVIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE JAYHAWKERS</strong></p>
+
+<p>IT was well that I was on the Federal captain's horse. He knew this sort
+of work and could do it quicker and more quietly than mine. Mine would
+have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it. Another
+advantage was the moon, and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I
+saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge
+of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins.
+Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young
+white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to
+startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the
+rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played &quot;I lay
+ten dollars down.&quot; There were three couples on the floor, and I saw--for
+the excited dogs had pushed the door open--that two of the men were
+white, though but one wore shoes. On him the light fell revealingly as
+he and the yellow girl before him passed each other in the dance and
+faced again. He was decidedly blond. The other man, though silhouetted
+against the glare of burning pine-knots, I knew to be white by the
+flapping of his lank locks about his cheeks as he lent his eyes to the
+improvisation of his steps. His partner was a young black girl. I
+burned with scorn, and doubtless showed it, although I only asked whose
+plantation this was.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This-yeh pla-ace?&quot; The rustic dragged his words lazily, chewed tobacco
+with his whole face, and looked my uniform over from cap to spur. &quot;They
+say this-yeh place belong to a man which his name Lu-ucius Ol-i-veh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So! I honestly wished myself back in my old rags, until I reflected that
+my handsome mount was enough to get me all the damage these wretches
+could offer. Still I thought it safest to show an overbearing frown.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To what command do you fellows belong?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He spurted a pint to reply, &quot;Fishe's batt'ry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! And where is the battery?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You sa-ay 'Whah is it?'--ow batt'ry&quot;--he champed noisily--&quot;I dunno.
+Does you? Whah is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's twenty miles off; why are you not with it? What are you doing
+here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You sa-ay 'What we a-doin' hyuh?' Well, suh, I mought sa-ay we ain't
+a-doin' nuth'n'; but I&quot;--he squirted again--&quot;<em>will</em> sa-ay that so fah as
+you <em>see</em> what we a-doin', you <em>kin</em> see, an' welcome; an' so fah as you
+don't see, it ain't none o' yo' damn' busi-ness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, that's all right, I was only asking a friendly question.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yaas; well, that's all right, too, suh; I uz on'y a-givin' you a
+frien'ly aynsweh. I hope you like it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Our intercourse became more amiable and the fellow dragged in his advice
+that I spend the rest of the night at the house of Mr. Oliver. His
+acquaintance with that gentleman seemed to grow while we talked, and
+broke into bloom like a magician's rosebush. He described him as a kind
+old bird who made hospitality to strangers his meat and drink. A
+conjecture darted into my mind. &quot;Why, yes! that is his married son, is
+he not, yonder in the cabin; the one with the fair hair?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who?--eh,--ole man Ol-i-veh? You sa--ay 'Is that his ma'-ied son, in
+yondeh; the one 'ith the fah hah? '--Eh,--no--o, suh,--eh,--yass,
+suh,--yass! Oh, yass, suh, thass his--tha'--thass his ma'ied son, in
+thah; yass, suh, the one 'ith the fah hah; yass, suh. I thought you
+meant the yetheh one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't believe,&quot; said I, &quot;I'd better put myself on the old gentleman
+when the mistress of the house is away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>She</em> ain't awa-ay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she not! Isn't she the Mrs. Oliver--Charlotte Oliver--who is such
+friends--she and her husband, I mean, of course,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>Uv</em> co'se!&quot; The reptile giggled, squirted and nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;--With General Austin,&quot; I continued, &quot;--and with Lieutenant Ferry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She air!&quot; He was pleased. &quot;Yass, we all good frien's togetheh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if she--oh, yes!--Yes, to be sure; she could easily have got here
+yesterday afternoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thass thess when she arrove!&quot; It was fascinating to watch the animal's
+cunning play across his face. The fiddle's tune changed and the dance
+quickened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I naturally thought,&quot; resumed I, with a smile meant to refer to the
+blond dancer, &quot;that the madam <em>must</em> be away somewhere.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My hearer grinned. &quot;Oh, that ain't no sign. Boys will be boys. You know
+that, yo'se'f. An' o' co'se she know it. Oh, yass, she at home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I reckon I'll stop all night.&quot; I began to move on. His eyes
+followed greedily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sa-ay! I'll wrastle you fo' them-ah clo'es.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I waved a pleasant refusal and rode toward the house.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX">XIX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>ASLEEP IN THE DEATH-TRAP</strong></p>
+
+<p>The dwelling was entirely dark. I came close in the bright moonlight and
+hallooed. At my second hail the door came a small way open, and after a
+brief parley a man's voice bade me put up my horse and come in. The
+stable was a few steps to the right and rear. Returning, I took care to
+notice the form of the house: a hall from front to rear; one front and
+one rear room on each side of it; above the whole a low attic, probably
+occupied by the slave housemaids.</p>
+
+<p>I was met in the bare unpainted hall by a dropsical man of nearly sixty,
+holding a dim candle, a wax-myrtle dip wrapped on a corncob. He had a
+retreating chin, a throat-latch beard and a roving eye; stepped with one
+foot and slid with the other, spoke in a dejected voice, and had very
+poor use of his right hand. I followed him to the rear corner chamber,
+the one nearest the stable, feeling that, poor as the choice was, I
+should rather have him for my robber and murderer than those villains
+down at the quarters. I detained him in conversation while I drew off my
+boots and threw my jacket upon the back of a chair in such a way as to
+let my despatch be seen. The toss was a lucky one; the document, sealed
+with red wax, stuck out arrogantly from an inside pocket. Then, asking
+lively questions the while as if to conceal a blunder and its
+correction, I moved quickly between him and it and slipped the missive
+under a pillow of the fourpost bedstead.</p>
+
+<p>He was not wordy, and he tarried but a moment, yet he explained his
+paralysis. In the dreary monotone of a chronic sour temper he related
+that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing
+horses, and their officer, on being called by him &quot;no gentleman,&quot; had
+struck him behind the ear with the butt of a carbine. I asked what
+punishment the officer received, and I noticed the plural pronoun as he
+icily replied, &quot;We didn't enter any complaint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said with genuine warmth that if he would give me that man's
+name--etc.</p>
+
+<p>He waited on the threshold with his dropsical back to me for my last
+word, and then, still in the same attitude, droned, &quot;O-oh, he's dead.
+And anyhow,&quot; he finished out of sight in the hall, &quot;that's not our way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sat on the edge of the bed, in the moonlight, wishing I knew what
+their way was. I considered my small stock of facts. The one that
+appalled me most was the inward guilt which I brought with me to this
+ordeal. I wanted to say my childhood prayers and I could not. For I
+could not repent; at least the <em>emotion</em> of repentance would not come.
+Moreover, every now and then there leapt across this blackness of guilt
+a forked lightning of fright, as I realized that I could no more plan
+than I could pray. No doubt Coralie Rothvelt, by this time in Fayette,
+was telling some Federal commander that a certain Confederate courier,
+now asleep at the house of Lucius Oliver, had let slip to her the fact
+that his despatches were written to be captured, and that, read with
+that knowledge, they would be of guiding value. What mine host himself
+might have in view for me I could not guess, but most likely those three
+rapscallions down at the quarters were already plotting my murder. So
+now for a counterplot--alas! the counterplot would not unfold for me!</p>
+
+<p>I rallied all my wits. Here was an open window. Through it the moonlight
+poured in upon the lower half of the bed. If I should lie with my eyes
+in the shadow of the headboard no one entering by the door opposite
+could see that I was looking. Good! but what to do when the time should
+come--ah me!--and &quot;Oh, God!&quot; and &quot;Oh, God!&quot; again. Ought I, now, to let
+the enemy get the despatch, or must I not rather keep it from him at
+whatever risk of death or disgrace? Ah! if I might only fight, and let
+the outcome decide for me! And why not? Yes, I would fight! And oh! how
+I would fight! If by fighting too well I should keep the despatch, why,
+that, as matters now stood, was likely to be the very best for my
+country's cause. On the other hand, should I fight till I fell dead or
+senseless and only then lose it, surely then it would be counted genuine
+and retain all its value to mislead. Oh, yes,--I could contrive nothing
+better--I would fight!</p>
+
+<p>I drew the counterpane aside, lay down under it revolver in hand, and
+then, for the first time since I had put on the glorious gray, found I
+could not face the thought of death. I grew steadily, penetratingly,
+excruciatingly cold, and presently--to the singular satisfaction of my
+conscience--began to shake from head to foot with a nervous chill. It
+was agonizing, but it was so much better than the spiritual chill of
+which it took the place! I felt as though I should never be warm again.
+Yet the attack slowly passed away, and with my finger once more close to
+the trigger, I lay trying to use my brain, when, without prayer or plan,
+I solved the riddle, what I should do, by doing the only thing I knew I
+ought not to do. I slept.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX">XX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>CHARLOTTE OLIVER</strong></p>
+
+<p>An envelope sealed with sealing-wax, unless it has also a wrapping of
+twine or tape whose only knot is under the seal, can be opened without
+breaking the seal. Gholson had once told me this. Hold a thin, sharp
+knife-blade to the spout of a boiling tea-kettle; then press the
+blade's edge under the edge of the seal. Repeat this operation many
+times. The wax will yield but a hair's-breadth each time, but a
+hair's-breadth counts, and in a few minutes the seal will be lifted
+entire. A touch of glue or paste will fasten it down again, and a seal
+so tampered with need betray the fact only to an eye already suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>As I say, I slept. The door between me and the hall had a lock, but no
+key; another door, letting from my room to the room in front of it, had
+no lock, but was bolted. I slept heavily and for an hour or more. Then I
+was aware of something being moved--slowly--slyly--by littles--under my
+pillow. The pillow was in a case of new unbleached cotton. When I first
+lay down, the cotton had so smelt of its newness that I thought it was
+enough, of itself, to keep me awake. Now this odor was veiled by
+another; a delicate perfume; a perfume I knew, and which brought again
+to me all the incidents of the night, and all their woe. I looked, and
+there, so close to the bedside that she could see my eyes as plainly as
+I saw hers, stood Coralie Rothvelt. In the door that opened into the
+hall were two young officers, staff swells, in the handsomest Federal
+blue. The moonlight lay in a broad flood between them and me. It
+silvered Miss Rothvelt from the crown of her hat to the floor, and
+brightened the earnest animation of her lovely face as she daintily
+tiptoed backward with one hand delicately poised in the air behind her,
+and the other still in the last pose of withdrawing from under the
+pillow--empty!</p>
+
+<p>My problem was indeed simplified. The despatch had been stolen, opened,
+read, re-sealed and returned. All I now had to do was to lie here till
+daybreak and then get away if I could, deliver the despatch to Ned
+Ferry, and tell him--ah! what?--how much? Oh, my bemired soul, how much
+must I tell? My shame I might bear; I might wash it out in blood at the
+battle's front; but my perfidy! how much was it perfidy to withhold; how
+much was it perfidy to confess?</p>
+
+<p>The heaviness of my soul, by reacting upon my frame and counterfeiting
+sleep better than I could have done it in cold blood, saved me, I fancy,
+from death or a northern prison. When I guessed my three visitors were
+gone I stirred, as in slumber, a trifle nearer the window, and for some
+minutes lay with my face half buried in the pillow. So lying, there
+stole to my ear a footfall. My finger felt the trigger, my lids lifted
+alertly, and as alertly reclosed. Outside the window one of the
+officers, rising by some slender foothold, had been looking in upon me,
+and in sinking down again and turning away had snapped a twig. He
+glanced back just as I opened my eyes, but once more my head was in
+shadow and the moonlight between us. When I peeped again he was
+moving away.</p>
+
+<p>Five, ten, fifteen minutes dragged by. Counting them helped me to lie
+still. Then I caught another pregnant sound, a mumbling of male voices
+in the adjoining front room. I waited a bit, hearkening laboriously, and
+then ever so gradually I slid from the bed, put on everything except my
+boots, and moved by inches to the door between the two rooms. It was
+very thin; &quot;a good sounding-board,&quot; thought I as I listened for life or
+death and hoped my ear was the only one against it.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion warmed and I began to catch words and meanings. Oftenest
+they were old Lucius Oliver's, whose bad temper made him incautious.
+While his son and the other two jayhawkers obstinately pressed their
+scheme he kept saying, sourly, &quot;That's--not--our--wa-ay!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At length he lost all prudence. &quot;Nn--o!--Nnno--o, sir! Not in this house
+you don't; and not on this place! Wait till he's off my land; I'm not
+goin' to have the infernal rebels a-turpentinin' my house and a-burnin'
+it over my head. What <em>air</em> you three skunks in such a sweat to git
+found out for, like a pack o' daymn' fools! I've swone to heaven and
+hell to git even ef revenge can ever git me even, and this ain't the way
+to git even. It's not--our--wa-ay!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His son's attitude exasperated him. &quot;<em>You</em> know this ain't ever been our
+way; you'd say so, yourself, ef you wa'n't skin full o' china-ball
+whiskey! What in all hell is the reason we can't do him as we've always
+done the others?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, shut your dirty face!&quot; replied the son, while one of his cronies
+warned both against being overheard. But when this one added something
+further the old man snarled:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's that about the horse?--The horse might git away and be evidence
+ag'inst us?--What?--Oh, now give the true reason; you want the horse,
+that's all! You two lickskillets air in this thing pyo'ly for the
+stealin's. Me and my son ain't bushwhackers, we're gentlemen! At least
+I'm one. Our game's revenge!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Not because of this speech, but of a soft rubbing sound on the
+window-sill behind me, my heart turned cold. Yet there I saw a most
+welcome sight. Against the outer edge of the sill an unseen hand was
+moving a forked stick to and fro. The tip of one of its tines was slit,
+in the slit was a white paper, and in the fork hung the bridle of my
+horse. I glided to the window. But there bethinking me how many a man
+had put his head out at just such a place and never got it back, I made
+a long sidewise reach, secured the paper, and read it.</p>
+
+<p>It was the envelope which had contained Coralie Rothvelt's pass. Its
+four flaps were spread open, and on the inside was scrawled in a large
+black writing the following:</p>
+
+<p><em>Yankees gone, completely fooled. Do not stir till day, then ride for
+your life. We're not thwarting Lieutenant Ferry's plan, we're only
+improving upon it. When you report to him don't let blame fall upon the
+father and son whose roof this night saves you from a bloody death. Do
+this for the sake of her who is risking her life to save yours. We serve
+one cause; be wary--be brave--be true</em>.</p>
+
+<p>I stood equally amazed and alert. The voices still growled in the next
+room, and my horse's bridle still hung before the window. I peered out;
+there stood the priceless beast. I came a sly step nearer, and lo! in
+his shadow, flattened against the house, face outward, was Coralie
+Rothvelt comically holding the forked stick at a present-arms.
+Throbbing with a grateful, craving allegiance, I seized the rein. Then I
+bent low out the window and with my free hand touched her face as it
+turned upward into a beam of moonlight. She pressed my fingers to her
+lips, and then let me draw her hand as far as it could come and cover it
+with kisses. Then she drew me down and whispered &quot;You'll do what
+I've asked?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When I said I would try she looked distressfully unassured and I added
+&quot;I'll do whatever risks no life but mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her face spoke passionate thanks. &quot;That's all I can ask!&quot; she said,
+whispered &quot;When you go--<em>keep the plain road,&quot;</em>--and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>I sat by the window, capped, booted, belted, my bridle in one hand,
+revolver in the other. In all the house, now, there was no sound, and
+without there was a stillness only more vast. I could not tell whether
+certain sensations in my ear were given by insects in the grass and
+trees or merely by my overwrought nerves and tired neck. The moon sailed
+high, the air was at last comfortably cool, my horse stood and slept. I
+thought it must be half-past two.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now it must be three.&quot; Miss Rothvelt's writing lay in my bosom beside
+my despatch. At each half-hour I re-read it. At three-and-a-half I
+happened to glance at the original superscription. A thought flashed
+upon me. I stared at her name, and began to mark off its letters one by
+one and to arrange them in a new order. I took C from Coralie and h from
+Rothvelt; after them I wrote a from Coralie and r from Rothvelt, l and o
+from Coralie and two t's and an e from Rothvelt, and behold, Charlotte!
+while the remaining letters gave me Oliver.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! where had my wits been? Yet without a suspicion that she was
+Charlotte Oliver one might have let the anagram go unsuspected for a
+lifetime. Evidently it concealed nothing from General Austin or Ned
+Ferry; most likely it was only the name she used in passing through the
+lines. At any rate I was convinced she was a good Confederate, and my
+heart rose.</p>
+
+<p>But why, then, this ardent zeal to save the necks of the two traitors
+&quot;whose roof this night--&quot; etc.? Manifestly she was moved by passion, not
+duty; love drove her on; but surely not love for them. &quot;No,&quot; I guessed
+in a reverent whisper, &quot;but love for Ned Ferry.&quot; It must have been
+through grace of some of her nobility and his, caught in my heart even
+before I was quite sure of it in theirs, that I sat and framed the
+following theory: Ned Ferry, loving Charlotte Oliver, yet coerced by his
+sense of a soldier's duty, had put passion's dictates wholly aside and
+had set about to bring these murderers to justice; doing this though he
+knew that she could never with honor or happiness to either of them
+become the wife of a man who had made her a widow, while she, aware of
+his love, a love so true that he would not breathe it to her while this
+hideous marriage held her, had ridden perilously in the dead of night to
+circumvent his plans if, with honor to both of them, it could be done.</p>
+
+<p>The half-hour dragged round to four. My horse roused up but kept as
+quiet as a clever dog. I heard a light sound in the hall; first a step
+and then a slide, then a step again and then a slide; Lucius Oliver was
+coming toward my door. The cords gathered in my throat and my finger
+stole to the trigger; Heaven only knew what noiseless feet might be
+following behind that loathsome shuffle. It reached the door and was
+still. And now the door opened, softly, slowly, and the paralytic stood
+looking in. The moonlight had swung almost out of the room, but a band
+of it fell glittering upon the revolver lying in my lap with my fingers
+on it, each exactly in place. Also it lighted my other hand, on the
+window-sill, with the bridle in it. Old Lucius was alone. In the gloom I
+could not see his venom gathering, but I could almost smell it.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI">XXI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning,&quot; I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning,&quot; he responded, tardily and grimly. &quot;Well, you <em>air</em> in a
+hurry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all, sir. I'm sorry to seem so; it's not the tip-top of
+courtesy,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, it ain't too stinkin' polite.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True; but neither are the enemy, and they're early risers, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, good Lord! don't hang back for my sake!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I put on an offended esteem. &quot;My dear sir, you've no call to take
+offence at me. I'm waiting because my business is too--well, if I must
+explain, it's--it's too important to be risked except by good safe
+daylight; that's all.&quot;</p>
+<a name="imgthree" id="imgthree"></a><img src="images/003.jpg" alt="Well, you air in a hurry!" align="left" />
+
+<p>Oh, he wasn't taking offence. His reptile temper crawled into hiding,
+and when I said day was breaking, he said he would show me my way.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I keep the plain road, don't I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No, he would not; only wagons went that way, to cross the creek by a
+small bridge. I could cut off nearly two miles by taking the bridle-path
+that turned sharply down into the thick woods of the creek-bottom about
+a quarter of a mile from the house and crossed the stream at a sandy
+ford. &quot;Ride round,&quot; he said, &quot;and I'll show you from the front of
+the house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thence he pointed out a distant sycamore looming high against the soft
+dawn. There was the fence-corner at which the bridle-path left the road.
+He icily declined pay for my lodging. &quot;We never charge a Confederate
+soldier for anything; that's not our way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Day came swiftly. By the time I could trot down to the sycamore it was
+perfectly light even in the shade of an old cotton-gin house close
+inside the corner of the small field around which I was to turn. The
+vast arms of its horse-power press, spreading rigidly downward, offered
+the only weird aspect that lingered in the lovely morning. I have a
+later and shuddering memory of it, but now the dewy air was full of
+sweet odors, the squirrel barked from the woods, the woodpecker tapped,
+and the lark, the cardinal and the mocking-bird were singing all around.
+The lint-box of the old cotton-press was covered with wet
+morning-glories. I took the bridle-path between the woods and the field
+and very soon was down in the dense forest beyond them. But the moment
+I was hid from house and clearing I turned my horse square to the left,
+stooped to his neck, and made straight through the pathless tangle.</p>
+
+<p>Silence was silver this time, speed was golden. But every step met its
+obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers,
+brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held
+dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath,
+footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait
+were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road by that way as
+soon as they found I was flanking them. And so I strove on at the best
+speed I could make, and burst into the road with a crackle and crash
+that might have been heard a hundred yards away. One glance up the
+embowered alley, one glance down it, and I whirled to the right, drove
+in the spur, and flew for the bridge. A wild minute so--a turn in the
+road--no one in sight! Two minutes--another turn--no one yet!
+Three--three--another turn--no one in front, no one behind--</p>
+
+<p>The thunder of our own hoofs
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Was all the sound we heard.<br />
+
+</p><p>A fourth turn and no one yet! A fifth--more abrupt than the others--and
+there--here--yonder now behind--was the path I had feared, but no one
+was in it, and the next instant the bridge flashed into view. With a
+great clatter I burst upon it, reached the middle, glanced back, and
+dropped complacently into a trot. Tame ending if--but as I looked
+forward again, what did I see? A mounted man. At the other end of the
+bridge, in the shade of overhanging trees, he moved into view, and well
+I knew the neat fit of that butternut homespun. He flourished a revolver
+above his head and in a drunken voice bade me halt.</p>
+
+<p>I halted; not making a point of valor or discretion, but because he was
+Charlotte Oliver's husband. I read his purpose and listened behind me as
+we parleyed. &quot;Don't halt me, sir, I'm a courier and in a hurry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He hiccoughed. &quot;Let's--s'--see y' orders.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took my weapon into my bridle-hand by the barrel and began to draw
+from my bosom the empty envelope addressed Coralie Rothvelt. At the same
+time I let my horse move forward again, while I still listened backward
+with my brain as busy as a mill. Was there here no hidden succor? Was
+that no part of Ned Ferry's plan--if the plan was his? Were those
+villains waiting yet, up at the ford? I could hear nothing at my back
+but the singing of innumerable birds.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt!&quot; the drunkard growled again, and again I halted, wearing a look
+of timid awe, but as full of guile as a weasel. I reined in abruptly so
+as to make the reach between us the fullest length of my outstretched
+arm with the paper in two fingers as I leaned over the saddle-bow. He
+bent and reached unsteadily, and took the envelope; but hardly could his
+eye light upon the superscription before it met the muzzle of my weapon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't move.&quot; My tone was affectionate. &quot;Don't holla, or I'll give you
+to the crows. Back. Back off this bridge--quick! or I'll--&quot; I pushed
+the pistol nearer; the danger was no less to him because I was
+thoroughly frightened. He backed; but he glared a devilish elation, for
+behind me beat the hoofs of both his horsemen. I had to change
+my tactics.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt! Turn as I turn, and keep your eye on <em>this.&quot;</em></p>
+
+<p>Glad was I then to be on a true cavalryman's horse that answered the
+closing of my left leg and moved steadily around till I could see down
+the bridge. Oliver, after a step or two, stopped. &quot;Turn!&quot; I yelled, and
+swelled. &quot;One, two,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned. There was not a second to spare. The two long-haired fellows
+came nip and tuck. I see yet their long deer-hunters' rifles. But I
+remembered my pledge to this man's wife, and proudly found I had the
+nerve to hold the trigger still unpressed when at the apron of the
+bridge the rascals caught their first full sight of us as we sat
+humpshouldered, eye to eye, like one gray tomcat and one yellow one.
+They dragged their horses back upon their haunches. One leaped to the
+ground, the other aimed from the saddle; but the first shot that woke
+the echoes was neither theirs nor mine, but Sergeant Jim Langley's,
+though that, of course, I did not know. It came from a tree on our side
+of the water, some forty yards downstream. The man in the saddle fired
+wild, and as his horse wheeled and ran, the rider slowly toppled over
+backward out of saddle and stirrups and went slamming to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>His companion had no time to fire. Instantly after these two shots came
+a third, and some willows upstream filled with its white smoke. The
+second long rifle fell upon the bridge and its owner sank to his knees
+heaving out long cries of agony that swelled in a tremor of echoes up
+and down the stream. Another voice, stalwart, elated, cut through it
+like a sword. &quot;Don't shoot, Smith, we're coming; save that hound for
+the halter!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The groans of the wounded man closed in behind it, a flood of agony, and
+my own outcry increased the din as I called &quot;Come quick, come quick! the
+wounded fellow's remounting!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wretch had lifted himself to his feet by a stirrup. Then, giving
+out, he had sunk prone, and now, still torturing the air with his horrid
+cries, was crawling for his rifle. Oliver saw I had a new inspiration.
+All the drunkenness left his eyes and they became the eyes of a snake,
+but too quickly for him to guess my purpose I turned my weapon from his
+face and fired. His revolver flew from his bleeding hand, a stream of
+curses started from his lips, and as I thrust my pistol into his face
+again and snatched his bridle he screamed to the crawling woodman
+&quot;Shoot! shoot! Kill one or the other of us! Oh! shoot! shoot!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The rifle cracked, but its ball sang over us; a shot answered it behind
+me; the howling man's voice died in a gurgle, and Sergeant Jim ran by
+me, leaped upon the horse that had stayed beside his fallen rider, and
+was off hot-footed after the other. &quot;Turn your prisoner over to Kendall,
+Smith,&quot; he cried, &quot;and put out like hell for Clifton!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I gave no assent, and I believe Oliver guessed my purpose to save him,
+though his eyes were as venomous as ever. I flirted the rein off his
+horse's neck and said, savagely &quot;Come! quick! trot! gallop!&quot; The
+sergeant's young companion of the morning before dashed out of the
+bushes on his horse with Jim's horse in lead. &quot;I've got him safe,
+Kendall,&quot; I cried, and my captive and I sped by him at a gallop on our
+way to Ned Ferry's command.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII">XXII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>WE SPEED A PARTING GUEST</strong></p>
+
+<p>Rising to higher ground, we turned into the Natchez, and Port Gibson
+road where a farm-house and country &quot;store&quot; constituted Clifton. Still
+at a gallop we left these behind and entered a broad lane between fields
+of tasselling corn, where we saw a gallant sight. In the early sunlight
+and in the pink dust of their own feet, down the red clay road at an
+easy trot in column by fours, the blue-gray of their dress flashing with
+the glint of the carbines at their backs, came Ferry's scouts with Ned
+Ferry at their head. There was his beautiful brown horse under him, too.
+My captive and I dropped to a walk, the column did the same, and Ferry
+trotted forward, beckoning us to halt. His face showed triumph and
+commendation, but no joy. Oliver answered his scrutiny with a blaze
+of defiance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning, Smith, who is your prisoner?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His name is Oliver.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry looked behind to the halted column. &quot;Lieutenant Quinn, send two
+men to guard this one. Smith, where's Sergeant Langley; where's Kendall?
+Kendall?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>While I told of the scrimmage, the guard relieved me of Oliver, and as I
+finished, three men galloped up and reined in. &quot;All right,&quot; said
+one, saluting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;South?&quot; asked our leader.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Before day,&quot; replied the new-comer, glowing with elation, and I grasped
+the fact that the enemy had taken our bait and I had not betrayed my
+country. The three men went to the column, and Ferry, looking up from
+the despatch which I had delivered to him, said--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course no one has seen this despatch, eh?--Oh!&quot;--a smile--&quot;yes?
+who?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Two Federal officers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Two--what?&quot; His smile broadened. &quot;You <em>know</em> that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw them, Lieutenant, looking in at the door to see the despatch put
+back under my pillow. Yes, sir, by the same hand that had shown it
+to them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whose hand was it; that fellow's, yonder?&quot; Oliver was several paces
+away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Lieutenant, I don't believe he had anything to do with it; and I've
+no absolute proof, either, that he was at the bridge to rob or kill me.
+I threatened his life first, sir. At any rate that hand under my pillow
+was neither his nor his father's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But they were present, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were neither of them present, Lieutenant; that hand was Miss
+Coralie Rothvelt's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no!&quot; he murmured, &quot;that cannot be!&quot; &quot;I saw her face, Lieutenant,
+nearer to mine than yours is now. But she did it to help us--oh, but I
+know that, sir! She came under my window and told me she had done it!
+She told me to tell you she hadn't thwarted your plan, but only improved
+on it, and I believe--Lieutenant, if you will hear me patiently through
+a confession which--&quot; I choked with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>He lighted up with happy relief. &quot;No, you need not make it. And you need
+not turn so pale.&quot; Whereat I turned red. &quot;She saw the despatch was a
+trap for the Yankees, and used it so, you think? Ah, yes, Smith, I see
+it all, now; she pumped you dry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could not speak, I shook my head, and for evidence in rebuttal I
+showed in my eyes two fountains of standing tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How, then, did she know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant, she guessed! She must have just put two and two together
+and guessed! Or else, Lieutenant,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She must have pumped others before she pumped you, eh?&quot; There was
+confession in his good humor. &quot;But tell me; did she not see also this
+other trap, for this man and his father, and try to save them out of
+it?--oh, if you don't want--never mind.&quot; He laid a leg over the front of
+his saddle and sat thinking. So I see him to-day: his chestnut locks,
+his goodly limbs and shoulders, the graceful boots, cut-away jacket,
+faded sash, straight sword, and that look of care on his features which
+intensified the charm of their spiritual cleanness; behind him his band
+of picked heroes, and for background the June sky. Whenever I smell
+dewy corn-fields smitten with the sun that picture comes back to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he said again, &quot;you need not tell me.&quot; By a placid light in his
+face I saw he understood. He drew his watch, put it back, thought on,
+and smiled at my uniform. &quot;It has not the blue of the others,&quot; he said,
+&quot;but indeed they are not all alike, and it will match the most of
+them--after a rain or two--and some dust. You have been trading horses?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I explained. While doing so I saw one of the guard reaching the
+prisoner's bridle to the other. Hah! Oliver had slapped the bridle free.
+In went his spurs! By a great buffet on the horse's neck he wheeled him,
+and with the rein dangling under the bits went over the fence like a
+deer. &quot;Bang! bang! bang!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was idle; a magic seems to shield a captive's leap for life. Away
+across the corn he went to the edge of a tangled wood, over the fence
+there again, and into the brush. &quot;Halt! bang!&quot; and &quot;Halt! bang!&quot; it was,
+at every bound, but now the pursuers came back empty-handed, some
+contemptuously silent, some laughing. Ferry glanced again at the time,
+and I was having within me a quarrel with him for his indifference at
+the prisoner's escape, when with cold severity he asked--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did you not fire?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I flushed with indignation, and my eye retorted to his that I had only
+followed his example. His answer was a smile. &quot;You, also, have been
+guessing, eh?&quot; he said, and when I glowed with gratitude he added,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind, we must have a long talk. At present there is a verbal
+message for me; what is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Verbal message? No, Lieutenant, she didn't--oh!--from the General! Yes!
+the General says--'Rodney.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, &quot;Left
+into line wheel--march!&quot; chanted our second in command.
+&quot;Backwards--march!&quot; and then &quot;Right dress!&quot; and the line, that had been
+a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning
+sun in their faces. Then Ferry called &quot;Fours from the right, to march to
+the left--march!&quot; and he and Quinn passed up the middle of the road
+along the front of the line, with yours truly close at their heels,
+while behind us the command broke into column again by fours from the
+right and set the pink dust afloat as they followed back northward over
+their own tracks with Sergeant Jim beside the first four as squadron
+right guide. I had got where I was by some mistake which I did not know
+how to correct,--I was no drill-master's pride,--and there was much
+suppressed amusement at my expense along the front as we rode down it.
+At every few steps until the whole line was a column Ned Ferry dropped
+some word of cheer, and each time there would come back an equally quiet
+and hearty reply. Near the middle he said &quot;Brisk work ahead of us
+to-day, boys,&quot; and I heard the reiteration of his words run among the
+ranks. I also heard one man bid another warm some milk for the baby.
+Trotting by a grove where the company had passed the night, we presently
+took the walk to break by twos, and as we resumed the trot and turned
+westward into a by-road, Lieutenant Quinn dropped back to the column and
+sent me forward to the side of Ned Ferry. I went with cold shivers.</p>
+<a name="imgfour" id="imgfour"></a><img src="images/004.jpg" alt="With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the fence like a deer." align="left" />
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII">XXIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>FERRY TALKS OF CHARLOTTE</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have no carbine,&quot; said my commander. &quot;And you have but one
+revolver; here is another.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I knew it at a glance. &quot;It's Oliver's,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll call it yours now,&quot; he replied. &quot;Kendall picked it up, but he has
+no need of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I remarked irrelevantly that I had not noticed when Sergeant Jim and
+Kendall rejoined us, but Ferry stuck to the subject of the captured
+weapon. &quot;Take it,&quot; he insisted; &quot;if you are not fully armed you will
+find yourself holding horses every time we dismount to fight. And now,
+Smith, I shall not report to the General this matter of the Olivers; you
+shall tell him the whole of it, yourself; you are my scout, but you are
+his courier.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant, I--I wish I knew the whole of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell him all you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Even things <em>she</em> doesn't want told?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot;--he gave a Creole shrug--&quot;that you must decide, on the honor of a
+good soldier. She has taken you into her confidence?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only into her service,&quot; I said, but he raised his brows. &quot;That is
+more; certainly you are honored. What is it you would rather not tell
+the General and yet you must; do I know that already?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, for one thing, I've got to tell him that old Lucius Oliver can't
+be hung too high or too soon. For months he has been--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry showed pain. &quot;I know; save that for the General. And what else?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, the other one--the son. Lieutenant, is she that monster's wife?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry stroked his horse's neck and said very softly, &quot;She is his wife.&quot;
+I had to wait long for him to say more, but at length, with the same
+measured mildness, he spoke on. This amazing Charlotte, bereft of
+father, brother and mother, ward of a light-headed married sister, and
+in these distracted times lacking any friend with the courage, wisdom
+and kind activity to probe the pretensions of her suitor, had been
+literally snared into marriage by this human spider, this Oliver, a man
+of just the measure to simulate with cunning and patient labor the
+character, bearing and antecedents of a true and exceptional gentleman
+for the sake of devouring a glorious woman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, eh!&quot; I exclaimed, &quot;how could ever such as she mistake him for--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, he is, I doubt not, but the burnt-out ruin of what he was half a
+year ago. You perceive, he has not succeeded; he has not devoured her;
+actually she has turned his fangs upon himself and has defeated his
+designs toward her as if by magic. And yet the only magic has been her
+vigilance, her courage, her sagacity. Smith,&quot;--again he stroked the
+mane of his charger--&quot;if I tell you--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I gave him no pledge but a look.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Since the hour of her marriage she has never gone into her chamber
+without locking the door; she has never come out of it unarmed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I remarked that had I been in her place I should either have sunk into
+the mire, so to speak, or thrown myself, literally, into the river.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he responded, &quot;but not she! Her life is still hers; she will
+neither give it away nor throw it away. She wants it, and she wants
+it whole.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did she say that to you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me in wide surprise. &quot;Ah! could you think she would speak
+with me on that subject? No, I have learned what I know from a man we
+shall meet to-day; the brother of Major Harper; and he, he has it
+from--&quot; my companion smiled--&quot;somebody you have known a pretty long
+time, I think, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see; I see; you mean my mother!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He let me ponder the fact a long time. &quot;Lieutenant,&quot; I asked at length,
+&quot;did you know your plot against the two Olivers would cross her wishes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; was his quick response, &quot;it crossed mine, like-wise. But, you
+know, this life we have to live, it is never for two people only.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, &quot;no two persons, and
+above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or
+even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third
+person,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hoh!&quot; interrupted Ferry, in the manner of one to whom the fact was
+somehow of the most immediate and lively practical interest, &quot;and to
+consider a thousand is better.&quot; Then, after a pause, &quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;I
+know she could not like that move, but you remember our talk of
+yesterday, where we first met?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Indeed I did. Between young men, to whom the principles of living were
+still unproved weapons, there was, to my taste, just one sort of talk
+better than table-talk, and that was saddle-talk; I remembered vividly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mean when we were saying that on whatever road a man's journey
+lies, if he will, first of all, stick to that road, and then every time
+it divides take the--I see! you came to where the road divided!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, and of course I had to take the upper fork. I am glad you said
+that yesterday morning; it came as sometimes the artillery, eh?--just at
+the right moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't say it, Lieutenant; you said it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I think you said it;--sounds like you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was you who said it! and anyhow, it was you who had the strength to
+do it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. &quot;Oh!--a little strength, a little
+vanity,--pride--self-love--we have to use them all--as a good politician
+uses men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked him squarely in the eyes and began to burn. At every new
+unfolding of his confidence I had let my own vanity, pride, self-love be
+more and more flattered, and here at length was getting ready to esteem
+him less for showing such lack of reserve as to use <em>me</em> as an
+escape-valve for his pent-up thoughts, when all at once I fancied I saw
+what he was trying to do. I believed he had guessed my temptations of
+the night and was making use of himself to warn me how to fight them. &quot;I
+understand,&quot; said I, humbly.</p>
+
+<p>But this only pleasantly mystified him. He glanced all over me with a
+playful eye and said, &quot;You must have a carbine the first time our
+ordnance-wagon finds us. Drop back, now, into the ranks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did so; but I felt sure I should ride beside him again as soon as he
+could make an opportunity; for it was plain that by a subtle unconfessed
+accord he and <em>she</em> had chosen me to be a true friend between them.</p>
+
+<p>About noon, while taking a brief rest to give our horses a bite, we were
+joined by an ambulance carrying Major Harper's brother and some freight
+which certainly was not hospital stores. When we remounted, this vehicle
+moved on with us, in the middle of the column, and I was called to ride
+beside it and tell all about the arrival of Miss Harper and her nieces
+at Hazlehurst, and their journey from Brookhaven to camp. Ned Ferry rode
+on the side opposite me and I noticed that all the fellows nearest the
+ambulance were choice men; Sergeant Jim was not there, but Kendall was
+one, and a young chap on a large white-footed pacer was another. Having
+finished my task I had gathered my horse to fall back to my place at the
+rear, when my distinguished auditor said, &quot;I'm acquainted with your
+mother, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was not so handsome as his brother, though younger. His affability
+came by gleams. I asked how that good fortune had come to my mother, and
+he replied that there was hardly time now for another story; we might
+be interrupted--by the Yankees. &quot;Ask the young lady you met yesterday
+evening,&quot; he added, with a knowing gleam, and smiled me away; and when
+by and by the enemy did interrupt, I had forgiven him. Whoever failed to
+answer my questions, in those days, incurred my forgiveness.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV">XXIV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A MILLION AND A HALF</strong></p>
+
+<p>About mid-afternoon I awoke from deep sleep on a bed of sand in the
+roasting shade of a cottonwood jungle. A corporal was shaking me and
+whispering &quot;Make no noise; mount and fall in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Round about in the stifling thicket a score of men were doing so.
+Lieutenant Quinn stood by, and at his side Sergeant Jim seemed to have
+just come among us. The place was pathless; only in two directions could
+one see farther than a few yards. Through one narrow opening came an
+intolerable glare of sunlight from a broad sheet of gliding water, while
+by another break in the motionless foliage could be seen in milder
+light, filling nearly the whole northern view, the tawny flood of the
+Mississippi. A stretch of the farther shore was open fields lying very
+low and hidden by a levee.</p>
+
+<p>As we noiselessly fell into line, counting off in a whisper and rubbing
+from ourselves and our tortured horses the flies we were forbidden to
+slap, I noticed rising from close under that farther levee and some two
+miles upstream, a small cloud of dust coming rapidly down the hidden
+levee road. It seemed to be raised entirely by one or two vehicles.
+Behind us our own main shore was wholly concealed by this mass of
+cottonwoods on the sands between it and the stream, on a spit of which
+we stood ambushed. On the water, a hundred and fifty yards or so from
+the jungle, pointed obliquely across the vast current, was a large skiff
+with six men in it. Four were rowing with all their power, a fifth sat
+in the bow and the other in the stern. Quinn, in the saddle, watched
+through his glass the cottonwoods from which the skiff had emerged at
+the bottom of a sheltered bay. Now he shifted his gaze to the little
+whirl of dust across the river, and now he turned to smile at Jim, but
+his eye lighted on me instead. I risked a knowing look and motioned with
+my lips, &quot;Just in time!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he murmured, &quot;they're late; we've been waiting for them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant's low order broke the platoon into column by file, Quinn
+rode toward its head with his blade drawn, and as he passed me he handed
+me his glass. &quot;Here, you with no carbine, stay and watch that boat till
+I send for you. If there's firing, look sharp to see if any one there is
+hit, and who, and how hard. Watch the boat, nothing else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He moved straight landward through the cottonwoods, followed by the men
+in single file, but halted them while the rear was still discernible in
+the green tangle. Presently they unslung carbines, and I distinctly
+heard galloping. It was not far beyond the cottonwoods. The Yankees were
+after us. Suddenly it ceased. Over yonder, shoreward in the thicket,
+came a sharp command and then a second, and then, right on the front of
+the jungle, at the water's edge, the shots began to puff and crack, and
+the yellow river out here around the boat to spit!--spit!--in wicked
+white splashes. Every second their number grew. Behind me Quinn and his
+men stole away. But orders are orders and I had no choice but to watch
+the boat. The man in the stern had his back to me, and no face among the
+other five did I know. They were fast getting away, but the splashes
+came thick and close and presently one ball found its mark. The man at
+the stern hurriedly changed places with an oarsman; and as the relieved
+rower took his new seat he turned slowly upon his face as if in mortal
+pain, and I saw that the fresh hand at the oar was the brother of Major
+Harper. Just as I made the discovery &quot;Boom!&quot; said my small dust-cloud
+across the river, and &quot;hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry--&quot; like
+a train on a trestle-work--&quot;boom!&quot;--a shell left its gray track in the
+still air over the skiff and burst in the tops of the cottonwoods. The
+green thicket grew pale with the bomb's white smoke, yet &quot;crack! crack!&quot;
+and &quot;spit! spit!&quot; persisted the blue-coats' rifles. &quot;Boom!&quot; said again
+the field-piece on yonder side the water. Its shell came rattling
+through the air to burst on this side, out of the flashing and cracking
+of rifles and the sulphurous bomb smoke arose cries of men getting
+mangled, and I whimpered and gnawed my lips for joy, and I watched the
+boat, but no second shot came aboard, and--&quot;Boom!--hurry-hurry-hurry-
+hurry&quot;--ah! the frightful skill of it! A third shell tore the
+cottonwoods, its smoke slowly broadened out, a Federal bugle beyond
+the thicket sounded the Rally, and the cracking of carbines ceased.</p>
+
+<p>Now Major Harper's brother passes a word to the man at the boat's bow,
+whereupon this man springs up and a Confederate officer's braids flash
+on his sleeve as he waves to the western shore to cease firing. I still
+watch the boat, but I listen behind me. I hear voices of command, the
+Federal sergeants hurrying the troop out of the jungle and back to their
+horses. Then there comes a single voice, the commander's evidently; but
+before it can cease it is swallowed up in a low thunder of hoofs and
+then in a burst of cries and cheers which themselves the next moment are
+drowned in a rattle of carbine and pistol shots--Ferry is down on them
+out of hiding. Thick and silent above the din rises the dust of the
+turmoil, and out of all the hubbub under it I can single out the voice
+of the Federal captain yelling curses and orders at his panic-stricken
+men. And now the m&ecirc;l&eacute;e rolls southward, the crackle of shots grows less
+and then more again, and then all at once comes the crash of Quinn's
+platoon out of ambush, their cheer, their charge, the crackle of pistols
+again, and then another cheer and charge--what is that! Ferry re-formed
+and down on them afresh? No, it was the hard-used but gallant foe
+cutting their way out and getting off after all.</p>
+
+<p>The skiff was touching the farther shore and the three oarsmen lifting
+their stricken comrade out and bearing him to the top of the levee, when
+Kendall came to recall me. On our way back he told me of the fight,
+beginning with the results: none of our own men killed outright, but
+four badly wounded and already started eastward in the ambulance left us
+by the Major's brother; some others more slightly hurt. My questions
+were headlong and his answers quiet; he was a slow-spoken daredevil; I
+wish he came more than he does into this story.</p>
+
+<p>Not slow-spoken did we find the command when we reached the road where
+they were falling into line. After a brief but vain pursuit, here were
+almost the haste and tumult of the onset; the sweat of it still reeked
+on everyone; the ground was strewn with its wreckage and its brute and
+human dead, and the pools of their blood were still warm. Squarely
+across the middle of the road, begrimed with dust, and with a dead
+Federal under him and another on top, lay the big white-footed pacer. At
+one side the enemy's fallen wounded were being laid in the shade to be
+left behind. In our ranks, here was a man with an arm in a bloody
+handkerchief, there one with his head so bound, and yonder a young
+fellow jesting wildly while he let his garments be cut and a flesh-wound
+in his side be rudely stanched. Here there was laughter at one who had
+been saved by his belt-buckle, and here at one who had dropped like dead
+from his horse, but had caught another horse and charged on. But these
+details imply a delay where in fact there was none; the moment Ferry
+spied me he asked &quot;Did he get across?&quot; and while I answered he motioned
+me into the line. Then he changed it into a column, commanded silence,
+and led us across country eastward. For those few wounded who would not
+give up their places in the ranks it was a weary ten miles that brought
+us swiftly back to a point within five miles of that Clifton which we
+had left in the morning. And yet a lovely ten miles it was, withal. You
+would hardly have known this tousled crowd for the same dandy crew that
+had smiled so flippantly upon me at sunrise, though they smiled as
+flippantly now with faces powder-blackened, hair and eyelashes matted
+and gummed with sweat and dust, and shoulders and thighs caked with
+grime. Yet to Ned Ferry as well as to me--I saw it in his eye every time
+he looked at them--these grimy fellows did more to beautify those ten
+miles than did June woods beflowered and perfumed with magnolia, bay and
+muscadine, or than slant sunlight in glade or grove.</p>
+
+<p>In a stretch of timber where we broke ranks for a short rest, unbitting
+but not unsaddling, a lot of fellows pressed me to tell them about the
+boat on the river. &quot;You heard what was in it, didn't you?&quot; asked one
+nearly as young as I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Besides the men? No. Same that was in the ambulance, I suppose; what
+was it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you know? Oh, I remember, you were asleep when Quinn told us.
+Well, sir,&quot;--he tried to speak calmly but he had to speak somehow or
+explode--&quot;it was soldiers' pay--for Dick Taylor's army, over in the
+Trans-Mississippi; a million and a half dollars!&quot; He was as proud to
+tell the news as he would have been to own the money.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV">XXV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A QUIET RIDE</strong></p>
+
+<p>Where Ferry's scouts camped that night I do not know, for we had gone
+only two or three miles beyond our first momentary halting-place when
+their leader left them to Quinn and sprang away southward over fence,
+hedge, road, ditch--whatever lay across his bee-line, and by his order I
+followed at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>In a secluded north-and-south road he looked back and beckoned me to his
+side: &quot;You saw Major Harper's brother land safe and sound, you say? He
+told you this morning he is acquainted with your mother, eh; but
+not how?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, except that it was through--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I know. But you don't know even how your mother is acquainted with
+her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, though of course if she lived in the city, common sympathies might
+easily bring them together.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She did not live in the city; she lived across the river from the city.
+'Tis but a year ago her father died. He was an owner of steamboats. She
+made many river trips with him, and I suppose that explains how she
+knows the country about Baton Rouge, Natchez, Grand Gulf, Rodney, better
+than she knows the city. But the boats are gone now; some turned into
+gunboats, one burnt when the city fell, another confiscated. I think
+they didn't manage her bringing-up very well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Maybe not,&quot; I replied, being nothing if not disputatious, &quot;and she does
+strike me as one thrown upon her own intuitions for everything; but if
+she's the lady she is entirely by her own personal quality, Lieutenant,
+she's a wonder!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but she is a wonder. In a state of society more finished--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She would be incredible,&quot; I said for him, and he accepted the clause by
+a gesture, and after a meditative pause went on with her history. The
+subject of our conversation had first met Oliver, it seemed, when by
+reason of some daring performance in the military field--near Milliken's
+Bend, in the previous autumn--he was the hero of the moment. Even so it
+was strange enough that he should capture her; one would as soon look to
+see Vicksburg fall; but the world was upside down, everything was
+happening as if in a tornado, and he cast his net of lies; lies of his
+own, and lies of two or three match-making friends who chose to believe,
+at no cost to themselves, that war, with one puff of its breath, had
+cleansed him of his vices and that marriage would complete the happy
+change. This was in Natchez, Ferry went on to say. Most fortunately for
+the bride one of the bridegroom's wedding gifts was a certain young
+slave girl; before the wedding was an hour past--before the
+orange-blossoms were out of the bride's hair--this slave maid had told
+her what he was, &quot;And you know what that is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We rode in silence while I tried to think what it must be to a woman of
+her warmth--of her impulsive energies--to be, week in, week out, month
+after month, besieged by that man's law-protected blandishments and
+stratagems. &quot;I wish you would use me in her service every time there is
+a chance,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The chances are few,&quot; he answered; &quot;even to General Austin she laughs
+and says we must let the story work itself out; that she is the fool in
+it, but there is a chance for the fool to win if not too much burdened
+with help.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How did you make her acquaintance?&quot; I ventured to ask.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You remember the last time the brigade was in this piece of country?&quot;
+he rejoined.</p>
+
+<p>I did; it had been only some five weeks earlier; Grant had driven us
+through Port Gibson, General Bowen had retired across the north fork of
+Bayou Pierre, and we had been cut off and forced to come down here.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; well, she came to us that night, round the enemy's right, with a
+letter from Major Harper's brother--he was then in New Orleans--and with
+information of her own that saved the brigade. I had just got my
+company. I took it off next morning on my first scout, whilst the
+brigade went to Raymond. She was my guide all that day; six times she
+was my guide before the end of May. Yet the most I have learned about
+her has come to me in the last few days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has a fearful game to play.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!--yes, that is what she would call it; but me, I say--though not as
+Gholson would mean it, you know,--she has a soul to save. If it is a
+game, it is a very delicate one; let her play it as nearly alone as she
+can.&quot; &quot;Yes,&quot; said I, &quot;a man's hand in it would be only his foot in it;&quot;
+and Ferry was pleased. He scanned me all over in the same bright way he
+had done it in the morning, and remarked &quot;This time I see they have
+given you a carbine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We went down into some low lands, crossed a creek or two, and in one of
+them gave our horses and ourselves a good scrubbing. On a dim path in
+thick woods we paused at a worm fence lying squarely across our way. It
+was staked and ridered and its zig-zags were crowded with brambles and
+wild-plum. A hundred yards to our left, still overhung by the woods, it
+turned south. Beyond it in our front lay a series of open fields, in
+which, except this one just at hand, the crops were standing high. The
+nearer half of this one, a breadth of maybe a hundred yards, though
+planted in corn, was now given up to grass, and live-stock, getting into
+it at some unseen point, had eaten and trampled everywhere. The farther
+half was thinly covered with a poor stand of cotton, and between the
+corn and the cotton a small, trench-like watercourse crossed our line of
+view at right angles and vanished in the woods at the field's eastern
+edge. The farther border of this run was densely masked by a growth of
+brake-cane entirely lacking on the side next us. Between the cotton and
+the next field beyond, a double line of rail fence indicated the Fayette
+and Union Church road. Suddenly Ferry looked through his field-glasses,
+and my glance followed the direction in which they were pointed. Dust
+again; one can get tired of dust! Some two miles off, a little southward
+of the setting sun, a golden haze of it floated across a low
+background of trees.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the enemy, I think,&quot; he said, &quot;but only scouts, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI">XXVI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A SALUTE ACROSS THE DEAD-LINE</strong></p>
+
+<p>I was not seeking enemies just then and was not pleased. &quot;Didn't the
+Yankees fall back this morning before day and move southward?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For what would they do that?&quot; inquired my leader, still using the
+glass, but before I could reply he gave a soft hiss, dropped the glass,
+and turned his unaided eye upon a point close beyond our field, in the
+road. Now again he lifted the glass, and I saw over there two small,
+black, moving objects. They passed behind some fence-row foliage,
+reappeared nearer, and suddenly bobbed smartly up to the roadside
+fence--the dusty hats of two Federal horsemen. The wearers sat looking
+over into the field between them and us. I asked Ferry if he wasn't
+afraid they would see us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is what we want,&quot; was his reply; &quot;only, they must not know we want
+it. Keep very still; don't move.&quot; At that word they espied us and
+galloped back.</p>
+
+<p>We turned to our left and hurried along our own fence-line, first
+eastward, then south, and reined up behind some live brush at the edge
+of the public road. &quot;Soon know how many they are, now,&quot; he said, smiling
+back at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you going to count them?&quot; It seemed so much easier to let them
+count us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he replied. &quot;Wish we had our boys here,&quot; he added, and did not
+need to tell me how he would have posted them; the place was so
+favorable for an ambush that those Yankees had no doubt been looking for
+us before they saw us. Half of us would be in the locks of these
+highroad fences to lure them on, and half in the little gully masked
+with canes to take them in the flank. &quot;We would count many times our own
+number before they should pass,&quot; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can't we make them think our men are here?&quot; I suggested. &quot;Couldn't I go
+back to where this fence crosses the gully and let them see me opening a
+gap in it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was amused. &quot;Go if you want; but be quick; here they come already, a
+small bunch of them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By the time I reached the spot they were in plain view, six men and an
+officer. I leaped to the ground, tugged at a rail and threw one end off.
+I thought I had never handled rails so heavy and slippery in my life. As
+I got a second one down I looked across to the road. The officer was
+distributing his men. Barely a mile behind was the dust of their column.
+The third rail stuck and the sweat began to pour down into my eyes and
+collar. Two of the blue-coats easily let down a panel of fence on the
+far side of the road and pushed into the tall corn; three others came
+galloping across the thin cotton to reconnoitre the fringe of canes; the
+officer and the remaining man cantered on up the road toward the spot
+where I could see Ferry observing everything from the saddle behind his
+mask of leaves. Of a sudden the Federal commander descried me wildly at
+work. He paused and pointed me out to the man at his back, but had no
+glass and seemed puzzled. At his word the man pricked up to the fence
+to come over it, but his horse was of another mind, and the impatient
+officer, crowding him away, cleared the fence himself and came across
+the furrows at a nimble trot. Still I tussled with the rails, and grew
+peevish. The enemy was counted, closely enough! one troop. Their dust
+showed it, the small advance guard proved it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello!&quot; called the Federal officer, &quot;who are you, over there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He might have known by looking a trifle more narrowly; I saw plainly,
+thrillingly, who he was; but his attention was diverted by some signal
+from the men he had sent to the fringe of cane; they had found the
+tracks of horses leading through the canes into the corn. But now he
+hailed me again. &quot;Here, you! what are you doing at that fence? Who
+are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was within easy range and was still trotting nearer. I snatched up my
+carbine, aimed, and then recovered, looking sharply to my left as if
+restrained by the command of some one behind the canes. The Federal's
+cool daring filled me with admiration. Had the foes he was looking for
+been actually in hiding here they could have picked him out of his
+saddle like a bird off a bush. His only chance was that they would not
+let themselves be teased into firing prematurely on any one man or six.
+Ferry beckoned me. I mounted and trotted down the woods side of the
+fence, at the same time the Federal's six men approached from three
+directions, and down the road the main column entered upon the scene.</p>
+
+<p>The officer halted with revolver drawn and sent a man back with some
+order to the main body. And then Ferry's beautiful brown horse, as
+though of his own choice, reared straight up where he stood, dropped his
+forelegs upon his breast, rose, over the fence, master and all, as
+unlaboriously as a kite, trotted out from the brush and halted in the
+open field. His rider's outdrawn sword flashed to the setting sun. The
+Federal, pointing here and there was deploying his remaining five men
+toward the spot I had left, but glancing round and seeing Ferry he
+trotted toward him. Thereupon Ferry advanced at a walk, and I--for I had
+followed him--moved at the same gait a few paces behind. &quot;Halt him,&quot;
+said my leader.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt!&quot; I yelled with carbine at a ready, and the Federal halted. In
+fact he had come to a small hollow full of bushes and grapevines and had
+no choice but to halt or go round it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't swallow him,&quot; said Ferry, smilingly, &quot;this isn't your private
+war.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's on my private horse!&quot; I retorted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you're on his,&quot; replied my commander. The giant before us,
+mounted on Cricket, was my prisoner of the previous day.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who are you?&quot; he was calling imperiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Jewett ought to know,&quot; Ferry called back, and on that the
+questioner recognized us both. He became very stately. &quot;Lieutenant
+Durand, I believe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At times,&quot; said Lieutenant Durand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And at other times--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant Ferry--Ferry's scouts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Federal expanded with surprise and then with austere pleasure. He
+glanced toward his five men galloping back to him having found no enemy,
+and then at his column, which had just halted. Frowning, he motioned the
+advance guard to the road again and once more hailed Ferry while he
+pointed at me. He straightened and swelled still more as he began his
+question, but as he finished it a smile went all over him. &quot;Is that your
+entire present force?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then what the devil do you want?&quot; he thundered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have what we wanted,&quot; said Ferry, &quot;only now we desire to cross the
+road.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're not asking my permission?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am afraid not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I admit you are quite able to cross without.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; said Ferry; &quot;will you pardon me for passing in front of
+you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Federal's pistol slid into its holster and his sabre flashed out. He
+threw its curved point up in a splendid salute. Ferry saluted with his
+straight blade. Then both swords rang back into their scabbards, and
+Jewett whirled away toward his column. For a moment we lingered, then
+faced to the left, trotted, galloped. Over the fence and into the road
+went he--went I. Down it, as we crossed, the blue column was just moving
+again. Then the woods on the south swallowed us up.</p>
+<a name="imgfive" id="imgfive"></a><img src="images/005.jpg" alt="Ferry saluted with his straight blade." align="left" />
+
+<p>&quot;If Captain Jewett will only go on to Union Church,&quot; said Ferry, &quot;Quinn
+will see that he never gets back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you think he will not go on?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, now he is discovered, surely not. I think he will turn back at
+Wiggins.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why Wiggins? does he know Coralie Rothvelt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, he does; and if since last night he has maybe found out she is
+Charlotte Oliver,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Lieutenant Ferry, oh! would such a man as that come hunting down a
+woman, with a troop of cavalry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is not hunting her; yet, should he find her, I have the fear he
+would do his duty as a soldier, anyhow. No, he <em>was</em> looking, I think,
+for Ferry's scouts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if she should be at Wiggins--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My leader smiled at my simplicity. &quot;She is not at Wiggins.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not know.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII">XXVII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>SOME FALL, SOME PLUNGE</strong></p>
+
+<p>At a farm-house well hidden in the woods of a creek we got a brave
+supper for the asking and had our uniforms wonderfully cleaned and
+pressed, and at ten that evening we dismounted before the three brightly
+illumined tents of General Austin, Major Harper and that amiable cipher
+our Adjutant-general. On the front of the last the shadow of a deeply
+absorbed writer showed through the canvas, and Ferry murmured to me &quot;The
+ever toiling.&quot; It was Scott Gholson. I had heard the same name for him
+the evening before, from her whose own lovely shadow fell so visibly and
+so often upon the bright curtain of Ned Ferry's thought.</p>
+
+<p>My leader went in while I held our horses. Then he and Gholson came out
+and entered the General's tent; from which Gholson soon emerged again
+and sent an orderly away into the gloom of the sleeping camp, and I
+heard a small body of men mount and set off northward. Presently Ferry
+came out and sent me in, and to my delight I found, on standing before
+the General, that I did not need to tell what Charlotte Oliver wanted
+kept back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, never mind that,&quot; he said, &quot;Miss Rothvelt was here and saw me this
+afternoon, herself.&quot; Up to the point of my arrival at the bridge I had
+merely to fumble my cap and answer his crisp questions. But there he
+lighted a fresh cigar and said &quot;Now, go on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson dropped in with something to be signed, and the General waved
+him to wait and hear. For Gholson, despite the sappy fetor of his mental
+temperament, had abilities that made him almost a private secretary to
+the General. Who, nevertheless, knew him thoroughly. When I had
+described Oliver's escape and would have hurried on to later details,
+General Austin raised a hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold on; you say nearly everybody fired at Oliver; who did not?&quot; &quot;I
+did not, General.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did Lieutenant Ferry fire?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said he did not. The General turned his strong eyes to Gholson's and
+kept them there while he took three luxurious puffs at his cigar. Then
+he took the waiting paper, and as he wrote his name on it he said,
+smiling, &quot;I wish you had been in Lieutenant Ferry's place, Mr. Gholson;
+you would have done your duty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The flattered Gholson received the signed paper and passed out, and the
+General smiled again, at his back. I hope no one has ever smiled the
+same way at mine.</p>
+
+<p>Ferry and I slept side by side that night, and he told me two companies
+of our Louisianians were gone to cut off Jewett and his band. &quot;Still, I
+think they will be much too late,&quot; he said, and when I rather violently
+turned the conversation aside to the subject of Scott Gholson, saying,
+to begin with, that Gholson had wonderful working powers, he replied,
+&quot;'Tis true. Yet he says the brigade surgeon told him to-day he is on the
+verge of a nervous break-down.&quot; But on my inquiring as to the cause of
+our friend's condition, my bedmate pretended to be asleep.</p>
+
+<p>We rose at dawn and rode eastward, he and I alone, some fourteen miles,
+to the Sessions's, where the dance had been two nights earlier. On
+entering the stable to put up our horses we suddenly looked at each
+other very straight, while Ferry's countenance confessed more pleasure
+than surprise, though a touch of care showed with it. &quot;I did not know
+this,&quot; he said, &quot;and I did not expect it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What we saw was the leather-curtained spring-wagon and its little
+striped-legged mules. The old negro in charge of them bowed gravely to
+me and smiled affectionately upon Ferry. About an hour later Gholson
+appeared. He took such hurried pains to explain his coming that any fool
+could have seen the real reason. The brigade surgeon had warned him--Oh!
+had I heard?--Oh! from Ned Ferry, yes. The cause of his threatened
+breakdown, he said, was the perpetual and fearful grind of work into
+which of late he had--fallen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did the doctor say 'fallen'?&quot; I shrewdly asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, the doctor said 'plunged,' but--did Ned Fer'--who put that into
+your head?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nobody; some fall, you know, some plunge.&quot; I did not ask the cause of
+the plunge; the two little mules told me that. He would never have come,
+Gholson hurried on to say, had not Major Harper kindly suggested that a
+Sabbath spent with certain four ladies would be a timely preventive.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; I cried, &quot;are they here t'--too? Why,--where's their carryall?
+'Tisn't in the stable; I've looked!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, it was here, but yesterday, when the fighting threatened to be
+heavy, it was sent to the front. Smith, I didn't know Charlie Tolliver
+was here!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I believed him. But I saw he was not in search of a preventive. Ah, no!
+he was ill of that old, old malady which more than any other abhors a
+preventive. Waking in the summer dawn and finding Ned Ferry risen and
+vanished hitherward, a rival's instinct had moved him to follow, as the
+seeker for wild honey follows the bee. He had come not for the cure of
+his honey-sickness, but for more--more--more--all he could find--of the
+honey. &quot;Smith,&quot; he said, with a painful screw of his features, &quot;I'm
+mightily troubled about Ned Ferry!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I dishonestly responded, &quot;his polished irreligion--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no! No,&quot; he groaned, &quot;it isn't that so much just now, though I know
+that to a true religionist like you the society of such a mere
+romanticist--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were interrupted.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII">XXVIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>OLDEST GAME ON EARTH</strong></p>
+
+<p>The cause of our interruption was Camille Harper. We had been pacing the
+side veranda and she came out upon it with an unconscious song on her
+lips, and on one finger a tiny basket.</p>
+
+<p>Her gentle irruption found me standing almost on the spot where she had
+stood two evenings before and said good-bye to me. From this point a
+path led to the rear of the house, where within a light paling fence
+bloomed a garden. She gave us a blithe good-morning as she passed,
+descended the two or three side steps, and tripped toward the garden
+gate, a wee affair which she might have lifted off its hinges with one
+thumb. I saw her try its latch two or three times and then turn back
+discomfited because the loose frame had sagged a trifle and needed to be
+raised half an inch. I did not understand the helplessness of girls as
+well then as I do now; I ran and opened the gate; and when I shut it
+again she and I were alone inside.</p>
+
+<p>She let me cut the flowers. &quot;You know who's here?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I guilefully replied, &quot;I came with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't mean Lieutenant Ferry,&quot; she responded, &quot;nor anybody you'd ever
+guess if you don't know; but you do, don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I knew and went on gathering sweet-pea blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you ever see her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I replied, stepping away for some roses, &quot;I--saw her--by
+chance--for a moment--she was in the wagon she's got here--last
+--eh,--Thursday--morn'--&quot; I came back trimming the roses, and
+as she reached for them and our glances met, she laughed and replied,
+with a roguish droop of the head--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She told us about it. And you needn't look so disturbed; she only
+praised you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Still I frowned. &quot;How does it come that she's here, anyhow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why! she's got to be everywhere! She's a war-correspondent! She was at
+the front yesterday nearly the whole time, near enough to see some of
+the fighting, and to hear it all! she calls it 'only a skirmish'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When did she get here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About five in the morning. But we didn't see her then; she shut herself
+up and wrote and wrote and wrote! They say she runs the most daring
+risks! And they say she's so wise in finding out what the Yankees are
+going to do and why they're going to do it, that they'd be nearly as
+glad to catch her as to catch Lieutenant Ferry! Didn't you know? Ah, you
+knew!&quot; She attempted a reproachful glance, but exhaled happiness like a
+fragrance. I asked how she had heard these things.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How did I hear them? Let me see. Oh, yes! from--from Harry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I flinched angrily. &quot;From what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked into her basket and fingered its flowers. &quot;That's what he
+asked me to call him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stiffened up as though I heard a thief picking the lock of my lawful
+treasure. She threw me, side wise, a bantering smile and then a more
+winsome glance, but I refused to see either. I burned with so many
+feelings at once that I could no more have told them than I could have
+raised a tune. &quot;Don't you like him?&quot; she asked, and tried to be
+very arch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Like whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know perfectly well,&quot; she replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I do not like him. Do you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why,--yes,--I do. I--I thought everybody did.&quot; She averted her face and
+toyed with the sweet-pea vines. Suddenly she gulped, faced me, blinked
+rapidly, and said &quot;If I oughtn't to call him--that,--then I oughtn't to
+have called--&quot; she dropped her eyes and bit her lip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>That</em>,&quot; I replied, &quot;is a very different matter! At least I had hoped
+it was!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her rejoinder came in a low, grieved monotone: &quot;Did you say <em>had</em>
+hoped?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was the sweetest question my ear had ever caught, and I asked her, I
+scarce know how, if I might still say &quot;do hope&quot;.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I--I didn't know you ever did say it. I don't see that I have any
+right to forbid you saying things--to--to yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So we played the game--oldest game on earth--and loveliest. Bungling
+moves we made, as you see, and sometimes did not know whose move it was.
+At length she admitted that this <em>is</em> a very unsafe world in which to be
+kind to soldiers. I told how <em>fickle</em> some of them were. She would not
+say she would--or wouldn't--make my case a permanent exception or a
+solitary one; yet with me she blissfully pooh-poohed the idea that our
+acquaintance was new, she being so wonderfully like my mother, and I
+being so wonderfully ditto, ditto. And when I burst into a blazing
+eulogy of my mother, my listener gave me kinder looks than I ever
+deserved of any woman alive. On my trying to reciprocate, she asked me
+for more flowers and hurried back to our earlier theme.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And really, you know, they say she's almost as truly a scout as Ned
+Fer'--as Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. She's from New Orleans, you know, and
+she's like us, half-Creole; but her other half is Highland Scotch--isn't
+that romantic! When she told us about it she laughed and said it
+explained some things in her which nothing else could excuse! Wasn't
+that funny!--oh, pshaw! it doesn't sound a bit funny as I tell it, but
+she said it in such a droll way! She was so full of fun and frolic that
+day! You can't conceive how full of them she is--sometimes; how soberly
+she <em>can</em> say the funniest things, and how <em>funnily</em> she can say the
+soberest things!&quot;</p>
+<a name="imgsix" id="imgsix"></a><img src="images/006.jpg" alt="Don't you like him? she asked, and tried to be very arch." align="left" />
+
+<p>&quot;You say she was so full of fun that day; what day?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young thing gaped at me, gasped, and melted half to the ground:
+&quot;O--oh--I've let it out!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you may as well go right on, now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She straightened to her toes, covered her open mouth an instant, and
+then said &quot;Yes, we knew her--at our house--in New Orleans--poor New
+Orleans! Your mother--oh, your splendid, lovely little mother is such a
+brave Confederate!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My mother brought her to your house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, oh, yes! and that's why it isn't wrong to tell <em>you</em>. Charlotte's
+been three times through the lines, to and from the city; once by way of
+Natchez and twice through Baton Rouge. And oh, the things she's brought
+out to our poor boys in the hospitals!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Generals' uniforms, for example?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, now you're real mean! No! what she's brought the most of is--guess!
+You'll never guess it in the world!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hindoo grammars!--No? Well, then,--perfumery!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you! No, I'll tell you.&quot; She spoke prudently; I had to bow my ear
+so close that it tingled: &quot;Dolls!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My amazement was genuine. &quot;For our sick soldiers!&quot; I sighed.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes danced; she leaned away and nodded. Then she drew nearer than
+before: &quot;Dolls!&quot; she murmured again;--&quot;and pincushions!--and
+emeries!--and 'rats'! you know, for ladies' hair--and chignon-cushions!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For our sick soldiers!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes!--stuffed with quinine!&quot; She laughed in her handkerchief till the
+smell of the sweet-peas was lost in the odor of frangipani, and she
+staggered almost into my arms. But that sobered her. &quot;And when we speak
+of the risk she runs of being sent to Ship Island she laughs and says,
+'Life is strife.' She says she'd like it long, but she's got to have
+it broad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Life is strife indeed to her,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! do you know that too?--and another reason she gives for taking
+those awful risks is that 'it's the best use she can make of her silly
+streak'--as if she had any such thing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did my mother bring her to you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! she had letters from uncle to aunt Martha! He thinks she's
+wonderful!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does your father think so, too?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My father? no; but he's prejudiced! That's one of the things I can
+never understand--why nearly all the girls I know have such
+prejudiced fathers.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX">XXIX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A GNAWING IN THE DARK</strong></p>
+
+<p>On our return to the veranda, Camille and I, we found on its front the
+house's entire company except only the children of the family. Mrs.
+Sessions, Estelle and C&eacute;cile formed one group, Squire Sessions and
+Charlotte Oliver made a pair, and Ferry and Miss Harper another. Our
+posies created a lively demonstration; Camille yielded them to Estelle,
+and Estelle took them into the house to arrange them in water. Gholson
+went with her; it was painful to see her zest for his society.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Harper &quot;knocked me down,&quot; as we boys used to say, to Charlotte
+Oliver; &quot;Charlotte, my dear, you already know Mr. Smith, I believe?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had expected to see again, and to feel, as well, the starry charms of
+Coralie Rothvelt; but what I confronted was far different. The charms
+were here, unquenched by this stare of daylight, but from them shone a
+lustre of womanliness wholly new. It seemed to grow on even when a
+tricksy gleam shot through it as she replied, &quot;Yes, our acquaintance
+dates from Gallatin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With a spasm of eagerness I said it did: &quot;Our
+acquai'--hh--Gallatin--hh--&quot; But my soul cried like a culprit, &quot;No, no,
+it begins only now!&quot; and my whole being stood under arrest before the
+accusing truth that from Gallatin till now my acquaintance had been
+solely with that false phase of her which I knew as Coralie Rothvelt. At
+the same her kind eyes sweetly granted me a stripling's acquittal--oh!
+why did it have to be a stripling's?</p>
+
+<p>Wonderful eyes she had; deep blue, as I have said, in color; black, in
+spirit; never so wonderful as when having sparkled black they quieted to
+blue again. Always then there came the slightest of contractions at the
+outer corners of the delicate lids, that gave a fourfold expression of
+thought, passion, tenderness and intrepidity. I never saw that silent
+meaning in but one other pair of eyes; wherever it turned it said--at
+the same time saying many other things but saying this always
+plainest--&quot;I see both out and in; I know myself--and thee.&quot; Never but in
+one other pair of eyes? no; and whose were those? Ned Ferry's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you love to see Charlotte and him look at each other in that
+steady way when they're talking together?&quot; Camille asked me later. But
+rather coldly I inquired why I should; I felt acutely enough without
+admitting it to Camille, that Charlotte and Ferry were meeting on ground
+far above me; and when Gholson, in his turn, called to my notice, in
+Charlotte's case, this unique gaze, and contrasted it with her beautiful
+yet strangely childish mouth, I asked a second time why she was
+here, anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's here,&quot; murmured Gholson, &quot;because she has to live! To live she
+must have means, Smith, and to have means she must either get them
+herself or she must--&quot; and again he poised his hand horizontally across
+his mouth and whispered--&quot;live with her hus'--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I jerked my head away--&quot;Yes, yes.&quot; Scott Gholson was the only one of us
+who could give that wretch that title. &quot;Gholson,&quot; I said, for I kept him
+plied with questions to prevent his questioning me, &quot;how did that man
+ever get her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the company were going into the house; he glanced furtively
+after them and grabbed my arm; you would have thought he was about to
+lay bare the whole tragedy in five words; &quot;Smith,--nobody knows!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you believe she has told Ned Ferry anything?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never! About herself? no, sir!&quot; He bent and whispered: &quot;She despises
+him; she keeps in with him, but it's to get the news, that's all; that's
+positively all.&quot; On our way to the stable to saddle up--for we were all
+going to church--he told me what he knew of her story. I had heard it
+all and more, but I listened with unfeigned interest, for he recited it
+with flashes of heat and rancor that betrayed a cruel infatuation eating
+into his very bone and brain, the guilt of which was only intensified by
+the sour legality of his moral sense.</p>
+
+<p>The church we went to was in Franklin, but the preacher was a man of
+note, a Vicksburg refugee. On the way back Gholson and I rode for a time
+near enough to Squire Sessions and Ned Ferry to know the sermon was
+being discussed by them, and something they said gave my companion
+occasion to murmur to me in a tone of eager censure that Ned Ferry's
+morals were better than his religion.</p>
+
+<p>I said I wished mine were.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Smith, be not deceived! Whenever you see a man bringing forth the
+fruits of the Spirit while he neglects the regularly appointed means of
+grace, you <em>know</em> there's something wrong, don't you? He went to church
+this morning--<em>of course</em>; but how often does he go? What's wrong with
+our dear friend--I don't like to say it, for I admire him so; I don't
+like to say it, and I never have said it, but, Smith,--Ned Ferry's a
+romanticist. We are relig'--what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O--oh, nothing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At one point our way sloped down to a ramshackle wooden bridge that
+spanned a narrow bit of running water at the edge of a wood. Beyond it
+the road led out between two fields whose high worm-fences made it a
+broad lane. The farther limit of this sea of sunlight was the grove that
+hid the Sessions house on the left; on the right it was the
+woods-pasture in which lay concealed a lily-pond. As Gholson and I
+crossed the bridge we came upon a most enlivening view of our own
+procession out in the noonday blaze before us; the Sessions buggy; then
+Charlotte' little wagon; next the Sessions family carriage full of
+youngsters; and lastly, on their horses, Squire Sessions--tall, fleshy,
+clean-shaven, silver-haired--and Ned Ferry. Mrs. Sessions and Miss
+Harper, in the buggy, were just going by a big white gate in the
+right-hand fence, through which a private way led eastward to the
+lily-pond. A happy sight they were, the children in the rear vehicle
+waving handkerchiefs back at us, and nothing in the scene made the
+faintest confession that my pet song, which I was again humming, was pat
+to the hour:</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be broke.&quot;<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson, if it isn't Ned Ferry's religion that's worrying you just now
+about him, what is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My companion looked at me as if what he must say was too large for his
+throat. He made a gesture of lament toward Ferry and broke out, &quot;O--oh
+Smith,&quot;--nearly all Gholson's oh's were groans--&quot;why is he here? The
+scout is 'the eyes of the army'! a man whose perpetual vigilance at the
+very foremost front--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, what do you mean? You know we're here to rejoin the company as it
+comes down from Union Church to camp here to-night. <em>That's</em> what we're
+here for.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,--yes,--but, oh, don't you <em>see</em>, Smith? For you, yourself, that's
+all right; you've got to stay with him, and I'm glad you have. But
+he--oh why did he not go on hours ago, to meet them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should he? Isn't it good to leave one's lieutenant sometimes in
+command; isn't it bad not to?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson's eyes turned green. &quot;Does Ned Ferry give that as his reason?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I haven't asked his reason; I've asked you a question.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'll answer it. Do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course I do, and Ned Ferry does; don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No! Smith, there ain't a braver man in Grant's army than that one
+right now a-straddle of your horse. Why, just the way he got your horse
+night before--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, hang him and the horse! you've told me that three times; what of
+it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, he's out here to make a new record for himself, at whatever
+cost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And do you imagine Ned Ferry hasn't thought of that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah-h, there are times when a man hasn't got his thinking powers; you
+ought to know that, Smith,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Gholson, what do you mean by that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! I certainly didn't mean anything against you, Smith. Why is your
+manner so strange to me to-day? Oh, Smith, if you knew what--if I could
+speak to you in sacred confidence--I--I wouldn't injure Ned Ferry in
+your eyes, nor in anybody's; I only tell you what I do tell so you may
+help me to help him. But he's staying here, Smith, and keeping you here,
+to be near one whose name--without her a-dreaming of it--is already
+coupled with--why,--why, what made you start that a-way again, Smith?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing; I didn't start. 'Coupled with somebody's name,' you say. With
+whose? Go on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With his, Smith, and most injuriously. He's here to tempt her to forget
+she's not--&quot; He faltered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Free?&quot; said I, and he nodded with tragic solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know who I mean, of course?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly; you mean Mrs. Sessions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head bitterly. &quot;Oh, well, then, of course I know. How am I
+to help you to help him; help him to do what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O--oh! to tear himself away from her, Smith. I want you to appeal to
+him. He's taken a great shine to you. You can appeal to his feeling for
+romance--poetry--whatever he calls his hell-fired--I mean his
+unfortunate impiety. You know how, and I don't. And there you reach the
+foundations of his character, as far as it's got any; there's his
+conscience if it's anywhere!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I find myself giving but a faint impression of the spirit in which
+Gholson spoke; it went away beyond a mere backbiting mood and became a
+temper so vindictive and so venomously purposeful that I was startled;
+his condition seemed so fearfully like that of the old paralytic when he
+whined &quot;That's not our way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; my companion went on, &quot;we ought to protect Ned Ferry from
+himself!&quot; The words came through his clenched teeth. &quot;And even more we
+ought to protect her. Who's to do it if we don't? Smith, I believe
+Providence has been a-preparing you to do this, all through these last
+three nights and days!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me for an answer until I became frightened. Was my late
+folly known to this crawling maligner after all? A sweet-scented
+preparation I've had, thought I, but aloud I said only, &quot;If Ned Ferry
+clears out, I suppose we must clear out, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, eh,--I--I don't know that my movements need have anything to do
+with his. Yours, of course,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I interrupted, beginning to boil.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know,&quot; he said, &quot;that comes hard; you'll have to tear <em>yourself</em>
+away--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stared at me and hushed. A panic was surging through me; must I be
+brought to book by such as he? &quot;Mr. Gholson,&quot; I cried, all scorn
+without, all terror within; &quot;Mr. Gholson, I--Mr. Gholson, sir!--&quot; and
+set my jaws and heaved for breath.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Smith,--&quot; He extended a soothing hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No explanation, sir, if you please! I can get away from here without
+tearing myself, which is more than you can boast. Any fool can see why
+<em>you</em> are here. Stop, I take that back, sir! I don't play tit-for-tat
+with my tongue.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson turned red on the brow and ashen about the lips. &quot;I don't call
+that tit-for-tat, Mr. Smith. I remind you of an innocent attachment for
+a young girl; you accuse me of harboring a guilty passion for--&quot; All at
+once he ceased with open lips, and then said as he drew a long breath of
+relief, &quot;Smith, I beg your pardon! We've each misunderstood the other; I
+see, now, who you meant; you meant Miss Estelle Harper!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whom else could I mean?&quot; Disdain was in my voice, but he ought to have
+seen the falsehood in my eye, for I could feel it there.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>Of</em> course!&quot; he said; &quot;of course! But, Smith, my mind was so
+full--just for the moment, you know,--of her we were speaking of in
+connection with Ned Ferry--Do you know? she's so unprotected and tagged
+after and talked about that it seems to me sometimes, in this nervous
+condition of mine, that if I could catch the entire gang of her
+pursuers in one hole I'd--I'd <em>end 'em</em> like so many rats. That sort of
+feeling is mere impulse, of course,&quot; he went on, &quot;and only shows how
+near I am to that nervous breakdown. Yes, the Harper ladies are mighty
+lovely and hard enough to leave, but that's all I meant to you, and I'm
+sorry I touched your feelings. I'm <em>tchagrined</em>. Anyhow, all this is
+between us, you know. I wouldn't ever have confessed such feelings as I
+did just now except to a friend who knows as well as you do that if I
+ever should do a man a mortal injury I wouldn't do it in a spirit of
+resentment. You know that, don't you? No, that's not my way--Why,
+Smith, what gives you those starts? That's the third time you've done
+that this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said that entering the cool shade of the Sessions grove after the
+blazing heat of that long lane gave any one the right to a little
+shudder, and as we turned toward the house Gholson murmured &quot;If you say
+you'll speak to Ned as I've asked you, I'll sort o' toll Squire Sessions
+off with me so's to give you the chance. It's for his own sake, you
+know, and you're the only one can do it.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX">XXX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE</strong></p>
+
+<p>I knew Ned Ferry was having that inner strife with which we ought always
+to credit even Gholson's sort, and I had a loving ambition to help him
+&quot;take the upper fork.&quot; So doing, I might help Charlotte Oliver fulfil
+the same principle, win the same victory. When, therefore, Gholson put
+the question to me squarely, Would I speak to Ferry? I consented, and as
+the four of us, horsemen, left our beasts in the stable munching corn,
+Gholson began a surprisingly animated talk with our host, and Ferry,
+with a quizzical smile, said to me &quot;Talk with you?--shall be happy to;
+we'll just make a slight <em>d&eacute;tour</em> on this side the grove and
+woods-pasture, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He meant the north side, opposite that one by which we had come from
+church. Here the landscape was much the same as there; wide fields on
+each side the fenced highway that still ran north and south, and woods
+for the sky-line everywhere. We chose an easy footpath along the
+northern fence of the grove, crossed the highway, and passed on a few
+steps alongside the woods-pasture fence. We talked as we went, he giving
+the kindest heed to my every word though I could see that, like any good
+soldier, he was scanning all the ground for its fighting values, and,
+not to be outdone, I, myself, pointed out, a short way up the public
+road, a fence-gap on the left, made by our camping soldiers two nights
+before. It was at another such gap, in the woods-pasture fence, that we
+turned back by a path through it which led into the wood and so again
+toward the highway and the house-grove. The evening General Austin sent
+me to Wiggins it was at this gap that I saw old Dismukes sitting
+cross-legged on the ground, playing poker; and here, now, I summoned the
+desperation to speak directly to my point.</p>
+
+<p>I had already tried hard to get something said, but had found myself at
+every turn entangled in generalities. Now, stammering and gagging I
+remarked that our experiences of the morning, both in church and out,
+had in some way combined with an earlier word of his own to me, and
+given me a valuable thought. &quot;You remember, when I wanted to shoot that
+Yankee off my horse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; and I said--what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You said 'This isn't your private war.' Lieutenant, I hope those words
+may last in my memory forever and come to me in every moral situation in
+which I may find myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes? Well, I think that's good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It seems to me, Lieutenant Ferry, that in every problem of moral
+conduct we confront we really hold in trust an interest of all mankind.
+To solve that problem bravely and faithfully is to make life just so
+much easier for everybody; and to fail to do so is to make it just so
+much harder to solve by whoever has next to face it.&quot; Whurroo! my blood
+was up now, let him look to himself!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes?&quot; said Ferry, picking at the underbrush as we sauntered, and for
+some time he said no more. Then he asked, &quot;You want me to apply that to
+myself, in--in the present case?&quot; and to my tender amazement, while his
+eyes seemed to count his slackening steps, he laid his arm across my
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>An hour of avowal could not have told me more; could not have filled me
+half so full of sympathy, admiration and love, as did that one slight
+motion. It befitted the day, a day outwardly so quiescent, yet in which
+so much was going on. A realization of this quiet activity kept us
+silent until we had come through the woods-pasture to its southern
+border, and so through the big white field-gate into the public road;
+now we turned up toward the grove-gate, and here I spoke again. &quot;Do you
+still think we ought to wait here for the command?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That from a private soldier to his captain! Yet all my leader answered
+was &quot;You think there's cause to change our mind?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know, Lieutenant; do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I think so; and you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, eh,--Lieutenant, I don't believe there's a braver man in Grant's
+army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why, just the way he
+got him, night before last,--you've heard that, haven't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, the General told me. And so you think--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant, I can't help believing he's out here to make a new record
+for himself, at whatever cost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We went on some steps in silence and entered the gate of the
+house-grove; and just as Ferry would have replied we discovered before
+us in the mottled shade of the driveway, with her arm on C&eacute;cile's
+shoulders as his lay on mine, and with <em>her</em> eyes counting <em>her</em>
+slackening steps, Charlotte Oliver. They must have espied us already out
+in the highway, for they also were turned toward the house, and as we
+neared them Charlotte faced round with a cheery absence of surprise and
+said &quot;Mr. Smith, don't we owe each other a better acquaintance? Suppose
+we settle up.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI">XXXI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE RED STAR'S WARNING</strong></p>
+
+<p>It seemed quite as undeniable, as we stood there, that Ned Ferry owed
+C&eacute;cile a better acquaintance. Every new hour enhanced her graces, and
+were I, here, less engrossed with her companion, I could pitch the
+praises of C&eacute;cile upon almost as high and brilliant a key--there may be
+room for that yet. Ferry moved on at her side. Charlotte stayed a moment
+to laugh at a squirrel, and then turned to walk, saying with eyes on
+the earth--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I tell you something, will you never tell?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked down too. &quot;Suppose I should feel sure it ought to be told.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you wait till you do you may tell it; that will suit me well
+enough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will always suit you the best I can.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know why you should,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You risked your life to save mine; and you risked it when I did not
+deserve so much as your respect.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!--we must never talk about that again, Richard; you saw me in the
+evilest guise I ever wore, and that is saying much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But,&quot; I responded, &quot;you put it on for a better reason than you could
+tell me then or can tell me now, though now I know your story.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please don't forget,&quot; she murmured, &quot;that you know too much.&quot; &quot;No, no!
+I don't know half enough; I know only what Miss Camilla
+and--and--Gholson could tell me,&quot; was my tricky reply, and I tried to
+look straight into her eyes, but they took that faint introspective
+contraction of which I have spoken, and gazed through me like sunlight
+through glass. Then again she bent her glance upon her steps, saying--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Richard, you have found out all you could, and I am glad of it,
+except of what I, myself, have had to betray to you; for <em>that</em> was more
+than one would want to tell her twin brother. But I had to create you
+<em>my</em> scout, and I had only two or three hours for my whole work of
+creation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you completed it.&quot; We went on some steps, and then she said--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You tell me I risked my life to save yours; I risked more than life,
+and I risked it for more than to save yours. Yet I did not save your
+life; you saved it, yourself, and--&quot; here her low tone thrilled like a
+harp-string--&quot;you risked it--frightfully--at that bridge--merely to save
+the promise you made me that you need not have made at all--oh, you
+needn't shake your head; I <em>know</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, how you gild my base metal!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no, I have the story exactly, and from one who has no mind to
+praise you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From Gholson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson! no! I have it from Lucius Oliver, who had it from his son. He
+told me carefully, quietly and entirely, in pure spleen, so that I might
+know that they know--think they know, that is,--why you and--he in front
+of us yonder--would not shoot his son when--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When as soldiers it was our simple du'--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; and also that I may understand that he--the son--has sworn by that
+right hand you mutilated that the 'pair of you' shall die before
+he does.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I ought not to have shown him that envelope addressed to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but if it saved your life!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And this is what you don't want me to tell? Ah, I see; for me to know
+it is enough; I can put it to him as a theory. I can say Oliver is not a
+man to be put upon the defensive, and that he is more than likely to be
+hunting 'the pair of us'--&quot; All at once I thought of something.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What made you give that sudden start?&quot; she asked as we faced about in
+the driveway to make our walk a moment longer; &quot;that's a bad habit
+you've got; why do you do it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I fancied the thrilling freshness of the question I was about to put
+would be explanation enough. &quot;Do you believe Jewett has gone back into
+his own lines?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know; hasn't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I don't <em>know</em>, either, but--well, I don't believe there's a braver
+man in Grant's army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why,
+just the way he got him, night before last,--you've heard that, have
+you not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I've heard it; he is a very daring man; what of it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I can't help thinking he's out here to make a new record for
+himself, at whatever cost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A note of distress hung on my hearer's stifled voice; her head went
+lower and she laid her fingers pensively to her lips. &quot;It would be like
+him,&quot; I heard her murmur, and when I asked if she meant Jewett she
+shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I said, &quot;you mean it would be like Oliver to join him,&quot; and with
+that the sudden start was hers. &quot;He wouldn't have to touch Ned Ferry or
+me,&quot; I went on, heartlessly, &quot;nor to come near us, to make us rue the
+hour we let ourselves forget this wasn't our private war.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she
+looked at me with her eyes very blue and said &quot;You'll see him about it,
+won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do
+I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!&quot; Her
+eyes began forewith.</p>
+
+<p>A light footfall sounded behind us, and Camille gave both her hands to
+my companion. &quot;I was in the hall,&quot; she said, &quot;telling C&eacute;cile she was
+like a white star that had come out by day, when I saw you here looking
+like a great red one; and you're still more like a red, red rose, and
+I've come to get some of your fragrance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd exchange for yours any day, and thank you, dear,&quot; responded
+Charlotte; &quot;you're a bunch of sweet-peas. Isn't she, Mr. Smith?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The bunch beamed an ecstatic bliss. What was the explanation; had her
+father arrived, or--or somebody else? The question went through me like
+an arrow. Was the cause of this heavenly radiance somebody else?--that
+was the barb; or was it I?--that was the soothing feather.</p>
+
+<p>In gratitude for Charlotte's word she sank backward in a long obeisance.
+&quot;May it please your ladyship, dinner is served. Oh, Mr. Smith, I've been
+listening to Mr. Gholson talking with aunt Martha and Estelle; I don't
+wonder you and he are friends; I think his ideas of religion are
+perfectly beautiful!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At our two-o'clock dinner I found that our company had been reinforced.
+On one side of Camille sat I; but on the other side sat &quot;Harry.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII">XXXII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A MARTYR'S WRATH</strong></p>
+
+<p>Great news the aide-de-camp brought us; from Lee, from Longstreet, Bragg
+and Johnston. Johnston was about to fall upon Grant's rear. Across the
+Mississippi Dick Taylor was expected this very day to deal the same
+adversary a crippling blow, and it was partly to mask this movement that
+we had made our feint upon the Federals near Natchez. Now these had
+fallen back, and our force had cunningly slipped away southward. Only
+General Austin and his staff had not gone when Lieutenant Helm left the
+front, and they were about to go.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of the meal Mrs. Sessions, in her amiable plantation
+drawl, said she hoped the bearer of so much good tidings had not come to
+take away Lieutenant Ferry; and when Harry, flushing, asked what had
+given her such a thought, the simple soul replied that Mr. Gholson had
+told her he &quot;suspicioned as much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At once there arose the prettiest clamor all round the board, in which
+Charlotte and C&eacute;cile joined for the obvious purpose of making confusion.
+Gholson turned yellow and spoke things nobody heard, and Ferry tried to
+drown Harry's loud declarations that the word he had brought to Ferry
+was for him to stay, and that he had found him saddling up to go in
+search of his company. &quot;Isn't that so, Ned?--Now,--now,--isn't that so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We left the table all laughing but Gholson. He tried to say something to
+Harry, which the latter waved away with mock gaiety until on the side
+veranda we got beyond view of the ladies, when the aide-de-camp reddened
+angrily and turned his back. As the two lieutenants were lighting
+cigarettes together, Harry, thinking Gholson had left us, blurted out,
+&quot;Oh, that's all very well for you to say, Ned, but, damn him, he's not
+the sort of man that has the right to 'suspicion' me of anything;
+slang-whanging, backbiting sneak, I know what <em>he's</em> here for.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On that the blood surged to Ferry's brow, but he set his mouth firmly,
+locked arms with the speaker and led him down the veranda. Gholson took
+on an uglier pallor than before and went back into the house. I followed
+him. He moved slowly up the two flights of hall stairs and into a room
+close under the roof, called the &quot;soldiers' room&quot;. It had three double
+beds, one of them ours. Without a fault in the dreary rhythm of his
+motions he went to the bedpost where hung his revolver, and turning to
+me buckled the weapon at his waist with hands that kept the same
+unbroken measure though they trembled and were as pallid as his face. In
+the same slow beat he shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, I rejoice! O--oh! I rejoice and am glad when I'm reviled and
+persecuted by the hounds of hell, and spoken evil against falsely for my
+religion's sake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Gholson, that's nonsense!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O--oh! that's what it's for! that's what he meant by 'slang-whanging.'
+That's what it's for from first to last, no matter what it's for in
+between; and I know what it's for in between, too, and Ned Ferry knows.
+Did you see Ned Ferry take him under his protection? O--oh! they're two
+of one hell-scorched kind!&quot; My companion stood gripping the bedpost and
+fumbling at his holster. I sank to the bed, facing him, expecting his
+rage to burn itself out in words, but when he began again his teeth
+were clenched. &quot;You heard him tell Ned Ferry he knows why I'm here. It's
+true! he does know! he knows I'm here to protect a certain person from
+him and--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From whom? from Harry Helm? Oh, Gholson, that's too fantastical!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From him and the likes of him! Not that he loves her; that's the
+difference between them two cotton-mouth moccasins; Ned Ferry, hell
+grind him! does--or thinks he does; that other whelp <em>don't,</em> and knows
+he don't; he's only enam'--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;HUSH!&quot; He ceased. &quot;I swear, Scott Gholson, you must choose your words
+better when you allude--Lieutenant Helm is the last man in the brigade
+to be under <em>my</em> protection, but--oh, you're crazy, man, and blind
+besides. Harry Helm is not in love, but he thinks he is, though with
+quite another person!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O--oh! whether he loves or not, or whoever he loves, I know who he
+hates; he hates me and my religion; our religion, Smith, mine and yours;
+because it's put me between him and her. What was that the preacher said
+this morning? 'The carnal mind, being enmity against God, is enmity
+against them that serve God.' O--oh, I accept his enmity! it proves my
+religion isn't vain! I'm glad to get it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All this from his oscillating head, through his set teeth, in one malign
+monotone. As he quoted the preacher he mechanically drew his revolver.
+There was no bravado in this; he might lie, but he did not know how to
+sham; did not know, now, that his face was drawn with pain. Holding the
+weapon in one hand, under his absent gaze he turned it from side to side
+on the palm of the other. I put out my hand for it, but he dropped it
+into the holster and tried to return my smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you propose to call him out?&quot; I asked. &quot;You can't call out an
+officer; you'll be sent to the water-batteries at Mobile.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've thought of all that,&quot; he droned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why do you put that thing on?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why do I put it on? Why, I--you know what I told you about that
+Yankee--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson,&quot; I exclaimed, for I saw that murder, even double murder, was
+hatching in his heart, with Charlotte Oliver for its cause, and looked
+hard into his evil eyes until they overmatched mine; whereupon I made as
+if suddenly convinced. &quot;You're right!&quot; I turned, whipped on my own belt
+with its two &quot;persuaders,&quot; and blandly smoothing my ribs, added &quot;Now!
+here are two ready, Yankees or no Yankees.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I never saw a face so unconsciously marked with misery as Gholson's was
+when we started downstairs. I stopped him on a landing. &quot;Understand, you
+and I are friends,--hmm? I think Lieutenant Helm owes you an apology,
+and if you'll keep away from him I'll try to bring it to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The reply began with a vindictive gleam. &quot;You needn't; I ain't got any
+more use for it than for him. I never apologized to a man in my life,
+Smith, nor I never accepted an apology from one; that's not my way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Near the bottom of the second flight we met Charlotte, who, to make bad
+worse, would have passed with no more than a smile, but the look of
+Gholson startled her and she noticed our arms. With an arresting eye I
+offered a sprightly comment on the heat of the day, and while she was
+replying with the same gaiety I whispered &quot;Take him with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How nimbly her mind moved! &quot;Oh Mr. Gholson!&quot; she said, and laughed to
+gain an instant for invention.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Gholson, can <em>you</em> tell me the first line of the last hymn we sang
+this morning?&quot; Her beam was irresistible, and they went to the large
+parlor. I turned into the smaller one, opposite, where Squire Sessions
+started from a stolen doze and, having heard of my feeling for books,
+thrust into my hands, and left me with, the &quot;Bible Defense of Slavery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As I moved to a window which let out upon the side veranda the two
+lieutenants came around from the front and stood almost against it,
+outside; and as I intended to begin upon Harry as soon as Squire
+Sessions was safely upstairs, this suited me well enough. But the moment
+they came to the spot I heard Ned Ferry doing precisely what I had
+planned to do. At the same time, from across the hall came the sound of
+the piano and of Charlotte's voice, now a few bars, then an interval of
+lively speech, again a few bars, then more speech, and then a sustained
+melody as she lent herself to the kind flattery of Gholson's
+songless soul.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he is!&quot; I overheard the aide-de-camp say; &quot;he is a backbiting
+sneak, and I tell you again he's backbitten nobody more than he
+has you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I tell you again, Harry, that is my business.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If he wants to fight me he can; I'll waive my rank.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, you will not, you have no right; our poor little rank, it doesn't
+belong to us, Harry, 'tis we belong to it. 'If he wants to fight!'--Do
+you take him for a rabbit? He is a brave man, you know that, old fellow.
+Of course he wants to fight. But he cannot! For the court-martial he
+would not care so much; I would not, you would not; 'tis his religion
+forbids him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O--oh!&quot; groaned Harry in Gholson's exact tone, &quot;'Hark from the tombs'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; said Ferry, &quot;he does not live up to it? Well, of course! who
+does? But we will pass that; the main question is, Will you express the
+regret, and so forth, as I have suggested, and do yourself credit,
+Harry, as an officer and a gentleman, or--will you fight?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you say his religion, so called, won't let him fight!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's what I think; but if it forbids him, and if consequently he will
+not, well,--Harry,--I will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will what!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will have to fight you in his place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Ned!--Ned!--you--you astound me! Wha'--what do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is what I mean, Harry. You know--many times you have heard me
+say--I don't believe in that kind of thing; I find that worse than the
+religion of Gholson; yet still,--what shall I say?--we are but soldiers
+anyhow--this time I make an exception in your favor. And of course this
+is confidential, on both sides; but you must make peace with Gholson, or
+you must fight with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, good Lord!--Ned!--Good Lord A'mighty! but this is too absurd. Why,
+Ned, don't you see that the bottom cause of this trouble isn't--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know what is the bottom cause of this trouble very well, Harry; you
+can hear her in yonder, now, singing. Wherever Gholson is he hears her,
+too, like-wise. Perchance 'tis to him she is singing. If she can sing to
+him, are you too good to apologise?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, Ned, damned if I don't!
+George! I'll apologize! Rather than lose your friendship I'd apologize
+to the devil!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry's thanks came eagerly. &quot;Well, anyhow, old boy,&quot; he added, &quot;in such
+a case to back down is braver than to fight; but to apologize to the
+devil--that is not hard; on the contrary, to keep <em>from</em> apologizing to
+the devil--ah! I wish I could always do that!--I wonder where is
+Dick Smith.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stealthily laid down the &quot;Bible Defense of Slavery&quot; and was going
+upstairs three steps at a stride, when I came upon Camille and Estelle.
+My aim was to get Harry's revolver to him before he should have the
+exasperating surprise of finding Gholson armed, and to contrive a
+pretext for so doing; and happily a word from the two sisters gave me my
+cue. With the fire-arms of both officers I came downstairs and out upon
+the veranda loud-footed, humming--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;'To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be--'<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Gentlemen, I hope I'm not too officious; they say we're all going for a
+walk in the lily-pond woods, and I reckon you'd rather not leave these
+things behind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Both thanked me and buckled on their belongings, but Ferry's look was
+peculiarly intelligent; &quot;I was in the small parlor, looking for you,&quot; he
+said; &quot;I thought you would be near the music.&quot; And so he had seen
+Gholson with his revolver on him, and must have understood it!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; said Harry, &quot;will you be so kind as to say to Gholson--oh,
+Lord! Ned, this is heavy drags on a sandy road! I--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's all right, Harry, I withdraw the request.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you needn't; I was in the wrong. Smith, will you say to
+Gholson--&quot; His voice dropped to a strictly private rumble.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Lieutenant, I'll do so with pleasure, and I'm sure what you say
+will have the proper--here are the ladies.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII">XXXIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>TORCH AND SWORD</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now give me your hand, Miss Camille; now jump!&quot; So twice and once again
+the rivulet was passed which ran from the lily-pond, she and I leading
+all the others on the return from the woodland afternoon walk. We turned
+and faced away from the declining sun and across the clear pool to where
+its upper end, dotted with lily-pads, lay in a deep recess of the woods.
+There were green and purple garlands of wild passion-flower around her
+hat and about the white and blue fabrics at her waist. At the head of
+the pond, with Ferry beside her, stood black-haired C&eacute;cile canopied by
+overhanging boughs, her hat bedecked with the red spikes of the
+Indian-shot and wound with orange masses of love-vine. Nearer to us
+around the shore was Estelle of the red-brown hair and red-brown eyes
+and brows and lashes, whose cheek seemed always to glow with ever rising
+but never confessed emotion; and with her walked Gholson. Near the
+waterside also, but farthest up the path, came Miss Harper and
+Charlotte Oliver.</p>
+
+<p>Harry was not with us. The settlement of his trouble with Gholson
+awaited his return out of the region north of us, whither Ferry had
+suggested his riding on an easy reconnaissance. Camille and I were just
+turning again, when there came abruptly into our scene the last gallant
+show of martial finery any of us ever saw until the war was over and
+there was nothing for our side to make itself fine for. On the road from
+the house we heard a sound of galloping, and the next moment General
+Austin and his entire staff (less only Harry) reined up at the edge of
+the pond, ablaze with all the good clothes they could muster and
+betraying just enough hard usage to give a stirring show of the war's
+heroic reality. The General, on a beautiful cream-colored horse, wore
+long yellow gauntlets and a yellow sash; from throat to waist the
+sunlight glistened upon the over-abundant gold lace of his new uniform,
+his legs were knee-deep in shining boots, and his soft gray hat was
+looped up on one side and plumed according to Regulations with one
+drooping ostrich feather. Behind halted in pleasing confusion captains
+and captains, flashing with braids, bars, buckles, buttons, bands,
+sword-knots, swords and brave eyes, and gaily lifting hats and caps,
+twice, and twice again, and once more, to the ladies--God bless them!
+Major Harper, the oldest, most refined and most soldierly of them all,
+was also the handsomest. Old Dismukes was with them; burly, bushy,
+dingy, on a huge roan charger. Camille asked me who he was, and I was
+about to reply that he was a bloodthirsty brute without a redeeming
+trait, when he lifted his shaggy brows at me and smiled, and as I smiled
+back I told her he was our senior colonel, rough at times, but the
+bravest of the brave. Meantime the General rode forward over a stretch
+of shallow water, Ned Ferry ran back along the margin to meet him, and
+at the saddlebow they spoke a moment together privately, while at more
+distance but openly to us all Major Harper informed his sister that with
+one night's camp and another day's dust the brigade would be down in
+Louisiana. Camille turned upon me and hurrahed, the Arkansas colonel
+smiled upon her approvingly, the ladies all waved, the General lifted
+his plumed hat, faced about, passed through his turning cavalcade and
+drew it after him at a gallop.</p>
+
+<p>Our promenaders hurried into close order and with quick step and eager
+converse we moved toward the house. In raptures scintillant with their
+own beauty the three Harper girls inflated each item of the day's news
+and the morrow's outlook, and it was almost as pretty to see Miss
+Harper's keen black eyes and loving-tolerant smile go back and forth
+from Camille to Estelle, from Estelle to C&eacute;cile, and round again, as
+each maiden added some new extravagance to the glad vaunting of the
+last, and looked, for confirmation, to the gallant who toiled to keep
+her under her parasol. Suddenly the three girls broke into song with an
+adaptation of &quot;Oh, carry me back&quot; which substituted &quot;Louisiana&quot; for
+&quot;Virginia,&quot; but whose absurd quaverings I will not betray in words to a
+generation that never knew the frantic times to which they belonged. I
+felt a shamefacedness for them even then, yet when I glanced behind,
+Miss Harper was singing with us in the most exalted earnest. We had
+nearly reached the field-gate, the big white one on the highway, and
+were noting that the dust of the General and his retinue had barely
+vanished from the southern stretch of the road, when one feminine voice
+said &quot;What's that?&quot; another exclaimed &quot;See yonder!&quot; and Miss Harper
+cried &quot;Why, gentlemen, somebody's house is burning!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the grove and the fields north of it, and beyond their farther
+bound of trees, in the northwest, was rising and unfolding into the
+peaceful Sabbath heavens a massive black column of the peculiar heavy
+smoke made by the burning of baled and stored cotton. We ran, two and
+two, into the road and up toward the grove-gate. &quot;Don't stumble,&quot; I
+warned Camille as she looked back to see if any one besides me was
+holding his partner's hand. Inside the gate we paused, we two, still
+hand in hand. Her brown hair had shaken low upon her temples in two
+voluptuous masses between which she lifted her eyes to mine, my hand
+tightened on hers, and hers gave a little spasm of its own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Dick!&quot; she whispered; but before I could rally from the blissful
+shock of it to reply, her face changed distressfully, and pointing
+beyond me, she drank a great breath, and cried, &quot;Look!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, out there on the sky-line, in the north-east this time,
+another column of smoke was lifting its first billow over the tree-tops.
+&quot;Oh, Dick!&quot; she exclaimed, in beautiful alarm, &quot;what does it mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It means the Yankees,--love,&quot; I said, and when she gasped her dismay
+without letting on to have heard the last word, I felt that fires were
+cheap at any price.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are others there besides Yankees,&quot; said Gholson to the general
+company as they joined us; &quot;Yankees have got more sense than to start
+fires ahead of their march.&quot; On the same instant with Ned Ferry I sprang
+half-way to the top of the grove fence and peered out across road and
+fields upon the farthest point in line with the second fire. There we
+saw two horsemen reconnoitring, one a very commanding figure, the other
+mean enough. Ferry used his glass, but no glass was needed to tell
+either of us that Gholson's reckoning was true; those two were
+not Federals.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies flew to the house and the rest of us to the stable. In its
+door Ferry stopped to look back upon the road while Gholson and I darted
+in, but now he, too, sprang to his horse's side. &quot;How many, Lieutenant?&quot;
+I cried, as the three of us saddled up.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About a hundred; same we saw yesterday; captain at the rear; that means
+our fellows are close behind them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment more I could hear the thunder of their speeding column;
+then the grove seemed to swallow it up, and the stillness was grim.
+&quot;Come on!&quot; cried Ferry, swinging up, and after him we sprang. &quot;They've
+dismounted on the far edge of the grove,&quot; said Gholson to me as we rode
+abreast, with Ferry a length ahead; &quot;they'll form line on each side the
+road at right angles to it!&quot; and again he was right. Ferry led
+northeastward, but hardly had we made half a dozen leaps when he waved
+me to a near corner of the flower-garden palings and I saw Miss Harper
+beckoning and Charlotte holding up my carbine and his sword. Miss Harper
+was drawn up as straight as a dart, her black eyes flashing and her lips
+charged with practical information that began to flow the moment I was
+near enough to hear her guarded voice. &quot;They've all put their horses in
+the locks of the road fence, just beyond the big white gate--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We know,&quot; I interrupted, leaning and snatching the weapons from
+Charlotte's hands. She kissed them good-bye.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, yes, yes!&quot; she said, &quot;they know all we can tell them and all we
+can't!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The only response I could give was the shower of loose earth thrown upon
+both women by my horse's heels as I whirled and sped after my leader. He
+and Gholson were half a broad field ahead of me, but I followed only at
+their speed, designing to hand over the sword so nearly at the moment of
+going into action that I might stay by its owner's side unrebuked; and
+my plan was not in vain. Up the highway our Louisianians burst into view
+in column at full speed; I knew them by their captain, a man noted
+throughout the brigade for the showiness of his dress; and the next
+instant, away across the fields beyond the highroad, Quinn and his
+scouts broke out of the woods, heading for the gap in the woods-pasture
+fence. As each friendly column caught sight of the other, long cheers
+rang across the narrowing interval between them. Through that other gap
+which I had noted in my walk with Ferry he and Gholson reached the road,
+sped forward on it to a rise that overlooked the fields, and halted.
+Ferry rose on tiptoe in the stirrups, lifted his cap in air, pointed
+triumphantly backward to the grove, and was recognized by both columns
+at once. Again they cheered; at a full run I reached his side and threw
+his sword into his hand. Both columns saw him belt it on and flash it
+out, their cheers swelled again, the Louisianians hurtled down upon us,
+and we turned and were at the front of the onset.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV</h2>
+<p><strong>THE CHARGE IN THE LANE</strong></p>
+
+<p>The instant Ferry wheeled at the flaming captain's side you could see he
+was unwelcome. I heard him tell what we knew of the foe and the ground;
+I saw him glance back at the blown condition of the speeding column and
+then say &quot;You've got them anyhow, Captain; you'll get every man of them
+without a scratch, only if you will take your time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the Captain answered headily; &quot;No, sir! I've tried that twice
+already; this time I'll cut them in two and be in their rear at one
+dash! Bring in your company behind mine, if you choose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry drew back a few ranks but stayed with the column; Quinn had had
+the toil of the chase, he should have also the glory of the fight. So
+Ferry sent Gholson--whose horsemanship won a cheer from the passing
+Louisianians as he cleared the roadside fence--across to Quinn, bidding
+the Lieutenant slacken speed and count himself a reserve. And then into
+the broad lane between grove and woods-pasture, with the charging yell,
+the Louisianians thundered. Ah! but my Creole gentleman was a sight,
+with his straight blade lifted in air and his face turned back on us
+aglow with the joy of battle! I was huzzaing back at him and we were
+passing the front gate of the grove avenue, when down through it came
+from the house, with a tremor of echoes, the first shot; a shot and then
+a woman's scream, and his blazing eyes said to me, &quot;He is there! That
+was Oliver!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was no time for speech. The shot was not a signal, yet on the
+instant and in our very teeth, on our right and our left, the cross-fire
+of the hidden and waiting foe flashed and pealed, and left and right, a
+life for a life, our carbines answered from the saddle. For a moment the
+odds against us were awful. In an instant the road was so full of fallen
+horses and dismounted men that the jaded column faltered in confusion.
+Our cunning enemy, seeing us charge in column, had swung the two
+extremes of their line forward and inward. So, crouching and firing upon
+us mounted, each half could fire toward the other with impunity, and
+what bullets missed their mark buzzed and whined about our ears and
+pecked the top rails of either fence like hail on a window. A wounded
+horse drove mine back upon his haunches and caused him to plant a hoof
+full on the breast of one of our Louisianians stretched dead on his back
+as though he had lain there for an hour. Another man, pale, dazed,
+unhurt, stood on the ground, unaware that he was under point-blank fire,
+holding by the bits his beautiful horse, that pawed the earth
+majestically and at every second or third breath blew from his flapping
+nostrils a cloud of scarlet spray. They blocked up half the road. As we
+swerved round them the horse of the company's first lieutenant slid
+forward and downward with knees and nose in the dust, hurling his rider
+into a lock of the fence, and the rider rose and rushed to the road
+again barely in time to catch a glittering form that dropped rein and
+sword and reeled backward from the saddle. It was his captain, shot
+through the breast. An instant later our tangled column parted to right
+and left, dashed into the locks of the two fences, sprang to the ground,
+and began to repay the enemy in the coin of their own issue. Only a
+dozen or so did otherwise, and it was my luck to be one of these.
+Espying Ned Ferry at the very front, in the road, standing in his
+stirrups and shouting back for followers to carry the charge on through,
+we spurred toward him and he turned and led. Then what was my next
+fortune but to see, astride of my stolen horse, the towering leader of
+the foe, Captain Jewett.</p>
+
+<p>He came into the road a few rods ahead of us through a gap his men had
+earlier made opposite the big white gate. He answered our fierce halloo,
+as he crossed, by a pistol-shot at Ferry, but Ferry only glanced around
+at me and pointed after him with his sword. A number of blue-coats afoot
+followed him to the gap but at our onset scattered backward, sturdily
+returning our fire. Into the gap and into the enemy's left rear went
+Ferry and his horsemen, but I turned the other way and spurred through
+the woods-pasture gate after the Federal leader, he on my horse and I on
+his. Down the highway, on either side, stood his brave men's horses in
+the angles of the worm-fence, and two or three horse-holders took a shot
+at me as I sped in after the man who was bent on reaching the right of
+his divided force before Quinn should strike it, as I was bent on
+foiling him. Twice I fired at his shapely back, and twice, while he kept
+his speed among the tree-trunks, he looked back at me as coolly as at an
+odd passer-by and sent me a ball from his revolver. A few more bounds
+carried him near enough to his force to shout his commands, but half a
+hundred cheers suddenly resounded in the depth of the woods-pasture, and
+Quinn and his men charged upon the foe's right and rear. I joined the
+shout and the shouters; in a moment the enemy were throwing down their
+arms, and I turned to regain the road to the pond. For I had marked
+Jewett burst through Quinn's line and with a score of shots ringing
+after him make one last brave dash--for escape. Others, pursuing him,
+bent northward, but my instinct was right, his last hope was for his
+horse-holders, and at a sharp angle of the by-road, where it reached the
+pond, exactly where Camille and I had stood not an hour before, I came
+abruptly upon Cricket--riderless. I seized his rein, and as I bent and
+snapped the halter of one horse on the snaffle of the other I saw the
+missing horseman. Leaping from the saddle I ran to him. He was lying on
+his face in the shallow water where General Austin and his staff had so
+gaily halted a short while before, and as I caught sight of him he
+rolled upon his back and tried to lift his bemired head.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV">XXXV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>FALLEN HEROES</strong></p>
+
+<p>I dropped to my knee in the reddening pool and passed my arm under his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; he said, and repeated the word as I wet my handkerchief and
+wiped the mire from his face; &quot;thank you;--no, no,&quot;--I was opening his
+shirt--&quot;that's useless; get me where you can turn me over; you've hit me
+in the back, my lad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I?--I hit you? Oh, Captain Jewett, thank God, I didn't hit you at all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the difference, boy; you didn't aim to miss, did you? I didn't.
+It's not my only hurt; I think I broke something inside when I fell from
+the sad'--ah! that's <em>your</em> bugle, isn't it? It's my last fight--oh, the
+devil! my good boy, don't begin to cry again; war's war; give me some
+water.... Thank you! And now, if you don't want me to bleed to death get
+me out of this slop, and--yes,--easy!--that's it--easy--oh, God! oh, let
+me down, boy, let me <em>down, you're killing me!</em> Oh!--&quot; he fainted away.</p>
+
+<p>With his unconscious head still on my arm I faced toward the hundred
+after-sounds of the fray and hallooed for help. To my surprise it
+promptly came. Three blundering boys we were who lifted him into the
+saddle and bore him to the house reeling and moaning astride of Cricket,
+the poor beast half dead with hard going. The sinking sun was as red as
+October when we issued into the highroad and moved up it to the grove
+gate through the bloody wreckage of the fray. The Louisianians were
+camping in the woods-pasture, Ferry's scouts in the grove, and the
+captive Federals were in the road between, shut in by heavy guards. At
+our appearance they crowded around us, greeting their undone commander
+with proud words of sympathy and love, and he thanked them as proudly
+and lovingly, though he could scarcely speak, more than to ask every
+moment for water. A number of our Sessions house group crowded out to
+meet us at the veranda steps; Camille; Harry Helm with his right hand
+bandaged; C&eacute;cile, attended by two or three Sessions children; and behind
+all Miss Harper exclaiming &quot;Ah, my boy, you're a welcome sight--Oh! is
+that Captain Jewett!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Two or three bystanders helped us bear him upstairs, where, turning from
+the bedside, I pressed Camille with eager questions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant Ferry? he's unhurt--and so is Mr. Gholson! Mr. Gholson's
+gone to Franklin for doctors; Lieutenant Ferry sent him; he's been
+sending everybody everywhere faster than anybody else could think of
+anything!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I asked where Ferry was now. Her eyes refilled--they were red from
+earlier distresses--and she motioned across the hall: &quot;The captain of
+the Louisianians, you know, has sent for him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said, &quot;the Captain's hit hard. I saw him when he was struck.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Dick! then you were at the very front!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you think I was at the rear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked down. &quot;I couldn't help hoping it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you were thinking of me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I prayed for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such news seemed but ill-gotten gains, to come before I had gathered
+courage to inquire after Charlotte Oliver. &quot;Wh'--where is--where are
+the others?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They're all about the house, tending the wounded; Mrs. Sessions is with
+the Squire, of course,--dear, brave old gentleman! we thought he was
+killed, but Charlotte found the ball had glanced.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I asked if it was Oliver who shot him, and she nodded. &quot;It was down at
+the front door; the Squire said he'd shoot him if he shot Charlotte, and
+Charlotte declared she'd shoot him if he shot the Squire, and all at
+once he shot at her and struck him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who was it that screamed; was it she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My informant's head drooped low and she murmured, &quot;It was I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then <em>you</em> were at the front.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you think I was at the rear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I fear I answered evasively. I added that I must go to Lieutenant Ferry,
+and started toward the door, but she touched my arm. &quot;Oh, Dick, you
+should have heard him praise you to her!--and when he said you had
+chased Captain Jewett and was missing, she cried; but now I'll tell her
+you're here.&quot; She started away but returned. &quot;Oh, Dick, isn't it
+wonderful how we're always victorious! why don't those poor Yankees give
+up the struggle? they must see that God is on our side!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As she left me, Ned Ferry came out with a sad face, but smiled gladly on
+me and caught me fondly by the arm. On hearing my brief report he
+saddened more than ever, and when I said I had promised Jewett he should
+hand his sword to none but him, &quot;Oh!&quot;--he smiled tenderly--&quot;I don't want
+to refuse it; go in and hang it at the head of his bed as he would do in
+his own tent; I'll wait here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I pointed to the door he had softly closed behind him: &quot;How is it in
+there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Richard, in there the war is all over.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dead?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So called.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI">XXXVI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>&quot;SAYS QUINN, S'E&quot;</strong></p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Helm came out as I went in, and I paused an instant to ask
+him in fierce suspicion if he had bandaged his hand himself. &quot;No,&quot; he
+whispered, &quot;Miss Camille.&quot; It was a lie, but I did not learn that until
+months after. &quot;Come downstairs as soon as you can,&quot; he added, &quot;there's a
+hot supper down there; first come first served.&quot; We parted.</p>
+
+<p>I found Miss Harper fanning the wounded giant and bathing his brows,
+and my smiles were ample explanation of my act as I hung the sword up.
+Then I brought in my leader. &quot;Captain Jewett,&quot; he said after a nearly
+silent exchange of greetings, &quot;I wish we had you uninjured.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no, Lieutenant, this is bad enough. Lieutenant, there is one
+matter--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain, what is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The villain who set those fires--you know who he is, I hope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain, I know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He didn't begin that until after he left me. I had some private reasons
+for not killing him when I might have done it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain, I know that, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet if I had caught him again I would have strung him up to the first
+limb.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have sent some picked men to catch him if they can,&quot; said Ferry, and
+the racked sufferer lifted a hand in approval. Camille came to her aunt
+and whispered &quot;Mr. Gholson with two doctors.&quot; The wounded captive
+heard her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant,&quot; he panted, &quot;I hope you'll--do me the favor--to let my turn
+with those gentlemen--come last,--after my boys,--will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Captain, even our boys wouldn't allow that; no, here's a doctor,
+now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I went down to the supper-table. Camille was there, dispensing its
+promiscuous hospitality to men who ate like pigs. I would as leave have
+found her behind a French-market coffee-stand. Harry Helm, nursing his
+bandaged hand, was lolling back from the board and quizzing her with
+compliments while she cut up his food. A fellow in the chair next mine
+said he had seen me with Ferry when we joined the Louisianians' charge.
+&quot;Your aide-de-camp friend over yonder's a-gitt'n' lots o' sweetenin'
+with his grub; well, he deserves it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I asked how he deserved it. &quot;Why, we wouldn't 'a' got here in time if he
+hadn't 'a' met-up with us. That man Gholson, he's another good one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The latter remark seemed to me a feeler, and I ignored it, and inquired
+how Lieutenant Helm had got that furlough. (Furlough was our slang for a
+light wound.) &quot;Oh, he got it mighty fair! Did you see that Yankee
+lieutenant with the big sabre-cut on his shoulder? Well, your friend
+yonder gave him that--and got the Yankee's pistol-shot in his hand. But
+that saved Gholson's life, for that shot was aimed to give Gholson a
+furlough to kingdom-come. Are they kinfolks?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I mumbled that they were not even friends. &quot;Well, now, I suspicioned
+that,--when I first see 'em meet at the head of our column! But the
+aide-de-camp he took it so good-natured that, thinks I,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Another of Ferry's men, seated opposite, swallowed hurriedly, and
+covertly put in--&quot;Y' ought to hear what Quinn said to Gholson just now
+as they met-up out here in the hall. Quinn thought they were alone. Says
+Quinn, as cold as a fish, s's'e 'Mr. Gholson,' s'e, 'you're not a
+coward, sir, and that's why I'm curious to ask you a question,' s'e. And
+says Gholson, just as cold, s'e 'I'm prepared, Lieutenant Quinn, to
+answer it.' And says Quinn, s'e 'Why was it, that when Harry Helm struck
+that blow which saved your life, and which you knew was meant to save
+it, and you seen his sword shot out of his hand and three or four
+Yankees makin' a dead set to kill him, and nothin' else in any
+particular danger at all, why was it, Mr. Gholson, that you never turned
+a hand nor an eye to save him?'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Great Scott! wha'd Gholson say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson, s'e, 'I done as I done, sir, from my highest sense o' duty.
+This ain't Lieutenant Helm's own little private war, Lieutenant Quinn,
+nor mine, nor yours.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jo'! that to Quinn! wha'd Quinn answer?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, with that Quinn popped them big glass eyes o' his'n till the
+whites showed clear round the blue, and s'e 'I know it better than you
+do; that's just what it suited you to forget. Oh! I'd already seen
+through you in one flash, you sneak. It's good for you you're not in my
+command; I'd lift you to a higher sense of whose war this is, damn you,
+if I had to hang you up by the thumbs.' With that he started right on
+by, Gholson a-keepin' his face to him as he passed, when Ned Ferry
+and--her--came out o' the parlor, and Ned turned out on the rear gallery
+with Quinn while she sort o' smiled at Gholson to come to her and sent
+him off on some business or other. George! I never seen her so
+beautiful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon occurred a brief exchange of comments which seemed to me to
+carry by implication as fine a praise as could possibly come from two
+rough fellows of the camp. Speaking the names of Ferry and Charlotte in
+undertone, of course, but with the unrestraint of soldiers, they said
+their say without a shadow of inuendo in word or smile. Her presence,
+they agreed, always made them feel as though something out of the common
+&quot;was bound to happen pretty quick,&quot; while his, they said, assured them
+that &quot;whatever did happen would happen right.&quot; I turned with a frown as
+Harry laughed irrelevantly, and saw Camille and him smiling at me with
+childish playfulness. Then suddenly their smile changed and went beyond
+me, two or three men softly said &quot;Smith!&quot; and I was out of my chair and
+standing when Charlotte Oliver, in a low voice, tenderly accosted me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Richard Thorndyke Smith!--alive and well! Lieutenant Ferry wants
+you; he has just gone to his camp-fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII">XXXVII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A HORSE! A HORSE!</strong></p>
+
+<p>Night had fully come. A few bivouac fires burned low in the grove, and
+at one of them near the grove gate I found our young commander. On a
+bench made of a fence-rail and two forked stakes he sat between Quinn
+and the first-lieutenant of the Louisianians. The doctor whom I had seen
+before sat humped on his horse, facing the three young men and making
+clumsy excuses to Ferry for leaving. The other physician would stay for
+some time yet, he said, and he, himself, was leaving his instruments,
+such as they were, and would return in the morning. &quot;Fact is, my son's a
+surgeon, and he taken all my best instruments with <em>him.</em>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When; where is he?&quot; eagerly asked Quinn, seeing Ferry was not going to
+ask.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My son? Oh, he's in Virginia, with General Lee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hell!&quot; grunted Quinn, but the doctor pretended to listen to Ferry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but we move south at day-light; the prisoners and wounded we send
+east, to Hazlehurst,&quot; said our leader, with a restraining hand on
+Quinn's knee. The other lieutenant made some inquiry of him, and the
+doctor was ignored, but stayed on, and as I stood waiting to be noticed
+I gathered a number of facts. The lightly injured would go in a
+plantation wagon; for the few gravely hurt there was the Harpers'
+ambulance, which had just arrived to take the ladies back to Squire
+Wall's, near Brookhaven, alas! instead of to Louisiana. For the ladies
+Charlotte's spring-wagon was to be appropriated, one of them riding
+beside it on horseback, and there was to be sent with them, besides
+Charlotte's old black driver, &quot;a reliable man well mounted.&quot; Whoever
+that was to be it was not Harry, for he was to go south with a small
+guard, bearing the body of the Louisiana captain to his home between the
+hostile lines behind Port Hudson.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-night, gentlemen,&quot; said the doctor at last. As he passed into the
+darkness Quinn bent a mock frown upon his young superior.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant Ferry, the next time I have to express my disgust please to
+keep your hand off my knee, will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry's response was to lay it back again and there ensued a puerile
+tussle that put me in a precious pout, that I should be kept waiting by
+such things. But presently the three parted to resume their several
+cares, and the moment Ferry touched my arm to turn me back toward the
+house I was once more his worshipper. &quot;Well!&quot; he began, &quot;you have now
+<em>two</em> fine horses, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, by Regulations, I suppose, I ought to turn one of them over to
+Major Harper. I wish it were to you, Lieutenant; I'd keep my own--he'll
+be all right in a day or two--and give you Captain Jewett's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,--just for a day or two,--do that, while I lend my horse to a
+friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had already asked myself what was to become of Charlotte Oliver while
+the Harpers were preempting her little wagon, and now I took keen alarm.
+&quot;Why, Lieutenant, I shall be glad! But why not lend Captain Jewett's
+horse and keep yours? Yours is right now the finest and freshest mount
+in the command.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, 'tis for that I lend him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We went on in silence. Startled and distressed, I pondered. What was her
+new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this
+from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would
+know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like
+smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry
+with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now,
+unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse
+to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing himself to speed
+Beauty--oh, how different! What was the all-subordinating need?</p>
+
+<p>As we entered the hall I came to a conviction which lightened my heart;
+the all-subordinating need was--Oliver. I thought I could see why. The
+spring of all his devilish behavior lay in those relations to her for
+which I knew she counted herself chargeable through her past mistakes.
+Unless I guessed wrong her motives had risen. I believed her aim was
+now, at whatever self-hazard, to stop this hideous one-woman's war, and
+to speed her unfinished story to the fairest possible outcome for all
+God's creatures, however splendidly or miserably the &quot;fool in it&quot; should
+win or lose. We stopped and waited for C&eacute;cile and the remaining doctor,
+she with a lighted candle, to come down the stairs. From two rooms
+below, where most of the wounded lay, there came women's voices softly
+singing, and Charlotte's was among them. Their song was one listening to
+which many a boy in blue, many a lad in gray, has died: &quot;Rock me to
+sleep, mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;cile and the doctor had come from the bedside of the Union captain,
+where Miss Harper remained. &quot;I've done all I can,&quot; he said to Ferry; &quot;we
+old chill-and-fever doctors wa'n't made for war-times; he may get well
+and he may not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; said Ferry, &quot;go up and stay with him till further orders.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXVIII" id="XXXVIII">XXXVIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>&quot;BEAR A MESSAGE AND A TOKEN&quot;</strong></p>
+
+<p>Late in the night Gholson came to the Union captain's bedside for Miss
+Harper. Charlotte had sent him; the doctor had left word what to do if a
+certain patient's wound should re-open, and this had happened. The three
+had succeeded in stanching it, but Charlotte had prevailed upon Miss
+Harper to lie down, and the weary lady had, against all her intentions,
+fallen asleep. I was alone with the wounded captain. He did not really
+sleep, but under the weight of his narcotics drowsed, muttered, stirred,
+moaned, and now and then spoke out.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting in the open window, I marked the few red points of dying
+firelight grow fewer in the bivouac under the grove. Out there by the
+gate Ned Ferry slept. Fireflies blinked, and beyond the hazy fields rose
+the wasted moon, by the regal slowness of whose march I measured the
+passage of time as I had done two nights before. My vigil was a sad one,
+but, in health, in love, in the last of my teens and in the silent
+company of such a moon, my straying thoughts lingered most about the
+maiden who had &quot;prayed for me.&quot; My hopes grew mightily. Yet with them
+grew my sense of need to redouble a lover's diligence. I resolved never
+again to leave great gaps in my line of circumvallation about the city
+of my siege, as I had done in the past--two days. I should move to the
+final assault, now, at the earliest favorable moment, and the next
+should see the rose-red flag of surrender rise on her temples; in war it
+is white, but in love it is red.</p>
+
+<p>First favorable moment; ah! but when would that be? Who was to convey
+the Harpers to Hazlehurst? Well, thank Heaven! not Harry. Scott Gholson?
+Gholson was due at headquarters. Poor Gholson! much rest for racked
+nerves had he found here; what with Ferry, and Harry, and the fight, and
+Quinn, I wondered he did not lie down and die under the pure suffocation
+of his &quot;tchagrin.&quot; Even a crocodile, I believed, could suffer from
+chagrin, give him as many good causes as Gholson had accumulated. But
+no, the heaven of &quot;Charlie Tolliver's&quot; presence and commands--she seemed
+to have taken entire possession of him--lifted and sustained him above
+the clouds of all unkinder things.</p>
+
+<p>A faint stir at the threshold caught my ear and I discerned in the hall
+a young negro woman. The light of an unseen candle made her known at a
+glance; she had been here since the previous evening, as I knew, though
+it chanced that I had not seen her; Oliver's best wedding-gift, the
+slave maid whom I had seen with Charlotte in the curtained wagon at
+Gallatin. I stole out to her; she courtesied. &quot;Miss Charlotte say ef you
+want he'p you fine me a-sett'n' on de step o' de stairs hafe-ways down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I inquired if she was leaving us. &quot;She a-gitt'n' ready, suh; Misteh
+Goshen done gone to de sta-able to git de hosses.&quot; The girl suddenly
+seemed pleased with herself. &quot;Mis' Charlotte would 'a' been done gone
+when de yethehs went--dem-ah two scouts what was sent ayfteh <em>him</em>--ef I
+hadn' spoke' up when I did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed! how was that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I says, s' I, 'Mis' Charlotte, how we know he ain' gwine fo' to
+double on his huntehs? Betteh wait a spell, and den ef no word come back
+dat he a-doublin', you kin be sho' he done lit out fo' to jine de
+Yankees roun' Pote Hudsom.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did you tell her that? You want him caught; so do I; but you know
+she doesn't want to catch him, and you don't want her to. Neither do I.
+Nor neither do we want Lieutenant Ferry to catch him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, suh, dass so. But same time, while she no notion o' gitt'n' him
+cotch, she believe she dess djuty-bound to head-off his devilment. 'Tis
+dess like I heah' Mr. Goshen say to Miss Hahpeh, 'Dis ain't ow own
+li'l pri'--'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I waved her away and went back into the room; the Captain had called. He
+asked the time of night; I said it was well after two; he murmured, was
+quiet, and after a moment spoke my name. I answered, and he whispered
+&quot;Coralie Rothvelt--she's here; I--recognized her voice--when they were
+singing. Did you know I knew her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Daring game that was you fellows let her put up on us night before
+last, my boy,--and it hung by a thread. If our officers had only asked
+the old man his name--it would have been--a flash of light. If I had
+dreamed, when I saw--you and Ned Ferry--yesterday,--that Coralie
+Rothvelt was--Charlotte Oliver,--and could have known her then--as
+I've--learned to know her--to-day--from her--worst enemy,--you know,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should--have turned back, my boy.&quot; After a silence the hero said more
+to himself than to me &quot;Ah, if my brother were here to-night--I
+might live!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Many days afterward I thought myself dull not to have guessed what that
+speech meant, but now I was too distressed by the change I saw coming
+over him to do any surmising. He began to say things entirely to
+himself. &quot;Home!&quot; he murmured; &quot;sweet, sweet home!--my home! my
+country!--My God, my country, my home!--Smith,--you know what that is
+you're--wiping off my brow,--don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I--I didn't want you to be--taken too unpleasantly by surprise--just at
+the--end. You know what's--happening,--don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain.&quot; As I wiped the brow again I heard the tread of two
+horses down in front of the house; they were Gholson's, and Ned Ferry's
+for Charlotte. &quot;Captain, may I go and bring her--tell her what you say,
+and bring her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think she'd come? She'd have gone to Ship Island if I had caught
+her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know she'll come.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish she would; she could 'bear a message and a token,' as the song
+says.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She came. I met her outside the door, and for a moment I feared she
+would come no farther. &quot;How can I, Richard! Oh, how can I?&quot; she
+whispered; &quot;this is my doing!&quot; But presently she stood at the bedside
+calm and compassionate, in the dark dress and limp hat of two nights
+before. The dying man's eyes were lustrous with gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have one or two things,&quot; he said, after a few words of greeting,
+&quot;that I'd like to send home--to my mother--and my wife; some
+trifles--and a message or two; if I--if--if I--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will you let me take them?&quot; Charlotte asked. I did not see or hear what
+they were; Gholson beckoned me into the hall. He did not whisper; there
+are some people, you know, who can never exercise enough
+self-suppression to whisper; he mumbled. He admitted the dying had some
+rights, but--he feared the delay might result unfortunately; wanted me
+to tell Charlotte so, and was sure I was ever so wrong to ask to have
+Ned Ferry awakened for the common incident of a prisoner's death; he
+would let him know the moment he awoke.</p>
+
+<p>When I came back into the room the captive had asked Charlotte to pray.
+&quot;Tisn't that I'm--the least bit afraid,&quot; he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no,&quot; she responded, wiping his brow, &quot;why should you be? Dying
+isn't nearly so fearful a thing as living. I'd rather, now, you'd pray
+for me; I'm such an unbeliever--in the beliefs, I mean, the beliefs the
+church people think we can't get on without. My religion is scarcely
+anything but longings and strivings&quot;--she sadly smiled--&quot;longings and
+strivings and hopes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet you wouldn't--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Part with it? Oh, not for the world beside!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Neither would I--with mine.&quot; The soldier folded his hands in
+supplication. &quot;Neither would I--though mine, O Lord--is only
+the--old-fashioned sort--for whose beliefs our fathers--used to kill one
+another; God have mercy--on them--and us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a great stillness. Against the bedside Charlotte had sunk to
+her knees, and under the broad brim of her Leghorn hat leaned her brow
+upon her folded hands. Thus, presently, she spoke again.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXIX" id="XXXIX">XXXIX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>CHARLOTTE SINGS</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know, Captain,&quot; she said, &quot;that we can't have longings, strivings, or
+hopes, without beliefs; beliefs are what they live on. I believe in
+being strong and sweet and true for the pure sake of being so; and yet
+more for the world's sake; and as much more again for God's sake as God
+is greater than his works. I believe in beauty and in joy. I believe
+they are the goal of all goodness and of all God's work and wish. As to
+resurrection, punishment, and reward, I can't see what my noblest choice
+has to do with them; they seem to me to be God's part of the matter;
+mine is to love perfect beauty and perfect joy, both in and infinitely
+beyond myself, with the desiring love with which I rejoice to believe
+God loves them, and to pity the lack of them with the loving pity with
+which God pities it. And above all I believe that no beauty and no joy
+can be perfect apart from a love that loves the whole world's joy better
+than any separate joy of any separate soul.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; was murmured from the pillow. Then, as Charlotte once more
+wiped the damp brow, the captive said, with much labor, &quot;After that--war
+seems--an awful thing. I suppose it isn't half so much a crime--as it is
+a--penalty--for the crimes that bring it on. But anyhow--you
+know--being--&quot; The bugle rang out the reveill&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Being a soldier,&quot; said Charlotte, &quot;you want to die like one?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, oh, yes!--the best I can. I'd like to sit half up--and hold my
+sword--if there's--no objection. I've loved it so! It would almost be
+like holding--the hand that's far away. Of course, it isn't really
+necessary, but--it would be more like--dying--for my country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his
+hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing
+from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts
+had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled
+close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of
+Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly:
+&quot;Dying--really?&quot; He turned to his fellows--&quot;Boys, Captain's dying.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Every Northern eye was lifted to the window and I turned away.
+&quot;Richard!&quot; gently called Charlotte, and I saw the end was at hand; a new
+anguish was on the brow; yet the soldier was asking for a song; &quot;a
+soldier's song, will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Captain,&quot; she replied, &quot;you know, we don't sing the same words to
+our soldier-songs that you do--except in the hymns. Shall I sing 'Am I a
+soldier of the cross?'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer promptly; but when he did he said &quot;Yes--sing that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She sang it. As the second stanza was begun we heard a responsive swell
+grow softly to fuller and fuller volume beneath the windows; the
+prisoners were singing. I heard an austere voice forbid it, but it rose
+straight on from strength to strength:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure I must fight if I would win,
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Increase my courage, Lord.<br />
+I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Supported by thy word.&quot;<br />
+
+</p><p>The dying man lifted a hand and Charlotte ceased. He had not heard the
+muffled chorus of his followers below; or it may be that he had, and
+that the degree of liberty they seemed to be enjoying prompted him to
+seek the new favor he now asked. I did not catch his words, but
+Charlotte heard, and answered tenderly, yet with a thrill of pain so
+keen she could not conceal it even from him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! you wouldn't ask a rebel to sing that,&quot; she sighed, &quot;would you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He made no rejoinder except that his eyes were insistent. She wiped his
+temples. &quot;I hate to refuse you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His gaze was grateful. She spoke again: &quot;I suppose I oughtn't to mind
+it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Harper came in, and Charlotte, taking her hand without a glance,
+told the Captain's hard request under her voice. Miss Harper, too, in
+her turn, gave a start of pain, but when the dying eyes and smile turned
+pleadingly to her she said, &quot;Why, if you can, Charlotte, dear, but oh!
+how can you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte addressed the wounded man: &quot;Just a little bit of it, will that
+do?&quot; and as he eagerly assented she added, to Miss Harper, &quot;You know,
+dear, in its history it's no more theirs than ours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not so much,&quot; said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and
+thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing:</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?&quot;<br />
+
+<p>But guardedly as she began, the effect on the huddled crowd below was
+instant and electrical. They heard almost the first note; looking down
+anxiously, I saw the wonder and enthusiasm pass from man to man. They
+heard the first two lines in awed, ecstatic silence; but at the third,
+warily, first one, then three, then a dozen, then a score, bereft of
+arms, standard, and leader, little counting ever again to see freedom,
+flag, or home, they raised their voices, by the dawn's early light, in
+their song of songs.</p>
+
+<p>Our main body were out in the highway, just facing into column, and the
+effect on them I could not see. The prisoners' guards, though instantly
+ablaze with indignation, were so taken by surprise that for two or three
+seconds, with carbines at a ready, they--and even their sergeant in
+command--only darted fierce looks here and there and up at me. The
+prisoners must have been used to singing in ordered chorus, for one of
+them strode into their middle, and smiling sturdily at the maddened
+guard and me, led the song evenly. &quot;No, sir!&quot; he cried, as I made an
+angry sign for them to desist, &quot;one verse through, if every damned fool
+of us dies for it--let the Captain hear it boys--sing!</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;'The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air--'&quot;<br />
+
+<p>Charlotte had ceased, in consternation not for the conditions without
+more than for those within. With the first strong swell of the song from
+below, the dying leader strove to sit upright and to lift his blade, but
+failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss
+Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching
+his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face
+untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into and over
+the strain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Club that man over the head!&quot; cried the sergeant of the guard, and one
+of his men swung a gun; but the Yankee sprang inside of its sweep,
+crying, &quot;Sing her through, boys!&quot; grappled his opponent, and hurled him
+back. In the same instant the sergeant called steadily, &quot;Guard,
+ready--aim--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There sounded a clean slap of levelled carbines, yet from the prisoners
+came the continued song in its closing couplet:</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;The star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave!--&quot;<br />
+
+<p>and out of the midst of its swell the oaths and curses and defiant
+laughter of a dozen men crying, with tears in their eyes, &quot;Shoot! shoot!
+why don't you shoot?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the command to fire did not come; suddenly there was a drumming of
+hoofs, then their abrupt stoppage, and the voice of a vigilant commander
+called, &quot;Attention!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With a few words to the sergeant, more brief than harsh, and while the
+indomitable singers pressed on to the very close of the stanza without a
+sign from him to desist, Ferry bade the subaltern resume his command,
+and turned toward me at the window. He lifted his sword and spoke in a
+lowered tone, the sullen guard stood to their arms, and every captive
+looked up for my reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shall I come?&quot; he inquired; but I shook my head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!--gone?&quot; he asked again, and I nodded. He turned and trotted
+lightly after the departing column. I remember his pensive mien as he
+moved down the grove, and how a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above
+his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender
+mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and
+let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his
+place under the window and was beckoning for my attention.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she coming?&quot; he called up, and Charlotte, at my side, spoke
+downward:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall be with you in a moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>While he waited the second lieutenant of the Louisianians came, and as
+guard and prisoners started away she came out upon the veranda steps.
+Across her knee, as she and Gholson galloped off by a road across
+fields, lay in a wrapping of corn-husks the huge sabre of the dead
+northerner.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XL" id="XL">XL</a></h2>
+<p><strong>HARRY LAUGHS</strong></p>
+
+<p>The first hush of the deserted camp-ground was lost in the songs of
+returning birds. Captain Jewett, his majestic length blanket-bound from
+brow to heel as trimly as a bale, had been laid under ground, and the
+Harpers stood in prayer at the grave's head and foot with hats on for
+their journey. The burial squad, turned guard of honor to the dead
+captain of the Louisianians, were riding away on either side of a light
+wagon that bore his mortal part. I, after all, was to be the Harpers'
+guardian on their way.</p>
+
+<p>Day widened into its first perfection as we moved down the highroad
+toward a near fork whose right was to lead Harry and his solemn cort&eacute;ge
+southward, while the left should be our eastward course. Camille and I
+rode horseback, side by side, with no one near enough to smile at my
+sentimental laudations of the morning's splendors, or at her for
+repaying my eloquence with looks so full of tender worship, personal
+acceptance and self-bestowal, that to tell of them here would make as
+poor a show as to lift a sea-flower out of the sea; they call for
+piccolo notes and I am no musician.</p>
+
+<p>The familiar little leather-curtained wagon was just ahead of us,
+bearing the other three Harpers, the old negro driver and--to complete
+its overloading--his daughter, Charlotte's dark maid. Beside the wheels
+ambled and babbled Harry Helm. At the bridge he fell back to us and
+found us talking of Charlotte. Camille was telling me how well Charlotte
+knew the region south of us, and how her plan was to dine at mid-day
+with such a friend and to pass the night with such another; but the
+moment Harry came up she began to upbraid him in her mellowest
+flute-notes for not telling us that he had got his wound in saving--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, you ladies--&quot; cried the teased aide-de-camp, &quot;I--I didn't save
+Gholson's life! I didn't try to save it! I only tried to split a
+Yankee's head and didn't even do that! Dick Smith, if you tell anybody
+else that I saved--Well, who did, then? Good Lordy! if I'd known that to
+save a man's life would make all this fuss I wouldn't 'a' done it! Why,
+Quinn and I had to sit and listen to Ned Ferry a solid half-hour last
+night, telling us the decent things he'd known Gholson to do, and the
+allowances we'd ought to make for a man with Gholson's sort of a
+conscience! And then, to cap--to clap--to clap the ki'--to cap--the
+<em>climax</em>--consound that word, I never did know what it meant--to clap
+the climax, Ned sends for Gholson and gets Quinn to speak to him
+civilly--aw, haw, haw!--Quinn showing all the time how he hated the job,
+like a cat when you make him jump over a stick! And then he led us on,
+with just a word here and there, until we all agreed as smooth as glass,
+that all Quinn had said was my fault, and all I had done was Gholson's
+fault, and all Gholson had said or done or left undone was our fault,
+and the rest was partly Ned's fault, but mostly accident.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Camille declared she did not and would not believe there had been any
+fault with any one, anywhere, and especially with Mr. Gholson, and I
+liked Lieutenant Helm less than ever, noticing anew the unaccountable
+freedom with which Camille seemed to think herself entitled to rebuke
+him. &quot;Oh, I'm in your power,&quot; he cried to her, &quot;and I'll call him a
+spotless giraffe if you want me to! that's what he is; I've always
+thought so!&quot; The spring-wagon was taking the left fork and he cantered
+ahead to begin his good-byes there and save her for the last. When he
+made his adieu to her he said, &quot;Won't you let Mr. Smith halt here with
+me a few moments? I want to speak of one or two matters that--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She resigned me almost with scorn; which privately amused me, and, I
+felt sure, hoodwinked the aide-de-camp.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, Dick!&quot; he began, as she moved away, &quot;look here, I'm going to tell
+you something; Ned Ferry's in love with Charlotte Oliver!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't mean it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I do, mean it! Smith, Ned's a grand fellow. I'm glad I came here
+yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you've secured a furlough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, this thing, yes; don't you wish you had it! No, I'm glad I came,
+for what I've learned. I'm glad for what Ned Ferry has taught me a man
+can do, and keep from doing, when he's got the upper hold of himself.
+And I'm glad for what she--you know who--by George! any man would know
+who ever saw her, for she draws every man who comes within her range, as
+naturally as a rose draws a bee. I'm glad for what she has taught me a
+woman can <em>be</em>, and can keep from being, so long as she knows there's
+one real man to live up to! just <em>up to</em>, mind you, I don't even say to
+live <em>for</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stared with surprise. Was this the trivial Harry talking? Fact is, the
+pair we were talking about had by some psychical magic rarified the
+atmosphere for all of us until half our notes were above our
+normal pitch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mean she loves him; what sign of such a thing did she show
+yesterday or last evening?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a sign of a sign! And yet I'll swear it! Do you know where she's
+gone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-day? I think I do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Lieutenant, if I were she, <em>I</em> should go straight into the Yankee
+lines behind Port Hudson. She's got Jewett's messages and his sword, and
+the Yank's won't know her as a Confederate any better than they ever
+did; for it's only these men whom we've captured who have found out
+she's Charlotte Oliver, or that she had any knowing part in General
+Austin's ruse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If Oliver doesn't tell,&quot; said Harry, lifting his bad hand in pain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He will not dare! If she can only get her word in first and tell them,
+herself, that he's Charlotte Oliver's husband and has just led the
+finest company of Federal scouts in the two States to destruction--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hi! that ought to cook his dough!--with her face--and her voice!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I responded, &quot;--and his breath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And why do you think she wants to do this?&quot; asked Harry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She doesn't want to do it; but she feels she must, knowing that every
+blow he strikes from now on is struck on her account. I believe she's
+gone to warn the Yankees that his whole animus is personal revenge and
+that he will sacrifice anything or anybody, any principle or pledge or
+cause, at any moment, to wreak that private vengeance, in whole or
+in part.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick Smith, yes! But don't you see, besides, what she <em>does</em> want? Why,
+she wants to keep Oliver and Ferry apart until somebody else for whom
+she doesn't care as she cares for Ned, say you, or I, or--or--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson, no! she can't trust Gholson, Gholson's conscience is too
+vindictive; that's why she's keeping him with her as long as she can.
+No, but until some of us, I say, can give Oliver a thousand times better
+than he ought ever to get--except for her sake--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you mean a soldier's clean death; and what you want of me is for
+me to say that I, for one, will lose no honest chance to give it to him,
+isn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I want of you, Smith, is to tell you that <em>I</em> shall lose no such
+chance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, neither shall I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bully for you, Dick; bully boy with the glass eye! You see, you're one
+of only half a dozen or so that know Oliver when they see him; so Ned
+will soon be sending you after him. Ned's got a conscience, too, you
+know, as squirmy as Gholson's. Oh, Lord! yes, you don't often <em>see</em> it,
+but it's as big and hard as a conscript's ague-cake.&quot; The Lieutenant
+gathered his rein; &quot;Smith, I want Ned and her to get one another;
+that's me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was tempted to say it was me, too, but I forbore and only said it was
+I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All the same,&quot; said Harry, &quot;I'm sorry for the little girl!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Little girl?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, come, now, you know!&quot; He leaned to me and whispered, &quot;Miss C&eacute;cile!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant,&quot; I replied, with a flush, realizing what I owed to the
+family as a prospective member of it, &quot;you're mistaking a little
+patriotic ardor--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pat who--oh? I tell you, my covey,--and of course, you understand, I
+wouldn't breathe it any further--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd rather you would not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Phew-ew! I don't know why in the devil <em>you'd</em> rather I would not,
+but--Smith,--she's so dead-gone in love with Ned Ferry, that if she
+doesn't get him--I George! it'll e'en a'most kill her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I guffawed in derision. &quot;And she didn't even have to tell you so! She
+can't even hide its deadly intensity from the casual bystander! haw!
+haw! haw! And it's all the outcome of a <em>three-days acquaintance</em>! It
+beats Doctor Swiftgrow's Mustache Invigor'--aw, haw! haw!&quot; &quot;Oh, you
+think so? Pity you couldn't get a few barrels of it--aw, haw! haw!&quot; said
+Harry, and my laughter left off where his began. But, some way hurting
+his hand, he, too, stopped short. I drew my horse back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that all you've noticed?&quot; I smilingly inquired. &quot;Isn't anybody else
+mortally in love with anybody else? You can't make me believe that's all
+you know!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, then, I sha'n't try. I do know one thing more; heard it
+yesterday. Like to hear it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Like! Why, I'm just that dead-gone with curiosity that if I don't hear
+it it'll e'en a'most kill me--aw, haw! haw! haw!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'm tired saving people's lives, but we won't count this one; you
+say you want to hear it--I can't give you all of it but it begins:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair!
+&nbsp;&nbsp;O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!'--<br />
+
+</p><p>&quot;Haw! haw! haw! Good-bye, Smith,--aw, haw! haw! haw!--and it's all the
+outcome of a three-days acquaintance!--haw! haw! haw!--Oh,
+say!--Smith!&quot;--I was leaving him--&quot;that's right, go back and begin
+over!--'Return! return!'--aw, haw! haw! haw!&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLI" id="XLI">XLI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>UNIMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIAL</strong></p>
+
+<p>On the second night after that morning of frantic mortification I was
+riding at Ned Ferry's side, in Louisiana. The camp of the brigade was a
+few miles behind us. Somewhere in front of us, fireless and close hid,
+lay our company of scouts, ahead of whose march he had pushed the day
+before to confer with the General, and we were now on our way to rejoin
+them. Under our horses' feet was that old Plank-road which every
+&quot;buttermilk ranger&quot; must remember--whether dead or not, I am tempted to
+say,--who rode under either flag in the Felicianas in '63 and '64.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the evening of the day on which I had conducted the Harpers to
+Squire Wall's I had received a despatch ordering me to board the next
+morning's train at Brookhaven with my horse. On it I should find a
+number of cases of those shoes I had seen at Hazlehurst. At Tangipahoa I
+was to transfer them to one or two army-wagons which would by that time
+have reached there, and bring them across to Clinton, where a guard
+would meet and join me to conduct the wagons to camp. And thus I had
+done, bearing with me a sad vision of dear dark Miss Harper fluttering
+her handkerchief above her three nieces' heads, one of whom refrained
+until the opportunity had all but gone, to wave good-bye to the visibly
+wretched author of &quot;Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes.&quot; My
+lucky Cricket had gone three nights and two whole days with no harness
+but his halter, and to-night, beside the Yankee's horse, that still bore
+Ned Ferry, he was as good as new. My leader and I talked of Charlotte.
+In the middle of this day's forenoon Gholson had come into camp
+reporting at the General's tent the long ride she had made on Monday; as
+good a fifty miles as Ferry's own. We called it, now, Ferry and I, a
+most clever achievement for a woman. &quot;Many women,&quot; he said, &quot;know how to
+ride, but she knows how to march.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you must have taught her,&quot; I responded, and he enjoyed his
+inability to deny it. So I ventured farther and said she seemed to me
+actually to have reached, in the few days since I had first seen her, a
+finer spiritual stature.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She?&quot; he asked; &quot;ah! she is of the kind that must grow or die. Yes, you
+may be right; but in that time she has kept me so occupied growing,
+myself, that I did not notice she was doing the same. But also, I think,
+the eyes with which we look at her have grown.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has outgrown this work,&quot; I insisted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Those letters--to the newspapers?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, this other; this work which she has to do by craft and wiles and
+disguises. Lieutenant, I don't believe she can go on doing that now with
+her past skill, since life has become to her a nobler story than it
+promised to be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My companion lifted higher in the saddle with delight. Then soberly he
+said, &quot;We have got to lose her.&quot; I turned inquiringly and he continued:
+&quot;She has done me the honor to tell me--Miss Harper and me--that if she
+succeeds in what she is now trying to do--you know?--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I do. It's to prevent Oliver from making himself useful to the
+enemy, isn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well--like that; and she says if she comes out all right she will leave
+us; yes, for the hospital service.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hosp'--Oh--oh! gangrene, typhoid, lock-jaw, itch, small-pox! Isn't she
+deep enough in the hospital service already, with her quinine dolls?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! but she cannot continue to play dolls that way; she must find
+something else. I see you have my temptation; yes, the desire to see her
+always doing something splendid. That is not 'real life,' as you call
+it. And besides, was not that you said one time to me 'No splendor
+shines at last so far as a hidden splendor'?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir! I suppose it's true, but I never want to see her splendor
+shining through pock-marks.&quot; The reply won from him a gesture of
+approval, and this gave me a reckless tongue. &quot;Why, if I were you,
+Lieutenant, she simply shouldn't go! Good Heaven! isn't she far enough
+away at the nearest? How can you tamely--no, I don't mean tamely,
+but--how can you <em>endure</em> to let this matter drift--how can you
+endure it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of my question he straightened exactly as I had seen
+him do in the middle of the lane when our recoiled column was
+staggering; but as my extravagance flamed up he quieted rebukingly, and
+with a quieter smile than ever asked &quot;Is that a soldier's question?
+Smith, is there not something wrong with you to-night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There always is,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, but to-night I think you are taking that 'lower fork' you talk
+sometimes about. Of course, if you don't want to tell--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>May</em> I tell you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, certainly! Is it that little Harper girl?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I nodded, all choked up. When I could speak I had to drop the words by
+ones and twos, and did not so much as say them as let them bleed from my
+lips; and never while I live shall I forget the sweet, grave, perfect
+sympathy with which my friend listened and led me on, and listened and
+led me on. I said I had never believed in love at first sight until now
+when it had come upon me to darken and embitter my life henceforth.</p>
+
+<p>He replied that certainly love sometimes <em>germinated</em> at first sight,
+and I interrupted greedily that that was all I claimed--except that love
+could also, at times, <em>grow to maturity</em> with amazing speed, a speed I
+never could have credited previous to these last four days. And he
+admitted as much, but thought time only could prove such love; whereto I
+rejoined that that was what she had answered.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at me suddenly, then smoothed his horse's mane, and said,
+gently, &quot;That means you have declared yourself to her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I confessed I had, and told him how, on our journey to Squire Wall's,
+being stung to desperation by the infantile way in which she had drooled
+out to others what my love had sacredly confided to her alone, I had
+abruptly confronted her with the fact, and in the ensuing debate,
+carried away by the torrent of my emotions, had offered her my love, for
+life and all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And she--ah, yes. I see; and I see, too, that in all she ever said or
+did or seemed, before, she never made herself such a treasure to be
+longed for and fought and lived for as in the way in which she--&quot;
+He paused.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Refused me! Oh, it's so; it's so! Ah! if you could have witnessed her
+dignity, her wisdom, her grace, her compassionate immovableness, you'd
+never think of her as the little Harper girl again. She said that if the
+unpremeditated, headlong way in which I had told my passion were my only
+mistake, and if it were only for my sake, she would not, if she could,
+answer favorably, and that I, myself, at last, would not have a girl who
+would have a man who would offer his love in that way, and that she
+would not have a man who would have a girl who would have a man who
+should offer his love in that way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I call it one of the sweetest kindnesses ever done me, that Ned Ferry
+heard me to the end of that speech and did not smile. Instead he asked
+&quot;Did she say that as if a'--as if--amused?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Lieutenant, she nearly cried. Oh, I wish we were on some dangerous
+errand to-night, instead of just camp and bed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, that's all right, Richard; we are.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLII" id="XLII">XLII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>&quot;CAN I GET THERE BY CANDLE-LIGHT?&quot;</strong></p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes we quitted the public way by an obscure path in the
+woods on our right. When we had followed this for two or three miles we
+turned to the left again and pressed as softly as we could into a low
+tangled ground where the air seemed stagnant and mosquitoes stung
+savagely. We wiped away the perspiration in streams. I pushed forward to
+Ferry's side and whispered my belief that at last we were to see rain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;and with thunder and lightning; just what we want
+to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I asked why. &quot;Oh, they hate our thunder-storms, those Yankee patrols.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Presently we were in a very dark road, and at a point where it dropped
+suddenly between steep sides we halted in black shadow. A gleam of pale
+sand, a whisper of deep flowing waters, and a farther glimmer of more
+sands beyond them challenged our advance. We had come to a &quot;grapevine
+ferry.&quot; The scow was on the other side, the water too shoal for the
+horses to swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the
+blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering,
+long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little
+sinner the screech-owl. Ferry murmured to me to answer it and I sent the
+same faint horror-stricken tremolo back. Again it came to us, from not
+farther than one might toss his cap, and I followed Ferry down to the
+water's edge. The grapevine guy swayed at our side, we heard the scow
+slide from the sands, and in a few moments, moved by two videttes, it
+touched our shore. Soon we were across, the two videttes riding with us,
+and beyond a sharp rise, in an old opening made by the swoop of a
+hurricane, we entered the silent unlighted bivouac of Ferry's scouts.
+Ferry got down and sat on the earth talking with Quinn, while the
+sergeants quietly roused the sleepers to horse.</p>
+
+<p>Now we marched, and when we had gone a mile or so Ned Ferry turned
+aside, taking with him only Sergeant Jim, Kendall, another private, and
+me. We went at an alert walk single-file for the better part of an hour
+and stopped at length in a narrow untilled &quot;deadening.&quot; Beyond it at our
+left a faint redness shone just above the tree-tops. At our right, in
+the northwest, a similar glow was ruddier, the heavens being darker
+there except when once or twice they paled with silent lightnings.
+Sergeant Jim went forward alone and on foot, and presently was back
+again, whispering to Ferry and remounting.</p>
+
+<p>Ferry led Kendall and me into the woods, the other two remaining. We
+found rising ground, and had ridden but a few minutes when from its
+crest we looked upon a startling sight. In front of us was a stretch of
+specially well farmed land. Our woods swept round it on both sides,
+crossed a highway, and gradually closed in again so as to terminate the
+opening about half a mile away. Always the same crops, bottom cause of
+the war: from us to the road an admirable planting of cotton, and from
+there to the farther woods as goodly a show of thick corn. The whole
+acreage swept downward to that terminus, at the same time sinking inward
+from the two sides. On the highway shone the lighted rear window of a
+roadside &quot;store,&quot; and down the two sides of the whole tract stretched
+the hundred tent-fires of two brigade camps of the enemy's cavalry.
+Their new, white canvases were pitched in long, even alleys following
+the borders of the wood, from which the brush had been cut away far
+enough for half of them to stand under the trees. The men had quieted
+down to sleep, but at one tent very near us a group of regimental
+officers sat in the light of a torch-basket, and by them were planted
+their colors. A quartet of capital voices were singing, and one who
+joined the chorus, standing by the flag, absently yet caressingly spread
+it at such breadth that we easily read on it the name of the command.
+Let me leave that out.</p>
+
+<p>As they sang, and as we sat in our saddles behind the low fence that ran
+quite round the opening, Ferry turned from looking across into the
+lighted window on the road and handed me his field-glass. &quot;How many
+candles do you see in there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw two. &quot;Yes,&quot; he said, dismounting and motioning me to do the same.
+Kendall took our bridles. Leaving him with the animals we went over the
+fence, through the cotton, across the road at a point terribly near the
+lighted and guarded shop, and on down the field of corn, to and over its
+farthest fence; stooping, gliding, halting, crouching, in the
+cotton-rows and corn-rows; taking every posture two upright gentlemen
+would rather not take; while nevertheless I swelled with pride, to be
+alone at the side--or even at the heels--of one who, for all this
+apparent skulking and grovelling, and in despite of all the hidden
+drawings of his passion for a fair woman at this hour somewhere in
+peril, kept his straight course in lion-hearted pursuit of his duty (as
+he saw it) to a whole world of loves and lovers, martyrs and fighters,
+hosts of whom had as good a right to their heart's desire as I to mine
+or he to his; and I remembered Charlotte Oliver saying, on her knees, &quot;I
+believe no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart from a love that loves
+the whole world's joy better than any separate joy of any
+separate soul.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLIII" id="XLIII">XLIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>&quot;YES, AND BACK AGAIN&quot;</strong></p>
+
+<p>One matter of surprise to me was that this whole property had escaped
+molestation. I wondered who could be so favored by the enemy and yet be
+so devoted to our cause as to signal us from his window with their
+sentinels at his doors; and as we passed beyond the cornfield's farther
+fence I ventured to ask Ferry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aaron Goldschmidt,&quot; he whispered, as we descended into a dry, tangled
+swamp. In the depths of this wild, beside a roofed pen of logs stored
+with half a dozen bales of cotton, we were presently in the company of a
+very small man who tossed a hand in token of great amusement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, Ned!&quot; he whispered in antic irony; &quot;what an accident is dat,
+meeding so! Whoever is expecting someding like dis!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I hope nobody, Isidore; I hardly expected it myself, your father
+set those candles so close the one behind the other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Isidore doubled with mirth and as suddenly straightened. &quot;Your horse is
+here since yesterday. <em>She</em> left him--by my father. She didn't t'ink t'e
+Yankees is going to push away out here to-night. But he is a pusher,
+t'at Grierson! You want him to-night, t'at horse? He is here by me, but
+I t'ink you best not take him, hmm? To cross t'e creek and go round t'e
+ot'er way take you more as all night; and to go back t'is same way you
+come, even if I wrap him up in piece paper you haven't got a lawch
+insite pocket you can carry him?&quot; He laughed silently and the next
+instant was more in earnest than ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>She</em> is in a tight place! She hires my mother's pony to ride in to
+headquarters.&quot; He called them hatekvartuss, but we need not. &quot;I t'ink
+she is not a prisoner--<em>unless</em>--she wants to come back.&quot; He doubled
+again. &quot;Anyhow, I wish you can see her to-night; she got another
+doll-baby for t'e gildren, and she give you waluable informations by de
+hatfull.... Find her? I tell you how you find her in finfty-nine
+minutes--vedder permitting, t'at is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The last phrase was fitted to a listening pose, and the first mutter of
+the pending thunder-storm came out of the northwest. Then Isidore
+hastened through the practical details of his proposition. Ferry drew a
+breath of enthusiasm. &quot;Can I have my horse, bridled and saddled, in
+three minutes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I pring um in two!&quot; said Isidore, and vanished. Ferry turned with an
+overmastering joy in every note of his whispered utterance. &quot;After all!&quot;
+he said, and I could have thrown my arms around him in pure delight to
+hear duty and heart's desire striking twelve together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; he asked, &quot;can you start back without me? Then go at once; I
+shall overtake you on my horse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stole through the cornfield safely; the frequent lightnings were still
+so well below the zenith as to hide me in a broad confusion of monstrous
+shadows. But when I came to cross the road no crouching or gliding would
+do. I must go erect and only at the speed of some ordinary official
+errand. So I did, at a point between two opposite fence-gaps, closely
+after an electric gleam, and I was rejoicing in the thick darkness that
+followed, when all at once the whole landscape shone like day and I
+stood in the middle of the road, in point-blank view of a small squad, a
+&quot;visiting patrol&quot;. They were trotting toward me in the highway, hardly a
+hundred yards off. As the darkness came again and the thunder crashed
+like falling timbers, I started into the cotton-field at an easy
+double-quick. The hoofs of one horse quickened to a gallop. A strong
+wind swept over, big rain-drops tapped me on the shoulder and pattered
+on the cotton-plants, the sound of the horse's galloping ceased as he
+turned after me in the soft field, and presently came the quiet call
+&quot;Halt, there, you on foot.&quot; I went faster. I knew by my pursuer's
+coming alone that he did not take me for a Confederate, and that the
+worst I should get, to begin with, would be the flat of his sabre.
+Shrewdly loading my tongue with that hard northern <em>r</em> which I hated
+more than all unrighteousness, I called back &quot;Oh, I'm under orders! go
+halt some fool who's got time to halt!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I obliqued as if bound for the headquarters fire where we had seen the
+singers, the lightning branched over the black sky like tree-roots, the
+thunder crashed and pounded again, the wind stopped in mid-career, and
+the rain came straight down in sheets. &quot;Halt!&quot; yelled the horseman. He
+lifted his blade, but I darted aside and doubled, and as he whirled
+around after me, another rider, meeting him and reining in at such close
+quarters that the mud flew over all three of us, lifted his hand
+and said--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is right, sergeant, he is carrying out my orders.&quot; Ferry's black
+silk handkerchief about his neck covered his Confederate bars of rank,
+and the Federal may or may not have noted the absence of
+shoulder-straps; our arms remained undrawn; and so the sergeant,
+catching a breath or two of disconcertion, caught nothing else. While
+Ferry spoke on for another instant I showed my heels; then he left the
+dripping Yankee mouthing an angry question and loped after me, and over
+the low fence went the two of us almost together.</p>
+
+<p>Kendall was not there, the Federal camp-makers had tardily repaired
+their blunder by posting guards; but these were not looking for their
+enemies from the side of their own camp, and as we cleared the fence in
+the full blaze of a lightning flash, only two or three wild shots sang
+after us. In the black downpour Ferry reached me an invisible hand. I
+leapt astride his horse's croup, and trusting the good beast to pick his
+way among the trees himself, we sped away. Soon we came upon our three
+men waiting with the horses, and no great while afterward the five of us
+rejoined our command. The storm lulled to mild glimmerings and a gentle
+shower, and the whole company, in one long single file, began to sweep
+hurriedly, stealthily, and on a wide circuit of obscurest byways, deeper
+than ever into the enemy's lines.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLIV" id="XLIV">XLIV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>CHARLOTTE IN THE TENTS OF THE FOE</strong></p>
+
+<p>From certain rank signs of bad management in the Federal camp one could
+easily guess that our circuit was designed to bring us around to its
+rear. That a colonel's tent--the one where the singers were--was not
+where the colonel's tent belonged was a trifle, but the slovenliness
+with which the forest borders of the camp were guarded was a graver
+matter. Evidently those troops were at least momentarily in unworthy
+hands, and I was so remarking to Kendall when a murmured command came
+back from Ferry, to tell Dick Smith to stop that whispering. I was
+sorry, for I wanted to add that I knew we were not going to attack the
+camp itself. That was on Wednesday night. Charlotte and Gholson had
+made their ride of fifty miles on Monday. The friends with whom she
+stopped at nightfall contrived to cram him into their crowded soldiers'
+room, and he had given the whole company of his room-mates, as they sat
+up in their beds, a full account of the fight at Sessions's, Charlotte's
+care of the sick and dying, and the singing, by her and the blue-coats,
+of their battle-song. Next morning Charlotte, without Gholson--who
+turned off to camp--rode on to Goldschmidt's store, just beyond which
+there was then still a Confederate picket. Here she hired Mrs.
+Goldschmidt's pony, rode to the picket, and presented the Coralie
+Rothvelt pass.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Coralie Rothvelt; yes, all right,&quot; said the officer, &quot;the men that
+rode with you this morning told me all about you.&quot; He went with her as
+far as his videttes, and thence she rode alone to a picket of the
+Federal army and by her request was conducted under guard to the
+headquarters of a corps commander. To him and his chief-of-staff she
+told the fate of Jewett's scouts and delivered the messages of their
+dying leader; and then she tendered the hero's sword.</p>
+
+<p>The staff-officer cut away its cornhusk wrapping and read aloud the
+owner's name on the hilt. The General laid the mighty weapon across his
+palm and sternly shut his lips. &quot;How did you get through the enemy's
+pickets with this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I had a Confederate general's pass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Is the Confederate general as nameless as yourself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not nameless; I only ask leave to withhold my name until I have
+told one or two other things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you don't mind confessing you're an out-and-out rebel sympathizer?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Under the broad-brimmed hat her smile grew to a sparkle. &quot;No, I enjoy
+it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The chief-of-staff smiled, but the General darkened and pressed his
+questions. At length he summed up. &quot;So, then, you wish me to believe
+that you did all you did, and now have come into our lines at a most
+extraordinary and exhausting speed and running the ugliest kinds of
+risks, in mere human sympathy for a dying stranger, he being a Union
+officer and you a secessionist of&quot;--a courtly bow--&quot;the very elect;
+that's your meaning, is it not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, General; in the first place, I am not one of any elect.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A flattering glimmer of amusement came into the two men's faces, but
+some change in Charlotte's manner arrested it and brought an enhanced
+deference.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the second place, I am not here merely on this errand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, General. And in the last place, my motive in this errand is no mere
+sympathy for any one person; I am here from a sense of public duty--&quot;
+The speaker seemed suddenly overtaken by emotions, dropped her words
+with pained evenness, and fingered the lace handkerchief in her lap.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardon,&quot; interrupted the General, &quot;the sunlight annoys you. Major, will
+you drop that curtain?&quot; &quot;Thank you. One thing I am here for, General,
+is to tell you something, and I have to begin by asking that neither of
+you will ever say how you learned it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The two men bowed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you. Please understand, also, I have never uttered this but to
+one friend, a lady. There was no need; I have not wanted aid or counsel,
+even from friends. But I feel duty bound to tell it to you, now,
+because, for one thing, the brave soldier who wore that sword--&quot; Her
+eyes rose to the weapon and fell again; she bit her lip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes--well--what of him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was lured to disaster and death by a man whose supreme purpose was,
+and is to-day, revenge upon me. That man drew him to his ruin purely in
+search of my life.&quot; Charlotte sat with her strange in-looking,
+out-looking gaze holding the gaze of her questioner until for relief
+he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, young lady, it's hard to doubt anything you say, but really that
+sounds rather fanciful. Why should you think it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not think it, I know it. He sends me his own assurance of it by
+his own father, so that his revenge may be fuller by my knowing daily
+and hourly that he is on my trail.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you appeal to me for protection?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled. &quot;No. I am not seeking to divert his fury from myself, but to
+confine it to myself. Fancy yourself a human-hearted woman, General, and
+murder being done day by day because you are alive.&quot; &quot;Oh, this is
+incredible! What is its occasion, its origin? How are you in any way
+responsible?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, largely I am not. Yet in degree I am, General, because of
+shortcomings of mine--faults--errors--that--oh--that have their bearing
+in the case, don't you see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I don't; pray don't ask me to draw inferences; I might infer too
+much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you might, easily,&quot; said Charlotte; &quot;for I only mean shortcomings
+of the kind we readily excuse in others though we never can or should
+pardon them in ourselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The General turned an arch smile of perplexity upon his chief-of-staff.
+&quot;I don't think we're quite up to that line of perpetual snow,
+Walter, are we?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The chief-of-staff &quot;guessed they were not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte resumed. &quot;I have come to you in the common interest, to warn
+you against that man. I believe he is on his way here to offer his
+services as a guide. He is fearless, untiring, and knows all this region
+by heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Union man, I take it, is he not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he's Federal, Confederate or guerilla as it may suit his bloody
+ends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you want me not to make use of him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, more than that; I want him stopped!--stopped from killing and
+burning on his and my private account. But I want much more than that,
+too. I know how you commonly stop such men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We hang them to the first tree.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, our side does the same. If I wanted such a fate to overtake him I
+should only have to let him alone. At risks too hideous to name I have
+saved him from it twice. I am here to-day chiefly to circumvent his
+purposes; but if I may do so in the way I wish to propose to you, I
+shall also save him once more. I am willing to save him--in that
+way--although by so doing I shall lose--fearfully.&quot; She dropped her
+glance and turned aside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do you propose to circumvent and yet save him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By getting you to send him so far to your own army's rear that he
+cannot get back; to compel him to leave the country; to go into your
+country, where law and order reign as they cannot here between
+the lines.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you consider that a reasonable request?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sir, I must make it! I can ask no less!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you say if this scheme works you lose by it. What will you lose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I may lose track of him! If I lose track of him I may have to go
+through a long life not knowing whether he is dead or alive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And suppose--why,--young lady, I thought you were unmarried. I--oh,
+what do you mean; is he--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte's head drooped and her hands trembled. &quot;Yes, by law and church
+decree he is my husband.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good Heaven!&quot; murmured the General, drew a breath, and folded his arms.
+&quot;But, madam! if a man <em>abandons</em> his wife--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I abandoned him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good for you!&quot; &quot;It was vital for me. But I did it on evidence which
+our laws ignore, the testimony of slaves. Oh, General, don't try to
+untangle me; only stop him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! madam, I'll do the little I can. How am I to know him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By a pistol-wound in his right hand, got last week. He would have got
+it in his brain but for my pleading. His name is Oliver.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oliver; hmm! any relation to Charlotte Oliver, your so called newspaper
+correspondent? I'd like to stop her.--How?--I don't quite hear you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am Charlotte Oliver.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The two officers glanced sharply at each other. When the General turned
+again he flushed resentfully. &quot;Have you never resumed your maiden name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, madam, tell me this! With a whole world of other people's names
+to choose from, why <em>have</em> you borrowed Charlotte Oliver's? Have you
+come here determined to be sent to prison, Miss Coralie Rothvelt?&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLV" id="XLV">XLV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>STAY TILL TO-MORROW</strong></p>
+
+<p>Charlotte did not move an eyelash. Gradually a happy confidence lighted
+her face. &quot;Freedom or prison is to me a secondary question. I came here
+determined to use only the truth. No wild creature loves to be free more
+than I do. I want to go back into our lines, and to go at once; but--I
+am Charlotte Oliver.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young lady, listen to me. I know your story is nearly all true. I know
+some good things about you which you have modestly left out; one of the
+rebels who stopped where you did last night and rode with you this
+morning was brought to me a prisoner half an hour ago. But he said your
+name was Rothvelt. How's that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unfortunately, General, my name is Charlotte Oliver. Two or three times
+I have had use for so much concealment as there was in the childish
+prank of turning my name wrong side out.&quot; The speaker made a sign to the
+chief-of-staff: &quot;Write the two names side by side and see if they
+are not one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was already doing so, and nodded laughingly to his superior.
+Charlotte spoke on. &quot;I tell you the truth only, gentlemen, though I tell
+you no more of it than I must. I have run many a risk to get the truth,
+and to get it early. If it is your suspicion that by so doing, or in any
+other way, I have forfeited a lady's liberty, let me hear and answer.
+If not--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I'll have to send you to the provost-martial at Baton Rouge and let
+you settle that with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no, General! By the name of the lady you love best, I beg you to
+see my need and let me go. I promise you never henceforth to offend your
+cause except in that mere woman's sympathy with what you call rebellion,
+for which women are not so much as banished by you--or if they are, then
+banish me! Treat me no better, and no worse, than a 'registered enemy'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The General shook his head. &quot;Your registration has been in the open
+field of military action; sometimes, I fear, between the lines. At least
+it has been with your pen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;General, I have laid down the pen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed! to take up what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The spoon!&quot; said Charlotte, with that smile which no man ever wholly
+resisted. &quot;I leave the sword and its questions to my brother man, in the
+blue and in the gray--God save it!--and have pledged myself to the gray,
+to work from now on only under the yellow flag of mercy and healing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, of course; mercy--and comfort--and every sort of unarmed aid--to
+rebels.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To the men you call so, yes. Yet I pledge you, General, to deal as
+tenderly with every man in blue who comes within range of my care as I
+did with Captain Jewett.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I know you did even better than you've told me, but I'd be a fool
+to send you back on the instant, so. Stay till to-morrow or next day.&quot;
+The captor smiled. &quot;Major, I think we owe the lady that much
+hospitality.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Major thought so, and that she must need a day's rest, more than she
+realized. She could be made in every way comfortable--under guard at
+&quot;Mr. Gilmer's.&quot; The Gilmers were Unionists, whose fine character had
+been their only protection through two years of ostracism, yet he
+believed they would treat her well. &quot;Oh! not there, please,&quot; said
+Charlotte; &quot;I hear they are to give some of your officers a dance
+to-morrow evening!&quot; and there followed a parley that called forth all
+her playfullest tact. &quot;Oh, no,&quot; she said, at one critical point, &quot;I'm
+not so narrow or sour but I could dance with a blue uniform; but
+suppose--why, suppose one's friends in gray should catch one dancing
+with one's enemies in blue. Such things have happened, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It sha'n't happen to-morrow night,&quot; laughed the General.</p>
+
+<p>She offered to nurse the Federal sick, instead, in the command's
+field-hospital, but no, the General rose to end the interview. &quot;My dear
+young lady, the saintliest thing we can let you do is to dance at that
+merrymaking.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She rose. &quot;As a prisoner under guard, General, I can nurse the sick, but
+I will not dance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The General smiled. &quot;I'll take your parole.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! exact a parole from a woman?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good gracious, why shouldn't I! As for you,--ha!--I'd as soon turn a
+commissioned rebel officer loose in my camp unparoled as you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then take my parole! I give it! you have it! I'll take the chances.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the dances?&quot; asked the Major.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very good,&quot; said the General, &quot;you are now on parole. See the lady
+conducted to Squire Gilmer's, Major. And now, Miss--eh,--day after
+to-morrow morning I shall either pass you beyond my lines or else send
+you to Baton Rouge. Good-day.&quot; When Charlotte found herself alone in a
+room of the Gilmer house she lay down upon the bed staring and sighing
+with dismay; she was bound by a parole! If within its limit of time
+Oliver should appear, &quot;It will mean Baton Rouge for me!&quot; she cried under
+her breath, starting up and falling back again; &quot;Baton Rouge, New
+Orleans, Ship Island!&quot; She was in as feminine a fright as though she had
+never braved a danger. Suddenly a new distress overwhelmed her:
+if--if--someone to deliver her should come--&quot;Oh Heaven! I am
+paroled!--bound hand and foot by my insane parole!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Softly she sprang from the bed, paced the floor, went to the window,
+seemed to look out upon the landscape; but in truth she was looking in
+upon herself. There she saw a most unaccountable tendency for her
+judgment--after some long overstrain--momentarily, but all at once, to
+swoon, collapse, turn upside down like a boy's kite and dart to earth;
+an impulse--while fancying she was playing the supremely courageous or
+generous or clever part--suddenly to surrender the key of the situation,
+the vital point in whatever she might be striving for. &quot;Ah me, ah me!
+why did I give my parole?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the close of the next day--&quot;Walter,&quot; said the General as the
+chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--&quot;oh, thud
+devil!--you going to that dance?&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLVI" id="XLVI">XLVI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE DANCE AT GILMER'S</strong></p>
+
+<p>All the while that I recount these scenes there come to me soft
+orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking
+of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music
+which I heard first--and last--in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other
+so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the
+daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into
+a roof; wail and huzza, camp-fire, litter and grave; battlefield stench;
+fiddle and flame; and ever in the midst these impromptu merrymakings to
+keep us from going stark mad, one and all,--as so many literally did.</p>
+
+<p>The Gilmer daughters were fair, but they were only three, and the
+Gilmers were the sole Unionists in their neighborhood. &quot;Still, a few
+girls will come,&quot; said Charlotte, sparkling first blue and then black at
+a sparkling captain who said that, after all, the chief-of-staff had
+decided he couldn't attend. I know she sparkled first blue and then
+black, for she always did so when she told of it in later days.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They say,&quot; responded the captain, &quot;that in this handy little world
+there are always a few to whom policy is the best honesty; is that the
+few who will come?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are cynical,&quot; said Charlotte, &quot;this is only their unarmed way of
+saving house and home for the brothers to come back to when you are
+purged out of the land.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the time came there were partners for eight gallants, and the
+gallants numbered sixteen. They counted off by twos; the evens waited
+while the odds danced the half of each set, and then the odds waited and
+cooled, tried to cool, out on the veranda. But when a reel was called
+the whole twenty-four danced together, while the fiddler (from the
+contraband camp) improvised exultant words to his electrifying tunes.</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &quot;O <em>ladies</em> ramble in,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whilst de <em>beaux</em> ramble out,<br />
+For to guile<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> dat golden <em>cha--ain.</em>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My <em>Lawdy!</em> it's a sin<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Fo' a <em>fiddleh</em> not to shout!<br />
+Miss <em>Charlotte's</em> a-comin' down de <em>la--ane</em>!&quot;
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> Coil.</p>
+
+<p>Now the dance is off, but now it is on again, and again. The fiddler
+toils to finer and finer heights of enthusiasm; slippers twinkle,
+top-boots flash, the evens come in (to the waltz) and the odds, out on
+the veranda, tell one another confidentially how damp they are. Was ever
+an evening so smotheringly hot! Through the house-grove, where the
+darkness grows blacker and blacker and the tepid air more and more
+breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their
+horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet
+for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.]
+One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture:
+the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room,
+and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and
+fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, and on
+their haunches at every door, the squalid field-hands making grotesque
+silhouettes against the yellow glow that streamed out into the trees.</p>
+
+<p>Now the lightning seems nearer. Hark, that was thunder; soft, but real.
+At last the air moves; there is a breeze, and the girls come out on the
+gallants' arms to drink it in. As they lift their brows and sigh their
+comfort the lightning grows brighter, the thunder comes more promptly
+and louder, and the maidens flinch and half scream, yet linger for one
+more draft of the blessed coolness. Suddenly an inverted tree of
+blinding light branches down the sky, and the thunder crashes in one's
+very ears; the couples recoil into a group at the door, the lightning
+again fills heaven and earth, it shows the bending trees far afield, and
+the thunders peal at each other as if here were all Vicksburg and Port
+Hudson, with Porter and Farragut going by. So for a space; then the wind
+drops to a zephyr, and though the sky still blazes and crashes, and
+flames and roars, the house purrs with content under the sweet strokings
+of the rain.</p>
+
+<p>Let it pour! the dining-room is the centre of all things; the ladies sip
+the custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the
+punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs
+on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat;
+and the couples are again on the floor. The departing thunders grumble
+as they go, the rain falls more and more sparingly, and now it is a
+waltz, and now a quadrille, and now it's a reel again, with Miss Sallie
+or Louise or Laura or Lucille or Miss Flora &quot;a-comin' down de lane!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So come the stars again, one by one. In a pause between dances Charlotte
+and the staff captain go to the veranda's far end and stand against the
+rail. The night is still very dark, the air motionless. Charlotte is
+remarking how far they can hear the dripping of the grove, when she
+gives a start and the captain an amused grunt; a soft, heart-broken,
+ear-searching quaver comes from just over yonder by the horses. &quot;One of
+those pesky little screech-owls,&quot; he says. &quot;Don't know as I ever heard
+one before under just these condi'--humph! there's another, around on
+this side.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I will go in,&quot; says Charlotte, with a pretence of languor. As
+they do so the same note sounds a third time; her pace quickens, and in
+passing a bright window, with a woman's protecting impulse she changes
+from his left arm to his right so as to be on the side next the owls. A
+moment later she is alone in the middle of her room, a lighted candle in
+one hand, a regally dressed doll in the other, and in her heart the cry,
+&quot;Oh, Edgard, Edgard, my parole, my parole!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Once more she is downstairs, in the lane which the dancers are making
+for their last reel. Two of the gallants have gone out to see the
+horses, and something keeps them, but there is no need to wait. The
+fiddle rings a chord! the merry double line straightens down the hall
+from front door to rear, bang! says the fiddler's foot--&quot;hands
+round!&quot;--and hands round it is! In the first of the evening they had
+been obliged to tell the fiddler the names of the dancers, but now he
+knows them all and throws off his flattering personalities and his
+overworked rhymes with an impartial rotation and unflagging ardor. Once
+in a while some one privately gives him a new nickname for the next man
+&quot;a-comin' down de lane,&quot; and as he yawps it out the whole dance gathers
+new mirth and speed.</p>
+
+<p>Now the third couple clasp hands, arch arms, and let the whole
+countermarching train sweep through; and a beautiful arch they make, for
+they are the aforesaid captain and Charlotte Oliver. &quot;Hands
+round!&quot;--hurrah for the whirling ellipse; and now it's &quot;right and left&quot;
+and two ellipses glide opposite ways, &quot;to quile dat golden chain.&quot; In
+the midst of the whirl, when every hand is in some other and men and
+girls are tossing their heads to get their locks out of their eyes, at
+the windows come unnoticed changes and two men loiter in by the front
+hall door, close to the fiddler. One has his sword on, and each his
+pistols, and their boots and mud-splashed uniforms of dubious blue are
+wet and steamy. The one without the sword gives the fiddler a fresh name
+to sing out when the spinning ring shall straighten into its two gay
+ranks again, and bids him--commandingly--to yell it; and with never a
+suspicion of what it stands for, the stamping and scraping fiddler
+shouts the name of a man who &quot;loves a good story with a
+positive passion.&quot;</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &quot;Come <em>a-left</em>, come a-right,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Come yo' <em>lily</em>-white hand,<br />
+Fo' to <em>quile</em> dat <em>golden cha--ain</em>.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; O <em>ladies</em> caper light--<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sweetest <em>ladies</em> in de land--<br />
+NED FERRY's a-comin' down de la--ane!&quot;<p></p>
+<img src="images/007.jpg" alt="Musical Notation" />
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLVII" id="XLVII">XLVII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>HE'S DEAD.--IS SHE ALIVE?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Cries of masculine anger and feminine affright filled the hall, but one
+ringing order for silence hushed all, and the dance stood still with Ned
+Ferry in its centre. In his right hand, shoulder high, he held not his
+sword, but Charlotte's fingers lightly poised for the turn in the
+arrested dance. &quot;Stand, gentlemen, every man is covered by two; look at
+the doors; look at the windows.&quot; The staff captain daringly sprang for
+the front door, but Ferry's quick boot caught his instep and he struck
+the floor full length. Like lightning Ferry's sword was out, but he only
+gave it a deferential sweep. &quot;Sir! better luck next time!--Lieutenant
+Quinn, put the Captain in your front rank.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Quinn hustled the captives &quot;down a lane,&quot; as the fiddler might have
+said, of Ferry's scouts, mounted them on their own horses at the door,
+and hurried them away. Charlotte had vanished but was back again in hat
+and riding-skirt. Ferry caught her hand and they ran to the front
+veranda steps just as the prisoners and guard rode swiftly from them.
+Kendall and I had the stirrup ready for her; the saddle was a man's, but
+she made a horn of its pommel, and in a flash the four of us were
+mounted. Nevertheless before we could move the grove resounded with
+shots, and Ferry, bidding us ride on after the fleeing guard, wheeled
+and galloped to where half our troop were holding back their assailants
+in the dark. But then, to our distraction, Charlotte would not fly.
+&quot;Richard, I'm paroled!&quot;--&quot;Charlotte Oliver, you're my prisoner!&quot; I
+reached for her bridle, but she avoided me and with a cry of
+recollection wheeled and was on her way back. &quot;I forgot something! I can
+get it, I left the room lighted!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I remember vividly yet the high purpose and girlish propitiation that
+rang together in her voice. Kendall dashed after her while I went
+against a wet bough that all but threw me; but before he could reach her
+she flew up the steps, crying &quot;Hold my horse!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mine, too!&quot; I cried, springing up after her. How queerly the inner
+house stood alight and silent, its guests and inmates hidden, while
+outside pistols and carbines flashed and cracked. I came upon Charlotte,
+just recrossing her chamber to leave it, with her doll in her arms.
+&quot;Come!&quot; I cried, &quot;our line is falling back behind the house!&quot; Her head
+flinched aside, a bit of her hat flew from it, and a pistol-ball buried
+itself in the ceiling straight over my head. We ran downstairs together,
+pulling, pushing and imploring each other in the name of honor, duty and
+heaven to let him--let her--go out first through the bright hall door.
+Kendall was not in sight, but in a dim half-light a few yards off we saw
+Oliver. He was afoot, bending low, and gliding toward us with his
+revolver in his left hand. He fired as I did; her clutch spoiled my aim;
+with eager eyes she straightened to her finest height, cried &quot;Richard!
+tell Lieutenant Ferry he--&quot; and with a long sigh sank into my arms. A
+rush of hoofs sounded behind Oliver, he glanced up, and Ferry's blade
+fell across his brow and launched him face upward to the ground. I saw
+a bunch of horses, with mine, at the foot of the steps, and a bunch of
+men at the top; Ferry snatched Charlotte's limp form from me and said
+over his shoulder as he went down the steps, &quot;Go get him and bring him
+along, dead or alive!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I called a man to my aid and was unlucky in not getting the cool-headed
+Kendall, for my own wits were gone. The next moment all had left us and
+I was down on the ground toiling frantically, with no help but one hand
+of my mounted companion, to heave the stalwart frame of Oliver up to
+my saddle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, he's dead!&quot; cried the lad, letting him slide half-way down when we
+had all but got him up; &quot;don't you see he's dead? His head's laid wide
+open! He's as dead as a mackerel! I'll <em>swear</em> we ain't got any right to
+get captured trying to save a dead Yankee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was in despair; our horses had caught our frenzy and were plunging to
+be after their fellows, and a fresh body of the enemy were hurtling into
+the grove. Dropping my burden I vaulted up, and we scurried away, saved
+only by the enemy's healthy fear of an ambush. The first man we came up
+with was Quinn, with the rear-guard. &quot;Is he dead?&quot; he growled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dead as Adam!&quot; said I, and my comrade put in &quot;Head laid wide open!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Drop back into the ranks,&quot; said Quinn to him. &quot;Smith, ride on to
+Lieutenant Ferry. Corporal,&quot;--to a man near him--&quot;you know the way so
+well, go with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The two of us sprang forward. How long or what way we went I have now
+no clear idea, but at length we neared again the grapevine ferry. The
+stream was swollen, we swam our horses, and on the farther side we found
+Kendall waiting. To the corporal's inquiry he replied that Ferry had
+just passed on. &quot;You know Roy's; two miles off the Plank Road by the
+first right? He expects to stop there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she alive, Kendall?&quot; I interrupted. &quot;Is she alive?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said he, to some further question of the corporal; &quot;I'm to wait
+here for the command.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she alive, Kendall?&quot; I asked again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, Smith.&quot; He scanned my dripping horse. &quot;Your saddle's slipped,
+Smith. Yes, she's alive.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLVIII" id="XLVIII">XLVIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS RIGHT ARM</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;There they are!&quot; said the corporal and I at the same moment, when we
+had been but a few minutes on the Plank-road. Two men were ahead of us
+riding abreast, and a few rods in front of them was a third horseman,
+apparently alone. Two others had pushed on, one to the house, the other
+for surgical aid. The two in the rear knew us and let us come up
+unchallenged; the corporal stayed with them, and I rode on to my
+leader's side.</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte lay in his double clasp balanced so lightly on the horse's
+crest as hardly to feel the jar of his motion, though her head lay as
+nearly level with it as Ferry's bending shoulders and the hollow of his
+lowered right arm would allow; from under his other arm her relaxed
+figure, in its long riding-skirt, trailed down over his knee and
+stirrup; her broad limp hat, as if it had been so placed in sport, hung
+at his back with its tie-ribbons round his throat, while the black
+masses of her hair spread in ravishing desolation over and under his
+supporting arm. Her face was fearfully pale, the brows glistened with
+the damp of nervous shock, and every few moments she feebly brought a
+handkerchief to her lips to wipe away the blood that rose to them with
+every sigh. Steadfastly, except when her eyes closed now and then in
+deathly exhaustion, her gaze melted into his like a suffering babe's
+into its mother's. From time to time a brief word passed between them,
+and with joy I noticed that it was always in French; I hoped with my
+whole heart and soul that they had already said things, and were saying
+things yet, which no one else ought to hear. I waited some time for his
+notice, and when he gave it it was only by saying to her in a full voice
+and in English &quot;Dick Smith is here, alongside of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her response was a question, which he repeated: &quot;Is he hurt? no, Richard
+never gets hurt. Shall he tell us whatever he knows?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He bent low for the faint reply, and when it came he sparkled with
+pride. &quot;'It matters little,' she says, 'to either of us, now.' Give your
+report; but <em>I</em> tell you&quot;--there came a tiger look in his eyes--&quot;there
+is now no turning back; we shall go on.&quot; I answered with soft elation:
+&quot;My news needn't turn you back: Oliver is dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He drew a long breath, murmured &quot;My God!&quot; and then suddenly asked &quot;You
+found him so, or--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We found him so; had to leave him so; head laid wide open; we were
+about to be captured--thought the news would be better than nothing--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly, yes, certainly. Now I want you to ride to the brigade camp
+and telegraph Miss Harper this: 'She needs you. Come instantly.
+Durand.'&quot;--I repeated it to him.--&quot;Right,&quot; he said. &quot;Send that first;
+and after that--here is a military secret for you to tell to General
+Austin; I think you like that kind, eh? Tell him I would not send it
+verbally if I had my hands free. You know that regiment at whose
+headquarters we saw them singing; well, tell him they are to make a move
+to-day, a bad mistake, and I think if he will stay right there where he
+is till they make it, we can catch the whole lot of them. As soon as
+they move I shall report to him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Two gasping words from Charlotte brought his ear down, and with a
+worshipping light in his eyes he said to her &quot;Yes,--yes!&quot; and then to
+me, &quot;Yes, I shall report to him <em>in person</em>. Now, Smith, the top of
+your speed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Reveill&eacute; was sounding as I entered the camp. In the middle of my story
+to the General--&quot;Saddle my horse,&quot; he said to an attendant, &quot;and send
+Mr. Gholson to me. Yes, Smith, well, what then?&quot;--I resumed, but in a
+minute--&quot;Mr. Gholson, good-morning. My compliments to Major Harper, Mr.
+Gholson, and ask him if he wouldn't like to take a ride with me; and
+let me have about four couriers; and send word to Colonel Dismukes that
+I shall call at his headquarters to see him a moment, on my way out of
+camp. Now, Smith, you've given me the gist of the matter, haven't you?
+Oh, I think you have; good-morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson had helped me get the despatch off to Miss Harper, whose coming
+no one could be more eager to hasten. Before leaving camp I saw him
+again. He was strangely reticent; my news seemed to benumb and sicken
+him. But as I remounted he began without connection--&quot;You see, she'll be
+absolutely alone until Miss Harper gets there; not a friend within call!
+<em>He</em> won't be there, she won't let him stay; she dislikes him too much;
+I <em>know</em> that, Smith. Why, Smith, she wouldn't ever 'a' let him carry
+her off the field if she'd been conscious; she'd sooner 'a' gone to Ship
+Island, or to death!&quot; He looked as though he would rather she had. His
+tongue, now it had started, could not stop. &quot;Ned Ferry can't stay by
+her; he mustn't! he hadn't ought to use around anywheres near her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I gave a sort of assent--attended with nausea--and turned to my saddle,
+but he clung. &quot;Why, how can he hang around that way, Smith, and he a
+suitor who's just killed her husband? Of course, now, he'd ought to know
+he can't ever be one henceforth. I'm sorry for him, but--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning,&quot; I interrupted, quite in the General's manner, and made a
+spirited exit, but it proved a false one; one thing had to be said, and
+I returned. &quot;Gholson, if she should be worse hurt than--&quot; &quot;Ah! you're
+thinking of the chaplain; I've already sent him. Yonder he goes, now;
+you can show him the way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Understand,&quot; I said as I wheeled, &quot;I fully expect her to recover.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, oh, yes!&quot; replied my co-religionist, with feverish zest; &quot;we must
+have faith--for her sake! But o--oh! Smith, what a chastening judgment
+this is against dancing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I moved away, looking back at him, and seeing by his starved look how he
+was racking his jaded brain for some excuse to go with me, I honestly
+believe I was sorry for him. The chaplain was a thick-set, clean-shaven,
+politic little fellow whose &quot;Good-mawning, brothah?&quot; had the heavy
+sweetness of perfumed lard. We conversed fluently on spiritual matters
+and also on Ned Ferry. He asked me if the Lieutenant was &quot;a believer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why,&quot; said I, &quot;as to that, Lieutenant Ferry believes there's something
+right about everything that's beautiful, and something wrong about
+everything that isn't. Now, of course that's a very dangerous idea, and
+yet--&quot; So I went on; ah me! the nightmare of it hangs over me yet,
+&quot;religionist&quot; though I am, after a fashion, unto this day. In Ferry's
+defence I maintained that only so much of any man's religion as fitted
+him, and fitted him not as his saddle or his clothes, but as his nervous
+system fitted him, was really his, or was really religion. I said I knew
+a man whose ready-made religion, small as it was, bagged all over him
+and made him as grotesque as a child in his father's trousers. The
+chaplain tittered so approvingly that I straightened to spout again, but
+just then we saw three distant figures that I knew at a glance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There he is, now!--Excuse me, sir--&quot; I clapped in the spurs, but the
+chaplain clattered stoutly after me. The two horsemen moving from us
+were the General and Major Harper, and the one meeting them was Ned
+Ferry. Between the three and us rose out of a hollow the squad of
+couriers. And yonder came the sun.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLIX" id="XLIX">XLIX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A CRUEL BOOK AND A FOOL OR TWO</strong></p>
+
+<p>I could see by Ferry's face that there was no worse news. He met me
+aside, and privately bade me go to Roy's (where Charlotte was). &quot;Kendall
+is there,&quot; he said; &quot;I leave you and him in charge. That will rest your
+horses. Kendall has your Yankee horse, his own is sick. You and Kendall
+get all the sleep you can, you may get none to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant,&quot; I began eagerly as he was drawing away, &quot;is--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes! oh, yes, yes!&quot; His eyes danced, and a soft laugh came, as happy as
+a child's. &quot;The surgeon is yonder, he will tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This person Kendall and I had the luck to meet at the Roy's
+breakfast-table. &quot;Yes, left lung,&quot; he said. &quot;No, hardly 'perforated,'
+but the top deeply grazed.&quot; The ball, he said, had passed on and out,
+and he went into particulars with me, while I wondered if Kendall knew,
+as I did, what parts of the body the pleura, the thorax, the clavicle
+and the pyemia were.</p>
+
+<p>We lay down to sleep on some fodder in the Widow Roy's stable, while
+around three sides of the place, in a deep wooded hollow, Quinn and the
+company, well guarded by hidden videttes, drowsed in secret bivouac. I
+dreamed. I had feared I should, and it would have been a sort of bitter
+heart's-ease to tell Kendall of my own particular haunting trouble. For
+now, peril and darkness, storm, hard riding, the uproar and rage of
+man-killing, all past and gone, my special private wretchedness came
+back to me bigger than ever, like a neglected wound stiffened and
+swollen as it has grown cold. But Kendall would not talk, and when I
+dreamed, my dream was not of Camille. It seemed to me there was a hot
+fight on at the front, and that I, in a sweat of terror, was at the
+rear, hiding among the wagons and telling Gholson pale-faced lies as to
+why I was there. All at once Gholson became Oliver, alive,
+bloody-handed, glaring on me spectrally, cursing, threatening, and
+demanding his wife. His head seemed not &quot;laid wide open,&quot; but to have
+only a streak of the skull bared by Ferry's glancing left-cut and a
+strip of the scalp turned inside out. C&eacute;cile drew his head down and
+showed it to me, in a transport of reproaches, as though my false report
+had wronged no one else so ruinously as her.</p>
+
+<p>I awoke aghast. If Kendall had still been with me I might, in the first
+flush of my distress, have told my vision; but in the place where
+Kendall had lain lay Harry Helm. Kendall was gone; a long beam of
+afternoon sunlight shone across my lair through a chink in the log
+stable. I sprang half up with an exclamation, and Harry awoke with a
+luxurious yawn and smile. Kendall, he said, had left with the company,
+which had marched. Quinn was in command and had told Harry that he was
+only going to show the enemy that there was no other hostile force in
+their front, and get himself chased away southeastward.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know whether he was telling me the truth or not,&quot; said Helm, as
+we led our saddled horses toward the house; &quot;I reckon he didn't want me
+alongside of him with this arm in a sling.&quot; The hand was bad; lines of
+pain were on the aide's face. He had taken the dead Louisianian home,
+got back to camp, and ridden down here to get the latest news concerning
+Charlotte. Kendall had already given him our story of the night; I had
+to answer only one inquiry. &quot;Oh, yes,&quot; was my reply, &quot;head laid wide
+open!&quot; But to think of my next meeting with Ned Ferry almost made
+me sick.</p>
+
+<p>Harry was delighted. &quot;That lays their way wide open--Ned's and hers!
+Smith, some God-forsaken fool brought a chaplain here to talk religion
+to her! He hasn't seen her--Doctor wouldn't let him; but he's here yet,
+and--George! if I was them I'd put him to a better use than what he came
+here for, and I'd do it so quick it would make his head swim!&quot; He went
+on into all the arguments for it; the awkwardnesses of Charlotte's new
+situation, her lack of means for even a hand-to-mouth daily existence,
+and so on. Seeing an ambulance coming in through the front gate, and in
+order not to lose the chance for my rejoinder, I interrupted.
+&quot;Lieutenant, she will not allow it! She will make him wait a proper time
+before he may as much as begin a courtship, and then he will have to
+begin at the beginning. She's not going to let Ned Ferry narrow or lower
+her life or his--no, neither of them is going to let the other do
+it--because a piece of luck has laid the way wide open!&quot; I ended with a
+pomp of prophecy, yet I could hear Ned Ferry saying again, with
+Charlotte's assenting eyes in his, &quot;There is no turning back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The driver of the ambulance did not know why he had been ordered to
+report here, but when the Widow Roy came to the door she brought
+explanation enough. A courier had come to her and gone again, and the
+chaplain and the surgeon and every one else of any &quot;army sort&quot; except us
+two had &quot;put out,&quot; and she was in a sad flurry. &quot;The Lieutenant,&quot; she
+said, &quot;writes in this-yeh note that this-yeh place won't be safe f'om
+the Yankees much longer'n to-day, and fo' us to send the wounded lady in
+the avalanch. Which she says, her own self, it'd go rough with her to
+fall into they hands again. My married daughter she's a-goin' with her,
+and the'd ought to be a Mr. Sm'--oh, my Lawdy! you ain't reg-lahly in
+the ahmy, air you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With some slave men to help us, Harry and I bore Charlotte out and laid
+her in the ambulance, mattress and all, on an under bedding of fodder.
+She had begged off from opiates, and was as full of the old starlight as
+if the day, still strong, were gone. I helped the married daughter up
+beside the driver, Harry and I mounted, and we set forth for the
+brigade camp. Mrs. Roy's daughter had with her a new romance, which she
+had been reading to Charlotte. Now she was eager to resume it, and
+Charlotte consented. It was a work of some merit; I have the volume yet,
+inscribed to me on the fly-leaf &quot;from C.O.,&quot; as I have once already
+stated, in my account of my friend &quot;The Solitary.&quot; At the end of a mile
+we made a change; Harry rode a few yards ahead with an officer who
+happened to overtake us, I took the reins from the ambulance driver, and
+he followed on my horse; I thought I could drive more smoothly than he.</p>
+
+<p>And so I began to hear the tale. I was startled by its strong reminder
+of Charlotte's own life; but Charlotte answered my anxious glance with a
+brow so unfretted that I let the reading go on, and so made a cruel
+mistake. At every turning-point in the story its reader would have
+paused to talk it over, but Charlotte, with a steadily darkling brow,
+murmured each time &quot;Go on,&quot; and I was silent, hoping that farther along
+there would be a better place to stop for good. Not so; the story's
+whirling flood swept us forward to a juncture ever drawing nearer and
+clearer, clearer and crueler, where a certain man would have to choose
+between the woman he loved and that breadth and fruitfulness of life to
+which his splendid gifts imperiously pointed him. Oh, you story-tellers!
+Every next page put the question plainer, drove the iron deeper: must a
+man, or even may a man, wed his love, when she stands between him and
+his truest career, a drawback and drag upon his finest service to his
+race and day? And, oh, me! who let my eye quail when Charlotte searched
+it, as though her own case had brought that question to me before ever
+we had seen this book. And, oh, that impenetrable woman reading! Her
+husband was in Lee's army, out of which, she boasted, she would steal
+him in a minute if she could. She was with us, now, only because, at
+whatever cost to others, she was going where no advancement of the
+enemy's lines could shut her off from him; and so stop reading a moment
+she must, to declare her choice for Love as against all the careers on
+earth, and to put that choice fairly to shame by the unworthiness of her
+pleadings in its defence. I intervened; I put her grovelling arguments
+aside and thrust better ones in, for the same choice, and then, in the
+fear that they were not enough, stumbled into special pleading and
+protested that the book itself had put the question unfairly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shut it,&quot; said Charlotte, with a sigh like that which had risen when
+the lead first struck her. &quot;If I could be moved ever so little,--&quot;
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>I had the driver tie my horse behind the vehicle and resume the lines.
+Then the soldier's wife and I moved Charlotte, and when the reader began
+to handle the book again wishfully our patient said, with the kindest
+voice, &quot;Read the rest of it to yourself; I know how it will end; it will
+end to please you, not as it ought; not as it ought.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a while we went in silence, and she must have seen that my heart was
+in a rage, for with suffering on her brow, amusement on her lips, and a
+sweet desperation in her eyes, she murmured my name. &quot;Richard:--what
+fun it must have been to live in those old Dark Ages--when all you had
+to do--was to turn any one passion into--one splendid virtue--at the
+expense--of all the rest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could answer pleadingly that it were far better not to talk now. But
+she would go on, until in my helplessness I remarked how beautiful the
+day had been. Her eyes changed; she looked into mine with her calm
+inward-outward ken, and once more with smiling lips and suffering brow
+murmured, &quot;Yes.&quot; I marvelled she should betray such wealth of meaning to
+such as I; yet it was like her splendid bravery to do it.</p>
+
+<p>At the brigade's picket, where I was angry that Ferry did not meet us,
+and had resumed the saddle and stretched all the curtains of the
+ambulance, who should appear but Scott Gholson. Harry and I were riding
+abreast in advance of the ambulance. Gholson and he barely said
+good-evening. I asked him where was Lieutenant Ferry, and scarcely noted
+his words, so promptly convinced was I by their mere tone that he had
+somehow contrived to get Ferry sent on a distant errand. &quot;Is she
+better?&quot; he inquired; &quot;has the hemorrhage stopped?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's begun again,&quot; growled Harry, who wanted both of us to suffer all
+we could. Gholson led us through the camp. A large proportion of the men
+were sleeping when as yet it was hardly night.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has the brigade got marching orders?&quot; I asked, and he said the three
+regiments had, though not the battery. He passed over to me two pint
+bottles filled, corked, and dangling from his fingers by a stout double
+twine on the neck of each. &quot;Every man has them,&quot; he said; &quot;hang one on
+each side of your belt in front of your pistol.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I held them up and scowled from them to Harry, and we both laughed, so
+transparent was Gholson's purpose to get every one away from our patient
+who yearned to be near her. &quot;One in front of each pistol,&quot; I said, so
+tying them; &quot;but use the pistols first, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; replied Gholson, &quot;pistols first, and then the turpentine.&quot;
+Whereat Harry and I exchanged glances again, it came so pat that Scott
+Gholson should be a dispenser of inflammables. At a house a mile behind
+the camp the surgeon stood waiting for us. He frowned at me the instant
+he saw Charlotte, and I heard him swear. As we bore her in with Gholson
+and me next her head she murmured to him:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Gholson, when does the command move?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At twelve,&quot; he replied, and I bent and softly added &quot;That's why--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she said, with a quick, understanding look, and wiped her lips as
+daintily as if it were with wine they were crimsoned.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="L" id="L">L</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE BOTTOM OF THE WHIRLWIND</strong></p>
+
+<p>On my way back through camp with Gholson I saw old Dismukes. He called
+me to him, quit his cards, and led me into his tent. There, very
+beguilingly, he questioned me at much length, evidently seeking to draw
+from the web of my replies the thread of Ferry's and Charlotte's story;
+and as I saw that he believed in both of them with all his brutal might,
+I let him win a certain success. &quot;Head laid wide open!&quot; he said
+gleefully, and boiled over with happy blasphemings.</p>
+
+<p>I left him, found supper, and had been long asleep tinder a tree, when I
+grabbed savagely at some one for silently shaking me, and found it was
+Ned Ferry. His horse's bridle was in his hand; his face was more filled
+with the old pain than I had ever seen it; he spoke low and hurriedly.
+&quot;Come, tell me what this means.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In an envelope addressed to him in the handwriting I had first seen at
+Lucius Oliver's I found a scripture-text, a heading torn from a tract
+which the chaplain may have sent in to Charlotte in the morning. I
+turned it to the light of my fire. Under this printed line she had
+pencilled her name.</p>
+
+<p>I asked if he had seen her. &quot;Ah, no! the Doctor has drugged her to
+sleep; but that woman who came with you was still in the parlor, reading
+a book, and she gave me this. What does it mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant,&quot; I replied, choking with dismay, &quot;why mind her meanings
+now? Ought you not rather to ignore them? She is fevered, dejected,
+overwrought. Why, sir, she is the very woman to say and mean things now
+which she would never say or mean at any other time!&quot; But my tone must
+have shown that I was only groping in desperation after anything
+plausible, and he waved my suggestions away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Doctor says that woman has been reading her an exciting story.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, and that helps to account--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Richard, it helps the wrong way; <em>I know that story</em>. After hearing
+that story she is, yes! the one woman of all women to send me <em>this</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took it again. The signature was extended in full, with the surname
+blackly underlined. The first clause of the print, too, was so treated.
+&quot;<em>Keep thy heart</em>,&quot; it read; &quot;<em>Keep thy heart</em> with all diligence; for
+out of it are the issues of life.--Charlotte <em>Oliver</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Lieutenant, that is just what you have done--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You think so? But I <em>have done</em>. I will keep it no longer! Ah, I never
+kept it; 'twas she! Without taking it from me she kept it--'with all
+diligence'; otherwise I should have lost it--and her, too--and all that
+is finest and hardest to keep--long ago. Give me that paper; come;
+saddle up; you may go with me if you want, as my courier.&quot; No bugle had
+sounded, yet the whole camp was softly and diligently astir. We rode
+toward the staff tents; the pulse of enterprise enlivened him once more,
+though he clung to the same theme. &quot;I have <em>her</em> heart now, Smith, and I
+will keep <em>that</em> with all diligence, for out of <em>that</em> are the issues
+of <em>my</em> life--if I live. And if I do live I will have her if I have to
+steal her even from herself, as last night from the Yankees.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Three hours later the stars still gleamed down through the balmy night
+above the long westward-galloping column of our brigade, that for those
+three hours had not slackened from the one unmitigated speed. The
+Federal regiment of whose plans Charlotte had apprised Ferry had been
+camped well to southward of this course, but in the day just past they
+had marched to the north, intending a raid around our right and into our
+rear. To-night they were resting in a wide natural meadow through the
+middle of which ran this road we were on. Around the southern edge of
+this inviting camp-ground by a considerable stream of water; the
+northern side was on rising ground and skirted by woods, and in these
+woods as day began to break stood our brigade, its presence utterly
+unsuspected in all that beautiful meadow whitened over with lane upon
+lane of the tents of the regiment of Federal cavalry, whose pickets we
+had already silently surprised and captured. Now, as warily as quails,
+we moved along an unused, woodcutters' road and began to trot up a
+gentle slope beyond whose crest the forest sank to the meadow. We were
+within a few yards of this crest, when a small mounted patrol came up
+from the other side, stood an instant profiled against the sky, bent
+low, gazed, wheeled and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Over the crest we swept after them at a gallop and saw them half-way
+down an even incline, going at a mad run and yelling &quot;Saddle up! saddle
+up! the rebels are coming! saddle up!&quot; The bugles had begun the
+reveill&eacute;; it ceased, and the next instant they were sounding the call To
+Arms. It was only a call to death; already we were half across the short
+decline and coming like a tornado; in the white camp the bluecoats were
+running hither and yon deaf to the brave shoutings of their captains;
+above the swelling thunder of our hoofs rose the mad yell of the onset;
+and now carbines peal and pistols crack, and here are the tents so close
+you may touch them, and yonder is one already in a light blaze, and at
+every hand and under every horse's foot is the crouching, quailing,
+falling foe, the air is one crash of huzzas and groans, screams, shots
+and commands, horses with riders and horses without plunge through the
+flames and smoke of the burning tents, and again and again I see Ned
+Ferry with the flat of his unstained sword strike pistol or carbine from
+hands too brave to cast them tamely down, and hear him cry &quot;Throw down
+your arms! For God's sake throw down your arms and run to the road! run
+to the public road!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And still every moment men fell, and what could we do but smite while
+the foe's bugles still rang out from beside his unfurled standard.
+Thitherward sprang a swarm of us and found a brave group massed on foot
+around the colors, men and officers shoulder to shoulder in sudden
+equality. I saw Ned Ferry make straight for their commander, who alone
+had out his sabre; the rest stood with cocked revolvers, and at twenty
+yards fired low. Ferry's horse was hit; he reared, but the spur carried
+him on; his rider's sword flashed up and then down, the Federal's sabre
+turned it, the pistols cracked in our very faces, and down went my
+leader and his horse into the bottom of the whirlwind, right under the
+standard. I saw the standard-bearer bring down one of our men on top of
+Ferry, and as Ferry half regained his feet the Federal aimed point-blank
+against his breast. But it was I who fired and the Federal who fell. As
+he reeled I stretched out for the standard, and exactly together Ned
+Ferry and I seized it--the same standard we had seen the night before.
+But instantly, graciously, he thrust it from him. &quot;Tis yours!&quot; he cried
+in the midst of a general huzza, smiling up at it and me as I swung the
+trophy over my head. Then he turned ghastly pale, his smile faded to an
+unmeaning stare, two or three men leaped to his side, and he sank
+lifelessly into their arms beside his dying horse.</p>
+
+<p>I was swinging from the saddle to my leader's relief, when a familiar
+voice forbade it, and old Dismukes came by at a long trot, pointing
+forward with the reddest sabre I ever saw, and bellowing to right and
+left with oaths and curses &quot;Fall in, every man, on yon line! Ride to yon
+line and fall in, there's more Yankees coming! Ride down yonder and
+fa'--<em>here</em>, you, Legs, there! follow me, and shoot down every man that
+stops to plunder!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now I saw the new firing-line, out on our left, and as the rattle of it
+quickened, the Colonel galloped, still roaring out his rallying-cries
+and wiping his reeking blade across his charger's mane. Throngs gathered
+after him; the high-road swarmed with prisoners double-quicking to the
+rear under mounted guards; here, thinly stretched across the road at
+right-angles, were our horse-holders, steadily, coolly falling back;
+farther forward, yet vividly near, was our skirmish-line, crackling and
+smoking, and beyond it the enemy's, in the edge of a wood, not yet quite
+venturing to fling itself upon us. We passed General Austin standing,
+mounted, at the top of the rise, with a number of his staff about him.
+Minie balls had begun to sing about them and us, and some officer was
+telling me rudely I had no business bringing that standard--when
+something struck like a sledge high up on my side, almost in the
+arm-pit; I told one of our men I was wounded and gave him the trophy,
+our horse-holders suddenly came forward, every man afoot rose into his
+saddle, and my horse wheeled and hurried rearward at a speed I strove in
+vain to check. Then the old messmate to whom I had said good-bye at this
+very hour just a week before, came and held me by the right arm, while I
+begged him like a drunk-and-disorderly to let me go and find Ned Ferry.</p>
+
+<p>But he said Lieutenant Ferry was in a captured ambulance ahead of us and
+of our hundreds of prisoners, that a full creek and a burning bridge
+were between us and the foe, and that the fight was over.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LI" id="LI">LI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>UNDER THE ROOM WHERE CHARLOTTE LAY</strong></p>
+
+<p>The fight was over only in degree. Our brigade was drawing away into the
+north and the enemy were pressing revengefully after them. Our hundreds
+of prisoners and our few wounded were being taken back eastward over the
+road by which we had come in the night, and even after we had turned
+into it I saw a Yankee shell kill a wounded man and his horse not thirty
+yards from me.</p>
+
+<p>Before we had gone another mile I met Harry Helm. The General had left
+him in camp with flat orders to remain, but at daylight he had ridden
+out to find us. He was in two tremendous moods at once; lifted to heaven
+on the glory of our deeds, yet heart-broken over the fate of Ned Ferry.
+&quot;Surgeon's told him he can't live, Dick! And all the effect that's
+had--'No opiates, then, Doctor,' s'e, 'till I get off these two or three
+despatches.' So there he lies in that ambulance cross-questioning
+prisoners and making everybody bring him every scrap of information, as
+if he were General Austin and Major Harper rolled into one and they were
+wounded instead of him--By George! Dick, he knows you're hit and just
+how you're hit, and has sent me to find you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we
+were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about
+it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn,
+and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now
+remounting, both of them openly in tears. &quot;Hello, Kendall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, Smith.&quot; He turned sharply from me, horse and all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning, sergeant, is Lieutenant Ferry--worse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant only jabbed in the spurs, and leapt away with Kendall,
+bearing despatches to the brigade. Harry, looking back to me from the
+ambulance, called softly, &quot;All right again; it was only a bad swoon!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, Smith,&quot; said some one whom I was too sick and dizzy to
+recognize, &quot;one of those prisoners says he saw Oliver dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They say two or three men sprang to catch me, but the first thing I knew
+was that the ambulance was under way and I in it on my back within
+elbow-touch of Ferry, looking up into a surgeon's face. &quot;How's the
+Lieutenant?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh--getting on, getting on,&quot; he replied. Doctors think patients are
+fools.</p>
+
+<p>In a parlor under the room where Charlotte lay they made a bed for Ferry
+and one for me, and here, lapped in luxury and distinction, I promptly
+fell asleep, and when I reopened my eyes it was again afternoon. In the
+other bed Ferry was slumbering, and quite across the room, beside a
+closed door, sat C&eacute;cile and Camille. The latter tiptoed to me. Her
+whispers were as soft as breathing, and when I answered or questioned,
+her ear sank as near as you would put a rose to smell it. &quot;The
+Lieutenant, sleeping? yes, this hour past; surgeons surprised and more
+hopeful. Miss Estelle? in another room with other wounded. Her aunt?
+upstairs with Charlotte, who was--oh--getting on, getting on.&quot; That made
+me anxious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does Charlotte,&quot; I asked, &quot;know--everything?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Camille allowed herself all the motions of a laugh, and said &quot;No, not
+quite everything;&quot; and then with solemn tenderness she added that
+Charlotte knew about Ferry. &quot;And she knows about <em>you,&quot;</em> the whisperer
+went on; &quot;they all know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thought she was alluding to the verses, and had an instant of terror
+and rage before I saw what she meant. She glided back to the door and
+the two opened it an inch or so to answer some inquirer without. I saw
+her no more until bedtime, when she stood at her aunt's elbow to hand
+and hold things, while Miss Harper, to my all but screaming
+embarrassment, bared the whole upper half of one side of me and washed
+and dressed my wound anew. Ferry it was imperative to let alone, but
+when I awoke the next morning there was a radiance of joy throughout all
+the house; for he had slept and improved. The next morning again he was
+ever so much stronger, and Harry Helm rode off in simulated disgust, not
+seeing &quot;any fun in hanging round girls who were hanging round
+other fellows.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Another day arose. A courier brought passes for our three or four other
+wounded to go home as soon as they were fit to travel, and by night they
+were all gone. At early bedtime came two surgeons of high rank all the
+way from Johnston's army up in Mississippi. General Austin had asked
+this favor by telegraph. Harry had been gone thirty-six hours, and Ferry
+was just asking if he had not yet got back, when the surgeons came in to
+the room. A pleasantry or two consumed a few moments. Then the surgeon
+in charge of us told of a symptom or two, to which they responded only
+&quot;hmm,&quot; and began the examination. Miss Harper sent her three nieces
+away. I lay and listened in the busy stillness. Presently one of the
+examiners murmured with a certain positiveness to the other, who after a
+moment's silence replied with conviction; Miss Harper touched our
+surgeon's arm inquiringly and he looked back in a glad way and nodded.
+Miss Harper nodded to me; they had located the ball! Now the
+conversation turned upon men and events of the day, while one of the
+visitors, with his back to the patient, opened a case of glittering
+knives. Presently the professional heads came so close together as quite
+to hide the patient; they spoke once or twice in a manly soothing tone.
+Miss Harper stroked my temples to keep me down, one of the busy ones
+spoke again, and lo! the thing was done, there was the ball in the
+basin. As the men of blood sped through their kind after-work the news
+flew to and fro; Camille wept,--since she could not hurrah,--C&eacute;cile told
+Charlotte, the heavenly-minded Estelle was confirmed in her faith, Miss
+Harper's black eyes, after a brief overflow, were keener and kindlier
+than ever, and as the surgeons spoke the word &quot;done,&quot; Ferry asked again
+if Harry had not got back yet. Pretty soon Harry did arrive, with news
+of great feats by our cavalry against our old enemy Grierson, in which
+Austin's brigade had covered themselves with glory, and in which he had
+had his own share; his hand was swelled as big as his heart. In all the
+Confederacy no houseful went to sleep that night in sweeter content. I
+sank into perfect bliss planning a double wedding.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LII" id="LII">LII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>SAME BOOK AND LIGHT-HEAD HARRY</strong></p>
+
+<p>The next day found me so robustly happy that I was allowed to dress and
+walk out to the front door. Three days later the surgeons were gone, all
+three, and at the approach of dew-fall C&eacute;cile and Harry, Camille and I,
+walked in a field-path, gathered hedge roses, and debated the problem of
+Mrs. Roy's daughter's book, which all of us were reading and none
+had finished.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A woman,&quot; I remarked, &quot;who, for very love of a man, can say to him, 'Go
+on up the hill without me, I have a ball and chain on my foot and you
+shall not carry them and me, you have a race to run,'--a woman so
+wonderfully good as to say that--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no!&quot; interrupted C&eacute;cile, with her killing Creole accent, &quot;not a
+woman so <em>good</em> to say that, only with the so-good <em>sanse</em> to say it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Harry was openly vexed. &quot;Well, either way! would any true man leave
+<em>that</em> woman behind?&quot; and I tried to put in that that was what I had
+been leading up to; but it makes me smile yet, to recall how jauntily
+she discomfited us both. She triumphed with the airy ease of a king-bird
+routing a crow in the upper blue. Camille had more than once told me
+that C&eacute;cile was wise beyond the hope of her two cousins to emulate her;
+which had only increased my admiration for Camille; yet now I began to
+see how the sisters came by their belief. In the present discussion she
+was easily first among the four of us. At the same time her sensuous
+graces also took unquestionable pre&euml;minence; city-bred though she was,
+she had the guise of belonging to the landscape, or, rather, of the
+landscape's belonging, by some fairy prerogative, to her. She seemed
+just let loose into the world, yet as ready and swift to make right use
+of it as any humming-bird let into a garden; as untimorous as any such,
+and as elusive. In this sultry June air she had all the animation both
+of mind and of frame that might have been expected of her on a keen,
+clear winter day. Her face never bore the same expression at the
+beginning and middle, or at either of these and the close, of any of her
+speeches, yet every change was lovely, the sign of a happy play of
+feeling, and proof of a mercurial intelligence. No report of them by
+this untrained pen would fully bear me out, and the best tribute I can
+offer is to avoid the task.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sweet mercy in her to change the subject, and tactful to change
+it to Charlotte, as if Charlotte were quite an unrelated theme. The
+cousins vied with each other ever so prettily in telling how beautiful
+the patient was on her couch of enfeeblement and pain, how her former
+loveliness had increased, and what new nobility it had taken on. That
+any such problem overhung her life as that which we had just been
+weighing, seemed never to have entered their thought, and if they had
+ever conceived of a passion already conscious between Charlotte and
+Ferry, they veiled the fact with charming feminine art.</p>
+
+<p>When we got back to the house Harry detained me on the veranda alone.
+Camille told me how long I might tarry. It was heaven to have her bit in
+my mouth, and I found it hard to be grum even when Harry beat with his
+good hand the rhythm of &quot;Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick,&quot; he said, suddenly grave as he walked me down the veranda, &quot;her
+cousin C&eacute;cile! isn't it awful? Now that poor girl's gone back to Ned's
+bedside; back to her torture! Why <em>do</em> they let her? My George! it's
+merciless! Has her aunt no eyes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Lieutenant, you don't know she loves him; there are signs, I
+admit; but proofs, no. She's lost color, and her curves are more
+slender, but, my goodness! a dozen things might account for that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick Smith,&quot;--my questioner worked himself up over the rail and sat out
+on the shelf that held the bucket of drinking-water and its gourd--&quot;do
+you imagine she didn't know, when we were talking about that book, that
+she was arguing against the union of Ned Ferry and Charlotte Oliver?
+<em>Didn't</em> she do it bravely! Richard, my friend, she couldn't have done
+it if she had suspected us of suspecting her. It's a bleeding pity! And
+yet you can't side with her, for I just swear Ned's got to have
+Charlotte Ol'--what? No, he won't overhear a blank word; here's his
+window shut, right here. He's got to have her, I say, and he's got to
+have her just as soon as the two of 'em can stand up together to be
+sworn in! Don't you say so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I replied that I was not aware of any one who did not say so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I can name several! I don't call Scott Gholson anybody, but
+there's Major Harper--No, I'm not talking too loud, Ned isn't hearing a
+word. Major Harper's so hot against this thing that he brought it up,
+with me, yesterday on the battlefield.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Major Harper doesn't really know her,&quot; I softly remarked.</p>
+
+<p>Harry swore with military energy. &quot;I told him he didn't, and he fairly
+snorted. <em>We</em> don't know her, he says; you nor I nor his sister nor his
+niece nor his daughters, oh, we don't know her at all; and neither do we
+know Ned; Ned has graceful manners, and she's a born actress, and we're
+simply infatuated by their romantic situation. Good Lordy! he got up on
+his Charleston pride-of-family like a circus-girl on stilts, and 'Edgard
+Ferry-Durand has got a great public career before him,' s's he, 'and no
+true friend will let him think of taking a wife who is all history and
+no antecedents, a blockade-runner, a spy, and the brand-new widow of a
+blackguard and a jayhawker she had run away from practically on her
+wedding-night.' Hy Jo'! the way he went on, you'd 'a' thought he was
+already Ned's uncle-in-l'--&quot; The speaker's face took a sudden
+distress--&quot;Great Caesar!&quot; He pointed up to the second-story front room
+and slipped down from the shelf just as Estelle came out to us with her
+aunt's message for me to come in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How's the fair patient?&quot; I hurried to ask as the three of us went.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Mr. Smith, she's actually been sitting up--in the twilight--at
+the open window--while Aunt Martha and I smoothed up her bed.&quot;
+Harry groaned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's still very weak,&quot; said Aunt Martha when we came to her; &quot;the
+moment her bed was made up she asked to lie down again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; softly exclaimed Camille, &quot;but, oh, aunt Martha, with such
+courage in those eyes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; privately asked the agonized Harry, &quot;what would you do if you
+were in my place; go and cut your throat from ear to ear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I said, as black as an executioner, &quot;but I wish you'd done it
+yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LIII" id="LIII">LIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>&quot;CAPTAIN, THEY'VE GOT US&quot;</strong></p>
+
+<p>More days slipped by. Neighbors pressed sweet favors upon us; calls,
+joyful rumors, delicacies, flowers. One day Major Harper paid us a
+flying visit, got kisses galore, and had his coat sponged and his
+buttons reanimated. In the small town some three miles northwest of us
+he was accumulating a great lot of captured stuff. On another day came
+General Austin and stayed a whole hour. Ferry took healing delight in
+these visits, asking no end of questions about the movements afield,
+and about the personal fortunes of everyone he knew. When the General
+told him Ferry's scouts were doing better without him than with him--&quot;I
+thought he would smile himself into three pieces,&quot; said the General at
+the supper-table.</p>
+
+<p>On a second call from Major Harper, when handed a document to open and
+read, he went through it carefully twice, and then dropping it on the
+coverlet asked--&quot;and Quinn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Quinn's turn will come.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Major, that is not fair to Quinn!&quot; said Ferry. Yet when he took up
+the paper again he gazed on it with a happy gravity; it made him a
+captain. &quot;By the by,&quot; he said, &quot;that Yankee horse that Dick Smith
+captured at Sessions's; I'd like to buy that horse from you, Major.&quot;
+They made the sale. &quot;And there's that captured ambulance still here,
+Major, with its team eating their heads off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I'm going to take that away with me to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This meant that Charlotte's negro man and his daughter, her maid, had
+come with her spring-wagon, and Harry and I would have liked the Major
+better if he had smiled at this point, as he did not. Yet he was most
+lovable; sent so kind a message up to Charlotte that Harry and I
+wondered; and received back from her a reply so gracious that--since we
+could not wonder--we worshipped. In the evening of that day Ferry and
+Charlotte were transferred, she into the room behind her, and he
+upstairs into the one out of which she was taken. That night a slave and
+his wife, belonging to the place, ran away to the enemy. If they should
+tell the Yankees Ned Ferry was here--! &quot;By Jo'!&quot; said Harry Helm, &quot;I'm
+glad I didn't cut my throat; I told that darkey, yesterday, Ned's name
+was O'Brien!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Toward the close of that day came tidings of the brigade's splendid work
+at a steamboat-landing on the Mississippi River, how they had stolen in
+by night between two great bodies of the enemy, burned a vast store of
+military supplies, and then brilliantly cut their way out; yet we were
+told to be ready to withdraw into Mississippi again as soon as our newly
+made captain could safely be moved. Pooh! what of that? Lee was on his
+way into Pennsylvania; the war was nearly over, sang the Harper girls,
+and we were the winners! They cheerily saw Helm and me, next morning,
+ride southward in search of further good news. At a cross-roads I
+proposed that we separate, and meet there again near the end of the day.
+He turned west; I went an hour's ride farther south and then turned
+west myself.</p>
+
+<p>When we met again I knew that he--while he did not know that I--had been
+to Gilmer's plantation. We wanted to see if the Federals had left a
+grave there. They had left three, and a young girl who had been one of
+the dancers told me she had seen Oliver's body carried off by two blue
+troopers who growled and cursed because they had been sent back to bury
+it. Neither Harry nor I mentioned the subject when we met at the
+cross-roads again, for we came on our horses' necks at a stretched out
+run; the Federals were rolling up from the south battalion after
+battalion, hoping to find Major Harper's store of supplies feebly
+guarded and even up with us for that steamboat-landing raid. Presently
+as we hurried northward we began to hear, off ahead of us on our left,
+the faint hot give-and-take of two skirmish lines. We came into the
+homestead grove at a constrained trot and found the ladies out on the
+veranda in liveliest suspense between scepticism and alarm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, they're fighting, now, on the edge of town,&quot; we said, &quot;but our
+boys will keep them there.&quot; Our host and hostess moaned their unbelief.
+&quot;However,&quot; added Harry, &quot;I'll go tell the old man to hitch up the little
+mules and--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You dawn't need,&quot; said C&eacute;cile, &quot;'tis done!&quot; and Camille confirmed her
+word, while the planter and his wife returned to the kitchen yard, where
+the servants were loading the smokehouse meat into a wagon to hide it in
+the woods; Miss Harper and Estelle went into the house, summoned by
+Charlotte's maid. On Ferry's chamber floor sounded three measured thumps
+of his scabbarded sword.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick, you answer that,&quot; exclaimed Harry, reining in half wheeled; &quot;but
+keep him on his back, if you have to hold him down!&quot; He spurred away to
+learn whether we had better stay or fly. I threw my rein to Camille and
+flew up the hall stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Ferry lay in bed with three pillows behind him and his sheathed sword
+across his lap. &quot;Good-evening, Richard,&quot; he said, &quot;you are returned just
+in time; will you please hand me my two pistol' from yonder?--thank
+you.&quot; He laid one beside each thigh. &quot;Now please turn the head of my
+bed a little bit, to face the door--thank you; and now, good-bye. You
+hear those footstep' there in the room behind? she is dressing to go;
+the other ladies they are helping her. Richard, I place them in your
+charge; have them all ready to get into her wagon at a moment's notice,
+with you on your horse--and you better take that Jewett horse, too; he
+came to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated, but a single flash of authority from his eye was enough and
+I had passed half-way to the door, when, through the window over the
+front veranda, I saw a small body of horsemen trotting up through the
+grove. The dusk of the room hid me, but there was no mistaking them.
+&quot;Too late, Captain,&quot; I said, &quot;they've got us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How many do you see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About sixteen. Our two horses will be Yankees again to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! not certainly. Where is your carbine?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just outside this door. They know you're here, Captain, they're
+surrounding the house.&quot; As I reached toward the door I heard his sword
+crawl out, the doorknob clicked without my touching it, the door swung
+and closed again, and Charlotte Oliver was with us. The light of the
+western window shone full upon her; she was in the same dress, hat and
+all, in which I had seen her the night we rode together alone. Though
+wasted and pale, she betrayed a flush on either cheek and a smile that
+mated with the sweet earnest of her eyes. She tendered me my carbine,
+patted my hand caressingly, and glided onward to Ferry's bedside. With
+my back to them and my ear to the door I hearkened outward. In the front
+doorway below sounded the jingling tread of cavalry-boots and a clank
+of sabres.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LIV" id="LIV">LIV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE FIGHT IN THE DOORWAY</strong></p>
+
+<p>Charlotte's whisper came to me: &quot;Richard!&quot; Standing by Ferry's pillow
+she spoke for him. &quot;If they start upstairs come and stand like me, on
+the other side.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I nodded and slyly opened the door enough to pass half-way out. Some man
+was parleying with Miss Harper. &quot;Now, madam, you know you haven't locked
+up your parlor to maintain an abstract right; you've locked it up
+because you've got the man in there that I've come for.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whom have you come for, sir?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant O'Brien, of the rebel army. Shall I order this man to kick
+that door in? Answer quickly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir, there is no Lieutenant O'Brien in there, nor elsewhere in this
+house; there never has been.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stand aside, madam.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop, sir! I command you! There is no Lieutenant of any name on this
+place!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes there is; he goes by various names, but one of them is Ned
+Ferry. Sergeant, we'll kick together; now!&quot;--Bang!</p>
+
+<p>I leaned back into the room to say &quot;It's all right! Oh, but that sweet
+woman's a 'coon! Let them batter!&quot; As I thrust my head out again Miss
+Harper was exclaiming &quot;Oh, sirs, don't do that!&quot;--Bang!--&quot;For the honor
+of your calling and your flag--&quot; Bang!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's no Lieutenant in there.&quot; Bang!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Corporal, go find an axe or something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you need not, sirs, I'll unlock the door.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, be quick about it, and then stand clear; we don't want any woman
+hurt.&quot; The key rattled at the keyhole and then dropped to the floor.
+&quot;You did that by intention! Give me that key!&quot; He tried the lock. &quot;We've
+jammed it, corporal, but another good kick will fetch it;
+now!&quot;--Bang!--crash!--open flew the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I will be damned!&quot; said the officer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir,&quot; said Miss Harper, &quot;you give me no occasion to doubt it.&quot; She
+followed the men upstairs. &quot;Estelle, go back to your sister and cousin;
+and if you, my dear,&quot;--to our hostess--&quot;will kindly go also, and stay
+with them--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I closed the door. It had no key, but there was a small catch to the
+knob and I turned it on while the men were looking into the adjacent
+rooms. When they reached ours Miss Harper was again at their front.
+Inside, the three of us silently noted our strategic advantages: we were
+in the darkest part of the room, the bed's covering was a dull red,
+Ferry had on his shirt of black silk, the white pillows were hidden at
+his back, Charlotte and I were darkly clad, the light from our west
+window would be in our assailants' faces as they entered, and they would
+be silhouetted against a similar light from the hall's front. We
+noiselessly cocked our weapons and Charlotte and I each sank to one
+knee. &quot;The door is very thin,&quot; murmured Ferry, &quot;we can fire before they
+enter; they will get, anyhow, our smoke, and if they fire as they rush
+in we can aim under their flash.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was only then that I observed that Charlotte was armed. But the fact
+made her seem only the more a true woman, since I knew that only for her
+honor or his life would she ever take deadly aim. Her weapon was the
+slender revolver she had carried ever since the day which had made her
+Charlotte Oliver, the thing without which she never could have reached
+this hour of blissful extremity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In here there is a lady, ill,&quot; we heard Miss Harper say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she alone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry prompted in a whisper, the three of us cried &quot;Yes!&quot; and he added
+&quot;Pass one side from the door, Miss Harper, we are going to shoot
+through it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, in there! Lieutenant Ferry, of Ferry's scouts,&quot;--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>Captain</em> Ferry,&quot; retorted Miss Harper, and I echoed the amendment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damn the difference; I give you one half-minute, Captain Ferry, to say
+you surrender! If you weren't wounded I wouldn't give you that.
+Corporal, go get a log out of that fireplace downstairs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, shame!&quot; wailed Miss Harper, half-way down the hall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain,&quot; called Ferry, &quot;I give you one quarter-minute to get away from
+that door.&quot; He whispered to Charlotte, pointing to a panel of it higher
+than any one's head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sirs,&quot; we again heard Miss Harper cry, &quot;withhold! Captain Ferry,
+they have called in four more men!&quot; We heard the four downstairs coming
+at a run. &quot;Oh, sir--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go away, madam!&quot; bellowed the officer as his men thundered into the
+upper hall. &quot;Now, Captain Ferry, there are six of us here and three
+under each of your windows. Do you--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sir, the lady! the sick lady!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's his look-out, madam. If the sick lady isn't Charlotte Oli'--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if she is?&quot; called Ferry, depressing Charlotte's weapon to an aim
+barely breast high.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then throwing away your life won't save hers! Do you surren'--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry made a quick gesture for her to shoot low, but she solemnly shook
+her head and fired through the top of the uppermost panel, and the
+assault came.</p>
+
+<p>The log burst the door in at a blow, Ferry and I fired, and our foes
+sprang in. Certainly they were brave; the doorway let them in only by
+twos, and the fire-log, falling under foot, became a stumbling-block;
+yet in an instant the room was ringing and roaring with the fray and
+benighted with its smoke. Their first ball bit the top of my shoulder
+and buried itself in the wall--no, not their first, but the first save
+one; for the bureau mirror stood in dim shade, and the Federal leader
+made the easy mistake of firing right into it. The error sealed his
+fate; Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of
+his followers. They replied hotly but blindly, and in a moment the room
+was void of assailants. Ferry started to spring from the bed, but
+Charlotte threw her arms about him, and as she pressed her head hard
+down on his breast I could not help but hear &quot;No, my treasure, my
+heart's whole treasure, no!&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LV" id="LV">LV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>RESCUE AND RETREAT</strong></p>
+
+<p>I sprang for the door, but the fire-log sent me sprawling with my
+shoulder on the threshold. As I went down I heard in the same breath the
+wounded officer wailing &quot;Go back! go in! there are only four of them!
+don't leave one alive!&quot; and Miss Harper all but screaming &quot;Our men! our
+men! God be praised, our men are coming, they are here! Fly spoilers,
+for your lives, fly!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And it was true. Their hoofs rumbled, their carbines banged, and their
+charge struck three sides of the house at once. Rising only to my
+elbows,--and how I did that much, stiffened with my wound, the doctors
+will have to explain,--I laid my cheek to my rifle, and the light of two
+windows fell upon my gunsights. Every blue-coat in the hall was between
+me and its rear window, but one besides the officer was wounded, and
+with these two three others were busy; only the one remaining man saw
+me. Twice he levelled his revolver, and twice I had almost lined my
+sights on him, but twice Miss Harper unaware came between us. A third
+time he aimed, fired and missed. I am glad he fired first, for our two
+shots almost made one report, and-he plunged forward exactly as I had
+done over the fire-log, except that he reached the floor dead.</p>
+<a name="imgseven" id="imgseven"></a><img src="images/008.jpg" alt="Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of his followers." align="left" />
+
+<p>Thereupon came more things at once than can be told: Miss Harper's
+outcry of horror and pity; Charlotte's cry from the bedside--&quot;Richard!
+Richard!&quot; a rush of feet and shouts of rage in the hall below; and my
+leap to the head of the stairs, shouting to half a dozen gray-jackets
+&quot;Two men, no more! two men to guard prisoners, no more! go back, all but
+you two! go back!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A sabreless officer with a bandaged hand flew up the stair and into my
+face. It was Helm. &quot;The ladies! Smith, good God! Smith, where are
+the girls?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the smokehouse,&quot; cried Miss Harper from her knees beside the
+prostrate Federal officer; &quot;go bring them!--Richard, Charlotte is
+calling you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I ran to Ferry's door; Charlotte was leaning busily over his bared
+chest, while he, still holding a revolver in his right hand, caressed
+her arm with his left. &quot;Dick, his wound has opened again, but we must
+get him away at once anyhow. Isn't my wagon still here?--oh, thank God!
+there it comes now, I hear it in the back yard!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A Confederate waiting on Miss Harper with basin and towels barely dodged
+me as I sprang to the far end of the hall and shouted down into the yard
+for Harry. The little mules, true enough, were just rattling round a
+half turn at the lower hall's back door, having been in hiding behind
+the stables. A score or so of cavalry were boisterously hurrying off
+across the yard with a few captured horses and prisoners, and I had to
+call the Lieutenant angrily a second time, to make him hear me amid
+their din and a happy confusion which he was helping to keep up in a
+fairer group. For here were all the missing feminine members of the
+household, white and colored, and Harry was clamorous with joy,
+compassion and applause, while Camille and C&eacute;cile, pink with weeping,
+stepped out across the high doorsill of the smokehouse, leading Ned
+Ferry's horse and mine.</p>
+
+<p>However, there was not the urgency for instant flight that Charlotte had
+thought there was; night fell; a whole regiment of our mounted infantry
+came silently up from the rear of the plantation and bivouacked without
+lights behind a quarter of a mile of worm-fence; our two wounded and
+three unharmed prisoners, or Miss Harper's, I should say, for it was in
+response to her entreaties that the latter had thrown down their arms,
+were taken away; the dead man was borne out; lights glowed in every
+room, the servants returned to their tasks, a maddening fragrance came
+from the kitchen, and the three nieces flitted everywhere in their
+benign activities, never discovering the hurt on my shoulder until
+everything else on earth had been discovered, and then--&quot;Oh, Richard,
+Richard!&quot; from Estelle, with &quot;Reach-hard, Reach-hard!&quot; from C&eacute;cile, and
+&quot;Mr. Smith!&quot; from Camille, as they bathed and bound it. At length a
+surgeon arrived, gave a cheering opinion of Ferry and of Charlotte, and
+scolded Harry savagely for the really bad condition of his hand. Then
+sounds grew few and faint, our lights went out, we lay down fully
+dressed, and nearly all of us, for a while, slept.</p>
+
+<p>But about two in the morning Harry awakened me, murmuring &quot;Reach-hard!
+Reach-hard! come! our sick-train's moving. Ssh! General Austin's asleep
+in the next room!&quot; I asked where Ferry was. &quot;Already started,&quot; he
+whispered, &quot;--in the General's own ambulance, with Charlotte Oliver in
+hers, on a mattress, like Ned, and the four Harpers in theirs.&quot; While we
+stole downstairs he murmured on &quot;Our brigade's come up and General
+Austin will attack at daylight with this house as his headquarters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As we mounted I asked whither we were bound. &quot;Tangipahoa,&quot; he said;
+&quot;then by railroad to Brookhaven, and then out to Squire Wall's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the first streak of dawn our slow caravan caught the distant notes of
+the battle opening behind us. &quot;That's Fisher's battery!&quot; joyously cried
+the aide-de-camp as we paused and hearkened back. &quot;Well, thank the Lord,
+this time nobody's got to go back for her doll; she's got it with her; I
+saw her, just now, combing its hair.&quot; We descended into a woody hollow,
+the sounds of human strife died away, and field and forest offered us
+only beauty, fragrance, peace, and the love-songs of birds.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LVI" id="LVI">LVI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>H&Ocirc;TEL DES INVALIDES</strong></p>
+
+<p>A shattered crew we were when in the forenoon of the third day we
+reached our goal. Harry's hand was giving him less trouble, but both my
+small wounds were misbehaving as stoutly as their limitations would
+allow; my aches were cruel and incessant, my side was swollen and my
+shoulder hot. Miss Harper was &quot;really ill,&quot; said the surgeon, but for
+whose coming with us we should hardly have brought our whole number
+through alive. Both Ferry and Charlotte were in a critical condition.
+&quot;Take you in!&quot; said our tearfully smiling Mrs. Wall; &quot;why, we'd take yo'
+whole crowd in ef we had to go out and bunk undeh the trees owse'v's!...
+Oh, Mr. Smith, you po' <em>chi--ild!</em>... Oh, my Lawd! is this Lieutenant
+Do-wrong! Good Lawd, good Lawd! I think this waugh's gone on now jess
+long enough!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the house she gave the younger Harpers a second kiss all round. &quot;You
+po' dears, yo're hero-ines, now, and hencefo'th fo'evehmo'!&quot; Harry and I
+agreed they were; it was one of the few points on which we thought
+alike. We even agreed that Estelle's grasp of earthly realities was not
+so feeble as we had thought it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fact is,&quot; I said to him, on our first day at the Walls', as he was
+leaving the soldiers' room, where I sat under the surgeon's inspection,
+&quot;you were totally mistaken about her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I was,&quot; he replied; &quot;she's got more sense in a minute than
+Camille's got in a week,&quot; and shut the door between us.</p>
+
+<p>My blood leaped with rage, yet I sat perfectly calm, while the surgeon
+laughed like a hyena. &quot;As soon as you can let me go, Doctor,&quot; I frigidly
+said, &quot;I shall look up the Lieutenant. I consider that remark
+ungentlemanly, and his method of making it as worthy only of a coward.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The surgeon cackled again. &quot;If that man,&quot; I dispassionately resumed,
+&quot;was not perfectly sure that I am too honorable a gentleman to give Miss
+Camille the faintest hint of what he has said, sooner than say it he
+would go out and cut his throat from ear to ear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well! you oughtn't to get mad at him for thinking you a gentleman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He sha'n't take a low advantage of my being one. You think he's open
+and blunt--he's as sly as a mink. He praises the older sister at the
+younger's expense, when it's the younger one that he's so everlastingly
+stuck on that he can't behave <em>like</em> a gentleman to any man to whom she
+shows the slightest preference.&quot; We heard a coming step, but I talked
+on: &quot;Sense! poor simpleton! he knows he hasn't got&quot;--the door opened and
+Harry stepped partly in, but I only raised my voice,--&quot;hasn't got as
+much brains in his whole head as there is in one of her tracks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With something between a sob, a sputter and a shriek he shut himself out
+again. Harry was never deep but in a shallow way, and never shallow
+without a certain treacherous depth. When Ned Ferry the next day
+summoned me to his bedside I went with a choking throat, not doubting I
+was to give account of this matter,--until I saw the kindness of his
+pallid face. Then my silly heart rose as much too high as it had just
+been too low and I thought &quot;Charlotte has surrendered!&quot; All he wanted
+was to make me his scribe. But when we were done he softly asked, &quot;That
+business of yours we talked about on the Plank-road--it looks
+any better?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bit my lip, turned away and shook my head. &quot;Well, anyhow,&quot; he said,
+&quot;I am told there is nobody in your way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I faced him sharply--&quot;Who told you that?&quot; and felt sure he would name
+the tricky aide-de-camp. But he pointed to the room overhead, which
+again, as in the other house, was Charlotte's. I blushed consciously
+with gratitude. &quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;it makes me happy to see you beginning
+again to get well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Within the same hour I met unexpectedly two other persons. First, Harry
+Helm; who, before I could speak, was deluging me with words, telling me
+for the twentieth time how, on that evening of the indoor fight, coming
+with a platoon of Mississippians which he had procured merely as a
+guard, he was within a hundred yards of the house before our shots in
+the bedroom told him he was riding to a rescue. Then suddenly he began
+to assure me that in what he had said about the two sisters he had
+sought only to mislead the surgeon, who, he declared, was more utterly
+dead-gone on Camille than both of us put together. We parted, and
+within the next five minutes I confronted the maiden herself.</p>
+
+<p>She came from upstairs with a mixed armful of papers, books and sewing,
+said she had been with Charlotte, and said no more, only made a
+mysterious mouth. I inquired how Charlotte was. She shrugged, sank into
+a seat on the gallery, let her arm-load into her lap, and replied, &quot;Ah!
+she lies up there and smiles and smiles, and calls us pet names, and
+says she's perfectly contented, and then cannot drop half asleep without
+looking as though she were pressing a knife into her own heart. Oh,
+Dick, what is the matter with her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you think,--Camille?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh--I--I'm afraid to say it--even to Estelle, or aunt Martha, or--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say it to me,&quot; I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, if I could only trust you!&quot; she said, shaking her head sadly and
+trying to lift her arm's burden again without taking her eyes from mine.
+It went to her feet in a landslide, and out of one of the books
+fluttered three stems of sweet-pea each bearing two mated blossoms. I
+knew them in an instant, and in the next I had them. She would not let
+me pile the fallen freight anywhere but into her arm again, nor recover
+her eye before she was fully re-laden. Then she set her lips freezingly
+and said &quot;Now give me back my flowers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I meekly gave them and she turned to go into the house; her head
+gradually sank forward as she went, and her unparagoned ear and neck
+flushed to a burning red. On the threshold, by some miscalculation, her
+burdened arm struck the jamb, and the whole load fell again. I sprang
+and began to gather the stuff into a chair, but she walked straight on
+as though nothing had occurred, and shut the nearest door behind her.</p>
+
+<p>In those days used to come out to see us Gregory, in his long-skirted
+black coat and full civilian dress; of whom I have told a separate
+history elsewhere. Very pointed was Camille's neglect of both Harry and
+me, to make herself lovely to the dark and diffident new-comer, while
+Estelle positively pursued me with compensatory sweetness; and Gregory,
+whenever he and I were alone together, labored to reassure me of his
+harmlessness by expatiating exclusively upon the charms of C&eacute;cile. She
+seemed to him like a guardian angel of Ferry and Charlotte, while yet
+everything she said or did was wholly free from that quality of
+other-worldliness which was beautiful in Estelle, but which would not
+have endured repetition in the sister or the cousin. There Harry and I,
+also, once more agreed. C&eacute;cile never allowed herself to reflect a spirit
+of saintliness, or even of sacrifice, but only of maidenly wisdom and
+sweet philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it weren't for Charlotte,&quot; whispered the Lieutenant, &quot;I could swear
+she was created for Ned Ferry!&quot; and when I shook my head he, too,
+declared &quot;No, no! if ever a match was made on high Charlotte was made
+for him and he for Charlotte; but, oh, Lord, Lord! Reach-hard Thorndyke
+Smith, how is this thing going to end?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That was the problem in the mind of every looker on, and the lookers-on
+were legion; the whole wide neighborhood came to see us. Gregory and
+others outstayed their furloughs; the surgeon lingered shamelessly. Of
+course, there were three girls besides Charlotte, and it was pure
+lying--as I told Helm--for some of those fellows to pretend that Captain
+Ferry's problem was all they stayed for; and yet it was the one
+heart-problem which was everybody's, and we were all in one fever to see
+forthwith a conclusion which &quot;a decent respect to the opinions of
+mankind&quot; required should not come for months.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pooh!&quot; said Harry, &quot;'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind'
+requires just the reverse!&quot; and the surgeon avowed that it was required
+by a decent respect to her powers of endurance; he was every day afraid
+her slow improvement would stop and she would begin to sink. He admitted
+the event could wait, but he wished to gracious we could have
+her decision.</p>
+
+<p>I said suppose it should be negative. &quot;Oh, it won't!&quot; exclaimed both he
+and Harry. &quot;When it comes to the very point--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gregory's approach interrupted us, but I remembered a trait in Charlotte
+of which I have spoken, and gave myself the hope that their prediction
+might prove well founded.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LVII" id="LVII">LVII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A YES AND A NO</strong></p>
+
+<p>But now Charlotte's recovery took on new speed. Maybe her new brightness
+meant only that her heart was learning to bear its load; but we hoped
+that was just what it was unlearning, as she and Ferry sat at chess on
+the gallery in the afternoons.</p>
+
+<p>One night the fellows gave a dance in Brookhaven. We went in two wagons
+and by the light of mounted torch-bearers, and Charlotte and Ferry stood
+at the dooryard gate and sent after us their mirthful warnings and
+good-byes. It set some of us a-hoping--to see them there--a dooryard
+gate means so much. We fairly prayed he might compel her decision before
+she should turn to re-enter the house. But the following morning it was
+evident we had prayed in vain.</p>
+
+<p>On the next afternoon but one we heard that a great column of our
+soldiers was approaching on the nearest highway, bound up the railroad
+to Joe Johnston's army from the region about Port Hudson, and Charlotte
+instantly proposed that our ladies deal out food and drink from some
+shady spot on the roadside. It was one of those southern summer days
+when it verily seems hotter in the shade than in the sun--unless you are
+in the sun. The force was wholly artillery and infantry, the last
+Confederate infantry that region ever saw in column under arms; poor,
+limping, brown-faced, bloody-footed boys! their weapons were the only
+clean things, the only whole things, about them except their unbroken
+spirit; and when the very foremost command chanced to be one which the
+Harpers had seen in New Orleans the day it left there marching in
+faultless platoons and spotless equipments through the crowds that
+roared acclaim and farewell, our dear ladies, for one weak moment, wept.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here come the real heroes, Harry,&quot; said my crippled leader; &quot;we are
+dandies and toy-soldiers, by the side of those infantry boys, Doctor, we
+cavalry fellows;&quot; and we cavalry fellows would have hid if we honorably
+could. Yet hardly had he spoken when he and a passing field-officer
+cried out in mutual recognition, and from that time until the rear-guard
+was clear gone by we received what the newspapers call &quot;a continuous
+ovation.&quot; A group of brigade officers went back with us to Squire
+Wall's, to supper, and you could see by the worship they paid Charlotte
+that they knew her story. Her strength was far overtaxed, and the moment
+the last fond straggler had gone we came in out of the splendid
+moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Charlotte, my dear,&quot; began Miss Harper, &quot;you are too terribly
+tired to--why, where is Charlotte; did she not come in with us from
+the--gate?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry, too, was missing. Mrs. Wall made eyes at the inquirer, Estelle
+and C&eacute;cile began to speak but deferred to each other, and Camille,
+putting on a deadly exhaustion, whined as she tottered to her smiling
+guardian, &quot;Kiss your sweet baby good-night, auntie dear, and&quot;--with a
+hand reached out to Estelle--&quot;make Naughty come, too.&quot; She turned to say
+good-night to C&eacute;cile but spoiled her kiss with an unintended laugh. The
+surgeon, Harry and I bowed from the room and stepped out to the
+water-bucket and gourd. From there we could see the missing two,
+lingering at the dooryard gate, in the bright moonlight. As we finished
+drinking, &quot;Gentlemen,&quot; murmured Harry, &quot;I fear our position is too
+exposed to be tenable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The surgeon started upstairs. &quot;I'll join you directly, Doctor,&quot; Harry
+said, and in a lower voice added &quot;Smith and I will just lounge in and
+out of the hall here to sort o' show nobody needn't be in any hurry,
+don't you see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the other jerked his thumb toward the half-closed parlor, where
+Miss Harper and C&eacute;cile sat close, to each other absorbed in some matter
+of the tenderest privacy. &quot;They'll attend to that,&quot; he muttered; &quot;come
+on to bed and mind your own business.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Harry huffed absurdly. &quot;You go mind yours,&quot; he retorted, and then more
+generously added, &quot;we'll be with you in a minute.&quot; The surgeon went, and
+the aide-de-camp, as we began to pace the hall, fairly took my breath by
+remarking without a hint of self-censure, &quot;Damn a frivolous man!&quot; Then
+irrelatively he added, &quot;Those two out at that gate--this is a matter of
+life and death with them;&quot; and when I would have qualified the
+declaration, he broke in upon me--&quot;Right, Dick, you're right, it <em>is</em>
+worse; it's a choice between true life and death-in-life; whether
+they'll make life's long march in sunshine together or in
+darkness apart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Well, of course, it was no such simple question, and never could be
+while life held so many values more splendid than any wilfulness could
+win. There lay the whole of Charlotte's real difficulty--for she had
+made it all hers. But when I tried in some awkward way to say this Harry
+cut me short. &quot;Oh, Dick, I--eh--you bother me! I want to tell you
+something and if I don't hurry I can't. Something's happened to me, old
+fellow, something that's sobered me more than I ever would 'a' thought
+anything could. I want to tell you because I can trust you with a
+secr'--wh'--what's the matter, did I hurt your wound? Honestly, I want
+to tell you because--well--because I've been deceiving you all along:
+I've deceived you shamefully, letting on to like this girl more than
+that, and so on and so on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you thought you were deceiving me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well, maybe I wasn't, but I want to tell you to-night because I'm
+going to camp in the morning. Oh, yes,&quot;--he named the deepest place
+known--&quot;the sight of those webfoot boys to-day was too much for me; I'm
+going; and Dick, when I told her I was going--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>Told whom</em>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aw, come, now, Dick, you know every bit as well as I know. Well, when I
+told her I was going I didn't dream I was going to tell her anything
+else; I give you my word! Where in the&quot;--same place again--&quot;I ever got
+the courage I'll never tell you, but all of a sudden thinks I, 'I'm
+never going to get anything but no, anyhow, and so, Dick, I've been and
+gone and done it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I leaned on the stair-newel, sorry for the poor fool, but glad of this
+chance. &quot;Why, Lieutenant, not many men would have done as well. You felt
+honor-bound not to slip away uncommitted, so you took your dose like a
+hero and licked the spoon.&quot; I felt that I was salting his wound, but we
+were soldiers and--I had the salt.</p>
+
+<p>He drew a sigh. &quot;Yes, I took my dose--of astonishment. Dick, she said
+yes! Oh, good Lord, Dick, do you reckon they'll ever be such full-blown
+idiots as to let me have her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sank upon the steps; every pore in my body was a fountain of cold
+sweat: &quot;Have whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;C&eacute;cile.&quot; He was going on to declare himself no more fit for her than
+for the presidency of the Confederate States, which was perfectly true;
+but I sprang up, caught him (on my well side) by one good hand, and had
+begun my enthusiastic congratulations, when Charlotte appeared and we
+swerved against the rail to let her pass upstairs. In some way as she
+went by it was made plain to us that she had said no. &quot;Good-night,&quot;
+ventured both of us, timorously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-night,&quot; she responded, very musically, but as if from a great
+distance.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LVIII" id="LVIII">LVIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE UPPER FORK OF THE ROAD</strong></p>
+
+<p>Ferry, as he passed us, called my name, and I started after him. At
+Charlotte's door we heard the greeting of her black maid. The maid's
+father, who of late had been nightly dressing Ferry's wound and mine,
+came to us in Ferry's room; and there my Captain turned to greet me, his
+face white with calamity. He took me caressingly by a button of my
+jacket. &quot;Can you have your wound washed to-night before mine?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, certainly, if it's the least--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, thank you. And down here in this room instead of upstairs?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Ferry! if you knew how horribly it smells, you--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! don't I know?&quot; he said, and as I sat naked from throat to waist
+with the old negro laving the sores, Ferry scanned them narrowly. &quot;They
+are not so bad, Dick; you think a few hours in the saddle will not make
+them worse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not if they're spent for you, Captain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, for me; also for much better. We shall ride for--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ride? Oh, Captain, you are in no condition--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tst!&quot; he laid a finger on my lips; &quot;'twill not be hard; we are not
+going on a scout--to jump fences.&quot; He began to make actual preparations,
+and presently helped me draw my shirt into place again over the clean
+bandages, while the old man went out after fresh water. &quot;I am a hundred
+times more fit to go than to stay,&quot; he suddenly resumed. &quot;I must go. Ah,
+idleness, there is nothing like idleness to drive a man mad; I must have
+something to do--to-night--at once.&quot; I wish I knew how to give the words
+with his quiet intensity.</p>
+
+<p>I began to unclothe his wound. &quot;May I ask one thing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! I know you; you want to ask am I taking that upper fork of the
+road. I am; 'tis for that I want you; so go you now to the stable,
+saddle our horses and bring them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When I reached the front steps with them Ferry was at the gallery's
+edge, Miss Harper, C&eacute;cile and Harry were on three sides of him, and he
+was explaining away our astonishing departure. We were going to
+Hazlehurst, to issue clothing and shoes to those ragged and barefoot
+fellows we had seen that afternoon, and the light of whose tentless camp
+was yonder in the sky, now, toward Brookhaven. We were to go that way,
+confer with their officers, telegraph from town for authorizations to be
+sent to us at Hazlehurst, and then to push on to that place and be ready
+to issue the stuff when the trains should come up from Brookhaven
+bringing the brigade. While he spoke Camille and Estelle joined us.
+&quot;No,&quot; he said, &quot;to start any later, 'twould be too late.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To Harry's imploring protest that he, Ferry, was not fit to go to
+Hazlehurst horseback, he replied &quot;Well! what we going to do? Those boys
+can't go to Big Black swamp bare-foot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Our dear friends were too well aware of the untold trouble to say a word
+about his coming back, but Miss Harper's parting injunction to me was to
+write them.</p>
+
+<p>The whole night and the following day were a toilsome time for us, but
+by fall of the next night the brigade had come in rags and passed newly
+clothed and shod, and in a room of the town tavern we dressed each
+other's hurts and sank to sleep on one bed. The night was hot, the pain
+of my wounds was like a great stone lying on them, and at the tragic
+moment of a frightful dream I awoke. &quot;Captain,&quot; I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did she give no reason?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot; A silence followed; then he said, &quot;You know the reason, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I think I do; I think--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well? don't be afraid to say it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I got the words out in some form, that I believed Charlotte loved him
+deeply, as deeply, passionately, exaltedly, as ever a true woman loved
+a man--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, me!&quot; he lifted his arms wide and knitted his fingers on his brow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And there is the whole trouble,&quot; I added. &quot;She will not let you marry
+the woman whose--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whose husband I have killed.... Ah, God!... Ah, my God! why was I
+chosen to do that?... And you think, Dick, it was not a question of
+time; that I did not ask, maybe a little too soon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not as between sooner and later; and yet, in another way, possibly,
+yes.&quot; Without either of us stirring from the pillow I tried to explain.
+I pointed out that trait in Charlotte which I called an impulse suddenly
+to surrender the key of her situation, the vital point in her
+fortunes and fate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.... Yes,&quot; Ferry kept putting in.</p>
+
+<p>I went on to say that she seemed now to have learned, herself, that it
+was on this shoal she grounded at every low water of her physical and
+mental powers; as when over-fatigued, for instance; and that I should
+not wonder if she had bound herself never again at such a time to let
+her judgment follow her impulses. He laid his hand on me: &quot;Stop; stop;
+you stab too deep. I thought to take her by surprise at that very point,
+and right there she has countermined. My God! can it be that I am served
+only right?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I replied, although it was a thing I would have said Ned Ferry
+would not do, &quot;no, no, it is she who has served both you and herself
+cruelly wrong. Captain, I believe that when Miss Harper has talked it
+over with her she will see her mistake as we all see it, and will call
+you back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, me! Ah, me! Do you believe that, Dick?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do, Captain; but at the same time--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What, what? Speak out, Dick. You blame me some other way?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, indeed! I am the one to blame, the only one. If you had not,
+both of you, been so blameless--so splendidly blameless--I should hardly
+have let myself sink so deep into blame; but I knew you would never take
+the last glad step until you had seen the last sad proof that you might
+take it. Oh, Captain, to-night is the third time that in my dreams I
+have seen <em>that man</em> alive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how long after that we lay silent, but it seemed an
+endless time before he exclaimed at last &quot;My God! Dick, you should
+have told me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know it; I know I should! But it was only a dream, and--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! 'twas your doubt first and the dream after! But let us think no
+more of blame, we must settle the doubt. We shall begin that to-morrow.&quot;
+On my venturing to say more he interrupted. &quot;Well, we can do nothing
+now; at the present, sleep is our first business.&quot; However, after a
+little, he spoke again, and, I believe, purely in order to soothe me to
+slumber, speculated and counselled with me for the better part of an
+hour concerning my own poor little love affair.</p>
+
+<p>At breakfast he told me the first step in his further plans would be for
+us to take the train for Tangipahoa, with our horses, on our way to our
+own camp; but just before the train came the telegraph brought General
+Austin's request--which, of course, carried all the weight of an
+order--for Ferry to remain here and make ready for further issues of
+quartermaster's stores. He turned on his heel and twisted his small
+mustache: &quot;That means we are kept here to be kept here, Richard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a mistaken kindness, from our point of view, but it had the merit
+that it kept us busy. In two days the post-quartermaster's affairs and
+supplies were reduced to perfect order for the first time in their
+history. For two days more we ran a construction train and with a swarm
+of conscripts repaired two or three miles of road-bed and some
+trestle-work in a swamp; and at every respite in our strenuous
+activities we discoursed of the girls we'd left behind us; their minds,
+their manners, their features, figures, tastes and talents, and their
+walk and talk. So came the end of the week, and while the sun was still
+above the trees we went on down, inspecting the road beyond our repairs,
+on our own hand-car to Brookhaven. With heads bare, jackets in our laps,
+and muddy boots dangling over the car's front edge, and with six big
+negroes at the levers behind us, we watched the miles glide under our
+wheels and grow fewer and fewer between us and the shrine of our hearts.
+&quot;Sing, Dick,&quot; said Ferry, and we chanted together, as we had done at
+every sunset these three days, &quot;O my love is like a red, red rose.&quot; We
+could not have done it had we known that yonder glorious sun was setting
+forever upon the fortunes of our Southern Confederacy. It was the fourth
+of July; Lee was in full retreat from Gettysburg, Vicksburg was gone,
+Port Hudson was doomed, and all that was left for us now was to
+die hard.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LIX" id="LIX">LIX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>UNDER CHARLOTTE'S WINDOW</strong></p>
+
+<p>At the tavern, where we went to smarten up and to eat, we chanced upon
+Gregory. He was very shy of Ferry, because Ferry was a captain, but told
+me the latest news from the Wall place, where he had spent the previous
+evening. Harry and the surgeon were gone to camp, the Harpers were well,
+Charlotte was--better, after a bad turn of several days. We felt in duty
+bound to stay within hail of the telegraph office until it should close
+for the night; and when the operator was detained in it much beyond the
+usual time, Ferry, as we hovered near, said at length, &quot;Well, I'm sorry
+for you, Dick; 'tis now too late for you to go yonder--this evening.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Didn't you intend to call, too?&quot; &quot;No,&quot; he said; yet the moment the
+operator turned the key in his door we sauntered away from the station,
+tavern, town, and out into the rain-famished country. We chose a road on
+high ground, under pines; the fact that a few miles of it would bring us
+to Squire Wall's was not sufficient reason for us to shun it, and we
+loitered on and on, discoursing philosophically on man and woman and the
+duties of each to other. Through habit we went softly, and so, in time,
+came up past a small garden under the house's southern side. Here
+silence was only decorum, for every window in the dark upper rooms was
+thrown open to the sultry air. The house's front was away from the
+direction of the town, and at a corner of this garden, where the road
+entered the open grove, the garden fence turned north at a right angle,
+while the road went on through the grove into wide cornfields beyond.</p>
+
+<p>We kept to the garden fence till it brought us along the dooryard front,
+facing the house. Thus far the whole place seemed fast asleep. Along the
+farthest, the northern, side a line of planted trees ran close to a
+narrow wing of but one room on each of its two stories, and the upper of
+these two rooms was Charlotte's. Where we paused, at the dooryard gate,
+we could not see this wing, but we knew its exterior perfectly; it had a
+narrow window in front, looking into the grove, and a broader one at the
+rear, that overlooked an open stretch of the Wall plantation. The place
+seemed fast asleep, I say, but we had not a doubt we were being
+watched--by the two terrible dogs that guarded the house but never
+barked. By this time they should have recognized us and ought to be
+coming forward and wagging faintly, as who should say &quot;Yes, that's all
+right, but we have our orders.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot;--Ferry guardedly pointed to the ground at the corner of the house
+nearest Charlotte's room; there were both the dogs, dim as phantoms and
+as silent, standing and peering not toward us but around to the wing
+side in a way to make one's blood stop. We drew deeper into the grove
+and made a short circuit that brought us in line with Charlotte's two
+windows, and there, at the farther one, with her back to us, sat
+Charlotte, looking toward Hazlehurst. The bloodthirsty beasts at the
+corner of the house were so intently waiting to spring upon something,
+somebody, between them and the nearer window, that we were secure from
+their notice. We had hardly more than become aware of these things when,
+in the line of planted trees, out of the depths of the one nearest the
+nearer window, sounded a note that brought Charlotte instantly to her
+feet; the same feeble, smothered cry she had heard the night she was
+wounded. She crossed to the front window and listened, first standing
+erect, and then stooping and leaning out. When we saw her do that we
+knew how little she cared for her life; Ferry beckoned me up from behind
+him; neither of us needed to say he feared the signal was from Oliver.
+&quot;Watch here,&quot; he whispered, and keeping the deepest shade, started
+eagerly, with drawn revolver, toward the particular tree. I saw the dogs
+discover and recognize him and welcome his aid, yet I kept my closest
+watch on that tree's boughs and on Charlotte. She was wondering, I
+guessed, whether the call was from some messenger of Ferry, or was only
+a bird's cry. As if she decided it was the latter, she moved away, and
+had nearly re-crossed the room, when the same sad tremolo came searching
+the air again. Nevertheless she went on to the farther window and stood
+gazing out for the better part of a minute, while in my heart I besought
+her not to look behind. For Ferry and the dogs had vanished in shadow,
+and outside her nearer window, wavering now above and now below the
+sill, I could just descry a small pale object that reminded me of that
+missive Coralie Rothvelt had passed up to me outside the window-sill at
+old Lucius Oliver's house exactly a month before. From the upper depths
+of the nearest tree this small thing was being proffered on the end of a
+fishing-rod. Presently the rod must have tapped the sill, with such a
+start did she face about. Silently she ran, snatched the dumb messenger,
+and drew down the window-shade. A moment later the room glowed with a
+candle, while her shadow, falling upon the shade, revealed her scanning
+a letter, lifting her arms with emotion, and so passing out of the
+line of view.</p>
+
+<p>I waited on. So absorbed was I that I did not hear the coming of a
+horseman in the fields beyond the grove, nor the click of a field gate;
+but when the strange quietude of Ferry and the dogs had begun to
+reassure me I became aware of this new-comer approaching the dooryard.
+There he reined in and hallooed. I knew the voice. An answer came from
+an upper window. &quot;Is this Squire Wall's?&quot; asked the traveller. &quot;Well,
+Squire, I'm from General Austin's headquarters, with orders to
+Captain Ferry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Ferry ain't stopping with us now, sir, he's 'way up at
+Hazlehurst.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir. I didn't know but he might 'a' come down to spend to-morrow
+with you, it being the Sabbath. My name's Gholson, sir; I've got letters
+for the Miss Harpers; yes, sir; and one for Private Smith, from his
+mother, in New Orleans.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My sakes! yo' pow'ful welcome, Mr. Wholesome; just wait till I call off
+my dogs, sir, and I'll let you in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the dogs came at the Squire's call I breathed relief. Ferry
+appeared behind me and beckoned me deeper into the grove. He sank upon a
+stump, whispering &quot;That was worse than ten fights.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who was it?&quot; I asked. &quot;Where is he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to the field gate through which Gholson had come. In the
+field a small man was re-closing it cautiously, and now he mounted and
+rode away; it was Isidore Goldschmidt, of the Plank-road swamp. I was
+wondering why he had behaved in this skulking way, when Ferry, as if
+reading my thought, said, &quot;Isidore can't afford to be found seventy-five
+miles inside our lines with no papers except a letter from a Yankee
+officer--and not knowing, himself, what's in it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! why should he risk his life to bring such a thing to her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because three months ago she risked her life to save the life of his
+father, and now, since only last week, that Yankee has saved the life of
+his mother.&quot; I asked who this Yankee might be. &quot;Well, that is yet more
+strange; he is the brother of Captain Jewett.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were moving to the house; at the steps we halted; the place was all
+alight and the ladies were arriving in the parlor. A beam of light
+touching Ferry's face made his smile haggard. I asked if this Jewett was
+another leader of scouts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he is a high-rank surgeon. Yet I think he must have heard all about
+her; he wouldn't send that letter, that way, just for gratitude.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I responded, pondering, &quot;he may easily have learned about her,&quot;
+and I called to mind that chief-of-staff of whom Charlotte had told us.
+Then, remembering her emotional shadow-play on the window-shade, I
+added, &quot;He knew at least what would be important news to her--Captain,
+I have it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He made a motion of pain--&quot;Don't say it!&quot; and we read in each other's
+eyes the one conviction that from a surgeon's personal knowledge this
+man had written to warn Charlotte that Oliver was alive.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LX" id="LX">LX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>TIDINGS</strong></p>
+
+<p>All the glad difference between hope stark drowned and hope sighing back
+into life lightened Ferry's heart; he gripped my shoulder--the sound
+one, by good luck,--and drew me into the dining-room, where the whole
+company were gathered to see Gholson eat. Our entry was a fresh
+surprise. As we drank the flatteries of seven lovely welcomes, from
+behind Gholson I reconnoitred Charlotte, and the fullest confirmation of
+our guess was in the peaceful resolve of her eyes. I noted the Harpers,
+all, and dear Mrs. Wall's sweet freckled face, take new gladness of the
+happy change, while unable to define its cause.</p>
+
+<p>But now came raptures and rhapsodies over the opened letters. Ferry's
+orders had not been expected to reach him to-night, Gholson said, and so
+we insisted they and my letter should remain in the saddle-pockets while
+Gholson ate, and while the good news, public and personal, of the
+Harpers' letters went round.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I thought the' was fi-ive letters,&quot; said the Squire as we were
+about to leave the board; at which Mrs. Wall mumbled to him to &quot;hush
+up;&quot; for the fifth was to C&eacute;cile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; guilefully said Charlotte, &quot;Richard's letter!&quot; and we all
+followed Gholson to where his saddle lay on the gallery. There he handed
+out Ferry's document and went on rummaging for mine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The two were right here together,&quot; he said, &quot;and Mr. Smith's was marked
+'valuable' and had something hard in one corner of it.&quot; Camille brought a
+candle, Estelle another; Gholson rose from his knee: &quot;Smith, it's gone!
+I've lost it! And yet&quot;--he slapped his breast-pockets--&quot;no, it's
+somewhere in the grove; it's between here and that cornfield gate! I
+counted all the papers just this side of that gate, and I must 'a'
+dropped yours then!&quot; C&eacute;cile brought a third light and we sallied forth
+into the motionless air, Estelle with a candle and Gholson, Camille
+with a candle and me, C&eacute;cile with a candle and Mrs. Wall, Miss Harper
+and the Squire, and Charlotte and Ferry. In the heart of the grove
+Estelle gave a soft cry, sprang, stooped, straightened, and handed me
+the letter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; exclaimed Camille as the three candle-bearers gathered close,
+&quot;that's your mother's writing,&quot; and as we fell into marching order
+again, with the lights still in the front files, I opened it. It was
+thick and soft with sheet after sheet of thinnest paper. With these was
+a sealed letter, unaddressed, containing in one corner what seemed to be
+a ring. Around all was a sheet of writing of later date than any other.
+Wonderful, my mother's lines declared, was the Providence that had
+brought her wounded boy among such priceless friends; and wonderful that
+same Providence that now gave her the chance to send three weeks' daily
+letters in one, and to send them by a hand so sure that she ventured to
+add this other note, a matter so secret that it must be delivered only
+by my own hands, or hands which I could trust as my own, to Charlotte
+Oliver. We glanced back in search of Charlotte. She and Ferry were well
+in the rear of the procession, moving with laggard steps, she lighting
+his page with a borrowed candle, and he evidently reading not his
+orders, but the Federal surgeon's letter. &quot;Oh, don't speak yet,&quot;
+murmured Camille, &quot;let them alone!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the garden gate the most of the company passed on into the house,
+Gholson among them. His face, as for an instant he turned aside to me,
+betrayed a frozen rage; for Ferry and Charlotte tarried just at our
+backs, she seated on the &quot;horse-block&quot; and he leaning against it. A stir
+of air brought by the rising moon had blown out their light. Gholson
+left me, and Camille waited at my side while I tried to read by the
+flare of her guttering candle. &quot;Come, my dear,&quot; said Miss Harper from
+half-way up the walk, but Charlotte called Miss Harper.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd better go in, Camille,&quot; insisted the aunt as she passed us, but
+Charlotte had just asked for our candle to relight her own, and she said
+to Miss Harper, &quot;Let them stay, won't you?&quot; and then to Ferry, &quot;They
+might as well, mightn't they? Oh, now,&quot;--as Camille handed her my
+mother's letter--&quot;they must!&quot; She toyed with the envelope's thinner edge
+without noticing the ring in the corner. &quot;My dears,&quot; she said, looking
+frail and distressed, yet resolute, &quot;I have positive intelligence--not
+through Captain, nor Richard, nor Mr. Gholson,--I'll tell you how some
+day--positive intelligence that--the dead--is not dead; the blow,
+Richard, glanced. I was foolish never to think of that possibility, it
+occurs so often. He was profoundly stunned, so that he didn't come-to
+until he was brought to a surgeon. It's from that surgeon I have the
+news; here's his letter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Charlotte, my dear,&quot; interrupted Miss Harper, &quot;tell us the remainder
+to-morrow, but now--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sweetest friend, there will never be another chance like this;
+Captain Ferry's orders carry him to Jackson at daylight to-morrow,
+and--and we may not meet again for years; let me go on. When the gash
+was sewed up, the hand was really the worse hurt of the two, and after
+a few days he was sent down on a steamer to New Orleans with a great lot
+of other sick and wounded, and with the commanding general's warning not
+to come back on peril of his life. 'Tisn't easy to tell this, but you
+four have a particular right to know it from me and at once. So let me
+say&quot;--she handed Ferry my mother's letter as if it were a burdensome
+distraction--&quot;I'm not sorry for the mistake, Richard, which we all so
+innocently made; and you mustn't be sorry for me and be saying to
+yourselves that my captivity is on me again; for I'm happier tonight
+than I've been since the night the mistake was made.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She dropped a hand to Ferry's to receive again the neglected letter, and
+chanced to take it by the corner that held the ring. With that she
+stared at us, fingered it, rended the envelope, gave one glance to her
+own name engraved inside a plain gold ring of the sort New Orleans girls
+bestow upon those to whom they are betrothed, and springing to the
+ground between our two candles, bent over the open page and cried
+through a flood of tears, &quot;Oh, God, have mercy on him, he is gone! He is
+gone, Edgard! Oh, Edgard, he is gone at last; gone beyond all doubt, and
+our hands--our hands and our hearts are clean!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry tossed away his candle and turned upon her, but she retreated into
+Miss Harper's arms laughing through her tears. &quot;Oh, no, no! we've never
+hurried yet, never yet, my master in patience, and we'll not hurry now!
+Go and come again. Go, wait, hide your eyes till I cry 'whoop,' and
+come again and find me, and, I pledge you before these dear witnesses,
+I'll be 'it' for the rest of my life!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With the letter again held open, and bidding Miss Harper and Camille
+read with her, she swept a fleet glance along the close lines that told
+how Oliver, half cured of his wounds, had died in a congestive chill, of
+swamp-fever, the day he landed in New Orleans. &quot;See, see, Richard, here
+your mother has copied the hospital's certificate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She read on aloud how two private Federal soldiers, hospital
+convalescents, had come to my mother telling her of his death, and how
+he had named my mother over and over in his delirium, desiring that she
+should be given charge of the small effects on his person and that she
+would return them to his father in the Confederacy. My mother wrote how
+she had been obliged secretly to buy back from the hospital steward a
+carte-de-visite photograph of Charlotte, and this ring; how, Oliver not
+being a Federal soldier, she had been allowed to assume the expense and
+task of his burial; how she had found the body already wrapped and
+bound, in the military way, when she first saw it, but heard the two
+convalescents praising to each other the strong, hard-used beauty of the
+hidden face, and was shown the suit of brown plantation jeans we all
+knew so well; and how, lastly, when her overbearing conscience compelled
+her to tell them she might find it easier to send the relics to the wife
+rather than the father, they had furtively advised her to do as
+she pleased.</p>
+<a name="imgeight" id="imgeight"></a><img src="images/009.jpg" alt="Springing to the ground between our two candles, she bent over the open page" align="left" />
+
+<p>&quot;Charlotte,&quot; said Miss Harper, &quot;the thing is an absolute certainty!
+Even without your likeness or--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no, no, not without this! the ring, the ring! But with it, yes!
+This is the crowning proof! my ring to him! Oh, see my name inside it,
+Camille; this little signet is Heaven's own testimony and acquittal!
+Look, Richard, look at it now, for no living soul, no light of day,
+shall ever see it again--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sweet heart,&quot; replied Miss Harper, &quot;very good! very good! but now say
+no more of that sort. God bless you, dear, just let yourself be happy.
+Good-night--no, no, sit still; stay where you are, love, while Camille
+and I go in and Richard steps around to the stable and puts our team
+into the road-wagon; for, Captain Ferry, neither you nor he is fit to
+walk into Brookhaven; we can bring the rig back when we come from church
+to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Richard,&quot; said Charlotte, &quot;get my wagon and the little Mexicans.&quot;
+Then to Miss Harper and Camille, &quot;Good-night, dears; I'll wait here that
+long, if Captain Ferry will allow me.&quot; She turned to him with the
+moonlight in her eyes, that danced riotously as she said in her softest,
+deepest note, &quot;You're afraid!&quot; and I thanked Heaven that Coralie
+Rothvelt was still a pulsing reality in the bosom of Charlotte
+Oliver.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LXI" id="LXI">LXI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>WHILE DESTINY MOVED ON</strong></p>
+
+<p>Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the
+next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and
+Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited
+Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther
+to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him
+and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if
+our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was
+not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in
+practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh,
+the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the
+scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the
+groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood
+and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from
+sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long
+dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our
+brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring,
+with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the
+Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was
+kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried
+swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade
+going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge
+might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its
+captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be,
+in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called
+back to his commander, &quot;Ferry's scouts!&quot; the whole column cheered us. I
+feel the thrill of it to this hour.</p>
+
+<p>How busy we were kept, and how much oftener I wrote to Ferry, and to
+Camille, than to my mother. And how much closer I watched the trend of
+things that belonged only to this small story than I did that great
+theatre of a whole world's fortunes, whose arches spread and resounded
+from the city of Washington to the city of Mexico. In mid-August one of
+Camille's heartlessly infrequent letters brought me a mint of blithe
+news. Harry and C&eacute;cile were really engaged; Major Harper, aunt Martha,
+General Austin, Captain Ferry and Charlotte had all written the distant
+father in his behalf, and the distant father had capitulated.
+Furthermore, Captain Ferry's latest letter to Charlotte had brought word
+that in spite of all backsets he was promised by his physician that in
+ten days more he could safely take the field again. But, best of all,
+Major Harper, having spent a week with his family--not on leave, but on
+some mysterious business that somehow included a great train of pontoon
+bridges--had been so completely won over to Charlotte by her own sweet
+ways that, on his own suggestion to his sister, and their joint
+proposition, by correspondence, to Ferry, another group of letters,
+from Miss Harper, the Major and the General, had been sent to the
+Durands in New Orleans--father, mother, and grandmother--telling them
+all about Charlotte; her story, her beauty, her charms of manner, mind,
+and heart. And so, wrote my correspondent, the Wall household were
+living in confident hope and yet in unbearable suspense; for these
+things were now full two weeks old, and would have been told me sooner
+only that she, Camille, had promised never to tell them to any one
+whomsoever.</p>
+
+<p>A week later came another of these heartlessly infrequent letters. Mr.
+Gregory, it said,--oh, <em>hang</em> Mr. Gregory!--had called the previous
+evening. Then followed the information that poor Mr. Gholson--oh, dear!
+the poor we have always with us!--had arrived again from camp so wasted
+with ague as to be a sight for tears. He had come consigned to &quot;our
+hospital,&quot; an establishment which the Harpers, Charlotte and the Walls
+had set up in the old &quot;summer-hotel&quot; at Panacea Springs, and had
+contrived to get the medical authorities to adopt, officer and--in a
+manner--equip. They were giving dances there, to keep the soldiers
+cheerful, said the letter, in which its writer took her usual patriotic
+part, and Mr. Gregory--oh, save us alive! And now I was to prepare
+myself: the Durands had got the bunch of letters and had written a
+lovely reply to Captain Ferry, who had sent it to Charlotte, claiming
+her hand, and Charlotte had answered yes. If I thought I had ever seen
+her beautiful or blithe, or sweet, or happy, I ought to see her now;
+while as for the writer herself, nothing in all her life had ever so
+filled her with bliss, or ever could again.</p>
+
+<p>Ferry did not arrive, but day by day, night by night, we stalked the
+enemy, longing for our Captain to return to us. Quinn was fearless,
+daring, indefatigable; but Quinn was not Ferry. Often we talked it over
+by twos or fours; the swiftness of Ferry's divinations, the brilliant
+celerity with which he followed them out, the kindness of his care;
+Quinn's care of us was paternal, Ferry's was brotherly and motherly. We
+loved Quinn for the hate and scorn that overflowed from his very gaze
+upon everything false or base. But we loved Ferry for loving each and
+every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther
+yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious
+atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the
+carbonic-acid gas of Gholson's cant. We made great parade of recognizing
+his defects; it had all the fine show of a motion to reconsider. For
+example, we said, his serene obstinacy in small matters was equally
+exasperating and ridiculous; or, for another instance,--so and so; but
+in summing up we always lumped such failings as &quot;the faults of his
+virtues,&quot; and neglected to catalogue them. Thinking it all over a
+thousand times since, I have concluded that the main source of his
+charm, what won our approval for whatever he did, however he did it, was
+that he seemed never to regard any one as the mere means to an
+end--except himself.</p>
+
+<p>If this history were more of war than of love--and really at times I
+fear it is--we might fill pages telling of the brigade's September and
+early October operations in that long tongue of devastated country which
+narrowed from northeast to southwest between Big Black on our front and
+the Tallahala and Bayou Pierre behind us. At Baker's Creek it had a
+bloody all-day fight, in which we took part after having been driven in
+upon the brigade. It was there that at dusk, to the uproarious delight
+of half the big camp, and with our Captain once more at our head, for he
+had rejoined us that very morning, we came last off the field, singing
+&quot;Ned Ferry's a-comin' down de lane.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On a day late in October our company were in bivouac after some hard
+night-riding. Some twenty-five miles west of us the brigade had been
+resting for several days on the old camp-ground at Gallatin, but now
+they were gone to Union Springs. Ferry, with a few men, was scouting
+eastward. Quinn awaited only his return in order to take half a dozen or
+so of picked fellows down southward and westward about Fayette. Between
+ten and eleven that night a corporal of the guard woke me, and as I
+flirted on my boots and jacket and saddled up, said Ferry was back and
+Quinn gone. I reported to Ferry, who handed me a despatch: &quot;Give that to
+General Austin; he has gone back to Gallatin--without the brigade--to
+wait--with the others&quot;--his smile broadened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain,&quot;--I swallowed a lump--&quot;what others?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,--all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm,
+Squire Wall, Mrs. Wall, the four Harper ladies, and--eh,--let me see, is
+that all?--ah, no, the old black man and his daughter, and--eh,--the
+two little mule'! that's all--stop! I was forgetting! What is that
+fellow's name we used to know? ah, yes; Charlie Toliver!&quot; In a moment he
+sobered: &quot;Yes, all will be yonder, and I wait only for Quinn to get back
+in the morning, to come myself.&quot; In the fulness of his joy he had to
+give my horse a parting slap. &quot;Good-night! good-bye--till to-morrow!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I galloped away filled with an absurd foreboding that he was too sure,
+which may have come wholly from my bad temper at being started too late
+to see our ladies before morning. However, at two that night, my saddle
+laid under my head, and haversack under the saddle, I fell asleep with
+all Gallatin for my bedchamber, the courthouse square for my bed, the
+sky for my tester, the pole-star for my taper, hogs for mosquitoes and a
+club for a fan.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LXII" id="LXII">LXII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A TARRYING BRIDEGROOM</strong></p>
+
+<p>Joyous was the dawn. With their places in the hospital filled for the
+brief time by Brookhaven friends, here were all our fairs, not to speak
+of the General, the Colonel, the Major, idlers of the town and region,
+and hospital bummers who had followed up unbidden and glaringly without
+wedding-garments. C&eacute;cile, Harry, Camille &quot;and others&quot; prepared the
+church. The General kept his tent, the Major rode to Hazlehurst, and the
+Colonel, bruised and stiffened by a late fall from his horse, lounged
+amiably just beyond talking range of the ladies and grumbled jokes to
+Chaplain Roly-poly, whose giggling enjoyment of them made us hope they
+were tempered to that clean-shaven lamb.</p>
+
+<p>However, there came a change. By mid-forenoon our gaiety ran on only by
+its momentum. The wedding was to be at eleven. At ten the Colonel,
+aside, told me, with a ferocious scowl, that my Captain ought to have
+arrived. At half-past he told me again, but Major Harper, returning from
+Hazlehurst, said, &quot;Oh, any of a hundred trifles might have delayed him a
+short time; he would be along.&quot; The wedding-hour passed, the
+wedding-feast filled the air with good smells. Horsemen ambled a few
+miles up the road and came back without tidings. Then a courier, one of
+Ferry's scouts, galloped up to the General's tent, and presently the
+Major walked from it to the tavern and up to Charlotte's room, to say
+that Ferry was only detained by Quinn's non-arrival. &quot;It's all right,&quot;
+said everyone.</p>
+
+<p>Another hour wore on, another followed. The General and old Dismukes
+played cards and the latter began to smell of his drams, Harry and
+C&eacute;cile walked and talked apart, Camille kept me in leash with three
+other men, and about two o'clock came another courier with another bit
+of Ferry's writing; Quinn had returned. He had had a brush with
+jayhawkers in the night, had captured all but their leader, and had sent
+his prisoners in to brigade headquarters at Union Church, while he
+returned to Ferry's camp bringing with him, mortally wounded--&quot;O--oh!
+Oh--oh!&quot; exclaimed Charlotte, gazing at the missive,--&quot;Sergeant
+Jim Langley!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does Ned say when he will start?&quot; asked the Colonel, and Charlotte,
+reading again, said the sergeant, at the time of the writing, was not
+expected to live an hour. Whereupon the word went through town that
+Ferry was on his way to us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; said the Colonel, just not too full to keep up a majestic
+frown, &quot;want to saddle my horse and yours?&quot; and very soon we were off to
+meet the tardy bridegroom. The October sunshine was fiery, but the road
+led us through our old camp-ground for two or three shady miles before
+it forked to the right to cross the Natchez Trace, and to the left on
+its way to Union Springs, and at the fork we halted. &quot;Smith, I reckon
+we'd best go back.&quot; I mentioned his bruises and the torrid sun-glare
+before us, but he cursed both with equal contempt; &quot;No, but I must go
+back; I--I've left a--oh, I must go back to wet my whistle!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We had retraced our way but a few steps, when, looking behind me as a
+scout's habit is, I saw a horseman coming swiftly on the Union Church
+road. &quot;Colonel,&quot; I said, &quot;here comes Scott Gholson.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Without pausing or turning an eye my hearer poured out a slow flood of
+curses. &quot;If that whelp has come here of his own accord he's come for no
+good! Has he seen us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson had not seen us; we had been in deep shade when he came into
+sight, and happened at that moment to turn an angle that took us out of
+his line of view. In a minute or so we were again at the small bridge
+over the embowered creek which ran through the camping-ground. The water
+was low and clear, and the Colonel turned from the bridge as if to cross
+beneath it and let his beast drink, yet motioned back for me to go upon
+it. As I reached its middle he came under it in the stream and halted.
+Guessing his wish I turned my horse across the bridge and waited.
+Gholson was almost within hail before he knew me. He was a heaving lump
+of dust, sweat and pain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has Ned Ferry come?&quot; was his first call. I shook my head. &quot;Oh, thank
+God!&quot; he cried with a wild gesture and sank low in the saddle; but
+instantly he roused again: &quot;Oh, don't stop me, Smith; if I once stop I'm
+afraid I'll never get to her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stopped him. &quot;Why, Gholson, you're burning up with fever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I started with a shaking chill. I'm afraid, every minute, I'll go
+out of my head. Oh, Smith, Oliver's alive! He's alive, he's alive, and
+I've come to save his poor wife from a fate worse than death!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson, you are out of your head.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, yes, yes! and yet I know what I'm saying, I know what I'm
+saying!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not! Gholson, Oliver's been food for worms these four months. I
+know he wasn't dead at Gilmer's; but he died--now, let me tell
+you--he--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, I know the whole story and you know only half!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no! I know all and you know only half; I have seen the absolute--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Proofs? no! you saw things taken from the body of another man in
+Oliver's clothes! Oliver swapped places with him on the boat going down
+to the city so's he could come back to these parts without being hung by
+the Yankees; swapped with a sick soldier, one of a pair that wanted to
+desert; swapped names, clothes, bandages, letters, everything. It was
+that soldier that died of the congestive chill and was buried by your
+mother with his face in a blanket--as, like enough, mine will be before
+another day is done--Oh, Lord, Lord! my head will burst!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson, you're mistaken yet! That soldier came to my mother--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he never! the other one went to her, in cahoots with Oliver, and
+worked the thing all through so's to have the news of Oliver's death, so
+called, come back here to the Yankees and us; and to his wife, so's she
+<em>would</em> marry Ned Ferry to her everlasting shame, and people would say
+they was served right when he killed 'em at last! O--oh! Smith,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Listen to me!&quot; I had tried twice to interrupt and now I yelled; &quot;was it
+Oliver, and a new gang, that Quinn fought last night, and have you got
+him at Union Church?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quinn didn't know it, for Oliver got away, but they got the Yankee
+deserter, and brought him in when everybody was asleep but me, and I
+cross-examined him. Oh, my friend, God's arm is not shortened that he
+cannot save! He maketh the wrath of the wicked to praise him! The man
+was dying then, but thank God, I choked the whole truth out of him with
+a halter over a limb, and then for three mortal hours I couldn't start
+because the squad that took him out to--Who--who is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel moved from under the bridge, spurred up the bank, and turned
+to us with a murderous smile. &quot;Howdy, Gholson.&quot; The smile grew. &quot;Had to
+stay with the hanging-squad to keep his mouth shut, you was going to
+say, wa'n't you? But you knew Captain Ferry would be delayed waiting for
+Quinn, too; yes. Does any one know this now besides us three; no! Good,
+we're well met! Smith and me are going to Union Church, and you'd better
+go with us; I've got a job that God A'mighty just built you two saints
+and me for; come, never mind Gallatin, Ferry's not there, and when he
+gets there Heaven ain't a-going to stop that wedding, and hell sha'n't.&quot;
+Gholson had barely caught his breath to demur when old Dismukes, roaring
+and snarling like a huge dog, whipped out his revolver, clutched the
+sick man's bosom, and hanging over him and bellowing blasphemies, yelled
+into his very teeth &quot;Come!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We galloped. A courier from the brigade-camp met us, and the Colonel
+scribbled a purely false explanation of our absence, begging that no
+delay be made because of it. As the man left us, who should come up from
+behind us but Harry, asking what was the matter. &quot;Matter enough for you
+to come along,&quot; said the Arkansan, and we went two and two, he and
+Gholson, Harry and I. We reached camp at sundown, and stopped to feed
+and rest our horses and to catch an hour's sleep. Gholson's fatigue was
+pitiful, but he ate like a wolf, slept, and awoke with but little fever.
+The Colonel kept him under his eye, forcing on him the honors of his
+own board, bed and bottle, and at nine we galloped again.</p>
+
+<p>Between eleven and twelve the Colonel, Harry and I were in a dense wood,
+moving noiselessly toward a clearing brilliantly lighted by the moon. I
+was guide. A few rods back in the woods Gholson was holding our horses
+and with cocked revolver detaining a young mulatto woman from whom the
+Colonel had extorted the knowledge which had brought us to this spot.
+The clearing was fenced, but was full of autumn weeds. Near the two
+sides next us, tilted awry on its high basement pillars, loomed an old
+cotton-gin house, its dark shadows falling toward us. A few yards beyond
+towered and gleamed a white-boled sycamore, and between the two the
+titanic arms of the horse-power press widened broadly downward out of
+the still night sky. The tree was the one which old Lucius Oliver had
+once pointed out to me at dawn.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LXIII" id="LXIII">LXIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER TOLD TILL NOW</strong></p>
+
+<p>At the fence I ceased to lead, and we crept near the gin-house from
+three sides, warily, though all the chances were that wherever Oliver
+lay he was heavy with drink. The Colonel stole in alone. He was lost to
+us for, I should say, five minutes; they seemed thirty; then there
+pealed upon the stillness an uproarious laugh mingled with oaths and
+curses, sounds of a plunge, a struggle, a groan, and old Dismukes
+calling &quot;Come, boys, I've got him! Take it easy, take it easy, I've got
+him on the floor by the hair of his head; call Gholson!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson brought the mulatress. In the feeble rays of an old tin lantern,
+on some gunny-sacking that lay about the gin-room floor, sat old
+Dismukes cross-legged and smiling, with arms folded and revolver
+dangling from his right hand, at full cock. On one side crouched Harry
+and I, on the other side Gholson and the slave woman. Facing him, half
+sat, half knelt Oliver, bound hand and foot, and gagged with his own
+knotted handkerchief. The lantern hung from a low beam just above his
+face; his eyes blazed across the short interval with the splendor of a
+hawk's. The dread issue of the hour seemed all at once to have taken
+from his outward aspect the baser signs of his habits and crimes, and I
+saw large extenuation for Charlotte's great mistake. From the big
+Colonel's face, too, the heaviness of drink was gone, and its smile grew
+almost fine as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ten minutes for prayer is a good while to allow you, my amiable friend;
+we ain't heard for our much speaking, are we, Brother Gholson? Still,
+we've given you that, and it's half gone. If you don't want the other
+half we won't force it on you; we've got that wedding to go to, and I'm
+afraid we'll be late.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The bound man sat like a statue. The slave girl went upon her knees and
+began to pray for her master,--with whom she had remained after every
+other servant on the place had run off to the Federals, supplicating
+with a piteous fervor that drew tears down Harry's cheeks. &quot;Humph!&quot; said
+the Arkansan, still smiling straight into Oliver's eyes, &quot;she'd better
+be thanking God for her freedom, for that's what we're going to give her
+to-night; we're going to take her and your poor old crippled father to
+the outposts and turn 'em loose, and if either of 'em ever shows up
+inside our lines after to-night, we'll hang 'em. You fixed the date of
+your death last June, and we're not going to let it be changed; that's
+when you died. Ain't it, Gholson? Whoever says it ain't fixes the date
+of his own funeral, eh, boys? I take pleasure in telling you we're not
+going to hang your father, because I believe in my bones you'd rather
+we'd hang him than not. Mr. Gholson, you're our most pious believer in
+obedience to orders; well, I'm going to give you one, and if you don't
+make a botch of it I sha'n't have to make a botch of you; understand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson's lips moved inaudibly, his jaws set hard, and he blanched; but
+the Colonel smiled once more: &quot;I've heard that at one time you said, or
+implied, that Captain Ferry had betrayed his office, because when he had
+a fair chance to shoot this varmint he omitted, for private reasons, to
+do it. And I've heard you say, myself, that this isn't your own little
+private war. So,--just change seats with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They exchanged. The slave girl sank forward upon her face moaning and
+sobbing. Harry silently wept. &quot;Now, Gholson, you know me; draw--pistol.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson drew; I grew sick. &quot;Ready,&quot;--Gholson came to a ready and so did
+the Colonel; &quot;aim,&quot; Gholson slowly aimed, the Colonel kept a ready, and
+Oliver, for the first time took his eyes from him and gazed at Gholson.
+&quot;Fire!&quot; Gholson fired; Oliver silently fell forward; with a stifled cry
+the girl sprang to him and drew his head into her lap, and he softly
+straightened out and was still. &quot;Oh, sweet Jesus!&quot; she cried, &quot;Oh,
+sweet Jesus!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The amused Colonel held the lantern close down. &quot;He's all right, Brother
+Gholson,&quot; was his verdict; the ball had gone to the heart. &quot;Still, just
+to clinch the thing, we'll calcine him, gin-house and all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gin-house and all, we burned him up. On our horses out in the open road
+to the house, we sat, the girl perched behind the Colonel, and watched
+the fire mount and whirl and crackle behind the awful black arms of the
+cotton-press. The Arkansan shook his head: &quot;It's too fine; 'tain't a
+dog's death, after all. Lord! why didn't I think of it in time? we'd
+ought to 'a' just dropped him alive into that lint-box and turned the
+press down onto him with our horses!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the pile was in one great flame we rode to the dwelling, and the
+girl was sent in to bid old Lucius begone. The doors stood open, a soft
+firelight shone from his room. We saw her form darken his chamber
+threshold and halt, and then she wailed: &quot;Oh, Lawd God A'mighty! Oh,
+Lawd God A'mighty!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop that noise! Gholson, hold the horses. Come. Lieutenant, come
+Smith, maybe he's killed himself, but it seems too good to be true.
+Here, girl, go cram what you can get into a pillow-case, and mount
+behind my saddle again; be quick, we're going to burn this hornet's
+nest too.&quot; Harry and I had already run to the old man's room, and, sure
+enough, there lay the aged assassin hideous in his fallen bulk, with his
+own bullet in his brain.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the Arkansan shook his head at the leaping flames. &quot;Too good,
+too good for either of 'em, entirely; we've let 'em settle at five cents
+on the dollar. Here girl,&quot;--he reached back and handed her a wad of
+greenbacks,--&quot;here's your dividend; you're a preferred creditor.&quot; He had
+rifled the pockets of both the dead men, and this was their contents.
+&quot;Now, boys, we'll dust, or we'll be getting shot at by some fool or
+other. We're leaving a fine horse hid away somewhere hereabouts, but we
+can't help that; come on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In due time the Colonel, with the slave girl, and Harry with her
+pillow-case of duds, turned toward Fayette, and Gholson and I toward the
+brigade, at Union Church. Then, at last, my old friend and
+co-religionist let his wrath loose. He began with a flood of curses,
+lifting high a loaded carbine which we had found with Oliver and which
+he was ordered to turn in. As he gave his ecstasy utterance it grew; he
+brandished the weapon like a Bedouin, dug the rowels into his overspent
+beast and curbed him back to his haunches, fisted him about the ears,
+gnashed with the pain of his own blows, and howled, and stood up in the
+stirrups and cursed again. I had heard church-members curse, but they
+were new church-members, camp converts, and their curses were an
+infant's cooing, to this. Unwittingly he caused his horse to stumble,
+and the torrent of his passion gathered force like rain after a peal of
+thunder; he clubbed the gun to bring it down upon the beautiful
+creature's head, and when I caught it on the rise he wrenched it from me
+as if I were a girl, threw it fifty feet away, sprang to the ground and
+caught it up, fired it in the air, and with one blow against a tree sent
+the stock flying, threw the barrel underfoot, leapt upon it, tore his
+hair and his hat, and cursed and champed and howled. I sat holding his
+horse and feeling my satisfaction rise like the mercury in a warmed
+thermometer. Contrasting this mood with the cold malignancy and resolve
+of his temper in the soldiers' room at Sessions's, I saw, to my delight,
+that our secret was forever imprisoned in his breast, gagged and chained
+down by the iron of his own inextricable infamy. At dawn he awakened me
+that he might persuade me to reject the evidences brought against his
+character by his doings and endurings of the night, and that he might
+rebuild the old house of words in which habitually he found shelter, too
+abysmally self-conceited ever to see his own hypocrisy. We breakfasted
+with the &quot;attatchays&quot;; after which he had barely secured my final
+assurance that our friendship remained unmarred, when old Dismukes and
+Harry mounted at the Colonel's tent, and the old brute, as they trotted
+out into the Gallatin road, beckoned me to join them.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LXIV" id="LXIV">LXIV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>BY TWOS. MARCH</strong></p>
+
+<p>The Arkansan was happy. &quot;Come up, Legs,&quot; he bawled to me as soon as we
+were beyond the pickets, &quot;come up from behind there; this ain't no
+dress parade.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are they married?&quot; I softly asked Harry at the first opportunity, but
+he could not tell me. He knew only that Ferry had been expected to
+arrive about an hour before midnight; if he arrived later the wedding
+would be deferred until to-day. On our whole ride we met no one from
+Gallatin until near the edge of the town we passed a smiling rider who
+called after us, &quot;You-all a-hurryin' for nothin'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We dropped to a more dignified gait and moved gayly in among our
+gathering friends, asking if we were in time. &quot;No--o! you're too
+late!--but still we've waited for you; couldn't help ourselves; she
+wouldn't stir without you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The happy hubbub was bewildering. &quot;Where's this one?&quot; &quot;Where's that
+one?&quot; &quot;See here, I'm looking for you!&quot; &quot;Now, you and I go together--&quot;
+&quot;Dick Smith! where's Dick Sm'--Miss Harper wants you, Smith, up at the
+bride's door.&quot; But Miss Harper only sent me in to Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Richard, tell me,&quot; the fair vision began to say, but there the cloud
+left her brow. &quot;No,&quot; she added, &quot;you couldn't look so happy if there
+were the least thing wrong, could you?&quot; Her fathoming eyes filled while
+her smile brightened, and meeting them squarely I replied &quot;There's
+a-many a thing wrong, but not one for which this wedding need wait
+another minute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God bless you, Richard!&quot; she said; &quot;and now <em>you</em> may go tell Edgard I
+am coming.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Old Gallatin is no more. I would not mention without reverence the
+perishing of a town however small, though no charm of antiquity, of art
+or of nature were lost in its dissolution. Yet it suits my fancy that
+old Gallatin has perished. Neither war nor famine, flood nor fever were
+the death of it; the railroad and Hazlehurst sapped its life. Some years
+ago, on a business trip for our company--not cavalry, insurance,--I went
+several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick,
+of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its
+square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In
+place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and
+houses had utterly vanished; a solitary &quot;store,&quot; as transient as a
+toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling calico and molasses, shoes
+and snuff. But that was the only discord, and by turning my back on it I
+easily called up the long past scene: the wedding, the feast, the fiery
+punch, the General's toast to the bridal pair, and the heavy-eyed
+Colonel's bumper to their posterity! It was hardly drunk when a courier
+brought word that the enemy were across Big Black, and the brigade
+pressing north to meet them. Charlotte glided away to her room to be
+&quot;back in a moment&quot;; into their saddles went the General, the Colonel,
+the Major and the aide-de-camp, and thundered off across the bridge in
+the woods; Charlotte came back in riding-habit, and here was my horse
+with her saddle on him, and the Harpers and Mrs. Wall clasping and
+kissing her; and now her foot was in Ferry's hand and up she sprang to
+her seat, he vaulted to his, and away they galloped side by side, he for
+the uttermost front of reconnoissance and assault, she for the slow but
+successful uplifting of Sergeant Jim back to health and into his place
+in the train of our hero and hers. In the little leather-curtained
+wagon, with the old black man and his daughter, and all her mistress's
+small belongings, and with my saddle and bridle, I followed on to the
+house where lay the sergeant, and where my horse would be waiting to
+bear me on to Ferry's scouts.</p>
+
+<p>I saw the Harpers only twice again before the war was over. Nearly all
+winter our soldiering was down in the Felicianas, but by February we
+were once more at Big Black when Sherman with ten thousand of his
+destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three
+or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had
+fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went
+back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers
+set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were
+occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department
+headquarters in that State capital; yet Harry and C&eacute;cile did not wed
+until after the surrender. Gholson's passion far Charlotte really did
+half destroy him, while it lasted; nevertheless, one day about a year
+after her marriage, when I had the joy of visiting the Harpers, I saw
+that Gholson's heart was healed of that wound and had opened in a new
+place. That is why Estelle, with that danger-glow of emotion ever
+impending on her beautiful cheek, never married. She was of that kind
+whose love, once placed, can never remove itself, and she loved Gholson.
+Both C&eacute;cile and Camille had some gift to discern character, and some
+notion of their own value, and therefore are less to be excused for not
+choosing better husbands than they did; but Estelle could never see
+beyond the outer label of man, woman or child, and Gholson's label was
+his piety. She believed in it as implicitly, as consumingly, as he
+believed in it himself; and when her whole kindred spoke as one and said
+no, and she sent him away, <em>she</em> knew she was a lifelong widow from that
+hour. Gholson found a wife, a rich widow ten years his senior, and so
+first of all, since we have reached the page for partings, good-bye
+Gholson. &quot;Whom the gods love die young&quot;--you must be sixty years old
+now, for they say you're still alive. And good-bye, old Dismukes; the
+Colonel made a fortune after the war, as a penitentiary lessee, but they
+say he has--how shall we phrase it?--gone to his reward? Let us
+hope not.</p>
+
+<p>But what is this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks?
+Our rocket has scaled the sky, poised, curved, burst, spread out all its
+stars, and dropped its stick. All is done unless we desire to watch the
+fading sparks slowly sink and melt into darkness. The General, the
+Major, his brother, their sister, my mother, Quinn, Kendall, Sergeant
+Jim, the Sessionses, the Walls--do not inquire too closely; some have
+vanished already, and soon all will be gone; then--another rocket; it is
+the only way, and why is it not a good one? Harry and C&eacute;cile--yes, they
+still shine, in &quot;dear old New Orleans.&quot; Camille kept me on the
+tenter-hooks while she &quot;turned away her eyes&quot; for years; but one evening
+when we were reading an ancient book together out dropped those same old
+sweet-pea blossoms; whereupon I took her hand and--I have it yet. There,
+we have counted the last spark--stop, no! two lights beam out again;
+Edgard and Charlotte, our neighbors and dearest friends through all our
+life; they glow with nobility and loveliness yet, as they did in those
+young days when his sword led our dying fortunes, and she, in her gypsy
+wagon, followed them, binding the torn wound, and bathing the aching
+bruise and fevered head. Oh, Ned Ferry, my long-loved partner, as dear a
+leader still as ever you were in the days of bloody death, life's
+choicest gifts be yours, and be hers whose sons and daughters are yours,
+and the eldest and tallest of whom is the one you and she have
+named Richard.</p>
+
+<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
+
+<p>OTHER BOOKS BY MR. CABLE</p>
+
+<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
+
+<p>There are few living American writers who can reproduce for us more
+perfectly than MR. CABLE does, in his best moments, the speech, the
+manners, the whole social atmosphere of a remote time and peculiar
+people. A delicious flavor of humor permeates his stories.--<em>The New
+York Tribune</em>.</p>
+
+<p>STRONG HEARTS</p>
+
+<p>12mo, $1.25</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Under the title &quot;<em>Strong Hearts</em>,&quot; MR. CABLE has grouped three stories
+of varying length, which we think must stand as among the most charming
+things he has written. Not even in &quot;<em>Old Creole Days</em>,&quot; is there found
+more delicate work, and yet underneath it there is felt the strong grasp
+of the master. There is so much delicacy, such a fine touch that one is
+wholly captivated by the handiwork until it is realized how much this is
+part and parcel of this picture.&quot;--<em>Brooklyn Eagle</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p><em>A New Edition of Mr. Cable's Romances comprising the following 5 vols.,
+printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt top and bound in sateen with full
+gilt design. Each 12mo, $1.50. The set, 5 volumes, in a box, $7.50</em>.</p>
+
+<p>JOHN MARCH SOUTHERNER</p>
+
+<p>12mo, $1.50</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The most careful and thorough going study of the reconstruction period
+in the South which has yet been offered in the world of
+fiction.--<em>The Outlook</em>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In many respects MR. CABLE'S finest work.&quot;--<em>Boston Advertiser</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>THE GRANDISSIMES</p>
+
+<p>A STORY OF CREOLE LIFE</p>
+
+<p>12mo, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such a book goes far towards establishing an epoch in fiction, and it
+places it beyond a doubt that we have in MR. CABLE a novelist of
+positive originality, and of the very first quality.&quot;--<em>The
+Boston Journal</em>.</p>
+
+<p><strong>The Grandissimes</strong>. with 12 full-page illustrations and 8 head and tail
+pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
+original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.</p>
+
+<p>A Special limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net, $12.00.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>OLD CREOLE DAYS</p>
+
+<p>12mo, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>Cameo Edition with an etching by Percy Moran, $1.25</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These charming stories attract attention and commendation by their
+quaint delicacy of style, their faithful delineation of Creole
+character, and a marked originality.&quot;--<em>The New Orleans Picayune</em>.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Old Creole Days</strong>. <em>With 8 full-page illustrations and 14 head and tail pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.</em></p>
+
+<p><em>A Special Limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net $12.00</em>.</p>
+
+<p>BONAVENTURE</p>
+
+<p>A PROSE PASTORAL OF ACADIAN LOUISIANA 12mo, $1.50</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A noble, tender, beautiful tale.&quot;--MRS. L. C. MOULTON in <em>Boston
+Herald</em>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;MR. CABLE has never produced anything so delightful and so artistic as
+&quot;Bonaventure.&quot; The charm of the pastoral life of these unlearned,
+unsuspicious people in rude homes far away from the stir of modern life
+is as novel as it is indescribable.&quot;--<em>North American Review</em>.</p>
+
+<p>DR. SEVIER 12mo, $1.50</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The story contains a most attractive blending of vivid descriptions of
+local scenery, with admirable delineations of personal character.&quot;--<em>The
+Congregationalist</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA</p>
+
+<p>Illustrated. 12mo, $2.00</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a field of romance, of color, of incident, of delicate feeling,
+and unique social conditions these stories show!&quot;--<em>Hartford Courant</em>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are tales whose interest and variety seem inexhaustible.--MR.
+CABLE has done lasting service to literature in giving us this
+remarkable and delightful collection. In themselves they are memorably
+charming.&quot;--<em>Boston Transcript</em>.</p>
+
+<p>MADAME DELPHINE</p>
+
+<p>16mo, 75 cents</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is one of the gems of a collection of exquisite stories of the old
+Creole days in Louisiana.&quot;--<em>Boston Advertiser</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Ivory series edition, 16mo, 75c.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA</p>
+
+<p>ILLUSTRATED FROM DRAWINGS BY FENNEL</p>
+
+<p>Square 12mo, $2.50</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As a history of the Louisiana Creoles, it occupies a field in which it
+will not find a competitor. Mr. Cable has given us an exceedingly
+attractive piece of work.&quot;--<em>The Nation</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>THE SILENT SOUTH</p>
+
+<p>Together with the Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease
+System. <em>Revised and Enlarged Edition</em>. With portrait.</p>
+
+<p>12mo, $1.00</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whatever other literature on these themes may arise Mr. Cable's book
+must be a permanent influence impossible for writers on either side to
+ignore.&quot;--<em>The Critic</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>THE NEGRO QUESTION</p>
+
+<p>12mo, 75c</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Cable has the Puritan conscience, the agitator's courage, and the
+Anglo-Saxon's fearless adhesion to what he deems right.&quot;--<em>The
+Churchman</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>THE CABLE STORY BOOK</p>
+
+<p>Selections for School Reading. Edited by Mary E. Burt and Lucy L. Cable.
+[<em>The Scribner Series of School Reading</em>]. Illustrated. 12mo, <em>net</em> 60c.</p>
+<br />
+</td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,9679 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cavalier, by George Washington Cable
+
+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: The Cavalier
+
+Author: George Washington Cable
+
+Posting Date: November 15, 2011 [EBook #9839]
+Release Date: February, 2006
+First Posted: October 23, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAVALIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!"]
+
+THE CAVALIER
+
+BY
+
+GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+     I.    She Wanted to Laugh
+    II.    Lieutenant Ferry
+   III.    She
+    IV.    Three Days' Rations
+     V.    Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty
+    VI.    A Handsome Stranger
+   VII.    A Plague on Names!
+  VIII.    Another Curtained Wagon
+    IX.    The Dandy's Task
+     X.    The Soldier's Hour
+    XI.    Captain Jewett
+    XII.    In the General's Tent
+   XIII.    Good-Bye, Dick
+    XIV.    Coralie Rothvelt
+     XV.    Venus and Mars
+    XVI.    An Aching Conscience
+   XVII.    Two Under One Hat-Brim
+  XVIII.    The Jayhawkers
+    XIX.    Asleep in the Death-Trap
+     XX.    Charlotte Oliver
+    XXI.    The Fight on the Bridge
+   XXII.    We Speed a Parting Guest
+  XXIII.    Ferry Talks of Charlotte
+   XXIV.    A Million and a Half
+    XXV.    A Quiet Ride
+   XXVI.    A Salute Across the Dead-Line
+  XXVII.    Some Fall, Some Plunge
+ XXVIII.    Oldest Game on Earth
+   XXIX.    A Gnawing in the Dark
+    XXX.    Dignity and Impudence
+   XXXI.    The Red Star's Warning
+  XXXII.    A Martyr's Wrath
+ XXXIII.    Torch and Sword
+  XXXIV.    The Charge in the Lane
+   XXXV.    Fallen Heroes
+  XXXVI.    "Says Quinn, S'e"
+ XXXVII.    A Horse! A Horse!
+XXXVIII.    "Bear a Message and a Token"
+  XXXIX.    Charlotte Sings
+     XL.    Harry Laughs
+    XLI.    Unimportant and Confidential
+   XLII.    "Can I Get There by Candle-Light?"
+  XLIII.    "Yes, and Back Again"
+   XLIV.    Charlotte in the Tents of the Foe
+    XLV.    Stay Till To-Morrow
+   XLVI.    The Dance at Gilmer's
+  XLVII.    He's Dead--Is She Alive?
+ XLVIII.    In the Hollow of His Right Arm
+   XLIX.    A Cruel Book and a Fool or Two
+      L.    The Bottom of the Whirlwind
+     LI.    Under the Room Where Charlotte Lay
+    LII.    Same Book and Light-Head Harry
+   LIII.    "Captain, They've Got Us"
+    LIV.    The Fight in the Doorway
+     LV.    Rescue and Retreat
+    LVI.    Hotel des Invalides
+   LVII.    A Yes and a No
+  LVIII.    The Upper Fork of the Road
+    LIX.    Under Charlotte's Window
+     LX.    Tidings
+    LXI.    While Destiny Moved On
+   LXII.    A Tarrying Bridegroom
+  LXIII.    Something I Have Never Told Till Now
+   LXIV.    By Twos. March
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!"
+
+"I surrender," he said, with amiable ease
+
+"Well, you _air_ in a hurry!"
+
+With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the fence like a deer
+
+Ferry saluted with his straight blade
+
+"Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very arch
+
+Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of his
+followers
+
+Springing to the ground between our two candles, she bent over the open
+page
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+SHE WANTED TO LAUGH
+
+Our camp was in the heart of Copiah County, Mississippi, a mile or so
+west of Gallatin and about six miles east of that once robber-haunted
+road, the Natchez Trace. Austin's brigade, we were, a detached body of
+mixed Louisiana and Mississippi cavalry, getting our breath again after
+two weeks' hard fighting of Grant. Grierson's raid had lately gone the
+entire length of the State, and we had had a hard, vain chase after
+him, also.
+
+Joe Johnston's shattered army was at Jackson, about forty-five miles to
+northward; beleaguered Vicksburg was in the Northwest, a trifle farther
+away; Natchez lay southwest, still more distant; and nearly twice as far
+in the south was our heartbroken New Orleans. We had paused to
+recuperate our animals, and there was a rumor that we were to get new
+clothing. Anyhow we had rags with honor, and a right to make as much
+noise as we chose.
+
+It was being made. The air was in anguish with the din of tree-felling
+and log-chopping, of stamping, neighing, braying, whooping, guffawing,
+and singing--all the daybreak charivari beloved of a camp of
+Confederate "critter companies." In the midst of it a chum and I sat
+close together on a log near the mess fire, and as the other boys of the
+mess lifted their heads from their saddle-tree pillows, from two of them
+at once came a slow, disdainful acceptance of the final lot of the
+wicked, made unsolicited on discovering that this chum and I had sat
+there talking together all night. I had the day before been wheedled
+into letting myself be detailed to be a quartermaster's clerk, and this
+comrade and I were never to snuggle under the one blanket again. The
+thought forbade slumber.
+
+"If I go to sleep," I said,--"you know how I dream. I shall have one of
+those dreams of mine to carry around in my memory for a year, like a
+bullet in my back." So there the dear fellow had sat all night to give
+me my hourly powders of reassurance that I could be a quartermaster's
+clerk without shame.
+
+"Certainly you can afford to fill a position which the leader of Ferry's
+scouts has filled just before you."
+
+But my unsoldierly motive for going to headquarters kept my misgivings
+alive. I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare
+was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and
+Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and "Les
+Miserables"--Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation--lent round; and where
+men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs. Ned
+Ferry had been Major Harper's clerk, but had managed in several
+instances to display such fitness to lead that General Austin had lately
+named him for promotion, and the quartermaster's clerk was now
+Lieutenant Ferry, raised from the ranks for gallantry, and followed
+ubiquitously by a chosen sixty or so drawn from the whole brigade. Could
+the like occur again? And could it occur to a chap who could not
+comprehend how it had ever occurred at all?
+
+By and by we breakfasted. After which, my precious horse not having
+finished his corn, I spread my blanket and let myself doze, but was soon
+awakened by the shouts of my companions laughing at me for laughing so
+piteously in my sleep.
+
+"Would I not tell my dream, as nice young men in the Bible always did?"
+
+"No, I would not!" But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had
+told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose
+tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather
+some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his
+example, but having got in, could only stay there. The boys furnished
+the moral; it was not complimentary.
+
+"Well, good-bye, fellows."
+
+"Good-bye, Smith." I have never liked my last name, but at that moment
+the boys contrived to put a kindness of tone into it which made it
+almost pleasing. "Good-bye, Smith, remember your failings."
+
+Remember! I had yet to make their discovery. But I was on the eve of
+making it.
+
+As I passed up the road through the midst of our nearly tentless camp I
+met a leather-curtained spring-wagon to which were attached a pair of
+little striped-legged mules driven by an old negro. Behind him, among
+the curtains, sat a lady and her black maid. The mistress was of
+strikingly graceful figure, in a most tasteful gown and broad Leghorn
+hat. Her small hands were daintily gloved. The mules stopped, and
+through her light veil I saw that she was handsome. Her eyes, full of
+thought, were blue, and yet were so spirited they might as well have
+been black, as her hair was. She, or fate for her, had crowded thirty
+years of life into twenty-five of time.
+
+For many a day I had not seen such charms of feminine attire, and yet I
+was not charmed. Every item of her fragrant drapery was from the world's
+open market, hence flagrantly un-Confederate, unpatriotic,
+reprehensible. Otherwise it might not have seemed to me that her thin
+nostrils had got their passionateness lately.
+
+"Are you not a New Orleans boy?" she asked as I lifted my kepi and drew
+rein.
+
+Boy! humph! I frowned, made myself long, and confessed I had the honor
+to be from that city. Whereupon she let her long-lashed eyes take on as
+ravishing a covetousness as though I had been a pretty baby.
+
+"I knew it!" she said delightedly. "But tell me, honor bright,"--she
+sparkled with amusement--"you're not regularly enlisted, are you?"
+
+I clenched my teeth. "I am nineteen, madam."
+
+Her eyes danced, her brows arched. "Haven't you got"--she hid her smile
+with an embroidered handkerchief--"haven't you got your second figure
+upside down?" I glared, but with one look of hurt sisterliness she
+melted me. Then, pensive just long enough to say, "I was nineteen once,"
+she shot me a sidelong glance so roguish that I was dumb with
+indignation and tried to find my mustache, forgetting I had shaved it
+off to stimulate it. She smiled in sweet propitiation and then came
+gravely to business. "Have you come from beyond the pickets?"
+
+"No, madam."
+
+"Have you met any officer riding toward them?"
+
+I had not. Her driver gathered the reins and I drew back.
+
+"Good-bye, New Orleans soldier-boy," she said, gaily, and as I raised my
+cap she gave herself a fetching air and added, "I'll wager I know
+your name."
+
+"Madam,"--my cap went higher, my head lower--"I never bet."
+
+I could not divine what there was ridiculous about me, except a certain
+damage to my dress, of which she could not possibly be aware as long as
+I remained in the saddle. Yet plainly she wanted to laugh. I made it as
+plain that I did not.
+
+"Good-day, sir," she said, with forced severity, but as I smiled
+apologetically and moved my rein, she broke down under new temptation
+and, as the wagon moved away, twittered after me unseen,--"Good-bye, Mr.
+Smith."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+LIEUTENANT FERRY
+
+I passed on, flattered but scandalized, wasting no guesses on how she
+knew me--if she really knew me at all--but taking my revenge by
+moralizing on her, to myself, as a sign of the times, until brigade
+headquarters were in full view, a few rods off the road; four or five
+good, white wall-tents in a green bit of old field backed by a thicket
+of young pines.
+
+Midway of this space I met Scott Gholson, clerk to the Adjutant-general.
+It was Gholson who had first spoken of me for this detail. He was an
+East Louisianian, of Tangipahoa; aged maybe twenty-six, but in effect
+older, having from birth eaten only ill-cooked food, and looking it;
+profoundly unconscious of any shortcoming in his education, which he had
+got from a small church-pecked college of the pelican sort that feed it
+raw from their own bosoms. One of his smallest deficiencies was that he
+had never seen as much art as there is in one handsome dinner-plate.
+Now, here he was, riding forth to learn for himself, privately, he said,
+why I did not appear. Yet he halted without turning, and seemed to wish
+he had not found me.
+
+"Did you"--he began, and stopped; "did you notice a"--he stopped again.
+
+"What, a leather-curtained spring-wagon?"
+
+"No-o!" he said, as if nobody but a gaping idiot would expect anybody
+not a gaping idiot to notice a leather-curtained spring-wagon. "No-o!
+did you notice the brown horse that man was riding who just now passed
+you as you turned off the road?"
+
+No, I barely remembered the rider had generously moved aside to let me
+go by. In pure sourness at the poverty of my dress and the perfection of
+his, I had avoided looking at him higher than his hundred-dollar boots.
+My feet were in uncolored cowhide, except the toes.
+
+"He noticed you," said Gholson; "he looked back at you and your bay.
+Wouldn't you like to turn back and see his horse?"
+
+"Why, hardly, if I'm behindhand now. Is it so fine as that?"
+
+"Well, no. It's the horse he captured the time he got the Yankee who had
+him prisoner."
+
+"Who?" I cried. "What! You don't mean to say--was that Lieutenant
+Ferry?"
+
+"Yes, so called. He wa'n't a lieutenant then, he was a clerk, like you
+or me."
+
+"Oh, I wish I had noticed him!"
+
+"We can see him yet if you--"
+
+"Do you want to see him?" I gathered my horse.
+
+"Me!--No, sir. But you spoke as if--"
+
+I shook my head and we moved toward the tents. This was worse than the
+dream; the rat had not seen the cockerel, but the cockerel had observed
+the rat--dropping into the barrel: the cockerel, yes, and not the
+cockerel alone, for I saw that Gholson was associating him with her of
+the curtained wagon. By now they were side and side. I asked if Ferry
+came often to headquarters. "Yes, quite as often as he's any business
+to." "Ah, ha!" thought I, and presently said I had heard he was a
+great favorite.
+
+"Well,--yes,--he--he is,--with some."
+
+"Don't you like him?"
+
+"Who, me? Oh!--I--I admire Ned Ferry--for a number of things. He's more
+foolhardy than brave; he's confessed as much to me. Women call him
+handsome. He sings; beautifully, I suppose; I can't sing a note; and
+wouldn't if I could. Still, if he only wouldn't sing drinking-songs
+--but, Smith, I think that to sing drinking-songs--and all
+the more to sing them as well as some folks think he does--is to
+advocate drinking, and to advocate drinking is next door to excusing
+drunkenness!"
+
+"Then Ned Ferry doesn't drink?"
+
+"Indeed he does! I don't like to say it, and I don't say he drinks 'too
+much', as they call it; but, Smith, he drinks with men who do! Oh, _I_
+admire him; only I do wish--"
+
+"Wish what?"
+
+"Oh, I--I wish he wouldn't play cards. Smith, I've seen him play cards
+with the shells bursting over us!"
+
+For my part I privately wished this saint wouldn't rub my uninteresting
+surname into me every time he spoke. As we dismounted near the tents I
+leaned against my saddle and asked further concerning the object of his
+loving anxiety. Was Ned Ferry generous, pleasant, frank?
+
+"Why, in outward manner, yes; but, Smith, he was raised to be a Catholic
+priest. I could a heap-sight easier trust him if he'd sometimes show
+distrust, himself. If he ever does I've never seen it. And yet--Oh,
+we're the best of friends, and I'm speaking now only as a friend and
+_toe_ a friend. Oh, if it wa'n't for just one thing, I could admit what
+Major Harper said of him not ten minutes ago to me; that you never
+finish talking to Ned Ferry without feeling a little brighter, happier
+and cleaner than when you began; whereas talking with some men it's just
+the reverse."
+
+I looked carefully at my companion and asked him if the Major had said
+_all_ of that. He had, and Gholson's hide had turned it without taking a
+scratch. "That's fine!--as to Ferry," I said.
+
+"Oh, yes,--it would be--if it was only _iso_. Trouble is, you keep
+remembering he's such a stumbling-block to any real spiritual inquirer.
+Yes, and to himself; for, you know, spiritually there's so much less
+hope for the moralist than what there is for the up-and-down reprobate!
+You know that,--_Smith_."
+
+My silence implied that I knew it, though I did not feel any brighter,
+happier or cleaner.
+
+"Smith, Ned Ferry is not only a Romanist, he's a romanticist. We--you
+and me--are religionists. _Our_ brightness and happiness air the
+brightness and happiness of faith; our cleanness is the cleanness of
+religious scruples. Worst of it with Ned is he's satisfied with the
+difference, I'm afraid! That's what makes him so pleasant to fellows who
+don't care a sou marquee about religion."
+
+I said one might respect religion even if he did not--
+
+"Oh, he's always _polite_ to it; but he's--he's read Voltaire! Oh, yes,
+Voltaire, George Sand, all those men. He questions the Bible, Smith. Not
+to me, though; hah, he knows better! Smith, I can discuss religion and
+not get mad, with any one who don't question the Bible; but if he does
+that, I just tell you, I wouldn't risk my soul in such a discussion!
+Would you?"
+
+I could hardly say, and we moved pensively toward Major Harper's tent.
+Evidently the main poison was still in Gholson's stomach, and when I
+glanced at him he asked, "What d'you reckon brought Ned Ferry here just
+at this time?"
+
+I made no reply. He looked momentous, leaned to me sidewise with a hand
+horizontally across his mouth, and whispered a name. It was new to me.
+"Charlie Toliver?" I murmured, for we were at the tent door.
+
+"The war-correspondent," whispered Gholson; "don't you know?" But the
+flap of the tent lifted and I could not reply.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+SHE
+
+Major Harper was the most capable officer on the brigade staff. I had
+never met a man of such force and dignity who was so modestly affable.
+His new clerk dined with him that first day, at noon in his tent, alone.
+Hot biscuits! with butter! and rock salt. Fried bacon also--somewhat
+vivacious, but still bacon. When the tent began to fill with the smoke
+of his meerschaum pipe, and while his black boy cleared the table for us
+to resume writing, we talked of books. Here was joy! I vaunted my love
+for history, biography, the poets, but spoke lightly of fiction.
+
+The smoker twinkled. "You're different from Ned Ferry," he said.
+
+"Has he a taste for fiction?" I asked, with a depreciative smirk.
+
+"Yes, a beautiful story is a thing Ned Ferry loves with a positive
+passion."
+
+"I suppose we might call him a romanticist," said I, "might we not?"
+
+The patient gentleman smiled again as he said, "Oh--Gholson can attend
+to that."
+
+I took up my pen, and until twilight we spoke thereafter only of
+abstracts and requisitions. But then he led me on to tell him all about
+myself. I explained why my first name was Richard and my second name
+Thorndyke, and dwelt especially on the enormous differences between the
+Smiths from whom we were and those from whom we were not descended.
+
+And then he told me about himself. He was a graduate of West Point, the
+only one on the brigade staff; was a widower, with a widowed brother, a
+maiden sister, two daughters, and a niece, all of one New Orleans
+household. The brothers and sister were Charlestonians, but the two men
+had married in New Orleans, twin sisters in a noted Creole family. The
+brother's daughter, I was told, spoke French better than English; the
+Major's elder daughter spoke English as perfectly as her father; and the
+younger, left in her aunt's care from infancy, knew no French at all. I
+wondered if they were as handsome as their white-haired father, and
+when I asked their names I learned that the niece, Cecile, was a year
+the junior of Estelle and as much the senior of Camille; but of the days
+of the years of the pilgrimage of any of the three "children" he gave me
+no slightest hint; they might be seven years older, or seven years
+younger, than his new clerk.
+
+To show him how little I cared for any girl's age whose father preferred
+not to mention it, I reverted to his sister and brother. She was in New
+Orleans, he said, with her nieces, but might at any moment be sent into
+the Confederacy, being one of General Butler's "registered enemies." The
+brother was--
+
+"Out here somewhere. No, not in the army exactly; no, nor in the navy,
+but--I expect him in camp to-night. If he comes you'll have to work when
+you ought to be asleep. No, he is not in the secret service, only in _a_
+secret service; running hospital supplies through the enemy's lines
+into ours."
+
+I was thrilled. _I_ was taken into the staff's confidence! Me, _Smith!_
+That _Major Harper_ would tell me part of a matter to conceal the rest
+of it did not enter my dreams, good as I was at dreaming. The flattery
+went to my brain, and presently, without the faintest preamble, I asked
+if there was any war-correspondent at headquarters just now. There came
+a hostile flash in his eyes, but instantly it passed, and with all his
+happy mildness he replied, "No, nor any room for one."
+
+Just then entered an ordnance-sergeant, so smart in his rags that the
+Major's affability seemed hardly a condescension. He asked me to supper
+with his mess--"of staff _attatchays_," he said, winking one eye and
+hitching his mouth; at which the Major laughed with kind disapprobation,
+and the jocose sergeant explained as we went that that was only one of
+Scott Gholson's mispronunciations the boys were trying to tease him
+out of.
+
+I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper,
+stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head
+(save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only Gholson
+was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious jests got
+off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind. Never had I
+been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing "All quiet along
+the Potomac to-night," and was courteously praised when I had done so.
+But there is where affliction overtook me; they debated its authorship.
+One said a certain newspaper correspondent, naming him, had proved it to
+be the work--I forget of whom. But I shall never forget what followed.
+Two or three challenged the literary preeminence of that correspondent,
+and from as many directions I was asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying
+back against a pile of saddles with my head in my hands, sodden with
+self-assurance, I replied, magnanimously, "Oh, I don't set up for a
+critic, but--well--would you call him a better man than
+Charlie Toliver?"
+
+"Who--o?" It was not one who asked; the whos came like shrapnel; and
+when, not knowing what else to do, I smiled as one dying, there went up
+a wail of mirth that froze my blood and then heated it to a fever. The
+company howled. They rolled over one another, crying, "Charlie
+Toliver!--Charlie Toliver!--Oh, Lord, where's Scott Gholson!--Charlie
+Toliver!"--and leaped up and huddled down and moaned and rolled and
+rose and looked for me.
+
+But, after all, fortune was merciful, and I was gone; the Major had
+summoned me--his brother had come. I went circuitously and alone. As I
+started, some fellow writhing on the grass cried, "Charlie Tol--oh, this
+is better than a tcharade!" and a flash of divination enlightened me.
+While I went I burned with shame, rage and nervous exhaustion; the name
+Scott Gholson had gasped in my ear was the name of her in the curtained
+wagon, and I cursed the day in which I had heard of Charlotte Oliver.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+THREE DAYS' RATIONS
+
+In the vocabulary of a prig, but in the wrath of a fishwoman, I
+execrated Scott Gholson; his jealousies, his disclosures, his religion,
+his mispronunciations; and Ned Ferry--that cockerel! Here was I in the
+barrel, and able only to squeal in irate terror at whoever looked down
+upon me. I could have crawled under a log and died. At the door of the
+Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve
+when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's
+nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling
+good joke Smith had just got off on Gholson!
+
+"We shall have to get Ned Ferry back here," the Major was saying as I
+entered, "to make you boys let Scott Gholson alone."
+
+The young man laughed and turned to go. "Why doesn't Ned Ferry make
+_her_ let Gholson alone? He can do it; he's got her round his finger as
+tight as she's got Gholson round hers."
+
+"Harry," replied the Major, from his table full of documents, "don't you
+know that any man who's got a woman wrapped round his finger has also
+got her wrapped round his throat?"
+
+The aide-de-camp laughed like a rustic and vanished. "Smith," said the
+Major, "your eyes are--"
+
+"I've been awake for forty-eight hours, Major. But--oh, I'm not
+sleepy."
+
+"Well, go get some sleep.--No, go at once; you'll be called when
+needed."
+
+But I was not needed; while I slept, who should come back and do my work
+in my stead but Ned Ferry. When I awoke it was with a bound of alarm to
+see clear day. The command was breaking camp. I rushed out of the tent
+with canteen, soap and comb, and ran into the arms of the mess-cook. We
+were alone. "Oh, yass, seh," he laughed as he poured the water into my
+hands, "th'ee days' rairtion. Seh? Lawd! dey done drawed and cook' befo'
+de fus' streak o' light. But you all right; here yo' habbersack, full
+up. Oh, I done fed yo' hoss. Here yo' jacket an' cap; and here yo'
+saddle an' bridle--Oh, you welcome; I dess tryin' to git shet of 'em
+so's I kin strak de tent."
+
+As I mounted, our wagonmaster rode by me, busy as a skipper in a storm.
+"Oh, here!" he cried, wheeled, and reaching something to me added,
+"that's your pass. Major Harper wants you as quick as you can show up.
+He says never mind the column, ride straight after him. Keep this road
+to Hazlehurst and then go down the main Brookhaven road till you
+overtake him. He's by himself--nearly."
+
+As the rider wheeled away I blurted out with anxious loudness in the
+general hubbub, "Isn't his brother with him?"
+
+He flashed back a glare of rebuke and then bellowed to heaven and earth,
+"Oh, the devil and Tom Walker! I don't keep run of sutlers and
+citizens!" He took a circuit, standing in his stirrups and calling
+orders to his teamsters, and as he neared me again he said very gently,
+"Good Lord! my boy, don't you know better than to shoot your mouth off
+like that? You'll find nobody with the Major but Ned Ferry, and I don't
+say you'll find him."
+
+I galloped to the road. Away down through the woods it was full of
+horsemen falling into line. With the nearest colonel was Lieutenant
+Helm, the aide-de-camp. I turned away from them toward Hazlehurst, but
+looked back distrustfully. Yes, sure enough, the whole command was
+facing into column the other way! My horse and I whirled and stood
+staring and swelling with indignation--we ordered south, and the brigade
+heading westward! He fretted, tramped, neighed, and began hurriedly to
+paw through the globe to head them off on the other side. He even
+threatened to rear; but when I showed him I was ashamed of that, he bore
+me proudly, and I sat him as proudly as he bore me, for he made me more
+than half my friends. And now as the aide-de-camp wheeled about from the
+receding column and came our way saluting cordially, we turned and
+trotted beside him jauntily. Our first talk was of saddles, but very
+soon I asked where the General was.
+
+"Out on the Natchez Trace waiting for the command. I'm carrying orders
+to Fisher's battery, down here by the cross-roads. Haven't you seen the
+General this morning? What! haven't seen him in his new uniform? Whoop!
+he's a blaze of glory! Look here, Smith, I believe you know who brought
+it to him!"
+
+"How on earth should I know?"
+
+"Oh, how innocent you always are! Look here! just tell me this; was it
+the Major's brother brought it, or was it Ned Ferry?"
+
+"Suppose it wasn't either."
+
+"I knew it! I knew it was her! Ah, you rogue, you know it was her!"
+
+"Well, that _might_ depend on who 'her' is." We had reached the
+cross-roads and he was turning south.
+
+"Look!" he said, and gave the glance and smile of the lady in the
+curtained wagon so perfectly that I cackled like a small boy. "Oh, you
+know that, do you? I dare you to say she didn't bring it!"
+
+"I give you my word I don't know!" called I as the distance grew between
+us. "And I give you my word I don't care!" he crowed back as we
+galloped apart. His speech was two or three words longer, but they are
+inappropriate at the end of a chapter, and I expurgate.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN, TWENTY
+
+On entering Hazlehurst I observed all about the railway-station a
+surprising amount of quartermaster's stores. A large part were cases of
+boots and shoes. Laden with such goods, a train of shabby box-cars stood
+facing south, its beggarly wood-burner engine sniffing and weeping,
+while the cork-legged conductor helped all hands wood up. Though homely,
+the picture was a stirring one. Up through the blue summer morning came
+the sun, bringing to mind the words of the dying Mirabeau, "If that is
+not God, at least it's his first cousin."
+
+Even in the character of the goods there was eloquence, and not a
+drollery in the scene, not even an ugliness, but was touched, was rife,
+with the woe of a war whose burning walls were falling in on us. And
+outward, too, upon others; a few up-ended cottonbales leaned against
+each other ragged and idle, while women and babes starved for want of
+them in far-away Lancaster.
+
+One of the cars furthest from the engine had no freight proper, only a
+number of trunks; and these were nearly hidden by the widely crinolined
+flounces of an elegant elderly lady who sat on the middle one. And now
+she, too, was hidden, and the wide doorway in the side of the car more
+than filled, by the fashionable gowns of three girls. On the ground
+below there stood a lieutenant in a homemade gray uniform, and at his
+back half a dozen big, slouching, barefoot boys squirted tobacco juice
+and gazed at the ladies. The officer scanned me, spoke to the ladies,
+scanned me again, and threw up an arm. "Ho--o! Come here! Hullo! Come
+here--if you please."
+
+If he had not said please he should have ho'd and hullo'd in vain, but
+at that word I turned. Before I had covered half the distance I read New
+Orleans! my dear, dear old New Orleans! in every line of those ladies'
+draperies, and at twenty-five yards I saw one noble family likeness in
+all four of their sweet faces. Oh, but those three maidens were fair!
+and I could name each by her name at a glance: Camille, Cecile, Estelle;
+eighteen, nineteen, twenty!
+
+There was a hush of attention among them as the lieutenant and I
+saluted. His left hand was gone at the wrist and the sleeve pinned back
+on itself. He asked my name; I told him. In the car there was a stir of
+deepening interest. I inquired if he was the post-quartermaster here.
+He was.
+
+"Ain't you Major Harper's quartermaster-sergeant?" he asked.
+
+"I am his clerk." In the car a flash of joy and then great decorum.
+
+As he handed me a writing he glowed kindly. It proved to be from Major
+Harper; a requisition upon this officer for shoes and clothing; not for
+a brigade, regiment or company, but for me alone, from hat to shoes. I
+tendered it back silently, and saw that he knew its purport already from
+the Major, and that the ladies knew it from him. The good fellow looked
+quite happy a moment, but then reddened as they joyfully crowded the
+car's doorway to see me fitted!
+
+"We can select out sev'l pair--" he began, but heard a puerile titter
+and lost his nerve. "Now, you boys that ain't got any business here,
+jest clair out!--Go! I tell you, aw I'll--" The boys loitered off toward
+the engine. "We can select out sev'l si-izes," he drawled, uncovering a
+box, "and fit you ove' in my office. You ain't so pow'ful long nor so
+pow'ful slim, but these-yeh gov'ment contrac's they seldom ev' allow
+fo' anybody so slim in the waist bein' so long in the, eh,--so, eh,--so
+long f'om thah down. But yet still, if you'll jest light off yo' hoss
+and come and look into this-yeh box--"
+
+Hmm! yes! I wouldn't have got off my horse and leaned over that box to
+save the Confederacy. "I thank you, Lieutenant, but I can't stop. If
+you'll hand me up a jacket and pair of shoes I'll sign for them and go.
+I don't want a hat, but I reckon I'd as well include shoes, although
+really,--" I glanced down brazenly at the stirrup-leathers that so
+snugly hid my naked toes.
+
+As the quartermaster lifted out a pair of brogans as broad as they were
+long, there came a cry of protestation from the freight-car group, that
+brought the entire herd of rustics from the woodpile and the locomotive.
+Miss Harper rose behind her nieces, tall, slender, dark, with keen
+black eyes as kind as they were penetrating. "My boy!" she cried, "you
+cannot wear those things!"
+
+Camille, the youngest, whispered to her, whereupon she beckoned.
+"Oh!--oh, do come here!--Mr. Smith, I am the sister of Major Harper.
+You're from New Orleans? Does your mother live in Apollo Street?"
+
+"Yes, madam, between Melpomene and Terpsichore."
+
+"Richard Thorndyke Smith! My dear boy," she cried, while the nieces
+gasped at each other with gestures and looks all the way between
+Terpsichore and Melpomene, and then the four cried in chorus, "We know
+your mother!"
+
+"We've got a letter for you from her!" exclaimed Camille.
+
+"And a suit of unie-fawm!" called Cecile, with her Creole accent.
+
+"We smuggled it through!" chanted the trio, ready to weep for virtuous
+joy. And then they clasped arms like the graces, about their aunt, and
+let her speak.
+
+"We all helped your mother make your uniform," she said. "In the short
+time we've known her we've learned to love her dearly." With military
+brevity she told how they had unexpectedly got a pass and were just out
+of New Orleans--"poor New Orleans!" put in Estelle, the eldest, the
+pensive one; that they had come up from Pontchatoula yesterday and last
+night, and had thrown themselves on beds in the "hotel" yonder without
+venturing to disrobe, and so had let her brother pass within a few
+steps of them while they slept! "Telegraph? My dear boy, we came but ten
+miles an hour, but we outran our despatch!" Now they had telegraphed
+again, to Brookhaven, and thanks to the post-quartermaster, were going
+down there at once on this train. While this was being told something
+else was going on. The youngest niece, Camille, had put herself entirely
+out of sight. Now she reappeared with very rosy cheeks, saying, "Here's
+the letter."
+
+My thanks were few and awkward, for there still hung to the missive a
+basting thread, and it was as warm as a nestling bird. I bent
+low--everybody was emotional in those days--kissed the fragrant thing,
+thrust it into my bosom, and blushed worse than Camille.
+
+"Poor boy!" said the aunt. "It's the first line you've had for months.
+Your sweet mother wrote, but her letters were all intercepted, and the
+last time she was warned that next time she'd be dealt with according to
+military usage! I'm glad we could give you this one at once. We can't
+give you the uniform, for we--why, girls, what--why, what nonsense!"
+
+Maybe I did not say vindictive things inside me just then! The three
+nieces had turned open-mouthed upon one another and sunk down upon their
+luggage with averted faces.
+
+"I say we can't give it to you now," Miss Harper persisted, with a
+motherly smile; "we're wearing it ourselves. We've had no time to take
+it off. I couldn't get the boots off me last night. And even if you had
+the boots, the other things--"
+
+"Aunt Martha!" moaned some one. "Well, in short," said the aunt,
+twinkling like her brother, "we can't deliver the goods, and--" She
+started as though some one had slapped her between the shoulder-blades.
+It was the engine caused it, whistling in the old, lawless way, putting
+a whoop, a howl, a scream and a wail into one. The young ladies quailed,
+the train jerked like several collisions, the bell began tardily to
+clang, and my steed whirled, cleared a packing case, whirled again, and
+stood facing the train, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flapping, not
+half so much frightened as insulted. The post-quartermaster waved to the
+ladies and they to us. For a last touch I lifted my cap high and backed
+my horse on drooping haunches--you've seen Buffalo Bill do it--and
+then, with a leap like a cricket's, and to a clapping of maidens' hands
+that made me whooping drunk, we stretched away, my horse and I, on a
+long smooth gallop, for Brookhaven.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+A HANDSOME STRANGER
+
+Certainly no cricket ever dropped blither music from his legs than did
+my beautiful horse that glorious morning as we clattered in perfect
+rhythm on the hard clean road of the wide pine forest. Ah! the forest is
+not there now; the lumbermen--
+
+For an hour or so the world seemed to have taken me for its center as
+smoothly as a sleeping top. Only after a good seven miles did my
+meditations begin to reveal any bitter in the sweet; but it was in
+recalling for the twentieth time the last sight of Camille, that I
+heard myself say, I know not whether softly or loudly,
+
+"Oh, hang the uniform!"
+
+The morning was almost sultry. As I halted in the clear ripples of a
+gravelly "branch" to let my horse drink, I heard no great way off the
+Harpers' train shrieking at cattle on the track, and looking up I
+noticed just behind me an unfrequented by-road carefully masked with
+brush, according to a new habit of the "citizens". The next moment my
+horse threw up his head to listen. Then I heard hoofs and voices, and
+presently there came trotting through the oak bushes and around the mask
+of brush two horsemen unusually well mounted, clad and armed. Their very
+dark gray uniforms were so trim and so nearly blue that my heart came
+into my throat; but then I noticed they carried neither carbines nor
+sabres, but repeaters only, a brace to each. They splashed lightly to
+either side of me, and the three horses drank together.
+
+"Good-morning," we said. One of the men was a sergeant. He scanned my
+animal, and then me, with a dawning smile. "That's a fightin'-cock of a
+horse you've got, sonny."
+
+"Yes, bub," I replied. The two men laughed so explosively that my horse
+lifted his head austerely.
+
+"Jim," said the younger, "I don't believe all the conscripts we've
+caught these three days are worth the powder they've cost!"
+
+"No," replied Sergeant Jim, "I doubt if the most of 'em are." I turned
+to him and drew down my under eyelid. "Will you kindly tell me, sir, if
+you see any unnatural discoloration in there?"
+
+He smiled. "No, but I can put some there if you want it."
+
+"Thank you, I couldn't let you take so much trouble--or risk."
+
+The three of us pattered out of the stream abreast. "No trouble,"
+replied the sergeant, "it wouldn't take half a minute."
+
+"No," I rejoined, "the first step would be the last."
+
+The men laughed again. "You must a-been born with all your teeth," said
+the private, as we quickened to a trot. "What makes you think we ain't
+after conscripts?"
+
+"Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for
+good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up
+we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all."
+
+The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds. Then
+the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh while
+Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would be
+horn-swoggled!
+
+"I'm willing," I responded, and we all laughed. The younger horseman
+asked my name. "Smith," I said, with dignity, and they laughed again,
+their laugh growing louder when I would not smile.
+
+"Well, say; maybe you'll tell us who this is we're about to meet up
+with."
+
+Through the shifting colonnades of pine, a hundred yards in front of
+us, came two horsemen in the same blue-gray of the pair beside me.
+"Whoever he is," I said, "that gray he's riding is his second best, or
+it's borrowed," for his mount, though good, was no match for him.
+
+"Borrowed!" echoed the sergeant. "If he doesn't own that mare no man
+does."
+
+"Nor no woman?" I asked, and again across the back of my neck my two
+companions gazed at each other.
+
+"By ganny!" exclaimed one, and--"You're a coon," murmured the other, as
+the new-comers drew near. The younger of these also was a private.
+Behind his elbow was swung a Maynard rifle. Both carried revolvers. The
+elder wore a long straight sword whose weather-dimmed orange sash showed
+at the front of a loose cut-away jacket. Under this garment was a shirt
+of strong black silk, made from some lady's gown and daintily corded
+with yellow. On the jacket's upturned collar were the two gilt bars of a
+first lieutenant, but the face above them shone with a combined
+intelligence and purity that drew my whole attention.
+
+A familiar friendship lighted every countenance but mine as this second
+pair turned and rode with us, the lieutenant in front on Sergeant Jim
+Longley's right, and the two privates with me between them behind. For
+some minutes the sergeant, in under-tone, made report to his young
+superior. Then in a small clearing he turned abruptly into a
+neighborhood road, and at his word my two companions pricked after him
+westward. I closed up beside the lieutenant; he praised the weather, and
+soon our talk was fluent though broken, as we moved sometimes at a trot
+and often faster. In stolen moments I scanned him with the jealousy of
+my youth. Five feet, ten; humph! I was five, nine and a thirty-second.
+In weight he looked to be just what I always had in mind in those
+prayers without words with which I mounted every pair of commissary
+scales I came to. The play of his form as our smooth-gaited horses sped
+through the flecking shades was worth watching for its stanch and supple
+grace. Alike below the saddle and above it he was as light as a leaf and
+as firm as a lance. I had long yearned to own a pair of shoulders not
+too square for beauty nor too sloping for strength, and lo, here they
+were, not mine, but his. No matter; the slender mustache he sported he
+was welcome to, I had shaved off nearly as good a one; wished now I
+hadn't. As once or twice he lifted his kepi to the warm breeze I took
+new despair from the soft locks of darkest chestnut that lay on his head
+in manly order, ready enough to curl but waiving the privilege.
+
+"Cock-a-doodle-doo," thought I; "if those are not the same
+hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their
+first cousins!"
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+A PLAGUE ON NAMES!
+
+Once more I measured my man. Celerity, valor, endurance, they were his
+iridescent neck and tail feathers. On a certain piece of road where we
+went more slowly I mentioned abruptly my clerkship under Major Harper
+and watched for the effect, but there was none. Did he know the Major?
+Oh, yes, and we fell to piling item upon item in praise of the
+quartermaster's virtues and good looks. Presently, with shrewdest
+intent, I said the Major was fine enough to be the hero of a novel! Did
+not my companion think so?
+
+Yes, he thought so; but I believed the glow in his tone was for novels.
+I extolled the romance of actual life! I denounced that dullness which
+fails to see the poetry of daily experience, and goes wandering after
+the mirages of fiction! And I was ready to fight him if he liked. But he
+agreed with me most cordially.
+
+"And yet," he began to add,--
+
+"Yet what?" I snapped out, with horse eyes.
+
+"Doesn't a good story revive the poetry of our actual lives?" He wiped
+the rim of his cap with a handkerchief of yellow silk enriched at one
+corner with needlework.
+
+"Um-hm!" I thought; "Charlotte Oliver, eh?" I responded tartly that I
+had that very morning met four ladies the poetry of whose actual,
+visible loveliness had abundantly illustrated to me the needlessness and
+impertinence of fiction! By the way, did he not think feminine beauty
+was always in its ripest perfection at eighteen?
+
+Well, he thought a girl might be prettiest at eighteen and handsomest
+much later. And again I said to myself, "Charlotte Oliver!" But when I
+looked searchingly into his eyes their manly sweetness so abashed me
+that I dropped my glance and felt him looking at me. I remembered my
+fable and flinched. "Isn't your name--" I cried, and choked, and when I
+would have said Ferry, another word slipped out instead. He did not hear
+it plainly:
+
+"Cockerel, did you say?"
+
+A sweet color was I. "Yes, that's what I said; Cockerel. Isn't your last
+name Cockerel?"
+
+"No," he said, "my last name is Durand." He gave it the French
+pronunciation.
+
+"Mine is Smith," I said, and we galloped.
+
+A plague on names! But I was not done with them yet. We met other scouts
+coming out of the east, who also gave reports and went on westward,
+sometimes through the trackless woods. At a broad cross-road which
+spanned the whole State from the Alabama line to the Mississippi River
+stood another sergeant, with three men, waiting. They were the last.
+
+Again we galloped alone; and as our horses' hoofs beat drummers' music
+out of the round earth our dialogue drifted into confessions of our own
+most private theories of conduct, character and creation. Now that this
+man's name was not--Cockerel, my heart opened to him and we began to
+admit to each other the perplexities of this great, strange thing called
+Life. Especially we confessed how every waking hour found us jostled and
+torn between two opposite, unappeasable tendencies of soul; one an
+upward yearning after everything high and pure, the other a
+down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence. I was warmed and fed.
+Yet I was pained to find him so steeped in presumptuous error, so
+wayward of belief and unbelief. The sweet ease with which he overturned
+and emptied out some of my arguments gave me worse failure of the
+diaphragm than a high swing ever did. Nevertheless I responded; and he
+rejoined; and I rejoined again, and presently he gave me the notion that
+he was suffering some cruel moral strain.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+ANOTHER CURTAINED WAGON
+
+Upon whatever fundamental scheme we perseveringly concentrate our
+powers, upon whatever main road of occupation we take life's
+journey,--art, politics, commerce, science,--if only we will take its
+upper fork as often as the road divides, then will that road itself, and
+not necessarily any cross-road, lead us to the noblest, truest plane of
+convictions, affections, aspirations. Such a frame of mind may be quite
+without religiosity, as unconscious as health; but the proof of its
+religious reality will be that, as if it were a lighthouse light and we
+its keeper, everybody else, or at any rate everybody _out on the deep_,
+will see it plainer than we. Such is the gist of what this young man was
+saying to me, when our speculations were brought to an end by our
+overtaking a man well mounted, and a woman whose rough-gaited was
+followed by a colt.
+
+The pair took our pace, the man plying me with questions, and his wife,
+in front, telling Lieutenant Durand all the rumors of the day. Her scant
+hair was of a scorched red tone, she was freckled down into her collar,
+her elbows waggled to the mare's jog, and her voice was as flat as a
+duck's. Her nag had trouble to keep up, and her tiny faded bonnet had
+even more to keep on. Yet the day was near when the touch of those
+freckled hands was to seem to me kinder than the breath of flowers, as
+they bathed my foul-smelling wounds, and she would say, in the words of
+the old song, "Let me kiss him for his mother," and I should be helpless
+to prevent her. By and by the man raised his voice:--
+
+"Why, yo' name _is_ Smith, to be sho'! I thought you was jest a-tryin'
+to chaw me. Why, Major Harper alludened to you not mo'n a half-ow ago.
+Why, Miz Wall! oh, Miz Wall!"
+
+But the wife was absorbed. "Yayse, seh," she was saying to the
+lieutenant, "and he told us about they comin' in on the freight-kyahs
+f'om Hazlehurst black with dust and sut and a-smuttyin' him all oveh
+with they kisses and goin's-on. He tol' me he ain't neveh so enjoyed
+havin' his face dirty sence he was a boy. He would a-been plumb happy,
+ef on'y he could a-got his haynds on that clerk o' his'n. And when he
+tol' us what a gay two-hoss turn-out he'd sekyo'ed for the ladies to
+travel in, s' I, Majo', that's all right! You jest go on whicheveh way
+you got to go! Husband and me, we'll ride into Brookhaven and bring 'em
+out to ow place and jest take ca'e of 'em untel yo' clerk is _found_."
+
+"Miz Wall!" cried the husband--"She's busy talkin'.--Miz Wall!--she
+don't hyuh me. I hate to interrupt heh.--Oh, Miz Wall! hyuh's Majo'
+Harper's clerk, right now!"
+
+"Law, you hain't!" cried Mrs. Wall, smiling back as she jounced. "If you
+air, the Majo's sisteh's got written awdehs fo' you."
+
+I shot forward, but had hardly more than sent back my good-bye when
+around a bend of the road, in a wagon larger than Charlotte Oliver's,
+with the curtains rolled up, came the four Miss Harpers, unsooted and
+radiant. The aunt drove. We turned, all four, and rode with them, and
+while the seven chatted gaily I read to myself the Major's note. It bade
+me take these four ladies into my most jealous care and conduct them to
+a point about thirty miles west of where we then were. A dandy's task in
+a soldier's hour! I ground my teeth, but as I lifted my glance I found
+Camille's eyes resting on me and read anxiety in them before she could
+put on a smile of unemotional friendliness that faded rapidly into
+abstraction. She was as pretty as the bough of wild azaleas in her hand,
+yet moving forward I told her aunt the order's purport and that it
+implied the greatest despatch compatible with mortal endurance. The
+whole four seemed only delighted.
+
+But Mrs. Wall protested. No, no, her hospitality first, and a basket of
+refreshments to be stowed in the vehicle, besides. "Why, that'll
+_sa-ave_ ti-ime. You-all goin' to be supprised to find how hungry
+y'all ah, befo' you come to yo' journey's en', to-night, and them col'
+victuals goin' taste pow'ful fi-ine!"
+
+Our acceptance was unanimous. I even decided not to inform Lieutenant
+Durand until after the repast, that ladies under my escort did not pick
+acquaintanceship with soldiers on the public highway. But before the
+brief meal was over I was wishing him hanged. Hang the heaven-high
+theories that had so lately put me in love with him! Hang his melodious
+voice, his modest composure, his gold-barred collar, his easy command of
+topics! Hang the women! they feasted on his every word and look! Ah,
+ladies! if I were mean enough to tell it--that man doesn't believe in
+hell! He has a down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence; he has
+told me so!
+
+How fast acquaintance grew! When he addressed himself to Cecile, the
+cousin of the other two, her black eyes leapt with delight; for as
+calmly as if that were the only way, he spoke to her in French--asked
+her a question. She gave answer in happiest affirmation, and explained
+to her aunt that her Durand schoolmates of a year or two back were
+cousins to the Lieutenant. When the throng came out to the carry-all I
+was there and mounted. Squire Wall took me a few rods to point out where
+a fork of his private road led into the highway. Then the carry-all came
+merrily after, and with a regret that surprised me I answered our
+Lieutenant's farewell wave, forgave him all his charms, and saw him face
+westward and disappear by a bridle-path.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+THE DANDY'S TASK
+
+Westward likewise we soon were bickering. The morning sun shone high;
+the thin, hot dust blew out over the blackened ground of some forest
+"burn" or through the worm fence of some field where a gang of slave men
+and women might be ploughing or hoeing between the green rows of young
+cotton or corn. The level stretches were many, the slopes gradual, and
+to those sweet city-bird ladies everything was new and delightful; a log
+cabin!--with clay chimney on the outside!--a well and its
+well-sweep!--another cabin with its gourd-vines! They knew that blessed
+alchemy which turns all things into the poetry of the moment. Sweet they
+would have been anywhere to any eye or mind; but I was a homeless
+trooper lad, and sweeter to the soldier boy than water on the
+battlefield are short hours with ladies who love him for his banner
+and his rags.
+
+These four were charmed with an old field given up to sedge, its deep
+rain-gullies as red as gaping wounds, its dead trees in tatters of long
+gray moss. Estelle became a student of flowers, Cecile of birds, Camille
+of trees. All my explanations were alike enchantingly strange. To their
+minds it had never occurred that the land sloped the same way the water
+ran! When told that these woods abounded in deer and wild turkey they
+began to look out for them at every new turn of the road. And the turns
+came fast. Happy miles, happy leagues; each hour was of a mellower
+sweetness than the last; they seemed to ripen in the sun. The only
+drawback was my shame of a sentimental situation, but once or twice I
+longed to turn the whole equipage into the woods--or the ditch. As, for
+instance, when three pine-woods cavalrymen had no sooner got by us than
+they set up that ribald old camp-song,
+
+  "We're going to get married, mamma, mamma;
+  We're going to get married, but don't tell pa--"
+
+"Deserters, I don't doubt!" was my comment to the ladies. Tongue revenge
+is poor, but it is something.
+
+Except in such moments, however, the war seemed farther away than it had
+for months and months. But about eleven o'clock we began to find the way
+scored by the fresh ruts of heavy wheels and the dust deepened by
+hundred of hoofs. The tops and faces of the roadside banks were newly
+trampled and torn by clambering human feet. Here was a canteen, smashed
+in a wheel-track; yonder a fragment of harness; here lay a broken hame,
+there was the half of a russet brogan and yonder a ragged sock stained
+and bloody.
+
+"Why, what does all this mean?" asked Miss Harper amid her nieces'
+cries.
+
+I said it meant Fisher's battery hurrying to the front. Twenty miles
+since five that morning was a marvel, horse artillery though they were,
+for, as I pointed out by many signs, their animals were in ill
+condition. "We shall have to go round them by neighborhood roads," I
+said, and presently we were deeper than ever in woodland shades and
+sources of girlish wonderment. The humid depths showed every sort of
+green and gray, their trunks, bushes and boughs, bearded with hanging
+moss, robed with tangled vines and chapleted with mistletoe. We seemed
+to have got this earth quite to ourselves and very much to our liking.
+
+One o'clock. Miss Harper suggested a halt to feed the horses. I, knowing
+what it would cost me to dismount and go walking about, said no, thrice
+no; let us first get back upon the main road in front of that battery.
+On, therefore, we hurried, and soon the reality of the war was vivid to
+us again. In a stretch of wet road where the team had mutely begged
+leave to walk and the ladies had urged me to sing we had at length
+paused in a pebbly rivulet to allow the weary animals to drink, and the
+girls and the aunt and the greenwood and I were all in chorus
+bidding somebody
+
+  "Unloose the west port and let us go free,"
+
+when, just as our last note died among the trees one of us cried,
+"Listen!" and through the stillness there came from far away on our
+right the last three measures of a bugle sounding The March.
+
+My eyes rested in Camille's and hers in mine. A musical license gave us
+the courage. At the last note our gaze did not sink but took on more
+glow, while out of the forest behind us a distant echo answered the last
+measure of the strain. Then our eyes slowly fell; and however it may
+have seemed to her, to me it was as if the vanished strains were not
+only or chiefly of bugle and echo, but as though our two hearts had
+called and answered in that melodious unison.
+
+All that warm afternoon we paid the tiresome penalty of having pushed
+our animals too smartly at the outset. We grew sedate; sedate were the
+brows of the few strangers we met. We talked in pairs. When I spoke with
+Miss Harper the four listened. She asked about the evils of camp life;
+for she was one of that fine sort to whom righteousness seems every
+man's and woman's daily business, one of the most practical items in the
+world's affairs. And I said camp life was fearfully corrupting; that the
+merest boys cursed and swore and stole, or else were scorned as
+weaklings. Then I grew meekly silent and we talked in pairs again, and
+because I yearned to talk most with Camille I talked most with Estelle.
+Three times when I turned abruptly from her to Camille and called,
+"Hark!" the fagged-out horses halted, and as we struck our listening
+pose the bugle's faint sigh ever farther in our rear was but feebly
+proportioned to the amount of our gazing into each other's eyes.
+
+Once, when we were not halted or harkening, we heard overmuch; heard
+that which brought us to an instant stand and caused even Miss Harper to
+gaze on me with dismayed eyes and parted lips, and the blood to go
+thumping through my veins. From a few hundred yards off in the
+northwest, beyond the far corner of an old field and the woods at its
+back, two gunshots together, then a third, with sharp, hot cries of
+alarum and command, and then another and another shot, rang out and
+spread wanderingly across the tender landscape.
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+THE SOLDIER'S HOUR
+
+To regain the highroad we had turned into a northerly fork, and were in
+as lovely a spot as we had seen all day. Before us and close on our
+right were the dense woods of magnolia, water-oak, tupelo and a hundred
+other affluent things that towered and spread or clambered and hung. On
+the left lay the old field, tawny with bending sedge and teeming with
+the yellow rays of the sun's last hour. This field we overlooked through
+a fence-row of persimmon and wild plum. Among these bushes, half fallen
+into a rain-gully, a catalpa, of belated bloom, was loaded with blossoms
+and bees, and I was directing Camille's glance to it when the shots
+came. Another outcry or two followed, and then a weird silence.
+
+"Some of our boys attacked by a rabbit," I suggested, but still
+hearkened.
+
+"That was not play, Mr. Smith," Miss Harper had begun to respond, when a
+voice across the sedge-field called with startling clearness,
+
+"Hi! there goes one of them!--Halt!--Halt, you blue--" pop!--pop!--pop!
+
+"Prisoners making a break!" I forgot all my tatters and stood on tiptoe
+in the stirrups to overpeer the fence-row. The next instant--"Sh--sh!"
+said I and slid to the ground. "Hold this bridle!" I gave it to Camille.
+"Don't one of you make a sound or a motion; there's a Yankee coming
+across this field in the little gully just behind us."
+
+I bent low, ran a few steps, cocking my revolver as I went. Then I rose,
+peeped, bent again, ran, rose, peeped, waited a few seconds behind the
+catalpa, and without rising peeped once more. Here he came! He was an
+officer. His uniform was torn and one whole side of him showed he had at
+some earlier hour ridden through a hedge and fallen from his horse. On
+he came! nearer--nearer--oh, what a giant! Quickly, warily, he crouched
+under the fence where it hung low across the gully, and half through it
+in that huddled posture he found my revolver between his astonished
+eyes. I did not yell at him, for I did not want the men he had escaped
+from to come and take him from me; yet when I said, "Halt, or you die!"
+the four ladies heard me much too plainly. For, frankly, I said more and
+worse. I felt my slenderness, my beardless youth, my rags, and his
+daring, and to offset them all in a bunch, I--I cursed him. I let go
+only one big damn and I've never spoken one since, though I've done many
+a worse thing, of course. I protest it was my modesty prompted it then.
+
+"I surrender," he said, with amiable ease. I stepped back a pace and he
+drew out and straightened up--the tallest man I had ever seen. I laughed,
+he smiled, laughed; my eyes filled with tears, I blazed with rage, and in
+plain sight and hearing of those ladies he said, "That's all right, my
+son, get as scared as you like; only, you don't need to cry about it."
+
+"Hold your tongue!" I barked my wrath like a frightened puppy, drawing
+back a stride and laying my eye closer along the pistol. "If you call me
+your son again I'll send you to your fathers."
+
+His smile darkened. "I am your prisoner," he said, with a sudden
+splendid stateliness, and right then I guessed who he was.
+
+"Yess, sir, you are!" I retorted. "Move to that wagon! And if you take
+one step out of common time you'll never take another."
+
+The aunt and her nieces were standing in the carry-all, she majestic,
+they laughing and weeping in the one act. I waved them into their seats.
+
+"Halt!" We halted. "About face!" As the prisoner eyed me both of us
+listened. His equanimity was almost winsome, and I saw that friendliness
+was going to be his tactics.
+
+"Guess I'm the first Yankee y' ever caught, ain't I?" His smile was
+superior, but congratulatory.
+
+"You'll be the first prisoner I ever shot if you get any funnier!"
+
+We listened again. "They've gone the wrong way," I said, still savage.
+
+"No," he replied, "I came the wrong way."
+
+The ladies smiled; I glowered. "Take those horses by their heads and
+turn them to me!"
+
+An instant his superb eye resented, but then he pleasantly did my
+bidding. "Suits me well; rather chance it with you than with those I've
+just left."
+
+[Illustration: "I surrender," he said, with amiable ease.]
+
+"Easier to get away, you think?" I asked, with a worse frown than ever,
+as he stepped into the carry-all and took the lines.
+
+"No, not so easy; but those fellows are Arkansans, and they're in a bad
+humor with me."
+
+I took the hint and grew less ferocious. "While you," I said, "are
+Captain Jewett."
+
+"I am," was his reply, and my heart leaped for joy. We hurried away. My
+captive was the most daring Union scout between Vicksburg and New
+Orleans; these very Harpers knew that. The thing unknown to us was that
+already his fate was entangled with Ned Ferry's and Charlotte Oliver's,
+as yet more it would be, with theirs and ours, in days close at hand.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+CAPTAIN JEWETT
+
+Once more we were in the by-road which had brought us westward parallel
+with the highway. The prisoner drove. Aunt Martha sat beside him, slim,
+dark, black-eyed, stately, her silver-gray hair rolled high a la
+Pompadour. With a magnanimity rare in those bitter days she incited him
+to talk, first of New Orleans, where he had spent a month in camp on one
+of the public squares, and then of his far northern home, and of loved
+ones there, mother, wife and child. The nieces, too, gave a generous
+attention. Only I, riding beside the hind wheels, held solemnly aloof.
+
+"Front!" I once snapped out with a ring that made the trees reply and
+the ladies catch their breath. "If you steal one more look back here
+I'll put a ball into your leg."
+
+He smiled, chirped the horses up and resumed his chat. I heard him
+praise my horse and compare him not unfavorably with his own which he
+had lost that morning'. He and a few picked men had been surprised in a
+farmhouse at breakfast. They had made a leap and a dash, he said, but
+one horse and rider falling dead, his horse, unhurt, had tumbled over
+them, and here was his rider.
+
+I prompted Camille to ask if he had ever encountered Ned Ferry, and he
+laughed.
+
+"No," he said, but Ned Ferry had lately restored to him, by proxy, some
+lost letters, with an invitation to _come and see him_.
+
+I laughed insolently. The young ladies sparkled, and so did Miss Harper,
+as she asked him who had been the proxy.
+
+He said the proxy was a young woman who had a knack of getting passes
+through the lines, and the three girls exchanged looks as knowing as
+they were delighted.
+
+"I tell her as a friend," he said, "she'll get one into Fortress Monroe
+yet!"
+
+Miss Harper's keen eyes glittered. "You northerners hardly realize our
+feelings concerning the imprisonment of women, I think."
+
+"My dear madam, you don't realize ours. We don't want to imprison
+women."
+
+So there came a silence, and then a gay laugh as three of us at once
+asked if he had ever heard of Lieutenant Durand. "Durand!" he cried, and
+looked squarely around at me. I lifted the cocked revolver, but he kept
+his fine eyes on mine and I rubbed my ear with my wrist. "What?" he
+said, "an elegant, Creole-seeming young fellow, very handsome? Why, that
+fellow saved my life this very afternoon."
+
+The young ladies were in rapture. Miss Harper asked how he had done it.
+
+"If I tell you that," said the Captain, "you won't like me the least
+bit."
+
+Whereat Cecile replied, "Ah--well! we cou'n' like you the leaz bit
+any-'ow."
+
+"I suppose that's so," laughed the officer. "I'll tell you how it was.
+My guard were just about to hang me for saying I thought we had a right
+to make soldiers of the darkies, when your friend came galloping along,
+saw the thing, and rushed in and cut the halter with his sword. And when
+they demanded to know who and what he was, he told them Durand, and that
+they'd hear it again, for he should report them."
+
+"Oh, sir," cried Estelle, whose eyes, brows, lashes and hair were all of
+the same luminous red-brown, and in whose cheeks the rose seemed always
+to burn through the olive, "how can you and your people seek to kill
+such men as that?"
+
+"Such as which?" asked the Yankee, with a twinkle. "There were two
+kinds."
+
+"But, o-oh! sir!" exclaimed the trio, when Miss Harper waved them to
+forbear. There was yet some daylight left as we trundled into a broad
+highroad and turned northward. We passed a picket guard and then a whole
+regiment of cavalry going into camp. They scrambled to the sides of the
+road and stormed us with questions, chaffing us cruelly when I remained
+silent. "Lawd! look a' this-yeh Yank a-bringin' in ow desertehs!" "Hey,
+you big Yank, you jest let that po' little conscrip' go!"
+
+Headquarters, we heard from a courier who said he was the third sent out
+to find us, were at the "Sessions house" two miles further on. We sent
+him galloping back there, and after a while here came Major Harper and
+three or four others of the staff, including Harry Helm. What a flood of
+mirthful compliment there was at sight of us and our captive; Harry was
+positively silly. In the series of introductions that followed he was
+left paired with Camille, and I said things to myself. Major Harper rode
+by the prisoner. "Well, Captain," he said, "you've had some experiences
+since you left me this morning. Don't you want to give us your parole
+this time, temporarily, for an hour or so, and be more comfortable?"
+
+"Thank you, Major," the Federal affably replied, "that would be a great
+relief to this most extraordinary youngster that I've brought with me."
+He gave it and we turned into a lofty grove whitened with our
+headquarters tents.
+
+"Smith," said the Major, "your part is done, and well done. You needn't
+report to me again to-night; the General wishes to see you a moment.
+Captain, will you go with this young man to General Austin's tent?"
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+IN THE GENERAL'S TENT
+
+I went to Gholson. He told me I was relieved of my captive and bade me
+go care for my horse and return in half an hour. In going I passed close
+by the Sessions plantation house. Every door and window was thrown wide
+to the night air, and preparations were in progress for a dance; and as
+I returned, a slave boy ran across my path, toward the house, bearing a
+flaming pine torch and followed by two ambulances filled with daughters
+of the neighborhood in clouds of white gauze. I found the General in
+fatigue dress. His new finery hung on the tent-pole at his back. Old
+Dismukes, the bull-necked colonel of the Arkansans, lounged on a
+camp-cot. Both smoked cigars.
+
+The General asked me a number of idle questions and then said my
+prisoner had called me a good soldier. Old Dismukes smiled so broadly
+that I grew hot, believing the Yankee had told them of my tears.
+
+"Smith," said the Colonel, and then smoked and smiled again till my brow
+beaded,--"tired?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"That's a lie," he pleasantly remarked, and lay back, enjoying my silent
+wrath. "Send him, General," he added, "he's your man."
+
+The General looked at me between puffs of his cigar. "I hear you've
+ridden over fifty miles to-day."
+
+"Yes, General." "If I give you a good fresh horse can you go
+twenty-three miles more by midnight?"
+
+"Yes, General, if I don't have to save the horse."
+
+"The horse may have to save you," drawled the Arkansan.
+
+"I think you know Lieutenant Durand?" asked the General, with a
+quizzical eye.
+
+"Slightly."
+
+"Well, Smith, on his suggestion approved by Major Harper, I have
+detailed another clerk to the Major."
+
+Rills of perspiration tickled my back like flies. "Can't one man do the
+work?"
+
+"Yes, the new man is detailed in your place."
+
+I almost leaped from the ground in consternation. My whole frame
+throbbed, my mouth fell open, my tongue was tied.
+
+The man who had got me into this thing--this barrel--lifted the
+tent-flap. "Mr. Gholson," said the General, "write an order assigning
+Smith to Ferry's scouts."
+
+The flap fell again and my panic was turned into a joy qualified only by
+a reduced esteem for my general as a judge of character.
+
+Old Dismukes rose. "Good-night. Shall I send this boy that Yankee's
+horse?"
+
+"Oh I was forgetting that; yes, do!"
+
+At the door the Colonel gave me a last look. "Good-night, Legs."
+
+I dared not retort, but I looked so hard at his paunch that the General
+smiled. Then he asked me if I knew where we were then camped, and I said
+we were on the Meadville and Fayette road, near Franklin, twenty miles
+southeast of Fayette and--
+
+"That will do. Now, beyond Fayette, about seven miles north, there's a
+place--"
+
+"Clifton?"
+
+"Don't interrupt me, Smith. Yes, Clifton. You're not to reach there
+to-night--"
+
+"I can do it, General."
+
+"You can do as you're told; understand?" I understood.
+
+"The enemy are in Fayette to-night," he continued. "So when you get
+half-way to Fayette, just across Morgan's Creek, you'll take a dim fork
+on the right running north along the creek. Ever travel by the stars?"
+
+I began to tell how well I knew the stars, but he stopped me. "Yes;
+well, keep straight north till you strike the road running east and west
+between Fayette and Union Church. You'll find there a little
+polling-place called Wiggins. Turn west, toward Fayette, and on the
+north side of the main road, opposite the blacksmith's shop, you'll come
+to a small--"
+
+"I see."
+
+"What do you see?" His frown scared me to my finger-tips.
+
+"Why, I suppose I'm to find there a road down Cole's Creek to Clifton."
+
+"Smith, if you interrupt me again, sir, you'll find the road back to
+your regiment. Opposite that blacksmith's shop you'll see a white
+cottage. There's a young lady stopping there to-night, a stranger, a
+traveller. The old lady who lives there has taken her in at my request.
+See that the young lady gets this envelope. It's no great matter, merely
+a pass through our lines; but it's your ostensible business till you get
+there; understand?"
+
+I thought I did until I glanced at the superscription: Miss Coralie
+Rothvelt.
+
+"Now, here is another matter of much more importance." He showed, but
+retained, another envelope. "Behind the house where you're to find Miss
+Rothvelt there's a road into Cole's Creek bottom. The house you're to
+stop at to-night, say from twelve o'clock till three or half-past, is on
+that road, about five miles from Wiggins, from Clifton and from Fayette.
+I'm sending you there expecting the people in that house will rob you if
+you give them half a chance."
+
+"I understand, General; they'll not get it."
+
+"Smith, I want them to get it. I want them to rob you of this." He
+waggled the envelope. "I want this to fall into the hands of the enemy;
+as it will if those people rob you of it."
+
+I snapped my eyes. He smiled and then frowned. "I don't want a clumsy
+job, now, mind! I don't want you to get captured if you can possibly
+avoid it; but all the same they mustn't get this so easily as to suspect
+it's a bait. So I want you to give those villains that half-chance to
+rob you, but not the other half, or they may--oh, it's no play! You must
+manage to have this despatch taken from you totally against your will!
+Then you must reach Clifton shortly after daylight. Ferry's scouts are
+there, and you'll say to Lieutenant Ferry the single word, Rodney.
+Understand?" He pretended to be reconsidering. "I--don't know
+but--after all--I'd better send one of my staff instead of you."
+
+"Oh, General, if you send an officer they'll see the ruse! I can do it!
+I'll do it all right!"
+
+"I'm most afraid," he said, abstractedly, as he read my detail, which
+Gholson brought in. "Here,"--he handed it to me--"and here, here's the
+despatch too."
+
+"What's the name, General, of the man whose house I'm to go to?"
+
+"You'd best not know; I want you to seem to have stumbled upon the
+place. You can't miss it; there's no other house within two miles of it.
+Good-bye, my lad;"--he gave me his hand;--"good luck to you."
+
+Gholson, in the Adjutant-general's tent, told me Ned Ferry had named me
+to the General as a first-class horseman and the most insignificant-
+looking person he knew of who was fit for this venture.
+
+"Ned Ferry! What does Ned Ferry know about my fitness?"
+
+"Read the address on your despatch," said Gholson, resuming his pen.
+
+I snatched the document from my bosom, into which I had thrust it to
+seize the General's hand "Oh, Gholson!" I said, in deep-toned grief, as
+I looked up from the superscription, "is that honest!"
+
+He admitted that by the true religionist's standard it was not honest,
+but reminded me that Ned Ferry--in his blindness--was only a poor
+romanticist. The despatch was addressed to Lieutenant Edgard
+Ferry-Durand.
+
+Major Harper's black boy brought me the Yankee's horse with my bridle
+and saddle on him; an elegant animal as fresh as a dawn breeze. Also he
+produced a parcel, my new uniform, and a wee note whose breath smelt of
+lavender as it said,--
+
+"Papa tells us you are being sent off on courier duty to-night. What a
+heart-breaking thing is war! How full of cruel sepa'--"
+
+That piece of a word was scored out and "dangers" written in its place.
+The missive ended all too soon, with the statement that I was requested
+to call, on my way out of camp, at the side gallery of the house--
+Sessions's--and let the writer and her sister and her cousin and her
+father and her aunt see me in my new uniform and bid me good-bye.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+GOOD-BYE, DICK
+
+I found but one white figure under the dim veranda eaves. "Miss
+Camille?"
+
+"Wh'--who is that?" responded a musical voice. "Why, is that Mr. Smith?"
+as if I were the last person in the world one should have expected to
+see there. The like of those moments I had never known. I saw her eyes
+note the perfect fit of my uniform, though neither of us mentioned it. I
+tried to tell her that Lieutenant Durand was Ned Ferry and that I was
+now one of his scouts, but she had already heard both facts, and would
+not tell me what her father had said about me, it was so good. Standing
+at the veranda's edge a trifle above me, with her cheek against one of
+the posts and her gaze on her slipper, she asked if I was glad I was
+going with Ned Ferry, and I had no more sense than to say I was; but she
+would neither say she was glad nor tell why she was not.
+
+Through the open windows we could see the dancers. Now and then a pair
+of fanning promenaders came down the veranda, but on descrying us turned
+back. I said I was keeping her from the dance. To which she replied,
+drooping her head again, that she shouldn't dance that night.
+
+"Too tired?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Too warm?"
+
+"Oh, no, not too warm."
+
+"Why, then?"
+
+"Oh--I--just don't feel as if I could, that's all."
+
+My heart beat wildly and I wanted to ask if it was on my account; but I
+was too pusillanimous a coward, and when I feebly tried to look into her
+eyes she would not let me, which convinced me that she lacked candor. A
+dance ended. Gold-laced fellows came and sat on the veranda rail wiping
+wrists and brows with over-tasked handkerchiefs, and explaining the
+small mishaps of the floor. Two promenaders mentioned the hour. I gasped
+my amazement and extended my hand. "Good-bye."
+
+"Wait a moment," she murmured, and watched the promenading pair turn
+back. Then she asked if I had read my mother's letter. I said I had. And
+then, very pensively, with head bent and eyes once more down, she
+inquired if I liked to get letters. Which led, quite accidentally, to my
+asking leave to write to her.
+
+She replied that she did not mean that. Nevertheless, I insisted, would
+she? She only bent lower still. I asked the third time; and with nothing
+but the parting of her hair for me to look at, she nodded, and one of
+her braids fell over in front, and I took the pink-ribboned live end of
+it timorously between thumb and finger and felt as if I had hold of an
+electric battery.
+
+She backed half a step, and quite needlessly I let it go. Then she bade
+me not forget I had promised her the words of a certain song. "Want
+them? Indeed, yes! Did you not say it was an unpublished song written
+by a messmate of yours?--oh, Mr. Smith! I see why you stammer! You said
+'a member of your mess'! oh!--oh!--oh!--you wrote it, yourself! And you
+wrote it to-day! That explains--" She drew an awesome breath, rose to
+her toes and knit her knuckles under her throat.
+
+I was in the sweetest consternation. With the end of her braid once more
+in my fingers I made her promise to keep the dark secret, and so
+recited them.
+
+"Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
+  Turn away thine eyes ere my bosom burn,
+Lit with foolish hope to hear thy fondling sighs,
+  Like yon twilight dove's, breathe, Return, return!
+Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+  O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
+
+"Maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!
+  Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn.
+Breathe, O! breathe to me, as these love-languid skies
+  To yon twilight star breathe, Return, return!
+Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+  O maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!"
+
+"Mis-ter Smith! you wrote that?--to-day! Wh'--who is she?"
+
+"One too modest," I murmured, "to know her own portrait." I clutched the
+braid emotionally and let it go intending to retake it; but she dropped
+it behind her and said I was too imaginative to be safe.
+
+I stiffened proudly, turned and mounted my steed, but her eyes drew
+mine. I pressed close, bent over the saddle-bow, and said,
+"Good-bye, Camille."
+
+"Good-bye." I could barely hear it.
+
+"Oh!--good-bye, just anybody?" I asked; and thereupon she gathered up
+all her misplaced trust in me, all her maiden ignorance of what is in
+man, and all her sweet daring, to murmur--
+
+"Good-bye,--Dick."
+
+I caught my breath in rapture and rode away. She was there yet when I
+looked back--once--and again--and again. And when I looked a last time
+still she had not moved. Oh, Camille, Camille! to this day I see you
+standing there in pink-edged white, pure, silent, motionless, a
+summer-evening cloud; while I, my body clad in its unstained--only
+because unused--new uniform, and my soul tricked out in the
+foolhardiness and vanity of a boy's innocence, rode forth into the night
+and into the talons of overmastering temptation.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+CORALIE ROTHVELT
+
+The night was still and sultry. At one of the many camp-fires on the
+edge of the road I saw the Arkansas colonel sitting cross-legged on the
+ground, in trousers, socks and undershirt, playing poker.
+
+Out in the open country how sweet was the silence. Not yet have I
+forgotten one bright star of that night's sky. My mother and I had
+studied the stars together. Lately Camille, her letter said, had learned
+them with her. Now the heavens dropped meanings that were for me and for
+this night alone. While the form of the maiden--passing fair--yet
+glimmered in the firmament of my own mind, behind me in the south soared
+the Virgin; but as some trees screened the low glare of our camp I saw,
+just rising into view out of the southeast, the unmistakable eyes of the
+Scorpion. But these fanciful oracles only flattered my moral
+self-assurance, and I trust that will be remembered which I forgot, that
+I had not yet known the damsel from one sun to the next.
+
+I was moving briskly along, making my good steed acquainted with me,
+testing his education, how promptly for instance, he would respond to
+rein-touch and to leg-pressure, when I saw, in front, coming toward me,
+three riders. Two of them were very genteel chaps, though a hand of each
+was on the lock of his carbine. The third was a woman, veiled, and clad
+in some dark stuff that in the starlight seemed quite black and
+contrasted strongly with the paleness of her horse. Her hat, in
+particular, fastened my attention; if that was not the same soft-brimmed
+Leghorn I had seen yesterday morning, at least it was its twin sister. I
+halted, revolver in hand, and said, as they drew rein,--"Good-evening."
+
+"Good-evening," replied the nearer man. "How far is it to
+camp--Austin's?"
+
+"A short three miles."
+
+"To what command do you belong?" he asked.
+
+"Ferry's scouts. What command is yours, gentlemen?"
+
+"Ferry's scouts." He scrutinized me. "What command do you say you--"
+
+"Ferry's scouts," I repeated. "F-e-r-r-y-apostrophe s,
+Ferry's--s-k-o-w-t-s--scouts."
+
+The trio laughed, the young woman most musically.
+
+"How long have you belonged to Ferry's scouts?" sceptically demanded
+their spokesman.
+
+"About an hour and a quarter."
+
+"Oh! that-a-way."
+
+"Yes," I replied, "in that direction."
+
+The three laughed again and the men sank their carbines across their
+laps, while in a voice as refined as her figure their companion said,
+"Good-evening, Mr. Smith." She laid back her veil and even in the
+darkness I felt the witchery of her glance. "I was just coming to meet
+you," she continued, "to get the letter you're bringing me from General
+Austin. I feared you might try to come around by Fayette, not knowing
+the Yankees are there. These gentlemen didn't know it." "She just did
+save us!" laughed the man hitherto silent.
+
+"I'm Miss Coralie Rothvelt," she added, and then how she sparkled in the
+dark as she said, "I see you remember me."
+
+"I am but human."
+
+"And yet you never take a lady's name for granted?"
+
+"I am to know Miss Rothvelt by finding her in a certain place." My
+honeyed bow implied that her being just now very much out of place was
+no fault of mine.
+
+"Nonsense!" muttered both men, and I liked them the better.
+
+"My dear Smith," said Miss Rothvelt, "keep your trust. But if I part
+here with these two kind gentlemen--"
+
+"Who don't belong to Ferry's scouts at all," I still more sweetly added.
+
+"No," she laughed, "and if I go back with you to Wiggins--to the little
+white cottage, you know, opposite the blacksmith's shop,--you'll give me
+what you've got for me, won't you?" She dropped her head to one side and
+a mocking-bird chuckle rippled in her throat.
+
+"I shall count myself honored," said I, and we went, together and alone.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+VENUS AND MARS
+
+Since those days men have made "fire-proof" buildings. You know them;
+let certain aggravations combine--they burn like straw. We had barely
+started when I began to be threatened with a conflagration against which
+I should have called it an insult to have been warned. The adroit beauty
+at my side set in to explain more fully her presence. From her window
+she had seen those two trim fellows hurrying along in a fair way to
+blunder into the Federal pickets within an hour, had cautioned them, and
+had finally asked leave to come with them, they under her guidance, she
+under their protection.
+
+"You were so anxious to get the General's letter?" I asked.
+
+"I was so anxious about you," she replied, with feeling, and then broke
+into a quizzical laugh.
+
+I had not the faintest doubt she was lying. What was I to her? The times
+were fearfully out of joint; women as well as men were taking war's
+licenses, and with a boy's unmerciful directness I sprang to the
+conclusion that here was an adventuress. Yet I had some better thoughts
+too. While I felt a moral tipsiness going into all my veins, I asked
+myself if it was not mainly due to my own inability to rise in full
+manliness to a most exceptional situation. Her jaunty method of
+confronting it, was I not failing to regard _that_ with due magnanimity?
+Was this the truth, or after all ought I really to see that at every
+turn of her speech, by coy bendings of the head, by the dark seductions
+of dim half-captive locks about her oval temples, and by many an
+indescribable swaying of the form and of the voice, I was being--to
+speak it brutally--challenged? Even in the poetic obscurity of the night
+I lost all steadiness of eye as I pertly said--
+
+"And so here you are in this awful fix."
+
+"I'm enjoying one advantage," she replied, "which you do not."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Why, I can read my safety in your face. You can't read anything in
+mine; you're afraid to look."
+
+All I got by looking then was a mellow laugh from behind her relowered
+veil; but we were going at a swift trot, nearing a roadside fire of
+fence-rails left by some belated foraging team, and as she came into the
+glare of it I turned my eyes a second time. She was revealed in a garb
+of brown enriched by the red beams of the fire, and was on the gray mare
+I had seen that morning under Lieutenant Edgard Ferry-Durand.
+
+"You recognize her?" the rider asked, delightedly. "She's not stolen,
+she's only served her country a little better than usual to-day; haven't
+you, Cousin Sallie?" (Cousin Sallie was short for Confederate States.)
+
+The note of patriotism righted me and I looked a third time. The one art
+of dress worth knowing in '63 was to slight its fashions without
+offending them, and this pretty gift I had marked all day in the
+Harpers. But never have I seen it half so successful as in the veiled
+horsewoman illumined by the side-lights of those burning fence-rails.
+The white apparition at the veranda's edge gleamed in my mind, yet
+swiftly faded out, and a new fascination, more sudden than worthy heaved
+at my heart. Then the fire was behind us and we were in the deep night.
+
+On the crest of a ridge we slackened speed and my fellow-traveller
+lifted her veil and asked exultantly what those two splendid stars were
+that overhung yonder fringe of woods so low and so close to each other.
+The less brilliant one, I said, the red one, was Mars.
+
+"And the one following, almost at his side?"
+
+"Don't you know?" I asked.
+
+Her eyes flashed round upon me like stars themselves. "Not--Venus?" she
+whispered, snatched in her breath, bit her lip, and half averting her
+face, shot me through with both "twinklers" at once. Then she took a
+long look at the planets and suddenly exclaimed with a scandalized air--
+
+"They're going down into the woods together!"
+
+"Yes," I responded, "and without even waiting for Diana."
+
+She dropped the rein and lifted both arms toward them. "Oh, blessings on
+your glorious old heathen hearts, what do you want of Diana, or of any
+one in heaven or earth except each other!"
+
+Foolish, idle cry, and meant for no more, by a heart on fire with
+temptations of which I knew nothing. But then and there my poor
+adolescent soul found out that the preceptive stuff of which it had
+built its treasure-house and citadel was not fire-proof.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+AN ACHING CONSCIENCE
+
+Yet great is precept. Precept is a well. Up from its far depths by slow,
+humble, constant process you may draw, in a slender silver thread, and
+store for sudden use, the pure waters of character.
+
+It has happened, however, that a man's own armor has been the death of
+him. So the moral isolation of a young prig of good red blood who is
+laudably trying to pump his conduct higher than his character--for
+that's the way he gets his character higher--has its own peculiar
+dangers. Take this example: that he does not dream any one will, or can,
+in mere frivolity, coquette, dally, play mud-pies, with a passion the
+sacredest in subjection, the shamefulest in mutiny, and the deepest and
+most perilous to tamper with, in our nature. As hotly alive in the
+nethermost cavern of his heart as in that of the vilest rogue there is a
+kennel of hounds to which one word of sophistry is as the call to the
+chase, and such a word I believed my companion had knowingly spoken. I
+was gone as wanton-tipsy as any low-flung fool, and actually fancied
+myself invited to be valiant by this transparent embodiment of passion
+whose outburst of amorous rebellion had been uttered not because I was
+there, but only in pure recklessness of my presence. Of course I ought
+to have seen that this was a soul only over-rich in woman's love;
+mettlesome, aspiring, but untrained to renunciation; consciously
+superior in mind and soul to the throng about her, and caught in some
+hideous gin of iron-bound--convention-bound--or even law-bound--foul
+play. But I was so besotted as to suggest a base analogy between us and
+those two sinking stars.
+
+Unluckily she retorted with some playful parry that just lacked the
+saving quality of true resentment. How I rejoined would be small profit
+to tell. I had a fearful sense of falling; first like a wounded
+squirrel, dropping in fierce amazement, catching, holding on for a
+panting moment, then dropping, catching and dropping again, down from
+the top of the great tree where I had so lately sat scolding all the
+forest; and then, later, with an appalling passivity. And at every fresh
+exchange of words, while she laughed and fended, and fended and laughed,
+along with this passivity came a yet more appalling perversity; a
+passivity and perversity as of delirium, and as horrid to her as to me,
+though I little thought so then.
+
+We came where a line of dense woods on our left marked the bottom-lands
+of Morgan's Creek. With her two earlier companions my fellow-traveller
+had crossed a ford here shortly after sunset, seeing no one; but a guard
+might easily have been put here since, by the Federals in Fayette.
+Pretty soon the road, bending toward it, led us down between two fenced
+fields and we stealthily walked our horses. Close to a way-side tree I
+murmured that if she would keep my horse I would steal nearer on foot
+and reconnoitre, and I had partly risen from the saddle, when I was
+thrilled by the pressure of her hand upon mine on the saddle-bow. "Don't
+commit the soldier's deadliest sin, my dear Mr. Smith," she said under
+her breath, and smiled at my agitation; "I mean, don't lose time."
+
+I was about to put a false meaning even on that, when she added "We
+don't need the ford this time of year; let us ride back as if we gave up
+the trip--for there may be a vidette looking at us now in the edge of
+those bushes--and as soon as we get where we can't be seen let us take a
+circuit. We can cross the creek somewhere above and strike the Wiggins
+road up in the woods. You can find your way by the blessed stars, can't
+you--being the angel you are?"
+
+My whole nature was upheaved. You may smile, but my plight was awful. In
+the sultry night I grew cold. My bridle-hand, still lying under her
+palm, turned and folded its big stupid fingers over hers. Then our hands
+slid apart and we rode back. "I wish I were good enough to know the
+stars," she said, gazing up. "Tell me some of them."
+
+I told them. Two or three times my voice stuck in my throat, I found the
+sky so filled, so possessed, by constellations of evil name. At our back
+the Dragon writhed between the two Bears; over us hung the Eagle, and in
+the south were the Wolf, the Crow, the Hydra, the Serpent--"Oh, don't
+tell any more," she exclaimed. "Or rather--what are those three bright
+stars yonder? Why do you skip them?"
+
+"Those? That one is the Virgin's sheaf; and those two are the Balances."
+
+I failed to catch her reply. She spoke in a tone of pain and sunk her
+face in her hand. "Head ache?" I asked. "No." She straightened, and
+from under her coquettish hat bent upon me such a look as I had never
+seen. In her eyes, in her tightened lips, and in the lift of her head,
+was a whole history of hope, pride, pain, resolve, strife, bafflement
+and defiance. She could not have chosen to betray so much; she must have
+counted too fully on the shade of her hat-brim. The beautiful frown
+relaxed into a smile. "No," she repeated, "only an aching conscience.
+Ever have one?"
+
+I averted my face and answered with a nod.
+
+"I don't believe you! I don't believe you ever had cause for one!" She
+laid a hand again upon mine.
+
+I covered it fiercely and sunk my brow upon it. And thereupon the wave
+of folly drew back, and on the bared sands of recollection I saw, like
+drowned things, my mother's face, and Gholson's and the General's, and
+Major Harper's, and Ned Ferry's, and Camille's. Each in turn brought its
+separate and peculiar pang; and among those that came a second time and
+with a crueler pang than before was Camille's.
+
+"You're tired!" murmured the voice beside me, and the wave rolled in
+again. I lifted my brow and moved one hand from hers to make room on it
+for my lips, but her fingers slipped away and alighted compassionately
+on my neck. "You must be one ache from head to foot!" she whispered.
+
+I turned upon her choking with anger, but her melting beauty rendered me
+helpless. Black woods were on our left. "Shall we turn in here?"
+I asked.
+
+"Yes." She stooped low under the interlacing boughs and plunged with me
+into the double darkness.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+TWO UNDER ONE HAT-BRIM
+
+"Is this the conservatory?" playfully whispered Miss Rothvelt; and if a
+hot, damp air, motionless, and heavy with the sleeping breath of
+countless growths could make it so, a conservatory it was. Every
+slightest turn had to be alertly chosen, and the tangle of branches and
+vines made going by the stars nearly impossible. The undergrowth crowded
+us into single file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses
+came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were
+much the same until near the end of our detour, when my horse swerved
+abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake sounded almost under foot. The
+mare swerved, too, and hurried forward to my horse's side.
+
+"That was almost an adventure, itself," laughingly murmured my
+companion, as if adventures were what we were in search of. While she
+spoke we came out into a slender road and turned due north. "Did you,"
+she went on, childishly, "ever take a snake up by the tail, in your
+thumb and finger, and watch him try to double on himself and bite you? I
+have, it's great fun; makes you feel so creepy, and yet you know
+you're safe!"
+
+She laughed under her breath as if at hide-and-seek. Then we galloped,
+then trotted again, galloped, walked and trotted again. Two miles,
+three, four, we reckoned off, and slowed to a walk to come out
+cautiously upon the Union Church and Fayette road. A sound brought us
+to a halt. From the right, out on the main road, it came; it was made by
+the wheels of a loaded wagon. I leaned sidewise until her hat-brim was
+over me and whispered "Yankee foragers;" but as I drew my revolver we
+heard voices, I breathed a sigh of relief, and with her locks touching
+mine we chuckled to each other in the dark. The passers were slaves
+escaping to the Federal camp.
+
+Now they came into view, on the broader road, two whole ragged families
+with a four-mule team. They passed on. And then all at once the whole
+situation was too much for me. In the joy of release I groped out
+caressingly and touched my companion's cheek. Whereat she took my
+fingers and drew them to her lips--twice. The next moment I found--we
+found--my lifted wrists in the slender grasp of her two hands and she
+was murmuring incoherent protests. Suddenly she grew eloquent. "Oh,
+think what you are and have always been! Do you think I don't know? Do
+you suppose I would have put myself into this situation, or taken the
+liberties I have taken with you, if I had not known you, and known you
+well, before ever I saw you? Ah! I have heard such good things of you!
+and the moment I saw you I saw they were true!--Yes,--yes, I tell you
+they were, they are! And I'm not going to take my trust away from you
+now! You shall keep my trust as you have kept all others. You shall be
+as miserly of it as of your general's. You will keep it!" Her whispers
+grew more and more gentle. "My dear friend, my dear friend! what is this
+trust compared to the trust I wish I might lay on you?" What did she
+mean by that! Had she some schemer's use for me? I could not ask, for
+her little hands had gradually slipped from my wrists to my fingers and
+were softly, torturingly fondling them. Suddenly she laughed and threw
+her hands behind her back. "I'm blundering! Oh, Richard Smith, be kind
+to a woman's poor wits, and let me say to-morrow that I know one man who
+can be trusted--who I know can be trusted--to make a woman's folly her
+protection. Do you know, dear, that any woman who can say that, is
+richer than any who cannot? And I am but a woman, sometimes a bit silly.
+Trouble is I'm a live one and a whole one!--or else I'm a live one and
+not quite a whole one--I wonder which it is!"
+
+I mumbled something about never wishing to tempt any one.
+
+"Oh, you haven't tempted me," she replied, with kind amusement. "You
+couldn't if you should try. You're a true soldier, with a true soldier's
+ideals; and I'm pledged to help you keep them."
+
+"What do you mean?" I demanded. "To whom are you pledged for any such--"
+
+"Oh!--don't you wish you knew! Why, to myself, for instance. Come! duty
+calls."
+
+"Come!" I echoed. We swung into the broader road and followed the
+contrabands.
+
+We came as close to them as was wise, and had to walk our horses. I
+could discern Miss Rothvelt's features once more, and felt a truer
+deference than I had yet given her. Near the blacksmith's shop, in the
+dusk of some shade-trees, she once more touched my shoulder. I turned
+resentfully to bid her not do it, but her shadowy gaze stopped me.
+
+"Don't be moody," she said; "the whole mistake is four-fifths mine. And
+anyhow, repining is only a counterfeit repentance, you know. Come, I
+don't want to tease you. It's only myself I love to torment. I'm the
+snake I like to hold up by the tail. Did you never have some dull,
+incessant ache that seemed to pain less when you pressed hard on it?"
+She laughed, left me and rode into the cottage gate.
+
+What do you say?--Yes, she might have spoken more wisely. Yet always
+there vibrated in her voice a wealth of thought, now bitter, now sweet,
+and often both at once, and a splendor of emotions, beyond the scope of
+all ordinary natures. How far beyond my own scope they were, even with
+my passions at flood-tide and turbid as a back-street overflow, I
+failed to ponder while I passed around the paling fence alone.
+
+In the edge of the woods at the rear of this enclosure I found the road
+that led into Cole's Creek bottom, and there turned and waited. A corner
+of the cottage was still in view among its cedars and china-trees. In an
+intervening melon-patch blinked the yellow lamps of countless fireflies.
+And now there came the ghost of a sound from beyond the patch, then a
+glimpse of drapery, and I beheld again the subject of my thoughts. Such
+thoughts! Ah! why had I neither modesty, wit nor charity enough to see
+that yonder came a woman whose heart beat only more strongly than the
+hearts of all the common run of us, with impulses both kind and high,
+although society, by the pure defects of its awkward machinery, had
+incurably mutilated her fate; a woman wrestling with a deep-founded love
+that, held by her at arm's length, yielded only humiliations and by its
+torments kept her half ripe for any sudden treason even against that
+love itself.
+
+She came without her horse, pointing eagerly at the brightness of the
+sky above the unrisen moon. "Diana!" she whispered, and tossed a kiss
+toward it. "You saw me put the mare into the stable and go into the
+house by the back door?"
+
+"Yes," I said, and handed her, as I dismounted, the General's gift, the
+pass.
+
+She snatched it gaily, loosed a fastening at her throat and dropped the
+missive into her bosom. Then with passionate gravity she asked, "Now,
+are you going straight on to Clifton to-night--without stopping?"
+
+"I haven't been ordered to tell any one where I'm going."
+
+"Neither was Lieutenant Ferry," she dryly responded, "yet I have it from
+him."
+
+"He told you?--Ah! you're only guessing," I said, and saw that I was
+helping her to guess more correctly.
+
+"Pooh!" she replied, ever so prettily, "do you suppose I don't know?
+Ferry's scouts are at Clifton, and you've got a despatch for
+Lieutenant--eh,--Durand--hem!" She posed playfully. "Now, tell me;
+you're not to report to him till daylight, are you? Then why need you
+hurry on now? This house where I am is the only safe place for you to
+sleep in between here and Clifton. I'll wake you, myself, in good time."
+My heart pounded and rose in my throat, yet I managed to say, "My
+orders are plain." I flinched visibly, for again I had told too much. I
+pretended to listen toward the depths of the wood.
+
+She struck a mock-sentimental attitude and murmured musically--
+
+  "'The beating of our own hearts
+  Was all the sound we heard.'
+
+"Yes,"--she put away gaiety--"your orders are plain; and they're as
+cruel as they are plain!"
+
+"Cruel to you?" I took her hand from my arm and held it.
+
+"Oh! cruel to you, Richard, dear; to you! And--yes!--yes!--I'll
+confess. I'll confess--if only you'll do as I beg! Yes, ah yes, cruel to
+me! But don't ask how, and we'll see if you are man enough to keep a
+real woman's real secret! And first, promise me not to put up at that
+house which the General and Lieutenant Ferry--"
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry is not sending me to any house."
+
+"Pardon me, I know better. This is his scheme." She laid her free hand
+on our two. "Tell me you will not go to that house!"
+
+I attempted an evasion. "Oh--a blanket on the ground--face covered up in
+it from the mosquitos--is really--"
+
+"Right!" She laughed. "I wish a woman could choose that way. Oh! if
+you'll do that I'll go with you and stand guard over you!"
+
+Dolt that I was, I would have drawn her close, but she put me off with
+an outstretched arm and forbidden smile. "No!--No! this is a matter of
+life and death."
+
+I stepped back, heaving. "Who and what are you? Who and what are you?"
+
+"Why, who and what should I be?"
+
+"Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+"Hmm; Charlotte Oliver. Are you sure you have the name just right?"
+
+"Why haven't I got it right?"
+
+"Oh, I don't doubt you have; though I didn't know but it might be
+Charlie Toliver or something."
+
+I dilated. "Who told--did Ned Ferry tell you that story?"
+
+"He did. Or, to be accurate, Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. My dear Richard,
+we cannot be witty and remain un-talked-about."
+
+"I--I believe it yet! You are Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+She became frigid. "Do you know who and what Charlotte Oliver is?--No?
+Well, to begin with, she's a married woman--but pshaw! you believe
+nothing till it's proved. If I tell you who and what I am will you do
+what I've asked you; will you promise not to stop at Lucius Oliver's
+house?" She softly reached for my hand and pressed and stroked it.
+"Don't stop there, dear. Oh, say you will not!"
+
+"Is it so dangerous?"
+
+"General Austin believes it is. You're being used to bait a trap,
+Richard."
+
+I laughed a gay disdain. "Who is Lucius; is he Charlotte's husband?"
+
+The reply came slowly. "No; her husband is quite another man; this
+man's wife has been dead for years. No, Charlotte Oliver lives
+in--hark!"
+
+The sound we had heard was only some stir of nature in her sleep. "I
+must go," I said.
+
+"Oh, no, no! I cannot let you!" She clutched the hand she had been
+stroking.
+
+"Coralie! Coralie Rothvelt!"--my cry was an honest one--"you tempt me
+beyond human endurance."
+
+She threw my hand from her. "I know I do! I'm so unworthy to do it that
+I wouldn't have believed I could. You thought I was Charlotte
+Oliver--Heavens! boy, if you should breathe the atmosphere Charlotte
+Oliver has to live in! But understand again, for your soul's comfort,
+you haven't tempted me. Go, if you must; go, take your chances; and if
+you're spared ever to see your dear, dear little mother--"
+
+"My mother! Do you know my mother?"
+
+"Tell her I tried to keep my promise to her."
+
+"You promised her--what did you promise her?"
+
+"Only to take care of you whenever I had the chance. Go, now, you must!"
+
+"And was care for me your only motive in--"
+
+"No; no, Richard, I wanted, and I still want, you to take care of me!
+But go, now, go! at once or not at all! Good-bye!" She laughed and
+fluttered away. I sprang upon my horse and sped into the forest.
+
+Another mile, another half; then my horror and dismay broke into gesture
+and speech, and over and over I reviled myself as a fool, a traitorous
+fool, to be fooled into confession of my errand! I moaned with physical
+pain; every fatigue of the long day now levied payment, and my back,
+knees, shoulders, ached cruelly. But my heart ached most, and I bowed in
+the saddle and cried--
+
+"What have I done, oh, what have I done? My secret! my general's, my
+country's secret! That woman has got it--bought it with flatteries and
+lies! She has drawn it from my befouled soul like a charge from a gun!"
+
+For a moment I quite forgot how evident it was that she had gathered
+earlier inklings of it from some one else. Suddenly my thought was of
+something far more startling. It stopped my breath; I halted; I held my
+temples; I stared. What would she do with a secret she had taken such
+hazards to extort? Ah! she'd carry it straight to market--why not? She
+would give it to the enemy! Before my closed eyes came a vision of the
+issue--disaster to our arms; bleeding, maiming, death, and widows' and
+orphans' tears.
+
+"My God! she shall not!" I cried, and whirled about and galloped back.
+
+At the edge of the wood, where we had parted, I tied my horse, and crept
+along the moonlight shadows of the melon-patch to the stable. The door
+was ajar. In the interior gloom I passed my hands over the necks and
+heads of what I recognized to be the pair of small mules I had seen at
+Gallatin. Near a third stall were pegs for saddle and bridle, but they
+were empty. So was the stall; the mare was gone.
+
+"Gone to the Yankees at Fayette!" I moaned, and hurried back to my
+horse. To attempt to overtake one within those few miles would only make
+failure complete, and I scurried once more into the north with such a
+burden of alarm and anguish as I had never before known.
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+THE JAYHAWKERS
+
+IT was well that I was on the Federal captain's horse. He knew this sort
+of work and could do it quicker and more quietly than mine. Mine would
+have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it. Another
+advantage was the moon, and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I
+saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge
+of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins.
+Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young
+white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to
+startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the
+rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay
+ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw--for
+the excited dogs had pushed the door open--that two of the men were
+white, though but one wore shoes. On him the light fell revealingly as
+he and the yellow girl before him passed each other in the dance and
+faced again. He was decidedly blond. The other man, though silhouetted
+against the glare of burning pine-knots, I knew to be white by the
+flapping of his lank locks about his cheeks as he lent his eyes to the
+improvisation of his steps. His partner was a young black girl. I
+burned with scorn, and doubtless showed it, although I only asked whose
+plantation this was.
+
+"This-yeh pla-ace?" The rustic dragged his words lazily, chewed tobacco
+with his whole face, and looked my uniform over from cap to spur. "They
+say this-yeh place belong to a man which his name Lu-ucius Ol-i-veh."
+
+So! I honestly wished myself back in my old rags, until I reflected that
+my handsome mount was enough to get me all the damage these wretches
+could offer. Still I thought it safest to show an overbearing frown.
+
+"To what command do you fellows belong?"
+
+He spurted a pint to reply, "Fishe's batt'ry."
+
+"Oh! And where is the battery?"
+
+"You sa-ay 'Whah is it?'--ow batt'ry"--he champed noisily--"I dunno.
+Does you? Whah is it?"
+
+"It's twenty miles off; why are you not with it? What are you doing
+here?"
+
+"You sa-ay 'What we a-doin' hyuh?' Well, suh, I mought sa-ay we ain't
+a-doin' nuth'n'; but I"--he squirted again--"_will_ sa-ay that so fah as
+you _see_ what we a-doin', you _kin_ see, an' welcome; an' so fah as you
+don't see, it ain't none o' yo' damn' busi-ness."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, I was only asking a friendly question."
+
+"Yaas; well, that's all right, too, suh; I uz on'y a-givin' you a
+frien'ly aynsweh. I hope you like it."
+
+Our intercourse became more amiable and the fellow dragged in his advice
+that I spend the rest of the night at the house of Mr. Oliver. His
+acquaintance with that gentleman seemed to grow while we talked, and
+broke into bloom like a magician's rosebush. He described him as a kind
+old bird who made hospitality to strangers his meat and drink. A
+conjecture darted into my mind. "Why, yes! that is his married son, is
+he not, yonder in the cabin; the one with the fair hair?"
+
+"Who?--eh,--ole man Ol-i-veh? You sa--ay 'Is that his ma'-ied son, in
+yondeh; the one 'ith the fah hah? '--Eh,--no--o, suh,--eh,--yass,
+suh,--yass! Oh, yass, suh, thass his--tha'--thass his ma'ied son, in
+thah; yass, suh, the one 'ith the fah hah; yass, suh. I thought you
+meant the yetheh one."
+
+"I don't believe," said I, "I'd better put myself on the old gentleman
+when the mistress of the house is away."
+
+"_She_ ain't awa-ay."
+
+"Is she not! Isn't she the Mrs. Oliver--Charlotte Oliver--who is such
+friends--she and her husband, I mean, of course,--"
+
+"_Uv_ co'se!" The reptile giggled, squirted and nodded.
+
+"--With General Austin," I continued, "--and with Lieutenant Ferry?"
+
+"She air!" He was pleased. "Yass, we all good frien's togetheh."
+
+"But if she--oh, yes!--Yes, to be sure; she could easily have got here
+yesterday afternoon."
+
+"Thass thess when she arrove!" It was fascinating to watch the animal's
+cunning play across his face. The fiddle's tune changed and the dance
+quickened.
+
+"I naturally thought," resumed I, with a smile meant to refer to the
+blond dancer, "that the madam _must_ be away somewhere."
+
+My hearer grinned. "Oh, that ain't no sign. Boys will be boys. You know
+that, yo'se'f. An' o' co'se she know it. Oh, yass, she at home."
+
+"Well, I reckon I'll stop all night." I began to move on. His eyes
+followed greedily.
+
+"Sa-ay! I'll wrastle you fo' them-ah clo'es."
+
+I waved a pleasant refusal and rode toward the house.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+ASLEEP IN THE DEATH-TRAP
+
+The dwelling was entirely dark. I came close in the bright moonlight and
+hallooed. At my second hail the door came a small way open, and after a
+brief parley a man's voice bade me put up my horse and come in. The
+stable was a few steps to the right and rear. Returning, I took care to
+notice the form of the house: a hall from front to rear; one front and
+one rear room on each side of it; above the whole a low attic, probably
+occupied by the slave housemaids.
+
+I was met in the bare unpainted hall by a dropsical man of nearly sixty,
+holding a dim candle, a wax-myrtle dip wrapped on a corncob. He had a
+retreating chin, a throat-latch beard and a roving eye; stepped with one
+foot and slid with the other, spoke in a dejected voice, and had very
+poor use of his right hand. I followed him to the rear corner chamber,
+the one nearest the stable, feeling that, poor as the choice was, I
+should rather have him for my robber and murderer than those villains
+down at the quarters. I detained him in conversation while I drew off my
+boots and threw my jacket upon the back of a chair in such a way as to
+let my despatch be seen. The toss was a lucky one; the document, sealed
+with red wax, stuck out arrogantly from an inside pocket. Then, asking
+lively questions the while as if to conceal a blunder and its
+correction, I moved quickly between him and it and slipped the missive
+under a pillow of the fourpost bedstead.
+
+He was not wordy, and he tarried but a moment, yet he explained his
+paralysis. In the dreary monotone of a chronic sour temper he related
+that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing
+horses, and their officer, on being called by him "no gentleman," had
+struck him behind the ear with the butt of a carbine. I asked what
+punishment the officer received, and I noticed the plural pronoun as he
+icily replied, "We didn't enter any complaint."
+
+I said with genuine warmth that if he would give me that man's
+name--etc.
+
+He waited on the threshold with his dropsical back to me for my last
+word, and then, still in the same attitude, droned, "O-oh, he's dead.
+And anyhow," he finished out of sight in the hall, "that's not our way."
+
+I sat on the edge of the bed, in the moonlight, wishing I knew what
+their way was. I considered my small stock of facts. The one that
+appalled me most was the inward guilt which I brought with me to this
+ordeal. I wanted to say my childhood prayers and I could not. For I
+could not repent; at least the _emotion_ of repentance would not come.
+Moreover, every now and then there leapt across this blackness of guilt
+a forked lightning of fright, as I realized that I could no more plan
+than I could pray. No doubt Coralie Rothvelt, by this time in Fayette,
+was telling some Federal commander that a certain Confederate courier,
+now asleep at the house of Lucius Oliver, had let slip to her the fact
+that his despatches were written to be captured, and that, read with
+that knowledge, they would be of guiding value. What mine host himself
+might have in view for me I could not guess, but most likely those three
+rapscallions down at the quarters were already plotting my murder. So
+now for a counterplot--alas! the counterplot would not unfold for me!
+
+I rallied all my wits. Here was an open window. Through it the moonlight
+poured in upon the lower half of the bed. If I should lie with my eyes
+in the shadow of the headboard no one entering by the door opposite
+could see that I was looking. Good! but what to do when the time should
+come--ah me!--and "Oh, God!" and "Oh, God!" again. Ought I, now, to let
+the enemy get the despatch, or must I not rather keep it from him at
+whatever risk of death or disgrace? Ah! if I might only fight, and let
+the outcome decide for me! And why not? Yes, I would fight! And oh! how
+I would fight! If by fighting too well I should keep the despatch, why,
+that, as matters now stood, was likely to be the very best for my
+country's cause. On the other hand, should I fight till I fell dead or
+senseless and only then lose it, surely then it would be counted genuine
+and retain all its value to mislead. Oh, yes,--I could contrive nothing
+better--I would fight!
+
+I drew the counterpane aside, lay down under it revolver in hand, and
+then, for the first time since I had put on the glorious gray, found I
+could not face the thought of death. I grew steadily, penetratingly,
+excruciatingly cold, and presently--to the singular satisfaction of my
+conscience--began to shake from head to foot with a nervous chill. It
+was agonizing, but it was so much better than the spiritual chill of
+which it took the place! I felt as though I should never be warm again.
+Yet the attack slowly passed away, and with my finger once more close to
+the trigger, I lay trying to use my brain, when, without prayer or plan,
+I solved the riddle, what I should do, by doing the only thing I knew I
+ought not to do. I slept.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+CHARLOTTE OLIVER
+
+An envelope sealed with sealing-wax, unless it has also a wrapping of
+twine or tape whose only knot is under the seal, can be opened without
+breaking the seal. Gholson had once told me this. Hold a thin, sharp
+knife-blade to the spout of a boiling tea-kettle; then press the
+blade's edge under the edge of the seal. Repeat this operation many
+times. The wax will yield but a hair's-breadth each time, but a
+hair's-breadth counts, and in a few minutes the seal will be lifted
+entire. A touch of glue or paste will fasten it down again, and a seal
+so tampered with need betray the fact only to an eye already suspicious.
+
+As I say, I slept. The door between me and the hall had a lock, but no
+key; another door, letting from my room to the room in front of it, had
+no lock, but was bolted. I slept heavily and for an hour or more. Then I
+was aware of something being moved--slowly--slyly--by littles--under my
+pillow. The pillow was in a case of new unbleached cotton. When I first
+lay down, the cotton had so smelt of its newness that I thought it was
+enough, of itself, to keep me awake. Now this odor was veiled by
+another; a delicate perfume; a perfume I knew, and which brought again
+to me all the incidents of the night, and all their woe. I looked, and
+there, so close to the bedside that she could see my eyes as plainly as
+I saw hers, stood Coralie Rothvelt. In the door that opened into the
+hall were two young officers, staff swells, in the handsomest Federal
+blue. The moonlight lay in a broad flood between them and me. It
+silvered Miss Rothvelt from the crown of her hat to the floor, and
+brightened the earnest animation of her lovely face as she daintily
+tiptoed backward with one hand delicately poised in the air behind her,
+and the other still in the last pose of withdrawing from under the
+pillow--empty!
+
+My problem was indeed simplified. The despatch had been stolen, opened,
+read, re-sealed and returned. All I now had to do was to lie here till
+daybreak and then get away if I could, deliver the despatch to Ned
+Ferry, and tell him--ah! what?--how much? Oh, my bemired soul, how much
+must I tell? My shame I might bear; I might wash it out in blood at the
+battle's front; but my perfidy! how much was it perfidy to withhold; how
+much was it perfidy to confess?
+
+The heaviness of my soul, by reacting upon my frame and counterfeiting
+sleep better than I could have done it in cold blood, saved me, I fancy,
+from death or a northern prison. When I guessed my three visitors were
+gone I stirred, as in slumber, a trifle nearer the window, and for some
+minutes lay with my face half buried in the pillow. So lying, there
+stole to my ear a footfall. My finger felt the trigger, my lids lifted
+alertly, and as alertly reclosed. Outside the window one of the
+officers, rising by some slender foothold, had been looking in upon me,
+and in sinking down again and turning away had snapped a twig. He
+glanced back just as I opened my eyes, but once more my head was in
+shadow and the moonlight between us. When I peeped again he was
+moving away.
+
+Five, ten, fifteen minutes dragged by. Counting them helped me to lie
+still. Then I caught another pregnant sound, a mumbling of male voices
+in the adjoining front room. I waited a bit, hearkening laboriously, and
+then ever so gradually I slid from the bed, put on everything except my
+boots, and moved by inches to the door between the two rooms. It was
+very thin; "a good sounding-board," thought I as I listened for life or
+death and hoped my ear was the only one against it.
+
+The discussion warmed and I began to catch words and meanings. Oftenest
+they were old Lucius Oliver's, whose bad temper made him incautious.
+While his son and the other two jayhawkers obstinately pressed their
+scheme he kept saying, sourly, "That's--not--our--wa-ay!"
+
+At length he lost all prudence. "Nn--o!--Nnno--o, sir! Not in this house
+you don't; and not on this place! Wait till he's off my land; I'm not
+goin' to have the infernal rebels a-turpentinin' my house and a-burnin'
+it over my head. What _air_ you three skunks in such a sweat to git
+found out for, like a pack o' daymn' fools! I've swone to heaven and
+hell to git even ef revenge can ever git me even, and this ain't the way
+to git even. It's not--our--wa-ay!"
+
+His son's attitude exasperated him. "_You_ know this ain't ever been our
+way; you'd say so, yourself, ef you wa'n't skin full o' china-ball
+whiskey! What in all hell is the reason we can't do him as we've always
+done the others?"
+
+"Oh, shut your dirty face!" replied the son, while one of his cronies
+warned both against being overheard. But when this one added something
+further the old man snarled:
+
+"What's that about the horse?--The horse might git away and be evidence
+ag'inst us?--What?--Oh, now give the true reason; you want the horse,
+that's all! You two lickskillets air in this thing pyo'ly for the
+stealin's. Me and my son ain't bushwhackers, we're gentlemen! At least
+I'm one. Our game's revenge!"
+
+Not because of this speech, but of a soft rubbing sound on the
+window-sill behind me, my heart turned cold. Yet there I saw a most
+welcome sight. Against the outer edge of the sill an unseen hand was
+moving a forked stick to and fro. The tip of one of its tines was slit,
+in the slit was a white paper, and in the fork hung the bridle of my
+horse. I glided to the window. But there bethinking me how many a man
+had put his head out at just such a place and never got it back, I made
+a long sidewise reach, secured the paper, and read it.
+
+It was the envelope which had contained Coralie Rothvelt's pass. Its
+four flaps were spread open, and on the inside was scrawled in a large
+black writing the following:
+
+_Yankees gone, completely fooled. Do not stir till day, then ride for
+your life. We're not thwarting Lieutenant Ferry's plan, we're only
+improving upon it. When you report to him don't let blame fall upon the
+father and son whose roof this night saves you from a bloody death. Do
+this for the sake of her who is risking her life to save yours. We serve
+one cause; be wary--be brave--be true_.
+
+I stood equally amazed and alert. The voices still growled in the next
+room, and my horse's bridle still hung before the window. I peered out;
+there stood the priceless beast. I came a sly step nearer, and lo! in
+his shadow, flattened against the house, face outward, was Coralie
+Rothvelt comically holding the forked stick at a present-arms.
+Throbbing with a grateful, craving allegiance, I seized the rein. Then I
+bent low out the window and with my free hand touched her face as it
+turned upward into a beam of moonlight. She pressed my fingers to her
+lips, and then let me draw her hand as far as it could come and cover it
+with kisses. Then she drew me down and whispered "You'll do what
+I've asked?"
+
+When I said I would try she looked distressfully unassured and I added
+"I'll do whatever risks no life but mine."
+
+Her face spoke passionate thanks. "That's all I can ask!" she said,
+whispered "When you go--_keep the plain road,"_--and vanished.
+
+I sat by the window, capped, booted, belted, my bridle in one hand,
+revolver in the other. In all the house, now, there was no sound, and
+without there was a stillness only more vast. I could not tell whether
+certain sensations in my ear were given by insects in the grass and
+trees or merely by my overwrought nerves and tired neck. The moon sailed
+high, the air was at last comfortably cool, my horse stood and slept. I
+thought it must be half-past two.
+
+"Now it must be three." Miss Rothvelt's writing lay in my bosom beside
+my despatch. At each half-hour I re-read it. At three-and-a-half I
+happened to glance at the original superscription. A thought flashed
+upon me. I stared at her name, and began to mark off its letters one by
+one and to arrange them in a new order. I took C from Coralie and h from
+Rothvelt; after them I wrote a from Coralie and r from Rothvelt, l and o
+from Coralie and two t's and an e from Rothvelt, and behold, Charlotte!
+while the remaining letters gave me Oliver.
+
+Ah! where had my wits been? Yet without a suspicion that she was
+Charlotte Oliver one might have let the anagram go unsuspected for a
+lifetime. Evidently it concealed nothing from General Austin or Ned
+Ferry; most likely it was only the name she used in passing through the
+lines. At any rate I was convinced she was a good Confederate, and my
+heart rose.
+
+But why, then, this ardent zeal to save the necks of the two traitors
+"whose roof this night--" etc.? Manifestly she was moved by passion, not
+duty; love drove her on; but surely not love for them. "No," I guessed
+in a reverent whisper, "but love for Ned Ferry." It must have been
+through grace of some of her nobility and his, caught in my heart even
+before I was quite sure of it in theirs, that I sat and framed the
+following theory: Ned Ferry, loving Charlotte Oliver, yet coerced by his
+sense of a soldier's duty, had put passion's dictates wholly aside and
+had set about to bring these murderers to justice; doing this though he
+knew that she could never with honor or happiness to either of them
+become the wife of a man who had made her a widow, while she, aware of
+his love, a love so true that he would not breathe it to her while this
+hideous marriage held her, had ridden perilously in the dead of night to
+circumvent his plans if, with honor to both of them, it could be done.
+
+The half-hour dragged round to four. My horse roused up but kept as
+quiet as a clever dog. I heard a light sound in the hall; first a step
+and then a slide, then a step again and then a slide; Lucius Oliver was
+coming toward my door. The cords gathered in my throat and my finger
+stole to the trigger; Heaven only knew what noiseless feet might be
+following behind that loathsome shuffle. It reached the door and was
+still. And now the door opened, softly, slowly, and the paralytic stood
+looking in. The moonlight had swung almost out of the room, but a band
+of it fell glittering upon the revolver lying in my lap with my fingers
+on it, each exactly in place. Also it lighted my other hand, on the
+window-sill, with the bridle in it. Old Lucius was alone. In the gloom I
+could not see his venom gathering, but I could almost smell it.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+THE FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE
+
+"Good-morning," I murmured.
+
+"Good-morning," he responded, tardily and grimly. "Well, you _air_ in a
+hurry."
+
+"Not at all, sir. I'm sorry to seem so; it's not the tip-top of
+courtesy,--"
+
+"No, it ain't too stinkin' polite."
+
+"True; but neither are the enemy, and they're early risers, you know."
+
+"Well, good Lord! don't hang back for my sake!"
+
+I put on an offended esteem. "My dear sir, you've no call to take
+offence at me. I'm waiting because my business is too--well, if I must
+explain, it's--it's too important to be risked except by good safe
+daylight; that's all."
+
+[Illustration: "Well, you _air_ in a hurry!"]
+
+Oh, he wasn't taking offence. His reptile temper crawled into hiding,
+and when I said day was breaking, he said he would show me my way.
+
+"Why, I keep the plain road, don't I?"
+
+No, he would not; only wagons went that way, to cross the creek by a
+small bridge. I could cut off nearly two miles by taking the bridle-path
+that turned sharply down into the thick woods of the creek-bottom about
+a quarter of a mile from the house and crossed the stream at a sandy
+ford. "Ride round," he said, "and I'll show you from the front of
+the house."
+
+Thence he pointed out a distant sycamore looming high against the soft
+dawn. There was the fence-corner at which the bridle-path left the road.
+He icily declined pay for my lodging. "We never charge a Confederate
+soldier for anything; that's not our way."
+
+Day came swiftly. By the time I could trot down to the sycamore it was
+perfectly light even in the shade of an old cotton-gin house close
+inside the corner of the small field around which I was to turn. The
+vast arms of its horse-power press, spreading rigidly downward, offered
+the only weird aspect that lingered in the lovely morning. I have a
+later and shuddering memory of it, but now the dewy air was full of
+sweet odors, the squirrel barked from the woods, the woodpecker tapped,
+and the lark, the cardinal and the mocking-bird were singing all around.
+The lint-box of the old cotton-press was covered with wet
+morning-glories. I took the bridle-path between the woods and the field
+and very soon was down in the dense forest beyond them. But the moment
+I was hid from house and clearing I turned my horse square to the left,
+stooped to his neck, and made straight through the pathless tangle.
+
+Silence was silver this time, speed was golden. But every step met its
+obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers,
+brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held
+dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath,
+footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait
+were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road by that way as
+soon as they found I was flanking them. And so I strove on at the best
+speed I could make, and burst into the road with a crackle and crash
+that might have been heard a hundred yards away. One glance up the
+embowered alley, one glance down it, and I whirled to the right, drove
+in the spur, and flew for the bridge. A wild minute so--a turn in the
+road--no one in sight! Two minutes--another turn--no one yet!
+Three--three--another turn--no one in front, no one behind--
+
+The thunder of our own hoofs
+  Was all the sound we heard.
+
+A fourth turn and no one yet! A fifth--more abrupt than the others--and
+there--here--yonder now behind--was the path I had feared, but no one
+was in it, and the next instant the bridge flashed into view. With a
+great clatter I burst upon it, reached the middle, glanced back, and
+dropped complacently into a trot. Tame ending if--but as I looked
+forward again, what did I see? A mounted man. At the other end of the
+bridge, in the shade of overhanging trees, he moved into view, and well
+I knew the neat fit of that butternut homespun. He flourished a revolver
+above his head and in a drunken voice bade me halt.
+
+I halted; not making a point of valor or discretion, but because he was
+Charlotte Oliver's husband. I read his purpose and listened behind me as
+we parleyed. "Don't halt me, sir, I'm a courier and in a hurry."
+
+He hiccoughed. "Let's--s'--see y' orders."
+
+I took my weapon into my bridle-hand by the barrel and began to draw
+from my bosom the empty envelope addressed Coralie Rothvelt. At the same
+time I let my horse move forward again, while I still listened backward
+with my brain as busy as a mill. Was there here no hidden succor? Was
+that no part of Ned Ferry's plan--if the plan was his? Were those
+villains waiting yet, up at the ford? I could hear nothing at my back
+but the singing of innumerable birds.
+
+"Halt!" the drunkard growled again, and again I halted, wearing a look
+of timid awe, but as full of guile as a weasel. I reined in abruptly so
+as to make the reach between us the fullest length of my outstretched
+arm with the paper in two fingers as I leaned over the saddle-bow. He
+bent and reached unsteadily, and took the envelope; but hardly could his
+eye light upon the superscription before it met the muzzle of my weapon.
+
+"Don't move." My tone was affectionate. "Don't holla, or I'll give you
+to the crows. Back. Back off this bridge--quick! or I'll--" I pushed
+the pistol nearer; the danger was no less to him because I was
+thoroughly frightened. He backed; but he glared a devilish elation, for
+behind me beat the hoofs of both his horsemen. I had to change
+my tactics.
+
+"Halt! Turn as I turn, and keep your eye on _this."_
+
+Glad was I then to be on a true cavalryman's horse that answered the
+closing of my left leg and moved steadily around till I could see down
+the bridge. Oliver, after a step or two, stopped. "Turn!" I yelled, and
+swelled. "One, two,--"
+
+He turned. There was not a second to spare. The two long-haired fellows
+came nip and tuck. I see yet their long deer-hunters' rifles. But I
+remembered my pledge to this man's wife, and proudly found I had the
+nerve to hold the trigger still unpressed when at the apron of the
+bridge the rascals caught their first full sight of us as we sat
+humpshouldered, eye to eye, like one gray tomcat and one yellow one.
+They dragged their horses back upon their haunches. One leaped to the
+ground, the other aimed from the saddle; but the first shot that woke
+the echoes was neither theirs nor mine, but Sergeant Jim Langley's,
+though that, of course, I did not know. It came from a tree on our side
+of the water, some forty yards downstream. The man in the saddle fired
+wild, and as his horse wheeled and ran, the rider slowly toppled over
+backward out of saddle and stirrups and went slamming to the ground.
+
+His companion had no time to fire. Instantly after these two shots came
+a third, and some willows upstream filled with its white smoke. The
+second long rifle fell upon the bridge and its owner sank to his knees
+heaving out long cries of agony that swelled in a tremor of echoes up
+and down the stream. Another voice, stalwart, elated, cut through it
+like a sword. "Don't shoot, Smith, we're coming; save that hound for
+the halter!"
+
+The groans of the wounded man closed in behind it, a flood of agony, and
+my own outcry increased the din as I called "Come quick, come quick! the
+wounded fellow's remounting!"
+
+The wretch had lifted himself to his feet by a stirrup. Then, giving
+out, he had sunk prone, and now, still torturing the air with his horrid
+cries, was crawling for his rifle. Oliver saw I had a new inspiration.
+All the drunkenness left his eyes and they became the eyes of a snake,
+but too quickly for him to guess my purpose I turned my weapon from his
+face and fired. His revolver flew from his bleeding hand, a stream of
+curses started from his lips, and as I thrust my pistol into his face
+again and snatched his bridle he screamed to the crawling woodman
+"Shoot! shoot! Kill one or the other of us! Oh! shoot! shoot!"
+
+The rifle cracked, but its ball sang over us; a shot answered it behind
+me; the howling man's voice died in a gurgle, and Sergeant Jim ran by
+me, leaped upon the horse that had stayed beside his fallen rider, and
+was off hot-footed after the other. "Turn your prisoner over to Kendall,
+Smith," he cried, "and put out like hell for Clifton!"
+
+I gave no assent, and I believe Oliver guessed my purpose to save him,
+though his eyes were as venomous as ever. I flirted the rein off his
+horse's neck and said, savagely "Come! quick! trot! gallop!" The
+sergeant's young companion of the morning before dashed out of the
+bushes on his horse with Jim's horse in lead. "I've got him safe,
+Kendall," I cried, and my captive and I sped by him at a gallop on our
+way to Ned Ferry's command.
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+WE SPEED A PARTING GUEST
+
+Rising to higher ground, we turned into the Natchez, and Port Gibson
+road where a farm-house and country "store" constituted Clifton. Still
+at a gallop we left these behind and entered a broad lane between fields
+of tasselling corn, where we saw a gallant sight. In the early sunlight
+and in the pink dust of their own feet, down the red clay road at an
+easy trot in column by fours, the blue-gray of their dress flashing with
+the glint of the carbines at their backs, came Ferry's scouts with Ned
+Ferry at their head. There was his beautiful brown horse under him, too.
+My captive and I dropped to a walk, the column did the same, and Ferry
+trotted forward, beckoning us to halt. His face showed triumph and
+commendation, but no joy. Oliver answered his scrutiny with a blaze
+of defiance.
+
+"Good-morning, Smith, who is your prisoner?"
+
+"His name is Oliver."
+
+Ferry looked behind to the halted column. "Lieutenant Quinn, send two
+men to guard this one. Smith, where's Sergeant Langley; where's Kendall?
+Kendall?"
+
+While I told of the scrimmage, the guard relieved me of Oliver, and as I
+finished, three men galloped up and reined in. "All right," said
+one, saluting.
+
+"South?" asked our leader.
+
+"Before day," replied the new-comer, glowing with elation, and I grasped
+the fact that the enemy had taken our bait and I had not betrayed my
+country. The three men went to the column, and Ferry, looking up from
+the despatch which I had delivered to him, said--
+
+"Of course no one has seen this despatch, eh?--Oh!"--a smile--"yes?
+who?"
+
+"Two Federal officers."
+
+"Two--what?" His smile broadened. "You _know_ that?"
+
+"I saw them, Lieutenant, looking in at the door to see the despatch put
+back under my pillow. Yes, sir, by the same hand that had shown it
+to them."
+
+"Whose hand was it; that fellow's, yonder?" Oliver was several paces
+away.
+
+"No, Lieutenant, I don't believe he had anything to do with it; and I've
+no absolute proof, either, that he was at the bridge to rob or kill me.
+I threatened his life first, sir. At any rate that hand under my pillow
+was neither his nor his father's."
+
+"But they were present, eh?"
+
+"They were neither of them present, Lieutenant; that hand was Miss
+Coralie Rothvelt's."
+
+"Oh, no!" he murmured, "that cannot be!" "I saw her face, Lieutenant,
+nearer to mine than yours is now. But she did it to help us--oh, but I
+know that, sir! She came under my window and told me she had done it!
+She told me to tell you she hadn't thwarted your plan, but only improved
+on it, and I believe--Lieutenant, if you will hear me patiently through
+a confession which--" I choked with emotion.
+
+He lighted up with happy relief. "No, you need not make it. And you need
+not turn so pale." Whereat I turned red. "She saw the despatch was a
+trap for the Yankees, and used it so, you think? Ah, yes, Smith, I see
+it all, now; she pumped you dry."
+
+I could not speak, I shook my head, and for evidence in rebuttal I
+showed in my eyes two fountains of standing tears.
+
+"How, then, did she know?"
+
+"Lieutenant, she guessed! She must have just put two and two together
+and guessed! Or else, Lieutenant,--"
+
+"She must have pumped others before she pumped you, eh?" There was
+confession in his good humor. "But tell me; did she not see also this
+other trap, for this man and his father, and try to save them out of
+it?--oh, if you don't want--never mind." He laid a leg over the front of
+his saddle and sat thinking. So I see him to-day: his chestnut locks,
+his goodly limbs and shoulders, the graceful boots, cut-away jacket,
+faded sash, straight sword, and that look of care on his features which
+intensified the charm of their spiritual cleanness; behind him his band
+of picked heroes, and for background the June sky. Whenever I smell
+dewy corn-fields smitten with the sun that picture comes back to me.
+
+"No," he said again, "you need not tell me." By a placid light in his
+face I saw he understood. He drew his watch, put it back, thought on,
+and smiled at my uniform. "It has not the blue of the others," he said,
+"but indeed they are not all alike, and it will match the most of
+them--after a rain or two--and some dust. You have been trading horses?"
+
+I explained. While doing so I saw one of the guard reaching the
+prisoner's bridle to the other. Hah! Oliver had slapped the bridle free.
+In went his spurs! By a great buffet on the horse's neck he wheeled him,
+and with the rein dangling under the bits went over the fence like a
+deer. "Bang! bang! bang!"
+
+It was idle; a magic seems to shield a captive's leap for life. Away
+across the corn he went to the edge of a tangled wood, over the fence
+there again, and into the brush. "Halt! bang!" and "Halt! bang!" it was,
+at every bound, but now the pursuers came back empty-handed, some
+contemptuously silent, some laughing. Ferry glanced again at the time,
+and I was having within me a quarrel with him for his indifference at
+the prisoner's escape, when with cold severity he asked--
+
+"Why did you not fire?"
+
+I flushed with indignation, and my eye retorted to his that I had only
+followed his example. His answer was a smile. "You, also, have been
+guessing, eh?" he said, and when I glowed with gratitude he added,
+
+"Never mind, we must have a long talk. At present there is a verbal
+message for me; what is it?"
+
+"Verbal message? No, Lieutenant, she didn't--oh!--from the General! Yes!
+the General says--'Rodney.'"
+
+He turned and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, "Left
+into line wheel--march!" chanted our second in command.
+"Backwards--march!" and then "Right dress!" and the line, that had been
+a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning
+sun in their faces. Then Ferry called "Fours from the right, to march to
+the left--march!" and he and Quinn passed up the middle of the road
+along the front of the line, with yours truly close at their heels,
+while behind us the command broke into column again by fours from the
+right and set the pink dust afloat as they followed back northward over
+their own tracks with Sergeant Jim beside the first four as squadron
+right guide. I had got where I was by some mistake which I did not know
+how to correct,--I was no drill-master's pride,--and there was much
+suppressed amusement at my expense along the front as we rode down it.
+At every few steps until the whole line was a column Ned Ferry dropped
+some word of cheer, and each time there would come back an equally quiet
+and hearty reply. Near the middle he said "Brisk work ahead of us
+to-day, boys," and I heard the reiteration of his words run among the
+ranks. I also heard one man bid another warm some milk for the baby.
+Trotting by a grove where the company had passed the night, we presently
+took the walk to break by twos, and as we resumed the trot and turned
+westward into a by-road, Lieutenant Quinn dropped back to the column and
+sent me forward to the side of Ned Ferry. I went with cold shivers.
+
+[Illustration: With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the
+fence like a deer.]
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+FERRY TALKS OF CHARLOTTE
+
+"You have no carbine," said my commander. "And you have but one
+revolver; here is another."
+
+I knew it at a glance. "It's Oliver's," I said.
+
+"We'll call it yours now," he replied. "Kendall picked it up, but he has
+no need of it."
+
+I remarked irrelevantly that I had not noticed when Sergeant Jim and
+Kendall rejoined us, but Ferry stuck to the subject of the captured
+weapon. "Take it," he insisted; "if you are not fully armed you will
+find yourself holding horses every time we dismount to fight. And now,
+Smith, I shall not report to the General this matter of the Olivers; you
+shall tell him the whole of it, yourself; you are my scout, but you are
+his courier."
+
+"Lieutenant, I--I wish I knew the whole of it."
+
+"Tell him all you know."
+
+"Even things _she_ doesn't want told?"
+
+"Ah!"--he gave a Creole shrug--"that you must decide, on the honor of a
+good soldier. She has taken you into her confidence?"
+
+"Only into her service," I said, but he raised his brows. "That is
+more; certainly you are honored. What is it you would rather not tell
+the General and yet you must; do I know that already?"
+
+"Yes, for one thing, I've got to tell him that old Lucius Oliver can't
+be hung too high or too soon. For months he has been--"
+
+Ferry showed pain. "I know; save that for the General. And what else?"
+
+"Why, the other one--the son. Lieutenant, is she that monster's wife?"
+
+Ferry stroked his horse's neck and said very softly, "She is his wife."
+I had to wait long for him to say more, but at length, with the same
+measured mildness, he spoke on. This amazing Charlotte, bereft of
+father, brother and mother, ward of a light-headed married sister, and
+in these distracted times lacking any friend with the courage, wisdom
+and kind activity to probe the pretensions of her suitor, had been
+literally snared into marriage by this human spider, this Oliver, a man
+of just the measure to simulate with cunning and patient labor the
+character, bearing and antecedents of a true and exceptional gentleman
+for the sake of devouring a glorious woman.
+
+"But, eh!" I exclaimed, "how could ever such as she mistake him for--"
+
+"Ah, he is, I doubt not, but the burnt-out ruin of what he was half a
+year ago. You perceive, he has not succeeded; he has not devoured her;
+actually she has turned his fangs upon himself and has defeated his
+designs toward her as if by magic. And yet the only magic has been her
+vigilance, her courage, her sagacity. Smith,"--again he stroked the
+mane of his charger--"if I tell you--"
+
+I gave him no pledge but a look.
+
+"Since the hour of her marriage she has never gone into her chamber
+without locking the door; she has never come out of it unarmed."
+
+I remarked that had I been in her place I should either have sunk into
+the mire, so to speak, or thrown myself, literally, into the river.
+
+"Yes," he responded, "but not she! Her life is still hers; she will
+neither give it away nor throw it away. She wants it, and she wants
+it whole."
+
+"Did she say that to you?"
+
+He looked at me in wide surprise. "Ah! could you think she would speak
+with me on that subject? No, I have learned what I know from a man we
+shall meet to-day; the brother of Major Harper; and he, he has it
+from--" my companion smiled--"somebody you have known a pretty long
+time, I think, eh?"
+
+"I see; I see; you mean my mother!"
+
+He let me ponder the fact a long time. "Lieutenant," I asked at length,
+"did you know your plot against the two Olivers would cross her wishes?"
+
+"Ah!" was his quick response, "it crossed mine, like-wise. But, you
+know, this life we have to live, it is never for two people only."
+
+"No," I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, "no two persons, and
+above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or
+even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third
+person,--"
+
+"Hoh!" interrupted Ferry, in the manner of one to whom the fact was
+somehow of the most immediate and lively practical interest, "and to
+consider a thousand is better." Then, after a pause, "Yes," he said, "I
+know she could not like that move, but you remember our talk of
+yesterday, where we first met?"
+
+Indeed I did. Between young men, to whom the principles of living were
+still unproved weapons, there was, to my taste, just one sort of talk
+better than table-talk, and that was saddle-talk; I remembered vividly.
+
+"You mean when we were saying that on whatever road a man's journey
+lies, if he will, first of all, stick to that road, and then every time
+it divides take the--I see! you came to where the road divided!"
+
+"Yes, and of course I had to take the upper fork. I am glad you said
+that yesterday morning; it came as sometimes the artillery, eh?--just at
+the right moment."
+
+"I didn't say it, Lieutenant; you said it."
+
+"No, I think you said it;--sounds like you."
+
+"It was you who said it! and anyhow, it was you who had the strength to
+do it!"
+
+He laughed. "Oh!--a little strength, a little
+vanity,--pride--self-love--we have to use them all--as a good politician
+uses men."
+
+I looked him squarely in the eyes and began to burn. At every new
+unfolding of his confidence I had let my own vanity, pride, self-love be
+more and more flattered, and here at length was getting ready to esteem
+him less for showing such lack of reserve as to use _me_ as an
+escape-valve for his pent-up thoughts, when all at once I fancied I saw
+what he was trying to do. I believed he had guessed my temptations of
+the night and was making use of himself to warn me how to fight them. "I
+understand," said I, humbly.
+
+But this only pleasantly mystified him. He glanced all over me with a
+playful eye and said, "You must have a carbine the first time our
+ordnance-wagon finds us. Drop back, now, into the ranks."
+
+I did so; but I felt sure I should ride beside him again as soon as he
+could make an opportunity; for it was plain that by a subtle unconfessed
+accord he and _she_ had chosen me to be a true friend between them.
+
+About noon, while taking a brief rest to give our horses a bite, we were
+joined by an ambulance carrying Major Harper's brother and some freight
+which certainly was not hospital stores. When we remounted, this vehicle
+moved on with us, in the middle of the column, and I was called to ride
+beside it and tell all about the arrival of Miss Harper and her nieces
+at Hazlehurst, and their journey from Brookhaven to camp. Ned Ferry rode
+on the side opposite me and I noticed that all the fellows nearest the
+ambulance were choice men; Sergeant Jim was not there, but Kendall was
+one, and a young chap on a large white-footed pacer was another. Having
+finished my task I had gathered my horse to fall back to my place at the
+rear, when my distinguished auditor said, "I'm acquainted with your
+mother, you know."
+
+He was not so handsome as his brother, though younger. His affability
+came by gleams. I asked how that good fortune had come to my mother, and
+he replied that there was hardly time now for another story; we might
+be interrupted--by the Yankees. "Ask the young lady you met yesterday
+evening," he added, with a knowing gleam, and smiled me away; and when
+by and by the enemy did interrupt, I had forgiven him. Whoever failed to
+answer my questions, in those days, incurred my forgiveness.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+A MILLION AND A HALF
+
+About mid-afternoon I awoke from deep sleep on a bed of sand in the
+roasting shade of a cottonwood jungle. A corporal was shaking me and
+whispering "Make no noise; mount and fall in."
+
+Round about in the stifling thicket a score of men were doing so.
+Lieutenant Quinn stood by, and at his side Sergeant Jim seemed to have
+just come among us. The place was pathless; only in two directions could
+one see farther than a few yards. Through one narrow opening came an
+intolerable glare of sunlight from a broad sheet of gliding water, while
+by another break in the motionless foliage could be seen in milder
+light, filling nearly the whole northern view, the tawny flood of the
+Mississippi. A stretch of the farther shore was open fields lying very
+low and hidden by a levee.
+
+As we noiselessly fell into line, counting off in a whisper and rubbing
+from ourselves and our tortured horses the flies we were forbidden to
+slap, I noticed rising from close under that farther levee and some two
+miles upstream, a small cloud of dust coming rapidly down the hidden
+levee road. It seemed to be raised entirely by one or two vehicles.
+Behind us our own main shore was wholly concealed by this mass of
+cottonwoods on the sands between it and the stream, on a spit of which
+we stood ambushed. On the water, a hundred and fifty yards or so from
+the jungle, pointed obliquely across the vast current, was a large skiff
+with six men in it. Four were rowing with all their power, a fifth sat
+in the bow and the other in the stern. Quinn, in the saddle, watched
+through his glass the cottonwoods from which the skiff had emerged at
+the bottom of a sheltered bay. Now he shifted his gaze to the little
+whirl of dust across the river, and now he turned to smile at Jim, but
+his eye lighted on me instead. I risked a knowing look and motioned with
+my lips, "Just in time!"
+
+"No," he murmured, "they're late; we've been waiting for them."
+
+The sergeant's low order broke the platoon into column by file, Quinn
+rode toward its head with his blade drawn, and as he passed me he handed
+me his glass. "Here, you with no carbine, stay and watch that boat till
+I send for you. If there's firing, look sharp to see if any one there is
+hit, and who, and how hard. Watch the boat, nothing else."
+
+He moved straight landward through the cottonwoods, followed by the men
+in single file, but halted them while the rear was still discernible in
+the green tangle. Presently they unslung carbines, and I distinctly
+heard galloping. It was not far beyond the cottonwoods. The Yankees were
+after us. Suddenly it ceased. Over yonder, shoreward in the thicket,
+came a sharp command and then a second, and then, right on the front of
+the jungle, at the water's edge, the shots began to puff and crack, and
+the yellow river out here around the boat to spit!--spit!--in wicked
+white splashes. Every second their number grew. Behind me Quinn and his
+men stole away. But orders are orders and I had no choice but to watch
+the boat. The man in the stern had his back to me, and no face among the
+other five did I know. They were fast getting away, but the splashes
+came thick and close and presently one ball found its mark. The man at
+the stern hurriedly changed places with an oarsman; and as the relieved
+rower took his new seat he turned slowly upon his face as if in mortal
+pain, and I saw that the fresh hand at the oar was the brother of Major
+Harper. Just as I made the discovery "Boom!" said my small dust-cloud
+across the river, and "hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry--" like
+a train on a trestle-work--"boom!"--a shell left its gray track in the
+still air over the skiff and burst in the tops of the cottonwoods. The
+green thicket grew pale with the bomb's white smoke, yet "crack! crack!"
+and "spit! spit!" persisted the blue-coats' rifles. "Boom!" said again
+the field-piece on yonder side the water. Its shell came rattling
+through the air to burst on this side, out of the flashing and cracking
+of rifles and the sulphurous bomb smoke arose cries of men getting
+mangled, and I whimpered and gnawed my lips for joy, and I watched the
+boat, but no second shot came aboard, and--"Boom!--hurry-hurry-hurry-
+hurry"--ah! the frightful skill of it! A third shell tore the
+cottonwoods, its smoke slowly broadened out, a Federal bugle beyond
+the thicket sounded the Rally, and the cracking of carbines ceased.
+
+Now Major Harper's brother passes a word to the man at the boat's bow,
+whereupon this man springs up and a Confederate officer's braids flash
+on his sleeve as he waves to the western shore to cease firing. I still
+watch the boat, but I listen behind me. I hear voices of command, the
+Federal sergeants hurrying the troop out of the jungle and back to their
+horses. Then there comes a single voice, the commander's evidently; but
+before it can cease it is swallowed up in a low thunder of hoofs and
+then in a burst of cries and cheers which themselves the next moment are
+drowned in a rattle of carbine and pistol shots--Ferry is down on them
+out of hiding. Thick and silent above the din rises the dust of the
+turmoil, and out of all the hubbub under it I can single out the voice
+of the Federal captain yelling curses and orders at his panic-stricken
+men. And now the melee rolls southward, the crackle of shots grows less
+and then more again, and then all at once comes the crash of Quinn's
+platoon out of ambush, their cheer, their charge, the crackle of pistols
+again, and then another cheer and charge--what is that! Ferry re-formed
+and down on them afresh? No, it was the hard-used but gallant foe
+cutting their way out and getting off after all.
+
+The skiff was touching the farther shore and the three oarsmen lifting
+their stricken comrade out and bearing him to the top of the levee, when
+Kendall came to recall me. On our way back he told me of the fight,
+beginning with the results: none of our own men killed outright, but
+four badly wounded and already started eastward in the ambulance left us
+by the Major's brother; some others more slightly hurt. My questions
+were headlong and his answers quiet; he was a slow-spoken daredevil; I
+wish he came more than he does into this story.
+
+Not slow-spoken did we find the command when we reached the road where
+they were falling into line. After a brief but vain pursuit, here were
+almost the haste and tumult of the onset; the sweat of it still reeked
+on everyone; the ground was strewn with its wreckage and its brute and
+human dead, and the pools of their blood were still warm. Squarely
+across the middle of the road, begrimed with dust, and with a dead
+Federal under him and another on top, lay the big white-footed pacer. At
+one side the enemy's fallen wounded were being laid in the shade to be
+left behind. In our ranks, here was a man with an arm in a bloody
+handkerchief, there one with his head so bound, and yonder a young
+fellow jesting wildly while he let his garments be cut and a flesh-wound
+in his side be rudely stanched. Here there was laughter at one who had
+been saved by his belt-buckle, and here at one who had dropped like dead
+from his horse, but had caught another horse and charged on. But these
+details imply a delay where in fact there was none; the moment Ferry
+spied me he asked "Did he get across?" and while I answered he motioned
+me into the line. Then he changed it into a column, commanded silence,
+and led us across country eastward. For those few wounded who would not
+give up their places in the ranks it was a weary ten miles that brought
+us swiftly back to a point within five miles of that Clifton which we
+had left in the morning. And yet a lovely ten miles it was, withal. You
+would hardly have known this tousled crowd for the same dandy crew that
+had smiled so flippantly upon me at sunrise, though they smiled as
+flippantly now with faces powder-blackened, hair and eyelashes matted
+and gummed with sweat and dust, and shoulders and thighs caked with
+grime. Yet to Ned Ferry as well as to me--I saw it in his eye every time
+he looked at them--these grimy fellows did more to beautify those ten
+miles than did June woods beflowered and perfumed with magnolia, bay and
+muscadine, or than slant sunlight in glade or grove.
+
+In a stretch of timber where we broke ranks for a short rest, unbitting
+but not unsaddling, a lot of fellows pressed me to tell them about the
+boat on the river. "You heard what was in it, didn't you?" asked one
+nearly as young as I.
+
+"Besides the men? No. Same that was in the ambulance, I suppose; what
+was it?"
+
+"Don't you know? Oh, I remember, you were asleep when Quinn told us.
+Well, sir,"--he tried to speak calmly but he had to speak somehow or
+explode--"it was soldiers' pay--for Dick Taylor's army, over in the
+Trans-Mississippi; a million and a half dollars!" He was as proud to
+tell the news as he would have been to own the money.
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+A QUIET RIDE
+
+Where Ferry's scouts camped that night I do not know, for we had gone
+only two or three miles beyond our first momentary halting-place when
+their leader left them to Quinn and sprang away southward over fence,
+hedge, road, ditch--whatever lay across his bee-line, and by his order I
+followed at his heels.
+
+In a secluded north-and-south road he looked back and beckoned me to his
+side: "You saw Major Harper's brother land safe and sound, you say? He
+told you this morning he is acquainted with your mother, eh; but
+not how?"
+
+"No, except that it was through--"
+
+"Yes, I know. But you don't know even how your mother is acquainted with
+her."
+
+"No, though of course if she lived in the city, common sympathies might
+easily bring them together."
+
+"She did not live in the city; she lived across the river from the city.
+'Tis but a year ago her father died. He was an owner of steamboats. She
+made many river trips with him, and I suppose that explains how she
+knows the country about Baton Rouge, Natchez, Grand Gulf, Rodney, better
+than she knows the city. But the boats are gone now; some turned into
+gunboats, one burnt when the city fell, another confiscated. I think
+they didn't manage her bringing-up very well."
+
+"Maybe not," I replied, being nothing if not disputatious, "and she does
+strike me as one thrown upon her own intuitions for everything; but if
+she's the lady she is entirely by her own personal quality, Lieutenant,
+she's a wonder!"
+
+"Ah, but she is a wonder. In a state of society more finished--"
+
+"She would be incredible," I said for him, and he accepted the clause by
+a gesture, and after a meditative pause went on with her history. The
+subject of our conversation had first met Oliver, it seemed, when by
+reason of some daring performance in the military field--near Milliken's
+Bend, in the previous autumn--he was the hero of the moment. Even so it
+was strange enough that he should capture her; one would as soon look to
+see Vicksburg fall; but the world was upside down, everything was
+happening as if in a tornado, and he cast his net of lies; lies of his
+own, and lies of two or three match-making friends who chose to believe,
+at no cost to themselves, that war, with one puff of its breath, had
+cleansed him of his vices and that marriage would complete the happy
+change. This was in Natchez, Ferry went on to say. Most fortunately for
+the bride one of the bridegroom's wedding gifts was a certain young
+slave girl; before the wedding was an hour past--before the
+orange-blossoms were out of the bride's hair--this slave maid had told
+her what he was, "And you know what that is."
+
+We rode in silence while I tried to think what it must be to a woman of
+her warmth--of her impulsive energies--to be, week in, week out, month
+after month, besieged by that man's law-protected blandishments and
+stratagems. "I wish you would use me in her service every time there is
+a chance," I said.
+
+"The chances are few," he answered; "even to General Austin she laughs
+and says we must let the story work itself out; that she is the fool in
+it, but there is a chance for the fool to win if not too much burdened
+with help."
+
+"How did you make her acquaintance?" I ventured to ask.
+
+"You remember the last time the brigade was in this piece of country?"
+he rejoined.
+
+I did; it had been only some five weeks earlier; Grant had driven us
+through Port Gibson, General Bowen had retired across the north fork of
+Bayou Pierre, and we had been cut off and forced to come down here.
+
+"Yes; well, she came to us that night, round the enemy's right, with a
+letter from Major Harper's brother--he was then in New Orleans--and with
+information of her own that saved the brigade. I had just got my
+company. I took it off next morning on my first scout, whilst the
+brigade went to Raymond. She was my guide all that day; six times she
+was my guide before the end of May. Yet the most I have learned about
+her has come to me in the last few days."
+
+"She has a fearful game to play."
+
+"Oh!--yes, that is what she would call it; but me, I say--though not as
+Gholson would mean it, you know,--she has a soul to save. If it is a
+game, it is a very delicate one; let her play it as nearly alone as she
+can." "Yes," said I, "a man's hand in it would be only his foot in it;"
+and Ferry was pleased. He scanned me all over in the same bright way he
+had done it in the morning, and remarked "This time I see they have
+given you a carbine."
+
+We went down into some low lands, crossed a creek or two, and in one of
+them gave our horses and ourselves a good scrubbing. On a dim path in
+thick woods we paused at a worm fence lying squarely across our way. It
+was staked and ridered and its zig-zags were crowded with brambles and
+wild-plum. A hundred yards to our left, still overhung by the woods, it
+turned south. Beyond it in our front lay a series of open fields, in
+which, except this one just at hand, the crops were standing high. The
+nearer half of this one, a breadth of maybe a hundred yards, though
+planted in corn, was now given up to grass, and live-stock, getting into
+it at some unseen point, had eaten and trampled everywhere. The farther
+half was thinly covered with a poor stand of cotton, and between the
+corn and the cotton a small, trench-like watercourse crossed our line of
+view at right angles and vanished in the woods at the field's eastern
+edge. The farther border of this run was densely masked by a growth of
+brake-cane entirely lacking on the side next us. Between the cotton and
+the next field beyond, a double line of rail fence indicated the Fayette
+and Union Church road. Suddenly Ferry looked through his field-glasses,
+and my glance followed the direction in which they were pointed. Dust
+again; one can get tired of dust! Some two miles off, a little southward
+of the setting sun, a golden haze of it floated across a low
+background of trees.
+
+"'Tis the enemy, I think," he said, "but only scouts, I suppose."
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+A SALUTE ACROSS THE DEAD-LINE
+
+I was not seeking enemies just then and was not pleased. "Didn't the
+Yankees fall back this morning before day and move southward?" I asked.
+
+"For what would they do that?" inquired my leader, still using the
+glass, but before I could reply he gave a soft hiss, dropped the glass,
+and turned his unaided eye upon a point close beyond our field, in the
+road. Now again he lifted the glass, and I saw over there two small,
+black, moving objects. They passed behind some fence-row foliage,
+reappeared nearer, and suddenly bobbed smartly up to the roadside
+fence--the dusty hats of two Federal horsemen. The wearers sat looking
+over into the field between them and us. I asked Ferry if he wasn't
+afraid they would see us.
+
+"That is what we want," was his reply; "only, they must not know we want
+it. Keep very still; don't move." At that word they espied us and
+galloped back.
+
+We turned to our left and hurried along our own fence-line, first
+eastward, then south, and reined up behind some live brush at the edge
+of the public road. "Soon know how many they are, now," he said, smiling
+back at me.
+
+"Are you going to count them?" It seemed so much easier to let them
+count us.
+
+"Yes," he replied. "Wish we had our boys here," he added, and did not
+need to tell me how he would have posted them; the place was so
+favorable for an ambush that those Yankees had no doubt been looking for
+us before they saw us. Half of us would be in the locks of these
+highroad fences to lure them on, and half in the little gully masked
+with canes to take them in the flank. "We would count many times our own
+number before they should pass," he added.
+
+"Can't we make them think our men are here?" I suggested. "Couldn't I go
+back to where this fence crosses the gully and let them see me opening a
+gap in it?"
+
+He was amused. "Go if you want; but be quick; here they come already, a
+small bunch of them."
+
+By the time I reached the spot they were in plain view, six men and an
+officer. I leaped to the ground, tugged at a rail and threw one end off.
+I thought I had never handled rails so heavy and slippery in my life. As
+I got a second one down I looked across to the road. The officer was
+distributing his men. Barely a mile behind was the dust of their column.
+The third rail stuck and the sweat began to pour down into my eyes and
+collar. Two of the blue-coats easily let down a panel of fence on the
+far side of the road and pushed into the tall corn; three others came
+galloping across the thin cotton to reconnoitre the fringe of canes; the
+officer and the remaining man cantered on up the road toward the spot
+where I could see Ferry observing everything from the saddle behind his
+mask of leaves. Of a sudden the Federal commander descried me wildly at
+work. He paused and pointed me out to the man at his back, but had no
+glass and seemed puzzled. At his word the man pricked up to the fence
+to come over it, but his horse was of another mind, and the impatient
+officer, crowding him away, cleared the fence himself and came across
+the furrows at a nimble trot. Still I tussled with the rails, and grew
+peevish. The enemy was counted, closely enough! one troop. Their dust
+showed it, the small advance guard proved it.
+
+"Hello!" called the Federal officer, "who are you, over there?"
+
+He might have known by looking a trifle more narrowly; I saw plainly,
+thrillingly, who he was; but his attention was diverted by some signal
+from the men he had sent to the fringe of cane; they had found the
+tracks of horses leading through the canes into the corn. But now he
+hailed me again. "Here, you! what are you doing at that fence? Who
+are you?"
+
+He was within easy range and was still trotting nearer. I snatched up my
+carbine, aimed, and then recovered, looking sharply to my left as if
+restrained by the command of some one behind the canes. The Federal's
+cool daring filled me with admiration. Had the foes he was looking for
+been actually in hiding here they could have picked him out of his
+saddle like a bird off a bush. His only chance was that they would not
+let themselves be teased into firing prematurely on any one man or six.
+Ferry beckoned me. I mounted and trotted down the woods side of the
+fence, at the same time the Federal's six men approached from three
+directions, and down the road the main column entered upon the scene.
+
+The officer halted with revolver drawn and sent a man back with some
+order to the main body. And then Ferry's beautiful brown horse, as
+though of his own choice, reared straight up where he stood, dropped his
+forelegs upon his breast, rose, over the fence, master and all, as
+unlaboriously as a kite, trotted out from the brush and halted in the
+open field. His rider's outdrawn sword flashed to the setting sun. The
+Federal, pointing here and there was deploying his remaining five men
+toward the spot I had left, but glancing round and seeing Ferry he
+trotted toward him. Thereupon Ferry advanced at a walk, and I--for I had
+followed him--moved at the same gait a few paces behind. "Halt him,"
+said my leader.
+
+"Halt!" I yelled with carbine at a ready, and the Federal halted. In
+fact he had come to a small hollow full of bushes and grapevines and had
+no choice but to halt or go round it.
+
+"Don't swallow him," said Ferry, smilingly, "this isn't your private
+war."
+
+"He's on my private horse!" I retorted.
+
+"Well, you're on his," replied my commander. The giant before us,
+mounted on Cricket, was my prisoner of the previous day.
+
+"Who are you?" he was calling imperiously.
+
+"Captain Jewett ought to know," Ferry called back, and on that the
+questioner recognized us both. He became very stately. "Lieutenant
+Durand, I believe."
+
+"At times," said Lieutenant Durand.
+
+"And at other times--?"
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry--Ferry's scouts."
+
+The Federal expanded with surprise and then with austere pleasure. He
+glanced toward his five men galloping back to him having found no enemy,
+and then at his column, which had just halted. Frowning, he motioned the
+advance guard to the road again and once more hailed Ferry while he
+pointed at me. He straightened and swelled still more as he began his
+question, but as he finished it a smile went all over him. "Is that your
+entire present force?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Then what the devil do you want?" he thundered.
+
+"We have what we wanted," said Ferry, "only now we desire to cross the
+road."
+
+"You're not asking my permission?"
+
+"I am afraid not."
+
+"I admit you are quite able to cross without."
+
+"Thank you," said Ferry; "will you pardon me for passing in front of
+you?"
+
+The Federal's pistol slid into its holster and his sabre flashed out. He
+threw its curved point up in a splendid salute. Ferry saluted with his
+straight blade. Then both swords rang back into their scabbards, and
+Jewett whirled away toward his column. For a moment we lingered, then
+faced to the left, trotted, galloped. Over the fence and into the road
+went he--went I. Down it, as we crossed, the blue column was just moving
+again. Then the woods on the south swallowed us up.
+
+[Illustration: Ferry saluted with his straight blade.]
+
+"If Captain Jewett will only go on to Union Church," said Ferry, "Quinn
+will see that he never gets back."
+
+"But you think he will not go on?"
+
+"Ah, now he is discovered, surely not. I think he will turn back at
+Wiggins."
+
+"Why Wiggins? does he know Coralie Rothvelt?"
+
+"Yes, he does; and if since last night he has maybe found out she is
+Charlotte Oliver,--"
+
+"Oh! Lieutenant Ferry, oh! would such a man as that come hunting down a
+woman, with a troop of cavalry?"
+
+"He is not hunting her; yet, should he find her, I have the fear he
+would do his duty as a soldier, anyhow. No, he _was_ looking, I think,
+for Ferry's scouts."
+
+"But if she should be at Wiggins--"
+
+My leader smiled at my simplicity. "She is not at Wiggins."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+SOME FALL, SOME PLUNGE
+
+At a farm-house well hidden in the woods of a creek we got a brave
+supper for the asking and had our uniforms wonderfully cleaned and
+pressed, and at ten that evening we dismounted before the three brightly
+illumined tents of General Austin, Major Harper and that amiable cipher
+our Adjutant-general. On the front of the last the shadow of a deeply
+absorbed writer showed through the canvas, and Ferry murmured to me "The
+ever toiling." It was Scott Gholson. I had heard the same name for him
+the evening before, from her whose own lovely shadow fell so visibly and
+so often upon the bright curtain of Ned Ferry's thought.
+
+My leader went in while I held our horses. Then he and Gholson came out
+and entered the General's tent; from which Gholson soon emerged again
+and sent an orderly away into the gloom of the sleeping camp, and I
+heard a small body of men mount and set off northward. Presently Ferry
+came out and sent me in, and to my delight I found, on standing before
+the General, that I did not need to tell what Charlotte Oliver wanted
+kept back.
+
+"No, never mind that," he said, "Miss Rothvelt was here and saw me this
+afternoon, herself." Up to the point of my arrival at the bridge I had
+merely to fumble my cap and answer his crisp questions. But there he
+lighted a fresh cigar and said "Now, go on."
+
+Gholson dropped in with something to be signed, and the General waved
+him to wait and hear. For Gholson, despite the sappy fetor of his mental
+temperament, had abilities that made him almost a private secretary to
+the General. Who, nevertheless, knew him thoroughly. When I had
+described Oliver's escape and would have hurried on to later details,
+General Austin raised a hand.
+
+"Hold on; you say nearly everybody fired at Oliver; who did not?" "I
+did not, General."
+
+"Did Lieutenant Ferry fire?"
+
+I said he did not. The General turned his strong eyes to Gholson's and
+kept them there while he took three luxurious puffs at his cigar. Then
+he took the waiting paper, and as he wrote his name on it he said,
+smiling, "I wish you had been in Lieutenant Ferry's place, Mr. Gholson;
+you would have done your duty."
+
+The flattered Gholson received the signed paper and passed out, and the
+General smiled again, at his back. I hope no one has ever smiled the
+same way at mine.
+
+Ferry and I slept side by side that night, and he told me two companies
+of our Louisianians were gone to cut off Jewett and his band. "Still, I
+think they will be much too late," he said, and when I rather violently
+turned the conversation aside to the subject of Scott Gholson, saying,
+to begin with, that Gholson had wonderful working powers, he replied,
+"'Tis true. Yet he says the brigade surgeon told him to-day he is on the
+verge of a nervous break-down." But on my inquiring as to the cause of
+our friend's condition, my bedmate pretended to be asleep.
+
+We rose at dawn and rode eastward, he and I alone, some fourteen miles,
+to the Sessions's, where the dance had been two nights earlier. On
+entering the stable to put up our horses we suddenly looked at each
+other very straight, while Ferry's countenance confessed more pleasure
+than surprise, though a touch of care showed with it. "I did not know
+this," he said, "and I did not expect it."
+
+What we saw was the leather-curtained spring-wagon and its little
+striped-legged mules. The old negro in charge of them bowed gravely to
+me and smiled affectionately upon Ferry. About an hour later Gholson
+appeared. He took such hurried pains to explain his coming that any fool
+could have seen the real reason. The brigade surgeon had warned him--Oh!
+had I heard?--Oh! from Ned Ferry, yes. The cause of his threatened
+breakdown, he said, was the perpetual and fearful grind of work into
+which of late he had--fallen.
+
+"Did the doctor say 'fallen'?" I shrewdly asked.
+
+"No, the doctor said 'plunged,' but--did Ned Fer'--who put that into
+your head?"
+
+"Nobody; some fall, you know, some plunge." I did not ask the cause of
+the plunge; the two little mules told me that. He would never have come,
+Gholson hurried on to say, had not Major Harper kindly suggested that a
+Sabbath spent with certain four ladies would be a timely preventive.
+
+"What!" I cried, "are they here t'--too? Why,--where's their carryall?
+'Tisn't in the stable; I've looked!"
+
+"No, it was here, but yesterday, when the fighting threatened to be
+heavy, it was sent to the front. Smith, I didn't know Charlie Tolliver
+was here!"
+
+I believed him. But I saw he was not in search of a preventive. Ah, no!
+he was ill of that old, old malady which more than any other abhors a
+preventive. Waking in the summer dawn and finding Ned Ferry risen and
+vanished hitherward, a rival's instinct had moved him to follow, as the
+seeker for wild honey follows the bee. He had come not for the cure of
+his honey-sickness, but for more--more--more--all he could find--of the
+honey. "Smith," he said, with a painful screw of his features, "I'm
+mightily troubled about Ned Ferry!"
+
+"Yes," I dishonestly responded, "his polished irreligion--"
+
+"Oh, no! No," he groaned, "it isn't that so much just now, though I know
+that to a true religionist like you the society of such a mere
+romanticist--"
+
+We were interrupted.
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+OLDEST GAME ON EARTH
+
+The cause of our interruption was Camille Harper. We had been pacing the
+side veranda and she came out upon it with an unconscious song on her
+lips, and on one finger a tiny basket.
+
+Her gentle irruption found me standing almost on the spot where she had
+stood two evenings before and said good-bye to me. From this point a
+path led to the rear of the house, where within a light paling fence
+bloomed a garden. She gave us a blithe good-morning as she passed,
+descended the two or three side steps, and tripped toward the garden
+gate, a wee affair which she might have lifted off its hinges with one
+thumb. I saw her try its latch two or three times and then turn back
+discomfited because the loose frame had sagged a trifle and needed to be
+raised half an inch. I did not understand the helplessness of girls as
+well then as I do now; I ran and opened the gate; and when I shut it
+again she and I were alone inside.
+
+She let me cut the flowers. "You know who's here?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," I guilefully replied, "I came with him."
+
+"I don't mean Lieutenant Ferry," she responded, "nor anybody you'd ever
+guess if you don't know; but you do, don't you?"
+
+I said I knew and went on gathering sweet-pea blossoms.
+
+"Did you ever see her?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, stepping away for some roses, "I--saw her--by
+chance--for a moment--she was in the wagon she's got here--last
+--eh,--Thursday--morn'--" I came back trimming the roses, and
+as she reached for them and our glances met, she laughed and replied,
+with a roguish droop of the head--
+
+"She told us about it. And you needn't look so disturbed; she only
+praised you."
+
+Still I frowned. "How does it come that she's here, anyhow?"
+
+"Why! she's got to be everywhere! She's a war-correspondent! She was at
+the front yesterday nearly the whole time, near enough to see some of
+the fighting, and to hear it all! she calls it 'only a skirmish'!"
+
+"When did she get here?"
+
+"About five in the morning. But we didn't see her then; she shut herself
+up and wrote and wrote and wrote! They say she runs the most daring
+risks! And they say she's so wise in finding out what the Yankees are
+going to do and why they're going to do it, that they'd be nearly as
+glad to catch her as to catch Lieutenant Ferry! Didn't you know? Ah, you
+knew!" She attempted a reproachful glance, but exhaled happiness like a
+fragrance. I asked how she had heard these things.
+
+"How did I hear them? Let me see. Oh, yes! from--from Harry."
+
+I flinched angrily. "From what?"
+
+She looked into her basket and fingered its flowers. "That's what he
+asked me to call him."
+
+I stiffened up as though I heard a thief picking the lock of my lawful
+treasure. She threw me, side wise, a bantering smile and then a more
+winsome glance, but I refused to see either. I burned with so many
+feelings at once that I could no more have told them than I could have
+raised a tune. "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be
+very arch.
+
+"Like whom?"
+
+"You know perfectly well," she replied.
+
+"No, I do not like him. Do you?"
+
+"Why,--yes,--I do. I--I thought everybody did." She averted her face and
+toyed with the sweet-pea vines. Suddenly she gulped, faced me, blinked
+rapidly, and said "If I oughtn't to call him--that,--then I oughtn't to
+have called--" she dropped her eyes and bit her lip.
+
+"_That_," I replied, "is a very different matter! At least I had hoped
+it was!"
+
+Her rejoinder came in a low, grieved monotone: "Did you say _had_
+hoped?"
+
+It was the sweetest question my ear had ever caught, and I asked her, I
+scarce know how, if I might still say "do hope".
+
+"Why, I--I didn't know you ever did say it. I don't see that I have any
+right to forbid you saying things--to--to yourself."
+
+So we played the game--oldest game on earth--and loveliest. Bungling
+moves we made, as you see, and sometimes did not know whose move it was.
+At length she admitted that this _is_ a very unsafe world in which to be
+kind to soldiers. I told how _fickle_ some of them were. She would not
+say she would--or wouldn't--make my case a permanent exception or a
+solitary one; yet with me she blissfully pooh-poohed the idea that our
+acquaintance was new, she being so wonderfully like my mother, and I
+being so wonderfully ditto, ditto. And when I burst into a blazing
+eulogy of my mother, my listener gave me kinder looks than I ever
+deserved of any woman alive. On my trying to reciprocate, she asked me
+for more flowers and hurried back to our earlier theme.
+
+"And really, you know, they say she's almost as truly a scout as Ned
+Fer'--as Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. She's from New Orleans, you know, and
+she's like us, half-Creole; but her other half is Highland Scotch--isn't
+that romantic! When she told us about it she laughed and said it
+explained some things in her which nothing else could excuse! Wasn't
+that funny!--oh, pshaw! it doesn't sound a bit funny as I tell it, but
+she said it in such a droll way! She was so full of fun and frolic that
+day! You can't conceive how full of them she is--sometimes; how soberly
+she _can_ say the funniest things, and how _funnily_ she can say the
+soberest things!"
+
+[Illustration: "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very
+arch.]
+
+"You say she was so full of fun that day; what day?"
+
+The young thing gaped at me, gasped, and melted half to the ground:
+"O--oh--I've let it out!"
+
+"Yes, you may as well go right on, now."
+
+She straightened to her toes, covered her open mouth an instant, and
+then said "Yes, we knew her--at our house--in New Orleans--poor New
+Orleans! Your mother--oh, your splendid, lovely little mother is such a
+brave Confederate!"
+
+"My mother brought her to your house?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes! and that's why it isn't wrong to tell _you_. Charlotte's
+been three times through the lines, to and from the city; once by way of
+Natchez and twice through Baton Rouge. And oh, the things she's brought
+out to our poor boys in the hospitals!"
+
+"Generals' uniforms, for example?"
+
+"Oh, now you're real mean! No! what she's brought the most of is--guess!
+You'll never guess it in the world!"
+
+"Hindoo grammars!--No? Well, then,--perfumery!"
+
+"Ah, you! No, I'll tell you." She spoke prudently; I had to bow my ear
+so close that it tingled: "Dolls!"
+
+My amazement was genuine. "For our sick soldiers!" I sighed.
+
+Her eyes danced; she leaned away and nodded. Then she drew nearer than
+before: "Dolls!" she murmured again;--"and pincushions!--and
+emeries!--and 'rats'! you know, for ladies' hair--and chignon-cushions!"
+
+"For our sick soldiers!"
+
+"Yes!--stuffed with quinine!" She laughed in her handkerchief till the
+smell of the sweet-peas was lost in the odor of frangipani, and she
+staggered almost into my arms. But that sobered her. "And when we speak
+of the risk she runs of being sent to Ship Island she laughs and says,
+'Life is strife.' She says she'd like it long, but she's got to have
+it broad."
+
+"Life is strife indeed to her," I said.
+
+"Oh! do you know that too?--and another reason she gives for taking
+those awful risks is that 'it's the best use she can make of her silly
+streak'--as if she had any such thing!"
+
+"Why did my mother bring her to you?"
+
+"Oh! she had letters from uncle to aunt Martha! He thinks she's
+wonderful!"
+
+"Does your father think so, too?"
+
+"My father? no; but he's prejudiced! That's one of the things I can
+never understand--why nearly all the girls I know have such
+prejudiced fathers."
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+A GNAWING IN THE DARK
+
+On our return to the veranda, Camille and I, we found on its front the
+house's entire company except only the children of the family. Mrs.
+Sessions, Estelle and Cecile formed one group, Squire Sessions and
+Charlotte Oliver made a pair, and Ferry and Miss Harper another. Our
+posies created a lively demonstration; Camille yielded them to Estelle,
+and Estelle took them into the house to arrange them in water. Gholson
+went with her; it was painful to see her zest for his society.
+
+Miss Harper "knocked me down," as we boys used to say, to Charlotte
+Oliver; "Charlotte, my dear, you already know Mr. Smith, I believe?"
+
+I had expected to see again, and to feel, as well, the starry charms of
+Coralie Rothvelt; but what I confronted was far different. The charms
+were here, unquenched by this stare of daylight, but from them shone a
+lustre of womanliness wholly new. It seemed to grow on even when a
+tricksy gleam shot through it as she replied, "Yes, our acquaintance
+dates from Gallatin."
+
+With a spasm of eagerness I said it did: "Our
+acquai'--hh--Gallatin--hh--" But my soul cried like a culprit, "No, no,
+it begins only now!" and my whole being stood under arrest before the
+accusing truth that from Gallatin till now my acquaintance had been
+solely with that false phase of her which I knew as Coralie Rothvelt. At
+the same her kind eyes sweetly granted me a stripling's acquittal--oh!
+why did it have to be a stripling's?
+
+Wonderful eyes she had; deep blue, as I have said, in color; black, in
+spirit; never so wonderful as when having sparkled black they quieted to
+blue again. Always then there came the slightest of contractions at the
+outer corners of the delicate lids, that gave a fourfold expression of
+thought, passion, tenderness and intrepidity. I never saw that silent
+meaning in but one other pair of eyes; wherever it turned it said--at
+the same time saying many other things but saying this always
+plainest--"I see both out and in; I know myself--and thee." Never but in
+one other pair of eyes? no; and whose were those? Ned Ferry's.
+
+"Don't you love to see Charlotte and him look at each other in that
+steady way when they're talking together?" Camille asked me later. But
+rather coldly I inquired why I should; I felt acutely enough without
+admitting it to Camille, that Charlotte and Ferry were meeting on ground
+far above me; and when Gholson, in his turn, called to my notice, in
+Charlotte's case, this unique gaze, and contrasted it with her beautiful
+yet strangely childish mouth, I asked a second time why she was
+here, anyhow.
+
+"She's here," murmured Gholson, "because she has to live! To live she
+must have means, Smith, and to have means she must either get them
+herself or she must--" and again he poised his hand horizontally across
+his mouth and whispered--"live with her hus'--"
+
+I jerked my head away--"Yes, yes." Scott Gholson was the only one of us
+who could give that wretch that title. "Gholson," I said, for I kept him
+plied with questions to prevent his questioning me, "how did that man
+ever get her?"
+
+The rest of the company were going into the house; he glanced furtively
+after them and grabbed my arm; you would have thought he was about to
+lay bare the whole tragedy in five words; "Smith,--nobody knows!"
+
+"Do you believe she has told Ned Ferry anything?"
+
+"Never! About herself? no, sir!" He bent and whispered: "She despises
+him; she keeps in with him, but it's to get the news, that's all; that's
+positively all." On our way to the stable to saddle up--for we were all
+going to church--he told me what he knew of her story. I had heard it
+all and more, but I listened with unfeigned interest, for he recited it
+with flashes of heat and rancor that betrayed a cruel infatuation eating
+into his very bone and brain, the guilt of which was only intensified by
+the sour legality of his moral sense.
+
+The church we went to was in Franklin, but the preacher was a man of
+note, a Vicksburg refugee. On the way back Gholson and I rode for a time
+near enough to Squire Sessions and Ned Ferry to know the sermon was
+being discussed by them, and something they said gave my companion
+occasion to murmur to me in a tone of eager censure that Ned Ferry's
+morals were better than his religion.
+
+I said I wished mine were.
+
+"Ah, Smith, be not deceived! Whenever you see a man bringing forth the
+fruits of the Spirit while he neglects the regularly appointed means of
+grace, you _know_ there's something wrong, don't you? He went to church
+this morning--_of course_; but how often does he go? What's wrong with
+our dear friend--I don't like to say it, for I admire him so; I don't
+like to say it, and I never have said it, but, Smith,--Ned Ferry's a
+romanticist. We are relig'--what?"
+
+"O--oh, nothing!"
+
+At one point our way sloped down to a ramshackle wooden bridge that
+spanned a narrow bit of running water at the edge of a wood. Beyond it
+the road led out between two fields whose high worm-fences made it a
+broad lane. The farther limit of this sea of sunlight was the grove that
+hid the Sessions house on the left; on the right it was the
+woods-pasture in which lay concealed a lily-pond. As Gholson and I
+crossed the bridge we came upon a most enlivening view of our own
+procession out in the noonday blaze before us; the Sessions buggy; then
+Charlotte' little wagon; next the Sessions family carriage full of
+youngsters; and lastly, on their horses, Squire Sessions--tall, fleshy,
+clean-shaven, silver-haired--and Ned Ferry. Mrs. Sessions and Miss
+Harper, in the buggy, were just going by a big white gate in the
+right-hand fence, through which a private way led eastward to the
+lily-pond. A happy sight they were, the children in the rear vehicle
+waving handkerchiefs back at us, and nothing in the scene made the
+faintest confession that my pet song, which I was again humming, was pat
+to the hour:
+
+  "To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
+   Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be broke."
+
+"Gholson, if it isn't Ned Ferry's religion that's worrying you just now
+about him, what is it?"
+
+My companion looked at me as if what he must say was too large for his
+throat. He made a gesture of lament toward Ferry and broke out, "O--oh
+Smith,"--nearly all Gholson's oh's were groans--"why is he here? The
+scout is 'the eyes of the army'! a man whose perpetual vigilance at the
+very foremost front--"
+
+"Why, what do you mean? You know we're here to rejoin the company as it
+comes down from Union Church to camp here to-night. _That's_ what we're
+here for."
+
+"Yes,--yes,--but, oh, don't you _see_, Smith? For you, yourself, that's
+all right; you've got to stay with him, and I'm glad you have. But
+he--oh why did he not go on hours ago, to meet them?"
+
+"Why should he? Isn't it good to leave one's lieutenant sometimes in
+command; isn't it bad not to?"
+
+Gholson's eyes turned green. "Does Ned Ferry give that as his reason?"
+
+"I haven't asked his reason; I've asked you a question."
+
+"Well, I'll answer it. Do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?"
+
+"Of course I do, and Ned Ferry does; don't you?"
+
+"No! Smith, there ain't a braver man in Grant's army than that one
+right now a-straddle of your horse. Why, just the way he got your horse
+night before--"
+
+"Oh, hang him and the horse! you've told me that three times; what of
+it?"
+
+"Smith, he's out here to make a new record for himself, at whatever
+cost!"
+
+"And do you imagine Ned Ferry hasn't thought of that?"
+
+"Ah-h, there are times when a man hasn't got his thinking powers; you
+ought to know that, Smith,--"
+
+"Mr. Gholson, what do you mean by that?"
+
+"Oh! I certainly didn't mean anything against you, Smith. Why is your
+manner so strange to me to-day? Oh, Smith, if you knew what--if I could
+speak to you in sacred confidence--I--I wouldn't injure Ned Ferry in
+your eyes, nor in anybody's; I only tell you what I do tell so you may
+help me to help him. But he's staying here, Smith, and keeping you here,
+to be near one whose name--without her a-dreaming of it--is already
+coupled with--why,--why, what made you start that a-way again, Smith?"
+
+"Nothing; I didn't start. 'Coupled with somebody's name,' you say. With
+whose? Go on."
+
+"With his, Smith, and most injuriously. He's here to tempt her to forget
+she's not--" He faltered.
+
+"Free?" said I, and he nodded with tragic solemnity.
+
+"You know who I mean, of course?"
+
+"Certainly; you mean Mrs. Sessions."
+
+He shook his head bitterly. "Oh, well, then, of course I know. How am I
+to help you to help him; help him to do what?"
+
+"O--oh! to tear himself away from her, Smith. I want you to appeal to
+him. He's taken a great shine to you. You can appeal to his feeling for
+romance--poetry--whatever he calls his hell-fired--I mean his
+unfortunate impiety. You know how, and I don't. And there you reach the
+foundations of his character, as far as it's got any; there's his
+conscience if it's anywhere!"
+
+I find myself giving but a faint impression of the spirit in which
+Gholson spoke; it went away beyond a mere backbiting mood and became a
+temper so vindictive and so venomously purposeful that I was startled;
+his condition seemed so fearfully like that of the old paralytic when he
+whined "That's not our way."
+
+"Smith," my companion went on, "we ought to protect Ned Ferry from
+himself!" The words came through his clenched teeth. "And even more we
+ought to protect her. Who's to do it if we don't? Smith, I believe
+Providence has been a-preparing you to do this, all through these last
+three nights and days!"
+
+He looked at me for an answer until I became frightened. Was my late
+folly known to this crawling maligner after all? A sweet-scented
+preparation I've had, thought I, but aloud I said only, "If Ned Ferry
+clears out, I suppose we must clear out, too."
+
+"Why, eh,--I--I don't know that my movements need have anything to do
+with his. Yours, of course,--"
+
+"Yes," I interrupted, beginning to boil.
+
+"I know," he said, "that comes hard; you'll have to tear _yourself_
+away--"
+
+He stared at me and hushed. A panic was surging through me; must I be
+brought to book by such as he? "Mr. Gholson," I cried, all scorn
+without, all terror within; "Mr. Gholson, I--Mr. Gholson, sir!--" and
+set my jaws and heaved for breath.
+
+"Why, Smith,--" He extended a soothing hand.
+
+"No explanation, sir, if you please! I can get away from here without
+tearing myself, which is more than you can boast. Any fool can see why
+_you_ are here. Stop, I take that back, sir! I don't play tit-for-tat
+with my tongue."
+
+Gholson turned red on the brow and ashen about the lips. "I don't call
+that tit-for-tat, Mr. Smith. I remind you of an innocent attachment for
+a young girl; you accuse me of harboring a guilty passion for--" All at
+once he ceased with open lips, and then said as he drew a long breath of
+relief, "Smith, I beg your pardon! We've each misunderstood the other; I
+see, now, who you meant; you meant Miss Estelle Harper!"
+
+"Whom else could I mean?" Disdain was in my voice, but he ought to have
+seen the falsehood in my eye, for I could feel it there.
+
+"_Of_ course!" he said; "of course! But, Smith, my mind was so
+full--just for the moment, you know,--of her we were speaking of in
+connection with Ned Ferry--Do you know? she's so unprotected and tagged
+after and talked about that it seems to me sometimes, in this nervous
+condition of mine, that if I could catch the entire gang of her
+pursuers in one hole I'd--I'd _end 'em_ like so many rats. That sort of
+feeling is mere impulse, of course," he went on, "and only shows how
+near I am to that nervous breakdown. Yes, the Harper ladies are mighty
+lovely and hard enough to leave, but that's all I meant to you, and I'm
+sorry I touched your feelings. I'm _tchagrined_. Anyhow, all this is
+between us, you know. I wouldn't ever have confessed such feelings as I
+did just now except to a friend who knows as well as you do that if I
+ever should do a man a mortal injury I wouldn't do it in a spirit of
+resentment. You know that, don't you? No, that's not my way--Why,
+Smith, what gives you those starts? That's the third time you've done
+that this morning."
+
+I said that entering the cool shade of the Sessions grove after the
+blazing heat of that long lane gave any one the right to a little
+shudder, and as we turned toward the house Gholson murmured "If you say
+you'll speak to Ned as I've asked you, I'll sort o' toll Squire Sessions
+off with me so's to give you the chance. It's for his own sake, you
+know, and you're the only one can do it."
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE
+
+I knew Ned Ferry was having that inner strife with which we ought always
+to credit even Gholson's sort, and I had a loving ambition to help him
+"take the upper fork." So doing, I might help Charlotte Oliver fulfil
+the same principle, win the same victory. When, therefore, Gholson put
+the question to me squarely, Would I speak to Ferry? I consented, and as
+the four of us, horsemen, left our beasts in the stable munching corn,
+Gholson began a surprisingly animated talk with our host, and Ferry,
+with a quizzical smile, said to me "Talk with you?--shall be happy to;
+we'll just make a slight _detour_ on this side the grove and
+woods-pasture, eh?"
+
+He meant the north side, opposite that one by which we had come from
+church. Here the landscape was much the same as there; wide fields on
+each side the fenced highway that still ran north and south, and woods
+for the sky-line everywhere. We chose an easy footpath along the
+northern fence of the grove, crossed the highway, and passed on a few
+steps alongside the woods-pasture fence. We talked as we went, he giving
+the kindest heed to my every word though I could see that, like any good
+soldier, he was scanning all the ground for its fighting values, and,
+not to be outdone, I, myself, pointed out, a short way up the public
+road, a fence-gap on the left, made by our camping soldiers two nights
+before. It was at another such gap, in the woods-pasture fence, that we
+turned back by a path through it which led into the wood and so again
+toward the highway and the house-grove. The evening General Austin sent
+me to Wiggins it was at this gap that I saw old Dismukes sitting
+cross-legged on the ground, playing poker; and here, now, I summoned the
+desperation to speak directly to my point.
+
+I had already tried hard to get something said, but had found myself at
+every turn entangled in generalities. Now, stammering and gagging I
+remarked that our experiences of the morning, both in church and out,
+had in some way combined with an earlier word of his own to me, and
+given me a valuable thought. "You remember, when I wanted to shoot that
+Yankee off my horse?"
+
+"Yes; and I said--what?"
+
+"You said 'This isn't your private war.' Lieutenant, I hope those words
+may last in my memory forever and come to me in every moral situation in
+which I may find myself."
+
+"Yes? Well, I think that's good."
+
+"It seems to me, Lieutenant Ferry, that in every problem of moral
+conduct we confront we really hold in trust an interest of all mankind.
+To solve that problem bravely and faithfully is to make life just so
+much easier for everybody; and to fail to do so is to make it just so
+much harder to solve by whoever has next to face it." Whurroo! my blood
+was up now, let him look to himself!
+
+"Yes?" said Ferry, picking at the underbrush as we sauntered, and for
+some time he said no more. Then he asked, "You want me to apply that to
+myself, in--in the present case?" and to my tender amazement, while his
+eyes seemed to count his slackening steps, he laid his arm across my
+shoulders.
+
+An hour of avowal could not have told me more; could not have filled me
+half so full of sympathy, admiration and love, as did that one slight
+motion. It befitted the day, a day outwardly so quiescent, yet in which
+so much was going on. A realization of this quiet activity kept us
+silent until we had come through the woods-pasture to its southern
+border, and so through the big white field-gate into the public road;
+now we turned up toward the grove-gate, and here I spoke again. "Do you
+still think we ought to wait here for the command?"
+
+That from a private soldier to his captain! Yet all my leader answered
+was "You think there's cause to change our mind?"
+
+"I don't know, Lieutenant; do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?"
+
+"Yes, I think so; and you?"
+
+"Why, eh,--Lieutenant, I don't believe there's a braver man in Grant's
+army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why, just the way he
+got him, night before last,--you've heard that, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, the General told me. And so you think--"
+
+"Lieutenant, I can't help believing he's out here to make a new record
+for himself, at whatever cost!"
+
+We went on some steps in silence and entered the gate of the
+house-grove; and just as Ferry would have replied we discovered before
+us in the mottled shade of the driveway, with her arm on Cecile's
+shoulders as his lay on mine, and with _her_ eyes counting _her_
+slackening steps, Charlotte Oliver. They must have espied us already out
+in the highway, for they also were turned toward the house, and as we
+neared them Charlotte faced round with a cheery absence of surprise and
+said "Mr. Smith, don't we owe each other a better acquaintance? Suppose
+we settle up."
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+THE RED STAR'S WARNING
+
+It seemed quite as undeniable, as we stood there, that Ned Ferry owed
+Cecile a better acquaintance. Every new hour enhanced her graces, and
+were I, here, less engrossed with her companion, I could pitch the
+praises of Cecile upon almost as high and brilliant a key--there may be
+room for that yet. Ferry moved on at her side. Charlotte stayed a moment
+to laugh at a squirrel, and then turned to walk, saying with eyes on
+the earth--
+
+"If I tell you something, will you never tell?"
+
+I looked down too. "Suppose I should feel sure it ought to be told."
+
+"If you wait till you do you may tell it; that will suit me well
+enough."
+
+"I will always suit you the best I can."
+
+"I don't know why you should," she said.
+
+"You risked your life to save mine; and you risked it when I did not
+deserve so much as your respect."
+
+"Oh!--we must never talk about that again, Richard; you saw me in the
+evilest guise I ever wore, and that is saying much."
+
+"But," I responded, "you put it on for a better reason than you could
+tell me then or can tell me now, though now I know your story."
+
+"Please don't forget," she murmured, "that you know too much." "No, no!
+I don't know half enough; I know only what Miss Camilla
+and--and--Gholson could tell me," was my tricky reply, and I tried to
+look straight into her eyes, but they took that faint introspective
+contraction of which I have spoken, and gazed through me like sunlight
+through glass. Then again she bent her glance upon her steps, saying--
+
+"Ah, Richard, you have found out all you could, and I am glad of it,
+except of what I, myself, have had to betray to you; for _that_ was more
+than one would want to tell her twin brother. But I had to create you
+_my_ scout, and I had only two or three hours for my whole work of
+creation."
+
+"Well, you completed it." We went on some steps, and then she said--
+
+"You tell me I risked my life to save yours; I risked more than life,
+and I risked it for more than to save yours. Yet I did not save your
+life; you saved it, yourself, and--" here her low tone thrilled like a
+harp-string--"you risked it--frightfully--at that bridge--merely to save
+the promise you made me that you need not have made at all--oh, you
+needn't shake your head; I _know_."
+
+"Ah, how you gild my base metal!"
+
+"No, no, I have the story exactly, and from one who has no mind to
+praise you."
+
+"From Gholson?"
+
+"Gholson! no! I have it from Lucius Oliver, who had it from his son. He
+told me carefully, quietly and entirely, in pure spleen, so that I might
+know that they know--think they know, that is,--why you and--he in front
+of us yonder--would not shoot his son when--"
+
+"When as soldiers it was our simple du'--"
+
+"Yes; and also that I may understand that he--the son--has sworn by that
+right hand you mutilated that the 'pair of you' shall die before
+he does."
+
+"I ought not to have shown him that envelope addressed to you."
+
+"Ah, but if it saved your life!"
+
+"And this is what you don't want me to tell? Ah, I see; for me to know
+it is enough; I can put it to him as a theory. I can say Oliver is not a
+man to be put upon the defensive, and that he is more than likely to be
+hunting 'the pair of us'--" All at once I thought of something.
+
+"What made you give that sudden start?" she asked as we faced about in
+the driveway to make our walk a moment longer; "that's a bad habit
+you've got; why do you do it?"
+
+I fancied the thrilling freshness of the question I was about to put
+would be explanation enough. "Do you believe Jewett has gone back into
+his own lines?"
+
+"I don't know; hasn't he?"
+
+"Oh, I don't _know_, either, but--well, I don't believe there's a braver
+man in Grant's army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why,
+just the way he got him, night before last,--you've heard that, have
+you not?"
+
+"Yes, I've heard it; he is a very daring man; what of it?"
+
+"Why, I can't help thinking he's out here to make a new record for
+himself, at whatever cost!"
+
+A note of distress hung on my hearer's stifled voice; her head went
+lower and she laid her fingers pensively to her lips. "It would be like
+him," I heard her murmur, and when I asked if she meant Jewett she
+shook her head.
+
+"No," I said, "you mean it would be like Oliver to join him," and with
+that the sudden start was hers. "He wouldn't have to touch Ned Ferry or
+me," I went on, heartlessly, "nor to come near us, to make us rue the
+hour we let ourselves forget this wasn't our private war."
+
+She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she
+looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it,
+won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do
+I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her
+eyes began forewith.
+
+A light footfall sounded behind us, and Camille gave both her hands to
+my companion. "I was in the hall," she said, "telling Cecile she was
+like a white star that had come out by day, when I saw you here looking
+like a great red one; and you're still more like a red, red rose, and
+I've come to get some of your fragrance."
+
+"I'd exchange for yours any day, and thank you, dear," responded
+Charlotte; "you're a bunch of sweet-peas. Isn't she, Mr. Smith?"
+
+The bunch beamed an ecstatic bliss. What was the explanation; had her
+father arrived, or--or somebody else? The question went through me like
+an arrow. Was the cause of this heavenly radiance somebody else?--that
+was the barb; or was it I?--that was the soothing feather.
+
+In gratitude for Charlotte's word she sank backward in a long obeisance.
+"May it please your ladyship, dinner is served. Oh, Mr. Smith, I've been
+listening to Mr. Gholson talking with aunt Martha and Estelle; I don't
+wonder you and he are friends; I think his ideas of religion are
+perfectly beautiful!"
+
+At our two-o'clock dinner I found that our company had been reinforced.
+On one side of Camille sat I; but on the other side sat "Harry."
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+A MARTYR'S WRATH
+
+Great news the aide-de-camp brought us; from Lee, from Longstreet, Bragg
+and Johnston. Johnston was about to fall upon Grant's rear. Across the
+Mississippi Dick Taylor was expected this very day to deal the same
+adversary a crippling blow, and it was partly to mask this movement that
+we had made our feint upon the Federals near Natchez. Now these had
+fallen back, and our force had cunningly slipped away southward. Only
+General Austin and his staff had not gone when Lieutenant Helm left the
+front, and they were about to go.
+
+Toward the end of the meal Mrs. Sessions, in her amiable plantation
+drawl, said she hoped the bearer of so much good tidings had not come to
+take away Lieutenant Ferry; and when Harry, flushing, asked what had
+given her such a thought, the simple soul replied that Mr. Gholson had
+told her he "suspicioned as much."
+
+At once there arose the prettiest clamor all round the board, in which
+Charlotte and Cecile joined for the obvious purpose of making confusion.
+Gholson turned yellow and spoke things nobody heard, and Ferry tried to
+drown Harry's loud declarations that the word he had brought to Ferry
+was for him to stay, and that he had found him saddling up to go in
+search of his company. "Isn't that so, Ned?--Now,--now,--isn't that so?"
+
+We left the table all laughing but Gholson. He tried to say something to
+Harry, which the latter waved away with mock gaiety until on the side
+veranda we got beyond view of the ladies, when the aide-de-camp reddened
+angrily and turned his back. As the two lieutenants were lighting
+cigarettes together, Harry, thinking Gholson had left us, blurted out,
+"Oh, that's all very well for you to say, Ned, but, damn him, he's not
+the sort of man that has the right to 'suspicion' me of anything;
+slang-whanging, backbiting sneak, I know what _he's_ here for."
+
+On that the blood surged to Ferry's brow, but he set his mouth firmly,
+locked arms with the speaker and led him down the veranda. Gholson took
+on an uglier pallor than before and went back into the house. I followed
+him. He moved slowly up the two flights of hall stairs and into a room
+close under the roof, called the "soldiers' room". It had three double
+beds, one of them ours. Without a fault in the dreary rhythm of his
+motions he went to the bedpost where hung his revolver, and turning to
+me buckled the weapon at his waist with hands that kept the same
+unbroken measure though they trembled and were as pallid as his face. In
+the same slow beat he shook his head.
+
+"Smith, I rejoice! O--oh! I rejoice and am glad when I'm reviled and
+persecuted by the hounds of hell, and spoken evil against falsely for my
+religion's sake."
+
+"Now, Gholson, that's nonsense!"
+
+"O--oh! that's what it's for! that's what he meant by 'slang-whanging.'
+That's what it's for from first to last, no matter what it's for in
+between; and I know what it's for in between, too, and Ned Ferry knows.
+Did you see Ned Ferry take him under his protection? O--oh! they're two
+of one hell-scorched kind!" My companion stood gripping the bedpost and
+fumbling at his holster. I sank to the bed, facing him, expecting his
+rage to burn itself out in words, but when he began again his teeth
+were clenched. "You heard him tell Ned Ferry he knows why I'm here. It's
+true! he does know! he knows I'm here to protect a certain person from
+him and--"
+
+"From whom? from Harry Helm? Oh, Gholson, that's too fantastical!"
+
+"From him and the likes of him! Not that he loves her; that's the
+difference between them two cotton-mouth moccasins; Ned Ferry, hell
+grind him! does--or thinks he does; that other whelp _don't,_ and knows
+he don't; he's only enam'--"
+
+"HUSH!" He ceased. "I swear, Scott Gholson, you must choose your words
+better when you allude--Lieutenant Helm is the last man in the brigade
+to be under _my_ protection, but--oh, you're crazy, man, and blind
+besides. Harry Helm is not in love, but he thinks he is, though with
+quite another person!"
+
+"O--oh! whether he loves or not, or whoever he loves, I know who he
+hates; he hates me and my religion; our religion, Smith, mine and yours;
+because it's put me between him and her. What was that the preacher said
+this morning? 'The carnal mind, being enmity against God, is enmity
+against them that serve God.' O--oh, I accept his enmity! it proves my
+religion isn't vain! I'm glad to get it!"
+
+All this from his oscillating head, through his set teeth, in one malign
+monotone. As he quoted the preacher he mechanically drew his revolver.
+There was no bravado in this; he might lie, but he did not know how to
+sham; did not know, now, that his face was drawn with pain. Holding the
+weapon in one hand, under his absent gaze he turned it from side to side
+on the palm of the other. I put out my hand for it, but he dropped it
+into the holster and tried to return my smile.
+
+"Do you propose to call him out?" I asked. "You can't call out an
+officer; you'll be sent to the water-batteries at Mobile."
+
+"I've thought of all that," he droned.
+
+"Then why do you put that thing on?"
+
+"Why do I put it on? Why, I--you know what I told you about that
+Yankee--"
+
+"Gholson," I exclaimed, for I saw that murder, even double murder, was
+hatching in his heart, with Charlotte Oliver for its cause, and looked
+hard into his evil eyes until they overmatched mine; whereupon I made as
+if suddenly convinced. "You're right!" I turned, whipped on my own belt
+with its two "persuaders," and blandly smoothing my ribs, added "Now!
+here are two ready, Yankees or no Yankees."
+
+I never saw a face so unconsciously marked with misery as Gholson's was
+when we started downstairs. I stopped him on a landing. "Understand, you
+and I are friends,--hmm? I think Lieutenant Helm owes you an apology,
+and if you'll keep away from him I'll try to bring it to you."
+
+The reply began with a vindictive gleam. "You needn't; I ain't got any
+more use for it than for him. I never apologized to a man in my life,
+Smith, nor I never accepted an apology from one; that's not my way."
+
+Near the bottom of the second flight we met Charlotte, who, to make bad
+worse, would have passed with no more than a smile, but the look of
+Gholson startled her and she noticed our arms. With an arresting eye I
+offered a sprightly comment on the heat of the day, and while she was
+replying with the same gaiety I whispered "Take him with you."
+
+How nimbly her mind moved! "Oh Mr. Gholson!" she said, and laughed to
+gain an instant for invention.
+
+"Mr. Gholson, can _you_ tell me the first line of the last hymn we sang
+this morning?" Her beam was irresistible, and they went to the large
+parlor. I turned into the smaller one, opposite, where Squire Sessions
+started from a stolen doze and, having heard of my feeling for books,
+thrust into my hands, and left me with, the "Bible Defense of Slavery."
+
+As I moved to a window which let out upon the side veranda the two
+lieutenants came around from the front and stood almost against it,
+outside; and as I intended to begin upon Harry as soon as Squire
+Sessions was safely upstairs, this suited me well enough. But the moment
+they came to the spot I heard Ned Ferry doing precisely what I had
+planned to do. At the same time, from across the hall came the sound of
+the piano and of Charlotte's voice, now a few bars, then an interval of
+lively speech, again a few bars, then more speech, and then a sustained
+melody as she lent herself to the kind flattery of Gholson's
+songless soul.
+
+"But he is!" I overheard the aide-de-camp say; "he is a backbiting
+sneak, and I tell you again he's backbitten nobody more than he
+has you!"
+
+"And I tell you again, Harry, that is my business."
+
+"If he wants to fight me he can; I'll waive my rank."
+
+"No, you will not, you have no right; our poor little rank, it doesn't
+belong to us, Harry, 'tis we belong to it. 'If he wants to fight!'--Do
+you take him for a rabbit? He is a brave man, you know that, old fellow.
+Of course he wants to fight. But he cannot! For the court-martial he
+would not care so much; I would not, you would not; 'tis his religion
+forbids him."
+
+"O--oh!" groaned Harry in Gholson's exact tone, "'Hark from the tombs'!"
+
+"Ah!" said Ferry, "he does not live up to it? Well, of course! who
+does? But we will pass that; the main question is, Will you express the
+regret, and so forth, as I have suggested, and do yourself credit,
+Harry, as an officer and a gentleman, or--will you fight?"
+
+"But you say his religion, so called, won't let him fight!"
+
+"That's what I think; but if it forbids him, and if consequently he will
+not, well,--Harry,--I will."
+
+"You will what!"
+
+"I will have to fight you in his place."
+
+"Why, Ned!--Ned!--you--you astound me! Wha'--what do you mean?"
+
+"That is what I mean, Harry. You know--many times you have heard me
+say--I don't believe in that kind of thing; I find that worse than the
+religion of Gholson; yet still,--what shall I say?--we are but soldiers
+anyhow--this time I make an exception in your favor. And of course this
+is confidential, on both sides; but you must make peace with Gholson, or
+you must fight with me."
+
+"Oh, good Lord!--Ned!--Good Lord A'mighty! but this is too absurd. Why,
+Ned, don't you see that the bottom cause of this trouble isn't--"
+
+"I know what is the bottom cause of this trouble very well, Harry; you
+can hear her in yonder, now, singing. Wherever Gholson is he hears her,
+too, like-wise. Perchance 'tis to him she is singing. If she can sing to
+him, are you too good to apologise?"
+
+"Oh, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, Ned, damned if I don't!
+George! I'll apologize! Rather than lose your friendship I'd apologize
+to the devil!"
+
+Ferry's thanks came eagerly. "Well, anyhow, old boy," he added, "in such
+a case to back down is braver than to fight; but to apologize to the
+devil--that is not hard; on the contrary, to keep _from_ apologizing to
+the devil--ah! I wish I could always do that!--I wonder where is
+Dick Smith."
+
+I stealthily laid down the "Bible Defense of Slavery" and was going
+upstairs three steps at a stride, when I came upon Camille and Estelle.
+My aim was to get Harry's revolver to him before he should have the
+exasperating surprise of finding Gholson armed, and to contrive a
+pretext for so doing; and happily a word from the two sisters gave me my
+cue. With the fire-arms of both officers I came downstairs and out upon
+the veranda loud-footed, humming--
+
+  "'To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
+  Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be--'
+
+"Gentlemen, I hope I'm not too officious; they say we're all going for a
+walk in the lily-pond woods, and I reckon you'd rather not leave these
+things behind."
+
+Both thanked me and buckled on their belongings, but Ferry's look was
+peculiarly intelligent; "I was in the small parlor, looking for you," he
+said; "I thought you would be near the music." And so he had seen
+Gholson with his revolver on him, and must have understood it!
+
+"Smith," said Harry, "will you be so kind as to say to Gholson--oh,
+Lord! Ned, this is heavy drags on a sandy road! I--"
+
+"That's all right, Harry, I withdraw the request."
+
+"Well, you needn't; I was in the wrong. Smith, will you say to
+Gholson--" His voice dropped to a strictly private rumble.
+
+"Yes, Lieutenant, I'll do so with pleasure, and I'm sure what you say
+will have the proper--here are the ladies."
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+TORCH AND SWORD
+
+"Now give me your hand, Miss Camille; now jump!" So twice and once again
+the rivulet was passed which ran from the lily-pond, she and I leading
+all the others on the return from the woodland afternoon walk. We turned
+and faced away from the declining sun and across the clear pool to where
+its upper end, dotted with lily-pads, lay in a deep recess of the woods.
+There were green and purple garlands of wild passion-flower around her
+hat and about the white and blue fabrics at her waist. At the head of
+the pond, with Ferry beside her, stood black-haired Cecile canopied by
+overhanging boughs, her hat bedecked with the red spikes of the
+Indian-shot and wound with orange masses of love-vine. Nearer to us
+around the shore was Estelle of the red-brown hair and red-brown eyes
+and brows and lashes, whose cheek seemed always to glow with ever rising
+but never confessed emotion; and with her walked Gholson. Near the
+waterside also, but farthest up the path, came Miss Harper and
+Charlotte Oliver.
+
+Harry was not with us. The settlement of his trouble with Gholson
+awaited his return out of the region north of us, whither Ferry had
+suggested his riding on an easy reconnaissance. Camille and I were just
+turning again, when there came abruptly into our scene the last gallant
+show of martial finery any of us ever saw until the war was over and
+there was nothing for our side to make itself fine for. On the road from
+the house we heard a sound of galloping, and the next moment General
+Austin and his entire staff (less only Harry) reined up at the edge of
+the pond, ablaze with all the good clothes they could muster and
+betraying just enough hard usage to give a stirring show of the war's
+heroic reality. The General, on a beautiful cream-colored horse, wore
+long yellow gauntlets and a yellow sash; from throat to waist the
+sunlight glistened upon the over-abundant gold lace of his new uniform,
+his legs were knee-deep in shining boots, and his soft gray hat was
+looped up on one side and plumed according to Regulations with one
+drooping ostrich feather. Behind halted in pleasing confusion captains
+and captains, flashing with braids, bars, buckles, buttons, bands,
+sword-knots, swords and brave eyes, and gaily lifting hats and caps,
+twice, and twice again, and once more, to the ladies--God bless them!
+Major Harper, the oldest, most refined and most soldierly of them all,
+was also the handsomest. Old Dismukes was with them; burly, bushy,
+dingy, on a huge roan charger. Camille asked me who he was, and I was
+about to reply that he was a bloodthirsty brute without a redeeming
+trait, when he lifted his shaggy brows at me and smiled, and as I smiled
+back I told her he was our senior colonel, rough at times, but the
+bravest of the brave. Meantime the General rode forward over a stretch
+of shallow water, Ned Ferry ran back along the margin to meet him, and
+at the saddlebow they spoke a moment together privately, while at more
+distance but openly to us all Major Harper informed his sister that with
+one night's camp and another day's dust the brigade would be down in
+Louisiana. Camille turned upon me and hurrahed, the Arkansas colonel
+smiled upon her approvingly, the ladies all waved, the General lifted
+his plumed hat, faced about, passed through his turning cavalcade and
+drew it after him at a gallop.
+
+Our promenaders hurried into close order and with quick step and eager
+converse we moved toward the house. In raptures scintillant with their
+own beauty the three Harper girls inflated each item of the day's news
+and the morrow's outlook, and it was almost as pretty to see Miss
+Harper's keen black eyes and loving-tolerant smile go back and forth
+from Camille to Estelle, from Estelle to Cecile, and round again, as
+each maiden added some new extravagance to the glad vaunting of the
+last, and looked, for confirmation, to the gallant who toiled to keep
+her under her parasol. Suddenly the three girls broke into song with an
+adaptation of "Oh, carry me back" which substituted "Louisiana" for
+"Virginia," but whose absurd quaverings I will not betray in words to a
+generation that never knew the frantic times to which they belonged. I
+felt a shamefacedness for them even then, yet when I glanced behind,
+Miss Harper was singing with us in the most exalted earnest. We had
+nearly reached the field-gate, the big white one on the highway, and
+were noting that the dust of the General and his retinue had barely
+vanished from the southern stretch of the road, when one feminine voice
+said "What's that?" another exclaimed "See yonder!" and Miss Harper
+cried "Why, gentlemen, somebody's house is burning!"
+
+Beyond the grove and the fields north of it, and beyond their farther
+bound of trees, in the northwest, was rising and unfolding into the
+peaceful Sabbath heavens a massive black column of the peculiar heavy
+smoke made by the burning of baled and stored cotton. We ran, two and
+two, into the road and up toward the grove-gate. "Don't stumble," I
+warned Camille as she looked back to see if any one besides me was
+holding his partner's hand. Inside the gate we paused, we two, still
+hand in hand. Her brown hair had shaken low upon her temples in two
+voluptuous masses between which she lifted her eyes to mine, my hand
+tightened on hers, and hers gave a little spasm of its own.
+
+"Oh, Dick!" she whispered; but before I could rally from the blissful
+shock of it to reply, her face changed distressfully, and pointing
+beyond me, she drank a great breath, and cried, "Look!"
+
+Sure enough, out there on the sky-line, in the north-east this time,
+another column of smoke was lifting its first billow over the tree-tops.
+"Oh, Dick!" she exclaimed, in beautiful alarm, "what does it mean?"
+
+"It means the Yankees,--love," I said, and when she gasped her dismay
+without letting on to have heard the last word, I felt that fires were
+cheap at any price.
+
+"There are others there besides Yankees," said Gholson to the general
+company as they joined us; "Yankees have got more sense than to start
+fires ahead of their march." On the same instant with Ned Ferry I sprang
+half-way to the top of the grove fence and peered out across road and
+fields upon the farthest point in line with the second fire. There we
+saw two horsemen reconnoitring, one a very commanding figure, the other
+mean enough. Ferry used his glass, but no glass was needed to tell
+either of us that Gholson's reckoning was true; those two were
+not Federals.
+
+The ladies flew to the house and the rest of us to the stable. In its
+door Ferry stopped to look back upon the road while Gholson and I darted
+in, but now he, too, sprang to his horse's side. "How many, Lieutenant?"
+I cried, as the three of us saddled up.
+
+"About a hundred; same we saw yesterday; captain at the rear; that means
+our fellows are close behind them."
+
+For a moment more I could hear the thunder of their speeding column;
+then the grove seemed to swallow it up, and the stillness was grim.
+"Come on!" cried Ferry, swinging up, and after him we sprang. "They've
+dismounted on the far edge of the grove," said Gholson to me as we rode
+abreast, with Ferry a length ahead; "they'll form line on each side the
+road at right angles to it!" and again he was right. Ferry led
+northeastward, but hardly had we made half a dozen leaps when he waved
+me to a near corner of the flower-garden palings and I saw Miss Harper
+beckoning and Charlotte holding up my carbine and his sword. Miss Harper
+was drawn up as straight as a dart, her black eyes flashing and her lips
+charged with practical information that began to flow the moment I was
+near enough to hear her guarded voice. "They've all put their horses in
+the locks of the road fence, just beyond the big white gate--"
+
+"We know," I interrupted, leaning and snatching the weapons from
+Charlotte's hands. She kissed them good-bye.
+
+"Ah, yes, yes!" she said, "they know all we can tell them and all we
+can't!"
+
+The only response I could give was the shower of loose earth thrown upon
+both women by my horse's heels as I whirled and sped after my leader. He
+and Gholson were half a broad field ahead of me, but I followed only at
+their speed, designing to hand over the sword so nearly at the moment of
+going into action that I might stay by its owner's side unrebuked; and
+my plan was not in vain. Up the highway our Louisianians burst into view
+in column at full speed; I knew them by their captain, a man noted
+throughout the brigade for the showiness of his dress; and the next
+instant, away across the fields beyond the highroad, Quinn and his
+scouts broke out of the woods, heading for the gap in the woods-pasture
+fence. As each friendly column caught sight of the other, long cheers
+rang across the narrowing interval between them. Through that other gap
+which I had noted in my walk with Ferry he and Gholson reached the road,
+sped forward on it to a rise that overlooked the fields, and halted.
+Ferry rose on tiptoe in the stirrups, lifted his cap in air, pointed
+triumphantly backward to the grove, and was recognized by both columns
+at once. Again they cheered; at a full run I reached his side and threw
+his sword into his hand. Both columns saw him belt it on and flash it
+out, their cheers swelled again, the Louisianians hurtled down upon us,
+and we turned and were at the front of the onset.
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+THE CHARGE IN THE LANE
+
+The instant Ferry wheeled at the flaming captain's side you could see he
+was unwelcome. I heard him tell what we knew of the foe and the ground;
+I saw him glance back at the blown condition of the speeding column and
+then say "You've got them anyhow, Captain; you'll get every man of them
+without a scratch, only if you will take your time."
+
+But the Captain answered headily; "No, sir! I've tried that twice
+already; this time I'll cut them in two and be in their rear at one
+dash! Bring in your company behind mine, if you choose."
+
+Ferry drew back a few ranks but stayed with the column; Quinn had had
+the toil of the chase, he should have also the glory of the fight. So
+Ferry sent Gholson--whose horsemanship won a cheer from the passing
+Louisianians as he cleared the roadside fence--across to Quinn, bidding
+the Lieutenant slacken speed and count himself a reserve. And then into
+the broad lane between grove and woods-pasture, with the charging yell,
+the Louisianians thundered. Ah! but my Creole gentleman was a sight,
+with his straight blade lifted in air and his face turned back on us
+aglow with the joy of battle! I was huzzaing back at him and we were
+passing the front gate of the grove avenue, when down through it came
+from the house, with a tremor of echoes, the first shot; a shot and then
+a woman's scream, and his blazing eyes said to me, "He is there! That
+was Oliver!"
+
+There was no time for speech. The shot was not a signal, yet on the
+instant and in our very teeth, on our right and our left, the cross-fire
+of the hidden and waiting foe flashed and pealed, and left and right, a
+life for a life, our carbines answered from the saddle. For a moment the
+odds against us were awful. In an instant the road was so full of fallen
+horses and dismounted men that the jaded column faltered in confusion.
+Our cunning enemy, seeing us charge in column, had swung the two
+extremes of their line forward and inward. So, crouching and firing upon
+us mounted, each half could fire toward the other with impunity, and
+what bullets missed their mark buzzed and whined about our ears and
+pecked the top rails of either fence like hail on a window. A wounded
+horse drove mine back upon his haunches and caused him to plant a hoof
+full on the breast of one of our Louisianians stretched dead on his back
+as though he had lain there for an hour. Another man, pale, dazed,
+unhurt, stood on the ground, unaware that he was under point-blank fire,
+holding by the bits his beautiful horse, that pawed the earth
+majestically and at every second or third breath blew from his flapping
+nostrils a cloud of scarlet spray. They blocked up half the road. As we
+swerved round them the horse of the company's first lieutenant slid
+forward and downward with knees and nose in the dust, hurling his rider
+into a lock of the fence, and the rider rose and rushed to the road
+again barely in time to catch a glittering form that dropped rein and
+sword and reeled backward from the saddle. It was his captain, shot
+through the breast. An instant later our tangled column parted to right
+and left, dashed into the locks of the two fences, sprang to the ground,
+and began to repay the enemy in the coin of their own issue. Only a
+dozen or so did otherwise, and it was my luck to be one of these.
+Espying Ned Ferry at the very front, in the road, standing in his
+stirrups and shouting back for followers to carry the charge on through,
+we spurred toward him and he turned and led. Then what was my next
+fortune but to see, astride of my stolen horse, the towering leader of
+the foe, Captain Jewett.
+
+He came into the road a few rods ahead of us through a gap his men had
+earlier made opposite the big white gate. He answered our fierce halloo,
+as he crossed, by a pistol-shot at Ferry, but Ferry only glanced around
+at me and pointed after him with his sword. A number of blue-coats afoot
+followed him to the gap but at our onset scattered backward, sturdily
+returning our fire. Into the gap and into the enemy's left rear went
+Ferry and his horsemen, but I turned the other way and spurred through
+the woods-pasture gate after the Federal leader, he on my horse and I on
+his. Down the highway, on either side, stood his brave men's horses in
+the angles of the worm-fence, and two or three horse-holders took a shot
+at me as I sped in after the man who was bent on reaching the right of
+his divided force before Quinn should strike it, as I was bent on
+foiling him. Twice I fired at his shapely back, and twice, while he kept
+his speed among the tree-trunks, he looked back at me as coolly as at an
+odd passer-by and sent me a ball from his revolver. A few more bounds
+carried him near enough to his force to shout his commands, but half a
+hundred cheers suddenly resounded in the depth of the woods-pasture, and
+Quinn and his men charged upon the foe's right and rear. I joined the
+shout and the shouters; in a moment the enemy were throwing down their
+arms, and I turned to regain the road to the pond. For I had marked
+Jewett burst through Quinn's line and with a score of shots ringing
+after him make one last brave dash--for escape. Others, pursuing him,
+bent northward, but my instinct was right, his last hope was for his
+horse-holders, and at a sharp angle of the by-road, where it reached the
+pond, exactly where Camille and I had stood not an hour before, I came
+abruptly upon Cricket--riderless. I seized his rein, and as I bent and
+snapped the halter of one horse on the snaffle of the other I saw the
+missing horseman. Leaping from the saddle I ran to him. He was lying on
+his face in the shallow water where General Austin and his staff had so
+gaily halted a short while before, and as I caught sight of him he
+rolled upon his back and tried to lift his bemired head.
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+FALLEN HEROES
+
+I dropped to my knee in the reddening pool and passed my arm under his
+head.
+
+"Thank you," he said, and repeated the word as I wet my handkerchief and
+wiped the mire from his face; "thank you;--no, no,"--I was opening his
+shirt--"that's useless; get me where you can turn me over; you've hit me
+in the back, my lad."
+
+"I?--I hit you? Oh, Captain Jewett, thank God, I didn't hit you at all!"
+
+"What's the difference, boy; you didn't aim to miss, did you? I didn't.
+It's not my only hurt; I think I broke something inside when I fell from
+the sad'--ah! that's _your_ bugle, isn't it? It's my last fight--oh, the
+devil! my good boy, don't begin to cry again; war's war; give me some
+water.... Thank you! And now, if you don't want me to bleed to death get
+me out of this slop, and--yes,--easy!--that's it--easy--oh, God! oh, let
+me down, boy, let me _down, you're killing me!_ Oh!--" he fainted away.
+
+With his unconscious head still on my arm I faced toward the hundred
+after-sounds of the fray and hallooed for help. To my surprise it
+promptly came. Three blundering boys we were who lifted him into the
+saddle and bore him to the house reeling and moaning astride of Cricket,
+the poor beast half dead with hard going. The sinking sun was as red as
+October when we issued into the highroad and moved up it to the grove
+gate through the bloody wreckage of the fray. The Louisianians were
+camping in the woods-pasture, Ferry's scouts in the grove, and the
+captive Federals were in the road between, shut in by heavy guards. At
+our appearance they crowded around us, greeting their undone commander
+with proud words of sympathy and love, and he thanked them as proudly
+and lovingly, though he could scarcely speak, more than to ask every
+moment for water. A number of our Sessions house group crowded out to
+meet us at the veranda steps; Camille; Harry Helm with his right hand
+bandaged; Cecile, attended by two or three Sessions children; and behind
+all Miss Harper exclaiming "Ah, my boy, you're a welcome sight--Oh! is
+that Captain Jewett!"
+
+Two or three bystanders helped us bear him upstairs, where, turning from
+the bedside, I pressed Camille with eager questions.
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry? he's unhurt--and so is Mr. Gholson! Mr. Gholson's
+gone to Franklin for doctors; Lieutenant Ferry sent him; he's been
+sending everybody everywhere faster than anybody else could think of
+anything!"
+
+I asked where Ferry was now. Her eyes refilled--they were red from
+earlier distresses--and she motioned across the hall: "The captain of
+the Louisianians, you know, has sent for him!"
+
+"Yes," I said, "the Captain's hit hard. I saw him when he was struck."
+
+"Oh, Dick! then you were at the very front!"
+
+"Did you think I was at the rear?"
+
+She looked down. "I couldn't help hoping it."
+
+"Then you were thinking of me."
+
+"I prayed for you."
+
+Such news seemed but ill-gotten gains, to come before I had gathered
+courage to inquire after Charlotte Oliver. "Wh'--where is--where are
+the others?"
+
+"They're all about the house, tending the wounded; Mrs. Sessions is with
+the Squire, of course,--dear, brave old gentleman! we thought he was
+killed, but Charlotte found the ball had glanced."
+
+I asked if it was Oliver who shot him, and she nodded. "It was down at
+the front door; the Squire said he'd shoot him if he shot Charlotte, and
+Charlotte declared she'd shoot him if he shot the Squire, and all at
+once he shot at her and struck him."
+
+"Who was it that screamed; was it she?"
+
+My informant's head drooped low and she murmured, "It was I."
+
+"Then _you_ were at the front."
+
+"Did you think I was at the rear?"
+
+I fear I answered evasively. I added that I must go to Lieutenant Ferry,
+and started toward the door, but she touched my arm. "Oh, Dick, you
+should have heard him praise you to her!--and when he said you had
+chased Captain Jewett and was missing, she cried; but now I'll tell her
+you're here." She started away but returned. "Oh, Dick, isn't it
+wonderful how we're always victorious! why don't those poor Yankees give
+up the struggle? they must see that God is on our side!"
+
+As she left me, Ned Ferry came out with a sad face, but smiled gladly on
+me and caught me fondly by the arm. On hearing my brief report he
+saddened more than ever, and when I said I had promised Jewett he should
+hand his sword to none but him, "Oh!"--he smiled tenderly--"I don't want
+to refuse it; go in and hang it at the head of his bed as he would do in
+his own tent; I'll wait here."
+
+I pointed to the door he had softly closed behind him: "How is it in
+there?"
+
+"Ah, Richard, in there the war is all over."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"So called."
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+"SAYS QUINN, S'E"
+
+Lieutenant Helm came out as I went in, and I paused an instant to ask
+him in fierce suspicion if he had bandaged his hand himself. "No," he
+whispered, "Miss Camille." It was a lie, but I did not learn that until
+months after. "Come downstairs as soon as you can," he added, "there's a
+hot supper down there; first come first served." We parted.
+
+I found Miss Harper fanning the wounded giant and bathing his brows,
+and my smiles were ample explanation of my act as I hung the sword up.
+Then I brought in my leader. "Captain Jewett," he said after a nearly
+silent exchange of greetings, "I wish we had you uninjured."
+
+"Ah, no, Lieutenant, this is bad enough. Lieutenant, there is one
+matter--"
+
+"Yes, Captain, what is that?"
+
+"The villain who set those fires--you know who he is, I hope."
+
+"Yes, Captain, I know."
+
+"He didn't begin that until after he left me. I had some private reasons
+for not killing him when I might have done it."
+
+"Yes, Captain, I know that, too."
+
+"Yet if I had caught him again I would have strung him up to the first
+limb."
+
+"I have sent some picked men to catch him if they can," said Ferry, and
+the racked sufferer lifted a hand in approval. Camille came to her aunt
+and whispered "Mr. Gholson with two doctors." The wounded captive
+heard her.
+
+"Lieutenant," he panted, "I hope you'll--do me the favor--to let my turn
+with those gentlemen--come last,--after my boys,--will you?"
+
+"Ah! Captain, even our boys wouldn't allow that; no, here's a doctor,
+now."
+
+I went down to the supper-table. Camille was there, dispensing its
+promiscuous hospitality to men who ate like pigs. I would as leave have
+found her behind a French-market coffee-stand. Harry Helm, nursing his
+bandaged hand, was lolling back from the board and quizzing her with
+compliments while she cut up his food. A fellow in the chair next mine
+said he had seen me with Ferry when we joined the Louisianians' charge.
+"Your aide-de-camp friend over yonder's a-gitt'n' lots o' sweetenin'
+with his grub; well, he deserves it."
+
+I asked how he deserved it. "Why, we wouldn't 'a' got here in time if he
+hadn't 'a' met-up with us. That man Gholson, he's another good one."
+
+The latter remark seemed to me a feeler, and I ignored it, and inquired
+how Lieutenant Helm had got that furlough. (Furlough was our slang for a
+light wound.) "Oh, he got it mighty fair! Did you see that Yankee
+lieutenant with the big sabre-cut on his shoulder? Well, your friend
+yonder gave him that--and got the Yankee's pistol-shot in his hand. But
+that saved Gholson's life, for that shot was aimed to give Gholson a
+furlough to kingdom-come. Are they kinfolks?"
+
+I mumbled that they were not even friends. "Well, now, I suspicioned
+that,--when I first see 'em meet at the head of our column! But the
+aide-de-camp he took it so good-natured that, thinks I,--"
+
+Another of Ferry's men, seated opposite, swallowed hurriedly, and
+covertly put in--"Y' ought to hear what Quinn said to Gholson just now
+as they met-up out here in the hall. Quinn thought they were alone. Says
+Quinn, as cold as a fish, s's'e 'Mr. Gholson,' s'e, 'you're not a
+coward, sir, and that's why I'm curious to ask you a question,' s'e. And
+says Gholson, just as cold, s'e 'I'm prepared, Lieutenant Quinn, to
+answer it.' And says Quinn, s'e 'Why was it, that when Harry Helm struck
+that blow which saved your life, and which you knew was meant to save
+it, and you seen his sword shot out of his hand and three or four
+Yankees makin' a dead set to kill him, and nothin' else in any
+particular danger at all, why was it, Mr. Gholson, that you never turned
+a hand nor an eye to save him?'"
+
+"Great Scott! wha'd Gholson say?"
+
+"Gholson, s'e, 'I done as I done, sir, from my highest sense o' duty.
+This ain't Lieutenant Helm's own little private war, Lieutenant Quinn,
+nor mine, nor yours.'"
+
+"Jo'! that to Quinn! wha'd Quinn answer?"
+
+"Why, with that Quinn popped them big glass eyes o' his'n till the
+whites showed clear round the blue, and s'e 'I know it better than you
+do; that's just what it suited you to forget. Oh! I'd already seen
+through you in one flash, you sneak. It's good for you you're not in my
+command; I'd lift you to a higher sense of whose war this is, damn you,
+if I had to hang you up by the thumbs.' With that he started right on
+by, Gholson a-keepin' his face to him as he passed, when Ned Ferry
+and--her--came out o' the parlor, and Ned turned out on the rear gallery
+with Quinn while she sort o' smiled at Gholson to come to her and sent
+him off on some business or other. George! I never seen her so
+beautiful."
+
+Thereupon occurred a brief exchange of comments which seemed to me to
+carry by implication as fine a praise as could possibly come from two
+rough fellows of the camp. Speaking the names of Ferry and Charlotte in
+undertone, of course, but with the unrestraint of soldiers, they said
+their say without a shadow of inuendo in word or smile. Her presence,
+they agreed, always made them feel as though something out of the common
+"was bound to happen pretty quick," while his, they said, assured them
+that "whatever did happen would happen right." I turned with a frown as
+Harry laughed irrelevantly, and saw Camille and him smiling at me with
+childish playfulness. Then suddenly their smile changed and went beyond
+me, two or three men softly said "Smith!" and I was out of my chair and
+standing when Charlotte Oliver, in a low voice, tenderly accosted me.
+
+"Oh, Richard Thorndyke Smith!--alive and well! Lieutenant Ferry wants
+you; he has just gone to his camp-fire."
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+A HORSE! A HORSE!
+
+Night had fully come. A few bivouac fires burned low in the grove, and
+at one of them near the grove gate I found our young commander. On a
+bench made of a fence-rail and two forked stakes he sat between Quinn
+and the first-lieutenant of the Louisianians. The doctor whom I had seen
+before sat humped on his horse, facing the three young men and making
+clumsy excuses to Ferry for leaving. The other physician would stay for
+some time yet, he said, and he, himself, was leaving his instruments,
+such as they were, and would return in the morning. "Fact is, my son's a
+surgeon, and he taken all my best instruments with _him._"
+
+"When; where is he?" eagerly asked Quinn, seeing Ferry was not going to
+ask.
+
+"My son? Oh, he's in Virginia, with General Lee."
+
+"Hell!" grunted Quinn, but the doctor pretended to listen to Ferry.
+
+"Ah, but we move south at day-light; the prisoners and wounded we send
+east, to Hazlehurst," said our leader, with a restraining hand on
+Quinn's knee. The other lieutenant made some inquiry of him, and the
+doctor was ignored, but stayed on, and as I stood waiting to be noticed
+I gathered a number of facts. The lightly injured would go in a
+plantation wagon; for the few gravely hurt there was the Harpers'
+ambulance, which had just arrived to take the ladies back to Squire
+Wall's, near Brookhaven, alas! instead of to Louisiana. For the ladies
+Charlotte's spring-wagon was to be appropriated, one of them riding
+beside it on horseback, and there was to be sent with them, besides
+Charlotte's old black driver, "a reliable man well mounted." Whoever
+that was to be it was not Harry, for he was to go south with a small
+guard, bearing the body of the Louisiana captain to his home between the
+hostile lines behind Port Hudson.
+
+"Good-night, gentlemen," said the doctor at last. As he passed into the
+darkness Quinn bent a mock frown upon his young superior.
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry, the next time I have to express my disgust please to
+keep your hand off my knee, will you?"
+
+Ferry's response was to lay it back again and there ensued a puerile
+tussle that put me in a precious pout, that I should be kept waiting by
+such things. But presently the three parted to resume their several
+cares, and the moment Ferry touched my arm to turn me back toward the
+house I was once more his worshipper. "Well!" he began, "you have now
+_two_ fine horses, eh?"
+
+"Oh, by Regulations, I suppose, I ought to turn one of them over to
+Major Harper. I wish it were to you, Lieutenant; I'd keep my own--he'll
+be all right in a day or two--and give you Captain Jewett's."
+
+"Well,--just for a day or two,--do that, while I lend my horse to a
+friend."
+
+I had already asked myself what was to become of Charlotte Oliver while
+the Harpers were preempting her little wagon, and now I took keen alarm.
+"Why, Lieutenant, I shall be glad! But why not lend Captain Jewett's
+horse and keep yours? Yours is right now the finest and freshest mount
+in the command."
+
+"Yes, 'tis for that I lend him."
+
+We went on in silence. Startled and distressed, I pondered. What was her
+new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this
+from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would
+know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like
+smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry
+with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now,
+unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse
+to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing himself to speed
+Beauty--oh, how different! What was the all-subordinating need?
+
+As we entered the hall I came to a conviction which lightened my heart;
+the all-subordinating need was--Oliver. I thought I could see why. The
+spring of all his devilish behavior lay in those relations to her for
+which I knew she counted herself chargeable through her past mistakes.
+Unless I guessed wrong her motives had risen. I believed her aim was
+now, at whatever self-hazard, to stop this hideous one-woman's war, and
+to speed her unfinished story to the fairest possible outcome for all
+God's creatures, however splendidly or miserably the "fool in it" should
+win or lose. We stopped and waited for Cecile and the remaining doctor,
+she with a lighted candle, to come down the stairs. From two rooms
+below, where most of the wounded lay, there came women's voices softly
+singing, and Charlotte's was among them. Their song was one listening to
+which many a boy in blue, many a lad in gray, has died: "Rock me to
+sleep, mother."
+
+Cecile and the doctor had come from the bedside of the Union captain,
+where Miss Harper remained. "I've done all I can," he said to Ferry; "we
+old chill-and-fever doctors wa'n't made for war-times; he may get well
+and he may not."
+
+"Smith," said Ferry, "go up and stay with him till further orders."
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+"BEAR A MESSAGE AND A TOKEN"
+
+Late in the night Gholson came to the Union captain's bedside for Miss
+Harper. Charlotte had sent him; the doctor had left word what to do if a
+certain patient's wound should re-open, and this had happened. The three
+had succeeded in stanching it, but Charlotte had prevailed upon Miss
+Harper to lie down, and the weary lady had, against all her intentions,
+fallen asleep. I was alone with the wounded captain. He did not really
+sleep, but under the weight of his narcotics drowsed, muttered, stirred,
+moaned, and now and then spoke out.
+
+Sitting in the open window, I marked the few red points of dying
+firelight grow fewer in the bivouac under the grove. Out there by the
+gate Ned Ferry slept. Fireflies blinked, and beyond the hazy fields rose
+the wasted moon, by the regal slowness of whose march I measured the
+passage of time as I had done two nights before. My vigil was a sad one,
+but, in health, in love, in the last of my teens and in the silent
+company of such a moon, my straying thoughts lingered most about the
+maiden who had "prayed for me." My hopes grew mightily. Yet with them
+grew my sense of need to redouble a lover's diligence. I resolved never
+again to leave great gaps in my line of circumvallation about the city
+of my siege, as I had done in the past--two days. I should move to the
+final assault, now, at the earliest favorable moment, and the next
+should see the rose-red flag of surrender rise on her temples; in war it
+is white, but in love it is red.
+
+First favorable moment; ah! but when would that be? Who was to convey
+the Harpers to Hazlehurst? Well, thank Heaven! not Harry. Scott Gholson?
+Gholson was due at headquarters. Poor Gholson! much rest for racked
+nerves had he found here; what with Ferry, and Harry, and the fight, and
+Quinn, I wondered he did not lie down and die under the pure suffocation
+of his "tchagrin." Even a crocodile, I believed, could suffer from
+chagrin, give him as many good causes as Gholson had accumulated. But
+no, the heaven of "Charlie Tolliver's" presence and commands--she seemed
+to have taken entire possession of him--lifted and sustained him above
+the clouds of all unkinder things.
+
+A faint stir at the threshold caught my ear and I discerned in the hall
+a young negro woman. The light of an unseen candle made her known at a
+glance; she had been here since the previous evening, as I knew, though
+it chanced that I had not seen her; Oliver's best wedding-gift, the
+slave maid whom I had seen with Charlotte in the curtained wagon at
+Gallatin. I stole out to her; she courtesied. "Miss Charlotte say ef you
+want he'p you fine me a-sett'n' on de step o' de stairs hafe-ways down."
+
+I inquired if she was leaving us. "She a-gitt'n' ready, suh; Misteh
+Goshen done gone to de sta-able to git de hosses." The girl suddenly
+seemed pleased with herself. "Mis' Charlotte would 'a' been done gone
+when de yethehs went--dem-ah two scouts what was sent ayfteh _him_--ef I
+hadn' spoke' up when I did."
+
+"Indeed! how was that?"
+
+"Why, I says, s' I, 'Mis' Charlotte, how we know he ain' gwine fo' to
+double on his huntehs? Betteh wait a spell, and den ef no word come back
+dat he a-doublin', you kin be sho' he done lit out fo' to jine de
+Yankees roun' Pote Hudsom.'"
+
+"Why did you tell her that? You want him caught; so do I; but you know
+she doesn't want to catch him, and you don't want her to. Neither do I.
+Nor neither do we want Lieutenant Ferry to catch him."
+
+"No, suh, dass so. But same time, while she no notion o' gitt'n' him
+cotch, she believe she dess djuty-bound to head-off his devilment. 'Tis
+dess like I heah' Mr. Goshen say to Miss Hahpeh, 'Dis ain't ow own
+li'l pri'--'"
+
+I waved her away and went back into the room; the Captain had called. He
+asked the time of night; I said it was well after two; he murmured, was
+quiet, and after a moment spoke my name. I answered, and he whispered
+"Coralie Rothvelt--she's here; I--recognized her voice--when they were
+singing. Did you know I knew her?"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"Daring game that was you fellows let her put up on us night before
+last, my boy,--and it hung by a thread. If our officers had only asked
+the old man his name--it would have been--a flash of light. If I had
+dreamed, when I saw--you and Ned Ferry--yesterday,--that Coralie
+Rothvelt was--Charlotte Oliver,--and could have known her then--as
+I've--learned to know her--to-day--from her--worst enemy,--you know,--"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"I should--have turned back, my boy." After a silence the hero said more
+to himself than to me "Ah, if my brother were here to-night--I
+might live!"
+
+Many days afterward I thought myself dull not to have guessed what that
+speech meant, but now I was too distressed by the change I saw coming
+over him to do any surmising. He began to say things entirely to
+himself. "Home!" he murmured; "sweet, sweet home!--my home! my
+country!--My God, my country, my home!--Smith,--you know what that is
+you're--wiping off my brow,--don't you?"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"I--I didn't want you to be--taken too unpleasantly by surprise--just at
+the--end. You know what's--happening,--don't you?"
+
+"Yes, Captain." As I wiped the brow again I heard the tread of two
+horses down in front of the house; they were Gholson's, and Ned Ferry's
+for Charlotte. "Captain, may I go and bring her--tell her what you say,
+and bring her?"
+
+"Do you think she'd come? She'd have gone to Ship Island if I had caught
+her."
+
+"I know she'll come."
+
+"I wish she would; she could 'bear a message and a token,' as the song
+says."
+
+She came. I met her outside the door, and for a moment I feared she
+would come no farther. "How can I, Richard! Oh, how can I?" she
+whispered; "this is my doing!" But presently she stood at the bedside
+calm and compassionate, in the dark dress and limp hat of two nights
+before. The dying man's eyes were lustrous with gratitude.
+
+"I have one or two things," he said, after a few words of greeting,
+"that I'd like to send home--to my mother--and my wife; some
+trifles--and a message or two; if I--if--if I--"
+
+"Will you let me take them?" Charlotte asked. I did not see or hear what
+they were; Gholson beckoned me into the hall. He did not whisper; there
+are some people, you know, who can never exercise enough
+self-suppression to whisper; he mumbled. He admitted the dying had some
+rights, but--he feared the delay might result unfortunately; wanted me
+to tell Charlotte so, and was sure I was ever so wrong to ask to have
+Ned Ferry awakened for the common incident of a prisoner's death; he
+would let him know the moment he awoke.
+
+When I came back into the room the captive had asked Charlotte to pray.
+"Tisn't that I'm--the least bit afraid," he was saying.
+
+"Oh, no," she responded, wiping his brow, "why should you be? Dying
+isn't nearly so fearful a thing as living. I'd rather, now, you'd pray
+for me; I'm such an unbeliever--in the beliefs, I mean, the beliefs the
+church people think we can't get on without. My religion is scarcely
+anything but longings and strivings"--she sadly smiled--"longings and
+strivings and hopes."
+
+"Yet you wouldn't--"
+
+"Part with it? Oh, not for the world beside!"
+
+"Neither would I--with mine." The soldier folded his hands in
+supplication. "Neither would I--though mine, O Lord--is only
+the--old-fashioned sort--for whose beliefs our fathers--used to kill one
+another; God have mercy--on them--and us."
+
+There was a great stillness. Against the bedside Charlotte had sunk to
+her knees, and under the broad brim of her Leghorn hat leaned her brow
+upon her folded hands. Thus, presently, she spoke again.
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+CHARLOTTE SINGS
+
+"I know, Captain," she said, "that we can't have longings, strivings, or
+hopes, without beliefs; beliefs are what they live on. I believe in
+being strong and sweet and true for the pure sake of being so; and yet
+more for the world's sake; and as much more again for God's sake as God
+is greater than his works. I believe in beauty and in joy. I believe
+they are the goal of all goodness and of all God's work and wish. As to
+resurrection, punishment, and reward, I can't see what my noblest choice
+has to do with them; they seem to me to be God's part of the matter;
+mine is to love perfect beauty and perfect joy, both in and infinitely
+beyond myself, with the desiring love with which I rejoice to believe
+God loves them, and to pity the lack of them with the loving pity with
+which God pities it. And above all I believe that no beauty and no joy
+can be perfect apart from a love that loves the whole world's joy better
+than any separate joy of any separate soul."
+
+"Thank you," was murmured from the pillow. Then, as Charlotte once more
+wiped the damp brow, the captive said, with much labor, "After that--war
+seems--an awful thing. I suppose it isn't half so much a crime--as it is
+a--penalty--for the crimes that bring it on. But anyhow--you
+know--being--" The bugle rang out the reveille.
+
+"Being a soldier," said Charlotte, "you want to die like one?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!--the best I can. I'd like to sit half up--and hold my
+sword--if there's--no objection. I've loved it so! It would almost be
+like holding--the hand that's far away. Of course, it isn't really
+necessary, but--it would be more like--dying--for my country."
+
+He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his
+hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing
+from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts
+had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled
+close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of
+Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly:
+"Dying--really?" He turned to his fellows--"Boys, Captain's dying."
+
+Every Northern eye was lifted to the window and I turned away.
+"Richard!" gently called Charlotte, and I saw the end was at hand; a new
+anguish was on the brow; yet the soldier was asking for a song; "a
+soldier's song, will you?"
+
+"Why, Captain," she replied, "you know, we don't sing the same words to
+our soldier-songs that you do--except in the hymns. Shall I sing 'Am I a
+soldier of the cross?'"
+
+He did not answer promptly; but when he did he said "Yes--sing that."
+
+She sang it. As the second stanza was begun we heard a responsive swell
+grow softly to fuller and fuller volume beneath the windows; the
+prisoners were singing. I heard an austere voice forbid it, but it rose
+straight on from strength to strength:
+
+"Sure I must fight if I would win,
+   Increase my courage, Lord.
+I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
+   Supported by thy word."
+
+The dying man lifted a hand and Charlotte ceased. He had not heard the
+muffled chorus of his followers below; or it may be that he had, and
+that the degree of liberty they seemed to be enjoying prompted him to
+seek the new favor he now asked. I did not catch his words, but
+Charlotte heard, and answered tenderly, yet with a thrill of pain so
+keen she could not conceal it even from him.
+
+"Oh! you wouldn't ask a rebel to sing that," she sighed, "would you?"
+
+He made no rejoinder except that his eyes were insistent. She wiped his
+temples. "I hate to refuse you."
+
+His gaze was grateful. She spoke again: "I suppose I oughtn't to mind
+it."
+
+Miss Harper came in, and Charlotte, taking her hand without a glance,
+told the Captain's hard request under her voice. Miss Harper, too, in
+her turn, gave a start of pain, but when the dying eyes and smile turned
+pleadingly to her she said, "Why, if you can, Charlotte, dear, but oh!
+how can you?"
+
+Charlotte addressed the wounded man: "Just a little bit of it, will that
+do?" and as he eagerly assented she added, to Miss Harper, "You know,
+dear, in its history it's no more theirs than ours."
+
+"No, not so much," said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and
+thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing:
+
+  "O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
+  What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"
+
+But guardedly as she began, the effect on the huddled crowd below was
+instant and electrical. They heard almost the first note; looking down
+anxiously, I saw the wonder and enthusiasm pass from man to man. They
+heard the first two lines in awed, ecstatic silence; but at the third,
+warily, first one, then three, then a dozen, then a score, bereft of
+arms, standard, and leader, little counting ever again to see freedom,
+flag, or home, they raised their voices, by the dawn's early light, in
+their song of songs.
+
+Our main body were out in the highway, just facing into column, and the
+effect on them I could not see. The prisoners' guards, though instantly
+ablaze with indignation, were so taken by surprise that for two or three
+seconds, with carbines at a ready, they--and even their sergeant in
+command--only darted fierce looks here and there and up at me. The
+prisoners must have been used to singing in ordered chorus, for one of
+them strode into their middle, and smiling sturdily at the maddened
+guard and me, led the song evenly. "No, sir!" he cried, as I made an
+angry sign for them to desist, "one verse through, if every damned fool
+of us dies for it--let the Captain hear it boys--sing!
+
+  "'The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air--'"
+
+Charlotte had ceased, in consternation not for the conditions without
+more than for those within. With the first strong swell of the song from
+below, the dying leader strove to sit upright and to lift his blade, but
+failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss
+Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching
+his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face
+untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into and over
+the strain.
+
+"Club that man over the head!" cried the sergeant of the guard, and one
+of his men swung a gun; but the Yankee sprang inside of its sweep,
+crying, "Sing her through, boys!" grappled his opponent, and hurled him
+back. In the same instant the sergeant called steadily, "Guard,
+ready--aim--"
+
+There sounded a clean slap of levelled carbines, yet from the prisoners
+came the continued song in its closing couplet:
+
+  "The star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave!--"
+
+and out of the midst of its swell the oaths and curses and defiant
+laughter of a dozen men crying, with tears in their eyes, "Shoot! shoot!
+why don't you shoot?"
+
+But the command to fire did not come; suddenly there was a drumming of
+hoofs, then their abrupt stoppage, and the voice of a vigilant commander
+called, "Attention!"
+
+With a few words to the sergeant, more brief than harsh, and while the
+indomitable singers pressed on to the very close of the stanza without a
+sign from him to desist, Ferry bade the subaltern resume his command,
+and turned toward me at the window. He lifted his sword and spoke in a
+lowered tone, the sullen guard stood to their arms, and every captive
+looked up for my reply.
+
+"Shall I come?" he inquired; but I shook my head.
+
+"What!--gone?" he asked again, and I nodded. He turned and trotted
+lightly after the departing column. I remember his pensive mien as he
+moved down the grove, and how a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above
+his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender
+mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and
+let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his
+place under the window and was beckoning for my attention.
+
+"Is she coming?" he called up, and Charlotte, at my side, spoke
+downward:
+
+"I shall be with you in a moment."
+
+While he waited the second lieutenant of the Louisianians came, and as
+guard and prisoners started away she came out upon the veranda steps.
+Across her knee, as she and Gholson galloped off by a road across
+fields, lay in a wrapping of corn-husks the huge sabre of the dead
+northerner.
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+HARRY LAUGHS
+
+The first hush of the deserted camp-ground was lost in the songs of
+returning birds. Captain Jewett, his majestic length blanket-bound from
+brow to heel as trimly as a bale, had been laid under ground, and the
+Harpers stood in prayer at the grave's head and foot with hats on for
+their journey. The burial squad, turned guard of honor to the dead
+captain of the Louisianians, were riding away on either side of a light
+wagon that bore his mortal part. I, after all, was to be the Harpers'
+guardian on their way.
+
+Day widened into its first perfection as we moved down the highroad
+toward a near fork whose right was to lead Harry and his solemn cortege
+southward, while the left should be our eastward course. Camille and I
+rode horseback, side by side, with no one near enough to smile at my
+sentimental laudations of the morning's splendors, or at her for
+repaying my eloquence with looks so full of tender worship, personal
+acceptance and self-bestowal, that to tell of them here would make as
+poor a show as to lift a sea-flower out of the sea; they call for
+piccolo notes and I am no musician.
+
+The familiar little leather-curtained wagon was just ahead of us,
+bearing the other three Harpers, the old negro driver and--to complete
+its overloading--his daughter, Charlotte's dark maid. Beside the wheels
+ambled and babbled Harry Helm. At the bridge he fell back to us and
+found us talking of Charlotte. Camille was telling me how well Charlotte
+knew the region south of us, and how her plan was to dine at mid-day
+with such a friend and to pass the night with such another; but the
+moment Harry came up she began to upbraid him in her mellowest
+flute-notes for not telling us that he had got his wound in saving--
+
+"Now, you ladies--" cried the teased aide-de-camp, "I--I didn't save
+Gholson's life! I didn't try to save it! I only tried to split a
+Yankee's head and didn't even do that! Dick Smith, if you tell anybody
+else that I saved--Well, who did, then? Good Lordy! if I'd known that to
+save a man's life would make all this fuss I wouldn't 'a' done it! Why,
+Quinn and I had to sit and listen to Ned Ferry a solid half-hour last
+night, telling us the decent things he'd known Gholson to do, and the
+allowances we'd ought to make for a man with Gholson's sort of a
+conscience! And then, to cap--to clap--to clap the ki'--to cap--the
+_climax_--consound that word, I never did know what it meant--to clap
+the climax, Ned sends for Gholson and gets Quinn to speak to him
+civilly--aw, haw, haw!--Quinn showing all the time how he hated the job,
+like a cat when you make him jump over a stick! And then he led us on,
+with just a word here and there, until we all agreed as smooth as glass,
+that all Quinn had said was my fault, and all I had done was Gholson's
+fault, and all Gholson had said or done or left undone was our fault,
+and the rest was partly Ned's fault, but mostly accident."
+
+Camille declared she did not and would not believe there had been any
+fault with any one, anywhere, and especially with Mr. Gholson, and I
+liked Lieutenant Helm less than ever, noticing anew the unaccountable
+freedom with which Camille seemed to think herself entitled to rebuke
+him. "Oh, I'm in your power," he cried to her, "and I'll call him a
+spotless giraffe if you want me to! that's what he is; I've always
+thought so!" The spring-wagon was taking the left fork and he cantered
+ahead to begin his good-byes there and save her for the last. When he
+made his adieu to her he said, "Won't you let Mr. Smith halt here with
+me a few moments? I want to speak of one or two matters that--"
+
+She resigned me almost with scorn; which privately amused me, and, I
+felt sure, hoodwinked the aide-de-camp.
+
+"Say, Dick!" he began, as she moved away, "look here, I'm going to tell
+you something; Ned Ferry's in love with Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"Yes, I do, mean it! Smith, Ned's a grand fellow. I'm glad I came here
+yesterday."
+
+"Yes, you've secured a furlough."
+
+"Oh, this thing, yes; don't you wish you had it! No, I'm glad I came,
+for what I've learned. I'm glad for what Ned Ferry has taught me a man
+can do, and keep from doing, when he's got the upper hold of himself.
+And I'm glad for what she--you know who--by George! any man would know
+who ever saw her, for she draws every man who comes within her range, as
+naturally as a rose draws a bee. I'm glad for what she has taught me a
+woman can _be_, and can keep from being, so long as she knows there's
+one real man to live up to! just _up to_, mind you, I don't even say to
+live _for_."
+
+I stared with surprise. Was this the trivial Harry talking? Fact is, the
+pair we were talking about had by some psychical magic rarified the
+atmosphere for all of us until half our notes were above our
+normal pitch.
+
+"Do you mean she loves him; what sign of such a thing did she show
+yesterday or last evening?"
+
+"Not a sign of a sign! And yet I'll swear it! Do you know where she's
+gone?"
+
+"To-day? I think I do."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Well, Lieutenant, if I were she, _I_ should go straight into the Yankee
+lines behind Port Hudson. She's got Jewett's messages and his sword, and
+the Yank's won't know her as a Confederate any better than they ever
+did; for it's only these men whom we've captured who have found out
+she's Charlotte Oliver, or that she had any knowing part in General
+Austin's ruse."
+
+"If Oliver doesn't tell," said Harry, lifting his bad hand in pain.
+
+"He will not dare! If she can only get her word in first and tell them,
+herself, that he's Charlotte Oliver's husband and has just led the
+finest company of Federal scouts in the two States to destruction--"
+
+"Hi! that ought to cook his dough!--with her face--and her voice!"
+
+"Yes," I responded, "--and his breath."
+
+"And why do you think she wants to do this?" asked Harry.
+
+"She doesn't want to do it; but she feels she must, knowing that every
+blow he strikes from now on is struck on her account. I believe she's
+gone to warn the Yankees that his whole animus is personal revenge and
+that he will sacrifice anything or anybody, any principle or pledge or
+cause, at any moment, to wreak that private vengeance, in whole or
+in part."
+
+"Dick Smith, yes! But don't you see, besides, what she _does_ want? Why,
+she wants to keep Oliver and Ferry apart until somebody else for whom
+she doesn't care as she cares for Ned, say you, or I, or--or--"
+
+"Gholson?"
+
+"Gholson, no! she can't trust Gholson, Gholson's conscience is too
+vindictive; that's why she's keeping him with her as long as she can.
+No, but until some of us, I say, can give Oliver a thousand times better
+than he ought ever to get--except for her sake--"
+
+"Yes, you mean a soldier's clean death; and what you want of me is for
+me to say that I, for one, will lose no honest chance to give it to him,
+isn't it?"
+
+"What I want of you, Smith, is to tell you that _I_ shall lose no such
+chance."
+
+"Well, neither shall I."
+
+"Bully for you, Dick; bully boy with the glass eye! You see, you're one
+of only half a dozen or so that know Oliver when they see him; so Ned
+will soon be sending you after him. Ned's got a conscience, too, you
+know, as squirmy as Gholson's. Oh, Lord! yes, you don't often _see_ it,
+but it's as big and hard as a conscript's ague-cake." The Lieutenant
+gathered his rein; "Smith, I want Ned and her to get one another;
+that's me!"
+
+I was tempted to say it was me, too, but I forbore and only said it was
+I.
+
+"All the same," said Harry, "I'm sorry for the little girl!"
+
+"Little girl?"
+
+"Oh, come, now, you know!" He leaned to me and whispered, "Miss Cecile!"
+
+"Lieutenant," I replied, with a flush, realizing what I owed to the
+family as a prospective member of it, "you're mistaking a little
+patriotic ardor--"
+
+"Pat who--oh? I tell you, my covey,--and of course, you understand, I
+wouldn't breathe it any further--"
+
+"I'd rather you would not."
+
+"Phew-ew! I don't know why in the devil _you'd_ rather I would not,
+but--Smith,--she's so dead-gone in love with Ned Ferry, that if she
+doesn't get him--I George! it'll e'en a'most kill her!"
+
+I guffawed in derision. "And she didn't even have to tell you so! She
+can't even hide its deadly intensity from the casual bystander! haw!
+haw! haw! And it's all the outcome of a _three-days acquaintance_! It
+beats Doctor Swiftgrow's Mustache Invigor'--aw, haw! haw!" "Oh, you
+think so? Pity you couldn't get a few barrels of it--aw, haw! haw!" said
+Harry, and my laughter left off where his began. But, some way hurting
+his hand, he, too, stopped short. I drew my horse back.
+
+"Is that all you've noticed?" I smilingly inquired. "Isn't anybody else
+mortally in love with anybody else? You can't make me believe that's all
+you know!"
+
+"Well, then, I sha'n't try. I do know one thing more; heard it
+yesterday. Like to hear it?"
+
+"Like! Why, I'm just that dead-gone with curiosity that if I don't hear
+it it'll e'en a'most kill me--aw, haw! haw! haw!"
+
+"Well, I'm tired saving people's lives, but we won't count this one; you
+say you want to hear it--I can't give you all of it but it begins:
+
+"'Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair!
+  O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!'--
+
+"Haw! haw! haw! Good-bye, Smith,--aw, haw! haw! haw!--and it's all the
+outcome of a three-days acquaintance!--haw! haw! haw!--Oh,
+say!--Smith!"--I was leaving him--"that's right, go back and begin
+over!--'Return! return!'--aw, haw! haw! haw!"
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+UNIMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIAL
+
+On the second night after that morning of frantic mortification I was
+riding at Ned Ferry's side, in Louisiana. The camp of the brigade was a
+few miles behind us. Somewhere in front of us, fireless and close hid,
+lay our company of scouts, ahead of whose march he had pushed the day
+before to confer with the General, and we were now on our way to rejoin
+them. Under our horses' feet was that old Plank-road which every
+"buttermilk ranger" must remember--whether dead or not, I am tempted to
+say,--who rode under either flag in the Felicianas in '63 and '64.
+
+Late in the evening of the day on which I had conducted the Harpers to
+Squire Wall's I had received a despatch ordering me to board the next
+morning's train at Brookhaven with my horse. On it I should find a
+number of cases of those shoes I had seen at Hazlehurst. At Tangipahoa I
+was to transfer them to one or two army-wagons which would by that time
+have reached there, and bring them across to Clinton, where a guard
+would meet and join me to conduct the wagons to camp. And thus I had
+done, bearing with me a sad vision of dear dark Miss Harper fluttering
+her handkerchief above her three nieces' heads, one of whom refrained
+until the opportunity had all but gone, to wave good-bye to the visibly
+wretched author of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes." My
+lucky Cricket had gone three nights and two whole days with no harness
+but his halter, and to-night, beside the Yankee's horse, that still bore
+Ned Ferry, he was as good as new. My leader and I talked of Charlotte.
+In the middle of this day's forenoon Gholson had come into camp
+reporting at the General's tent the long ride she had made on Monday; as
+good a fifty miles as Ferry's own. We called it, now, Ferry and I, a
+most clever achievement for a woman. "Many women," he said, "know how to
+ride, but she knows how to march."
+
+"I think you must have taught her," I responded, and he enjoyed his
+inability to deny it. So I ventured farther and said she seemed to me
+actually to have reached, in the few days since I had first seen her, a
+finer spiritual stature.
+
+"She?" he asked; "ah! she is of the kind that must grow or die. Yes, you
+may be right; but in that time she has kept me so occupied growing,
+myself, that I did not notice she was doing the same. But also, I think,
+the eyes with which we look at her have grown."
+
+"She has outgrown this work," I insisted.
+
+"Those letters--to the newspapers?"
+
+"No, this other; this work which she has to do by craft and wiles and
+disguises. Lieutenant, I don't believe she can go on doing that now with
+her past skill, since life has become to her a nobler story than it
+promised to be."
+
+My companion lifted higher in the saddle with delight. Then soberly he
+said, "We have got to lose her." I turned inquiringly and he continued:
+"She has done me the honor to tell me--Miss Harper and me--that if she
+succeeds in what she is now trying to do--you know?--"
+
+"I think I do. It's to prevent Oliver from making himself useful to the
+enemy, isn't it?"
+
+"Well--like that; and she says if she comes out all right she will leave
+us; yes, for the hospital service."
+
+"Hosp'--Oh--oh! gangrene, typhoid, lock-jaw, itch, small-pox! Isn't she
+deep enough in the hospital service already, with her quinine dolls?"
+
+"Ah! but she cannot continue to play dolls that way; she must find
+something else. I see you have my temptation; yes, the desire to see her
+always doing something splendid. That is not 'real life,' as you call
+it. And besides, was not that you said one time to me 'No splendor
+shines at last so far as a hidden splendor'?"
+
+"No, sir! I suppose it's true, but I never want to see her splendor
+shining through pock-marks." The reply won from him a gesture of
+approval, and this gave me a reckless tongue. "Why, if I were you,
+Lieutenant, she simply shouldn't go! Good Heaven! isn't she far enough
+away at the nearest? How can you tamely--no, I don't mean tamely,
+but--how can you _endure_ to let this matter drift--how can you
+endure it?"
+
+At the beginning of my question he straightened exactly as I had seen
+him do in the middle of the lane when our recoiled column was
+staggering; but as my extravagance flamed up he quieted rebukingly, and
+with a quieter smile than ever asked "Is that a soldier's question?
+Smith, is there not something wrong with you to-night?"
+
+"There always is," I replied.
+
+"No, but to-night I think you are taking that 'lower fork' you talk
+sometimes about. Of course, if you don't want to tell--"
+
+"_May_ I tell you?"
+
+"Ah, certainly! Is it that little Harper girl?"
+
+I nodded, all choked up. When I could speak I had to drop the words by
+ones and twos, and did not so much as say them as let them bleed from my
+lips; and never while I live shall I forget the sweet, grave, perfect
+sympathy with which my friend listened and led me on, and listened and
+led me on. I said I had never believed in love at first sight until now
+when it had come upon me to darken and embitter my life henceforth.
+
+He replied that certainly love sometimes _germinated_ at first sight,
+and I interrupted greedily that that was all I claimed--except that love
+could also, at times, _grow to maturity_ with amazing speed, a speed I
+never could have credited previous to these last four days. And he
+admitted as much, but thought time only could prove such love; whereto I
+rejoined that that was what she had answered.
+
+He glanced at me suddenly, then smoothed his horse's mane, and said,
+gently, "That means you have declared yourself to her?"
+
+I confessed I had, and told him how, on our journey to Squire Wall's,
+being stung to desperation by the infantile way in which she had drooled
+out to others what my love had sacredly confided to her alone, I had
+abruptly confronted her with the fact, and in the ensuing debate,
+carried away by the torrent of my emotions, had offered her my love, for
+life and all.
+
+"And she--ah, yes. I see; and I see, too, that in all she ever said or
+did or seemed, before, she never made herself such a treasure to be
+longed for and fought and lived for as in the way in which she--"
+He paused.
+
+"Refused me! Oh, it's so; it's so! Ah! if you could have witnessed her
+dignity, her wisdom, her grace, her compassionate immovableness, you'd
+never think of her as the little Harper girl again. She said that if the
+unpremeditated, headlong way in which I had told my passion were my only
+mistake, and if it were only for my sake, she would not, if she could,
+answer favorably, and that I, myself, at last, would not have a girl who
+would have a man who would offer his love in that way, and that she
+would not have a man who would have a girl who would have a man who
+should offer his love in that way."
+
+I call it one of the sweetest kindnesses ever done me, that Ned Ferry
+heard me to the end of that speech and did not smile. Instead he asked
+"Did she say that as if a'--as if--amused?"
+
+"No, Lieutenant, she nearly cried. Oh, I wish we were on some dangerous
+errand to-night, instead of just camp and bed!"
+
+"Well, that's all right, Richard; we are."
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+"CAN I GET THERE BY CANDLE-LIGHT?"
+
+After a few minutes we quitted the public way by an obscure path in the
+woods on our right. When we had followed this for two or three miles we
+turned to the left again and pressed as softly as we could into a low
+tangled ground where the air seemed stagnant and mosquitoes stung
+savagely. We wiped away the perspiration in streams. I pushed forward to
+Ferry's side and whispered my belief that at last we were to see rain.
+
+"Yes," he said, "and with thunder and lightning; just what we want
+to-night."
+
+I asked why. "Oh, they hate our thunder-storms, those Yankee patrols."
+
+Presently we were in a very dark road, and at a point where it dropped
+suddenly between steep sides we halted in black shadow. A gleam of pale
+sand, a whisper of deep flowing waters, and a farther glimmer of more
+sands beyond them challenged our advance. We had come to a "grapevine
+ferry." The scow was on the other side, the water too shoal for the
+horses to swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the
+blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering,
+long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little
+sinner the screech-owl. Ferry murmured to me to answer it and I sent the
+same faint horror-stricken tremolo back. Again it came to us, from not
+farther than one might toss his cap, and I followed Ferry down to the
+water's edge. The grapevine guy swayed at our side, we heard the scow
+slide from the sands, and in a few moments, moved by two videttes, it
+touched our shore. Soon we were across, the two videttes riding with us,
+and beyond a sharp rise, in an old opening made by the swoop of a
+hurricane, we entered the silent unlighted bivouac of Ferry's scouts.
+Ferry got down and sat on the earth talking with Quinn, while the
+sergeants quietly roused the sleepers to horse.
+
+Now we marched, and when we had gone a mile or so Ned Ferry turned
+aside, taking with him only Sergeant Jim, Kendall, another private, and
+me. We went at an alert walk single-file for the better part of an hour
+and stopped at length in a narrow untilled "deadening." Beyond it at our
+left a faint redness shone just above the tree-tops. At our right, in
+the northwest, a similar glow was ruddier, the heavens being darker
+there except when once or twice they paled with silent lightnings.
+Sergeant Jim went forward alone and on foot, and presently was back
+again, whispering to Ferry and remounting.
+
+Ferry led Kendall and me into the woods, the other two remaining. We
+found rising ground, and had ridden but a few minutes when from its
+crest we looked upon a startling sight. In front of us was a stretch of
+specially well farmed land. Our woods swept round it on both sides,
+crossed a highway, and gradually closed in again so as to terminate the
+opening about half a mile away. Always the same crops, bottom cause of
+the war: from us to the road an admirable planting of cotton, and from
+there to the farther woods as goodly a show of thick corn. The whole
+acreage swept downward to that terminus, at the same time sinking inward
+from the two sides. On the highway shone the lighted rear window of a
+roadside "store," and down the two sides of the whole tract stretched
+the hundred tent-fires of two brigade camps of the enemy's cavalry.
+Their new, white canvases were pitched in long, even alleys following
+the borders of the wood, from which the brush had been cut away far
+enough for half of them to stand under the trees. The men had quieted
+down to sleep, but at one tent very near us a group of regimental
+officers sat in the light of a torch-basket, and by them were planted
+their colors. A quartet of capital voices were singing, and one who
+joined the chorus, standing by the flag, absently yet caressingly spread
+it at such breadth that we easily read on it the name of the command.
+Let me leave that out.
+
+As they sang, and as we sat in our saddles behind the low fence that ran
+quite round the opening, Ferry turned from looking across into the
+lighted window on the road and handed me his field-glass. "How many
+candles do you see in there?"
+
+I saw two. "Yes," he said, dismounting and motioning me to do the same.
+Kendall took our bridles. Leaving him with the animals we went over the
+fence, through the cotton, across the road at a point terribly near the
+lighted and guarded shop, and on down the field of corn, to and over its
+farthest fence; stooping, gliding, halting, crouching, in the
+cotton-rows and corn-rows; taking every posture two upright gentlemen
+would rather not take; while nevertheless I swelled with pride, to be
+alone at the side--or even at the heels--of one who, for all this
+apparent skulking and grovelling, and in despite of all the hidden
+drawings of his passion for a fair woman at this hour somewhere in
+peril, kept his straight course in lion-hearted pursuit of his duty (as
+he saw it) to a whole world of loves and lovers, martyrs and fighters,
+hosts of whom had as good a right to their heart's desire as I to mine
+or he to his; and I remembered Charlotte Oliver saying, on her knees, "I
+believe no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart from a love that loves
+the whole world's joy better than any separate joy of any
+separate soul."
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+"YES, AND BACK AGAIN"
+
+One matter of surprise to me was that this whole property had escaped
+molestation. I wondered who could be so favored by the enemy and yet be
+so devoted to our cause as to signal us from his window with their
+sentinels at his doors; and as we passed beyond the cornfield's farther
+fence I ventured to ask Ferry.
+
+"Aaron Goldschmidt," he whispered, as we descended into a dry, tangled
+swamp. In the depths of this wild, beside a roofed pen of logs stored
+with half a dozen bales of cotton, we were presently in the company of a
+very small man who tossed a hand in token of great amusement.
+
+"Hello, Ned!" he whispered in antic irony; "what an accident is dat,
+meeding so! Whoever is expecting someding like dis!"
+
+"Well, I hope nobody, Isidore; I hardly expected it myself, your father
+set those candles so close the one behind the other."
+
+Isidore doubled with mirth and as suddenly straightened. "Your horse is
+here since yesterday. _She_ left him--by my father. She didn't t'ink t'e
+Yankees is going to push away out here to-night. But he is a pusher,
+t'at Grierson! You want him to-night, t'at horse? He is here by me, but
+I t'ink you best not take him, hmm? To cross t'e creek and go round t'e
+ot'er way take you more as all night; and to go back t'is same way you
+come, even if I wrap him up in piece paper you haven't got a lawch
+insite pocket you can carry him?" He laughed silently and the next
+instant was more in earnest than ever.
+
+"_She_ is in a tight place! She hires my mother's pony to ride in to
+headquarters." He called them hatekvartuss, but we need not. "I t'ink
+she is not a prisoner--_unless_--she wants to come back." He doubled
+again. "Anyhow, I wish you can see her to-night; she got another
+doll-baby for t'e gildren, and she give you waluable informations by de
+hatfull.... Find her? I tell you how you find her in finfty-nine
+minutes--vedder permitting, t'at is."
+
+The last phrase was fitted to a listening pose, and the first mutter of
+the pending thunder-storm came out of the northwest. Then Isidore
+hastened through the practical details of his proposition. Ferry drew a
+breath of enthusiasm. "Can I have my horse, bridled and saddled, in
+three minutes?"
+
+"I pring um in two!" said Isidore, and vanished. Ferry turned with an
+overmastering joy in every note of his whispered utterance. "After all!"
+he said, and I could have thrown my arms around him in pure delight to
+hear duty and heart's desire striking twelve together.
+
+"Smith," he asked, "can you start back without me? Then go at once; I
+shall overtake you on my horse."
+
+I stole through the cornfield safely; the frequent lightnings were still
+so well below the zenith as to hide me in a broad confusion of monstrous
+shadows. But when I came to cross the road no crouching or gliding would
+do. I must go erect and only at the speed of some ordinary official
+errand. So I did, at a point between two opposite fence-gaps, closely
+after an electric gleam, and I was rejoicing in the thick darkness that
+followed, when all at once the whole landscape shone like day and I
+stood in the middle of the road, in point-blank view of a small squad, a
+"visiting patrol". They were trotting toward me in the highway, hardly a
+hundred yards off. As the darkness came again and the thunder crashed
+like falling timbers, I started into the cotton-field at an easy
+double-quick. The hoofs of one horse quickened to a gallop. A strong
+wind swept over, big rain-drops tapped me on the shoulder and pattered
+on the cotton-plants, the sound of the horse's galloping ceased as he
+turned after me in the soft field, and presently came the quiet call
+"Halt, there, you on foot." I went faster. I knew by my pursuer's
+coming alone that he did not take me for a Confederate, and that the
+worst I should get, to begin with, would be the flat of his sabre.
+Shrewdly loading my tongue with that hard northern _r_ which I hated
+more than all unrighteousness, I called back "Oh, I'm under orders! go
+halt some fool who's got time to halt!"
+
+I obliqued as if bound for the headquarters fire where we had seen the
+singers, the lightning branched over the black sky like tree-roots, the
+thunder crashed and pounded again, the wind stopped in mid-career, and
+the rain came straight down in sheets. "Halt!" yelled the horseman. He
+lifted his blade, but I darted aside and doubled, and as he whirled
+around after me, another rider, meeting him and reining in at such close
+quarters that the mud flew over all three of us, lifted his hand
+and said--
+
+"He is right, sergeant, he is carrying out my orders." Ferry's black
+silk handkerchief about his neck covered his Confederate bars of rank,
+and the Federal may or may not have noted the absence of
+shoulder-straps; our arms remained undrawn; and so the sergeant,
+catching a breath or two of disconcertion, caught nothing else. While
+Ferry spoke on for another instant I showed my heels; then he left the
+dripping Yankee mouthing an angry question and loped after me, and over
+the low fence went the two of us almost together.
+
+Kendall was not there, the Federal camp-makers had tardily repaired
+their blunder by posting guards; but these were not looking for their
+enemies from the side of their own camp, and as we cleared the fence in
+the full blaze of a lightning flash, only two or three wild shots sang
+after us. In the black downpour Ferry reached me an invisible hand. I
+leapt astride his horse's croup, and trusting the good beast to pick his
+way among the trees himself, we sped away. Soon we came upon our three
+men waiting with the horses, and no great while afterward the five of us
+rejoined our command. The storm lulled to mild glimmerings and a gentle
+shower, and the whole company, in one long single file, began to sweep
+hurriedly, stealthily, and on a wide circuit of obscurest byways, deeper
+than ever into the enemy's lines.
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+CHARLOTTE IN THE TENTS OF THE FOE
+
+From certain rank signs of bad management in the Federal camp one could
+easily guess that our circuit was designed to bring us around to its
+rear. That a colonel's tent--the one where the singers were--was not
+where the colonel's tent belonged was a trifle, but the slovenliness
+with which the forest borders of the camp were guarded was a graver
+matter. Evidently those troops were at least momentarily in unworthy
+hands, and I was so remarking to Kendall when a murmured command came
+back from Ferry, to tell Dick Smith to stop that whispering. I was
+sorry, for I wanted to add that I knew we were not going to attack the
+camp itself. That was on Wednesday night. Charlotte and Gholson had
+made their ride of fifty miles on Monday. The friends with whom she
+stopped at nightfall contrived to cram him into their crowded soldiers'
+room, and he had given the whole company of his room-mates, as they sat
+up in their beds, a full account of the fight at Sessions's, Charlotte's
+care of the sick and dying, and the singing, by her and the blue-coats,
+of their battle-song. Next morning Charlotte, without Gholson--who
+turned off to camp--rode on to Goldschmidt's store, just beyond which
+there was then still a Confederate picket. Here she hired Mrs.
+Goldschmidt's pony, rode to the picket, and presented the Coralie
+Rothvelt pass.
+
+"Miss Coralie Rothvelt; yes, all right," said the officer, "the men that
+rode with you this morning told me all about you." He went with her as
+far as his videttes, and thence she rode alone to a picket of the
+Federal army and by her request was conducted under guard to the
+headquarters of a corps commander. To him and his chief-of-staff she
+told the fate of Jewett's scouts and delivered the messages of their
+dying leader; and then she tendered the hero's sword.
+
+The staff-officer cut away its cornhusk wrapping and read aloud the
+owner's name on the hilt. The General laid the mighty weapon across his
+palm and sternly shut his lips. "How did you get through the enemy's
+pickets with this?"
+
+"I had a Confederate general's pass."
+
+"Ah! Is the Confederate general as nameless as yourself?"
+
+"I am not nameless; I only ask leave to withhold my name until I have
+told one or two other things."
+
+"But you don't mind confessing you're an out-and-out rebel sympathizer?"
+
+Under the broad-brimmed hat her smile grew to a sparkle. "No, I enjoy
+it."
+
+The chief-of-staff smiled, but the General darkened and pressed his
+questions. At length he summed up. "So, then, you wish me to believe
+that you did all you did, and now have come into our lines at a most
+extraordinary and exhausting speed and running the ugliest kinds of
+risks, in mere human sympathy for a dying stranger, he being a Union
+officer and you a secessionist of"--a courtly bow--"the very elect;
+that's your meaning, is it not?"
+
+"No, General; in the first place, I am not one of any elect."
+
+A flattering glimmer of amusement came into the two men's faces, but
+some change in Charlotte's manner arrested it and brought an enhanced
+deference.
+
+"In the second place, I am not here merely on this errand."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"No, General. And in the last place, my motive in this errand is no mere
+sympathy for any one person; I am here from a sense of public duty--"
+The speaker seemed suddenly overtaken by emotions, dropped her words
+with pained evenness, and fingered the lace handkerchief in her lap.
+
+"Pardon," interrupted the General, "the sunlight annoys you. Major, will
+you drop that curtain?" "Thank you. One thing I am here for, General,
+is to tell you something, and I have to begin by asking that neither of
+you will ever say how you learned it."
+
+The two men bowed.
+
+"Thank you. Please understand, also, I have never uttered this but to
+one friend, a lady. There was no need; I have not wanted aid or counsel,
+even from friends. But I feel duty bound to tell it to you, now,
+because, for one thing, the brave soldier who wore that sword--" Her
+eyes rose to the weapon and fell again; she bit her lip.
+
+"Yes--well--what of him?"
+
+"He was lured to disaster and death by a man whose supreme purpose was,
+and is to-day, revenge upon me. That man drew him to his ruin purely in
+search of my life." Charlotte sat with her strange in-looking,
+out-looking gaze holding the gaze of her questioner until for relief
+he spoke.
+
+"Why, young lady, it's hard to doubt anything you say, but really that
+sounds rather fanciful. Why should you think it?"
+
+"I do not think it, I know it. He sends me his own assurance of it by
+his own father, so that his revenge may be fuller by my knowing daily
+and hourly that he is on my trail."
+
+"And you appeal to me for protection?"
+
+She smiled. "No. I am not seeking to divert his fury from myself, but to
+confine it to myself. Fancy yourself a human-hearted woman, General, and
+murder being done day by day because you are alive." "Oh, this is
+incredible! What is its occasion, its origin? How are you in any way
+responsible?"
+
+"Why, largely I am not. Yet in degree I am, General, because of
+shortcomings of mine--faults--errors--that--oh--that have their bearing
+in the case, don't you see?"
+
+"No, I don't; pray don't ask me to draw inferences; I might infer too
+much."
+
+"Yes, you might, easily," said Charlotte; "for I only mean shortcomings
+of the kind we readily excuse in others though we never can or should
+pardon them in ourselves."
+
+The General turned an arch smile of perplexity upon his chief-of-staff.
+"I don't think we're quite up to that line of perpetual snow,
+Walter, are we?"
+
+The chief-of-staff "guessed they were not."
+
+Charlotte resumed. "I have come to you in the common interest, to warn
+you against that man. I believe he is on his way here to offer his
+services as a guide. He is fearless, untiring, and knows all this region
+by heart."
+
+"Union man, I take it, is he not?"
+
+"No, he's Federal, Confederate or guerilla as it may suit his bloody
+ends."
+
+"And you want me not to make use of him."
+
+"Oh, more than that; I want him stopped!--stopped from killing and
+burning on his and my private account. But I want much more than that,
+too. I know how you commonly stop such men."
+
+"We hang them to the first tree."
+
+"Yes, our side does the same. If I wanted such a fate to overtake him I
+should only have to let him alone. At risks too hideous to name I have
+saved him from it twice. I am here to-day chiefly to circumvent his
+purposes; but if I may do so in the way I wish to propose to you, I
+shall also save him once more. I am willing to save him--in that
+way--although by so doing I shall lose--fearfully." She dropped her
+glance and turned aside.
+
+"How do you propose to circumvent and yet save him?"
+
+"By getting you to send him so far to your own army's rear that he
+cannot get back; to compel him to leave the country; to go into your
+country, where law and order reign as they cannot here between
+the lines."
+
+"And you consider that a reasonable request?"
+
+"Oh, sir, I must make it! I can ask no less!"
+
+"But you say if this scheme works you lose by it. What will you lose?"
+
+"I may lose track of him! If I lose track of him I may have to go
+through a long life not knowing whether he is dead or alive."
+
+"And suppose--why,--young lady, I thought you were unmarried. I--oh,
+what do you mean; is he--?"
+
+Charlotte's head drooped and her hands trembled. "Yes, by law and church
+decree he is my husband."
+
+"Good Heaven!" murmured the General, drew a breath, and folded his arms.
+"But, madam! if a man _abandons_ his wife--"
+
+"I abandoned him."
+
+"Good for you!" "It was vital for me. But I did it on evidence which
+our laws ignore, the testimony of slaves. Oh, General, don't try to
+untangle me; only stop him!"
+
+"Ah! madam, I'll do the little I can. How am I to know him?"
+
+"By a pistol-wound in his right hand, got last week. He would have got
+it in his brain but for my pleading. His name is Oliver."
+
+"Oliver; hmm! any relation to Charlotte Oliver, your so called newspaper
+correspondent? I'd like to stop her.--How?--I don't quite hear you."
+
+"I am Charlotte Oliver."
+
+The two officers glanced sharply at each other. When the General turned
+again he flushed resentfully. "Have you never resumed your maiden name?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then, madam, tell me this! With a whole world of other people's names
+to choose from, why _have_ you borrowed Charlotte Oliver's? Have you
+come here determined to be sent to prison, Miss Coralie Rothvelt?"
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+STAY TILL TO-MORROW
+
+Charlotte did not move an eyelash. Gradually a happy confidence lighted
+her face. "Freedom or prison is to me a secondary question. I came here
+determined to use only the truth. No wild creature loves to be free more
+than I do. I want to go back into our lines, and to go at once; but--I
+am Charlotte Oliver."
+
+"Young lady, listen to me. I know your story is nearly all true. I know
+some good things about you which you have modestly left out; one of the
+rebels who stopped where you did last night and rode with you this
+morning was brought to me a prisoner half an hour ago. But he said your
+name was Rothvelt. How's that?"
+
+"Unfortunately, General, my name is Charlotte Oliver. Two or three times
+I have had use for so much concealment as there was in the childish
+prank of turning my name wrong side out." The speaker made a sign to the
+chief-of-staff: "Write the two names side by side and see if they
+are not one."
+
+He was already doing so, and nodded laughingly to his superior.
+Charlotte spoke on. "I tell you the truth only, gentlemen, though I tell
+you no more of it than I must. I have run many a risk to get the truth,
+and to get it early. If it is your suspicion that by so doing, or in any
+other way, I have forfeited a lady's liberty, let me hear and answer.
+If not--"
+
+"Oh, I'll have to send you to the provost-martial at Baton Rouge and let
+you settle that with him."
+
+"Ah, no, General! By the name of the lady you love best, I beg you to
+see my need and let me go. I promise you never henceforth to offend your
+cause except in that mere woman's sympathy with what you call rebellion,
+for which women are not so much as banished by you--or if they are, then
+banish me! Treat me no better, and no worse, than a 'registered enemy'!"
+
+The General shook his head. "Your registration has been in the open
+field of military action; sometimes, I fear, between the lines. At least
+it has been with your pen."
+
+"General, I have laid down the pen."
+
+"Indeed! to take up what?"
+
+"The spoon!" said Charlotte, with that smile which no man ever wholly
+resisted. "I leave the sword and its questions to my brother man, in the
+blue and in the gray--God save it!--and have pledged myself to the gray,
+to work from now on only under the yellow flag of mercy and healing."
+
+"Yes, of course; mercy--and comfort--and every sort of unarmed aid--to
+rebels."
+
+"To the men you call so, yes. Yet I pledge you, General, to deal as
+tenderly with every man in blue who comes within range of my care as I
+did with Captain Jewett."
+
+"Oh, I know you did even better than you've told me, but I'd be a fool
+to send you back on the instant, so. Stay till to-morrow or next day."
+The captor smiled. "Major, I think we owe the lady that much
+hospitality."
+
+The Major thought so, and that she must need a day's rest, more than she
+realized. She could be made in every way comfortable--under guard at
+"Mr. Gilmer's." The Gilmers were Unionists, whose fine character had
+been their only protection through two years of ostracism, yet he
+believed they would treat her well. "Oh! not there, please," said
+Charlotte; "I hear they are to give some of your officers a dance
+to-morrow evening!" and there followed a parley that called forth all
+her playfullest tact. "Oh, no," she said, at one critical point, "I'm
+not so narrow or sour but I could dance with a blue uniform; but
+suppose--why, suppose one's friends in gray should catch one dancing
+with one's enemies in blue. Such things have happened, you know."
+
+"It sha'n't happen to-morrow night," laughed the General.
+
+She offered to nurse the Federal sick, instead, in the command's
+field-hospital, but no, the General rose to end the interview. "My dear
+young lady, the saintliest thing we can let you do is to dance at that
+merrymaking."
+
+She rose. "As a prisoner under guard, General, I can nurse the sick, but
+I will not dance."
+
+The General smiled. "I'll take your parole."
+
+"Oh! exact a parole from a woman?"
+
+"Good gracious, why shouldn't I! As for you,--ha!--I'd as soon turn a
+commissioned rebel officer loose in my camp unparoled as you."
+
+"Then take my parole! I give it! you have it! I'll take the chances."
+
+"And the dances?" asked the Major.
+
+"Very good," said the General, "you are now on parole. See the lady
+conducted to Squire Gilmer's, Major. And now, Miss--eh,--day after
+to-morrow morning I shall either pass you beyond my lines or else send
+you to Baton Rouge. Good-day." When Charlotte found herself alone in a
+room of the Gilmer house she lay down upon the bed staring and sighing
+with dismay; she was bound by a parole! If within its limit of time
+Oliver should appear, "It will mean Baton Rouge for me!" she cried under
+her breath, starting up and falling back again; "Baton Rouge, New
+Orleans, Ship Island!" She was in as feminine a fright as though she had
+never braved a danger. Suddenly a new distress overwhelmed her:
+if--if--someone to deliver her should come--"Oh Heaven! I am
+paroled!--bound hand and foot by my insane parole!"
+
+Softly she sprang from the bed, paced the floor, went to the window,
+seemed to look out upon the landscape; but in truth she was looking in
+upon herself. There she saw a most unaccountable tendency for her
+judgment--after some long overstrain--momentarily, but all at once, to
+swoon, collapse, turn upside down like a boy's kite and dart to earth;
+an impulse--while fancying she was playing the supremely courageous or
+generous or clever part--suddenly to surrender the key of the situation,
+the vital point in whatever she might be striving for. "Ah me, ah me!
+why did I give my parole?"
+
+At the close of the next day--"Walter," said the General as the
+chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--"oh, thud
+devil!--you going to that dance?"
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+THE DANCE AT GILMER'S
+
+All the while that I recount these scenes there come to me soft
+orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking
+of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music
+which I heard first--and last--in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other
+so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the
+daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into
+a roof; wail and huzza, camp-fire, litter and grave; battlefield stench;
+fiddle and flame; and ever in the midst these impromptu merrymakings to
+keep us from going stark mad, one and all,--as so many literally did.
+
+The Gilmer daughters were fair, but they were only three, and the
+Gilmers were the sole Unionists in their neighborhood. "Still, a few
+girls will come," said Charlotte, sparkling first blue and then black at
+a sparkling captain who said that, after all, the chief-of-staff had
+decided he couldn't attend. I know she sparkled first blue and then
+black, for she always did so when she told of it in later days.
+
+"They say," responded the captain, "that in this handy little world
+there are always a few to whom policy is the best honesty; is that the
+few who will come?"
+
+"You are cynical," said Charlotte, "this is only their unarmed way of
+saving house and home for the brothers to come back to when you are
+purged out of the land."
+
+When the time came there were partners for eight gallants, and the
+gallants numbered sixteen. They counted off by twos; the evens waited
+while the odds danced the half of each set, and then the odds waited and
+cooled, tried to cool, out on the veranda. But when a reel was called
+the whole twenty-four danced together, while the fiddler (from the
+contraband camp) improvised exultant words to his electrifying tunes.
+
+      "O _ladies_ ramble in,
+          Whilst de _beaux_ ramble out,
+For to guile[1] dat golden _cha--ain._
+      My _Lawdy!_ it's a sin
+          Fo' a _fiddleh_ not to shout!
+Miss _Charlotte's_ a-comin' down de _la--ane_!"
+
+[Footnote 1: Coil.]
+
+Now the dance is off, but now it is on again, and again. The fiddler
+toils to finer and finer heights of enthusiasm; slippers twinkle,
+top-boots flash, the evens come in (to the waltz) and the odds, out on
+the veranda, tell one another confidentially how damp they are. Was ever
+an evening so smotheringly hot! Through the house-grove, where the
+darkness grows blacker and blacker and the tepid air more and more
+breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their
+horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet
+for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.]
+One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture:
+the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room,
+and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and
+fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, and on
+their haunches at every door, the squalid field-hands making grotesque
+silhouettes against the yellow glow that streamed out into the trees.
+
+Now the lightning seems nearer. Hark, that was thunder; soft, but real.
+At last the air moves; there is a breeze, and the girls come out on the
+gallants' arms to drink it in. As they lift their brows and sigh their
+comfort the lightning grows brighter, the thunder comes more promptly
+and louder, and the maidens flinch and half scream, yet linger for one
+more draft of the blessed coolness. Suddenly an inverted tree of
+blinding light branches down the sky, and the thunder crashes in one's
+very ears; the couples recoil into a group at the door, the lightning
+again fills heaven and earth, it shows the bending trees far afield, and
+the thunders peal at each other as if here were all Vicksburg and Port
+Hudson, with Porter and Farragut going by. So for a space; then the wind
+drops to a zephyr, and though the sky still blazes and crashes, and
+flames and roars, the house purrs with content under the sweet strokings
+of the rain.
+
+Let it pour! the dining-room is the centre of all things; the ladies sip
+the custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the
+punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs
+on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat;
+and the couples are again on the floor. The departing thunders grumble
+as they go, the rain falls more and more sparingly, and now it is a
+waltz, and now a quadrille, and now it's a reel again, with Miss Sallie
+or Louise or Laura or Lucille or Miss Flora "a-comin' down de lane!"
+
+So come the stars again, one by one. In a pause between dances Charlotte
+and the staff captain go to the veranda's far end and stand against the
+rail. The night is still very dark, the air motionless. Charlotte is
+remarking how far they can hear the dripping of the grove, when she
+gives a start and the captain an amused grunt; a soft, heart-broken,
+ear-searching quaver comes from just over yonder by the horses. "One of
+those pesky little screech-owls," he says. "Don't know as I ever heard
+one before under just these condi'--humph! there's another, around on
+this side."
+
+"I think I will go in," says Charlotte, with a pretence of languor. As
+they do so the same note sounds a third time; her pace quickens, and in
+passing a bright window, with a woman's protecting impulse she changes
+from his left arm to his right so as to be on the side next the owls. A
+moment later she is alone in the middle of her room, a lighted candle in
+one hand, a regally dressed doll in the other, and in her heart the cry,
+"Oh, Edgard, Edgard, my parole, my parole!"
+
+Once more she is downstairs, in the lane which the dancers are making
+for their last reel. Two of the gallants have gone out to see the
+horses, and something keeps them, but there is no need to wait. The
+fiddle rings a chord! the merry double line straightens down the hall
+from front door to rear, bang! says the fiddler's foot--"hands
+round!"--and hands round it is! In the first of the evening they had
+been obliged to tell the fiddler the names of the dancers, but now he
+knows them all and throws off his flattering personalities and his
+overworked rhymes with an impartial rotation and unflagging ardor. Once
+in a while some one privately gives him a new nickname for the next man
+"a-comin' down de lane," and as he yawps it out the whole dance gathers
+new mirth and speed.
+
+Now the third couple clasp hands, arch arms, and let the whole
+countermarching train sweep through; and a beautiful arch they make, for
+they are the aforesaid captain and Charlotte Oliver. "Hands
+round!"--hurrah for the whirling ellipse; and now it's "right and left"
+and two ellipses glide opposite ways, "to quile dat golden chain." In
+the midst of the whirl, when every hand is in some other and men and
+girls are tossing their heads to get their locks out of their eyes, at
+the windows come unnoticed changes and two men loiter in by the front
+hall door, close to the fiddler. One has his sword on, and each his
+pistols, and their boots and mud-splashed uniforms of dubious blue are
+wet and steamy. The one without the sword gives the fiddler a fresh name
+to sing out when the spinning ring shall straighten into its two gay
+ranks again, and bids him--commandingly--to yell it; and with never a
+suspicion of what it stands for, the stamping and scraping fiddler
+shouts the name of a man who "loves a good story with a
+positive passion."
+
+    "Come _a-left_, come a-right,
+       Come yo' _lily_-white hand,
+Fo' to _quile_ dat _golden cha--ain_.
+    O _ladies_ caper light--
+       Sweetest _ladies_ in de land--
+NED FERRY's a-comin' down de la--ane!"
+
+[Illustration: Musical Notation]
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+HE'S DEAD.--IS SHE ALIVE?
+
+Cries of masculine anger and feminine affright filled the hall, but one
+ringing order for silence hushed all, and the dance stood still with Ned
+Ferry in its centre. In his right hand, shoulder high, he held not his
+sword, but Charlotte's fingers lightly poised for the turn in the
+arrested dance. "Stand, gentlemen, every man is covered by two; look at
+the doors; look at the windows." The staff captain daringly sprang for
+the front door, but Ferry's quick boot caught his instep and he struck
+the floor full length. Like lightning Ferry's sword was out, but he only
+gave it a deferential sweep. "Sir! better luck next time!--Lieutenant
+Quinn, put the Captain in your front rank."
+
+Quinn hustled the captives "down a lane," as the fiddler might have
+said, of Ferry's scouts, mounted them on their own horses at the door,
+and hurried them away. Charlotte had vanished but was back again in hat
+and riding-skirt. Ferry caught her hand and they ran to the front
+veranda steps just as the prisoners and guard rode swiftly from them.
+Kendall and I had the stirrup ready for her; the saddle was a man's, but
+she made a horn of its pommel, and in a flash the four of us were
+mounted. Nevertheless before we could move the grove resounded with
+shots, and Ferry, bidding us ride on after the fleeing guard, wheeled
+and galloped to where half our troop were holding back their assailants
+in the dark. But then, to our distraction, Charlotte would not fly.
+"Richard, I'm paroled!"--"Charlotte Oliver, you're my prisoner!" I
+reached for her bridle, but she avoided me and with a cry of
+recollection wheeled and was on her way back. "I forgot something! I can
+get it, I left the room lighted!"
+
+I remember vividly yet the high purpose and girlish propitiation that
+rang together in her voice. Kendall dashed after her while I went
+against a wet bough that all but threw me; but before he could reach her
+she flew up the steps, crying "Hold my horse!"
+
+"Mine, too!" I cried, springing up after her. How queerly the inner
+house stood alight and silent, its guests and inmates hidden, while
+outside pistols and carbines flashed and cracked. I came upon Charlotte,
+just recrossing her chamber to leave it, with her doll in her arms.
+"Come!" I cried, "our line is falling back behind the house!" Her head
+flinched aside, a bit of her hat flew from it, and a pistol-ball buried
+itself in the ceiling straight over my head. We ran downstairs together,
+pulling, pushing and imploring each other in the name of honor, duty and
+heaven to let him--let her--go out first through the bright hall door.
+Kendall was not in sight, but in a dim half-light a few yards off we saw
+Oliver. He was afoot, bending low, and gliding toward us with his
+revolver in his left hand. He fired as I did; her clutch spoiled my aim;
+with eager eyes she straightened to her finest height, cried "Richard!
+tell Lieutenant Ferry he--" and with a long sigh sank into my arms. A
+rush of hoofs sounded behind Oliver, he glanced up, and Ferry's blade
+fell across his brow and launched him face upward to the ground. I saw
+a bunch of horses, with mine, at the foot of the steps, and a bunch of
+men at the top; Ferry snatched Charlotte's limp form from me and said
+over his shoulder as he went down the steps, "Go get him and bring him
+along, dead or alive!"
+
+I called a man to my aid and was unlucky in not getting the cool-headed
+Kendall, for my own wits were gone. The next moment all had left us and
+I was down on the ground toiling frantically, with no help but one hand
+of my mounted companion, to heave the stalwart frame of Oliver up to
+my saddle.
+
+"Why, he's dead!" cried the lad, letting him slide half-way down when we
+had all but got him up; "don't you see he's dead? His head's laid wide
+open! He's as dead as a mackerel! I'll _swear_ we ain't got any right to
+get captured trying to save a dead Yankee."
+
+I was in despair; our horses had caught our frenzy and were plunging to
+be after their fellows, and a fresh body of the enemy were hurtling into
+the grove. Dropping my burden I vaulted up, and we scurried away, saved
+only by the enemy's healthy fear of an ambush. The first man we came up
+with was Quinn, with the rear-guard. "Is he dead?" he growled.
+
+"Dead as Adam!" said I, and my comrade put in "Head laid wide open!"
+
+"Drop back into the ranks," said Quinn to him. "Smith, ride on to
+Lieutenant Ferry. Corporal,"--to a man near him--"you know the way so
+well, go with him."
+
+The two of us sprang forward. How long or what way we went I have now
+no clear idea, but at length we neared again the grapevine ferry. The
+stream was swollen, we swam our horses, and on the farther side we found
+Kendall waiting. To the corporal's inquiry he replied that Ferry had
+just passed on. "You know Roy's; two miles off the Plank Road by the
+first right? He expects to stop there."
+
+"Is she alive, Kendall?" I interrupted. "Is she alive?"
+
+"No," said he, to some further question of the corporal; "I'm to wait
+here for the command."
+
+"Is she alive, Kendall?" I asked again.
+
+"Hello, Smith." He scanned my dripping horse. "Your saddle's slipped,
+Smith. Yes, she's alive."
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+
+IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS RIGHT ARM
+
+"There they are!" said the corporal and I at the same moment, when we
+had been but a few minutes on the Plank-road. Two men were ahead of us
+riding abreast, and a few rods in front of them was a third horseman,
+apparently alone. Two others had pushed on, one to the house, the other
+for surgical aid. The two in the rear knew us and let us come up
+unchallenged; the corporal stayed with them, and I rode on to my
+leader's side.
+
+Charlotte lay in his double clasp balanced so lightly on the horse's
+crest as hardly to feel the jar of his motion, though her head lay as
+nearly level with it as Ferry's bending shoulders and the hollow of his
+lowered right arm would allow; from under his other arm her relaxed
+figure, in its long riding-skirt, trailed down over his knee and
+stirrup; her broad limp hat, as if it had been so placed in sport, hung
+at his back with its tie-ribbons round his throat, while the black
+masses of her hair spread in ravishing desolation over and under his
+supporting arm. Her face was fearfully pale, the brows glistened with
+the damp of nervous shock, and every few moments she feebly brought a
+handkerchief to her lips to wipe away the blood that rose to them with
+every sigh. Steadfastly, except when her eyes closed now and then in
+deathly exhaustion, her gaze melted into his like a suffering babe's
+into its mother's. From time to time a brief word passed between them,
+and with joy I noticed that it was always in French; I hoped with my
+whole heart and soul that they had already said things, and were saying
+things yet, which no one else ought to hear. I waited some time for his
+notice, and when he gave it it was only by saying to her in a full voice
+and in English "Dick Smith is here, alongside of us."
+
+Her response was a question, which he repeated: "Is he hurt? no, Richard
+never gets hurt. Shall he tell us whatever he knows?"
+
+He bent low for the faint reply, and when it came he sparkled with
+pride. "'It matters little,' she says, 'to either of us, now.' Give your
+report; but _I_ tell you"--there came a tiger look in his eyes--"there
+is now no turning back; we shall go on." I answered with soft elation:
+"My news needn't turn you back: Oliver is dead."
+
+He drew a long breath, murmured "My God!" and then suddenly asked "You
+found him so, or--?"
+
+"We found him so; had to leave him so; head laid wide open; we were
+about to be captured--thought the news would be better than nothing--"
+
+"Certainly, yes, certainly. Now I want you to ride to the brigade camp
+and telegraph Miss Harper this: 'She needs you. Come instantly.
+Durand.'"--I repeated it to him.--"Right," he said. "Send that first;
+and after that--here is a military secret for you to tell to General
+Austin; I think you like that kind, eh? Tell him I would not send it
+verbally if I had my hands free. You know that regiment at whose
+headquarters we saw them singing; well, tell him they are to make a move
+to-day, a bad mistake, and I think if he will stay right there where he
+is till they make it, we can catch the whole lot of them. As soon as
+they move I shall report to him."
+
+Two gasping words from Charlotte brought his ear down, and with a
+worshipping light in his eyes he said to her "Yes,--yes!" and then to
+me, "Yes, I shall report to him _in person_. Now, Smith, the top of
+your speed!"
+
+Reveille was sounding as I entered the camp. In the middle of my story
+to the General--"Saddle my horse," he said to an attendant, "and send
+Mr. Gholson to me. Yes, Smith, well, what then?"--I resumed, but in a
+minute--"Mr. Gholson, good-morning. My compliments to Major Harper, Mr.
+Gholson, and ask him if he wouldn't like to take a ride with me; and
+let me have about four couriers; and send word to Colonel Dismukes that
+I shall call at his headquarters to see him a moment, on my way out of
+camp. Now, Smith, you've given me the gist of the matter, haven't you?
+Oh, I think you have; good-morning."
+
+Gholson had helped me get the despatch off to Miss Harper, whose coming
+no one could be more eager to hasten. Before leaving camp I saw him
+again. He was strangely reticent; my news seemed to benumb and sicken
+him. But as I remounted he began without connection--"You see, she'll be
+absolutely alone until Miss Harper gets there; not a friend within call!
+_He_ won't be there, she won't let him stay; she dislikes him too much;
+I _know_ that, Smith. Why, Smith, she wouldn't ever 'a' let him carry
+her off the field if she'd been conscious; she'd sooner 'a' gone to Ship
+Island, or to death!" He looked as though he would rather she had. His
+tongue, now it had started, could not stop. "Ned Ferry can't stay by
+her; he mustn't! he hadn't ought to use around anywheres near her."
+
+I gave a sort of assent--attended with nausea--and turned to my saddle,
+but he clung. "Why, how can he hang around that way, Smith, and he a
+suitor who's just killed her husband? Of course, now, he'd ought to know
+he can't ever be one henceforth. I'm sorry for him, but--"
+
+"Good-morning," I interrupted, quite in the General's manner, and made a
+spirited exit, but it proved a false one; one thing had to be said, and
+I returned. "Gholson, if she should be worse hurt than--" "Ah! you're
+thinking of the chaplain; I've already sent him. Yonder he goes, now;
+you can show him the way."
+
+"Understand," I said as I wheeled, "I fully expect her to recover."
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!" replied my co-religionist, with feverish zest; "we must
+have faith--for her sake! But o--oh! Smith, what a chastening judgment
+this is against dancing!"
+
+I moved away, looking back at him, and seeing by his starved look how he
+was racking his jaded brain for some excuse to go with me, I honestly
+believe I was sorry for him. The chaplain was a thick-set, clean-shaven,
+politic little fellow whose "Good-mawning, brothah?" had the heavy
+sweetness of perfumed lard. We conversed fluently on spiritual matters
+and also on Ned Ferry. He asked me if the Lieutenant was "a believer."
+
+"Why," said I, "as to that, Lieutenant Ferry believes there's something
+right about everything that's beautiful, and something wrong about
+everything that isn't. Now, of course that's a very dangerous idea, and
+yet--" So I went on; ah me! the nightmare of it hangs over me yet,
+"religionist" though I am, after a fashion, unto this day. In Ferry's
+defence I maintained that only so much of any man's religion as fitted
+him, and fitted him not as his saddle or his clothes, but as his nervous
+system fitted him, was really his, or was really religion. I said I knew
+a man whose ready-made religion, small as it was, bagged all over him
+and made him as grotesque as a child in his father's trousers. The
+chaplain tittered so approvingly that I straightened to spout again, but
+just then we saw three distant figures that I knew at a glance.
+
+"There he is, now!--Excuse me, sir--" I clapped in the spurs, but the
+chaplain clattered stoutly after me. The two horsemen moving from us
+were the General and Major Harper, and the one meeting them was Ned
+Ferry. Between the three and us rose out of a hollow the squad of
+couriers. And yonder came the sun.
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+
+A CRUEL BOOK AND A FOOL OR TWO
+
+I could see by Ferry's face that there was no worse news. He met me
+aside, and privately bade me go to Roy's (where Charlotte was). "Kendall
+is there," he said; "I leave you and him in charge. That will rest your
+horses. Kendall has your Yankee horse, his own is sick. You and Kendall
+get all the sleep you can, you may get none to-night."
+
+"Lieutenant," I began eagerly as he was drawing away, "is--?"
+
+"Yes! oh, yes, yes!" His eyes danced, and a soft laugh came, as happy as
+a child's. "The surgeon is yonder, he will tell you."
+
+This person Kendall and I had the luck to meet at the Roy's
+breakfast-table. "Yes, left lung," he said. "No, hardly 'perforated,'
+but the top deeply grazed." The ball, he said, had passed on and out,
+and he went into particulars with me, while I wondered if Kendall knew,
+as I did, what parts of the body the pleura, the thorax, the clavicle
+and the pyemia were.
+
+We lay down to sleep on some fodder in the Widow Roy's stable, while
+around three sides of the place, in a deep wooded hollow, Quinn and the
+company, well guarded by hidden videttes, drowsed in secret bivouac. I
+dreamed. I had feared I should, and it would have been a sort of bitter
+heart's-ease to tell Kendall of my own particular haunting trouble. For
+now, peril and darkness, storm, hard riding, the uproar and rage of
+man-killing, all past and gone, my special private wretchedness came
+back to me bigger than ever, like a neglected wound stiffened and
+swollen as it has grown cold. But Kendall would not talk, and when I
+dreamed, my dream was not of Camille. It seemed to me there was a hot
+fight on at the front, and that I, in a sweat of terror, was at the
+rear, hiding among the wagons and telling Gholson pale-faced lies as to
+why I was there. All at once Gholson became Oliver, alive,
+bloody-handed, glaring on me spectrally, cursing, threatening, and
+demanding his wife. His head seemed not "laid wide open," but to have
+only a streak of the skull bared by Ferry's glancing left-cut and a
+strip of the scalp turned inside out. Cecile drew his head down and
+showed it to me, in a transport of reproaches, as though my false report
+had wronged no one else so ruinously as her.
+
+I awoke aghast. If Kendall had still been with me I might, in the first
+flush of my distress, have told my vision; but in the place where
+Kendall had lain lay Harry Helm. Kendall was gone; a long beam of
+afternoon sunlight shone across my lair through a chink in the log
+stable. I sprang half up with an exclamation, and Harry awoke with a
+luxurious yawn and smile. Kendall, he said, had left with the company,
+which had marched. Quinn was in command and had told Harry that he was
+only going to show the enemy that there was no other hostile force in
+their front, and get himself chased away southeastward.
+
+"I don't know whether he was telling me the truth or not," said Helm, as
+we led our saddled horses toward the house; "I reckon he didn't want me
+alongside of him with this arm in a sling." The hand was bad; lines of
+pain were on the aide's face. He had taken the dead Louisianian home,
+got back to camp, and ridden down here to get the latest news concerning
+Charlotte. Kendall had already given him our story of the night; I had
+to answer only one inquiry. "Oh, yes," was my reply, "head laid wide
+open!" But to think of my next meeting with Ned Ferry almost made
+me sick.
+
+Harry was delighted. "That lays their way wide open--Ned's and hers!
+Smith, some God-forsaken fool brought a chaplain here to talk religion
+to her! He hasn't seen her--Doctor wouldn't let him; but he's here yet,
+and--George! if I was them I'd put him to a better use than what he came
+here for, and I'd do it so quick it would make his head swim!" He went
+on into all the arguments for it; the awkwardnesses of Charlotte's new
+situation, her lack of means for even a hand-to-mouth daily existence,
+and so on. Seeing an ambulance coming in through the front gate, and in
+order not to lose the chance for my rejoinder, I interrupted.
+"Lieutenant, she will not allow it! She will make him wait a proper time
+before he may as much as begin a courtship, and then he will have to
+begin at the beginning. She's not going to let Ned Ferry narrow or lower
+her life or his--no, neither of them is going to let the other do
+it--because a piece of luck has laid the way wide open!" I ended with a
+pomp of prophecy, yet I could hear Ned Ferry saying again, with
+Charlotte's assenting eyes in his, "There is no turning back."
+
+The driver of the ambulance did not know why he had been ordered to
+report here, but when the Widow Roy came to the door she brought
+explanation enough. A courier had come to her and gone again, and the
+chaplain and the surgeon and every one else of any "army sort" except us
+two had "put out," and she was in a sad flurry. "The Lieutenant," she
+said, "writes in this-yeh note that this-yeh place won't be safe f'om
+the Yankees much longer'n to-day, and fo' us to send the wounded lady in
+the avalanch. Which she says, her own self, it'd go rough with her to
+fall into they hands again. My married daughter she's a-goin' with her,
+and the'd ought to be a Mr. Sm'--oh, my Lawdy! you ain't reg-lahly in
+the ahmy, air you?"
+
+With some slave men to help us, Harry and I bore Charlotte out and laid
+her in the ambulance, mattress and all, on an under bedding of fodder.
+She had begged off from opiates, and was as full of the old starlight as
+if the day, still strong, were gone. I helped the married daughter up
+beside the driver, Harry and I mounted, and we set forth for the
+brigade camp. Mrs. Roy's daughter had with her a new romance, which she
+had been reading to Charlotte. Now she was eager to resume it, and
+Charlotte consented. It was a work of some merit; I have the volume yet,
+inscribed to me on the fly-leaf "from C.O.," as I have once already
+stated, in my account of my friend "The Solitary." At the end of a mile
+we made a change; Harry rode a few yards ahead with an officer who
+happened to overtake us, I took the reins from the ambulance driver, and
+he followed on my horse; I thought I could drive more smoothly than he.
+
+And so I began to hear the tale. I was startled by its strong reminder
+of Charlotte's own life; but Charlotte answered my anxious glance with a
+brow so unfretted that I let the reading go on, and so made a cruel
+mistake. At every turning-point in the story its reader would have
+paused to talk it over, but Charlotte, with a steadily darkling brow,
+murmured each time "Go on," and I was silent, hoping that farther along
+there would be a better place to stop for good. Not so; the story's
+whirling flood swept us forward to a juncture ever drawing nearer and
+clearer, clearer and crueler, where a certain man would have to choose
+between the woman he loved and that breadth and fruitfulness of life to
+which his splendid gifts imperiously pointed him. Oh, you story-tellers!
+Every next page put the question plainer, drove the iron deeper: must a
+man, or even may a man, wed his love, when she stands between him and
+his truest career, a drawback and drag upon his finest service to his
+race and day? And, oh, me! who let my eye quail when Charlotte searched
+it, as though her own case had brought that question to me before ever
+we had seen this book. And, oh, that impenetrable woman reading! Her
+husband was in Lee's army, out of which, she boasted, she would steal
+him in a minute if she could. She was with us, now, only because, at
+whatever cost to others, she was going where no advancement of the
+enemy's lines could shut her off from him; and so stop reading a moment
+she must, to declare her choice for Love as against all the careers on
+earth, and to put that choice fairly to shame by the unworthiness of her
+pleadings in its defence. I intervened; I put her grovelling arguments
+aside and thrust better ones in, for the same choice, and then, in the
+fear that they were not enough, stumbled into special pleading and
+protested that the book itself had put the question unfairly.
+
+"Shut it," said Charlotte, with a sigh like that which had risen when
+the lead first struck her. "If I could be moved ever so little,--"
+she said.
+
+I had the driver tie my horse behind the vehicle and resume the lines.
+Then the soldier's wife and I moved Charlotte, and when the reader began
+to handle the book again wishfully our patient said, with the kindest
+voice, "Read the rest of it to yourself; I know how it will end; it will
+end to please you, not as it ought; not as it ought."
+
+For a while we went in silence, and she must have seen that my heart was
+in a rage, for with suffering on her brow, amusement on her lips, and a
+sweet desperation in her eyes, she murmured my name. "Richard:--what
+fun it must have been to live in those old Dark Ages--when all you had
+to do--was to turn any one passion into--one splendid virtue--at the
+expense--of all the rest."
+
+I could answer pleadingly that it were far better not to talk now. But
+she would go on, until in my helplessness I remarked how beautiful the
+day had been. Her eyes changed; she looked into mine with her calm
+inward-outward ken, and once more with smiling lips and suffering brow
+murmured, "Yes." I marvelled she should betray such wealth of meaning to
+such as I; yet it was like her splendid bravery to do it.
+
+At the brigade's picket, where I was angry that Ferry did not meet us,
+and had resumed the saddle and stretched all the curtains of the
+ambulance, who should appear but Scott Gholson. Harry and I were riding
+abreast in advance of the ambulance. Gholson and he barely said
+good-evening. I asked him where was Lieutenant Ferry, and scarcely noted
+his words, so promptly convinced was I by their mere tone that he had
+somehow contrived to get Ferry sent on a distant errand. "Is she
+better?" he inquired; "has the hemorrhage stopped?"
+
+"It's begun again," growled Harry, who wanted both of us to suffer all
+we could. Gholson led us through the camp. A large proportion of the men
+were sleeping when as yet it was hardly night.
+
+"Has the brigade got marching orders?" I asked, and he said the three
+regiments had, though not the battery. He passed over to me two pint
+bottles filled, corked, and dangling from his fingers by a stout double
+twine on the neck of each. "Every man has them," he said; "hang one on
+each side of your belt in front of your pistol."
+
+I held them up and scowled from them to Harry, and we both laughed, so
+transparent was Gholson's purpose to get every one away from our patient
+who yearned to be near her. "One in front of each pistol," I said, so
+tying them; "but use the pistols first, I suppose."
+
+"Yes," replied Gholson, "pistols first, and then the turpentine."
+Whereat Harry and I exchanged glances again, it came so pat that Scott
+Gholson should be a dispenser of inflammables. At a house a mile behind
+the camp the surgeon stood waiting for us. He frowned at me the instant
+he saw Charlotte, and I heard him swear. As we bore her in with Gholson
+and me next her head she murmured to him:
+
+"Mr. Gholson, when does the command move?"
+
+"At twelve," he replied, and I bent and softly added "That's why--"
+
+"Yes," she said, with a quick, understanding look, and wiped her lips as
+daintily as if it were with wine they were crimsoned.
+
+
+
+L
+
+
+THE BOTTOM OF THE WHIRLWIND
+
+On my way back through camp with Gholson I saw old Dismukes. He called
+me to him, quit his cards, and led me into his tent. There, very
+beguilingly, he questioned me at much length, evidently seeking to draw
+from the web of my replies the thread of Ferry's and Charlotte's story;
+and as I saw that he believed in both of them with all his brutal might,
+I let him win a certain success. "Head laid wide open!" he said
+gleefully, and boiled over with happy blasphemings.
+
+I left him, found supper, and had been long asleep tinder a tree, when I
+grabbed savagely at some one for silently shaking me, and found it was
+Ned Ferry. His horse's bridle was in his hand; his face was more filled
+with the old pain than I had ever seen it; he spoke low and hurriedly.
+"Come, tell me what this means."
+
+In an envelope addressed to him in the handwriting I had first seen at
+Lucius Oliver's I found a scripture-text, a heading torn from a tract
+which the chaplain may have sent in to Charlotte in the morning. I
+turned it to the light of my fire. Under this printed line she had
+pencilled her name.
+
+I asked if he had seen her. "Ah, no! the Doctor has drugged her to
+sleep; but that woman who came with you was still in the parlor, reading
+a book, and she gave me this. What does it mean?"
+
+"Lieutenant," I replied, choking with dismay, "why mind her meanings
+now? Ought you not rather to ignore them? She is fevered, dejected,
+overwrought. Why, sir, she is the very woman to say and mean things now
+which she would never say or mean at any other time!" But my tone must
+have shown that I was only groping in desperation after anything
+plausible, and he waved my suggestions away.
+
+"The Doctor says that woman has been reading her an exciting story."
+
+"Yes, and that helps to account--"
+
+"Richard, it helps the wrong way; _I know that story_. After hearing
+that story she is, yes! the one woman of all women to send me _this_."
+
+I took it again. The signature was extended in full, with the surname
+blackly underlined. The first clause of the print, too, was so treated.
+"_Keep thy heart_," it read; "_Keep thy heart_ with all diligence; for
+out of it are the issues of life.--Charlotte _Oliver_."
+
+"Why, Lieutenant, that is just what you have done--"
+
+"You think so? But I _have done_. I will keep it no longer! Ah, I never
+kept it; 'twas she! Without taking it from me she kept it--'with all
+diligence'; otherwise I should have lost it--and her, too--and all that
+is finest and hardest to keep--long ago. Give me that paper; come;
+saddle up; you may go with me if you want, as my courier." No bugle had
+sounded, yet the whole camp was softly and diligently astir. We rode
+toward the staff tents; the pulse of enterprise enlivened him once more,
+though he clung to the same theme. "I have _her_ heart now, Smith, and I
+will keep _that_ with all diligence, for out of _that_ are the issues
+of _my_ life--if I live. And if I do live I will have her if I have to
+steal her even from herself, as last night from the Yankees."
+
+Three hours later the stars still gleamed down through the balmy night
+above the long westward-galloping column of our brigade, that for those
+three hours had not slackened from the one unmitigated speed. The
+Federal regiment of whose plans Charlotte had apprised Ferry had been
+camped well to southward of this course, but in the day just past they
+had marched to the north, intending a raid around our right and into our
+rear. To-night they were resting in a wide natural meadow through the
+middle of which ran this road we were on. Around the southern edge of
+this inviting camp-ground by a considerable stream of water; the
+northern side was on rising ground and skirted by woods, and in these
+woods as day began to break stood our brigade, its presence utterly
+unsuspected in all that beautiful meadow whitened over with lane upon
+lane of the tents of the regiment of Federal cavalry, whose pickets we
+had already silently surprised and captured. Now, as warily as quails,
+we moved along an unused, woodcutters' road and began to trot up a
+gentle slope beyond whose crest the forest sank to the meadow. We were
+within a few yards of this crest, when a small mounted patrol came up
+from the other side, stood an instant profiled against the sky, bent
+low, gazed, wheeled and vanished.
+
+Over the crest we swept after them at a gallop and saw them half-way
+down an even incline, going at a mad run and yelling "Saddle up! saddle
+up! the rebels are coming! saddle up!" The bugles had begun the
+reveille; it ceased, and the next instant they were sounding the call To
+Arms. It was only a call to death; already we were half across the short
+decline and coming like a tornado; in the white camp the bluecoats were
+running hither and yon deaf to the brave shoutings of their captains;
+above the swelling thunder of our hoofs rose the mad yell of the onset;
+and now carbines peal and pistols crack, and here are the tents so close
+you may touch them, and yonder is one already in a light blaze, and at
+every hand and under every horse's foot is the crouching, quailing,
+falling foe, the air is one crash of huzzas and groans, screams, shots
+and commands, horses with riders and horses without plunge through the
+flames and smoke of the burning tents, and again and again I see Ned
+Ferry with the flat of his unstained sword strike pistol or carbine from
+hands too brave to cast them tamely down, and hear him cry "Throw down
+your arms! For God's sake throw down your arms and run to the road! run
+to the public road!"
+
+And still every moment men fell, and what could we do but smite while
+the foe's bugles still rang out from beside his unfurled standard.
+Thitherward sprang a swarm of us and found a brave group massed on foot
+around the colors, men and officers shoulder to shoulder in sudden
+equality. I saw Ned Ferry make straight for their commander, who alone
+had out his sabre; the rest stood with cocked revolvers, and at twenty
+yards fired low. Ferry's horse was hit; he reared, but the spur carried
+him on; his rider's sword flashed up and then down, the Federal's sabre
+turned it, the pistols cracked in our very faces, and down went my
+leader and his horse into the bottom of the whirlwind, right under the
+standard. I saw the standard-bearer bring down one of our men on top of
+Ferry, and as Ferry half regained his feet the Federal aimed point-blank
+against his breast. But it was I who fired and the Federal who fell. As
+he reeled I stretched out for the standard, and exactly together Ned
+Ferry and I seized it--the same standard we had seen the night before.
+But instantly, graciously, he thrust it from him. "Tis yours!" he cried
+in the midst of a general huzza, smiling up at it and me as I swung the
+trophy over my head. Then he turned ghastly pale, his smile faded to an
+unmeaning stare, two or three men leaped to his side, and he sank
+lifelessly into their arms beside his dying horse.
+
+I was swinging from the saddle to my leader's relief, when a familiar
+voice forbade it, and old Dismukes came by at a long trot, pointing
+forward with the reddest sabre I ever saw, and bellowing to right and
+left with oaths and curses "Fall in, every man, on yon line! Ride to yon
+line and fall in, there's more Yankees coming! Ride down yonder and
+fa'--_here_, you, Legs, there! follow me, and shoot down every man that
+stops to plunder!"
+
+Now I saw the new firing-line, out on our left, and as the rattle of it
+quickened, the Colonel galloped, still roaring out his rallying-cries
+and wiping his reeking blade across his charger's mane. Throngs gathered
+after him; the high-road swarmed with prisoners double-quicking to the
+rear under mounted guards; here, thinly stretched across the road at
+right-angles, were our horse-holders, steadily, coolly falling back;
+farther forward, yet vividly near, was our skirmish-line, crackling and
+smoking, and beyond it the enemy's, in the edge of a wood, not yet quite
+venturing to fling itself upon us. We passed General Austin standing,
+mounted, at the top of the rise, with a number of his staff about him.
+Minie balls had begun to sing about them and us, and some officer was
+telling me rudely I had no business bringing that standard--when
+something struck like a sledge high up on my side, almost in the
+arm-pit; I told one of our men I was wounded and gave him the trophy,
+our horse-holders suddenly came forward, every man afoot rose into his
+saddle, and my horse wheeled and hurried rearward at a speed I strove in
+vain to check. Then the old messmate to whom I had said good-bye at this
+very hour just a week before, came and held me by the right arm, while I
+begged him like a drunk-and-disorderly to let me go and find Ned Ferry.
+
+But he said Lieutenant Ferry was in a captured ambulance ahead of us and
+of our hundreds of prisoners, that a full creek and a burning bridge
+were between us and the foe, and that the fight was over.
+
+
+
+LI
+
+
+UNDER THE ROOM WHERE CHARLOTTE LAY
+
+The fight was over only in degree. Our brigade was drawing away into the
+north and the enemy were pressing revengefully after them. Our hundreds
+of prisoners and our few wounded were being taken back eastward over the
+road by which we had come in the night, and even after we had turned
+into it I saw a Yankee shell kill a wounded man and his horse not thirty
+yards from me.
+
+Before we had gone another mile I met Harry Helm. The General had left
+him in camp with flat orders to remain, but at daylight he had ridden
+out to find us. He was in two tremendous moods at once; lifted to heaven
+on the glory of our deeds, yet heart-broken over the fate of Ned Ferry.
+"Surgeon's told him he can't live, Dick! And all the effect that's
+had--'No opiates, then, Doctor,' s'e, 'till I get off these two or three
+despatches.' So there he lies in that ambulance cross-questioning
+prisoners and making everybody bring him every scrap of information, as
+if he were General Austin and Major Harper rolled into one and they were
+wounded instead of him--By George! Dick, he knows you're hit and just
+how you're hit, and has sent me to find you!"
+
+I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we
+were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about
+it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn,
+and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now
+remounting, both of them openly in tears. "Hello, Kendall."
+
+"Hello, Smith." He turned sharply from me, horse and all.
+
+"Good-morning, sergeant, is Lieutenant Ferry--worse?"
+
+The sergeant only jabbed in the spurs, and leapt away with Kendall,
+bearing despatches to the brigade. Harry, looking back to me from the
+ambulance, called softly, "All right again; it was only a bad swoon!"
+
+"Hello, Smith," said some one whom I was too sick and dizzy to
+recognize, "one of those prisoners says he saw Oliver dead."
+
+They say two or three men sprang to catch me, but the first thing I knew
+was that the ambulance was under way and I in it on my back within
+elbow-touch of Ferry, looking up into a surgeon's face. "How's the
+Lieutenant?" I asked.
+
+"Oh--getting on, getting on," he replied. Doctors think patients are
+fools.
+
+In a parlor under the room where Charlotte lay they made a bed for Ferry
+and one for me, and here, lapped in luxury and distinction, I promptly
+fell asleep, and when I reopened my eyes it was again afternoon. In the
+other bed Ferry was slumbering, and quite across the room, beside a
+closed door, sat Cecile and Camille. The latter tiptoed to me. Her
+whispers were as soft as breathing, and when I answered or questioned,
+her ear sank as near as you would put a rose to smell it. "The
+Lieutenant, sleeping? yes, this hour past; surgeons surprised and more
+hopeful. Miss Estelle? in another room with other wounded. Her aunt?
+upstairs with Charlotte, who was--oh--getting on, getting on." That made
+me anxious.
+
+"Does Charlotte," I asked, "know--everything?"
+
+Camille allowed herself all the motions of a laugh, and said "No, not
+quite everything;" and then with solemn tenderness she added that
+Charlotte knew about Ferry. "And she knows about _you,"_ the whisperer
+went on; "they all know."
+
+I thought she was alluding to the verses, and had an instant of terror
+and rage before I saw what she meant. She glided back to the door and
+the two opened it an inch or so to answer some inquirer without. I saw
+her no more until bedtime, when she stood at her aunt's elbow to hand
+and hold things, while Miss Harper, to my all but screaming
+embarrassment, bared the whole upper half of one side of me and washed
+and dressed my wound anew. Ferry it was imperative to let alone, but
+when I awoke the next morning there was a radiance of joy throughout all
+the house; for he had slept and improved. The next morning again he was
+ever so much stronger, and Harry Helm rode off in simulated disgust, not
+seeing "any fun in hanging round girls who were hanging round
+other fellows."
+
+Another day arose. A courier brought passes for our three or four other
+wounded to go home as soon as they were fit to travel, and by night they
+were all gone. At early bedtime came two surgeons of high rank all the
+way from Johnston's army up in Mississippi. General Austin had asked
+this favor by telegraph. Harry had been gone thirty-six hours, and Ferry
+was just asking if he had not yet got back, when the surgeons came in to
+the room. A pleasantry or two consumed a few moments. Then the surgeon
+in charge of us told of a symptom or two, to which they responded only
+"hmm," and began the examination. Miss Harper sent her three nieces
+away. I lay and listened in the busy stillness. Presently one of the
+examiners murmured with a certain positiveness to the other, who after a
+moment's silence replied with conviction; Miss Harper touched our
+surgeon's arm inquiringly and he looked back in a glad way and nodded.
+Miss Harper nodded to me; they had located the ball! Now the
+conversation turned upon men and events of the day, while one of the
+visitors, with his back to the patient, opened a case of glittering
+knives. Presently the professional heads came so close together as quite
+to hide the patient; they spoke once or twice in a manly soothing tone.
+Miss Harper stroked my temples to keep me down, one of the busy ones
+spoke again, and lo! the thing was done, there was the ball in the
+basin. As the men of blood sped through their kind after-work the news
+flew to and fro; Camille wept,--since she could not hurrah,--Cecile told
+Charlotte, the heavenly-minded Estelle was confirmed in her faith, Miss
+Harper's black eyes, after a brief overflow, were keener and kindlier
+than ever, and as the surgeons spoke the word "done," Ferry asked again
+if Harry had not got back yet. Pretty soon Harry did arrive, with news
+of great feats by our cavalry against our old enemy Grierson, in which
+Austin's brigade had covered themselves with glory, and in which he had
+had his own share; his hand was swelled as big as his heart. In all the
+Confederacy no houseful went to sleep that night in sweeter content. I
+sank into perfect bliss planning a double wedding.
+
+
+
+LII
+
+
+SAME BOOK AND LIGHT-HEAD HARRY
+
+The next day found me so robustly happy that I was allowed to dress and
+walk out to the front door. Three days later the surgeons were gone, all
+three, and at the approach of dew-fall Cecile and Harry, Camille and I,
+walked in a field-path, gathered hedge roses, and debated the problem of
+Mrs. Roy's daughter's book, which all of us were reading and none
+had finished.
+
+"A woman," I remarked, "who, for very love of a man, can say to him, 'Go
+on up the hill without me, I have a ball and chain on my foot and you
+shall not carry them and me, you have a race to run,'--a woman so
+wonderfully good as to say that--"
+
+"Ah, no!" interrupted Cecile, with her killing Creole accent, "not a
+woman so _good_ to say that, only with the so-good _sanse_ to say it."
+
+Harry was openly vexed. "Well, either way! would any true man leave
+_that_ woman behind?" and I tried to put in that that was what I had
+been leading up to; but it makes me smile yet, to recall how jauntily
+she discomfited us both. She triumphed with the airy ease of a king-bird
+routing a crow in the upper blue. Camille had more than once told me
+that Cecile was wise beyond the hope of her two cousins to emulate her;
+which had only increased my admiration for Camille; yet now I began to
+see how the sisters came by their belief. In the present discussion she
+was easily first among the four of us. At the same time her sensuous
+graces also took unquestionable preeminence; city-bred though she was,
+she had the guise of belonging to the landscape, or, rather, of the
+landscape's belonging, by some fairy prerogative, to her. She seemed
+just let loose into the world, yet as ready and swift to make right use
+of it as any humming-bird let into a garden; as untimorous as any such,
+and as elusive. In this sultry June air she had all the animation both
+of mind and of frame that might have been expected of her on a keen,
+clear winter day. Her face never bore the same expression at the
+beginning and middle, or at either of these and the close, of any of her
+speeches, yet every change was lovely, the sign of a happy play of
+feeling, and proof of a mercurial intelligence. No report of them by
+this untrained pen would fully bear me out, and the best tribute I can
+offer is to avoid the task.
+
+It was a sweet mercy in her to change the subject, and tactful to change
+it to Charlotte, as if Charlotte were quite an unrelated theme. The
+cousins vied with each other ever so prettily in telling how beautiful
+the patient was on her couch of enfeeblement and pain, how her former
+loveliness had increased, and what new nobility it had taken on. That
+any such problem overhung her life as that which we had just been
+weighing, seemed never to have entered their thought, and if they had
+ever conceived of a passion already conscious between Charlotte and
+Ferry, they veiled the fact with charming feminine art.
+
+When we got back to the house Harry detained me on the veranda alone.
+Camille told me how long I might tarry. It was heaven to have her bit in
+my mouth, and I found it hard to be grum even when Harry beat with his
+good hand the rhythm of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes."
+
+"Dick," he said, suddenly grave as he walked me down the veranda, "her
+cousin Cecile! isn't it awful? Now that poor girl's gone back to Ned's
+bedside; back to her torture! Why _do_ they let her? My George! it's
+merciless! Has her aunt no eyes?"
+
+"But, Lieutenant, you don't know she loves him; there are signs, I
+admit; but proofs, no. She's lost color, and her curves are more
+slender, but, my goodness! a dozen things might account for that."
+
+"Dick Smith,"--my questioner worked himself up over the rail and sat out
+on the shelf that held the bucket of drinking-water and its gourd--"do
+you imagine she didn't know, when we were talking about that book, that
+she was arguing against the union of Ned Ferry and Charlotte Oliver?
+_Didn't_ she do it bravely! Richard, my friend, she couldn't have done
+it if she had suspected us of suspecting her. It's a bleeding pity! And
+yet you can't side with her, for I just swear Ned's got to have
+Charlotte Ol'--what? No, he won't overhear a blank word; here's his
+window shut, right here. He's got to have her, I say, and he's got to
+have her just as soon as the two of 'em can stand up together to be
+sworn in! Don't you say so?"
+
+I replied that I was not aware of any one who did not say so.
+
+"Well, I can name several! I don't call Scott Gholson anybody, but
+there's Major Harper--No, I'm not talking too loud, Ned isn't hearing a
+word. Major Harper's so hot against this thing that he brought it up,
+with me, yesterday on the battlefield."
+
+"Major Harper doesn't really know her," I softly remarked.
+
+Harry swore with military energy. "I told him he didn't, and he fairly
+snorted. _We_ don't know her, he says; you nor I nor his sister nor his
+niece nor his daughters, oh, we don't know her at all; and neither do we
+know Ned; Ned has graceful manners, and she's a born actress, and we're
+simply infatuated by their romantic situation. Good Lordy! he got up on
+his Charleston pride-of-family like a circus-girl on stilts, and 'Edgard
+Ferry-Durand has got a great public career before him,' s's he, 'and no
+true friend will let him think of taking a wife who is all history and
+no antecedents, a blockade-runner, a spy, and the brand-new widow of a
+blackguard and a jayhawker she had run away from practically on her
+wedding-night.' Hy Jo'! the way he went on, you'd 'a' thought he was
+already Ned's uncle-in-l'--" The speaker's face took a sudden
+distress--"Great Caesar!" He pointed up to the second-story front room
+and slipped down from the shelf just as Estelle came out to us with her
+aunt's message for me to come in.
+
+"How's the fair patient?" I hurried to ask as the three of us went.
+
+"Why, Mr. Smith, she's actually been sitting up--in the twilight--at
+the open window--while Aunt Martha and I smoothed up her bed."
+Harry groaned.
+
+"She's still very weak," said Aunt Martha when we came to her; "the
+moment her bed was made up she asked to lie down again."
+
+"Yes," softly exclaimed Camille, "but, oh, aunt Martha, with such
+courage in those eyes!"
+
+"Smith," privately asked the agonized Harry, "what would you do if you
+were in my place; go and cut your throat from ear to ear?"
+
+"No," I said, as black as an executioner, "but I wish you'd done it
+yesterday."
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+
+"CAPTAIN, THEY'VE GOT US"
+
+More days slipped by. Neighbors pressed sweet favors upon us; calls,
+joyful rumors, delicacies, flowers. One day Major Harper paid us a
+flying visit, got kisses galore, and had his coat sponged and his
+buttons reanimated. In the small town some three miles northwest of us
+he was accumulating a great lot of captured stuff. On another day came
+General Austin and stayed a whole hour. Ferry took healing delight in
+these visits, asking no end of questions about the movements afield,
+and about the personal fortunes of everyone he knew. When the General
+told him Ferry's scouts were doing better without him than with him--"I
+thought he would smile himself into three pieces," said the General at
+the supper-table.
+
+On a second call from Major Harper, when handed a document to open and
+read, he went through it carefully twice, and then dropping it on the
+coverlet asked--"and Quinn?"
+
+"Oh, Quinn's turn will come."
+
+"Ah! Major, that is not fair to Quinn!" said Ferry. Yet when he took up
+the paper again he gazed on it with a happy gravity; it made him a
+captain. "By the by," he said, "that Yankee horse that Dick Smith
+captured at Sessions's; I'd like to buy that horse from you, Major."
+They made the sale. "And there's that captured ambulance still here,
+Major, with its team eating their heads off."
+
+"Yes, I'm going to take that away with me to-day."
+
+This meant that Charlotte's negro man and his daughter, her maid, had
+come with her spring-wagon, and Harry and I would have liked the Major
+better if he had smiled at this point, as he did not. Yet he was most
+lovable; sent so kind a message up to Charlotte that Harry and I
+wondered; and received back from her a reply so gracious that--since we
+could not wonder--we worshipped. In the evening of that day Ferry and
+Charlotte were transferred, she into the room behind her, and he
+upstairs into the one out of which she was taken. That night a slave and
+his wife, belonging to the place, ran away to the enemy. If they should
+tell the Yankees Ned Ferry was here--! "By Jo'!" said Harry Helm, "I'm
+glad I didn't cut my throat; I told that darkey, yesterday, Ned's name
+was O'Brien!"
+
+Toward the close of that day came tidings of the brigade's splendid work
+at a steamboat-landing on the Mississippi River, how they had stolen in
+by night between two great bodies of the enemy, burned a vast store of
+military supplies, and then brilliantly cut their way out; yet we were
+told to be ready to withdraw into Mississippi again as soon as our newly
+made captain could safely be moved. Pooh! what of that? Lee was on his
+way into Pennsylvania; the war was nearly over, sang the Harper girls,
+and we were the winners! They cheerily saw Helm and me, next morning,
+ride southward in search of further good news. At a cross-roads I
+proposed that we separate, and meet there again near the end of the day.
+He turned west; I went an hour's ride farther south and then turned
+west myself.
+
+When we met again I knew that he--while he did not know that I--had been
+to Gilmer's plantation. We wanted to see if the Federals had left a
+grave there. They had left three, and a young girl who had been one of
+the dancers told me she had seen Oliver's body carried off by two blue
+troopers who growled and cursed because they had been sent back to bury
+it. Neither Harry nor I mentioned the subject when we met at the
+cross-roads again, for we came on our horses' necks at a stretched out
+run; the Federals were rolling up from the south battalion after
+battalion, hoping to find Major Harper's store of supplies feebly
+guarded and even up with us for that steamboat-landing raid. Presently
+as we hurried northward we began to hear, off ahead of us on our left,
+the faint hot give-and-take of two skirmish lines. We came into the
+homestead grove at a constrained trot and found the ladies out on the
+veranda in liveliest suspense between scepticism and alarm.
+
+"Yes, they're fighting, now, on the edge of town," we said, "but our
+boys will keep them there." Our host and hostess moaned their unbelief.
+"However," added Harry, "I'll go tell the old man to hitch up the little
+mules and--"
+
+"You dawn't need," said Cecile, "'tis done!" and Camille confirmed her
+word, while the planter and his wife returned to the kitchen yard, where
+the servants were loading the smokehouse meat into a wagon to hide it in
+the woods; Miss Harper and Estelle went into the house, summoned by
+Charlotte's maid. On Ferry's chamber floor sounded three measured thumps
+of his scabbarded sword.
+
+"Dick, you answer that," exclaimed Harry, reining in half wheeled; "but
+keep him on his back, if you have to hold him down!" He spurred away to
+learn whether we had better stay or fly. I threw my rein to Camille and
+flew up the hall stairs.
+
+Ferry lay in bed with three pillows behind him and his sheathed sword
+across his lap. "Good-evening, Richard," he said, "you are returned just
+in time; will you please hand me my two pistol' from yonder?--thank
+you." He laid one beside each thigh. "Now please turn the head of my
+bed a little bit, to face the door--thank you; and now, good-bye. You
+hear those footstep' there in the room behind? she is dressing to go;
+the other ladies they are helping her. Richard, I place them in your
+charge; have them all ready to get into her wagon at a moment's notice,
+with you on your horse--and you better take that Jewett horse, too; he
+came to-day."
+
+I hesitated, but a single flash of authority from his eye was enough and
+I had passed half-way to the door, when, through the window over the
+front veranda, I saw a small body of horsemen trotting up through the
+grove. The dusk of the room hid me, but there was no mistaking them.
+"Too late, Captain," I said, "they've got us."
+
+"How many do you see?"
+
+"About sixteen. Our two horses will be Yankees again to-morrow."
+
+"Ah! not certainly. Where is your carbine?"
+
+"Just outside this door. They know you're here, Captain, they're
+surrounding the house." As I reached toward the door I heard his sword
+crawl out, the doorknob clicked without my touching it, the door swung
+and closed again, and Charlotte Oliver was with us. The light of the
+western window shone full upon her; she was in the same dress, hat and
+all, in which I had seen her the night we rode together alone. Though
+wasted and pale, she betrayed a flush on either cheek and a smile that
+mated with the sweet earnest of her eyes. She tendered me my carbine,
+patted my hand caressingly, and glided onward to Ferry's bedside. With
+my back to them and my ear to the door I hearkened outward. In the front
+doorway below sounded the jingling tread of cavalry-boots and a clank
+of sabres.
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+
+THE FIGHT IN THE DOORWAY
+
+Charlotte's whisper came to me: "Richard!" Standing by Ferry's pillow
+she spoke for him. "If they start upstairs come and stand like me, on
+the other side."
+
+I nodded and slyly opened the door enough to pass half-way out. Some man
+was parleying with Miss Harper. "Now, madam, you know you haven't locked
+up your parlor to maintain an abstract right; you've locked it up
+because you've got the man in there that I've come for."
+
+"Whom have you come for, sir?"
+
+"Lieutenant O'Brien, of the rebel army. Shall I order this man to kick
+that door in? Answer quickly."
+
+"Sir, there is no Lieutenant O'Brien in there, nor elsewhere in this
+house; there never has been."
+
+"Stand aside, madam."
+
+"Stop, sir! I command you! There is no Lieutenant of any name on this
+place!"
+
+"Oh, yes there is; he goes by various names, but one of them is Ned
+Ferry. Sergeant, we'll kick together; now!"--Bang!
+
+I leaned back into the room to say "It's all right! Oh, but that sweet
+woman's a 'coon! Let them batter!" As I thrust my head out again Miss
+Harper was exclaiming "Oh, sirs, don't do that!"--Bang!--"For the honor
+of your calling and your flag--" Bang!
+
+"There's no Lieutenant in there." Bang!
+
+"Corporal, go find an axe or something."
+
+"Oh, you need not, sirs, I'll unlock the door."
+
+"Well, be quick about it, and then stand clear; we don't want any woman
+hurt." The key rattled at the keyhole and then dropped to the floor.
+"You did that by intention! Give me that key!" He tried the lock. "We've
+jammed it, corporal, but another good kick will fetch it;
+now!"--Bang!--crash!--open flew the door.
+
+"Well, I will be damned!" said the officer.
+
+"Sir," said Miss Harper, "you give me no occasion to doubt it." She
+followed the men upstairs. "Estelle, go back to your sister and cousin;
+and if you, my dear,"--to our hostess--"will kindly go also, and stay
+with them--"
+
+I closed the door. It had no key, but there was a small catch to the
+knob and I turned it on while the men were looking into the adjacent
+rooms. When they reached ours Miss Harper was again at their front.
+Inside, the three of us silently noted our strategic advantages: we were
+in the darkest part of the room, the bed's covering was a dull red,
+Ferry had on his shirt of black silk, the white pillows were hidden at
+his back, Charlotte and I were darkly clad, the light from our west
+window would be in our assailants' faces as they entered, and they would
+be silhouetted against a similar light from the hall's front. We
+noiselessly cocked our weapons and Charlotte and I each sank to one
+knee. "The door is very thin," murmured Ferry, "we can fire before they
+enter; they will get, anyhow, our smoke, and if they fire as they rush
+in we can aim under their flash."
+
+It was only then that I observed that Charlotte was armed. But the fact
+made her seem only the more a true woman, since I knew that only for her
+honor or his life would she ever take deadly aim. Her weapon was the
+slender revolver she had carried ever since the day which had made her
+Charlotte Oliver, the thing without which she never could have reached
+this hour of blissful extremity.
+
+"In here there is a lady, ill," we heard Miss Harper say.
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+Ferry prompted in a whisper, the three of us cried "Yes!" and he added
+"Pass one side from the door, Miss Harper, we are going to shoot
+through it."
+
+"Hello, in there! Lieutenant Ferry, of Ferry's scouts,"--
+
+"_Captain_ Ferry," retorted Miss Harper, and I echoed the amendment.
+
+"Damn the difference; I give you one half-minute, Captain Ferry, to say
+you surrender! If you weren't wounded I wouldn't give you that.
+Corporal, go get a log out of that fireplace downstairs."
+
+"Oh, shame!" wailed Miss Harper, half-way down the hall.
+
+"Captain," called Ferry, "I give you one quarter-minute to get away from
+that door." He whispered to Charlotte, pointing to a panel of it higher
+than any one's head.
+
+"Oh, sirs," we again heard Miss Harper cry, "withhold! Captain Ferry,
+they have called in four more men!" We heard the four downstairs coming
+at a run. "Oh, sir--"
+
+"Go away, madam!" bellowed the officer as his men thundered into the
+upper hall. "Now, Captain Ferry, there are six of us here and three
+under each of your windows. Do you--?"
+
+"Oh, sir, the lady! the sick lady!"
+
+"That's his look-out, madam. If the sick lady isn't Charlotte Oli'--"
+
+"And if she is?" called Ferry, depressing Charlotte's weapon to an aim
+barely breast high.
+
+"Then throwing away your life won't save hers! Do you surren'--?"
+
+Ferry made a quick gesture for her to shoot low, but she solemnly shook
+her head and fired through the top of the uppermost panel, and the
+assault came.
+
+The log burst the door in at a blow, Ferry and I fired, and our foes
+sprang in. Certainly they were brave; the doorway let them in only by
+twos, and the fire-log, falling under foot, became a stumbling-block;
+yet in an instant the room was ringing and roaring with the fray and
+benighted with its smoke. Their first ball bit the top of my shoulder
+and buried itself in the wall--no, not their first, but the first save
+one; for the bureau mirror stood in dim shade, and the Federal leader
+made the easy mistake of firing right into it. The error sealed his
+fate; Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of
+his followers. They replied hotly but blindly, and in a moment the room
+was void of assailants. Ferry started to spring from the bed, but
+Charlotte threw her arms about him, and as she pressed her head hard
+down on his breast I could not help but hear "No, my treasure, my
+heart's whole treasure, no!"
+
+
+
+LV
+
+
+RESCUE AND RETREAT
+
+I sprang for the door, but the fire-log sent me sprawling with my
+shoulder on the threshold. As I went down I heard in the same breath the
+wounded officer wailing "Go back! go in! there are only four of them!
+don't leave one alive!" and Miss Harper all but screaming "Our men! our
+men! God be praised, our men are coming, they are here! Fly spoilers,
+for your lives, fly!"
+
+And it was true. Their hoofs rumbled, their carbines banged, and their
+charge struck three sides of the house at once. Rising only to my
+elbows,--and how I did that much, stiffened with my wound, the doctors
+will have to explain,--I laid my cheek to my rifle, and the light of two
+windows fell upon my gunsights. Every blue-coat in the hall was between
+me and its rear window, but one besides the officer was wounded, and
+with these two three others were busy; only the one remaining man saw
+me. Twice he levelled his revolver, and twice I had almost lined my
+sights on him, but twice Miss Harper unaware came between us. A third
+time he aimed, fired and missed. I am glad he fired first, for our two
+shots almost made one report, and-he plunged forward exactly as I had
+done over the fire-log, except that he reached the floor dead.
+
+[Illustration: Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the
+arms of his followers.]
+
+Thereupon came more things at once than can be told: Miss Harper's
+outcry of horror and pity; Charlotte's cry from the bedside--"Richard!
+Richard!" a rush of feet and shouts of rage in the hall below; and my
+leap to the head of the stairs, shouting to half a dozen gray-jackets
+"Two men, no more! two men to guard prisoners, no more! go back, all but
+you two! go back!"
+
+A sabreless officer with a bandaged hand flew up the stair and into my
+face. It was Helm. "The ladies! Smith, good God! Smith, where are
+the girls?"
+
+"In the smokehouse," cried Miss Harper from her knees beside the
+prostrate Federal officer; "go bring them!--Richard, Charlotte is
+calling you!"
+
+I ran to Ferry's door; Charlotte was leaning busily over his bared
+chest, while he, still holding a revolver in his right hand, caressed
+her arm with his left. "Dick, his wound has opened again, but we must
+get him away at once anyhow. Isn't my wagon still here?--oh, thank God!
+there it comes now, I hear it in the back yard!"
+
+A Confederate waiting on Miss Harper with basin and towels barely dodged
+me as I sprang to the far end of the hall and shouted down into the yard
+for Harry. The little mules, true enough, were just rattling round a
+half turn at the lower hall's back door, having been in hiding behind
+the stables. A score or so of cavalry were boisterously hurrying off
+across the yard with a few captured horses and prisoners, and I had to
+call the Lieutenant angrily a second time, to make him hear me amid
+their din and a happy confusion which he was helping to keep up in a
+fairer group. For here were all the missing feminine members of the
+household, white and colored, and Harry was clamorous with joy,
+compassion and applause, while Camille and Cecile, pink with weeping,
+stepped out across the high doorsill of the smokehouse, leading Ned
+Ferry's horse and mine.
+
+However, there was not the urgency for instant flight that Charlotte had
+thought there was; night fell; a whole regiment of our mounted infantry
+came silently up from the rear of the plantation and bivouacked without
+lights behind a quarter of a mile of worm-fence; our two wounded and
+three unharmed prisoners, or Miss Harper's, I should say, for it was in
+response to her entreaties that the latter had thrown down their arms,
+were taken away; the dead man was borne out; lights glowed in every
+room, the servants returned to their tasks, a maddening fragrance came
+from the kitchen, and the three nieces flitted everywhere in their
+benign activities, never discovering the hurt on my shoulder until
+everything else on earth had been discovered, and then--"Oh, Richard,
+Richard!" from Estelle, with "Reach-hard, Reach-hard!" from Cecile, and
+"Mr. Smith!" from Camille, as they bathed and bound it. At length a
+surgeon arrived, gave a cheering opinion of Ferry and of Charlotte, and
+scolded Harry savagely for the really bad condition of his hand. Then
+sounds grew few and faint, our lights went out, we lay down fully
+dressed, and nearly all of us, for a while, slept.
+
+But about two in the morning Harry awakened me, murmuring "Reach-hard!
+Reach-hard! come! our sick-train's moving. Ssh! General Austin's asleep
+in the next room!" I asked where Ferry was. "Already started," he
+whispered, "--in the General's own ambulance, with Charlotte Oliver in
+hers, on a mattress, like Ned, and the four Harpers in theirs." While we
+stole downstairs he murmured on "Our brigade's come up and General
+Austin will attack at daylight with this house as his headquarters."
+
+As we mounted I asked whither we were bound. "Tangipahoa," he said;
+"then by railroad to Brookhaven, and then out to Squire Wall's."
+
+At the first streak of dawn our slow caravan caught the distant notes of
+the battle opening behind us. "That's Fisher's battery!" joyously cried
+the aide-de-camp as we paused and hearkened back. "Well, thank the Lord,
+this time nobody's got to go back for her doll; she's got it with her; I
+saw her, just now, combing its hair." We descended into a woody hollow,
+the sounds of human strife died away, and field and forest offered us
+only beauty, fragrance, peace, and the love-songs of birds.
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+
+HOTEL DES INVALIDES
+
+A shattered crew we were when in the forenoon of the third day we
+reached our goal. Harry's hand was giving him less trouble, but both my
+small wounds were misbehaving as stoutly as their limitations would
+allow; my aches were cruel and incessant, my side was swollen and my
+shoulder hot. Miss Harper was "really ill," said the surgeon, but for
+whose coming with us we should hardly have brought our whole number
+through alive. Both Ferry and Charlotte were in a critical condition.
+"Take you in!" said our tearfully smiling Mrs. Wall; "why, we'd take yo'
+whole crowd in ef we had to go out and bunk undeh the trees owse'v's!...
+Oh, Mr. Smith, you po' _chi--ild!_... Oh, my Lawd! is this Lieutenant
+Do-wrong! Good Lawd, good Lawd! I think this waugh's gone on now jess
+long enough!"
+
+In the house she gave the younger Harpers a second kiss all round. "You
+po' dears, yo're hero-ines, now, and hencefo'th fo'evehmo'!" Harry and I
+agreed they were; it was one of the few points on which we thought
+alike. We even agreed that Estelle's grasp of earthly realities was not
+so feeble as we had thought it.
+
+"Fact is," I said to him, on our first day at the Walls', as he was
+leaving the soldiers' room, where I sat under the surgeon's inspection,
+"you were totally mistaken about her."
+
+"Yes, I was," he replied; "she's got more sense in a minute than
+Camille's got in a week," and shut the door between us.
+
+My blood leaped with rage, yet I sat perfectly calm, while the surgeon
+laughed like a hyena. "As soon as you can let me go, Doctor," I frigidly
+said, "I shall look up the Lieutenant. I consider that remark
+ungentlemanly, and his method of making it as worthy only of a coward."
+
+The surgeon cackled again. "If that man," I dispassionately resumed,
+"was not perfectly sure that I am too honorable a gentleman to give Miss
+Camille the faintest hint of what he has said, sooner than say it he
+would go out and cut his throat from ear to ear."
+
+"Well! you oughtn't to get mad at him for thinking you a gentleman."
+
+"He sha'n't take a low advantage of my being one. You think he's open
+and blunt--he's as sly as a mink. He praises the older sister at the
+younger's expense, when it's the younger one that he's so everlastingly
+stuck on that he can't behave _like_ a gentleman to any man to whom she
+shows the slightest preference." We heard a coming step, but I talked
+on: "Sense! poor simpleton! he knows he hasn't got"--the door opened and
+Harry stepped partly in, but I only raised my voice,--"hasn't got as
+much brains in his whole head as there is in one of her tracks."
+
+With something between a sob, a sputter and a shriek he shut himself out
+again. Harry was never deep but in a shallow way, and never shallow
+without a certain treacherous depth. When Ned Ferry the next day
+summoned me to his bedside I went with a choking throat, not doubting I
+was to give account of this matter,--until I saw the kindness of his
+pallid face. Then my silly heart rose as much too high as it had just
+been too low and I thought "Charlotte has surrendered!" All he wanted
+was to make me his scribe. But when we were done he softly asked, "That
+business of yours we talked about on the Plank-road--it looks
+any better?"
+
+I bit my lip, turned away and shook my head. "Well, anyhow," he said,
+"I am told there is nobody in your way."
+
+I faced him sharply--"Who told you that?" and felt sure he would name
+the tricky aide-de-camp. But he pointed to the room overhead, which
+again, as in the other house, was Charlotte's. I blushed consciously
+with gratitude. "Well," I said, "it makes me happy to see you beginning
+again to get well."
+
+Within the same hour I met unexpectedly two other persons. First, Harry
+Helm; who, before I could speak, was deluging me with words, telling me
+for the twentieth time how, on that evening of the indoor fight, coming
+with a platoon of Mississippians which he had procured merely as a
+guard, he was within a hundred yards of the house before our shots in
+the bedroom told him he was riding to a rescue. Then suddenly he began
+to assure me that in what he had said about the two sisters he had
+sought only to mislead the surgeon, who, he declared, was more utterly
+dead-gone on Camille than both of us put together. We parted, and
+within the next five minutes I confronted the maiden herself.
+
+She came from upstairs with a mixed armful of papers, books and sewing,
+said she had been with Charlotte, and said no more, only made a
+mysterious mouth. I inquired how Charlotte was. She shrugged, sank into
+a seat on the gallery, let her arm-load into her lap, and replied, "Ah!
+she lies up there and smiles and smiles, and calls us pet names, and
+says she's perfectly contented, and then cannot drop half asleep without
+looking as though she were pressing a knife into her own heart. Oh,
+Dick, what is the matter with her?"
+
+"What do you think,--Camille?"
+
+"Oh--I--I'm afraid to say it--even to Estelle, or aunt Martha, or--"
+
+"Say it to me," I murmured.
+
+"Oh, if I could only trust you!" she said, shaking her head sadly and
+trying to lift her arm's burden again without taking her eyes from mine.
+It went to her feet in a landslide, and out of one of the books
+fluttered three stems of sweet-pea each bearing two mated blossoms. I
+knew them in an instant, and in the next I had them. She would not let
+me pile the fallen freight anywhere but into her arm again, nor recover
+her eye before she was fully re-laden. Then she set her lips freezingly
+and said "Now give me back my flowers."
+
+I meekly gave them and she turned to go into the house; her head
+gradually sank forward as she went, and her unparagoned ear and neck
+flushed to a burning red. On the threshold, by some miscalculation, her
+burdened arm struck the jamb, and the whole load fell again. I sprang
+and began to gather the stuff into a chair, but she walked straight on
+as though nothing had occurred, and shut the nearest door behind her.
+
+In those days used to come out to see us Gregory, in his long-skirted
+black coat and full civilian dress; of whom I have told a separate
+history elsewhere. Very pointed was Camille's neglect of both Harry and
+me, to make herself lovely to the dark and diffident new-comer, while
+Estelle positively pursued me with compensatory sweetness; and Gregory,
+whenever he and I were alone together, labored to reassure me of his
+harmlessness by expatiating exclusively upon the charms of Cecile. She
+seemed to him like a guardian angel of Ferry and Charlotte, while yet
+everything she said or did was wholly free from that quality of
+other-worldliness which was beautiful in Estelle, but which would not
+have endured repetition in the sister or the cousin. There Harry and I,
+also, once more agreed. Cecile never allowed herself to reflect a spirit
+of saintliness, or even of sacrifice, but only of maidenly wisdom and
+sweet philosophy.
+
+"If it weren't for Charlotte," whispered the Lieutenant, "I could swear
+she was created for Ned Ferry!" and when I shook my head he, too,
+declared "No, no! if ever a match was made on high Charlotte was made
+for him and he for Charlotte; but, oh, Lord, Lord! Reach-hard Thorndyke
+Smith, how is this thing going to end?"
+
+That was the problem in the mind of every looker on, and the lookers-on
+were legion; the whole wide neighborhood came to see us. Gregory and
+others outstayed their furloughs; the surgeon lingered shamelessly. Of
+course, there were three girls besides Charlotte, and it was pure
+lying--as I told Helm--for some of those fellows to pretend that Captain
+Ferry's problem was all they stayed for; and yet it was the one
+heart-problem which was everybody's, and we were all in one fever to see
+forthwith a conclusion which "a decent respect to the opinions of
+mankind" required should not come for months.
+
+"Pooh!" said Harry, "'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind'
+requires just the reverse!" and the surgeon avowed that it was required
+by a decent respect to her powers of endurance; he was every day afraid
+her slow improvement would stop and she would begin to sink. He admitted
+the event could wait, but he wished to gracious we could have
+her decision.
+
+I said suppose it should be negative. "Oh, it won't!" exclaimed both he
+and Harry. "When it comes to the very point--"
+
+Gregory's approach interrupted us, but I remembered a trait in Charlotte
+of which I have spoken, and gave myself the hope that their prediction
+might prove well founded.
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+
+A YES AND A NO
+
+But now Charlotte's recovery took on new speed. Maybe her new brightness
+meant only that her heart was learning to bear its load; but we hoped
+that was just what it was unlearning, as she and Ferry sat at chess on
+the gallery in the afternoons.
+
+One night the fellows gave a dance in Brookhaven. We went in two wagons
+and by the light of mounted torch-bearers, and Charlotte and Ferry stood
+at the dooryard gate and sent after us their mirthful warnings and
+good-byes. It set some of us a-hoping--to see them there--a dooryard
+gate means so much. We fairly prayed he might compel her decision before
+she should turn to re-enter the house. But the following morning it was
+evident we had prayed in vain.
+
+On the next afternoon but one we heard that a great column of our
+soldiers was approaching on the nearest highway, bound up the railroad
+to Joe Johnston's army from the region about Port Hudson, and Charlotte
+instantly proposed that our ladies deal out food and drink from some
+shady spot on the roadside. It was one of those southern summer days
+when it verily seems hotter in the shade than in the sun--unless you are
+in the sun. The force was wholly artillery and infantry, the last
+Confederate infantry that region ever saw in column under arms; poor,
+limping, brown-faced, bloody-footed boys! their weapons were the only
+clean things, the only whole things, about them except their unbroken
+spirit; and when the very foremost command chanced to be one which the
+Harpers had seen in New Orleans the day it left there marching in
+faultless platoons and spotless equipments through the crowds that
+roared acclaim and farewell, our dear ladies, for one weak moment, wept.
+
+"Here come the real heroes, Harry," said my crippled leader; "we are
+dandies and toy-soldiers, by the side of those infantry boys, Doctor, we
+cavalry fellows;" and we cavalry fellows would have hid if we honorably
+could. Yet hardly had he spoken when he and a passing field-officer
+cried out in mutual recognition, and from that time until the rear-guard
+was clear gone by we received what the newspapers call "a continuous
+ovation." A group of brigade officers went back with us to Squire
+Wall's, to supper, and you could see by the worship they paid Charlotte
+that they knew her story. Her strength was far overtaxed, and the moment
+the last fond straggler had gone we came in out of the splendid
+moonlight.
+
+"Now, Charlotte, my dear," began Miss Harper, "you are too terribly
+tired to--why, where is Charlotte; did she not come in with us from
+the--gate?"
+
+Ferry, too, was missing. Mrs. Wall made eyes at the inquirer, Estelle
+and Cecile began to speak but deferred to each other, and Camille,
+putting on a deadly exhaustion, whined as she tottered to her smiling
+guardian, "Kiss your sweet baby good-night, auntie dear, and"--with a
+hand reached out to Estelle--"make Naughty come, too." She turned to say
+good-night to Cecile but spoiled her kiss with an unintended laugh. The
+surgeon, Harry and I bowed from the room and stepped out to the
+water-bucket and gourd. From there we could see the missing two,
+lingering at the dooryard gate, in the bright moonlight. As we finished
+drinking, "Gentlemen," murmured Harry, "I fear our position is too
+exposed to be tenable."
+
+The surgeon started upstairs. "I'll join you directly, Doctor," Harry
+said, and in a lower voice added "Smith and I will just lounge in and
+out of the hall here to sort o' show nobody needn't be in any hurry,
+don't you see?"
+
+But the other jerked his thumb toward the half-closed parlor, where
+Miss Harper and Cecile sat close, to each other absorbed in some matter
+of the tenderest privacy. "They'll attend to that," he muttered; "come
+on to bed and mind your own business."
+
+Harry huffed absurdly. "You go mind yours," he retorted, and then more
+generously added, "we'll be with you in a minute." The surgeon went, and
+the aide-de-camp, as we began to pace the hall, fairly took my breath by
+remarking without a hint of self-censure, "Damn a frivolous man!" Then
+irrelatively he added, "Those two out at that gate--this is a matter of
+life and death with them;" and when I would have qualified the
+declaration, he broke in upon me--"Right, Dick, you're right, it _is_
+worse; it's a choice between true life and death-in-life; whether
+they'll make life's long march in sunshine together or in
+darkness apart."
+
+Well, of course, it was no such simple question, and never could be
+while life held so many values more splendid than any wilfulness could
+win. There lay the whole of Charlotte's real difficulty--for she had
+made it all hers. But when I tried in some awkward way to say this Harry
+cut me short. "Oh, Dick, I--eh--you bother me! I want to tell you
+something and if I don't hurry I can't. Something's happened to me, old
+fellow, something that's sobered me more than I ever would 'a' thought
+anything could. I want to tell you because I can trust you with a
+secr'--wh'--what's the matter, did I hurt your wound? Honestly, I want
+to tell you because--well--because I've been deceiving you all along:
+I've deceived you shamefully, letting on to like this girl more than
+that, and so on and so on."
+
+"Yes, you thought you were deceiving me."
+
+"Oh, well, maybe I wasn't, but I want to tell you to-night because I'm
+going to camp in the morning. Oh, yes,"--he named the deepest place
+known--"the sight of those webfoot boys to-day was too much for me; I'm
+going; and Dick, when I told her I was going--"
+
+"_Told whom_?"
+
+"Aw, come, now, Dick, you know every bit as well as I know. Well, when I
+told her I was going I didn't dream I was going to tell her anything
+else; I give you my word! Where in the"--same place again--"I ever got
+the courage I'll never tell you, but all of a sudden thinks I, 'I'm
+never going to get anything but no, anyhow, and so, Dick, I've been and
+gone and done it!"
+
+I leaned on the stair-newel, sorry for the poor fool, but glad of this
+chance. "Why, Lieutenant, not many men would have done as well. You felt
+honor-bound not to slip away uncommitted, so you took your dose like a
+hero and licked the spoon." I felt that I was salting his wound, but we
+were soldiers and--I had the salt.
+
+He drew a sigh. "Yes, I took my dose--of astonishment. Dick, she said
+yes! Oh, good Lord, Dick, do you reckon they'll ever be such full-blown
+idiots as to let me have her?"
+
+I sank upon the steps; every pore in my body was a fountain of cold
+sweat: "Have whom?"
+
+"Cecile." He was going on to declare himself no more fit for her than
+for the presidency of the Confederate States, which was perfectly true;
+but I sprang up, caught him (on my well side) by one good hand, and had
+begun my enthusiastic congratulations, when Charlotte appeared and we
+swerved against the rail to let her pass upstairs. In some way as she
+went by it was made plain to us that she had said no. "Good-night,"
+ventured both of us, timorously.
+
+"Good-night," she responded, very musically, but as if from a great
+distance.
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+
+THE UPPER FORK OF THE ROAD
+
+Ferry, as he passed us, called my name, and I started after him. At
+Charlotte's door we heard the greeting of her black maid. The maid's
+father, who of late had been nightly dressing Ferry's wound and mine,
+came to us in Ferry's room; and there my Captain turned to greet me, his
+face white with calamity. He took me caressingly by a button of my
+jacket. "Can you have your wound washed to-night before mine?"
+
+"Why, certainly, if it's the least--"
+
+"Yes, thank you. And down here in this room instead of upstairs?"
+
+"Captain Ferry! if you knew how horribly it smells, you--"
+
+"Ah! don't I know?" he said, and as I sat naked from throat to waist
+with the old negro laving the sores, Ferry scanned them narrowly. "They
+are not so bad, Dick; you think a few hours in the saddle will not make
+them worse?"
+
+"Not if they're spent for you, Captain."
+
+"Yes, for me; also for much better. We shall ride for--"
+
+"You ride? Oh, Captain, you are in no condition--"
+
+"Tst!" he laid a finger on my lips; "'twill not be hard; we are not
+going on a scout--to jump fences." He began to make actual preparations,
+and presently helped me draw my shirt into place again over the clean
+bandages, while the old man went out after fresh water. "I am a hundred
+times more fit to go than to stay," he suddenly resumed. "I must go. Ah,
+idleness, there is nothing like idleness to drive a man mad; I must have
+something to do--to-night--at once." I wish I knew how to give the words
+with his quiet intensity.
+
+I began to unclothe his wound. "May I ask one thing?"
+
+"Ah! I know you; you want to ask am I taking that upper fork of the
+road. I am; 'tis for that I want you; so go you now to the stable,
+saddle our horses and bring them."
+
+When I reached the front steps with them Ferry was at the gallery's
+edge, Miss Harper, Cecile and Harry were on three sides of him, and he
+was explaining away our astonishing departure. We were going to
+Hazlehurst, to issue clothing and shoes to those ragged and barefoot
+fellows we had seen that afternoon, and the light of whose tentless camp
+was yonder in the sky, now, toward Brookhaven. We were to go that way,
+confer with their officers, telegraph from town for authorizations to be
+sent to us at Hazlehurst, and then to push on to that place and be ready
+to issue the stuff when the trains should come up from Brookhaven
+bringing the brigade. While he spoke Camille and Estelle joined us.
+"No," he said, "to start any later, 'twould be too late."
+
+To Harry's imploring protest that he, Ferry, was not fit to go to
+Hazlehurst horseback, he replied "Well! what we going to do? Those boys
+can't go to Big Black swamp bare-foot."
+
+Our dear friends were too well aware of the untold trouble to say a word
+about his coming back, but Miss Harper's parting injunction to me was to
+write them.
+
+The whole night and the following day were a toilsome time for us, but
+by fall of the next night the brigade had come in rags and passed newly
+clothed and shod, and in a room of the town tavern we dressed each
+other's hurts and sank to sleep on one bed. The night was hot, the pain
+of my wounds was like a great stone lying on them, and at the tragic
+moment of a frightful dream I awoke. "Captain," I murmured.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Did she give no reason?"
+
+"No." A silence followed; then he said, "You know the reason, I think."
+
+"Yes, I think I do; I think--"
+
+"Well? don't be afraid to say it."
+
+I got the words out in some form, that I believed Charlotte loved him
+deeply, as deeply, passionately, exaltedly, as ever a true woman loved
+a man--
+
+"Ah, me!" he lifted his arms wide and knitted his fingers on his brow.
+
+"And there is the whole trouble," I added. "She will not let you marry
+the woman whose--"
+
+"Whose husband I have killed.... Ah, God!... Ah, my God! why was I
+chosen to do that?... And you think, Dick, it was not a question of
+time; that I did not ask, maybe a little too soon?"
+
+"No, not as between sooner and later; and yet, in another way, possibly,
+yes." Without either of us stirring from the pillow I tried to explain.
+I pointed out that trait in Charlotte which I called an impulse suddenly
+to surrender the key of her situation, the vital point in her
+fortunes and fate.
+
+"Yes.... Yes," Ferry kept putting in.
+
+I went on to say that she seemed now to have learned, herself, that it
+was on this shoal she grounded at every low water of her physical and
+mental powers; as when over-fatigued, for instance; and that I should
+not wonder if she had bound herself never again at such a time to let
+her judgment follow her impulses. He laid his hand on me: "Stop; stop;
+you stab too deep. I thought to take her by surprise at that very point,
+and right there she has countermined. My God! can it be that I am served
+only right?"
+
+"No," I replied, although it was a thing I would have said Ned Ferry
+would not do, "no, no, it is she who has served both you and herself
+cruelly wrong. Captain, I believe that when Miss Harper has talked it
+over with her she will see her mistake as we all see it, and will call
+you back."
+
+"Ah, me! Ah, me! Do you believe that, Dick?"
+
+"I do, Captain; but at the same time--"
+
+"What, what? Speak out, Dick. You blame me some other way?"
+
+"Oh, no, indeed! I am the one to blame, the only one. If you had not,
+both of you, been so blameless--so splendidly blameless--I should hardly
+have let myself sink so deep into blame; but I knew you would never take
+the last glad step until you had seen the last sad proof that you might
+take it. Oh, Captain, to-night is the third time that in my dreams I
+have seen _that man_ alive."
+
+I do not know how long after that we lay silent, but it seemed an
+endless time before he exclaimed at last "My God! Dick, you should
+have told me."
+
+"I know it; I know I should! But it was only a dream, and--"
+
+"Ah! 'twas your doubt first and the dream after! But let us think no
+more of blame, we must settle the doubt. We shall begin that to-morrow."
+On my venturing to say more he interrupted. "Well, we can do nothing
+now; at the present, sleep is our first business." However, after a
+little, he spoke again, and, I believe, purely in order to soothe me to
+slumber, speculated and counselled with me for the better part of an
+hour concerning my own poor little love affair.
+
+At breakfast he told me the first step in his further plans would be for
+us to take the train for Tangipahoa, with our horses, on our way to our
+own camp; but just before the train came the telegraph brought General
+Austin's request--which, of course, carried all the weight of an
+order--for Ferry to remain here and make ready for further issues of
+quartermaster's stores. He turned on his heel and twisted his small
+mustache: "That means we are kept here to be kept here, Richard."
+
+It was a mistaken kindness, from our point of view, but it had the merit
+that it kept us busy. In two days the post-quartermaster's affairs and
+supplies were reduced to perfect order for the first time in their
+history. For two days more we ran a construction train and with a swarm
+of conscripts repaired two or three miles of road-bed and some
+trestle-work in a swamp; and at every respite in our strenuous
+activities we discoursed of the girls we'd left behind us; their minds,
+their manners, their features, figures, tastes and talents, and their
+walk and talk. So came the end of the week, and while the sun was still
+above the trees we went on down, inspecting the road beyond our repairs,
+on our own hand-car to Brookhaven. With heads bare, jackets in our laps,
+and muddy boots dangling over the car's front edge, and with six big
+negroes at the levers behind us, we watched the miles glide under our
+wheels and grow fewer and fewer between us and the shrine of our hearts.
+"Sing, Dick," said Ferry, and we chanted together, as we had done at
+every sunset these three days, "O my love is like a red, red rose." We
+could not have done it had we known that yonder glorious sun was setting
+forever upon the fortunes of our Southern Confederacy. It was the fourth
+of July; Lee was in full retreat from Gettysburg, Vicksburg was gone,
+Port Hudson was doomed, and all that was left for us now was to
+die hard.
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+
+UNDER CHARLOTTE'S WINDOW
+
+At the tavern, where we went to smarten up and to eat, we chanced upon
+Gregory. He was very shy of Ferry, because Ferry was a captain, but told
+me the latest news from the Wall place, where he had spent the previous
+evening. Harry and the surgeon were gone to camp, the Harpers were well,
+Charlotte was--better, after a bad turn of several days. We felt in duty
+bound to stay within hail of the telegraph office until it should close
+for the night; and when the operator was detained in it much beyond the
+usual time, Ferry, as we hovered near, said at length, "Well, I'm sorry
+for you, Dick; 'tis now too late for you to go yonder--this evening."
+
+"Didn't you intend to call, too?" "No," he said; yet the moment the
+operator turned the key in his door we sauntered away from the station,
+tavern, town, and out into the rain-famished country. We chose a road on
+high ground, under pines; the fact that a few miles of it would bring us
+to Squire Wall's was not sufficient reason for us to shun it, and we
+loitered on and on, discoursing philosophically on man and woman and the
+duties of each to other. Through habit we went softly, and so, in time,
+came up past a small garden under the house's southern side. Here
+silence was only decorum, for every window in the dark upper rooms was
+thrown open to the sultry air. The house's front was away from the
+direction of the town, and at a corner of this garden, where the road
+entered the open grove, the garden fence turned north at a right angle,
+while the road went on through the grove into wide cornfields beyond.
+
+We kept to the garden fence till it brought us along the dooryard front,
+facing the house. Thus far the whole place seemed fast asleep. Along the
+farthest, the northern, side a line of planted trees ran close to a
+narrow wing of but one room on each of its two stories, and the upper of
+these two rooms was Charlotte's. Where we paused, at the dooryard gate,
+we could not see this wing, but we knew its exterior perfectly; it had a
+narrow window in front, looking into the grove, and a broader one at the
+rear, that overlooked an open stretch of the Wall plantation. The place
+seemed fast asleep, I say, but we had not a doubt we were being
+watched--by the two terrible dogs that guarded the house but never
+barked. By this time they should have recognized us and ought to be
+coming forward and wagging faintly, as who should say "Yes, that's all
+right, but we have our orders."
+
+"Ah!"--Ferry guardedly pointed to the ground at the corner of the house
+nearest Charlotte's room; there were both the dogs, dim as phantoms and
+as silent, standing and peering not toward us but around to the wing
+side in a way to make one's blood stop. We drew deeper into the grove
+and made a short circuit that brought us in line with Charlotte's two
+windows, and there, at the farther one, with her back to us, sat
+Charlotte, looking toward Hazlehurst. The bloodthirsty beasts at the
+corner of the house were so intently waiting to spring upon something,
+somebody, between them and the nearer window, that we were secure from
+their notice. We had hardly more than become aware of these things when,
+in the line of planted trees, out of the depths of the one nearest the
+nearer window, sounded a note that brought Charlotte instantly to her
+feet; the same feeble, smothered cry she had heard the night she was
+wounded. She crossed to the front window and listened, first standing
+erect, and then stooping and leaning out. When we saw her do that we
+knew how little she cared for her life; Ferry beckoned me up from behind
+him; neither of us needed to say he feared the signal was from Oliver.
+"Watch here," he whispered, and keeping the deepest shade, started
+eagerly, with drawn revolver, toward the particular tree. I saw the dogs
+discover and recognize him and welcome his aid, yet I kept my closest
+watch on that tree's boughs and on Charlotte. She was wondering, I
+guessed, whether the call was from some messenger of Ferry, or was only
+a bird's cry. As if she decided it was the latter, she moved away, and
+had nearly re-crossed the room, when the same sad tremolo came searching
+the air again. Nevertheless she went on to the farther window and stood
+gazing out for the better part of a minute, while in my heart I besought
+her not to look behind. For Ferry and the dogs had vanished in shadow,
+and outside her nearer window, wavering now above and now below the
+sill, I could just descry a small pale object that reminded me of that
+missive Coralie Rothvelt had passed up to me outside the window-sill at
+old Lucius Oliver's house exactly a month before. From the upper depths
+of the nearest tree this small thing was being proffered on the end of a
+fishing-rod. Presently the rod must have tapped the sill, with such a
+start did she face about. Silently she ran, snatched the dumb messenger,
+and drew down the window-shade. A moment later the room glowed with a
+candle, while her shadow, falling upon the shade, revealed her scanning
+a letter, lifting her arms with emotion, and so passing out of the
+line of view.
+
+I waited on. So absorbed was I that I did not hear the coming of a
+horseman in the fields beyond the grove, nor the click of a field gate;
+but when the strange quietude of Ferry and the dogs had begun to
+reassure me I became aware of this new-comer approaching the dooryard.
+There he reined in and hallooed. I knew the voice. An answer came from
+an upper window. "Is this Squire Wall's?" asked the traveller. "Well,
+Squire, I'm from General Austin's headquarters, with orders to
+Captain Ferry."
+
+"Captain Ferry ain't stopping with us now, sir, he's 'way up at
+Hazlehurst."
+
+"Yes, sir. I didn't know but he might 'a' come down to spend to-morrow
+with you, it being the Sabbath. My name's Gholson, sir; I've got letters
+for the Miss Harpers; yes, sir; and one for Private Smith, from his
+mother, in New Orleans."
+
+"My sakes! yo' pow'ful welcome, Mr. Wholesome; just wait till I call off
+my dogs, sir, and I'll let you in."
+
+When the dogs came at the Squire's call I breathed relief. Ferry
+appeared behind me and beckoned me deeper into the grove. He sank upon a
+stump, whispering "That was worse than ten fights."
+
+"Who was it?" I asked. "Where is he?"
+
+He pointed to the field gate through which Gholson had come. In the
+field a small man was re-closing it cautiously, and now he mounted and
+rode away; it was Isidore Goldschmidt, of the Plank-road swamp. I was
+wondering why he had behaved in this skulking way, when Ferry, as if
+reading my thought, said, "Isidore can't afford to be found seventy-five
+miles inside our lines with no papers except a letter from a Yankee
+officer--and not knowing, himself, what's in it."
+
+"Oh! why should he risk his life to bring such a thing to her?"
+
+"Because three months ago she risked her life to save the life of his
+father, and now, since only last week, that Yankee has saved the life of
+his mother." I asked who this Yankee might be. "Well, that is yet more
+strange; he is the brother of Captain Jewett."
+
+We were moving to the house; at the steps we halted; the place was all
+alight and the ladies were arriving in the parlor. A beam of light
+touching Ferry's face made his smile haggard. I asked if this Jewett was
+another leader of scouts.
+
+"No, he is a high-rank surgeon. Yet I think he must have heard all about
+her; he wouldn't send that letter, that way, just for gratitude."
+
+"Yes," I responded, pondering, "he may easily have learned about her,"
+and I called to mind that chief-of-staff of whom Charlotte had told us.
+Then, remembering her emotional shadow-play on the window-shade, I
+added, "He knew at least what would be important news to her--Captain,
+I have it!"
+
+He made a motion of pain--"Don't say it!" and we read in each other's
+eyes the one conviction that from a surgeon's personal knowledge this
+man had written to warn Charlotte that Oliver was alive.
+
+
+
+LX
+
+
+TIDINGS
+
+All the glad difference between hope stark drowned and hope sighing back
+into life lightened Ferry's heart; he gripped my shoulder--the sound
+one, by good luck,--and drew me into the dining-room, where the whole
+company were gathered to see Gholson eat. Our entry was a fresh
+surprise. As we drank the flatteries of seven lovely welcomes, from
+behind Gholson I reconnoitred Charlotte, and the fullest confirmation of
+our guess was in the peaceful resolve of her eyes. I noted the Harpers,
+all, and dear Mrs. Wall's sweet freckled face, take new gladness of the
+happy change, while unable to define its cause.
+
+But now came raptures and rhapsodies over the opened letters. Ferry's
+orders had not been expected to reach him to-night, Gholson said, and so
+we insisted they and my letter should remain in the saddle-pockets while
+Gholson ate, and while the good news, public and personal, of the
+Harpers' letters went round.
+
+"But I thought the' was fi-ive letters," said the Squire as we were
+about to leave the board; at which Mrs. Wall mumbled to him to "hush
+up;" for the fifth was to Cecile.
+
+"Yes," guilefully said Charlotte, "Richard's letter!" and we all
+followed Gholson to where his saddle lay on the gallery. There he handed
+out Ferry's document and went on rummaging for mine.
+
+"The two were right here together," he said, "and Mr. Smith's was marked
+'valuable' and had something hard in one corner of it." Camille brought a
+candle, Estelle another; Gholson rose from his knee: "Smith, it's gone!
+I've lost it! And yet"--he slapped his breast-pockets--"no, it's
+somewhere in the grove; it's between here and that cornfield gate! I
+counted all the papers just this side of that gate, and I must 'a'
+dropped yours then!" Cecile brought a third light and we sallied forth
+into the motionless air, Estelle with a candle and Gholson, Camille
+with a candle and me, Cecile with a candle and Mrs. Wall, Miss Harper
+and the Squire, and Charlotte and Ferry. In the heart of the grove
+Estelle gave a soft cry, sprang, stooped, straightened, and handed me
+the letter.
+
+"Yes," exclaimed Camille as the three candle-bearers gathered close,
+"that's your mother's writing," and as we fell into marching order
+again, with the lights still in the front files, I opened it. It was
+thick and soft with sheet after sheet of thinnest paper. With these was
+a sealed letter, unaddressed, containing in one corner what seemed to be
+a ring. Around all was a sheet of writing of later date than any other.
+Wonderful, my mother's lines declared, was the Providence that had
+brought her wounded boy among such priceless friends; and wonderful that
+same Providence that now gave her the chance to send three weeks' daily
+letters in one, and to send them by a hand so sure that she ventured to
+add this other note, a matter so secret that it must be delivered only
+by my own hands, or hands which I could trust as my own, to Charlotte
+Oliver. We glanced back in search of Charlotte. She and Ferry were well
+in the rear of the procession, moving with laggard steps, she lighting
+his page with a borrowed candle, and he evidently reading not his
+orders, but the Federal surgeon's letter. "Oh, don't speak yet,"
+murmured Camille, "let them alone!"
+
+At the garden gate the most of the company passed on into the house,
+Gholson among them. His face, as for an instant he turned aside to me,
+betrayed a frozen rage; for Ferry and Charlotte tarried just at our
+backs, she seated on the "horse-block" and he leaning against it. A stir
+of air brought by the rising moon had blown out their light. Gholson
+left me, and Camille waited at my side while I tried to read by the
+flare of her guttering candle. "Come, my dear," said Miss Harper from
+half-way up the walk, but Charlotte called Miss Harper.
+
+"You'd better go in, Camille," insisted the aunt as she passed us, but
+Charlotte had just asked for our candle to relight her own, and she said
+to Miss Harper, "Let them stay, won't you?" and then to Ferry, "They
+might as well, mightn't they? Oh, now,"--as Camille handed her my
+mother's letter--"they must!" She toyed with the envelope's thinner edge
+without noticing the ring in the corner. "My dears," she said, looking
+frail and distressed, yet resolute, "I have positive intelligence--not
+through Captain, nor Richard, nor Mr. Gholson,--I'll tell you how some
+day--positive intelligence that--the dead--is not dead; the blow,
+Richard, glanced. I was foolish never to think of that possibility, it
+occurs so often. He was profoundly stunned, so that he didn't come-to
+until he was brought to a surgeon. It's from that surgeon I have the
+news; here's his letter."
+
+"Charlotte, my dear," interrupted Miss Harper, "tell us the remainder
+to-morrow, but now--"
+
+"No, sweetest friend, there will never be another chance like this;
+Captain Ferry's orders carry him to Jackson at daylight to-morrow,
+and--and we may not meet again for years; let me go on. When the gash
+was sewed up, the hand was really the worse hurt of the two, and after
+a few days he was sent down on a steamer to New Orleans with a great lot
+of other sick and wounded, and with the commanding general's warning not
+to come back on peril of his life. 'Tisn't easy to tell this, but you
+four have a particular right to know it from me and at once. So let me
+say"--she handed Ferry my mother's letter as if it were a burdensome
+distraction--"I'm not sorry for the mistake, Richard, which we all so
+innocently made; and you mustn't be sorry for me and be saying to
+yourselves that my captivity is on me again; for I'm happier tonight
+than I've been since the night the mistake was made."
+
+She dropped a hand to Ferry's to receive again the neglected letter, and
+chanced to take it by the corner that held the ring. With that she
+stared at us, fingered it, rended the envelope, gave one glance to her
+own name engraved inside a plain gold ring of the sort New Orleans girls
+bestow upon those to whom they are betrothed, and springing to the
+ground between our two candles, bent over the open page and cried
+through a flood of tears, "Oh, God, have mercy on him, he is gone! He is
+gone, Edgard! Oh, Edgard, he is gone at last; gone beyond all doubt, and
+our hands--our hands and our hearts are clean!"
+
+Ferry tossed away his candle and turned upon her, but she retreated into
+Miss Harper's arms laughing through her tears. "Oh, no, no! we've never
+hurried yet, never yet, my master in patience, and we'll not hurry now!
+Go and come again. Go, wait, hide your eyes till I cry 'whoop,' and
+come again and find me, and, I pledge you before these dear witnesses,
+I'll be 'it' for the rest of my life!"
+
+With the letter again held open, and bidding Miss Harper and Camille
+read with her, she swept a fleet glance along the close lines that told
+how Oliver, half cured of his wounds, had died in a congestive chill, of
+swamp-fever, the day he landed in New Orleans. "See, see, Richard, here
+your mother has copied the hospital's certificate."
+
+She read on aloud how two private Federal soldiers, hospital
+convalescents, had come to my mother telling her of his death, and how
+he had named my mother over and over in his delirium, desiring that she
+should be given charge of the small effects on his person and that she
+would return them to his father in the Confederacy. My mother wrote how
+she had been obliged secretly to buy back from the hospital steward a
+carte-de-visite photograph of Charlotte, and this ring; how, Oliver not
+being a Federal soldier, she had been allowed to assume the expense and
+task of his burial; how she had found the body already wrapped and
+bound, in the military way, when she first saw it, but heard the two
+convalescents praising to each other the strong, hard-used beauty of the
+hidden face, and was shown the suit of brown plantation jeans we all
+knew so well; and how, lastly, when her overbearing conscience compelled
+her to tell them she might find it easier to send the relics to the wife
+rather than the father, they had furtively advised her to do as
+she pleased.
+
+[Illustration: Springing to the ground between our two candles, she
+bent over the open page]
+
+"Charlotte," said Miss Harper, "the thing is an absolute certainty!
+Even without your likeness or--"
+
+"Ah, no, no, not without this! the ring, the ring! But with it, yes!
+This is the crowning proof! my ring to him! Oh, see my name inside it,
+Camille; this little signet is Heaven's own testimony and acquittal!
+Look, Richard, look at it now, for no living soul, no light of day,
+shall ever see it again--"
+
+"Sweet heart," replied Miss Harper, "very good! very good! but now say
+no more of that sort. God bless you, dear, just let yourself be happy.
+Good-night--no, no, sit still; stay where you are, love, while Camille
+and I go in and Richard steps around to the stable and puts our team
+into the road-wagon; for, Captain Ferry, neither you nor he is fit to
+walk into Brookhaven; we can bring the rig back when we come from church
+to-morrow."
+
+"No, Richard," said Charlotte, "get my wagon and the little Mexicans."
+Then to Miss Harper and Camille, "Good-night, dears; I'll wait here that
+long, if Captain Ferry will allow me." She turned to him with the
+moonlight in her eyes, that danced riotously as she said in her softest,
+deepest note, "You're afraid!" and I thanked Heaven that Coralie
+Rothvelt was still a pulsing reality in the bosom of Charlotte
+Oliver.
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+
+WHILE DESTINY MOVED ON
+
+Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the
+next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and
+Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited
+Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther
+to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him
+and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if
+our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was
+not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in
+practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh,
+the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the
+scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the
+groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood
+and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from
+sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long
+dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our
+brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring,
+with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the
+Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was
+kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried
+swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade
+going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge
+might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its
+captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be,
+in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called
+back to his commander, "Ferry's scouts!" the whole column cheered us. I
+feel the thrill of it to this hour.
+
+How busy we were kept, and how much oftener I wrote to Ferry, and to
+Camille, than to my mother. And how much closer I watched the trend of
+things that belonged only to this small story than I did that great
+theatre of a whole world's fortunes, whose arches spread and resounded
+from the city of Washington to the city of Mexico. In mid-August one of
+Camille's heartlessly infrequent letters brought me a mint of blithe
+news. Harry and Cecile were really engaged; Major Harper, aunt Martha,
+General Austin, Captain Ferry and Charlotte had all written the distant
+father in his behalf, and the distant father had capitulated.
+Furthermore, Captain Ferry's latest letter to Charlotte had brought word
+that in spite of all backsets he was promised by his physician that in
+ten days more he could safely take the field again. But, best of all,
+Major Harper, having spent a week with his family--not on leave, but on
+some mysterious business that somehow included a great train of pontoon
+bridges--had been so completely won over to Charlotte by her own sweet
+ways that, on his own suggestion to his sister, and their joint
+proposition, by correspondence, to Ferry, another group of letters,
+from Miss Harper, the Major and the General, had been sent to the
+Durands in New Orleans--father, mother, and grandmother--telling them
+all about Charlotte; her story, her beauty, her charms of manner, mind,
+and heart. And so, wrote my correspondent, the Wall household were
+living in confident hope and yet in unbearable suspense; for these
+things were now full two weeks old, and would have been told me sooner
+only that she, Camille, had promised never to tell them to any one
+whomsoever.
+
+A week later came another of these heartlessly infrequent letters. Mr.
+Gregory, it said,--oh, _hang_ Mr. Gregory!--had called the previous
+evening. Then followed the information that poor Mr. Gholson--oh, dear!
+the poor we have always with us!--had arrived again from camp so wasted
+with ague as to be a sight for tears. He had come consigned to "our
+hospital," an establishment which the Harpers, Charlotte and the Walls
+had set up in the old "summer-hotel" at Panacea Springs, and had
+contrived to get the medical authorities to adopt, officer and--in a
+manner--equip. They were giving dances there, to keep the soldiers
+cheerful, said the letter, in which its writer took her usual patriotic
+part, and Mr. Gregory--oh, save us alive! And now I was to prepare
+myself: the Durands had got the bunch of letters and had written a
+lovely reply to Captain Ferry, who had sent it to Charlotte, claiming
+her hand, and Charlotte had answered yes. If I thought I had ever seen
+her beautiful or blithe, or sweet, or happy, I ought to see her now;
+while as for the writer herself, nothing in all her life had ever so
+filled her with bliss, or ever could again.
+
+Ferry did not arrive, but day by day, night by night, we stalked the
+enemy, longing for our Captain to return to us. Quinn was fearless,
+daring, indefatigable; but Quinn was not Ferry. Often we talked it over
+by twos or fours; the swiftness of Ferry's divinations, the brilliant
+celerity with which he followed them out, the kindness of his care;
+Quinn's care of us was paternal, Ferry's was brotherly and motherly. We
+loved Quinn for the hate and scorn that overflowed from his very gaze
+upon everything false or base. But we loved Ferry for loving each and
+every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther
+yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious
+atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the
+carbonic-acid gas of Gholson's cant. We made great parade of recognizing
+his defects; it had all the fine show of a motion to reconsider. For
+example, we said, his serene obstinacy in small matters was equally
+exasperating and ridiculous; or, for another instance,--so and so; but
+in summing up we always lumped such failings as "the faults of his
+virtues," and neglected to catalogue them. Thinking it all over a
+thousand times since, I have concluded that the main source of his
+charm, what won our approval for whatever he did, however he did it, was
+that he seemed never to regard any one as the mere means to an
+end--except himself.
+
+If this history were more of war than of love--and really at times I
+fear it is--we might fill pages telling of the brigade's September and
+early October operations in that long tongue of devastated country which
+narrowed from northeast to southwest between Big Black on our front and
+the Tallahala and Bayou Pierre behind us. At Baker's Creek it had a
+bloody all-day fight, in which we took part after having been driven in
+upon the brigade. It was there that at dusk, to the uproarious delight
+of half the big camp, and with our Captain once more at our head, for he
+had rejoined us that very morning, we came last off the field, singing
+"Ned Ferry's a-comin' down de lane."
+
+On a day late in October our company were in bivouac after some hard
+night-riding. Some twenty-five miles west of us the brigade had been
+resting for several days on the old camp-ground at Gallatin, but now
+they were gone to Union Springs. Ferry, with a few men, was scouting
+eastward. Quinn awaited only his return in order to take half a dozen or
+so of picked fellows down southward and westward about Fayette. Between
+ten and eleven that night a corporal of the guard woke me, and as I
+flirted on my boots and jacket and saddled up, said Ferry was back and
+Quinn gone. I reported to Ferry, who handed me a despatch: "Give that to
+General Austin; he has gone back to Gallatin--without the brigade--to
+wait--with the others"--his smile broadened.
+
+"Captain,"--I swallowed a lump--"what others?"
+
+"Well,--all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm,
+Squire Wall, Mrs. Wall, the four Harper ladies, and--eh,--let me see, is
+that all?--ah, no, the old black man and his daughter, and--eh,--the
+two little mule'! that's all--stop! I was forgetting! What is that
+fellow's name we used to know? ah, yes; Charlie Toliver!" In a moment he
+sobered: "Yes, all will be yonder, and I wait only for Quinn to get back
+in the morning, to come myself." In the fulness of his joy he had to
+give my horse a parting slap. "Good-night! good-bye--till to-morrow!"
+
+I galloped away filled with an absurd foreboding that he was too sure,
+which may have come wholly from my bad temper at being started too late
+to see our ladies before morning. However, at two that night, my saddle
+laid under my head, and haversack under the saddle, I fell asleep with
+all Gallatin for my bedchamber, the courthouse square for my bed, the
+sky for my tester, the pole-star for my taper, hogs for mosquitoes and a
+club for a fan.
+
+
+
+LXII
+
+
+A TARRYING BRIDEGROOM
+
+Joyous was the dawn. With their places in the hospital filled for the
+brief time by Brookhaven friends, here were all our fairs, not to speak
+of the General, the Colonel, the Major, idlers of the town and region,
+and hospital bummers who had followed up unbidden and glaringly without
+wedding-garments. Cecile, Harry, Camille "and others" prepared the
+church. The General kept his tent, the Major rode to Hazlehurst, and the
+Colonel, bruised and stiffened by a late fall from his horse, lounged
+amiably just beyond talking range of the ladies and grumbled jokes to
+Chaplain Roly-poly, whose giggling enjoyment of them made us hope they
+were tempered to that clean-shaven lamb.
+
+However, there came a change. By mid-forenoon our gaiety ran on only by
+its momentum. The wedding was to be at eleven. At ten the Colonel,
+aside, told me, with a ferocious scowl, that my Captain ought to have
+arrived. At half-past he told me again, but Major Harper, returning from
+Hazlehurst, said, "Oh, any of a hundred trifles might have delayed him a
+short time; he would be along." The wedding-hour passed, the
+wedding-feast filled the air with good smells. Horsemen ambled a few
+miles up the road and came back without tidings. Then a courier, one of
+Ferry's scouts, galloped up to the General's tent, and presently the
+Major walked from it to the tavern and up to Charlotte's room, to say
+that Ferry was only detained by Quinn's non-arrival. "It's all right,"
+said everyone.
+
+Another hour wore on, another followed. The General and old Dismukes
+played cards and the latter began to smell of his drams, Harry and
+Cecile walked and talked apart, Camille kept me in leash with three
+other men, and about two o'clock came another courier with another bit
+of Ferry's writing; Quinn had returned. He had had a brush with
+jayhawkers in the night, had captured all but their leader, and had sent
+his prisoners in to brigade headquarters at Union Church, while he
+returned to Ferry's camp bringing with him, mortally wounded--"O--oh!
+Oh--oh!" exclaimed Charlotte, gazing at the missive,--"Sergeant
+Jim Langley!"
+
+"Does Ned say when he will start?" asked the Colonel, and Charlotte,
+reading again, said the sergeant, at the time of the writing, was not
+expected to live an hour. Whereupon the word went through town that
+Ferry was on his way to us.
+
+"Smith," said the Colonel, just not too full to keep up a majestic
+frown, "want to saddle my horse and yours?" and very soon we were off to
+meet the tardy bridegroom. The October sunshine was fiery, but the road
+led us through our old camp-ground for two or three shady miles before
+it forked to the right to cross the Natchez Trace, and to the left on
+its way to Union Springs, and at the fork we halted. "Smith, I reckon
+we'd best go back." I mentioned his bruises and the torrid sun-glare
+before us, but he cursed both with equal contempt; "No, but I must go
+back; I--I've left a--oh, I must go back to wet my whistle!"
+
+We had retraced our way but a few steps, when, looking behind me as a
+scout's habit is, I saw a horseman coming swiftly on the Union Church
+road. "Colonel," I said, "here comes Scott Gholson."
+
+Without pausing or turning an eye my hearer poured out a slow flood of
+curses. "If that whelp has come here of his own accord he's come for no
+good! Has he seen us?"
+
+Gholson had not seen us; we had been in deep shade when he came into
+sight, and happened at that moment to turn an angle that took us out of
+his line of view. In a minute or so we were again at the small bridge
+over the embowered creek which ran through the camping-ground. The water
+was low and clear, and the Colonel turned from the bridge as if to cross
+beneath it and let his beast drink, yet motioned back for me to go upon
+it. As I reached its middle he came under it in the stream and halted.
+Guessing his wish I turned my horse across the bridge and waited.
+Gholson was almost within hail before he knew me. He was a heaving lump
+of dust, sweat and pain.
+
+"Has Ned Ferry come?" was his first call. I shook my head. "Oh, thank
+God!" he cried with a wild gesture and sank low in the saddle; but
+instantly he roused again: "Oh, don't stop me, Smith; if I once stop I'm
+afraid I'll never get to her!"
+
+I stopped him. "Why, Gholson, you're burning up with fever."
+
+"Yes, I started with a shaking chill. I'm afraid, every minute, I'll go
+out of my head. Oh, Smith, Oliver's alive! He's alive, he's alive, and
+I've come to save his poor wife from a fate worse than death!"
+
+"Gholson, you are out of your head."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes, yes! and yet I know what I'm saying, I know what I'm
+saying!"
+
+"You do not! Gholson, Oliver's been food for worms these four months. I
+know he wasn't dead at Gilmer's; but he died--now, let me tell
+you--he--"
+
+"Smith, I know the whole story and you know only half!"
+
+"No, no! I know all and you know only half; I have seen the absolute--"
+
+"Proofs? no! you saw things taken from the body of another man in
+Oliver's clothes! Oliver swapped places with him on the boat going down
+to the city so's he could come back to these parts without being hung by
+the Yankees; swapped with a sick soldier, one of a pair that wanted to
+desert; swapped names, clothes, bandages, letters, everything. It was
+that soldier that died of the congestive chill and was buried by your
+mother with his face in a blanket--as, like enough, mine will be before
+another day is done--Oh, Lord, Lord! my head will burst!"
+
+"Gholson, you're mistaken yet! That soldier came to my mother--"
+
+"No, he never! the other one went to her, in cahoots with Oliver, and
+worked the thing all through so's to have the news of Oliver's death, so
+called, come back here to the Yankees and us; and to his wife, so's she
+_would_ marry Ned Ferry to her everlasting shame, and people would say
+they was served right when he killed 'em at last! O--oh! Smith,--"
+
+"Listen to me!" I had tried twice to interrupt and now I yelled; "was it
+Oliver, and a new gang, that Quinn fought last night, and have you got
+him at Union Church?"
+
+"Quinn didn't know it, for Oliver got away, but they got the Yankee
+deserter, and brought him in when everybody was asleep but me, and I
+cross-examined him. Oh, my friend, God's arm is not shortened that he
+cannot save! He maketh the wrath of the wicked to praise him! The man
+was dying then, but thank God, I choked the whole truth out of him with
+a halter over a limb, and then for three mortal hours I couldn't start
+because the squad that took him out to--Who--who is that?"
+
+The Colonel moved from under the bridge, spurred up the bank, and turned
+to us with a murderous smile. "Howdy, Gholson." The smile grew. "Had to
+stay with the hanging-squad to keep his mouth shut, you was going to
+say, wa'n't you? But you knew Captain Ferry would be delayed waiting for
+Quinn, too; yes. Does any one know this now besides us three; no! Good,
+we're well met! Smith and me are going to Union Church, and you'd better
+go with us; I've got a job that God A'mighty just built you two saints
+and me for; come, never mind Gallatin, Ferry's not there, and when he
+gets there Heaven ain't a-going to stop that wedding, and hell sha'n't."
+Gholson had barely caught his breath to demur when old Dismukes, roaring
+and snarling like a huge dog, whipped out his revolver, clutched the
+sick man's bosom, and hanging over him and bellowing blasphemies, yelled
+into his very teeth "Come!"
+
+We galloped. A courier from the brigade-camp met us, and the Colonel
+scribbled a purely false explanation of our absence, begging that no
+delay be made because of it. As the man left us, who should come up from
+behind us but Harry, asking what was the matter. "Matter enough for you
+to come along," said the Arkansan, and we went two and two, he and
+Gholson, Harry and I. We reached camp at sundown, and stopped to feed
+and rest our horses and to catch an hour's sleep. Gholson's fatigue was
+pitiful, but he ate like a wolf, slept, and awoke with but little fever.
+The Colonel kept him under his eye, forcing on him the honors of his
+own board, bed and bottle, and at nine we galloped again.
+
+Between eleven and twelve the Colonel, Harry and I were in a dense wood,
+moving noiselessly toward a clearing brilliantly lighted by the moon. I
+was guide. A few rods back in the woods Gholson was holding our horses
+and with cocked revolver detaining a young mulatto woman from whom the
+Colonel had extorted the knowledge which had brought us to this spot.
+The clearing was fenced, but was full of autumn weeds. Near the two
+sides next us, tilted awry on its high basement pillars, loomed an old
+cotton-gin house, its dark shadows falling toward us. A few yards beyond
+towered and gleamed a white-boled sycamore, and between the two the
+titanic arms of the horse-power press widened broadly downward out of
+the still night sky. The tree was the one which old Lucius Oliver had
+once pointed out to me at dawn.
+
+
+
+LXIII
+
+
+SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER TOLD TILL NOW
+
+At the fence I ceased to lead, and we crept near the gin-house from
+three sides, warily, though all the chances were that wherever Oliver
+lay he was heavy with drink. The Colonel stole in alone. He was lost to
+us for, I should say, five minutes; they seemed thirty; then there
+pealed upon the stillness an uproarious laugh mingled with oaths and
+curses, sounds of a plunge, a struggle, a groan, and old Dismukes
+calling "Come, boys, I've got him! Take it easy, take it easy, I've got
+him on the floor by the hair of his head; call Gholson!"
+
+Gholson brought the mulatress. In the feeble rays of an old tin lantern,
+on some gunny-sacking that lay about the gin-room floor, sat old
+Dismukes cross-legged and smiling, with arms folded and revolver
+dangling from his right hand, at full cock. On one side crouched Harry
+and I, on the other side Gholson and the slave woman. Facing him, half
+sat, half knelt Oliver, bound hand and foot, and gagged with his own
+knotted handkerchief. The lantern hung from a low beam just above his
+face; his eyes blazed across the short interval with the splendor of a
+hawk's. The dread issue of the hour seemed all at once to have taken
+from his outward aspect the baser signs of his habits and crimes, and I
+saw large extenuation for Charlotte's great mistake. From the big
+Colonel's face, too, the heaviness of drink was gone, and its smile grew
+almost fine as he spoke.
+
+"Ten minutes for prayer is a good while to allow you, my amiable friend;
+we ain't heard for our much speaking, are we, Brother Gholson? Still,
+we've given you that, and it's half gone. If you don't want the other
+half we won't force it on you; we've got that wedding to go to, and I'm
+afraid we'll be late."
+
+The bound man sat like a statue. The slave girl went upon her knees and
+began to pray for her master,--with whom she had remained after every
+other servant on the place had run off to the Federals, supplicating
+with a piteous fervor that drew tears down Harry's cheeks. "Humph!" said
+the Arkansan, still smiling straight into Oliver's eyes, "she'd better
+be thanking God for her freedom, for that's what we're going to give her
+to-night; we're going to take her and your poor old crippled father to
+the outposts and turn 'em loose, and if either of 'em ever shows up
+inside our lines after to-night, we'll hang 'em. You fixed the date of
+your death last June, and we're not going to let it be changed; that's
+when you died. Ain't it, Gholson? Whoever says it ain't fixes the date
+of his own funeral, eh, boys? I take pleasure in telling you we're not
+going to hang your father, because I believe in my bones you'd rather
+we'd hang him than not. Mr. Gholson, you're our most pious believer in
+obedience to orders; well, I'm going to give you one, and if you don't
+make a botch of it I sha'n't have to make a botch of you; understand?"
+
+Gholson's lips moved inaudibly, his jaws set hard, and he blanched; but
+the Colonel smiled once more: "I've heard that at one time you said, or
+implied, that Captain Ferry had betrayed his office, because when he had
+a fair chance to shoot this varmint he omitted, for private reasons, to
+do it. And I've heard you say, myself, that this isn't your own little
+private war. So,--just change seats with me."
+
+They exchanged. The slave girl sank forward upon her face moaning and
+sobbing. Harry silently wept. "Now, Gholson, you know me; draw--pistol."
+
+Gholson drew; I grew sick. "Ready,"--Gholson came to a ready and so did
+the Colonel; "aim," Gholson slowly aimed, the Colonel kept a ready, and
+Oliver, for the first time took his eyes from him and gazed at Gholson.
+"Fire!" Gholson fired; Oliver silently fell forward; with a stifled cry
+the girl sprang to him and drew his head into her lap, and he softly
+straightened out and was still. "Oh, sweet Jesus!" she cried, "Oh,
+sweet Jesus!"
+
+The amused Colonel held the lantern close down. "He's all right, Brother
+Gholson," was his verdict; the ball had gone to the heart. "Still, just
+to clinch the thing, we'll calcine him, gin-house and all."
+
+Gin-house and all, we burned him up. On our horses out in the open road
+to the house, we sat, the girl perched behind the Colonel, and watched
+the fire mount and whirl and crackle behind the awful black arms of the
+cotton-press. The Arkansan shook his head: "It's too fine; 'tain't a
+dog's death, after all. Lord! why didn't I think of it in time? we'd
+ought to 'a' just dropped him alive into that lint-box and turned the
+press down onto him with our horses!"
+
+When the pile was in one great flame we rode to the dwelling, and the
+girl was sent in to bid old Lucius begone. The doors stood open, a soft
+firelight shone from his room. We saw her form darken his chamber
+threshold and halt, and then she wailed: "Oh, Lawd God A'mighty! Oh,
+Lawd God A'mighty!"
+
+"Stop that noise! Gholson, hold the horses. Come. Lieutenant, come
+Smith, maybe he's killed himself, but it seems too good to be true.
+Here, girl, go cram what you can get into a pillow-case, and mount
+behind my saddle again; be quick, we're going to burn this hornet's
+nest too." Harry and I had already run to the old man's room, and, sure
+enough, there lay the aged assassin hideous in his fallen bulk, with his
+own bullet in his brain.
+
+Once more the Arkansan shook his head at the leaping flames. "Too good,
+too good for either of 'em, entirely; we've let 'em settle at five cents
+on the dollar. Here girl,"--he reached back and handed her a wad of
+greenbacks,--"here's your dividend; you're a preferred creditor." He had
+rifled the pockets of both the dead men, and this was their contents.
+"Now, boys, we'll dust, or we'll be getting shot at by some fool or
+other. We're leaving a fine horse hid away somewhere hereabouts, but we
+can't help that; come on."
+
+In due time the Colonel, with the slave girl, and Harry with her
+pillow-case of duds, turned toward Fayette, and Gholson and I toward the
+brigade, at Union Church. Then, at last, my old friend and
+co-religionist let his wrath loose. He began with a flood of curses,
+lifting high a loaded carbine which we had found with Oliver and which
+he was ordered to turn in. As he gave his ecstasy utterance it grew; he
+brandished the weapon like a Bedouin, dug the rowels into his overspent
+beast and curbed him back to his haunches, fisted him about the ears,
+gnashed with the pain of his own blows, and howled, and stood up in the
+stirrups and cursed again. I had heard church-members curse, but they
+were new church-members, camp converts, and their curses were an
+infant's cooing, to this. Unwittingly he caused his horse to stumble,
+and the torrent of his passion gathered force like rain after a peal of
+thunder; he clubbed the gun to bring it down upon the beautiful
+creature's head, and when I caught it on the rise he wrenched it from me
+as if I were a girl, threw it fifty feet away, sprang to the ground and
+caught it up, fired it in the air, and with one blow against a tree sent
+the stock flying, threw the barrel underfoot, leapt upon it, tore his
+hair and his hat, and cursed and champed and howled. I sat holding his
+horse and feeling my satisfaction rise like the mercury in a warmed
+thermometer. Contrasting this mood with the cold malignancy and resolve
+of his temper in the soldiers' room at Sessions's, I saw, to my delight,
+that our secret was forever imprisoned in his breast, gagged and chained
+down by the iron of his own inextricable infamy. At dawn he awakened me
+that he might persuade me to reject the evidences brought against his
+character by his doings and endurings of the night, and that he might
+rebuild the old house of words in which habitually he found shelter, too
+abysmally self-conceited ever to see his own hypocrisy. We breakfasted
+with the "attatchays"; after which he had barely secured my final
+assurance that our friendship remained unmarred, when old Dismukes and
+Harry mounted at the Colonel's tent, and the old brute, as they trotted
+out into the Gallatin road, beckoned me to join them.
+
+
+
+LXIV
+
+
+BY TWOS. MARCH
+
+The Arkansan was happy. "Come up, Legs," he bawled to me as soon as we
+were beyond the pickets, "come up from behind there; this ain't no
+dress parade."
+
+"Are they married?" I softly asked Harry at the first opportunity, but
+he could not tell me. He knew only that Ferry had been expected to
+arrive about an hour before midnight; if he arrived later the wedding
+would be deferred until to-day. On our whole ride we met no one from
+Gallatin until near the edge of the town we passed a smiling rider who
+called after us, "You-all a-hurryin' for nothin'!"
+
+We dropped to a more dignified gait and moved gayly in among our
+gathering friends, asking if we were in time. "No--o! you're too
+late!--but still we've waited for you; couldn't help ourselves; she
+wouldn't stir without you."
+
+The happy hubbub was bewildering. "Where's this one?" "Where's that
+one?" "See here, I'm looking for you!" "Now, you and I go together--"
+"Dick Smith! where's Dick Sm'--Miss Harper wants you, Smith, up at the
+bride's door." But Miss Harper only sent me in to Charlotte.
+
+"Richard, tell me," the fair vision began to say, but there the cloud
+left her brow. "No," she added, "you couldn't look so happy if there
+were the least thing wrong, could you?" Her fathoming eyes filled while
+her smile brightened, and meeting them squarely I replied "There's
+a-many a thing wrong, but not one for which this wedding need wait
+another minute."
+
+"God bless you, Richard!" she said; "and now _you_ may go tell Edgard I
+am coming."
+
+Old Gallatin is no more. I would not mention without reverence the
+perishing of a town however small, though no charm of antiquity, of art
+or of nature were lost in its dissolution. Yet it suits my fancy that
+old Gallatin has perished. Neither war nor famine, flood nor fever were
+the death of it; the railroad and Hazlehurst sapped its life. Some years
+ago, on a business trip for our company--not cavalry, insurance,--I went
+several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick,
+of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its
+square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In
+place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and
+houses had utterly vanished; a solitary "store," as transient as a
+toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling calico and molasses, shoes
+and snuff. But that was the only discord, and by turning my back on it I
+easily called up the long past scene: the wedding, the feast, the fiery
+punch, the General's toast to the bridal pair, and the heavy-eyed
+Colonel's bumper to their posterity! It was hardly drunk when a courier
+brought word that the enemy were across Big Black, and the brigade
+pressing north to meet them. Charlotte glided away to her room to be
+"back in a moment"; into their saddles went the General, the Colonel,
+the Major and the aide-de-camp, and thundered off across the bridge in
+the woods; Charlotte came back in riding-habit, and here was my horse
+with her saddle on him, and the Harpers and Mrs. Wall clasping and
+kissing her; and now her foot was in Ferry's hand and up she sprang to
+her seat, he vaulted to his, and away they galloped side by side, he for
+the uttermost front of reconnoissance and assault, she for the slow but
+successful uplifting of Sergeant Jim back to health and into his place
+in the train of our hero and hers. In the little leather-curtained
+wagon, with the old black man and his daughter, and all her mistress's
+small belongings, and with my saddle and bridle, I followed on to the
+house where lay the sergeant, and where my horse would be waiting to
+bear me on to Ferry's scouts.
+
+I saw the Harpers only twice again before the war was over. Nearly all
+winter our soldiering was down in the Felicianas, but by February we
+were once more at Big Black when Sherman with ten thousand of his
+destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three
+or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had
+fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went
+back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers
+set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were
+occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department
+headquarters in that State capital; yet Harry and Cecile did not wed
+until after the surrender. Gholson's passion far Charlotte really did
+half destroy him, while it lasted; nevertheless, one day about a year
+after her marriage, when I had the joy of visiting the Harpers, I saw
+that Gholson's heart was healed of that wound and had opened in a new
+place. That is why Estelle, with that danger-glow of emotion ever
+impending on her beautiful cheek, never married. She was of that kind
+whose love, once placed, can never remove itself, and she loved Gholson.
+Both Cecile and Camille had some gift to discern character, and some
+notion of their own value, and therefore are less to be excused for not
+choosing better husbands than they did; but Estelle could never see
+beyond the outer label of man, woman or child, and Gholson's label was
+his piety. She believed in it as implicitly, as consumingly, as he
+believed in it himself; and when her whole kindred spoke as one and said
+no, and she sent him away, _she_ knew she was a lifelong widow from that
+hour. Gholson found a wife, a rich widow ten years his senior, and so
+first of all, since we have reached the page for partings, good-bye
+Gholson. "Whom the gods love die young"--you must be sixty years old
+now, for they say you're still alive. And good-bye, old Dismukes; the
+Colonel made a fortune after the war, as a penitentiary lessee, but they
+say he has--how shall we phrase it?--gone to his reward? Let us
+hope not.
+
+But what is this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks?
+Our rocket has scaled the sky, poised, curved, burst, spread out all its
+stars, and dropped its stick. All is done unless we desire to watch the
+fading sparks slowly sink and melt into darkness. The General, the
+Major, his brother, their sister, my mother, Quinn, Kendall, Sergeant
+Jim, the Sessionses, the Walls--do not inquire too closely; some have
+vanished already, and soon all will be gone; then--another rocket; it is
+the only way, and why is it not a good one? Harry and Cecile--yes, they
+still shine, in "dear old New Orleans." Camille kept me on the
+tenter-hooks while she "turned away her eyes" for years; but one evening
+when we were reading an ancient book together out dropped those same old
+sweet-pea blossoms; whereupon I took her hand and--I have it yet. There,
+we have counted the last spark--stop, no! two lights beam out again;
+Edgard and Charlotte, our neighbors and dearest friends through all our
+life; they glow with nobility and loveliness yet, as they did in those
+young days when his sword led our dying fortunes, and she, in her gypsy
+wagon, followed them, binding the torn wound, and bathing the aching
+bruise and fevered head. Oh, Ned Ferry, my long-loved partner, as dear a
+leader still as ever you were in the days of bloody death, life's
+choicest gifts be yours, and be hers whose sons and daughters are yours,
+and the eldest and tallest of whom is the one you and she have
+named Richard.
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+OTHER BOOKS BY MR. CABLE
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+There are few living American writers who can reproduce for us more
+perfectly than MR. CABLE does, in his best moments, the speech, the
+manners, the whole social atmosphere of a remote time and peculiar
+people. A delicious flavor of humor permeates his stories.--_The New
+York Tribune_.
+
+STRONG HEARTS
+
+12mo, $1.25
+
+"Under the title "_Strong Hearts_," MR. CABLE has grouped three stories
+of varying length, which we think must stand as among the most charming
+things he has written. Not even in "_Old Creole Days_," is there found
+more delicate work, and yet underneath it there is felt the strong grasp
+of the master. There is so much delicacy, such a fine touch that one is
+wholly captivated by the handiwork until it is realized how much this is
+part and parcel of this picture."--_Brooklyn Eagle_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+_A New Edition of Mr. Cable's Romances comprising the following 5 vols.,
+printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt top and bound in sateen with full
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+
+JOHN MARCH SOUTHERNER
+
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+
+"The most careful and thorough going study of the reconstruction period
+in the South which has yet been offered in the world of
+fiction.--_The Outlook_.
+
+"In many respects MR. CABLE'S finest work."--_Boston Advertiser_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE GRANDISSIMES
+
+A STORY OF CREOLE LIFE
+
+12mo, $1.50.
+
+"Such a book goes far towards establishing an epoch in fiction, and it
+places it beyond a doubt that we have in MR. CABLE a novelist of
+positive originality, and of the very first quality."--_The
+Boston Journal_.
+
++The Grandissimes.+ with 12 full-page illustrations and 8 head and tail
+pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
+original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.
+
+A Special limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net, $12.00_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+OLD CREOLE DAYS
+
+12mo, $1.50.
+
+Cameo Edition with an etching by Percy Moran, $1.25
+
+"These charming stories attract attention and commendation by their
+quaint delicacy of style, their faithful delineation of Creole
+character, and a marked originality."--_The New Orleans Picayune_.
+
++Old Creole Days.+ _With 8 full-page illustrations and 14 head and tail
+pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
+original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.
+
+A Special Limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net $12.00_.
+
+BONAVENTURE
+
+A PROSE PASTORAL OF ACADIAN LOUISIANA 12mo, $1.50
+
+"A noble, tender, beautiful tale."--MRS. L. C. MOULTON in _Boston
+Herald_.
+
+"MR. CABLE has never produced anything so delightful and so artistic as
+"Bonaventure." The charm of the pastoral life of these unlearned,
+unsuspicious people in rude homes far away from the stir of modern life
+is as novel as it is indescribable."--_North American Review_.
+
+DR. SEVIER 12mo, $1.50
+
+"The story contains a most attractive blending of vivid descriptions of
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+Congregationalist_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA
+
+Illustrated. 12mo, $2.00
+
+"What a field of romance, of color, of incident, of delicate feeling,
+and unique social conditions these stories show!"--_Hartford Courant_.
+
+"They are tales whose interest and variety seem inexhaustible.--MR.
+CABLE has done lasting service to literature in giving us this
+remarkable and delightful collection. In themselves they are memorably
+charming."--_Boston Transcript_.
+
+MADAME DELPHINE
+
+16mo, 75 cents
+
+"This is one of the gems of a collection of exquisite stories of the old
+Creole days in Louisiana."--_Boston Advertiser_.
+
+Ivory series edition, 16mo, 75c.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA
+
+ILLUSTRATED FROM DRAWINGS BY FENNEL
+
+Square 12mo, $2.50
+
+"As a history of the Louisiana Creoles, it occupies a field in which it
+will not find a competitor. Mr. Cable has given us an exceedingly
+attractive piece of work."--_The Nation_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE SILENT SOUTH
+
+Together with the Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease
+System. _Revised and Enlarged Edition_. With portrait.
+
+12mo, $1.00
+
+"Whatever other literature on these themes may arise Mr. Cable's book
+must be a permanent influence impossible for writers on either side to
+ignore."--_The Critic_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE NEGRO QUESTION
+
+12mo, 75c
+
+"Mr. Cable has the Puritan conscience, the agitator's courage, and the
+Anglo-Saxon's fearless adhesion to what he deems right."--_The
+Churchman_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE CABLE STORY BOOK
+
+Selections for School Reading. Edited by Mary E. Burt and Lucy L. Cable.
+[_The Scribner Series of School Reading_]. Illustrated. 12mo, _net_ 60c.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cavalier, by George Washington Cable
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+Title: The Cavalier
+
+Author: George Washington Cable
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9839]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 23, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAVALIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!"]
+
+THE CAVALIER
+
+BY
+
+GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+     I.    She Wanted to Laugh
+    II.    Lieutenant Ferry
+   III.    She
+    IV.    Three Days' Rations
+     V.    Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty
+    VI.    A Handsome Stranger
+   VII.    A Plague on Names!
+  VIII.    Another Curtained Wagon
+    IX.    The Dandy's Task
+     X.    The Soldier's Hour
+    XI.    Captain Jewett
+    XII.    In the General's Tent
+   XIII.    Good-Bye, Dick
+    XIV.    Coralie Rothvelt
+     XV.    Venus and Mars
+    XVI.    An Aching Conscience
+   XVII.    Two Under One Hat-Brim
+  XVIII.    The Jayhawkers
+    XIX.    Asleep in the Death-Trap
+     XX.    Charlotte Oliver
+    XXI.    The Fight on the Bridge
+   XXII.    We Speed a Parting Guest
+  XXIII.    Ferry Talks of Charlotte
+   XXIV.    A Million and a Half
+    XXV.    A Quiet Ride
+   XXVI.    A Salute Across the Dead-Line
+  XXVII.    Some Fall, Some Plunge
+ XXVIII.    Oldest Game on Earth
+   XXIX.    A Gnawing in the Dark
+    XXX.    Dignity and Impudence
+   XXXI.    The Red Star's Warning
+  XXXII.    A Martyr's Wrath
+ XXXIII.    Torch and Sword
+  XXXIV.    The Charge in the Lane
+   XXXV.    Fallen Heroes
+  XXXVI.    "Says Quinn, S'e"
+ XXXVII.    A Horse! A Horse!
+XXXVIII.    "Bear a Message and a Token"
+  XXXIX.    Charlotte Sings
+     XL.    Harry Laughs
+    XLI.    Unimportant and Confidential
+   XLII.    "Can I Get There by Candle-Light?"
+  XLIII.    "Yes, and Back Again"
+   XLIV.    Charlotte in the Tents of the Foe
+    XLV.    Stay Till To-Morrow
+   XLVI.    The Dance at Gilmer's
+  XLVII.    He's Dead--Is She Alive?
+ XLVIII.    In the Hollow of His Right Arm
+   XLIX.    A Cruel Book and a Fool or Two
+      L.    The Bottom of the Whirlwind
+     LI.    Under the Room Where Charlotte Lay
+    LII.    Same Book and Light-Head Harry
+   LIII.    "Captain, They've Got Us"
+    LIV.    The Fight in the Doorway
+     LV.    Rescue and Retreat
+    LVI.    Hotel des Invalides
+   LVII.    A Yes and a No
+  LVIII.    The Upper Fork of the Road
+    LIX.    Under Charlotte's Window
+     LX.    Tidings
+    LXI.    While Destiny Moved On
+   LXII.    A Tarrying Bridegroom
+  LXIII.    Something I Have Never Told Till Now
+   LXIV.    By Twos. March
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!"
+
+"I surrender," he said, with amiable ease
+
+"Well, you _air_ in a hurry!"
+
+With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the fence like a deer
+
+Ferry saluted with his straight blade
+
+"Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very arch
+
+Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of his
+followers
+
+Springing to the ground between our two candles, she bent over the open
+page
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+SHE WANTED TO LAUGH
+
+Our camp was in the heart of Copiah County, Mississippi, a mile or so
+west of Gallatin and about six miles east of that once robber-haunted
+road, the Natchez Trace. Austin's brigade, we were, a detached body of
+mixed Louisiana and Mississippi cavalry, getting our breath again after
+two weeks' hard fighting of Grant. Grierson's raid had lately gone the
+entire length of the State, and we had had a hard, vain chase after
+him, also.
+
+Joe Johnston's shattered army was at Jackson, about forty-five miles to
+northward; beleaguered Vicksburg was in the Northwest, a trifle farther
+away; Natchez lay southwest, still more distant; and nearly twice as far
+in the south was our heartbroken New Orleans. We had paused to
+recuperate our animals, and there was a rumor that we were to get new
+clothing. Anyhow we had rags with honor, and a right to make as much
+noise as we chose.
+
+It was being made. The air was in anguish with the din of tree-felling
+and log-chopping, of stamping, neighing, braying, whooping, guffawing,
+and singing--all the daybreak charivari beloved of a camp of
+Confederate "critter companies." In the midst of it a chum and I sat
+close together on a log near the mess fire, and as the other boys of the
+mess lifted their heads from their saddle-tree pillows, from two of them
+at once came a slow, disdainful acceptance of the final lot of the
+wicked, made unsolicited on discovering that this chum and I had sat
+there talking together all night. I had the day before been wheedled
+into letting myself be detailed to be a quartermaster's clerk, and this
+comrade and I were never to snuggle under the one blanket again. The
+thought forbade slumber.
+
+"If I go to sleep," I said,--"you know how I dream. I shall have one of
+those dreams of mine to carry around in my memory for a year, like a
+bullet in my back." So there the dear fellow had sat all night to give
+me my hourly powders of reassurance that I could be a quartermaster's
+clerk without shame.
+
+"Certainly you can afford to fill a position which the leader of Ferry's
+scouts has filled just before you."
+
+But my unsoldierly motive for going to headquarters kept my misgivings
+alive. I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare
+was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and
+Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and "Les
+Miserables"--Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation--lent round; and where
+men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs. Ned
+Ferry had been Major Harper's clerk, but had managed in several
+instances to display such fitness to lead that General Austin had lately
+named him for promotion, and the quartermaster's clerk was now
+Lieutenant Ferry, raised from the ranks for gallantry, and followed
+ubiquitously by a chosen sixty or so drawn from the whole brigade. Could
+the like occur again? And could it occur to a chap who could not
+comprehend how it had ever occurred at all?
+
+By and by we breakfasted. After which, my precious horse not having
+finished his corn, I spread my blanket and let myself doze, but was soon
+awakened by the shouts of my companions laughing at me for laughing so
+piteously in my sleep.
+
+"Would I not tell my dream, as nice young men in the Bible always did?"
+
+"No, I would not!" But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had
+told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose
+tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather
+some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his
+example, but having got in, could only stay there. The boys furnished
+the moral; it was not complimentary.
+
+"Well, good-bye, fellows."
+
+"Good-bye, Smith." I have never liked my last name, but at that moment
+the boys contrived to put a kindness of tone into it which made it
+almost pleasing. "Good-bye, Smith, remember your failings."
+
+Remember! I had yet to make their discovery. But I was on the eve of
+making it.
+
+As I passed up the road through the midst of our nearly tentless camp I
+met a leather-curtained spring-wagon to which were attached a pair of
+little striped-legged mules driven by an old negro. Behind him, among
+the curtains, sat a lady and her black maid. The mistress was of
+strikingly graceful figure, in a most tasteful gown and broad Leghorn
+hat. Her small hands were daintily gloved. The mules stopped, and
+through her light veil I saw that she was handsome. Her eyes, full of
+thought, were blue, and yet were so spirited they might as well have
+been black, as her hair was. She, or fate for her, had crowded thirty
+years of life into twenty-five of time.
+
+For many a day I had not seen such charms of feminine attire, and yet I
+was not charmed. Every item of her fragrant drapery was from the world's
+open market, hence flagrantly un-Confederate, unpatriotic,
+reprehensible. Otherwise it might not have seemed to me that her thin
+nostrils had got their passionateness lately.
+
+"Are you not a New Orleans boy?" she asked as I lifted my kepi and drew
+rein.
+
+Boy! humph! I frowned, made myself long, and confessed I had the honor
+to be from that city. Whereupon she let her long-lashed eyes take on as
+ravishing a covetousness as though I had been a pretty baby.
+
+"I knew it!" she said delightedly. "But tell me, honor bright,"--she
+sparkled with amusement--"you're not regularly enlisted, are you?"
+
+I clenched my teeth. "I am nineteen, madam."
+
+Her eyes danced, her brows arched. "Haven't you got"--she hid her smile
+with an embroidered handkerchief--"haven't you got your second figure
+upside down?" I glared, but with one look of hurt sisterliness she
+melted me. Then, pensive just long enough to say, "I was nineteen once,"
+she shot me a sidelong glance so roguish that I was dumb with
+indignation and tried to find my mustache, forgetting I had shaved it
+off to stimulate it. She smiled in sweet propitiation and then came
+gravely to business. "Have you come from beyond the pickets?"
+
+"No, madam."
+
+"Have you met any officer riding toward them?"
+
+I had not. Her driver gathered the reins and I drew back.
+
+"Good-bye, New Orleans soldier-boy," she said, gaily, and as I raised my
+cap she gave herself a fetching air and added, "I'll wager I know
+your name."
+
+"Madam,"--my cap went higher, my head lower--"I never bet."
+
+I could not divine what there was ridiculous about me, except a certain
+damage to my dress, of which she could not possibly be aware as long as
+I remained in the saddle. Yet plainly she wanted to laugh. I made it as
+plain that I did not.
+
+"Good-day, sir," she said, with forced severity, but as I smiled
+apologetically and moved my rein, she broke down under new temptation
+and, as the wagon moved away, twittered after me unseen,--"Good-bye, Mr.
+Smith."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+LIEUTENANT FERRY
+
+I passed on, flattered but scandalized, wasting no guesses on how she
+knew me--if she really knew me at all--but taking my revenge by
+moralizing on her, to myself, as a sign of the times, until brigade
+headquarters were in full view, a few rods off the road; four or five
+good, white wall-tents in a green bit of old field backed by a thicket
+of young pines.
+
+Midway of this space I met Scott Gholson, clerk to the Adjutant-general.
+It was Gholson who had first spoken of me for this detail. He was an
+East Louisianian, of Tangipahoa; aged maybe twenty-six, but in effect
+older, having from birth eaten only ill-cooked food, and looking it;
+profoundly unconscious of any shortcoming in his education, which he had
+got from a small church-pecked college of the pelican sort that feed it
+raw from their own bosoms. One of his smallest deficiencies was that he
+had never seen as much art as there is in one handsome dinner-plate.
+Now, here he was, riding forth to learn for himself, privately, he said,
+why I did not appear. Yet he halted without turning, and seemed to wish
+he had not found me.
+
+"Did you"--he began, and stopped; "did you notice a"--he stopped again.
+
+"What, a leather-curtained spring-wagon?"
+
+"No-o!" he said, as if nobody but a gaping idiot would expect anybody
+not a gaping idiot to notice a leather-curtained spring-wagon. "No-o!
+did you notice the brown horse that man was riding who just now passed
+you as you turned off the road?"
+
+No, I barely remembered the rider had generously moved aside to let me
+go by. In pure sourness at the poverty of my dress and the perfection of
+his, I had avoided looking at him higher than his hundred-dollar boots.
+My feet were in uncolored cowhide, except the toes.
+
+"He noticed you," said Gholson; "he looked back at you and your bay.
+Wouldn't you like to turn back and see his horse?"
+
+"Why, hardly, if I'm behindhand now. Is it so fine as that?"
+
+"Well, no. It's the horse he captured the time he got the Yankee who had
+him prisoner."
+
+"Who?" I cried. "What! You don't mean to say--was that Lieutenant
+Ferry?"
+
+"Yes, so called. He wa'n't a lieutenant then, he was a clerk, like you
+or me."
+
+"Oh, I wish I had noticed him!"
+
+"We can see him yet if you--"
+
+"Do you want to see him?" I gathered my horse.
+
+"Me!--No, sir. But you spoke as if--"
+
+I shook my head and we moved toward the tents. This was worse than the
+dream; the rat had not seen the cockerel, but the cockerel had observed
+the rat--dropping into the barrel: the cockerel, yes, and not the
+cockerel alone, for I saw that Gholson was associating him with her of
+the curtained wagon. By now they were side and side. I asked if Ferry
+came often to headquarters. "Yes, quite as often as he's any business
+to." "Ah, ha!" thought I, and presently said I had heard he was a
+great favorite.
+
+"Well,--yes,--he--he is,--with some."
+
+"Don't you like him?"
+
+"Who, me? Oh!--I--I admire Ned Ferry--for a number of things. He's more
+foolhardy than brave; he's confessed as much to me. Women call him
+handsome. He sings; beautifully, I suppose; I can't sing a note; and
+wouldn't if I could. Still, if he only wouldn't sing drinking-songs
+--but, Smith, I think that to sing drinking-songs--and all
+the more to sing them as well as some folks think he does--is to
+advocate drinking, and to advocate drinking is next door to excusing
+drunkenness!"
+
+"Then Ned Ferry doesn't drink?"
+
+"Indeed he does! I don't like to say it, and I don't say he drinks 'too
+much', as they call it; but, Smith, he drinks with men who do! Oh, _I_
+admire him; only I do wish--"
+
+"Wish what?"
+
+"Oh, I--I wish he wouldn't play cards. Smith, I've seen him play cards
+with the shells bursting over us!"
+
+For my part I privately wished this saint wouldn't rub my uninteresting
+surname into me every time he spoke. As we dismounted near the tents I
+leaned against my saddle and asked further concerning the object of his
+loving anxiety. Was Ned Ferry generous, pleasant, frank?
+
+"Why, in outward manner, yes; but, Smith, he was raised to be a Catholic
+priest. I could a heap-sight easier trust him if he'd sometimes show
+distrust, himself. If he ever does I've never seen it. And yet--Oh,
+we're the best of friends, and I'm speaking now only as a friend and
+_toe_ a friend. Oh, if it wa'n't for just one thing, I could admit what
+Major Harper said of him not ten minutes ago to me; that you never
+finish talking to Ned Ferry without feeling a little brighter, happier
+and cleaner than when you began; whereas talking with some men it's just
+the reverse."
+
+I looked carefully at my companion and asked him if the Major had said
+_all_ of that. He had, and Gholson's hide had turned it without taking a
+scratch. "That's fine!--as to Ferry," I said.
+
+"Oh, yes,--it would be--if it was only _iso_. Trouble is, you keep
+remembering he's such a stumbling-block to any real spiritual inquirer.
+Yes, and to himself; for, you know, spiritually there's so much less
+hope for the moralist than what there is for the up-and-down reprobate!
+You know that,--_Smith_."
+
+My silence implied that I knew it, though I did not feel any brighter,
+happier or cleaner.
+
+"Smith, Ned Ferry is not only a Romanist, he's a romanticist. We--you
+and me--are religionists. _Our_ brightness and happiness air the
+brightness and happiness of faith; our cleanness is the cleanness of
+religious scruples. Worst of it with Ned is he's satisfied with the
+difference, I'm afraid! That's what makes him so pleasant to fellows who
+don't care a sou marquee about religion."
+
+I said one might respect religion even if he did not--
+
+"Oh, he's always _polite_ to it; but he's--he's read Voltaire! Oh, yes,
+Voltaire, George Sand, all those men. He questions the Bible, Smith. Not
+to me, though; hah, he knows better! Smith, I can discuss religion and
+not get mad, with any one who don't question the Bible; but if he does
+that, I just tell you, I wouldn't risk my soul in such a discussion!
+Would you?"
+
+I could hardly say, and we moved pensively toward Major Harper's tent.
+Evidently the main poison was still in Gholson's stomach, and when I
+glanced at him he asked, "What d'you reckon brought Ned Ferry here just
+at this time?"
+
+I made no reply. He looked momentous, leaned to me sidewise with a hand
+horizontally across his mouth, and whispered a name. It was new to me.
+"Charlie Toliver?" I murmured, for we were at the tent door.
+
+"The war-correspondent," whispered Gholson; "don't you know?" But the
+flap of the tent lifted and I could not reply.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+SHE
+
+Major Harper was the most capable officer on the brigade staff. I had
+never met a man of such force and dignity who was so modestly affable.
+His new clerk dined with him that first day, at noon in his tent, alone.
+Hot biscuits! with butter! and rock salt. Fried bacon also--somewhat
+vivacious, but still bacon. When the tent began to fill with the smoke
+of his meerschaum pipe, and while his black boy cleared the table for us
+to resume writing, we talked of books. Here was joy! I vaunted my love
+for history, biography, the poets, but spoke lightly of fiction.
+
+The smoker twinkled. "You're different from Ned Ferry," he said.
+
+"Has he a taste for fiction?" I asked, with a depreciative smirk.
+
+"Yes, a beautiful story is a thing Ned Ferry loves with a positive
+passion."
+
+"I suppose we might call him a romanticist," said I, "might we not?"
+
+The patient gentleman smiled again as he said, "Oh--Gholson can attend
+to that."
+
+I took up my pen, and until twilight we spoke thereafter only of
+abstracts and requisitions. But then he led me on to tell him all about
+myself. I explained why my first name was Richard and my second name
+Thorndyke, and dwelt especially on the enormous differences between the
+Smiths from whom we were and those from whom we were not descended.
+
+And then he told me about himself. He was a graduate of West Point, the
+only one on the brigade staff; was a widower, with a widowed brother, a
+maiden sister, two daughters, and a niece, all of one New Orleans
+household. The brothers and sister were Charlestonians, but the two men
+had married in New Orleans, twin sisters in a noted Creole family. The
+brother's daughter, I was told, spoke French better than English; the
+Major's elder daughter spoke English as perfectly as her father; and the
+younger, left in her aunt's care from infancy, knew no French at all. I
+wondered if they were as handsome as their white-haired father, and
+when I asked their names I learned that the niece, Cecile, was a year
+the junior of Estelle and as much the senior of Camille; but of the days
+of the years of the pilgrimage of any of the three "children" he gave me
+no slightest hint; they might be seven years older, or seven years
+younger, than his new clerk.
+
+To show him how little I cared for any girl's age whose father preferred
+not to mention it, I reverted to his sister and brother. She was in New
+Orleans, he said, with her nieces, but might at any moment be sent into
+the Confederacy, being one of General Butler's "registered enemies." The
+brother was--
+
+"Out here somewhere. No, not in the army exactly; no, nor in the navy,
+but--I expect him in camp to-night. If he comes you'll have to work when
+you ought to be asleep. No, he is not in the secret service, only in _a_
+secret service; running hospital supplies through the enemy's lines
+into ours."
+
+I was thrilled. _I_ was taken into the staff's confidence! Me, _Smith!_
+That _Major Harper_ would tell me part of a matter to conceal the rest
+of it did not enter my dreams, good as I was at dreaming. The flattery
+went to my brain, and presently, without the faintest preamble, I asked
+if there was any war-correspondent at headquarters just now. There came
+a hostile flash in his eyes, but instantly it passed, and with all his
+happy mildness he replied, "No, nor any room for one."
+
+Just then entered an ordnance-sergeant, so smart in his rags that the
+Major's affability seemed hardly a condescension. He asked me to supper
+with his mess--"of staff _attatchays_," he said, winking one eye and
+hitching his mouth; at which the Major laughed with kind disapprobation,
+and the jocose sergeant explained as we went that that was only one of
+Scott Gholson's mispronunciations the boys were trying to tease him
+out of.
+
+I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper,
+stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head
+(save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only Gholson
+was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious jests got
+off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind. Never had I
+been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing "All quiet along
+the Potomac to-night," and was courteously praised when I had done so.
+But there is where affliction overtook me; they debated its authorship.
+One said a certain newspaper correspondent, naming him, had proved it to
+be the work--I forget of whom. But I shall never forget what followed.
+Two or three challenged the literary preeminence of that correspondent,
+and from as many directions I was asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying
+back against a pile of saddles with my head in my hands, sodden with
+self-assurance, I replied, magnanimously, "Oh, I don't set up for a
+critic, but--well--would you call him a better man than
+Charlie Toliver?"
+
+"Who--o?" It was not one who asked; the whos came like shrapnel; and
+when, not knowing what else to do, I smiled as one dying, there went up
+a wail of mirth that froze my blood and then heated it to a fever. The
+company howled. They rolled over one another, crying, "Charlie
+Toliver!--Charlie Toliver!--Oh, Lord, where's Scott Gholson!--Charlie
+Toliver!"--and leaped up and huddled down and moaned and rolled and
+rose and looked for me.
+
+But, after all, fortune was merciful, and I was gone; the Major had
+summoned me--his brother had come. I went circuitously and alone. As I
+started, some fellow writhing on the grass cried, "Charlie Tol--oh, this
+is better than a tcharade!" and a flash of divination enlightened me.
+While I went I burned with shame, rage and nervous exhaustion; the name
+Scott Gholson had gasped in my ear was the name of her in the curtained
+wagon, and I cursed the day in which I had heard of Charlotte Oliver.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+THREE DAYS' RATIONS
+
+In the vocabulary of a prig, but in the wrath of a fishwoman, I
+execrated Scott Gholson; his jealousies, his disclosures, his religion,
+his mispronunciations; and Ned Ferry--that cockerel! Here was I in the
+barrel, and able only to squeal in irate terror at whoever looked down
+upon me. I could have crawled under a log and died. At the door of the
+Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve
+when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's
+nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling
+good joke Smith had just got off on Gholson!
+
+"We shall have to get Ned Ferry back here," the Major was saying as I
+entered, "to make you boys let Scott Gholson alone."
+
+The young man laughed and turned to go. "Why doesn't Ned Ferry make
+_her_ let Gholson alone? He can do it; he's got her round his finger as
+tight as she's got Gholson round hers."
+
+"Harry," replied the Major, from his table full of documents, "don't you
+know that any man who's got a woman wrapped round his finger has also
+got her wrapped round his throat?"
+
+The aide-de-camp laughed like a rustic and vanished. "Smith," said the
+Major, "your eyes are--"
+
+"I've been awake for forty-eight hours, Major. But--oh, I'm not
+sleepy."
+
+"Well, go get some sleep.--No, go at once; you'll be called when
+needed."
+
+But I was not needed; while I slept, who should come back and do my work
+in my stead but Ned Ferry. When I awoke it was with a bound of alarm to
+see clear day. The command was breaking camp. I rushed out of the tent
+with canteen, soap and comb, and ran into the arms of the mess-cook. We
+were alone. "Oh, yass, seh," he laughed as he poured the water into my
+hands, "th'ee days' rairtion. Seh? Lawd! dey done drawed and cook' befo'
+de fus' streak o' light. But you all right; here yo' habbersack, full
+up. Oh, I done fed yo' hoss. Here yo' jacket an' cap; and here yo'
+saddle an' bridle--Oh, you welcome; I dess tryin' to git shet of 'em
+so's I kin strak de tent."
+
+As I mounted, our wagonmaster rode by me, busy as a skipper in a storm.
+"Oh, here!" he cried, wheeled, and reaching something to me added,
+"that's your pass. Major Harper wants you as quick as you can show up.
+He says never mind the column, ride straight after him. Keep this road
+to Hazlehurst and then go down the main Brookhaven road till you
+overtake him. He's by himself--nearly."
+
+As the rider wheeled away I blurted out with anxious loudness in the
+general hubbub, "Isn't his brother with him?"
+
+He flashed back a glare of rebuke and then bellowed to heaven and earth,
+"Oh, the devil and Tom Walker! I don't keep run of sutlers and
+citizens!" He took a circuit, standing in his stirrups and calling
+orders to his teamsters, and as he neared me again he said very gently,
+"Good Lord! my boy, don't you know better than to shoot your mouth off
+like that? You'll find nobody with the Major but Ned Ferry, and I don't
+say you'll find him."
+
+I galloped to the road. Away down through the woods it was full of
+horsemen falling into line. With the nearest colonel was Lieutenant
+Helm, the aide-de-camp. I turned away from them toward Hazlehurst, but
+looked back distrustfully. Yes, sure enough, the whole command was
+facing into column the other way! My horse and I whirled and stood
+staring and swelling with indignation--we ordered south, and the brigade
+heading westward! He fretted, tramped, neighed, and began hurriedly to
+paw through the globe to head them off on the other side. He even
+threatened to rear; but when I showed him I was ashamed of that, he bore
+me proudly, and I sat him as proudly as he bore me, for he made me more
+than half my friends. And now as the aide-de-camp wheeled about from the
+receding column and came our way saluting cordially, we turned and
+trotted beside him jauntily. Our first talk was of saddles, but very
+soon I asked where the General was.
+
+"Out on the Natchez Trace waiting for the command. I'm carrying orders
+to Fisher's battery, down here by the cross-roads. Haven't you seen the
+General this morning? What! haven't seen him in his new uniform? Whoop!
+he's a blaze of glory! Look here, Smith, I believe you know who brought
+it to him!"
+
+"How on earth should I know?"
+
+"Oh, how innocent you always are! Look here! just tell me this; was it
+the Major's brother brought it, or was it Ned Ferry?"
+
+"Suppose it wasn't either."
+
+"I knew it! I knew it was her! Ah, you rogue, you know it was her!"
+
+"Well, that _might_ depend on who 'her' is." We had reached the
+cross-roads and he was turning south.
+
+"Look!" he said, and gave the glance and smile of the lady in the
+curtained wagon so perfectly that I cackled like a small boy. "Oh, you
+know that, do you? I dare you to say she didn't bring it!"
+
+"I give you my word I don't know!" called I as the distance grew between
+us. "And I give you my word I don't care!" he crowed back as we
+galloped apart. His speech was two or three words longer, but they are
+inappropriate at the end of a chapter, and I expurgate.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN, TWENTY
+
+On entering Hazlehurst I observed all about the railway-station a
+surprising amount of quartermaster's stores. A large part were cases of
+boots and shoes. Laden with such goods, a train of shabby box-cars stood
+facing south, its beggarly wood-burner engine sniffing and weeping,
+while the cork-legged conductor helped all hands wood up. Though homely,
+the picture was a stirring one. Up through the blue summer morning came
+the sun, bringing to mind the words of the dying Mirabeau, "If that is
+not God, at least it's his first cousin."
+
+Even in the character of the goods there was eloquence, and not a
+drollery in the scene, not even an ugliness, but was touched, was rife,
+with the woe of a war whose burning walls were falling in on us. And
+outward, too, upon others; a few up-ended cottonbales leaned against
+each other ragged and idle, while women and babes starved for want of
+them in far-away Lancaster.
+
+One of the cars furthest from the engine had no freight proper, only a
+number of trunks; and these were nearly hidden by the widely crinolined
+flounces of an elegant elderly lady who sat on the middle one. And now
+she, too, was hidden, and the wide doorway in the side of the car more
+than filled, by the fashionable gowns of three girls. On the ground
+below there stood a lieutenant in a homemade gray uniform, and at his
+back half a dozen big, slouching, barefoot boys squirted tobacco juice
+and gazed at the ladies. The officer scanned me, spoke to the ladies,
+scanned me again, and threw up an arm. "Ho--o! Come here! Hullo! Come
+here--if you please."
+
+If he had not said please he should have ho'd and hullo'd in vain, but
+at that word I turned. Before I had covered half the distance I read New
+Orleans! my dear, dear old New Orleans! in every line of those ladies'
+draperies, and at twenty-five yards I saw one noble family likeness in
+all four of their sweet faces. Oh, but those three maidens were fair!
+and I could name each by her name at a glance: Camille, Cecile, Estelle;
+eighteen, nineteen, twenty!
+
+There was a hush of attention among them as the lieutenant and I
+saluted. His left hand was gone at the wrist and the sleeve pinned back
+on itself. He asked my name; I told him. In the car there was a stir of
+deepening interest. I inquired if he was the post-quartermaster here.
+He was.
+
+"Ain't you Major Harper's quartermaster-sergeant?" he asked.
+
+"I am his clerk." In the car a flash of joy and then great decorum.
+
+As he handed me a writing he glowed kindly. It proved to be from Major
+Harper; a requisition upon this officer for shoes and clothing; not for
+a brigade, regiment or company, but for me alone, from hat to shoes. I
+tendered it back silently, and saw that he knew its purport already from
+the Major, and that the ladies knew it from him. The good fellow looked
+quite happy a moment, but then reddened as they joyfully crowded the
+car's doorway to see me fitted!
+
+"We can select out sev'l pair--" he began, but heard a puerile titter
+and lost his nerve. "Now, you boys that ain't got any business here,
+jest clair out!--Go! I tell you, aw I'll--" The boys loitered off toward
+the engine. "We can select out sev'l si-izes," he drawled, uncovering a
+box, "and fit you ove' in my office. You ain't so pow'ful long nor so
+pow'ful slim, but these-yeh gov'ment contrac's they seldom ev' allow
+fo' anybody so slim in the waist bein' so long in the, eh,--so, eh,--so
+long f'om thah down. But yet still, if you'll jest light off yo' hoss
+and come and look into this-yeh box--"
+
+Hmm! yes! I wouldn't have got off my horse and leaned over that box to
+save the Confederacy. "I thank you, Lieutenant, but I can't stop. If
+you'll hand me up a jacket and pair of shoes I'll sign for them and go.
+I don't want a hat, but I reckon I'd as well include shoes, although
+really,--" I glanced down brazenly at the stirrup-leathers that so
+snugly hid my naked toes.
+
+As the quartermaster lifted out a pair of brogans as broad as they were
+long, there came a cry of protestation from the freight-car group, that
+brought the entire herd of rustics from the woodpile and the locomotive.
+Miss Harper rose behind her nieces, tall, slender, dark, with keen
+black eyes as kind as they were penetrating. "My boy!" she cried, "you
+cannot wear those things!"
+
+Camille, the youngest, whispered to her, whereupon she beckoned.
+"Oh!--oh, do come here!--Mr. Smith, I am the sister of Major Harper.
+You're from New Orleans? Does your mother live in Apollo Street?"
+
+"Yes, madam, between Melpomene and Terpsichore."
+
+"Richard Thorndyke Smith! My dear boy," she cried, while the nieces
+gasped at each other with gestures and looks all the way between
+Terpsichore and Melpomene, and then the four cried in chorus, "We know
+your mother!"
+
+"We've got a letter for you from her!" exclaimed Camille.
+
+"And a suit of unie-fawm!" called Cecile, with her Creole accent.
+
+"We smuggled it through!" chanted the trio, ready to weep for virtuous
+joy. And then they clasped arms like the graces, about their aunt, and
+let her speak.
+
+"We all helped your mother make your uniform," she said. "In the short
+time we've known her we've learned to love her dearly." With military
+brevity she told how they had unexpectedly got a pass and were just out
+of New Orleans--"poor New Orleans!" put in Estelle, the eldest, the
+pensive one; that they had come up from Pontchatoula yesterday and last
+night, and had thrown themselves on beds in the "hotel" yonder without
+venturing to disrobe, and so had let her brother pass within a few
+steps of them while they slept! "Telegraph? My dear boy, we came but ten
+miles an hour, but we outran our despatch!" Now they had telegraphed
+again, to Brookhaven, and thanks to the post-quartermaster, were going
+down there at once on this train. While this was being told something
+else was going on. The youngest niece, Camille, had put herself entirely
+out of sight. Now she reappeared with very rosy cheeks, saying, "Here's
+the letter."
+
+My thanks were few and awkward, for there still hung to the missive a
+basting thread, and it was as warm as a nestling bird. I bent
+low--everybody was emotional in those days--kissed the fragrant thing,
+thrust it into my bosom, and blushed worse than Camille.
+
+"Poor boy!" said the aunt. "It's the first line you've had for months.
+Your sweet mother wrote, but her letters were all intercepted, and the
+last time she was warned that next time she'd be dealt with according to
+military usage! I'm glad we could give you this one at once. We can't
+give you the uniform, for we--why, girls, what--why, what nonsense!"
+
+Maybe I did not say vindictive things inside me just then! The three
+nieces had turned open-mouthed upon one another and sunk down upon their
+luggage with averted faces.
+
+"I say we can't give it to you now," Miss Harper persisted, with a
+motherly smile; "we're wearing it ourselves. We've had no time to take
+it off. I couldn't get the boots off me last night. And even if you had
+the boots, the other things--"
+
+"Aunt Martha!" moaned some one. "Well, in short," said the aunt,
+twinkling like her brother, "we can't deliver the goods, and--" She
+started as though some one had slapped her between the shoulder-blades.
+It was the engine caused it, whistling in the old, lawless way, putting
+a whoop, a howl, a scream and a wail into one. The young ladies quailed,
+the train jerked like several collisions, the bell began tardily to
+clang, and my steed whirled, cleared a packing case, whirled again, and
+stood facing the train, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flapping, not
+half so much frightened as insulted. The post-quartermaster waved to the
+ladies and they to us. For a last touch I lifted my cap high and backed
+my horse on drooping haunches--you've seen Buffalo Bill do it--and
+then, with a leap like a cricket's, and to a clapping of maidens' hands
+that made me whooping drunk, we stretched away, my horse and I, on a
+long smooth gallop, for Brookhaven.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+A HANDSOME STRANGER
+
+Certainly no cricket ever dropped blither music from his legs than did
+my beautiful horse that glorious morning as we clattered in perfect
+rhythm on the hard clean road of the wide pine forest. Ah! the forest is
+not there now; the lumbermen--
+
+For an hour or so the world seemed to have taken me for its center as
+smoothly as a sleeping top. Only after a good seven miles did my
+meditations begin to reveal any bitter in the sweet; but it was in
+recalling for the twentieth time the last sight of Camille, that I
+heard myself say, I know not whether softly or loudly,
+
+"Oh, hang the uniform!"
+
+The morning was almost sultry. As I halted in the clear ripples of a
+gravelly "branch" to let my horse drink, I heard no great way off the
+Harpers' train shrieking at cattle on the track, and looking up I
+noticed just behind me an unfrequented by-road carefully masked with
+brush, according to a new habit of the "citizens". The next moment my
+horse threw up his head to listen. Then I heard hoofs and voices, and
+presently there came trotting through the oak bushes and around the mask
+of brush two horsemen unusually well mounted, clad and armed. Their very
+dark gray uniforms were so trim and so nearly blue that my heart came
+into my throat; but then I noticed they carried neither carbines nor
+sabres, but repeaters only, a brace to each. They splashed lightly to
+either side of me, and the three horses drank together.
+
+"Good-morning," we said. One of the men was a sergeant. He scanned my
+animal, and then me, with a dawning smile. "That's a fightin'-cock of a
+horse you've got, sonny."
+
+"Yes, bub," I replied. The two men laughed so explosively that my horse
+lifted his head austerely.
+
+"Jim," said the younger, "I don't believe all the conscripts we've
+caught these three days are worth the powder they've cost!"
+
+"No," replied Sergeant Jim, "I doubt if the most of 'em are." I turned
+to him and drew down my under eyelid. "Will you kindly tell me, sir, if
+you see any unnatural discoloration in there?"
+
+He smiled. "No, but I can put some there if you want it."
+
+"Thank you, I couldn't let you take so much trouble--or risk."
+
+The three of us pattered out of the stream abreast. "No trouble,"
+replied the sergeant, "it wouldn't take half a minute."
+
+"No," I rejoined, "the first step would be the last."
+
+The men laughed again. "You must a-been born with all your teeth," said
+the private, as we quickened to a trot. "What makes you think we ain't
+after conscripts?"
+
+"Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for
+good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up
+we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all."
+
+The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds. Then
+the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh while
+Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would be
+horn-swoggled!
+
+"I'm willing," I responded, and we all laughed. The younger horseman
+asked my name. "Smith," I said, with dignity, and they laughed again,
+their laugh growing louder when I would not smile.
+
+"Well, say; maybe you'll tell us who this is we're about to meet up
+with."
+
+Through the shifting colonnades of pine, a hundred yards in front of
+us, came two horsemen in the same blue-gray of the pair beside me.
+"Whoever he is," I said, "that gray he's riding is his second best, or
+it's borrowed," for his mount, though good, was no match for him.
+
+"Borrowed!" echoed the sergeant. "If he doesn't own that mare no man
+does."
+
+"Nor no woman?" I asked, and again across the back of my neck my two
+companions gazed at each other.
+
+"By ganny!" exclaimed one, and--"You're a coon," murmured the other, as
+the new-comers drew near. The younger of these also was a private.
+Behind his elbow was swung a Maynard rifle. Both carried revolvers. The
+elder wore a long straight sword whose weather-dimmed orange sash showed
+at the front of a loose cut-away jacket. Under this garment was a shirt
+of strong black silk, made from some lady's gown and daintily corded
+with yellow. On the jacket's upturned collar were the two gilt bars of a
+first lieutenant, but the face above them shone with a combined
+intelligence and purity that drew my whole attention.
+
+A familiar friendship lighted every countenance but mine as this second
+pair turned and rode with us, the lieutenant in front on Sergeant Jim
+Longley's right, and the two privates with me between them behind. For
+some minutes the sergeant, in under-tone, made report to his young
+superior. Then in a small clearing he turned abruptly into a
+neighborhood road, and at his word my two companions pricked after him
+westward. I closed up beside the lieutenant; he praised the weather, and
+soon our talk was fluent though broken, as we moved sometimes at a trot
+and often faster. In stolen moments I scanned him with the jealousy of
+my youth. Five feet, ten; humph! I was five, nine and a thirty-second.
+In weight he looked to be just what I always had in mind in those
+prayers without words with which I mounted every pair of commissary
+scales I came to. The play of his form as our smooth-gaited horses sped
+through the flecking shades was worth watching for its stanch and supple
+grace. Alike below the saddle and above it he was as light as a leaf and
+as firm as a lance. I had long yearned to own a pair of shoulders not
+too square for beauty nor too sloping for strength, and lo, here they
+were, not mine, but his. No matter; the slender mustache he sported he
+was welcome to, I had shaved off nearly as good a one; wished now I
+hadn't. As once or twice he lifted his kepi to the warm breeze I took
+new despair from the soft locks of darkest chestnut that lay on his head
+in manly order, ready enough to curl but waiving the privilege.
+
+"Cock-a-doodle-doo," thought I; "if those are not the same
+hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their
+first cousins!"
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+A PLAGUE ON NAMES!
+
+Once more I measured my man. Celerity, valor, endurance, they were his
+iridescent neck and tail feathers. On a certain piece of road where we
+went more slowly I mentioned abruptly my clerkship under Major Harper
+and watched for the effect, but there was none. Did he know the Major?
+Oh, yes, and we fell to piling item upon item in praise of the
+quartermaster's virtues and good looks. Presently, with shrewdest
+intent, I said the Major was fine enough to be the hero of a novel! Did
+not my companion think so?
+
+Yes, he thought so; but I believed the glow in his tone was for novels.
+I extolled the romance of actual life! I denounced that dullness which
+fails to see the poetry of daily experience, and goes wandering after
+the mirages of fiction! And I was ready to fight him if he liked. But he
+agreed with me most cordially.
+
+"And yet," he began to add,--
+
+"Yet what?" I snapped out, with horse eyes.
+
+"Doesn't a good story revive the poetry of our actual lives?" He wiped
+the rim of his cap with a handkerchief of yellow silk enriched at one
+corner with needlework.
+
+"Um-hm!" I thought; "Charlotte Oliver, eh?" I responded tartly that I
+had that very morning met four ladies the poetry of whose actual,
+visible loveliness had abundantly illustrated to me the needlessness and
+impertinence of fiction! By the way, did he not think feminine beauty
+was always in its ripest perfection at eighteen?
+
+Well, he thought a girl might be prettiest at eighteen and handsomest
+much later. And again I said to myself, "Charlotte Oliver!" But when I
+looked searchingly into his eyes their manly sweetness so abashed me
+that I dropped my glance and felt him looking at me. I remembered my
+fable and flinched. "Isn't your name--" I cried, and choked, and when I
+would have said Ferry, another word slipped out instead. He did not hear
+it plainly:
+
+"Cockerel, did you say?"
+
+A sweet color was I. "Yes, that's what I said; Cockerel. Isn't your last
+name Cockerel?"
+
+"No," he said, "my last name is Durand." He gave it the French
+pronunciation.
+
+"Mine is Smith," I said, and we galloped.
+
+A plague on names! But I was not done with them yet. We met other scouts
+coming out of the east, who also gave reports and went on westward,
+sometimes through the trackless woods. At a broad cross-road which
+spanned the whole State from the Alabama line to the Mississippi River
+stood another sergeant, with three men, waiting. They were the last.
+
+Again we galloped alone; and as our horses' hoofs beat drummers' music
+out of the round earth our dialogue drifted into confessions of our own
+most private theories of conduct, character and creation. Now that this
+man's name was not--Cockerel, my heart opened to him and we began to
+admit to each other the perplexities of this great, strange thing called
+Life. Especially we confessed how every waking hour found us jostled and
+torn between two opposite, unappeasable tendencies of soul; one an
+upward yearning after everything high and pure, the other a
+down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence. I was warmed and fed.
+Yet I was pained to find him so steeped in presumptuous error, so
+wayward of belief and unbelief. The sweet ease with which he overturned
+and emptied out some of my arguments gave me worse failure of the
+diaphragm than a high swing ever did. Nevertheless I responded; and he
+rejoined; and I rejoined again, and presently he gave me the notion that
+he was suffering some cruel moral strain.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+ANOTHER CURTAINED WAGON
+
+Upon whatever fundamental scheme we perseveringly concentrate our
+powers, upon whatever main road of occupation we take life's
+journey,--art, politics, commerce, science,--if only we will take its
+upper fork as often as the road divides, then will that road itself, and
+not necessarily any cross-road, lead us to the noblest, truest plane of
+convictions, affections, aspirations. Such a frame of mind may be quite
+without religiosity, as unconscious as health; but the proof of its
+religious reality will be that, as if it were a lighthouse light and we
+its keeper, everybody else, or at any rate everybody _out on the deep_,
+will see it plainer than we. Such is the gist of what this young man was
+saying to me, when our speculations were brought to an end by our
+overtaking a man well mounted, and a woman whose rough-gaited was
+followed by a colt.
+
+The pair took our pace, the man plying me with questions, and his wife,
+in front, telling Lieutenant Durand all the rumors of the day. Her scant
+hair was of a scorched red tone, she was freckled down into her collar,
+her elbows waggled to the mare's jog, and her voice was as flat as a
+duck's. Her nag had trouble to keep up, and her tiny faded bonnet had
+even more to keep on. Yet the day was near when the touch of those
+freckled hands was to seem to me kinder than the breath of flowers, as
+they bathed my foul-smelling wounds, and she would say, in the words of
+the old song, "Let me kiss him for his mother," and I should be helpless
+to prevent her. By and by the man raised his voice:--
+
+"Why, yo' name _is_ Smith, to be sho'! I thought you was jest a-tryin'
+to chaw me. Why, Major Harper alludened to you not mo'n a half-ow ago.
+Why, Miz Wall! oh, Miz Wall!"
+
+But the wife was absorbed. "Yayse, seh," she was saying to the
+lieutenant, "and he told us about they comin' in on the freight-kyahs
+f'om Hazlehurst black with dust and sut and a-smuttyin' him all oveh
+with they kisses and goin's-on. He tol' me he ain't neveh so enjoyed
+havin' his face dirty sence he was a boy. He would a-been plumb happy,
+ef on'y he could a-got his haynds on that clerk o' his'n. And when he
+tol' us what a gay two-hoss turn-out he'd sekyo'ed for the ladies to
+travel in, s' I, Majo', that's all right! You jest go on whicheveh way
+you got to go! Husband and me, we'll ride into Brookhaven and bring 'em
+out to ow place and jest take ca'e of 'em untel yo' clerk is _found_."
+
+"Miz Wall!" cried the husband--"She's busy talkin'.--Miz Wall!--she
+don't hyuh me. I hate to interrupt heh.--Oh, Miz Wall! hyuh's Majo'
+Harper's clerk, right now!"
+
+"Law, you hain't!" cried Mrs. Wall, smiling back as she jounced. "If you
+air, the Majo's sisteh's got written awdehs fo' you."
+
+I shot forward, but had hardly more than sent back my good-bye when
+around a bend of the road, in a wagon larger than Charlotte Oliver's,
+with the curtains rolled up, came the four Miss Harpers, unsooted and
+radiant. The aunt drove. We turned, all four, and rode with them, and
+while the seven chatted gaily I read to myself the Major's note. It bade
+me take these four ladies into my most jealous care and conduct them to
+a point about thirty miles west of where we then were. A dandy's task in
+a soldier's hour! I ground my teeth, but as I lifted my glance I found
+Camille's eyes resting on me and read anxiety in them before she could
+put on a smile of unemotional friendliness that faded rapidly into
+abstraction. She was as pretty as the bough of wild azaleas in her hand,
+yet moving forward I told her aunt the order's purport and that it
+implied the greatest despatch compatible with mortal endurance. The
+whole four seemed only delighted.
+
+But Mrs. Wall protested. No, no, her hospitality first, and a basket of
+refreshments to be stowed in the vehicle, besides. "Why, that'll
+_sa-ave_ ti-ime. You-all goin' to be supprised to find how hungry
+y'all ah, befo' you come to yo' journey's en', to-night, and them col'
+victuals goin' taste pow'ful fi-ine!"
+
+Our acceptance was unanimous. I even decided not to inform Lieutenant
+Durand until after the repast, that ladies under my escort did not pick
+acquaintanceship with soldiers on the public highway. But before the
+brief meal was over I was wishing him hanged. Hang the heaven-high
+theories that had so lately put me in love with him! Hang his melodious
+voice, his modest composure, his gold-barred collar, his easy command of
+topics! Hang the women! they feasted on his every word and look! Ah,
+ladies! if I were mean enough to tell it--that man doesn't believe in
+hell! He has a down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence; he has
+told me so!
+
+How fast acquaintance grew! When he addressed himself to Cecile, the
+cousin of the other two, her black eyes leapt with delight; for as
+calmly as if that were the only way, he spoke to her in French--asked
+her a question. She gave answer in happiest affirmation, and explained
+to her aunt that her Durand schoolmates of a year or two back were
+cousins to the Lieutenant. When the throng came out to the carry-all I
+was there and mounted. Squire Wall took me a few rods to point out where
+a fork of his private road led into the highway. Then the carry-all came
+merrily after, and with a regret that surprised me I answered our
+Lieutenant's farewell wave, forgave him all his charms, and saw him face
+westward and disappear by a bridle-path.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+THE DANDY'S TASK
+
+Westward likewise we soon were bickering. The morning sun shone high;
+the thin, hot dust blew out over the blackened ground of some forest
+"burn" or through the worm fence of some field where a gang of slave men
+and women might be ploughing or hoeing between the green rows of young
+cotton or corn. The level stretches were many, the slopes gradual, and
+to those sweet city-bird ladies everything was new and delightful; a log
+cabin!--with clay chimney on the outside!--a well and its
+well-sweep!--another cabin with its gourd-vines! They knew that blessed
+alchemy which turns all things into the poetry of the moment. Sweet they
+would have been anywhere to any eye or mind; but I was a homeless
+trooper lad, and sweeter to the soldier boy than water on the
+battlefield are short hours with ladies who love him for his banner
+and his rags.
+
+These four were charmed with an old field given up to sedge, its deep
+rain-gullies as red as gaping wounds, its dead trees in tatters of long
+gray moss. Estelle became a student of flowers, Cecile of birds, Camille
+of trees. All my explanations were alike enchantingly strange. To their
+minds it had never occurred that the land sloped the same way the water
+ran! When told that these woods abounded in deer and wild turkey they
+began to look out for them at every new turn of the road. And the turns
+came fast. Happy miles, happy leagues; each hour was of a mellower
+sweetness than the last; they seemed to ripen in the sun. The only
+drawback was my shame of a sentimental situation, but once or twice I
+longed to turn the whole equipage into the woods--or the ditch. As, for
+instance, when three pine-woods cavalrymen had no sooner got by us than
+they set up that ribald old camp-song,
+
+  "We're going to get married, mamma, mamma;
+  We're going to get married, but don't tell pa--"
+
+"Deserters, I don't doubt!" was my comment to the ladies. Tongue revenge
+is poor, but it is something.
+
+Except in such moments, however, the war seemed farther away than it had
+for months and months. But about eleven o'clock we began to find the way
+scored by the fresh ruts of heavy wheels and the dust deepened by
+hundred of hoofs. The tops and faces of the roadside banks were newly
+trampled and torn by clambering human feet. Here was a canteen, smashed
+in a wheel-track; yonder a fragment of harness; here lay a broken hame,
+there was the half of a russet brogan and yonder a ragged sock stained
+and bloody.
+
+"Why, what does all this mean?" asked Miss Harper amid her nieces'
+cries.
+
+I said it meant Fisher's battery hurrying to the front. Twenty miles
+since five that morning was a marvel, horse artillery though they were,
+for, as I pointed out by many signs, their animals were in ill
+condition. "We shall have to go round them by neighborhood roads," I
+said, and presently we were deeper than ever in woodland shades and
+sources of girlish wonderment. The humid depths showed every sort of
+green and gray, their trunks, bushes and boughs, bearded with hanging
+moss, robed with tangled vines and chapleted with mistletoe. We seemed
+to have got this earth quite to ourselves and very much to our liking.
+
+One o'clock. Miss Harper suggested a halt to feed the horses. I, knowing
+what it would cost me to dismount and go walking about, said no, thrice
+no; let us first get back upon the main road in front of that battery.
+On, therefore, we hurried, and soon the reality of the war was vivid to
+us again. In a stretch of wet road where the team had mutely begged
+leave to walk and the ladies had urged me to sing we had at length
+paused in a pebbly rivulet to allow the weary animals to drink, and the
+girls and the aunt and the greenwood and I were all in chorus
+bidding somebody
+
+  "Unloose the west port and let us go free,"
+
+when, just as our last note died among the trees one of us cried,
+"Listen!" and through the stillness there came from far away on our
+right the last three measures of a bugle sounding The March.
+
+My eyes rested in Camille's and hers in mine. A musical license gave us
+the courage. At the last note our gaze did not sink but took on more
+glow, while out of the forest behind us a distant echo answered the last
+measure of the strain. Then our eyes slowly fell; and however it may
+have seemed to her, to me it was as if the vanished strains were not
+only or chiefly of bugle and echo, but as though our two hearts had
+called and answered in that melodious unison.
+
+All that warm afternoon we paid the tiresome penalty of having pushed
+our animals too smartly at the outset. We grew sedate; sedate were the
+brows of the few strangers we met. We talked in pairs. When I spoke with
+Miss Harper the four listened. She asked about the evils of camp life;
+for she was one of that fine sort to whom righteousness seems every
+man's and woman's daily business, one of the most practical items in the
+world's affairs. And I said camp life was fearfully corrupting; that the
+merest boys cursed and swore and stole, or else were scorned as
+weaklings. Then I grew meekly silent and we talked in pairs again, and
+because I yearned to talk most with Camille I talked most with Estelle.
+Three times when I turned abruptly from her to Camille and called,
+"Hark!" the fagged-out horses halted, and as we struck our listening
+pose the bugle's faint sigh ever farther in our rear was but feebly
+proportioned to the amount of our gazing into each other's eyes.
+
+Once, when we were not halted or harkening, we heard overmuch; heard
+that which brought us to an instant stand and caused even Miss Harper to
+gaze on me with dismayed eyes and parted lips, and the blood to go
+thumping through my veins. From a few hundred yards off in the
+northwest, beyond the far corner of an old field and the woods at its
+back, two gunshots together, then a third, with sharp, hot cries of
+alarum and command, and then another and another shot, rang out and
+spread wanderingly across the tender landscape.
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+THE SOLDIER'S HOUR
+
+To regain the highroad we had turned into a northerly fork, and were in
+as lovely a spot as we had seen all day. Before us and close on our
+right were the dense woods of magnolia, water-oak, tupelo and a hundred
+other affluent things that towered and spread or clambered and hung. On
+the left lay the old field, tawny with bending sedge and teeming with
+the yellow rays of the sun's last hour. This field we overlooked through
+a fence-row of persimmon and wild plum. Among these bushes, half fallen
+into a rain-gully, a catalpa, of belated bloom, was loaded with blossoms
+and bees, and I was directing Camille's glance to it when the shots
+came. Another outcry or two followed, and then a weird silence.
+
+"Some of our boys attacked by a rabbit," I suggested, but still
+hearkened.
+
+"That was not play, Mr. Smith," Miss Harper had begun to respond, when a
+voice across the sedge-field called with startling clearness,
+
+"Hi! there goes one of them!--Halt!--Halt, you blue--" pop!--pop!--pop!
+
+"Prisoners making a break!" I forgot all my tatters and stood on tiptoe
+in the stirrups to overpeer the fence-row. The next instant--"Sh--sh!"
+said I and slid to the ground. "Hold this bridle!" I gave it to Camille.
+"Don't one of you make a sound or a motion; there's a Yankee coming
+across this field in the little gully just behind us."
+
+I bent low, ran a few steps, cocking my revolver as I went. Then I rose,
+peeped, bent again, ran, rose, peeped, waited a few seconds behind the
+catalpa, and without rising peeped once more. Here he came! He was an
+officer. His uniform was torn and one whole side of him showed he had at
+some earlier hour ridden through a hedge and fallen from his horse. On
+he came! nearer--nearer--oh, what a giant! Quickly, warily, he crouched
+under the fence where it hung low across the gully, and half through it
+in that huddled posture he found my revolver between his astonished
+eyes. I did not yell at him, for I did not want the men he had escaped
+from to come and take him from me; yet when I said, "Halt, or you die!"
+the four ladies heard me much too plainly. For, frankly, I said more and
+worse. I felt my slenderness, my beardless youth, my rags, and his
+daring, and to offset them all in a bunch, I--I cursed him. I let go
+only one big damn and I've never spoken one since, though I've done many
+a worse thing, of course. I protest it was my modesty prompted it then.
+
+"I surrender," he said, with amiable ease. I stepped back a pace and he
+drew out and straightened up--the tallest man I had ever seen. I laughed,
+he smiled, laughed; my eyes filled with tears, I blazed with rage, and in
+plain sight and hearing of those ladies he said, "That's all right, my
+son, get as scared as you like; only, you don't need to cry about it."
+
+"Hold your tongue!" I barked my wrath like a frightened puppy, drawing
+back a stride and laying my eye closer along the pistol. "If you call me
+your son again I'll send you to your fathers."
+
+His smile darkened. "I am your prisoner," he said, with a sudden
+splendid stateliness, and right then I guessed who he was.
+
+"Yess, sir, you are!" I retorted. "Move to that wagon! And if you take
+one step out of common time you'll never take another."
+
+The aunt and her nieces were standing in the carry-all, she majestic,
+they laughing and weeping in the one act. I waved them into their seats.
+
+"Halt!" We halted. "About face!" As the prisoner eyed me both of us
+listened. His equanimity was almost winsome, and I saw that friendliness
+was going to be his tactics.
+
+"Guess I'm the first Yankee y' ever caught, ain't I?" His smile was
+superior, but congratulatory.
+
+"You'll be the first prisoner I ever shot if you get any funnier!"
+
+We listened again. "They've gone the wrong way," I said, still savage.
+
+"No," he replied, "I came the wrong way."
+
+The ladies smiled; I glowered. "Take those horses by their heads and
+turn them to me!"
+
+An instant his superb eye resented, but then he pleasantly did my
+bidding. "Suits me well; rather chance it with you than with those I've
+just left."
+
+[Illustration: "I surrender," he said, with amiable ease.]
+
+"Easier to get away, you think?" I asked, with a worse frown than ever,
+as he stepped into the carry-all and took the lines.
+
+"No, not so easy; but those fellows are Arkansans, and they're in a bad
+humor with me."
+
+I took the hint and grew less ferocious. "While you," I said, "are
+Captain Jewett."
+
+"I am," was his reply, and my heart leaped for joy. We hurried away. My
+captive was the most daring Union scout between Vicksburg and New
+Orleans; these very Harpers knew that. The thing unknown to us was that
+already his fate was entangled with Ned Ferry's and Charlotte Oliver's,
+as yet more it would be, with theirs and ours, in days close at hand.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+CAPTAIN JEWETT
+
+Once more we were in the by-road which had brought us westward parallel
+with the highway. The prisoner drove. Aunt Martha sat beside him, slim,
+dark, black-eyed, stately, her silver-gray hair rolled high a la
+Pompadour. With a magnanimity rare in those bitter days she incited him
+to talk, first of New Orleans, where he had spent a month in camp on one
+of the public squares, and then of his far northern home, and of loved
+ones there, mother, wife and child. The nieces, too, gave a generous
+attention. Only I, riding beside the hind wheels, held solemnly aloof.
+
+"Front!" I once snapped out with a ring that made the trees reply and
+the ladies catch their breath. "If you steal one more look back here
+I'll put a ball into your leg."
+
+He smiled, chirped the horses up and resumed his chat. I heard him
+praise my horse and compare him not unfavorably with his own which he
+had lost that morning'. He and a few picked men had been surprised in a
+farmhouse at breakfast. They had made a leap and a dash, he said, but
+one horse and rider falling dead, his horse, unhurt, had tumbled over
+them, and here was his rider.
+
+I prompted Camille to ask if he had ever encountered Ned Ferry, and he
+laughed.
+
+"No," he said, but Ned Ferry had lately restored to him, by proxy, some
+lost letters, with an invitation to _come and see him_.
+
+I laughed insolently. The young ladies sparkled, and so did Miss Harper,
+as she asked him who had been the proxy.
+
+He said the proxy was a young woman who had a knack of getting passes
+through the lines, and the three girls exchanged looks as knowing as
+they were delighted.
+
+"I tell her as a friend," he said, "she'll get one into Fortress Monroe
+yet!"
+
+Miss Harper's keen eyes glittered. "You northerners hardly realize our
+feelings concerning the imprisonment of women, I think."
+
+"My dear madam, you don't realize ours. We don't want to imprison
+women."
+
+So there came a silence, and then a gay laugh as three of us at once
+asked if he had ever heard of Lieutenant Durand. "Durand!" he cried, and
+looked squarely around at me. I lifted the cocked revolver, but he kept
+his fine eyes on mine and I rubbed my ear with my wrist. "What?" he
+said, "an elegant, Creole-seeming young fellow, very handsome? Why, that
+fellow saved my life this very afternoon."
+
+The young ladies were in rapture. Miss Harper asked how he had done it.
+
+"If I tell you that," said the Captain, "you won't like me the least
+bit."
+
+Whereat Cecile replied, "Ah--well! we cou'n' like you the leaz bit
+any-'ow."
+
+"I suppose that's so," laughed the officer. "I'll tell you how it was.
+My guard were just about to hang me for saying I thought we had a right
+to make soldiers of the darkies, when your friend came galloping along,
+saw the thing, and rushed in and cut the halter with his sword. And when
+they demanded to know who and what he was, he told them Durand, and that
+they'd hear it again, for he should report them."
+
+"Oh, sir," cried Estelle, whose eyes, brows, lashes and hair were all of
+the same luminous red-brown, and in whose cheeks the rose seemed always
+to burn through the olive, "how can you and your people seek to kill
+such men as that?"
+
+"Such as which?" asked the Yankee, with a twinkle. "There were two
+kinds."
+
+"But, o-oh! sir!" exclaimed the trio, when Miss Harper waved them to
+forbear. There was yet some daylight left as we trundled into a broad
+highroad and turned northward. We passed a picket guard and then a whole
+regiment of cavalry going into camp. They scrambled to the sides of the
+road and stormed us with questions, chaffing us cruelly when I remained
+silent. "Lawd! look a' this-yeh Yank a-bringin' in ow desertehs!" "Hey,
+you big Yank, you jest let that po' little conscrip' go!"
+
+Headquarters, we heard from a courier who said he was the third sent out
+to find us, were at the "Sessions house" two miles further on. We sent
+him galloping back there, and after a while here came Major Harper and
+three or four others of the staff, including Harry Helm. What a flood of
+mirthful compliment there was at sight of us and our captive; Harry was
+positively silly. In the series of introductions that followed he was
+left paired with Camille, and I said things to myself. Major Harper rode
+by the prisoner. "Well, Captain," he said, "you've had some experiences
+since you left me this morning. Don't you want to give us your parole
+this time, temporarily, for an hour or so, and be more comfortable?"
+
+"Thank you, Major," the Federal affably replied, "that would be a great
+relief to this most extraordinary youngster that I've brought with me."
+He gave it and we turned into a lofty grove whitened with our
+headquarters tents.
+
+"Smith," said the Major, "your part is done, and well done. You needn't
+report to me again to-night; the General wishes to see you a moment.
+Captain, will you go with this young man to General Austin's tent?"
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+IN THE GENERAL'S TENT
+
+I went to Gholson. He told me I was relieved of my captive and bade me
+go care for my horse and return in half an hour. In going I passed close
+by the Sessions plantation house. Every door and window was thrown wide
+to the night air, and preparations were in progress for a dance; and as
+I returned, a slave boy ran across my path, toward the house, bearing a
+flaming pine torch and followed by two ambulances filled with daughters
+of the neighborhood in clouds of white gauze. I found the General in
+fatigue dress. His new finery hung on the tent-pole at his back. Old
+Dismukes, the bull-necked colonel of the Arkansans, lounged on a
+camp-cot. Both smoked cigars.
+
+The General asked me a number of idle questions and then said my
+prisoner had called me a good soldier. Old Dismukes smiled so broadly
+that I grew hot, believing the Yankee had told them of my tears.
+
+"Smith," said the Colonel, and then smoked and smiled again till my brow
+beaded,--"tired?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"That's a lie," he pleasantly remarked, and lay back, enjoying my silent
+wrath. "Send him, General," he added, "he's your man."
+
+The General looked at me between puffs of his cigar. "I hear you've
+ridden over fifty miles to-day."
+
+"Yes, General." "If I give you a good fresh horse can you go
+twenty-three miles more by midnight?"
+
+"Yes, General, if I don't have to save the horse."
+
+"The horse may have to save you," drawled the Arkansan.
+
+"I think you know Lieutenant Durand?" asked the General, with a
+quizzical eye.
+
+"Slightly."
+
+"Well, Smith, on his suggestion approved by Major Harper, I have
+detailed another clerk to the Major."
+
+Rills of perspiration tickled my back like flies. "Can't one man do the
+work?"
+
+"Yes, the new man is detailed in your place."
+
+I almost leaped from the ground in consternation. My whole frame
+throbbed, my mouth fell open, my tongue was tied.
+
+The man who had got me into this thing--this barrel--lifted the
+tent-flap. "Mr. Gholson," said the General, "write an order assigning
+Smith to Ferry's scouts."
+
+The flap fell again and my panic was turned into a joy qualified only by
+a reduced esteem for my general as a judge of character.
+
+Old Dismukes rose. "Good-night. Shall I send this boy that Yankee's
+horse?"
+
+"Oh I was forgetting that; yes, do!"
+
+At the door the Colonel gave me a last look. "Good-night, Legs."
+
+I dared not retort, but I looked so hard at his paunch that the General
+smiled. Then he asked me if I knew where we were then camped, and I said
+we were on the Meadville and Fayette road, near Franklin, twenty miles
+southeast of Fayette and--
+
+"That will do. Now, beyond Fayette, about seven miles north, there's a
+place--"
+
+"Clifton?"
+
+"Don't interrupt me, Smith. Yes, Clifton. You're not to reach there
+to-night--"
+
+"I can do it, General."
+
+"You can do as you're told; understand?" I understood.
+
+"The enemy are in Fayette to-night," he continued. "So when you get
+half-way to Fayette, just across Morgan's Creek, you'll take a dim fork
+on the right running north along the creek. Ever travel by the stars?"
+
+I began to tell how well I knew the stars, but he stopped me. "Yes;
+well, keep straight north till you strike the road running east and west
+between Fayette and Union Church. You'll find there a little
+polling-place called Wiggins. Turn west, toward Fayette, and on the
+north side of the main road, opposite the blacksmith's shop, you'll come
+to a small--"
+
+"I see."
+
+"What do you see?" His frown scared me to my finger-tips.
+
+"Why, I suppose I'm to find there a road down Cole's Creek to Clifton."
+
+"Smith, if you interrupt me again, sir, you'll find the road back to
+your regiment. Opposite that blacksmith's shop you'll see a white
+cottage. There's a young lady stopping there to-night, a stranger, a
+traveller. The old lady who lives there has taken her in at my request.
+See that the young lady gets this envelope. It's no great matter, merely
+a pass through our lines; but it's your ostensible business till you get
+there; understand?"
+
+I thought I did until I glanced at the superscription: Miss Coralie
+Rothvelt.
+
+"Now, here is another matter of much more importance." He showed, but
+retained, another envelope. "Behind the house where you're to find Miss
+Rothvelt there's a road into Cole's Creek bottom. The house you're to
+stop at to-night, say from twelve o'clock till three or half-past, is on
+that road, about five miles from Wiggins, from Clifton and from Fayette.
+I'm sending you there expecting the people in that house will rob you if
+you give them half a chance."
+
+"I understand, General; they'll not get it."
+
+"Smith, I want them to get it. I want them to rob you of this." He
+waggled the envelope. "I want this to fall into the hands of the enemy;
+as it will if those people rob you of it."
+
+I snapped my eyes. He smiled and then frowned. "I don't want a clumsy
+job, now, mind! I don't want you to get captured if you can possibly
+avoid it; but all the same they mustn't get this so easily as to suspect
+it's a bait. So I want you to give those villains that half-chance to
+rob you, but not the other half, or they may--oh, it's no play! You must
+manage to have this despatch taken from you totally against your will!
+Then you must reach Clifton shortly after daylight. Ferry's scouts are
+there, and you'll say to Lieutenant Ferry the single word, Rodney.
+Understand?" He pretended to be reconsidering. "I--don't know
+but--after all--I'd better send one of my staff instead of you."
+
+"Oh, General, if you send an officer they'll see the ruse! I can do it!
+I'll do it all right!"
+
+"I'm most afraid," he said, abstractedly, as he read my detail, which
+Gholson brought in. "Here,"--he handed it to me--"and here, here's the
+despatch too."
+
+"What's the name, General, of the man whose house I'm to go to?"
+
+"You'd best not know; I want you to seem to have stumbled upon the
+place. You can't miss it; there's no other house within two miles of it.
+Good-bye, my lad;"--he gave me his hand;--"good luck to you."
+
+Gholson, in the Adjutant-general's tent, told me Ned Ferry had named me
+to the General as a first-class horseman and the most insignificant-
+looking person he knew of who was fit for this venture.
+
+"Ned Ferry! What does Ned Ferry know about my fitness?"
+
+"Read the address on your despatch," said Gholson, resuming his pen.
+
+I snatched the document from my bosom, into which I had thrust it to
+seize the General's hand "Oh, Gholson!" I said, in deep-toned grief, as
+I looked up from the superscription, "is that honest!"
+
+He admitted that by the true religionist's standard it was not honest,
+but reminded me that Ned Ferry--in his blindness--was only a poor
+romanticist. The despatch was addressed to Lieutenant Edgard
+Ferry-Durand.
+
+Major Harper's black boy brought me the Yankee's horse with my bridle
+and saddle on him; an elegant animal as fresh as a dawn breeze. Also he
+produced a parcel, my new uniform, and a wee note whose breath smelt of
+lavender as it said,--
+
+"Papa tells us you are being sent off on courier duty to-night. What a
+heart-breaking thing is war! How full of cruel sepa'--"
+
+That piece of a word was scored out and "dangers" written in its place.
+The missive ended all too soon, with the statement that I was requested
+to call, on my way out of camp, at the side gallery of the house--
+Sessions's--and let the writer and her sister and her cousin and her
+father and her aunt see me in my new uniform and bid me good-bye.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+GOOD-BYE, DICK
+
+I found but one white figure under the dim veranda eaves. "Miss
+Camille?"
+
+"Wh'--who is that?" responded a musical voice. "Why, is that Mr. Smith?"
+as if I were the last person in the world one should have expected to
+see there. The like of those moments I had never known. I saw her eyes
+note the perfect fit of my uniform, though neither of us mentioned it. I
+tried to tell her that Lieutenant Durand was Ned Ferry and that I was
+now one of his scouts, but she had already heard both facts, and would
+not tell me what her father had said about me, it was so good. Standing
+at the veranda's edge a trifle above me, with her cheek against one of
+the posts and her gaze on her slipper, she asked if I was glad I was
+going with Ned Ferry, and I had no more sense than to say I was; but she
+would neither say she was glad nor tell why she was not.
+
+Through the open windows we could see the dancers. Now and then a pair
+of fanning promenaders came down the veranda, but on descrying us turned
+back. I said I was keeping her from the dance. To which she replied,
+drooping her head again, that she shouldn't dance that night.
+
+"Too tired?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Too warm?"
+
+"Oh, no, not too warm."
+
+"Why, then?"
+
+"Oh--I--just don't feel as if I could, that's all."
+
+My heart beat wildly and I wanted to ask if it was on my account; but I
+was too pusillanimous a coward, and when I feebly tried to look into her
+eyes she would not let me, which convinced me that she lacked candor. A
+dance ended. Gold-laced fellows came and sat on the veranda rail wiping
+wrists and brows with over-tasked handkerchiefs, and explaining the
+small mishaps of the floor. Two promenaders mentioned the hour. I gasped
+my amazement and extended my hand. "Good-bye."
+
+"Wait a moment," she murmured, and watched the promenading pair turn
+back. Then she asked if I had read my mother's letter. I said I had. And
+then, very pensively, with head bent and eyes once more down, she
+inquired if I liked to get letters. Which led, quite accidentally, to my
+asking leave to write to her.
+
+She replied that she did not mean that. Nevertheless, I insisted, would
+she? She only bent lower still. I asked the third time; and with nothing
+but the parting of her hair for me to look at, she nodded, and one of
+her braids fell over in front, and I took the pink-ribboned live end of
+it timorously between thumb and finger and felt as if I had hold of an
+electric battery.
+
+She backed half a step, and quite needlessly I let it go. Then she bade
+me not forget I had promised her the words of a certain song. "Want
+them? Indeed, yes! Did you not say it was an unpublished song written
+by a messmate of yours?--oh, Mr. Smith! I see why you stammer! You said
+'a member of your mess'! oh!--oh!--oh!--you wrote it, yourself! And you
+wrote it to-day! That explains--" She drew an awesome breath, rose to
+her toes and knit her knuckles under her throat.
+
+I was in the sweetest consternation. With the end of her braid once more
+in my fingers I made her promise to keep the dark secret, and so
+recited them.
+
+"Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
+  Turn away thine eyes ere my bosom burn,
+Lit with foolish hope to hear thy fondling sighs,
+  Like yon twilight dove's, breathe, Return, return!
+Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+  O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
+
+"Maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!
+  Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn.
+Breathe, O! breathe to me, as these love-languid skies
+  To yon twilight star breathe, Return, return!
+Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+  O maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!"
+
+"Mis-ter Smith! you wrote that?--to-day! Wh'--who is she?"
+
+"One too modest," I murmured, "to know her own portrait." I clutched the
+braid emotionally and let it go intending to retake it; but she dropped
+it behind her and said I was too imaginative to be safe.
+
+I stiffened proudly, turned and mounted my steed, but her eyes drew
+mine. I pressed close, bent over the saddle-bow, and said,
+"Good-bye, Camille."
+
+"Good-bye." I could barely hear it.
+
+"Oh!--good-bye, just anybody?" I asked; and thereupon she gathered up
+all her misplaced trust in me, all her maiden ignorance of what is in
+man, and all her sweet daring, to murmur--
+
+"Good-bye,--Dick."
+
+I caught my breath in rapture and rode away. She was there yet when I
+looked back--once--and again--and again. And when I looked a last time
+still she had not moved. Oh, Camille, Camille! to this day I see you
+standing there in pink-edged white, pure, silent, motionless, a
+summer-evening cloud; while I, my body clad in its unstained--only
+because unused--new uniform, and my soul tricked out in the
+foolhardiness and vanity of a boy's innocence, rode forth into the night
+and into the talons of overmastering temptation.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+CORALIE ROTHVELT
+
+The night was still and sultry. At one of the many camp-fires on the
+edge of the road I saw the Arkansas colonel sitting cross-legged on the
+ground, in trousers, socks and undershirt, playing poker.
+
+Out in the open country how sweet was the silence. Not yet have I
+forgotten one bright star of that night's sky. My mother and I had
+studied the stars together. Lately Camille, her letter said, had learned
+them with her. Now the heavens dropped meanings that were for me and for
+this night alone. While the form of the maiden--passing fair--yet
+glimmered in the firmament of my own mind, behind me in the south soared
+the Virgin; but as some trees screened the low glare of our camp I saw,
+just rising into view out of the southeast, the unmistakable eyes of the
+Scorpion. But these fanciful oracles only flattered my moral
+self-assurance, and I trust that will be remembered which I forgot, that
+I had not yet known the damsel from one sun to the next.
+
+I was moving briskly along, making my good steed acquainted with me,
+testing his education, how promptly for instance, he would respond to
+rein-touch and to leg-pressure, when I saw, in front, coming toward me,
+three riders. Two of them were very genteel chaps, though a hand of each
+was on the lock of his carbine. The third was a woman, veiled, and clad
+in some dark stuff that in the starlight seemed quite black and
+contrasted strongly with the paleness of her horse. Her hat, in
+particular, fastened my attention; if that was not the same soft-brimmed
+Leghorn I had seen yesterday morning, at least it was its twin sister. I
+halted, revolver in hand, and said, as they drew rein,--"Good-evening."
+
+"Good-evening," replied the nearer man. "How far is it to
+camp--Austin's?"
+
+"A short three miles."
+
+"To what command do you belong?" he asked.
+
+"Ferry's scouts. What command is yours, gentlemen?"
+
+"Ferry's scouts." He scrutinized me. "What command do you say you--"
+
+"Ferry's scouts," I repeated. "F-e-r-r-y-apostrophe s,
+Ferry's--s-k-o-w-t-s--scouts."
+
+The trio laughed, the young woman most musically.
+
+"How long have you belonged to Ferry's scouts?" sceptically demanded
+their spokesman.
+
+"About an hour and a quarter."
+
+"Oh! that-a-way."
+
+"Yes," I replied, "in that direction."
+
+The three laughed again and the men sank their carbines across their
+laps, while in a voice as refined as her figure their companion said,
+"Good-evening, Mr. Smith." She laid back her veil and even in the
+darkness I felt the witchery of her glance. "I was just coming to meet
+you," she continued, "to get the letter you're bringing me from General
+Austin. I feared you might try to come around by Fayette, not knowing
+the Yankees are there. These gentlemen didn't know it." "She just did
+save us!" laughed the man hitherto silent.
+
+"I'm Miss Coralie Rothvelt," she added, and then how she sparkled in the
+dark as she said, "I see you remember me."
+
+"I am but human."
+
+"And yet you never take a lady's name for granted?"
+
+"I am to know Miss Rothvelt by finding her in a certain place." My
+honeyed bow implied that her being just now very much out of place was
+no fault of mine.
+
+"Nonsense!" muttered both men, and I liked them the better.
+
+"My dear Smith," said Miss Rothvelt, "keep your trust. But if I part
+here with these two kind gentlemen--"
+
+"Who don't belong to Ferry's scouts at all," I still more sweetly added.
+
+"No," she laughed, "and if I go back with you to Wiggins--to the little
+white cottage, you know, opposite the blacksmith's shop,--you'll give me
+what you've got for me, won't you?" She dropped her head to one side and
+a mocking-bird chuckle rippled in her throat.
+
+"I shall count myself honored," said I, and we went, together and alone.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+VENUS AND MARS
+
+Since those days men have made "fire-proof" buildings. You know them;
+let certain aggravations combine--they burn like straw. We had barely
+started when I began to be threatened with a conflagration against which
+I should have called it an insult to have been warned. The adroit beauty
+at my side set in to explain more fully her presence. From her window
+she had seen those two trim fellows hurrying along in a fair way to
+blunder into the Federal pickets within an hour, had cautioned them, and
+had finally asked leave to come with them, they under her guidance, she
+under their protection.
+
+"You were so anxious to get the General's letter?" I asked.
+
+"I was so anxious about you," she replied, with feeling, and then broke
+into a quizzical laugh.
+
+I had not the faintest doubt she was lying. What was I to her? The times
+were fearfully out of joint; women as well as men were taking war's
+licenses, and with a boy's unmerciful directness I sprang to the
+conclusion that here was an adventuress. Yet I had some better thoughts
+too. While I felt a moral tipsiness going into all my veins, I asked
+myself if it was not mainly due to my own inability to rise in full
+manliness to a most exceptional situation. Her jaunty method of
+confronting it, was I not failing to regard _that_ with due magnanimity?
+Was this the truth, or after all ought I really to see that at every
+turn of her speech, by coy bendings of the head, by the dark seductions
+of dim half-captive locks about her oval temples, and by many an
+indescribable swaying of the form and of the voice, I was being--to
+speak it brutally--challenged? Even in the poetic obscurity of the night
+I lost all steadiness of eye as I pertly said--
+
+"And so here you are in this awful fix."
+
+"I'm enjoying one advantage," she replied, "which you do not."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Why, I can read my safety in your face. You can't read anything in
+mine; you're afraid to look."
+
+All I got by looking then was a mellow laugh from behind her relowered
+veil; but we were going at a swift trot, nearing a roadside fire of
+fence-rails left by some belated foraging team, and as she came into the
+glare of it I turned my eyes a second time. She was revealed in a garb
+of brown enriched by the red beams of the fire, and was on the gray mare
+I had seen that morning under Lieutenant Edgard Ferry-Durand.
+
+"You recognize her?" the rider asked, delightedly. "She's not stolen,
+she's only served her country a little better than usual to-day; haven't
+you, Cousin Sallie?" (Cousin Sallie was short for Confederate States.)
+
+The note of patriotism righted me and I looked a third time. The one art
+of dress worth knowing in '63 was to slight its fashions without
+offending them, and this pretty gift I had marked all day in the
+Harpers. But never have I seen it half so successful as in the veiled
+horsewoman illumined by the side-lights of those burning fence-rails.
+The white apparition at the veranda's edge gleamed in my mind, yet
+swiftly faded out, and a new fascination, more sudden than worthy heaved
+at my heart. Then the fire was behind us and we were in the deep night.
+
+On the crest of a ridge we slackened speed and my fellow-traveller
+lifted her veil and asked exultantly what those two splendid stars were
+that overhung yonder fringe of woods so low and so close to each other.
+The less brilliant one, I said, the red one, was Mars.
+
+"And the one following, almost at his side?"
+
+"Don't you know?" I asked.
+
+Her eyes flashed round upon me like stars themselves. "Not--Venus?" she
+whispered, snatched in her breath, bit her lip, and half averting her
+face, shot me through with both "twinklers" at once. Then she took a
+long look at the planets and suddenly exclaimed with a scandalized air--
+
+"They're going down into the woods together!"
+
+"Yes," I responded, "and without even waiting for Diana."
+
+She dropped the rein and lifted both arms toward them. "Oh, blessings on
+your glorious old heathen hearts, what do you want of Diana, or of any
+one in heaven or earth except each other!"
+
+Foolish, idle cry, and meant for no more, by a heart on fire with
+temptations of which I knew nothing. But then and there my poor
+adolescent soul found out that the preceptive stuff of which it had
+built its treasure-house and citadel was not fire-proof.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+AN ACHING CONSCIENCE
+
+Yet great is precept. Precept is a well. Up from its far depths by slow,
+humble, constant process you may draw, in a slender silver thread, and
+store for sudden use, the pure waters of character.
+
+It has happened, however, that a man's own armor has been the death of
+him. So the moral isolation of a young prig of good red blood who is
+laudably trying to pump his conduct higher than his character--for
+that's the way he gets his character higher--has its own peculiar
+dangers. Take this example: that he does not dream any one will, or can,
+in mere frivolity, coquette, dally, play mud-pies, with a passion the
+sacredest in subjection, the shamefulest in mutiny, and the deepest and
+most perilous to tamper with, in our nature. As hotly alive in the
+nethermost cavern of his heart as in that of the vilest rogue there is a
+kennel of hounds to which one word of sophistry is as the call to the
+chase, and such a word I believed my companion had knowingly spoken. I
+was gone as wanton-tipsy as any low-flung fool, and actually fancied
+myself invited to be valiant by this transparent embodiment of passion
+whose outburst of amorous rebellion had been uttered not because I was
+there, but only in pure recklessness of my presence. Of course I ought
+to have seen that this was a soul only over-rich in woman's love;
+mettlesome, aspiring, but untrained to renunciation; consciously
+superior in mind and soul to the throng about her, and caught in some
+hideous gin of iron-bound--convention-bound--or even law-bound--foul
+play. But I was so besotted as to suggest a base analogy between us and
+those two sinking stars.
+
+Unluckily she retorted with some playful parry that just lacked the
+saving quality of true resentment. How I rejoined would be small profit
+to tell. I had a fearful sense of falling; first like a wounded
+squirrel, dropping in fierce amazement, catching, holding on for a
+panting moment, then dropping, catching and dropping again, down from
+the top of the great tree where I had so lately sat scolding all the
+forest; and then, later, with an appalling passivity. And at every fresh
+exchange of words, while she laughed and fended, and fended and laughed,
+along with this passivity came a yet more appalling perversity; a
+passivity and perversity as of delirium, and as horrid to her as to me,
+though I little thought so then.
+
+We came where a line of dense woods on our left marked the bottom-lands
+of Morgan's Creek. With her two earlier companions my fellow-traveller
+had crossed a ford here shortly after sunset, seeing no one; but a guard
+might easily have been put here since, by the Federals in Fayette.
+Pretty soon the road, bending toward it, led us down between two fenced
+fields and we stealthily walked our horses. Close to a way-side tree I
+murmured that if she would keep my horse I would steal nearer on foot
+and reconnoitre, and I had partly risen from the saddle, when I was
+thrilled by the pressure of her hand upon mine on the saddle-bow. "Don't
+commit the soldier's deadliest sin, my dear Mr. Smith," she said under
+her breath, and smiled at my agitation; "I mean, don't lose time."
+
+I was about to put a false meaning even on that, when she added "We
+don't need the ford this time of year; let us ride back as if we gave up
+the trip--for there may be a vidette looking at us now in the edge of
+those bushes--and as soon as we get where we can't be seen let us take a
+circuit. We can cross the creek somewhere above and strike the Wiggins
+road up in the woods. You can find your way by the blessed stars, can't
+you--being the angel you are?"
+
+My whole nature was upheaved. You may smile, but my plight was awful. In
+the sultry night I grew cold. My bridle-hand, still lying under her
+palm, turned and folded its big stupid fingers over hers. Then our hands
+slid apart and we rode back. "I wish I were good enough to know the
+stars," she said, gazing up. "Tell me some of them."
+
+I told them. Two or three times my voice stuck in my throat, I found the
+sky so filled, so possessed, by constellations of evil name. At our back
+the Dragon writhed between the two Bears; over us hung the Eagle, and in
+the south were the Wolf, the Crow, the Hydra, the Serpent--"Oh, don't
+tell any more," she exclaimed. "Or rather--what are those three bright
+stars yonder? Why do you skip them?"
+
+"Those? That one is the Virgin's sheaf; and those two are the Balances."
+
+I failed to catch her reply. She spoke in a tone of pain and sunk her
+face in her hand. "Head ache?" I asked. "No." She straightened, and
+from under her coquettish hat bent upon me such a look as I had never
+seen. In her eyes, in her tightened lips, and in the lift of her head,
+was a whole history of hope, pride, pain, resolve, strife, bafflement
+and defiance. She could not have chosen to betray so much; she must have
+counted too fully on the shade of her hat-brim. The beautiful frown
+relaxed into a smile. "No," she repeated, "only an aching conscience.
+Ever have one?"
+
+I averted my face and answered with a nod.
+
+"I don't believe you! I don't believe you ever had cause for one!" She
+laid a hand again upon mine.
+
+I covered it fiercely and sunk my brow upon it. And thereupon the wave
+of folly drew back, and on the bared sands of recollection I saw, like
+drowned things, my mother's face, and Gholson's and the General's, and
+Major Harper's, and Ned Ferry's, and Camille's. Each in turn brought its
+separate and peculiar pang; and among those that came a second time and
+with a crueler pang than before was Camille's.
+
+"You're tired!" murmured the voice beside me, and the wave rolled in
+again. I lifted my brow and moved one hand from hers to make room on it
+for my lips, but her fingers slipped away and alighted compassionately
+on my neck. "You must be one ache from head to foot!" she whispered.
+
+I turned upon her choking with anger, but her melting beauty rendered me
+helpless. Black woods were on our left. "Shall we turn in here?"
+I asked.
+
+"Yes." She stooped low under the interlacing boughs and plunged with me
+into the double darkness.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+TWO UNDER ONE HAT-BRIM
+
+"Is this the conservatory?" playfully whispered Miss Rothvelt; and if a
+hot, damp air, motionless, and heavy with the sleeping breath of
+countless growths could make it so, a conservatory it was. Every
+slightest turn had to be alertly chosen, and the tangle of branches and
+vines made going by the stars nearly impossible. The undergrowth crowded
+us into single file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses
+came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were
+much the same until near the end of our detour, when my horse swerved
+abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake sounded almost under foot. The
+mare swerved, too, and hurried forward to my horse's side.
+
+"That was almost an adventure, itself," laughingly murmured my
+companion, as if adventures were what we were in search of. While she
+spoke we came out into a slender road and turned due north. "Did you,"
+she went on, childishly, "ever take a snake up by the tail, in your
+thumb and finger, and watch him try to double on himself and bite you? I
+have, it's great fun; makes you feel so creepy, and yet you know
+you're safe!"
+
+She laughed under her breath as if at hide-and-seek. Then we galloped,
+then trotted again, galloped, walked and trotted again. Two miles,
+three, four, we reckoned off, and slowed to a walk to come out
+cautiously upon the Union Church and Fayette road. A sound brought us
+to a halt. From the right, out on the main road, it came; it was made by
+the wheels of a loaded wagon. I leaned sidewise until her hat-brim was
+over me and whispered "Yankee foragers;" but as I drew my revolver we
+heard voices, I breathed a sigh of relief, and with her locks touching
+mine we chuckled to each other in the dark. The passers were slaves
+escaping to the Federal camp.
+
+Now they came into view, on the broader road, two whole ragged families
+with a four-mule team. They passed on. And then all at once the whole
+situation was too much for me. In the joy of release I groped out
+caressingly and touched my companion's cheek. Whereat she took my
+fingers and drew them to her lips--twice. The next moment I found--we
+found--my lifted wrists in the slender grasp of her two hands and she
+was murmuring incoherent protests. Suddenly she grew eloquent. "Oh,
+think what you are and have always been! Do you think I don't know? Do
+you suppose I would have put myself into this situation, or taken the
+liberties I have taken with you, if I had not known you, and known you
+well, before ever I saw you? Ah! I have heard such good things of you!
+and the moment I saw you I saw they were true!--Yes,--yes, I tell you
+they were, they are! And I'm not going to take my trust away from you
+now! You shall keep my trust as you have kept all others. You shall be
+as miserly of it as of your general's. You will keep it!" Her whispers
+grew more and more gentle. "My dear friend, my dear friend! what is this
+trust compared to the trust I wish I might lay on you?" What did she
+mean by that! Had she some schemer's use for me? I could not ask, for
+her little hands had gradually slipped from my wrists to my fingers and
+were softly, torturingly fondling them. Suddenly she laughed and threw
+her hands behind her back. "I'm blundering! Oh, Richard Smith, be kind
+to a woman's poor wits, and let me say to-morrow that I know one man who
+can be trusted--who I know can be trusted--to make a woman's folly her
+protection. Do you know, dear, that any woman who can say that, is
+richer than any who cannot? And I am but a woman, sometimes a bit silly.
+Trouble is I'm a live one and a whole one!--or else I'm a live one and
+not quite a whole one--I wonder which it is!"
+
+I mumbled something about never wishing to tempt any one.
+
+"Oh, you haven't tempted me," she replied, with kind amusement. "You
+couldn't if you should try. You're a true soldier, with a true soldier's
+ideals; and I'm pledged to help you keep them."
+
+"What do you mean?" I demanded. "To whom are you pledged for any such--"
+
+"Oh!--don't you wish you knew! Why, to myself, for instance. Come! duty
+calls."
+
+"Come!" I echoed. We swung into the broader road and followed the
+contrabands.
+
+We came as close to them as was wise, and had to walk our horses. I
+could discern Miss Rothvelt's features once more, and felt a truer
+deference than I had yet given her. Near the blacksmith's shop, in the
+dusk of some shade-trees, she once more touched my shoulder. I turned
+resentfully to bid her not do it, but her shadowy gaze stopped me.
+
+"Don't be moody," she said; "the whole mistake is four-fifths mine. And
+anyhow, repining is only a counterfeit repentance, you know. Come, I
+don't want to tease you. It's only myself I love to torment. I'm the
+snake I like to hold up by the tail. Did you never have some dull,
+incessant ache that seemed to pain less when you pressed hard on it?"
+She laughed, left me and rode into the cottage gate.
+
+What do you say?--Yes, she might have spoken more wisely. Yet always
+there vibrated in her voice a wealth of thought, now bitter, now sweet,
+and often both at once, and a splendor of emotions, beyond the scope of
+all ordinary natures. How far beyond my own scope they were, even with
+my passions at flood-tide and turbid as a back-street overflow, I
+failed to ponder while I passed around the paling fence alone.
+
+In the edge of the woods at the rear of this enclosure I found the road
+that led into Cole's Creek bottom, and there turned and waited. A corner
+of the cottage was still in view among its cedars and china-trees. In an
+intervening melon-patch blinked the yellow lamps of countless fireflies.
+And now there came the ghost of a sound from beyond the patch, then a
+glimpse of drapery, and I beheld again the subject of my thoughts. Such
+thoughts! Ah! why had I neither modesty, wit nor charity enough to see
+that yonder came a woman whose heart beat only more strongly than the
+hearts of all the common run of us, with impulses both kind and high,
+although society, by the pure defects of its awkward machinery, had
+incurably mutilated her fate; a woman wrestling with a deep-founded love
+that, held by her at arm's length, yielded only humiliations and by its
+torments kept her half ripe for any sudden treason even against that
+love itself.
+
+She came without her horse, pointing eagerly at the brightness of the
+sky above the unrisen moon. "Diana!" she whispered, and tossed a kiss
+toward it. "You saw me put the mare into the stable and go into the
+house by the back door?"
+
+"Yes," I said, and handed her, as I dismounted, the General's gift, the
+pass.
+
+She snatched it gaily, loosed a fastening at her throat and dropped the
+missive into her bosom. Then with passionate gravity she asked, "Now,
+are you going straight on to Clifton to-night--without stopping?"
+
+"I haven't been ordered to tell any one where I'm going."
+
+"Neither was Lieutenant Ferry," she dryly responded, "yet I have it from
+him."
+
+"He told you?--Ah! you're only guessing," I said, and saw that I was
+helping her to guess more correctly.
+
+"Pooh!" she replied, ever so prettily, "do you suppose I don't know?
+Ferry's scouts are at Clifton, and you've got a despatch for
+Lieutenant--eh,--Durand--hem!" She posed playfully. "Now, tell me;
+you're not to report to him till daylight, are you? Then why need you
+hurry on now? This house where I am is the only safe place for you to
+sleep in between here and Clifton. I'll wake you, myself, in good time."
+My heart pounded and rose in my throat, yet I managed to say, "My
+orders are plain." I flinched visibly, for again I had told too much. I
+pretended to listen toward the depths of the wood.
+
+She struck a mock-sentimental attitude and murmured musically--
+
+  "'The beating of our own hearts
+  Was all the sound we heard.'
+
+"Yes,"--she put away gaiety--"your orders are plain; and they're as
+cruel as they are plain!"
+
+"Cruel to you?" I took her hand from my arm and held it.
+
+"Oh! cruel to you, Richard, dear; to you! And--yes!--yes!--I'll
+confess. I'll confess--if only you'll do as I beg! Yes, ah yes, cruel to
+me! But don't ask how, and we'll see if you are man enough to keep a
+real woman's real secret! And first, promise me not to put up at that
+house which the General and Lieutenant Ferry--"
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry is not sending me to any house."
+
+"Pardon me, I know better. This is his scheme." She laid her free hand
+on our two. "Tell me you will not go to that house!"
+
+I attempted an evasion. "Oh--a blanket on the ground--face covered up in
+it from the mosquitos--is really--"
+
+"Right!" She laughed. "I wish a woman could choose that way. Oh! if
+you'll do that I'll go with you and stand guard over you!"
+
+Dolt that I was, I would have drawn her close, but she put me off with
+an outstretched arm and forbidden smile. "No!--No! this is a matter of
+life and death."
+
+I stepped back, heaving. "Who and what are you? Who and what are you?"
+
+"Why, who and what should I be?"
+
+"Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+"Hmm; Charlotte Oliver. Are you sure you have the name just right?"
+
+"Why haven't I got it right?"
+
+"Oh, I don't doubt you have; though I didn't know but it might be
+Charlie Toliver or something."
+
+I dilated. "Who told--did Ned Ferry tell you that story?"
+
+"He did. Or, to be accurate, Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. My dear Richard,
+we cannot be witty and remain un-talked-about."
+
+"I--I believe it yet! You are Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+She became frigid. "Do you know who and what Charlotte Oliver is?--No?
+Well, to begin with, she's a married woman--but pshaw! you believe
+nothing till it's proved. If I tell you who and what I am will you do
+what I've asked you; will you promise not to stop at Lucius Oliver's
+house?" She softly reached for my hand and pressed and stroked it.
+"Don't stop there, dear. Oh, say you will not!"
+
+"Is it so dangerous?"
+
+"General Austin believes it is. You're being used to bait a trap,
+Richard."
+
+I laughed a gay disdain. "Who is Lucius; is he Charlotte's husband?"
+
+The reply came slowly. "No; her husband is quite another man; this
+man's wife has been dead for years. No, Charlotte Oliver lives
+in--hark!"
+
+The sound we had heard was only some stir of nature in her sleep. "I
+must go," I said.
+
+"Oh, no, no! I cannot let you!" She clutched the hand she had been
+stroking.
+
+"Coralie! Coralie Rothvelt!"--my cry was an honest one--"you tempt me
+beyond human endurance."
+
+She threw my hand from her. "I know I do! I'm so unworthy to do it that
+I wouldn't have believed I could. You thought I was Charlotte
+Oliver--Heavens! boy, if you should breathe the atmosphere Charlotte
+Oliver has to live in! But understand again, for your soul's comfort,
+you haven't tempted me. Go, if you must; go, take your chances; and if
+you're spared ever to see your dear, dear little mother--"
+
+"My mother! Do you know my mother?"
+
+"Tell her I tried to keep my promise to her."
+
+"You promised her--what did you promise her?"
+
+"Only to take care of you whenever I had the chance. Go, now, you must!"
+
+"And was care for me your only motive in--"
+
+"No; no, Richard, I wanted, and I still want, you to take care of me!
+But go, now, go! at once or not at all! Good-bye!" She laughed and
+fluttered away. I sprang upon my horse and sped into the forest.
+
+Another mile, another half; then my horror and dismay broke into gesture
+and speech, and over and over I reviled myself as a fool, a traitorous
+fool, to be fooled into confession of my errand! I moaned with physical
+pain; every fatigue of the long day now levied payment, and my back,
+knees, shoulders, ached cruelly. But my heart ached most, and I bowed in
+the saddle and cried--
+
+"What have I done, oh, what have I done? My secret! my general's, my
+country's secret! That woman has got it--bought it with flatteries and
+lies! She has drawn it from my befouled soul like a charge from a gun!"
+
+For a moment I quite forgot how evident it was that she had gathered
+earlier inklings of it from some one else. Suddenly my thought was of
+something far more startling. It stopped my breath; I halted; I held my
+temples; I stared. What would she do with a secret she had taken such
+hazards to extort? Ah! she'd carry it straight to market--why not? She
+would give it to the enemy! Before my closed eyes came a vision of the
+issue--disaster to our arms; bleeding, maiming, death, and widows' and
+orphans' tears.
+
+"My God! she shall not!" I cried, and whirled about and galloped back.
+
+At the edge of the wood, where we had parted, I tied my horse, and crept
+along the moonlight shadows of the melon-patch to the stable. The door
+was ajar. In the interior gloom I passed my hands over the necks and
+heads of what I recognized to be the pair of small mules I had seen at
+Gallatin. Near a third stall were pegs for saddle and bridle, but they
+were empty. So was the stall; the mare was gone.
+
+"Gone to the Yankees at Fayette!" I moaned, and hurried back to my
+horse. To attempt to overtake one within those few miles would only make
+failure complete, and I scurried once more into the north with such a
+burden of alarm and anguish as I had never before known.
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+THE JAYHAWKERS
+
+IT was well that I was on the Federal captain's horse. He knew this sort
+of work and could do it quicker and more quietly than mine. Mine would
+have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it. Another
+advantage was the moon, and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I
+saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge
+of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins.
+Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young
+white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to
+startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the
+rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay
+ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw--for
+the excited dogs had pushed the door open--that two of the men were
+white, though but one wore shoes. On him the light fell revealingly as
+he and the yellow girl before him passed each other in the dance and
+faced again. He was decidedly blond. The other man, though silhouetted
+against the glare of burning pine-knots, I knew to be white by the
+flapping of his lank locks about his cheeks as he lent his eyes to the
+improvisation of his steps. His partner was a young black girl. I
+burned with scorn, and doubtless showed it, although I only asked whose
+plantation this was.
+
+"This-yeh pla-ace?" The rustic dragged his words lazily, chewed tobacco
+with his whole face, and looked my uniform over from cap to spur. "They
+say this-yeh place belong to a man which his name Lu-ucius Ol-i-veh."
+
+So! I honestly wished myself back in my old rags, until I reflected that
+my handsome mount was enough to get me all the damage these wretches
+could offer. Still I thought it safest to show an overbearing frown.
+
+"To what command do you fellows belong?"
+
+He spurted a pint to reply, "Fishe's batt'ry."
+
+"Oh! And where is the battery?"
+
+"You sa-ay 'Whah is it?'--ow batt'ry"--he champed noisily--"I dunno.
+Does you? Whah is it?"
+
+"It's twenty miles off; why are you not with it? What are you doing
+here?"
+
+"You sa-ay 'What we a-doin' hyuh?' Well, suh, I mought sa-ay we ain't
+a-doin' nuth'n'; but I"--he squirted again--"_will_ sa-ay that so fah as
+you _see_ what we a-doin', you _kin_ see, an' welcome; an' so fah as you
+don't see, it ain't none o' yo' damn' busi-ness."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, I was only asking a friendly question."
+
+"Yaas; well, that's all right, too, suh; I uz on'y a-givin' you a
+frien'ly aynsweh. I hope you like it."
+
+Our intercourse became more amiable and the fellow dragged in his advice
+that I spend the rest of the night at the house of Mr. Oliver. His
+acquaintance with that gentleman seemed to grow while we talked, and
+broke into bloom like a magician's rosebush. He described him as a kind
+old bird who made hospitality to strangers his meat and drink. A
+conjecture darted into my mind. "Why, yes! that is his married son, is
+he not, yonder in the cabin; the one with the fair hair?"
+
+"Who?--eh,--ole man Ol-i-veh? You sa--ay 'Is that his ma'-ied son, in
+yondeh; the one 'ith the fah hah? '--Eh,--no--o, suh,--eh,--yass,
+suh,--yass! Oh, yass, suh, thass his--tha'--thass his ma'ied son, in
+thah; yass, suh, the one 'ith the fah hah; yass, suh. I thought you
+meant the yetheh one."
+
+"I don't believe," said I, "I'd better put myself on the old gentleman
+when the mistress of the house is away."
+
+"_She_ ain't awa-ay."
+
+"Is she not! Isn't she the Mrs. Oliver--Charlotte Oliver--who is such
+friends--she and her husband, I mean, of course,--"
+
+"_Uv_ co'se!" The reptile giggled, squirted and nodded.
+
+"--With General Austin," I continued, "--and with Lieutenant Ferry?"
+
+"She air!" He was pleased. "Yass, we all good frien's togetheh."
+
+"But if she--oh, yes!--Yes, to be sure; she could easily have got here
+yesterday afternoon."
+
+"Thass thess when she arrove!" It was fascinating to watch the animal's
+cunning play across his face. The fiddle's tune changed and the dance
+quickened.
+
+"I naturally thought," resumed I, with a smile meant to refer to the
+blond dancer, "that the madam _must_ be away somewhere."
+
+My hearer grinned. "Oh, that ain't no sign. Boys will be boys. You know
+that, yo'se'f. An' o' co'se she know it. Oh, yass, she at home."
+
+"Well, I reckon I'll stop all night." I began to move on. His eyes
+followed greedily.
+
+"Sa-ay! I'll wrastle you fo' them-ah clo'es."
+
+I waved a pleasant refusal and rode toward the house.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+ASLEEP IN THE DEATH-TRAP
+
+The dwelling was entirely dark. I came close in the bright moonlight and
+hallooed. At my second hail the door came a small way open, and after a
+brief parley a man's voice bade me put up my horse and come in. The
+stable was a few steps to the right and rear. Returning, I took care to
+notice the form of the house: a hall from front to rear; one front and
+one rear room on each side of it; above the whole a low attic, probably
+occupied by the slave housemaids.
+
+I was met in the bare unpainted hall by a dropsical man of nearly sixty,
+holding a dim candle, a wax-myrtle dip wrapped on a corncob. He had a
+retreating chin, a throat-latch beard and a roving eye; stepped with one
+foot and slid with the other, spoke in a dejected voice, and had very
+poor use of his right hand. I followed him to the rear corner chamber,
+the one nearest the stable, feeling that, poor as the choice was, I
+should rather have him for my robber and murderer than those villains
+down at the quarters. I detained him in conversation while I drew off my
+boots and threw my jacket upon the back of a chair in such a way as to
+let my despatch be seen. The toss was a lucky one; the document, sealed
+with red wax, stuck out arrogantly from an inside pocket. Then, asking
+lively questions the while as if to conceal a blunder and its
+correction, I moved quickly between him and it and slipped the missive
+under a pillow of the fourpost bedstead.
+
+He was not wordy, and he tarried but a moment, yet he explained his
+paralysis. In the dreary monotone of a chronic sour temper he related
+that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing
+horses, and their officer, on being called by him "no gentleman," had
+struck him behind the ear with the butt of a carbine. I asked what
+punishment the officer received, and I noticed the plural pronoun as he
+icily replied, "We didn't enter any complaint."
+
+I said with genuine warmth that if he would give me that man's
+name--etc.
+
+He waited on the threshold with his dropsical back to me for my last
+word, and then, still in the same attitude, droned, "O-oh, he's dead.
+And anyhow," he finished out of sight in the hall, "that's not our way."
+
+I sat on the edge of the bed, in the moonlight, wishing I knew what
+their way was. I considered my small stock of facts. The one that
+appalled me most was the inward guilt which I brought with me to this
+ordeal. I wanted to say my childhood prayers and I could not. For I
+could not repent; at least the _emotion_ of repentance would not come.
+Moreover, every now and then there leapt across this blackness of guilt
+a forked lightning of fright, as I realized that I could no more plan
+than I could pray. No doubt Coralie Rothvelt, by this time in Fayette,
+was telling some Federal commander that a certain Confederate courier,
+now asleep at the house of Lucius Oliver, had let slip to her the fact
+that his despatches were written to be captured, and that, read with
+that knowledge, they would be of guiding value. What mine host himself
+might have in view for me I could not guess, but most likely those three
+rapscallions down at the quarters were already plotting my murder. So
+now for a counterplot--alas! the counterplot would not unfold for me!
+
+I rallied all my wits. Here was an open window. Through it the moonlight
+poured in upon the lower half of the bed. If I should lie with my eyes
+in the shadow of the headboard no one entering by the door opposite
+could see that I was looking. Good! but what to do when the time should
+come--ah me!--and "Oh, God!" and "Oh, God!" again. Ought I, now, to let
+the enemy get the despatch, or must I not rather keep it from him at
+whatever risk of death or disgrace? Ah! if I might only fight, and let
+the outcome decide for me! And why not? Yes, I would fight! And oh! how
+I would fight! If by fighting too well I should keep the despatch, why,
+that, as matters now stood, was likely to be the very best for my
+country's cause. On the other hand, should I fight till I fell dead or
+senseless and only then lose it, surely then it would be counted genuine
+and retain all its value to mislead. Oh, yes,--I could contrive nothing
+better--I would fight!
+
+I drew the counterpane aside, lay down under it revolver in hand, and
+then, for the first time since I had put on the glorious gray, found I
+could not face the thought of death. I grew steadily, penetratingly,
+excruciatingly cold, and presently--to the singular satisfaction of my
+conscience--began to shake from head to foot with a nervous chill. It
+was agonizing, but it was so much better than the spiritual chill of
+which it took the place! I felt as though I should never be warm again.
+Yet the attack slowly passed away, and with my finger once more close to
+the trigger, I lay trying to use my brain, when, without prayer or plan,
+I solved the riddle, what I should do, by doing the only thing I knew I
+ought not to do. I slept.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+CHARLOTTE OLIVER
+
+An envelope sealed with sealing-wax, unless it has also a wrapping of
+twine or tape whose only knot is under the seal, can be opened without
+breaking the seal. Gholson had once told me this. Hold a thin, sharp
+knife-blade to the spout of a boiling tea-kettle; then press the
+blade's edge under the edge of the seal. Repeat this operation many
+times. The wax will yield but a hair's-breadth each time, but a
+hair's-breadth counts, and in a few minutes the seal will be lifted
+entire. A touch of glue or paste will fasten it down again, and a seal
+so tampered with need betray the fact only to an eye already suspicious.
+
+As I say, I slept. The door between me and the hall had a lock, but no
+key; another door, letting from my room to the room in front of it, had
+no lock, but was bolted. I slept heavily and for an hour or more. Then I
+was aware of something being moved--slowly--slyly--by littles--under my
+pillow. The pillow was in a case of new unbleached cotton. When I first
+lay down, the cotton had so smelt of its newness that I thought it was
+enough, of itself, to keep me awake. Now this odor was veiled by
+another; a delicate perfume; a perfume I knew, and which brought again
+to me all the incidents of the night, and all their woe. I looked, and
+there, so close to the bedside that she could see my eyes as plainly as
+I saw hers, stood Coralie Rothvelt. In the door that opened into the
+hall were two young officers, staff swells, in the handsomest Federal
+blue. The moonlight lay in a broad flood between them and me. It
+silvered Miss Rothvelt from the crown of her hat to the floor, and
+brightened the earnest animation of her lovely face as she daintily
+tiptoed backward with one hand delicately poised in the air behind her,
+and the other still in the last pose of withdrawing from under the
+pillow--empty!
+
+My problem was indeed simplified. The despatch had been stolen, opened,
+read, re-sealed and returned. All I now had to do was to lie here till
+daybreak and then get away if I could, deliver the despatch to Ned
+Ferry, and tell him--ah! what?--how much? Oh, my bemired soul, how much
+must I tell? My shame I might bear; I might wash it out in blood at the
+battle's front; but my perfidy! how much was it perfidy to withhold; how
+much was it perfidy to confess?
+
+The heaviness of my soul, by reacting upon my frame and counterfeiting
+sleep better than I could have done it in cold blood, saved me, I fancy,
+from death or a northern prison. When I guessed my three visitors were
+gone I stirred, as in slumber, a trifle nearer the window, and for some
+minutes lay with my face half buried in the pillow. So lying, there
+stole to my ear a footfall. My finger felt the trigger, my lids lifted
+alertly, and as alertly reclosed. Outside the window one of the
+officers, rising by some slender foothold, had been looking in upon me,
+and in sinking down again and turning away had snapped a twig. He
+glanced back just as I opened my eyes, but once more my head was in
+shadow and the moonlight between us. When I peeped again he was
+moving away.
+
+Five, ten, fifteen minutes dragged by. Counting them helped me to lie
+still. Then I caught another pregnant sound, a mumbling of male voices
+in the adjoining front room. I waited a bit, hearkening laboriously, and
+then ever so gradually I slid from the bed, put on everything except my
+boots, and moved by inches to the door between the two rooms. It was
+very thin; "a good sounding-board," thought I as I listened for life or
+death and hoped my ear was the only one against it.
+
+The discussion warmed and I began to catch words and meanings. Oftenest
+they were old Lucius Oliver's, whose bad temper made him incautious.
+While his son and the other two jayhawkers obstinately pressed their
+scheme he kept saying, sourly, "That's--not--our--wa-ay!"
+
+At length he lost all prudence. "Nn--o!--Nnno--o, sir! Not in this house
+you don't; and not on this place! Wait till he's off my land; I'm not
+goin' to have the infernal rebels a-turpentinin' my house and a-burnin'
+it over my head. What _air_ you three skunks in such a sweat to git
+found out for, like a pack o' daymn' fools! I've swone to heaven and
+hell to git even ef revenge can ever git me even, and this ain't the way
+to git even. It's not--our--wa-ay!"
+
+His son's attitude exasperated him. "_You_ know this ain't ever been our
+way; you'd say so, yourself, ef you wa'n't skin full o' china-ball
+whiskey! What in all hell is the reason we can't do him as we've always
+done the others?"
+
+"Oh, shut your dirty face!" replied the son, while one of his cronies
+warned both against being overheard. But when this one added something
+further the old man snarled:
+
+"What's that about the horse?--The horse might git away and be evidence
+ag'inst us?--What?--Oh, now give the true reason; you want the horse,
+that's all! You two lickskillets air in this thing pyo'ly for the
+stealin's. Me and my son ain't bushwhackers, we're gentlemen! At least
+I'm one. Our game's revenge!"
+
+Not because of this speech, but of a soft rubbing sound on the
+window-sill behind me, my heart turned cold. Yet there I saw a most
+welcome sight. Against the outer edge of the sill an unseen hand was
+moving a forked stick to and fro. The tip of one of its tines was slit,
+in the slit was a white paper, and in the fork hung the bridle of my
+horse. I glided to the window. But there bethinking me how many a man
+had put his head out at just such a place and never got it back, I made
+a long sidewise reach, secured the paper, and read it.
+
+It was the envelope which had contained Coralie Rothvelt's pass. Its
+four flaps were spread open, and on the inside was scrawled in a large
+black writing the following:
+
+_Yankees gone, completely fooled. Do not stir till day, then ride for
+your life. We're not thwarting Lieutenant Ferry's plan, we're only
+improving upon it. When you report to him don't let blame fall upon the
+father and son whose roof this night saves you from a bloody death. Do
+this for the sake of her who is risking her life to save yours. We serve
+one cause; be wary--be brave--be true_.
+
+I stood equally amazed and alert. The voices still growled in the next
+room, and my horse's bridle still hung before the window. I peered out;
+there stood the priceless beast. I came a sly step nearer, and lo! in
+his shadow, flattened against the house, face outward, was Coralie
+Rothvelt comically holding the forked stick at a present-arms.
+Throbbing with a grateful, craving allegiance, I seized the rein. Then I
+bent low out the window and with my free hand touched her face as it
+turned upward into a beam of moonlight. She pressed my fingers to her
+lips, and then let me draw her hand as far as it could come and cover it
+with kisses. Then she drew me down and whispered "You'll do what
+I've asked?"
+
+When I said I would try she looked distressfully unassured and I added
+"I'll do whatever risks no life but mine."
+
+Her face spoke passionate thanks. "That's all I can ask!" she said,
+whispered "When you go--_keep the plain road,"_--and vanished.
+
+I sat by the window, capped, booted, belted, my bridle in one hand,
+revolver in the other. In all the house, now, there was no sound, and
+without there was a stillness only more vast. I could not tell whether
+certain sensations in my ear were given by insects in the grass and
+trees or merely by my overwrought nerves and tired neck. The moon sailed
+high, the air was at last comfortably cool, my horse stood and slept. I
+thought it must be half-past two.
+
+"Now it must be three." Miss Rothvelt's writing lay in my bosom beside
+my despatch. At each half-hour I re-read it. At three-and-a-half I
+happened to glance at the original superscription. A thought flashed
+upon me. I stared at her name, and began to mark off its letters one by
+one and to arrange them in a new order. I took C from Coralie and h from
+Rothvelt; after them I wrote a from Coralie and r from Rothvelt, l and o
+from Coralie and two t's and an e from Rothvelt, and behold, Charlotte!
+while the remaining letters gave me Oliver.
+
+Ah! where had my wits been? Yet without a suspicion that she was
+Charlotte Oliver one might have let the anagram go unsuspected for a
+lifetime. Evidently it concealed nothing from General Austin or Ned
+Ferry; most likely it was only the name she used in passing through the
+lines. At any rate I was convinced she was a good Confederate, and my
+heart rose.
+
+But why, then, this ardent zeal to save the necks of the two traitors
+"whose roof this night--" etc.? Manifestly she was moved by passion, not
+duty; love drove her on; but surely not love for them. "No," I guessed
+in a reverent whisper, "but love for Ned Ferry." It must have been
+through grace of some of her nobility and his, caught in my heart even
+before I was quite sure of it in theirs, that I sat and framed the
+following theory: Ned Ferry, loving Charlotte Oliver, yet coerced by his
+sense of a soldier's duty, had put passion's dictates wholly aside and
+had set about to bring these murderers to justice; doing this though he
+knew that she could never with honor or happiness to either of them
+become the wife of a man who had made her a widow, while she, aware of
+his love, a love so true that he would not breathe it to her while this
+hideous marriage held her, had ridden perilously in the dead of night to
+circumvent his plans if, with honor to both of them, it could be done.
+
+The half-hour dragged round to four. My horse roused up but kept as
+quiet as a clever dog. I heard a light sound in the hall; first a step
+and then a slide, then a step again and then a slide; Lucius Oliver was
+coming toward my door. The cords gathered in my throat and my finger
+stole to the trigger; Heaven only knew what noiseless feet might be
+following behind that loathsome shuffle. It reached the door and was
+still. And now the door opened, softly, slowly, and the paralytic stood
+looking in. The moonlight had swung almost out of the room, but a band
+of it fell glittering upon the revolver lying in my lap with my fingers
+on it, each exactly in place. Also it lighted my other hand, on the
+window-sill, with the bridle in it. Old Lucius was alone. In the gloom I
+could not see his venom gathering, but I could almost smell it.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+THE FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE
+
+"Good-morning," I murmured.
+
+"Good-morning," he responded, tardily and grimly. "Well, you _air_ in a
+hurry."
+
+"Not at all, sir. I'm sorry to seem so; it's not the tip-top of
+courtesy,--"
+
+"No, it ain't too stinkin' polite."
+
+"True; but neither are the enemy, and they're early risers, you know."
+
+"Well, good Lord! don't hang back for my sake!"
+
+I put on an offended esteem. "My dear sir, you've no call to take
+offence at me. I'm waiting because my business is too--well, if I must
+explain, it's--it's too important to be risked except by good safe
+daylight; that's all."
+
+[Illustration: "Well, you _air_ in a hurry!"]
+
+Oh, he wasn't taking offence. His reptile temper crawled into hiding,
+and when I said day was breaking, he said he would show me my way.
+
+"Why, I keep the plain road, don't I?"
+
+No, he would not; only wagons went that way, to cross the creek by a
+small bridge. I could cut off nearly two miles by taking the bridle-path
+that turned sharply down into the thick woods of the creek-bottom about
+a quarter of a mile from the house and crossed the stream at a sandy
+ford. "Ride round," he said, "and I'll show you from the front of
+the house."
+
+Thence he pointed out a distant sycamore looming high against the soft
+dawn. There was the fence-corner at which the bridle-path left the road.
+He icily declined pay for my lodging. "We never charge a Confederate
+soldier for anything; that's not our way."
+
+Day came swiftly. By the time I could trot down to the sycamore it was
+perfectly light even in the shade of an old cotton-gin house close
+inside the corner of the small field around which I was to turn. The
+vast arms of its horse-power press, spreading rigidly downward, offered
+the only weird aspect that lingered in the lovely morning. I have a
+later and shuddering memory of it, but now the dewy air was full of
+sweet odors, the squirrel barked from the woods, the woodpecker tapped,
+and the lark, the cardinal and the mocking-bird were singing all around.
+The lint-box of the old cotton-press was covered with wet
+morning-glories. I took the bridle-path between the woods and the field
+and very soon was down in the dense forest beyond them. But the moment
+I was hid from house and clearing I turned my horse square to the left,
+stooped to his neck, and made straight through the pathless tangle.
+
+Silence was silver this time, speed was golden. But every step met its
+obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers,
+brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held
+dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath,
+footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait
+were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road by that way as
+soon as they found I was flanking them. And so I strove on at the best
+speed I could make, and burst into the road with a crackle and crash
+that might have been heard a hundred yards away. One glance up the
+embowered alley, one glance down it, and I whirled to the right, drove
+in the spur, and flew for the bridge. A wild minute so--a turn in the
+road--no one in sight! Two minutes--another turn--no one yet!
+Three--three--another turn--no one in front, no one behind--
+
+The thunder of our own hoofs
+  Was all the sound we heard.
+
+A fourth turn and no one yet! A fifth--more abrupt than the others--and
+there--here--yonder now behind--was the path I had feared, but no one
+was in it, and the next instant the bridge flashed into view. With a
+great clatter I burst upon it, reached the middle, glanced back, and
+dropped complacently into a trot. Tame ending if--but as I looked
+forward again, what did I see? A mounted man. At the other end of the
+bridge, in the shade of overhanging trees, he moved into view, and well
+I knew the neat fit of that butternut homespun. He flourished a revolver
+above his head and in a drunken voice bade me halt.
+
+I halted; not making a point of valor or discretion, but because he was
+Charlotte Oliver's husband. I read his purpose and listened behind me as
+we parleyed. "Don't halt me, sir, I'm a courier and in a hurry."
+
+He hiccoughed. "Let's--s'--see y' orders."
+
+I took my weapon into my bridle-hand by the barrel and began to draw
+from my bosom the empty envelope addressed Coralie Rothvelt. At the same
+time I let my horse move forward again, while I still listened backward
+with my brain as busy as a mill. Was there here no hidden succor? Was
+that no part of Ned Ferry's plan--if the plan was his? Were those
+villains waiting yet, up at the ford? I could hear nothing at my back
+but the singing of innumerable birds.
+
+"Halt!" the drunkard growled again, and again I halted, wearing a look
+of timid awe, but as full of guile as a weasel. I reined in abruptly so
+as to make the reach between us the fullest length of my outstretched
+arm with the paper in two fingers as I leaned over the saddle-bow. He
+bent and reached unsteadily, and took the envelope; but hardly could his
+eye light upon the superscription before it met the muzzle of my weapon.
+
+"Don't move." My tone was affectionate. "Don't holla, or I'll give you
+to the crows. Back. Back off this bridge--quick! or I'll--" I pushed
+the pistol nearer; the danger was no less to him because I was
+thoroughly frightened. He backed; but he glared a devilish elation, for
+behind me beat the hoofs of both his horsemen. I had to change
+my tactics.
+
+"Halt! Turn as I turn, and keep your eye on _this."_
+
+Glad was I then to be on a true cavalryman's horse that answered the
+closing of my left leg and moved steadily around till I could see down
+the bridge. Oliver, after a step or two, stopped. "Turn!" I yelled, and
+swelled. "One, two,--"
+
+He turned. There was not a second to spare. The two long-haired fellows
+came nip and tuck. I see yet their long deer-hunters' rifles. But I
+remembered my pledge to this man's wife, and proudly found I had the
+nerve to hold the trigger still unpressed when at the apron of the
+bridge the rascals caught their first full sight of us as we sat
+humpshouldered, eye to eye, like one gray tomcat and one yellow one.
+They dragged their horses back upon their haunches. One leaped to the
+ground, the other aimed from the saddle; but the first shot that woke
+the echoes was neither theirs nor mine, but Sergeant Jim Langley's,
+though that, of course, I did not know. It came from a tree on our side
+of the water, some forty yards downstream. The man in the saddle fired
+wild, and as his horse wheeled and ran, the rider slowly toppled over
+backward out of saddle and stirrups and went slamming to the ground.
+
+His companion had no time to fire. Instantly after these two shots came
+a third, and some willows upstream filled with its white smoke. The
+second long rifle fell upon the bridge and its owner sank to his knees
+heaving out long cries of agony that swelled in a tremor of echoes up
+and down the stream. Another voice, stalwart, elated, cut through it
+like a sword. "Don't shoot, Smith, we're coming; save that hound for
+the halter!"
+
+The groans of the wounded man closed in behind it, a flood of agony, and
+my own outcry increased the din as I called "Come quick, come quick! the
+wounded fellow's remounting!"
+
+The wretch had lifted himself to his feet by a stirrup. Then, giving
+out, he had sunk prone, and now, still torturing the air with his horrid
+cries, was crawling for his rifle. Oliver saw I had a new inspiration.
+All the drunkenness left his eyes and they became the eyes of a snake,
+but too quickly for him to guess my purpose I turned my weapon from his
+face and fired. His revolver flew from his bleeding hand, a stream of
+curses started from his lips, and as I thrust my pistol into his face
+again and snatched his bridle he screamed to the crawling woodman
+"Shoot! shoot! Kill one or the other of us! Oh! shoot! shoot!"
+
+The rifle cracked, but its ball sang over us; a shot answered it behind
+me; the howling man's voice died in a gurgle, and Sergeant Jim ran by
+me, leaped upon the horse that had stayed beside his fallen rider, and
+was off hot-footed after the other. "Turn your prisoner over to Kendall,
+Smith," he cried, "and put out like hell for Clifton!"
+
+I gave no assent, and I believe Oliver guessed my purpose to save him,
+though his eyes were as venomous as ever. I flirted the rein off his
+horse's neck and said, savagely "Come! quick! trot! gallop!" The
+sergeant's young companion of the morning before dashed out of the
+bushes on his horse with Jim's horse in lead. "I've got him safe,
+Kendall," I cried, and my captive and I sped by him at a gallop on our
+way to Ned Ferry's command.
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+WE SPEED A PARTING GUEST
+
+Rising to higher ground, we turned into the Natchez, and Port Gibson
+road where a farm-house and country "store" constituted Clifton. Still
+at a gallop we left these behind and entered a broad lane between fields
+of tasselling corn, where we saw a gallant sight. In the early sunlight
+and in the pink dust of their own feet, down the red clay road at an
+easy trot in column by fours, the blue-gray of their dress flashing with
+the glint of the carbines at their backs, came Ferry's scouts with Ned
+Ferry at their head. There was his beautiful brown horse under him, too.
+My captive and I dropped to a walk, the column did the same, and Ferry
+trotted forward, beckoning us to halt. His face showed triumph and
+commendation, but no joy. Oliver answered his scrutiny with a blaze
+of defiance.
+
+"Good-morning, Smith, who is your prisoner?"
+
+"His name is Oliver."
+
+Ferry looked behind to the halted column. "Lieutenant Quinn, send two
+men to guard this one. Smith, where's Sergeant Langley; where's Kendall?
+Kendall?"
+
+While I told of the scrimmage, the guard relieved me of Oliver, and as I
+finished, three men galloped up and reined in. "All right," said
+one, saluting.
+
+"South?" asked our leader.
+
+"Before day," replied the new-comer, glowing with elation, and I grasped
+the fact that the enemy had taken our bait and I had not betrayed my
+country. The three men went to the column, and Ferry, looking up from
+the despatch which I had delivered to him, said--
+
+"Of course no one has seen this despatch, eh?--Oh!"--a smile--"yes?
+who?"
+
+"Two Federal officers."
+
+"Two--what?" His smile broadened. "You _know_ that?"
+
+"I saw them, Lieutenant, looking in at the door to see the despatch put
+back under my pillow. Yes, sir, by the same hand that had shown it
+to them."
+
+"Whose hand was it; that fellow's, yonder?" Oliver was several paces
+away.
+
+"No, Lieutenant, I don't believe he had anything to do with it; and I've
+no absolute proof, either, that he was at the bridge to rob or kill me.
+I threatened his life first, sir. At any rate that hand under my pillow
+was neither his nor his father's."
+
+"But they were present, eh?"
+
+"They were neither of them present, Lieutenant; that hand was Miss
+Coralie Rothvelt's."
+
+"Oh, no!" he murmured, "that cannot be!" "I saw her face, Lieutenant,
+nearer to mine than yours is now. But she did it to help us--oh, but I
+know that, sir! She came under my window and told me she had done it!
+She told me to tell you she hadn't thwarted your plan, but only improved
+on it, and I believe--Lieutenant, if you will hear me patiently through
+a confession which--" I choked with emotion.
+
+He lighted up with happy relief. "No, you need not make it. And you need
+not turn so pale." Whereat I turned red. "She saw the despatch was a
+trap for the Yankees, and used it so, you think? Ah, yes, Smith, I see
+it all, now; she pumped you dry."
+
+I could not speak, I shook my head, and for evidence in rebuttal I
+showed in my eyes two fountains of standing tears.
+
+"How, then, did she know?"
+
+"Lieutenant, she guessed! She must have just put two and two together
+and guessed! Or else, Lieutenant,--"
+
+"She must have pumped others before she pumped you, eh?" There was
+confession in his good humor. "But tell me; did she not see also this
+other trap, for this man and his father, and try to save them out of
+it?--oh, if you don't want--never mind." He laid a leg over the front of
+his saddle and sat thinking. So I see him to-day: his chestnut locks,
+his goodly limbs and shoulders, the graceful boots, cut-away jacket,
+faded sash, straight sword, and that look of care on his features which
+intensified the charm of their spiritual cleanness; behind him his band
+of picked heroes, and for background the June sky. Whenever I smell
+dewy corn-fields smitten with the sun that picture comes back to me.
+
+"No," he said again, "you need not tell me." By a placid light in his
+face I saw he understood. He drew his watch, put it back, thought on,
+and smiled at my uniform. "It has not the blue of the others," he said,
+"but indeed they are not all alike, and it will match the most of
+them--after a rain or two--and some dust. You have been trading horses?"
+
+I explained. While doing so I saw one of the guard reaching the
+prisoner's bridle to the other. Hah! Oliver had slapped the bridle free.
+In went his spurs! By a great buffet on the horse's neck he wheeled him,
+and with the rein dangling under the bits went over the fence like a
+deer. "Bang! bang! bang!"
+
+It was idle; a magic seems to shield a captive's leap for life. Away
+across the corn he went to the edge of a tangled wood, over the fence
+there again, and into the brush. "Halt! bang!" and "Halt! bang!" it was,
+at every bound, but now the pursuers came back empty-handed, some
+contemptuously silent, some laughing. Ferry glanced again at the time,
+and I was having within me a quarrel with him for his indifference at
+the prisoner's escape, when with cold severity he asked--
+
+"Why did you not fire?"
+
+I flushed with indignation, and my eye retorted to his that I had only
+followed his example. His answer was a smile. "You, also, have been
+guessing, eh?" he said, and when I glowed with gratitude he added,
+
+"Never mind, we must have a long talk. At present there is a verbal
+message for me; what is it?"
+
+"Verbal message? No, Lieutenant, she didn't--oh!--from the General! Yes!
+the General says--'Rodney.'"
+
+He turned and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, "Left
+into line wheel--march!" chanted our second in command.
+"Backwards--march!" and then "Right dress!" and the line, that had been
+a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning
+sun in their faces. Then Ferry called "Fours from the right, to march to
+the left--march!" and he and Quinn passed up the middle of the road
+along the front of the line, with yours truly close at their heels,
+while behind us the command broke into column again by fours from the
+right and set the pink dust afloat as they followed back northward over
+their own tracks with Sergeant Jim beside the first four as squadron
+right guide. I had got where I was by some mistake which I did not know
+how to correct,--I was no drill-master's pride,--and there was much
+suppressed amusement at my expense along the front as we rode down it.
+At every few steps until the whole line was a column Ned Ferry dropped
+some word of cheer, and each time there would come back an equally quiet
+and hearty reply. Near the middle he said "Brisk work ahead of us
+to-day, boys," and I heard the reiteration of his words run among the
+ranks. I also heard one man bid another warm some milk for the baby.
+Trotting by a grove where the company had passed the night, we presently
+took the walk to break by twos, and as we resumed the trot and turned
+westward into a by-road, Lieutenant Quinn dropped back to the column and
+sent me forward to the side of Ned Ferry. I went with cold shivers.
+
+[Illustration: With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the
+fence like a deer.]
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+FERRY TALKS OF CHARLOTTE
+
+"You have no carbine," said my commander. "And you have but one
+revolver; here is another."
+
+I knew it at a glance. "It's Oliver's," I said.
+
+"We'll call it yours now," he replied. "Kendall picked it up, but he has
+no need of it."
+
+I remarked irrelevantly that I had not noticed when Sergeant Jim and
+Kendall rejoined us, but Ferry stuck to the subject of the captured
+weapon. "Take it," he insisted; "if you are not fully armed you will
+find yourself holding horses every time we dismount to fight. And now,
+Smith, I shall not report to the General this matter of the Olivers; you
+shall tell him the whole of it, yourself; you are my scout, but you are
+his courier."
+
+"Lieutenant, I--I wish I knew the whole of it."
+
+"Tell him all you know."
+
+"Even things _she_ doesn't want told?"
+
+"Ah!"--he gave a Creole shrug--"that you must decide, on the honor of a
+good soldier. She has taken you into her confidence?"
+
+"Only into her service," I said, but he raised his brows. "That is
+more; certainly you are honored. What is it you would rather not tell
+the General and yet you must; do I know that already?"
+
+"Yes, for one thing, I've got to tell him that old Lucius Oliver can't
+be hung too high or too soon. For months he has been--"
+
+Ferry showed pain. "I know; save that for the General. And what else?"
+
+"Why, the other one--the son. Lieutenant, is she that monster's wife?"
+
+Ferry stroked his horse's neck and said very softly, "She is his wife."
+I had to wait long for him to say more, but at length, with the same
+measured mildness, he spoke on. This amazing Charlotte, bereft of
+father, brother and mother, ward of a light-headed married sister, and
+in these distracted times lacking any friend with the courage, wisdom
+and kind activity to probe the pretensions of her suitor, had been
+literally snared into marriage by this human spider, this Oliver, a man
+of just the measure to simulate with cunning and patient labor the
+character, bearing and antecedents of a true and exceptional gentleman
+for the sake of devouring a glorious woman.
+
+"But, eh!" I exclaimed, "how could ever such as she mistake him for--"
+
+"Ah, he is, I doubt not, but the burnt-out ruin of what he was half a
+year ago. You perceive, he has not succeeded; he has not devoured her;
+actually she has turned his fangs upon himself and has defeated his
+designs toward her as if by magic. And yet the only magic has been her
+vigilance, her courage, her sagacity. Smith,"--again he stroked the
+mane of his charger--"if I tell you--"
+
+I gave him no pledge but a look.
+
+"Since the hour of her marriage she has never gone into her chamber
+without locking the door; she has never come out of it unarmed."
+
+I remarked that had I been in her place I should either have sunk into
+the mire, so to speak, or thrown myself, literally, into the river.
+
+"Yes," he responded, "but not she! Her life is still hers; she will
+neither give it away nor throw it away. She wants it, and she wants
+it whole."
+
+"Did she say that to you?"
+
+He looked at me in wide surprise. "Ah! could you think she would speak
+with me on that subject? No, I have learned what I know from a man we
+shall meet to-day; the brother of Major Harper; and he, he has it
+from--" my companion smiled--"somebody you have known a pretty long
+time, I think, eh?"
+
+"I see; I see; you mean my mother!"
+
+He let me ponder the fact a long time. "Lieutenant," I asked at length,
+"did you know your plot against the two Olivers would cross her wishes?"
+
+"Ah!" was his quick response, "it crossed mine, like-wise. But, you
+know, this life we have to live, it is never for two people only."
+
+"No," I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, "no two persons, and
+above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or
+even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third
+person,--"
+
+"Hoh!" interrupted Ferry, in the manner of one to whom the fact was
+somehow of the most immediate and lively practical interest, "and to
+consider a thousand is better." Then, after a pause, "Yes," he said, "I
+know she could not like that move, but you remember our talk of
+yesterday, where we first met?"
+
+Indeed I did. Between young men, to whom the principles of living were
+still unproved weapons, there was, to my taste, just one sort of talk
+better than table-talk, and that was saddle-talk; I remembered vividly.
+
+"You mean when we were saying that on whatever road a man's journey
+lies, if he will, first of all, stick to that road, and then every time
+it divides take the--I see! you came to where the road divided!"
+
+"Yes, and of course I had to take the upper fork. I am glad you said
+that yesterday morning; it came as sometimes the artillery, eh?--just at
+the right moment."
+
+"I didn't say it, Lieutenant; you said it."
+
+"No, I think you said it;--sounds like you."
+
+"It was you who said it! and anyhow, it was you who had the strength to
+do it!"
+
+He laughed. "Oh!--a little strength, a little
+vanity,--pride--self-love--we have to use them all--as a good politician
+uses men."
+
+I looked him squarely in the eyes and began to burn. At every new
+unfolding of his confidence I had let my own vanity, pride, self-love be
+more and more flattered, and here at length was getting ready to esteem
+him less for showing such lack of reserve as to use _me_ as an
+escape-valve for his pent-up thoughts, when all at once I fancied I saw
+what he was trying to do. I believed he had guessed my temptations of
+the night and was making use of himself to warn me how to fight them. "I
+understand," said I, humbly.
+
+But this only pleasantly mystified him. He glanced all over me with a
+playful eye and said, "You must have a carbine the first time our
+ordnance-wagon finds us. Drop back, now, into the ranks."
+
+I did so; but I felt sure I should ride beside him again as soon as he
+could make an opportunity; for it was plain that by a subtle unconfessed
+accord he and _she_ had chosen me to be a true friend between them.
+
+About noon, while taking a brief rest to give our horses a bite, we were
+joined by an ambulance carrying Major Harper's brother and some freight
+which certainly was not hospital stores. When we remounted, this vehicle
+moved on with us, in the middle of the column, and I was called to ride
+beside it and tell all about the arrival of Miss Harper and her nieces
+at Hazlehurst, and their journey from Brookhaven to camp. Ned Ferry rode
+on the side opposite me and I noticed that all the fellows nearest the
+ambulance were choice men; Sergeant Jim was not there, but Kendall was
+one, and a young chap on a large white-footed pacer was another. Having
+finished my task I had gathered my horse to fall back to my place at the
+rear, when my distinguished auditor said, "I'm acquainted with your
+mother, you know."
+
+He was not so handsome as his brother, though younger. His affability
+came by gleams. I asked how that good fortune had come to my mother, and
+he replied that there was hardly time now for another story; we might
+be interrupted--by the Yankees. "Ask the young lady you met yesterday
+evening," he added, with a knowing gleam, and smiled me away; and when
+by and by the enemy did interrupt, I had forgiven him. Whoever failed to
+answer my questions, in those days, incurred my forgiveness.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+A MILLION AND A HALF
+
+About mid-afternoon I awoke from deep sleep on a bed of sand in the
+roasting shade of a cottonwood jungle. A corporal was shaking me and
+whispering "Make no noise; mount and fall in."
+
+Round about in the stifling thicket a score of men were doing so.
+Lieutenant Quinn stood by, and at his side Sergeant Jim seemed to have
+just come among us. The place was pathless; only in two directions could
+one see farther than a few yards. Through one narrow opening came an
+intolerable glare of sunlight from a broad sheet of gliding water, while
+by another break in the motionless foliage could be seen in milder
+light, filling nearly the whole northern view, the tawny flood of the
+Mississippi. A stretch of the farther shore was open fields lying very
+low and hidden by a levee.
+
+As we noiselessly fell into line, counting off in a whisper and rubbing
+from ourselves and our tortured horses the flies we were forbidden to
+slap, I noticed rising from close under that farther levee and some two
+miles upstream, a small cloud of dust coming rapidly down the hidden
+levee road. It seemed to be raised entirely by one or two vehicles.
+Behind us our own main shore was wholly concealed by this mass of
+cottonwoods on the sands between it and the stream, on a spit of which
+we stood ambushed. On the water, a hundred and fifty yards or so from
+the jungle, pointed obliquely across the vast current, was a large skiff
+with six men in it. Four were rowing with all their power, a fifth sat
+in the bow and the other in the stern. Quinn, in the saddle, watched
+through his glass the cottonwoods from which the skiff had emerged at
+the bottom of a sheltered bay. Now he shifted his gaze to the little
+whirl of dust across the river, and now he turned to smile at Jim, but
+his eye lighted on me instead. I risked a knowing look and motioned with
+my lips, "Just in time!"
+
+"No," he murmured, "they're late; we've been waiting for them."
+
+The sergeant's low order broke the platoon into column by file, Quinn
+rode toward its head with his blade drawn, and as he passed me he handed
+me his glass. "Here, you with no carbine, stay and watch that boat till
+I send for you. If there's firing, look sharp to see if any one there is
+hit, and who, and how hard. Watch the boat, nothing else."
+
+He moved straight landward through the cottonwoods, followed by the men
+in single file, but halted them while the rear was still discernible in
+the green tangle. Presently they unslung carbines, and I distinctly
+heard galloping. It was not far beyond the cottonwoods. The Yankees were
+after us. Suddenly it ceased. Over yonder, shoreward in the thicket,
+came a sharp command and then a second, and then, right on the front of
+the jungle, at the water's edge, the shots began to puff and crack, and
+the yellow river out here around the boat to spit!--spit!--in wicked
+white splashes. Every second their number grew. Behind me Quinn and his
+men stole away. But orders are orders and I had no choice but to watch
+the boat. The man in the stern had his back to me, and no face among the
+other five did I know. They were fast getting away, but the splashes
+came thick and close and presently one ball found its mark. The man at
+the stern hurriedly changed places with an oarsman; and as the relieved
+rower took his new seat he turned slowly upon his face as if in mortal
+pain, and I saw that the fresh hand at the oar was the brother of Major
+Harper. Just as I made the discovery "Boom!" said my small dust-cloud
+across the river, and "hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry--" like
+a train on a trestle-work--"boom!"--a shell left its gray track in the
+still air over the skiff and burst in the tops of the cottonwoods. The
+green thicket grew pale with the bomb's white smoke, yet "crack! crack!"
+and "spit! spit!" persisted the blue-coats' rifles. "Boom!" said again
+the field-piece on yonder side the water. Its shell came rattling
+through the air to burst on this side, out of the flashing and cracking
+of rifles and the sulphurous bomb smoke arose cries of men getting
+mangled, and I whimpered and gnawed my lips for joy, and I watched the
+boat, but no second shot came aboard, and--"Boom!--hurry-hurry-hurry-
+hurry"--ah! the frightful skill of it! A third shell tore the
+cottonwoods, its smoke slowly broadened out, a Federal bugle beyond
+the thicket sounded the Rally, and the cracking of carbines ceased.
+
+Now Major Harper's brother passes a word to the man at the boat's bow,
+whereupon this man springs up and a Confederate officer's braids flash
+on his sleeve as he waves to the western shore to cease firing. I still
+watch the boat, but I listen behind me. I hear voices of command, the
+Federal sergeants hurrying the troop out of the jungle and back to their
+horses. Then there comes a single voice, the commander's evidently; but
+before it can cease it is swallowed up in a low thunder of hoofs and
+then in a burst of cries and cheers which themselves the next moment are
+drowned in a rattle of carbine and pistol shots--Ferry is down on them
+out of hiding. Thick and silent above the din rises the dust of the
+turmoil, and out of all the hubbub under it I can single out the voice
+of the Federal captain yelling curses and orders at his panic-stricken
+men. And now the melee rolls southward, the crackle of shots grows less
+and then more again, and then all at once comes the crash of Quinn's
+platoon out of ambush, their cheer, their charge, the crackle of pistols
+again, and then another cheer and charge--what is that! Ferry re-formed
+and down on them afresh? No, it was the hard-used but gallant foe
+cutting their way out and getting off after all.
+
+The skiff was touching the farther shore and the three oarsmen lifting
+their stricken comrade out and bearing him to the top of the levee, when
+Kendall came to recall me. On our way back he told me of the fight,
+beginning with the results: none of our own men killed outright, but
+four badly wounded and already started eastward in the ambulance left us
+by the Major's brother; some others more slightly hurt. My questions
+were headlong and his answers quiet; he was a slow-spoken daredevil; I
+wish he came more than he does into this story.
+
+Not slow-spoken did we find the command when we reached the road where
+they were falling into line. After a brief but vain pursuit, here were
+almost the haste and tumult of the onset; the sweat of it still reeked
+on everyone; the ground was strewn with its wreckage and its brute and
+human dead, and the pools of their blood were still warm. Squarely
+across the middle of the road, begrimed with dust, and with a dead
+Federal under him and another on top, lay the big white-footed pacer. At
+one side the enemy's fallen wounded were being laid in the shade to be
+left behind. In our ranks, here was a man with an arm in a bloody
+handkerchief, there one with his head so bound, and yonder a young
+fellow jesting wildly while he let his garments be cut and a flesh-wound
+in his side be rudely stanched. Here there was laughter at one who had
+been saved by his belt-buckle, and here at one who had dropped like dead
+from his horse, but had caught another horse and charged on. But these
+details imply a delay where in fact there was none; the moment Ferry
+spied me he asked "Did he get across?" and while I answered he motioned
+me into the line. Then he changed it into a column, commanded silence,
+and led us across country eastward. For those few wounded who would not
+give up their places in the ranks it was a weary ten miles that brought
+us swiftly back to a point within five miles of that Clifton which we
+had left in the morning. And yet a lovely ten miles it was, withal. You
+would hardly have known this tousled crowd for the same dandy crew that
+had smiled so flippantly upon me at sunrise, though they smiled as
+flippantly now with faces powder-blackened, hair and eyelashes matted
+and gummed with sweat and dust, and shoulders and thighs caked with
+grime. Yet to Ned Ferry as well as to me--I saw it in his eye every time
+he looked at them--these grimy fellows did more to beautify those ten
+miles than did June woods beflowered and perfumed with magnolia, bay and
+muscadine, or than slant sunlight in glade or grove.
+
+In a stretch of timber where we broke ranks for a short rest, unbitting
+but not unsaddling, a lot of fellows pressed me to tell them about the
+boat on the river. "You heard what was in it, didn't you?" asked one
+nearly as young as I.
+
+"Besides the men? No. Same that was in the ambulance, I suppose; what
+was it?"
+
+"Don't you know? Oh, I remember, you were asleep when Quinn told us.
+Well, sir,"--he tried to speak calmly but he had to speak somehow or
+explode--"it was soldiers' pay--for Dick Taylor's army, over in the
+Trans-Mississippi; a million and a half dollars!" He was as proud to
+tell the news as he would have been to own the money.
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+A QUIET RIDE
+
+Where Ferry's scouts camped that night I do not know, for we had gone
+only two or three miles beyond our first momentary halting-place when
+their leader left them to Quinn and sprang away southward over fence,
+hedge, road, ditch--whatever lay across his bee-line, and by his order I
+followed at his heels.
+
+In a secluded north-and-south road he looked back and beckoned me to his
+side: "You saw Major Harper's brother land safe and sound, you say? He
+told you this morning he is acquainted with your mother, eh; but
+not how?"
+
+"No, except that it was through--"
+
+"Yes, I know. But you don't know even how your mother is acquainted with
+her."
+
+"No, though of course if she lived in the city, common sympathies might
+easily bring them together."
+
+"She did not live in the city; she lived across the river from the city.
+'Tis but a year ago her father died. He was an owner of steamboats. She
+made many river trips with him, and I suppose that explains how she
+knows the country about Baton Rouge, Natchez, Grand Gulf, Rodney, better
+than she knows the city. But the boats are gone now; some turned into
+gunboats, one burnt when the city fell, another confiscated. I think
+they didn't manage her bringing-up very well."
+
+"Maybe not," I replied, being nothing if not disputatious, "and she does
+strike me as one thrown upon her own intuitions for everything; but if
+she's the lady she is entirely by her own personal quality, Lieutenant,
+she's a wonder!"
+
+"Ah, but she is a wonder. In a state of society more finished--"
+
+"She would be incredible," I said for him, and he accepted the clause by
+a gesture, and after a meditative pause went on with her history. The
+subject of our conversation had first met Oliver, it seemed, when by
+reason of some daring performance in the military field--near Milliken's
+Bend, in the previous autumn--he was the hero of the moment. Even so it
+was strange enough that he should capture her; one would as soon look to
+see Vicksburg fall; but the world was upside down, everything was
+happening as if in a tornado, and he cast his net of lies; lies of his
+own, and lies of two or three match-making friends who chose to believe,
+at no cost to themselves, that war, with one puff of its breath, had
+cleansed him of his vices and that marriage would complete the happy
+change. This was in Natchez, Ferry went on to say. Most fortunately for
+the bride one of the bridegroom's wedding gifts was a certain young
+slave girl; before the wedding was an hour past--before the
+orange-blossoms were out of the bride's hair--this slave maid had told
+her what he was, "And you know what that is."
+
+We rode in silence while I tried to think what it must be to a woman of
+her warmth--of her impulsive energies--to be, week in, week out, month
+after month, besieged by that man's law-protected blandishments and
+stratagems. "I wish you would use me in her service every time there is
+a chance," I said.
+
+"The chances are few," he answered; "even to General Austin she laughs
+and says we must let the story work itself out; that she is the fool in
+it, but there is a chance for the fool to win if not too much burdened
+with help."
+
+"How did you make her acquaintance?" I ventured to ask.
+
+"You remember the last time the brigade was in this piece of country?"
+he rejoined.
+
+I did; it had been only some five weeks earlier; Grant had driven us
+through Port Gibson, General Bowen had retired across the north fork of
+Bayou Pierre, and we had been cut off and forced to come down here.
+
+"Yes; well, she came to us that night, round the enemy's right, with a
+letter from Major Harper's brother--he was then in New Orleans--and with
+information of her own that saved the brigade. I had just got my
+company. I took it off next morning on my first scout, whilst the
+brigade went to Raymond. She was my guide all that day; six times she
+was my guide before the end of May. Yet the most I have learned about
+her has come to me in the last few days."
+
+"She has a fearful game to play."
+
+"Oh!--yes, that is what she would call it; but me, I say--though not as
+Gholson would mean it, you know,--she has a soul to save. If it is a
+game, it is a very delicate one; let her play it as nearly alone as she
+can." "Yes," said I, "a man's hand in it would be only his foot in it;"
+and Ferry was pleased. He scanned me all over in the same bright way he
+had done it in the morning, and remarked "This time I see they have
+given you a carbine."
+
+We went down into some low lands, crossed a creek or two, and in one of
+them gave our horses and ourselves a good scrubbing. On a dim path in
+thick woods we paused at a worm fence lying squarely across our way. It
+was staked and ridered and its zig-zags were crowded with brambles and
+wild-plum. A hundred yards to our left, still overhung by the woods, it
+turned south. Beyond it in our front lay a series of open fields, in
+which, except this one just at hand, the crops were standing high. The
+nearer half of this one, a breadth of maybe a hundred yards, though
+planted in corn, was now given up to grass, and live-stock, getting into
+it at some unseen point, had eaten and trampled everywhere. The farther
+half was thinly covered with a poor stand of cotton, and between the
+corn and the cotton a small, trench-like watercourse crossed our line of
+view at right angles and vanished in the woods at the field's eastern
+edge. The farther border of this run was densely masked by a growth of
+brake-cane entirely lacking on the side next us. Between the cotton and
+the next field beyond, a double line of rail fence indicated the Fayette
+and Union Church road. Suddenly Ferry looked through his field-glasses,
+and my glance followed the direction in which they were pointed. Dust
+again; one can get tired of dust! Some two miles off, a little southward
+of the setting sun, a golden haze of it floated across a low
+background of trees.
+
+"'Tis the enemy, I think," he said, "but only scouts, I suppose."
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+A SALUTE ACROSS THE DEAD-LINE
+
+I was not seeking enemies just then and was not pleased. "Didn't the
+Yankees fall back this morning before day and move southward?" I asked.
+
+"For what would they do that?" inquired my leader, still using the
+glass, but before I could reply he gave a soft hiss, dropped the glass,
+and turned his unaided eye upon a point close beyond our field, in the
+road. Now again he lifted the glass, and I saw over there two small,
+black, moving objects. They passed behind some fence-row foliage,
+reappeared nearer, and suddenly bobbed smartly up to the roadside
+fence--the dusty hats of two Federal horsemen. The wearers sat looking
+over into the field between them and us. I asked Ferry if he wasn't
+afraid they would see us.
+
+"That is what we want," was his reply; "only, they must not know we want
+it. Keep very still; don't move." At that word they espied us and
+galloped back.
+
+We turned to our left and hurried along our own fence-line, first
+eastward, then south, and reined up behind some live brush at the edge
+of the public road. "Soon know how many they are, now," he said, smiling
+back at me.
+
+"Are you going to count them?" It seemed so much easier to let them
+count us.
+
+"Yes," he replied. "Wish we had our boys here," he added, and did not
+need to tell me how he would have posted them; the place was so
+favorable for an ambush that those Yankees had no doubt been looking for
+us before they saw us. Half of us would be in the locks of these
+highroad fences to lure them on, and half in the little gully masked
+with canes to take them in the flank. "We would count many times our own
+number before they should pass," he added.
+
+"Can't we make them think our men are here?" I suggested. "Couldn't I go
+back to where this fence crosses the gully and let them see me opening a
+gap in it?"
+
+He was amused. "Go if you want; but be quick; here they come already, a
+small bunch of them."
+
+By the time I reached the spot they were in plain view, six men and an
+officer. I leaped to the ground, tugged at a rail and threw one end off.
+I thought I had never handled rails so heavy and slippery in my life. As
+I got a second one down I looked across to the road. The officer was
+distributing his men. Barely a mile behind was the dust of their column.
+The third rail stuck and the sweat began to pour down into my eyes and
+collar. Two of the blue-coats easily let down a panel of fence on the
+far side of the road and pushed into the tall corn; three others came
+galloping across the thin cotton to reconnoitre the fringe of canes; the
+officer and the remaining man cantered on up the road toward the spot
+where I could see Ferry observing everything from the saddle behind his
+mask of leaves. Of a sudden the Federal commander descried me wildly at
+work. He paused and pointed me out to the man at his back, but had no
+glass and seemed puzzled. At his word the man pricked up to the fence
+to come over it, but his horse was of another mind, and the impatient
+officer, crowding him away, cleared the fence himself and came across
+the furrows at a nimble trot. Still I tussled with the rails, and grew
+peevish. The enemy was counted, closely enough! one troop. Their dust
+showed it, the small advance guard proved it.
+
+"Hello!" called the Federal officer, "who are you, over there?"
+
+He might have known by looking a trifle more narrowly; I saw plainly,
+thrillingly, who he was; but his attention was diverted by some signal
+from the men he had sent to the fringe of cane; they had found the
+tracks of horses leading through the canes into the corn. But now he
+hailed me again. "Here, you! what are you doing at that fence? Who
+are you?"
+
+He was within easy range and was still trotting nearer. I snatched up my
+carbine, aimed, and then recovered, looking sharply to my left as if
+restrained by the command of some one behind the canes. The Federal's
+cool daring filled me with admiration. Had the foes he was looking for
+been actually in hiding here they could have picked him out of his
+saddle like a bird off a bush. His only chance was that they would not
+let themselves be teased into firing prematurely on any one man or six.
+Ferry beckoned me. I mounted and trotted down the woods side of the
+fence, at the same time the Federal's six men approached from three
+directions, and down the road the main column entered upon the scene.
+
+The officer halted with revolver drawn and sent a man back with some
+order to the main body. And then Ferry's beautiful brown horse, as
+though of his own choice, reared straight up where he stood, dropped his
+forelegs upon his breast, rose, over the fence, master and all, as
+unlaboriously as a kite, trotted out from the brush and halted in the
+open field. His rider's outdrawn sword flashed to the setting sun. The
+Federal, pointing here and there was deploying his remaining five men
+toward the spot I had left, but glancing round and seeing Ferry he
+trotted toward him. Thereupon Ferry advanced at a walk, and I--for I had
+followed him--moved at the same gait a few paces behind. "Halt him,"
+said my leader.
+
+"Halt!" I yelled with carbine at a ready, and the Federal halted. In
+fact he had come to a small hollow full of bushes and grapevines and had
+no choice but to halt or go round it.
+
+"Don't swallow him," said Ferry, smilingly, "this isn't your private
+war."
+
+"He's on my private horse!" I retorted.
+
+"Well, you're on his," replied my commander. The giant before us,
+mounted on Cricket, was my prisoner of the previous day.
+
+"Who are you?" he was calling imperiously.
+
+"Captain Jewett ought to know," Ferry called back, and on that the
+questioner recognized us both. He became very stately. "Lieutenant
+Durand, I believe."
+
+"At times," said Lieutenant Durand.
+
+"And at other times--?"
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry--Ferry's scouts."
+
+The Federal expanded with surprise and then with austere pleasure. He
+glanced toward his five men galloping back to him having found no enemy,
+and then at his column, which had just halted. Frowning, he motioned the
+advance guard to the road again and once more hailed Ferry while he
+pointed at me. He straightened and swelled still more as he began his
+question, but as he finished it a smile went all over him. "Is that your
+entire present force?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Then what the devil do you want?" he thundered.
+
+"We have what we wanted," said Ferry, "only now we desire to cross the
+road."
+
+"You're not asking my permission?"
+
+"I am afraid not."
+
+"I admit you are quite able to cross without."
+
+"Thank you," said Ferry; "will you pardon me for passing in front of
+you?"
+
+The Federal's pistol slid into its holster and his sabre flashed out. He
+threw its curved point up in a splendid salute. Ferry saluted with his
+straight blade. Then both swords rang back into their scabbards, and
+Jewett whirled away toward his column. For a moment we lingered, then
+faced to the left, trotted, galloped. Over the fence and into the road
+went he--went I. Down it, as we crossed, the blue column was just moving
+again. Then the woods on the south swallowed us up.
+
+[Illustration: Ferry saluted with his straight blade.]
+
+"If Captain Jewett will only go on to Union Church," said Ferry, "Quinn
+will see that he never gets back."
+
+"But you think he will not go on?"
+
+"Ah, now he is discovered, surely not. I think he will turn back at
+Wiggins."
+
+"Why Wiggins? does he know Coralie Rothvelt?"
+
+"Yes, he does; and if since last night he has maybe found out she is
+Charlotte Oliver,--"
+
+"Oh! Lieutenant Ferry, oh! would such a man as that come hunting down a
+woman, with a troop of cavalry?"
+
+"He is not hunting her; yet, should he find her, I have the fear he
+would do his duty as a soldier, anyhow. No, he _was_ looking, I think,
+for Ferry's scouts."
+
+"But if she should be at Wiggins--"
+
+My leader smiled at my simplicity. "She is not at Wiggins."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+SOME FALL, SOME PLUNGE
+
+At a farm-house well hidden in the woods of a creek we got a brave
+supper for the asking and had our uniforms wonderfully cleaned and
+pressed, and at ten that evening we dismounted before the three brightly
+illumined tents of General Austin, Major Harper and that amiable cipher
+our Adjutant-general. On the front of the last the shadow of a deeply
+absorbed writer showed through the canvas, and Ferry murmured to me "The
+ever toiling." It was Scott Gholson. I had heard the same name for him
+the evening before, from her whose own lovely shadow fell so visibly and
+so often upon the bright curtain of Ned Ferry's thought.
+
+My leader went in while I held our horses. Then he and Gholson came out
+and entered the General's tent; from which Gholson soon emerged again
+and sent an orderly away into the gloom of the sleeping camp, and I
+heard a small body of men mount and set off northward. Presently Ferry
+came out and sent me in, and to my delight I found, on standing before
+the General, that I did not need to tell what Charlotte Oliver wanted
+kept back.
+
+"No, never mind that," he said, "Miss Rothvelt was here and saw me this
+afternoon, herself." Up to the point of my arrival at the bridge I had
+merely to fumble my cap and answer his crisp questions. But there he
+lighted a fresh cigar and said "Now, go on."
+
+Gholson dropped in with something to be signed, and the General waved
+him to wait and hear. For Gholson, despite the sappy fetor of his mental
+temperament, had abilities that made him almost a private secretary to
+the General. Who, nevertheless, knew him thoroughly. When I had
+described Oliver's escape and would have hurried on to later details,
+General Austin raised a hand.
+
+"Hold on; you say nearly everybody fired at Oliver; who did not?" "I
+did not, General."
+
+"Did Lieutenant Ferry fire?"
+
+I said he did not. The General turned his strong eyes to Gholson's and
+kept them there while he took three luxurious puffs at his cigar. Then
+he took the waiting paper, and as he wrote his name on it he said,
+smiling, "I wish you had been in Lieutenant Ferry's place, Mr. Gholson;
+you would have done your duty."
+
+The flattered Gholson received the signed paper and passed out, and the
+General smiled again, at his back. I hope no one has ever smiled the
+same way at mine.
+
+Ferry and I slept side by side that night, and he told me two companies
+of our Louisianians were gone to cut off Jewett and his band. "Still, I
+think they will be much too late," he said, and when I rather violently
+turned the conversation aside to the subject of Scott Gholson, saying,
+to begin with, that Gholson had wonderful working powers, he replied,
+"'Tis true. Yet he says the brigade surgeon told him to-day he is on the
+verge of a nervous break-down." But on my inquiring as to the cause of
+our friend's condition, my bedmate pretended to be asleep.
+
+We rose at dawn and rode eastward, he and I alone, some fourteen miles,
+to the Sessions's, where the dance had been two nights earlier. On
+entering the stable to put up our horses we suddenly looked at each
+other very straight, while Ferry's countenance confessed more pleasure
+than surprise, though a touch of care showed with it. "I did not know
+this," he said, "and I did not expect it."
+
+What we saw was the leather-curtained spring-wagon and its little
+striped-legged mules. The old negro in charge of them bowed gravely to
+me and smiled affectionately upon Ferry. About an hour later Gholson
+appeared. He took such hurried pains to explain his coming that any fool
+could have seen the real reason. The brigade surgeon had warned him--Oh!
+had I heard?--Oh! from Ned Ferry, yes. The cause of his threatened
+breakdown, he said, was the perpetual and fearful grind of work into
+which of late he had--fallen.
+
+"Did the doctor say 'fallen'?" I shrewdly asked.
+
+"No, the doctor said 'plunged,' but--did Ned Fer'--who put that into
+your head?"
+
+"Nobody; some fall, you know, some plunge." I did not ask the cause of
+the plunge; the two little mules told me that. He would never have come,
+Gholson hurried on to say, had not Major Harper kindly suggested that a
+Sabbath spent with certain four ladies would be a timely preventive.
+
+"What!" I cried, "are they here t'--too? Why,--where's their carryall?
+'Tisn't in the stable; I've looked!"
+
+"No, it was here, but yesterday, when the fighting threatened to be
+heavy, it was sent to the front. Smith, I didn't know Charlie Tolliver
+was here!"
+
+I believed him. But I saw he was not in search of a preventive. Ah, no!
+he was ill of that old, old malady which more than any other abhors a
+preventive. Waking in the summer dawn and finding Ned Ferry risen and
+vanished hitherward, a rival's instinct had moved him to follow, as the
+seeker for wild honey follows the bee. He had come not for the cure of
+his honey-sickness, but for more--more--more--all he could find--of the
+honey. "Smith," he said, with a painful screw of his features, "I'm
+mightily troubled about Ned Ferry!"
+
+"Yes," I dishonestly responded, "his polished irreligion--"
+
+"Oh, no! No," he groaned, "it isn't that so much just now, though I know
+that to a true religionist like you the society of such a mere
+romanticist--"
+
+We were interrupted.
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+OLDEST GAME ON EARTH
+
+The cause of our interruption was Camille Harper. We had been pacing the
+side veranda and she came out upon it with an unconscious song on her
+lips, and on one finger a tiny basket.
+
+Her gentle irruption found me standing almost on the spot where she had
+stood two evenings before and said good-bye to me. From this point a
+path led to the rear of the house, where within a light paling fence
+bloomed a garden. She gave us a blithe good-morning as she passed,
+descended the two or three side steps, and tripped toward the garden
+gate, a wee affair which she might have lifted off its hinges with one
+thumb. I saw her try its latch two or three times and then turn back
+discomfited because the loose frame had sagged a trifle and needed to be
+raised half an inch. I did not understand the helplessness of girls as
+well then as I do now; I ran and opened the gate; and when I shut it
+again she and I were alone inside.
+
+She let me cut the flowers. "You know who's here?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," I guilefully replied, "I came with him."
+
+"I don't mean Lieutenant Ferry," she responded, "nor anybody you'd ever
+guess if you don't know; but you do, don't you?"
+
+I said I knew and went on gathering sweet-pea blossoms.
+
+"Did you ever see her?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, stepping away for some roses, "I--saw her--by
+chance--for a moment--she was in the wagon she's got here--last
+--eh,--Thursday--morn'--" I came back trimming the roses, and
+as she reached for them and our glances met, she laughed and replied,
+with a roguish droop of the head--
+
+"She told us about it. And you needn't look so disturbed; she only
+praised you."
+
+Still I frowned. "How does it come that she's here, anyhow?"
+
+"Why! she's got to be everywhere! She's a war-correspondent! She was at
+the front yesterday nearly the whole time, near enough to see some of
+the fighting, and to hear it all! she calls it 'only a skirmish'!"
+
+"When did she get here?"
+
+"About five in the morning. But we didn't see her then; she shut herself
+up and wrote and wrote and wrote! They say she runs the most daring
+risks! And they say she's so wise in finding out what the Yankees are
+going to do and why they're going to do it, that they'd be nearly as
+glad to catch her as to catch Lieutenant Ferry! Didn't you know? Ah, you
+knew!" She attempted a reproachful glance, but exhaled happiness like a
+fragrance. I asked how she had heard these things.
+
+"How did I hear them? Let me see. Oh, yes! from--from Harry."
+
+I flinched angrily. "From what?"
+
+She looked into her basket and fingered its flowers. "That's what he
+asked me to call him."
+
+I stiffened up as though I heard a thief picking the lock of my lawful
+treasure. She threw me, side wise, a bantering smile and then a more
+winsome glance, but I refused to see either. I burned with so many
+feelings at once that I could no more have told them than I could have
+raised a tune. "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be
+very arch.
+
+"Like whom?"
+
+"You know perfectly well," she replied.
+
+"No, I do not like him. Do you?"
+
+"Why,--yes,--I do. I--I thought everybody did." She averted her face and
+toyed with the sweet-pea vines. Suddenly she gulped, faced me, blinked
+rapidly, and said "If I oughtn't to call him--that,--then I oughtn't to
+have called--" she dropped her eyes and bit her lip.
+
+"_That_," I replied, "is a very different matter! At least I had hoped
+it was!"
+
+Her rejoinder came in a low, grieved monotone: "Did you say _had_
+hoped?"
+
+It was the sweetest question my ear had ever caught, and I asked her, I
+scarce know how, if I might still say "do hope".
+
+"Why, I--I didn't know you ever did say it. I don't see that I have any
+right to forbid you saying things--to--to yourself."
+
+So we played the game--oldest game on earth--and loveliest. Bungling
+moves we made, as you see, and sometimes did not know whose move it was.
+At length she admitted that this _is_ a very unsafe world in which to be
+kind to soldiers. I told how _fickle_ some of them were. She would not
+say she would--or wouldn't--make my case a permanent exception or a
+solitary one; yet with me she blissfully pooh-poohed the idea that our
+acquaintance was new, she being so wonderfully like my mother, and I
+being so wonderfully ditto, ditto. And when I burst into a blazing
+eulogy of my mother, my listener gave me kinder looks than I ever
+deserved of any woman alive. On my trying to reciprocate, she asked me
+for more flowers and hurried back to our earlier theme.
+
+"And really, you know, they say she's almost as truly a scout as Ned
+Fer'--as Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. She's from New Orleans, you know, and
+she's like us, half-Creole; but her other half is Highland Scotch--isn't
+that romantic! When she told us about it she laughed and said it
+explained some things in her which nothing else could excuse! Wasn't
+that funny!--oh, pshaw! it doesn't sound a bit funny as I tell it, but
+she said it in such a droll way! She was so full of fun and frolic that
+day! You can't conceive how full of them she is--sometimes; how soberly
+she _can_ say the funniest things, and how _funnily_ she can say the
+soberest things!"
+
+[Illustration: "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very
+arch.]
+
+"You say she was so full of fun that day; what day?"
+
+The young thing gaped at me, gasped, and melted half to the ground:
+"O--oh--I've let it out!"
+
+"Yes, you may as well go right on, now."
+
+She straightened to her toes, covered her open mouth an instant, and
+then said "Yes, we knew her--at our house--in New Orleans--poor New
+Orleans! Your mother--oh, your splendid, lovely little mother is such a
+brave Confederate!"
+
+"My mother brought her to your house?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes! and that's why it isn't wrong to tell _you_. Charlotte's
+been three times through the lines, to and from the city; once by way of
+Natchez and twice through Baton Rouge. And oh, the things she's brought
+out to our poor boys in the hospitals!"
+
+"Generals' uniforms, for example?"
+
+"Oh, now you're real mean! No! what she's brought the most of is--guess!
+You'll never guess it in the world!"
+
+"Hindoo grammars!--No? Well, then,--perfumery!"
+
+"Ah, you! No, I'll tell you." She spoke prudently; I had to bow my ear
+so close that it tingled: "Dolls!"
+
+My amazement was genuine. "For our sick soldiers!" I sighed.
+
+Her eyes danced; she leaned away and nodded. Then she drew nearer than
+before: "Dolls!" she murmured again;--"and pincushions!--and
+emeries!--and 'rats'! you know, for ladies' hair--and chignon-cushions!"
+
+"For our sick soldiers!"
+
+"Yes!--stuffed with quinine!" She laughed in her handkerchief till the
+smell of the sweet-peas was lost in the odor of frangipani, and she
+staggered almost into my arms. But that sobered her. "And when we speak
+of the risk she runs of being sent to Ship Island she laughs and says,
+'Life is strife.' She says she'd like it long, but she's got to have
+it broad."
+
+"Life is strife indeed to her," I said.
+
+"Oh! do you know that too?--and another reason she gives for taking
+those awful risks is that 'it's the best use she can make of her silly
+streak'--as if she had any such thing!"
+
+"Why did my mother bring her to you?"
+
+"Oh! she had letters from uncle to aunt Martha! He thinks she's
+wonderful!"
+
+"Does your father think so, too?"
+
+"My father? no; but he's prejudiced! That's one of the things I can
+never understand--why nearly all the girls I know have such
+prejudiced fathers."
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+A GNAWING IN THE DARK
+
+On our return to the veranda, Camille and I, we found on its front the
+house's entire company except only the children of the family. Mrs.
+Sessions, Estelle and Cecile formed one group, Squire Sessions and
+Charlotte Oliver made a pair, and Ferry and Miss Harper another. Our
+posies created a lively demonstration; Camille yielded them to Estelle,
+and Estelle took them into the house to arrange them in water. Gholson
+went with her; it was painful to see her zest for his society.
+
+Miss Harper "knocked me down," as we boys used to say, to Charlotte
+Oliver; "Charlotte, my dear, you already know Mr. Smith, I believe?"
+
+I had expected to see again, and to feel, as well, the starry charms of
+Coralie Rothvelt; but what I confronted was far different. The charms
+were here, unquenched by this stare of daylight, but from them shone a
+lustre of womanliness wholly new. It seemed to grow on even when a
+tricksy gleam shot through it as she replied, "Yes, our acquaintance
+dates from Gallatin."
+
+With a spasm of eagerness I said it did: "Our
+acquai'--hh--Gallatin--hh--" But my soul cried like a culprit, "No, no,
+it begins only now!" and my whole being stood under arrest before the
+accusing truth that from Gallatin till now my acquaintance had been
+solely with that false phase of her which I knew as Coralie Rothvelt. At
+the same her kind eyes sweetly granted me a stripling's acquittal--oh!
+why did it have to be a stripling's?
+
+Wonderful eyes she had; deep blue, as I have said, in color; black, in
+spirit; never so wonderful as when having sparkled black they quieted to
+blue again. Always then there came the slightest of contractions at the
+outer corners of the delicate lids, that gave a fourfold expression of
+thought, passion, tenderness and intrepidity. I never saw that silent
+meaning in but one other pair of eyes; wherever it turned it said--at
+the same time saying many other things but saying this always
+plainest--"I see both out and in; I know myself--and thee." Never but in
+one other pair of eyes? no; and whose were those? Ned Ferry's.
+
+"Don't you love to see Charlotte and him look at each other in that
+steady way when they're talking together?" Camille asked me later. But
+rather coldly I inquired why I should; I felt acutely enough without
+admitting it to Camille, that Charlotte and Ferry were meeting on ground
+far above me; and when Gholson, in his turn, called to my notice, in
+Charlotte's case, this unique gaze, and contrasted it with her beautiful
+yet strangely childish mouth, I asked a second time why she was
+here, anyhow.
+
+"She's here," murmured Gholson, "because she has to live! To live she
+must have means, Smith, and to have means she must either get them
+herself or she must--" and again he poised his hand horizontally across
+his mouth and whispered--"live with her hus'--"
+
+I jerked my head away--"Yes, yes." Scott Gholson was the only one of us
+who could give that wretch that title. "Gholson," I said, for I kept him
+plied with questions to prevent his questioning me, "how did that man
+ever get her?"
+
+The rest of the company were going into the house; he glanced furtively
+after them and grabbed my arm; you would have thought he was about to
+lay bare the whole tragedy in five words; "Smith,--nobody knows!"
+
+"Do you believe she has told Ned Ferry anything?"
+
+"Never! About herself? no, sir!" He bent and whispered: "She despises
+him; she keeps in with him, but it's to get the news, that's all; that's
+positively all." On our way to the stable to saddle up--for we were all
+going to church--he told me what he knew of her story. I had heard it
+all and more, but I listened with unfeigned interest, for he recited it
+with flashes of heat and rancor that betrayed a cruel infatuation eating
+into his very bone and brain, the guilt of which was only intensified by
+the sour legality of his moral sense.
+
+The church we went to was in Franklin, but the preacher was a man of
+note, a Vicksburg refugee. On the way back Gholson and I rode for a time
+near enough to Squire Sessions and Ned Ferry to know the sermon was
+being discussed by them, and something they said gave my companion
+occasion to murmur to me in a tone of eager censure that Ned Ferry's
+morals were better than his religion.
+
+I said I wished mine were.
+
+"Ah, Smith, be not deceived! Whenever you see a man bringing forth the
+fruits of the Spirit while he neglects the regularly appointed means of
+grace, you _know_ there's something wrong, don't you? He went to church
+this morning--_of course_; but how often does he go? What's wrong with
+our dear friend--I don't like to say it, for I admire him so; I don't
+like to say it, and I never have said it, but, Smith,--Ned Ferry's a
+romanticist. We are relig'--what?"
+
+"O--oh, nothing!"
+
+At one point our way sloped down to a ramshackle wooden bridge that
+spanned a narrow bit of running water at the edge of a wood. Beyond it
+the road led out between two fields whose high worm-fences made it a
+broad lane. The farther limit of this sea of sunlight was the grove that
+hid the Sessions house on the left; on the right it was the
+woods-pasture in which lay concealed a lily-pond. As Gholson and I
+crossed the bridge we came upon a most enlivening view of our own
+procession out in the noonday blaze before us; the Sessions buggy; then
+Charlotte' little wagon; next the Sessions family carriage full of
+youngsters; and lastly, on their horses, Squire Sessions--tall, fleshy,
+clean-shaven, silver-haired--and Ned Ferry. Mrs. Sessions and Miss
+Harper, in the buggy, were just going by a big white gate in the
+right-hand fence, through which a private way led eastward to the
+lily-pond. A happy sight they were, the children in the rear vehicle
+waving handkerchiefs back at us, and nothing in the scene made the
+faintest confession that my pet song, which I was again humming, was pat
+to the hour:
+
+  "To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
+   Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be broke."
+
+"Gholson, if it isn't Ned Ferry's religion that's worrying you just now
+about him, what is it?"
+
+My companion looked at me as if what he must say was too large for his
+throat. He made a gesture of lament toward Ferry and broke out, "O--oh
+Smith,"--nearly all Gholson's oh's were groans--"why is he here? The
+scout is 'the eyes of the army'! a man whose perpetual vigilance at the
+very foremost front--"
+
+"Why, what do you mean? You know we're here to rejoin the company as it
+comes down from Union Church to camp here to-night. _That's_ what we're
+here for."
+
+"Yes,--yes,--but, oh, don't you _see_, Smith? For you, yourself, that's
+all right; you've got to stay with him, and I'm glad you have. But
+he--oh why did he not go on hours ago, to meet them?"
+
+"Why should he? Isn't it good to leave one's lieutenant sometimes in
+command; isn't it bad not to?"
+
+Gholson's eyes turned green. "Does Ned Ferry give that as his reason?"
+
+"I haven't asked his reason; I've asked you a question."
+
+"Well, I'll answer it. Do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?"
+
+"Of course I do, and Ned Ferry does; don't you?"
+
+"No! Smith, there ain't a braver man in Grant's army than that one
+right now a-straddle of your horse. Why, just the way he got your horse
+night before--"
+
+"Oh, hang him and the horse! you've told me that three times; what of
+it?"
+
+"Smith, he's out here to make a new record for himself, at whatever
+cost!"
+
+"And do you imagine Ned Ferry hasn't thought of that?"
+
+"Ah-h, there are times when a man hasn't got his thinking powers; you
+ought to know that, Smith,--"
+
+"Mr. Gholson, what do you mean by that?"
+
+"Oh! I certainly didn't mean anything against you, Smith. Why is your
+manner so strange to me to-day? Oh, Smith, if you knew what--if I could
+speak to you in sacred confidence--I--I wouldn't injure Ned Ferry in
+your eyes, nor in anybody's; I only tell you what I do tell so you may
+help me to help him. But he's staying here, Smith, and keeping you here,
+to be near one whose name--without her a-dreaming of it--is already
+coupled with--why,--why, what made you start that a-way again, Smith?"
+
+"Nothing; I didn't start. 'Coupled with somebody's name,' you say. With
+whose? Go on."
+
+"With his, Smith, and most injuriously. He's here to tempt her to forget
+she's not--" He faltered.
+
+"Free?" said I, and he nodded with tragic solemnity.
+
+"You know who I mean, of course?"
+
+"Certainly; you mean Mrs. Sessions."
+
+He shook his head bitterly. "Oh, well, then, of course I know. How am I
+to help you to help him; help him to do what?"
+
+"O--oh! to tear himself away from her, Smith. I want you to appeal to
+him. He's taken a great shine to you. You can appeal to his feeling for
+romance--poetry--whatever he calls his hell-fired--I mean his
+unfortunate impiety. You know how, and I don't. And there you reach the
+foundations of his character, as far as it's got any; there's his
+conscience if it's anywhere!"
+
+I find myself giving but a faint impression of the spirit in which
+Gholson spoke; it went away beyond a mere backbiting mood and became a
+temper so vindictive and so venomously purposeful that I was startled;
+his condition seemed so fearfully like that of the old paralytic when he
+whined "That's not our way."
+
+"Smith," my companion went on, "we ought to protect Ned Ferry from
+himself!" The words came through his clenched teeth. "And even more we
+ought to protect her. Who's to do it if we don't? Smith, I believe
+Providence has been a-preparing you to do this, all through these last
+three nights and days!"
+
+He looked at me for an answer until I became frightened. Was my late
+folly known to this crawling maligner after all? A sweet-scented
+preparation I've had, thought I, but aloud I said only, "If Ned Ferry
+clears out, I suppose we must clear out, too."
+
+"Why, eh,--I--I don't know that my movements need have anything to do
+with his. Yours, of course,--"
+
+"Yes," I interrupted, beginning to boil.
+
+"I know," he said, "that comes hard; you'll have to tear _yourself_
+away--"
+
+He stared at me and hushed. A panic was surging through me; must I be
+brought to book by such as he? "Mr. Gholson," I cried, all scorn
+without, all terror within; "Mr. Gholson, I--Mr. Gholson, sir!--" and
+set my jaws and heaved for breath.
+
+"Why, Smith,--" He extended a soothing hand.
+
+"No explanation, sir, if you please! I can get away from here without
+tearing myself, which is more than you can boast. Any fool can see why
+_you_ are here. Stop, I take that back, sir! I don't play tit-for-tat
+with my tongue."
+
+Gholson turned red on the brow and ashen about the lips. "I don't call
+that tit-for-tat, Mr. Smith. I remind you of an innocent attachment for
+a young girl; you accuse me of harboring a guilty passion for--" All at
+once he ceased with open lips, and then said as he drew a long breath of
+relief, "Smith, I beg your pardon! We've each misunderstood the other; I
+see, now, who you meant; you meant Miss Estelle Harper!"
+
+"Whom else could I mean?" Disdain was in my voice, but he ought to have
+seen the falsehood in my eye, for I could feel it there.
+
+"_Of_ course!" he said; "of course! But, Smith, my mind was so
+full--just for the moment, you know,--of her we were speaking of in
+connection with Ned Ferry--Do you know? she's so unprotected and tagged
+after and talked about that it seems to me sometimes, in this nervous
+condition of mine, that if I could catch the entire gang of her
+pursuers in one hole I'd--I'd _end 'em_ like so many rats. That sort of
+feeling is mere impulse, of course," he went on, "and only shows how
+near I am to that nervous breakdown. Yes, the Harper ladies are mighty
+lovely and hard enough to leave, but that's all I meant to you, and I'm
+sorry I touched your feelings. I'm _tchagrined_. Anyhow, all this is
+between us, you know. I wouldn't ever have confessed such feelings as I
+did just now except to a friend who knows as well as you do that if I
+ever should do a man a mortal injury I wouldn't do it in a spirit of
+resentment. You know that, don't you? No, that's not my way--Why,
+Smith, what gives you those starts? That's the third time you've done
+that this morning."
+
+I said that entering the cool shade of the Sessions grove after the
+blazing heat of that long lane gave any one the right to a little
+shudder, and as we turned toward the house Gholson murmured "If you say
+you'll speak to Ned as I've asked you, I'll sort o' toll Squire Sessions
+off with me so's to give you the chance. It's for his own sake, you
+know, and you're the only one can do it."
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE
+
+I knew Ned Ferry was having that inner strife with which we ought always
+to credit even Gholson's sort, and I had a loving ambition to help him
+"take the upper fork." So doing, I might help Charlotte Oliver fulfil
+the same principle, win the same victory. When, therefore, Gholson put
+the question to me squarely, Would I speak to Ferry? I consented, and as
+the four of us, horsemen, left our beasts in the stable munching corn,
+Gholson began a surprisingly animated talk with our host, and Ferry,
+with a quizzical smile, said to me "Talk with you?--shall be happy to;
+we'll just make a slight _detour_ on this side the grove and
+woods-pasture, eh?"
+
+He meant the north side, opposite that one by which we had come from
+church. Here the landscape was much the same as there; wide fields on
+each side the fenced highway that still ran north and south, and woods
+for the sky-line everywhere. We chose an easy footpath along the
+northern fence of the grove, crossed the highway, and passed on a few
+steps alongside the woods-pasture fence. We talked as we went, he giving
+the kindest heed to my every word though I could see that, like any good
+soldier, he was scanning all the ground for its fighting values, and,
+not to be outdone, I, myself, pointed out, a short way up the public
+road, a fence-gap on the left, made by our camping soldiers two nights
+before. It was at another such gap, in the woods-pasture fence, that we
+turned back by a path through it which led into the wood and so again
+toward the highway and the house-grove. The evening General Austin sent
+me to Wiggins it was at this gap that I saw old Dismukes sitting
+cross-legged on the ground, playing poker; and here, now, I summoned the
+desperation to speak directly to my point.
+
+I had already tried hard to get something said, but had found myself at
+every turn entangled in generalities. Now, stammering and gagging I
+remarked that our experiences of the morning, both in church and out,
+had in some way combined with an earlier word of his own to me, and
+given me a valuable thought. "You remember, when I wanted to shoot that
+Yankee off my horse?"
+
+"Yes; and I said--what?"
+
+"You said 'This isn't your private war.' Lieutenant, I hope those words
+may last in my memory forever and come to me in every moral situation in
+which I may find myself."
+
+"Yes? Well, I think that's good."
+
+"It seems to me, Lieutenant Ferry, that in every problem of moral
+conduct we confront we really hold in trust an interest of all mankind.
+To solve that problem bravely and faithfully is to make life just so
+much easier for everybody; and to fail to do so is to make it just so
+much harder to solve by whoever has next to face it." Whurroo! my blood
+was up now, let him look to himself!
+
+"Yes?" said Ferry, picking at the underbrush as we sauntered, and for
+some time he said no more. Then he asked, "You want me to apply that to
+myself, in--in the present case?" and to my tender amazement, while his
+eyes seemed to count his slackening steps, he laid his arm across my
+shoulders.
+
+An hour of avowal could not have told me more; could not have filled me
+half so full of sympathy, admiration and love, as did that one slight
+motion. It befitted the day, a day outwardly so quiescent, yet in which
+so much was going on. A realization of this quiet activity kept us
+silent until we had come through the woods-pasture to its southern
+border, and so through the big white field-gate into the public road;
+now we turned up toward the grove-gate, and here I spoke again. "Do you
+still think we ought to wait here for the command?"
+
+That from a private soldier to his captain! Yet all my leader answered
+was "You think there's cause to change our mind?"
+
+"I don't know, Lieutenant; do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?"
+
+"Yes, I think so; and you?"
+
+"Why, eh,--Lieutenant, I don't believe there's a braver man in Grant's
+army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why, just the way he
+got him, night before last,--you've heard that, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, the General told me. And so you think--"
+
+"Lieutenant, I can't help believing he's out here to make a new record
+for himself, at whatever cost!"
+
+We went on some steps in silence and entered the gate of the
+house-grove; and just as Ferry would have replied we discovered before
+us in the mottled shade of the driveway, with her arm on Cecile's
+shoulders as his lay on mine, and with _her_ eyes counting _her_
+slackening steps, Charlotte Oliver. They must have espied us already out
+in the highway, for they also were turned toward the house, and as we
+neared them Charlotte faced round with a cheery absence of surprise and
+said "Mr. Smith, don't we owe each other a better acquaintance? Suppose
+we settle up."
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+THE RED STAR'S WARNING
+
+It seemed quite as undeniable, as we stood there, that Ned Ferry owed
+Cecile a better acquaintance. Every new hour enhanced her graces, and
+were I, here, less engrossed with her companion, I could pitch the
+praises of Cecile upon almost as high and brilliant a key--there may be
+room for that yet. Ferry moved on at her side. Charlotte stayed a moment
+to laugh at a squirrel, and then turned to walk, saying with eyes on
+the earth--
+
+"If I tell you something, will you never tell?"
+
+I looked down too. "Suppose I should feel sure it ought to be told."
+
+"If you wait till you do you may tell it; that will suit me well
+enough."
+
+"I will always suit you the best I can."
+
+"I don't know why you should," she said.
+
+"You risked your life to save mine; and you risked it when I did not
+deserve so much as your respect."
+
+"Oh!--we must never talk about that again, Richard; you saw me in the
+evilest guise I ever wore, and that is saying much."
+
+"But," I responded, "you put it on for a better reason than you could
+tell me then or can tell me now, though now I know your story."
+
+"Please don't forget," she murmured, "that you know too much." "No, no!
+I don't know half enough; I know only what Miss Camilla
+and--and--Gholson could tell me," was my tricky reply, and I tried to
+look straight into her eyes, but they took that faint introspective
+contraction of which I have spoken, and gazed through me like sunlight
+through glass. Then again she bent her glance upon her steps, saying--
+
+"Ah, Richard, you have found out all you could, and I am glad of it,
+except of what I, myself, have had to betray to you; for _that_ was more
+than one would want to tell her twin brother. But I had to create you
+_my_ scout, and I had only two or three hours for my whole work of
+creation."
+
+"Well, you completed it." We went on some steps, and then she said--
+
+"You tell me I risked my life to save yours; I risked more than life,
+and I risked it for more than to save yours. Yet I did not save your
+life; you saved it, yourself, and--" here her low tone thrilled like a
+harp-string--"you risked it--frightfully--at that bridge--merely to save
+the promise you made me that you need not have made at all--oh, you
+needn't shake your head; I _know_."
+
+"Ah, how you gild my base metal!"
+
+"No, no, I have the story exactly, and from one who has no mind to
+praise you."
+
+"From Gholson?"
+
+"Gholson! no! I have it from Lucius Oliver, who had it from his son. He
+told me carefully, quietly and entirely, in pure spleen, so that I might
+know that they know--think they know, that is,--why you and--he in front
+of us yonder--would not shoot his son when--"
+
+"When as soldiers it was our simple du'--"
+
+"Yes; and also that I may understand that he--the son--has sworn by that
+right hand you mutilated that the 'pair of you' shall die before
+he does."
+
+"I ought not to have shown him that envelope addressed to you."
+
+"Ah, but if it saved your life!"
+
+"And this is what you don't want me to tell? Ah, I see; for me to know
+it is enough; I can put it to him as a theory. I can say Oliver is not a
+man to be put upon the defensive, and that he is more than likely to be
+hunting 'the pair of us'--" All at once I thought of something.
+
+"What made you give that sudden start?" she asked as we faced about in
+the driveway to make our walk a moment longer; "that's a bad habit
+you've got; why do you do it?"
+
+I fancied the thrilling freshness of the question I was about to put
+would be explanation enough. "Do you believe Jewett has gone back into
+his own lines?"
+
+"I don't know; hasn't he?"
+
+"Oh, I don't _know_, either, but--well, I don't believe there's a braver
+man in Grant's army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why,
+just the way he got him, night before last,--you've heard that, have
+you not?"
+
+"Yes, I've heard it; he is a very daring man; what of it?"
+
+"Why, I can't help thinking he's out here to make a new record for
+himself, at whatever cost!"
+
+A note of distress hung on my hearer's stifled voice; her head went
+lower and she laid her fingers pensively to her lips. "It would be like
+him," I heard her murmur, and when I asked if she meant Jewett she
+shook her head.
+
+"No," I said, "you mean it would be like Oliver to join him," and with
+that the sudden start was hers. "He wouldn't have to touch Ned Ferry or
+me," I went on, heartlessly, "nor to come near us, to make us rue the
+hour we let ourselves forget this wasn't our private war."
+
+She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she
+looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it,
+won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do
+I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her
+eyes began forewith.
+
+A light footfall sounded behind us, and Camille gave both her hands to
+my companion. "I was in the hall," she said, "telling Cecile she was
+like a white star that had come out by day, when I saw you here looking
+like a great red one; and you're still more like a red, red rose, and
+I've come to get some of your fragrance."
+
+"I'd exchange for yours any day, and thank you, dear," responded
+Charlotte; "you're a bunch of sweet-peas. Isn't she, Mr. Smith?"
+
+The bunch beamed an ecstatic bliss. What was the explanation; had her
+father arrived, or--or somebody else? The question went through me like
+an arrow. Was the cause of this heavenly radiance somebody else?--that
+was the barb; or was it I?--that was the soothing feather.
+
+In gratitude for Charlotte's word she sank backward in a long obeisance.
+"May it please your ladyship, dinner is served. Oh, Mr. Smith, I've been
+listening to Mr. Gholson talking with aunt Martha and Estelle; I don't
+wonder you and he are friends; I think his ideas of religion are
+perfectly beautiful!"
+
+At our two-o'clock dinner I found that our company had been reinforced.
+On one side of Camille sat I; but on the other side sat "Harry."
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+A MARTYR'S WRATH
+
+Great news the aide-de-camp brought us; from Lee, from Longstreet, Bragg
+and Johnston. Johnston was about to fall upon Grant's rear. Across the
+Mississippi Dick Taylor was expected this very day to deal the same
+adversary a crippling blow, and it was partly to mask this movement that
+we had made our feint upon the Federals near Natchez. Now these had
+fallen back, and our force had cunningly slipped away southward. Only
+General Austin and his staff had not gone when Lieutenant Helm left the
+front, and they were about to go.
+
+Toward the end of the meal Mrs. Sessions, in her amiable plantation
+drawl, said she hoped the bearer of so much good tidings had not come to
+take away Lieutenant Ferry; and when Harry, flushing, asked what had
+given her such a thought, the simple soul replied that Mr. Gholson had
+told her he "suspicioned as much."
+
+At once there arose the prettiest clamor all round the board, in which
+Charlotte and Cecile joined for the obvious purpose of making confusion.
+Gholson turned yellow and spoke things nobody heard, and Ferry tried to
+drown Harry's loud declarations that the word he had brought to Ferry
+was for him to stay, and that he had found him saddling up to go in
+search of his company. "Isn't that so, Ned?--Now,--now,--isn't that so?"
+
+We left the table all laughing but Gholson. He tried to say something to
+Harry, which the latter waved away with mock gaiety until on the side
+veranda we got beyond view of the ladies, when the aide-de-camp reddened
+angrily and turned his back. As the two lieutenants were lighting
+cigarettes together, Harry, thinking Gholson had left us, blurted out,
+"Oh, that's all very well for you to say, Ned, but, damn him, he's not
+the sort of man that has the right to 'suspicion' me of anything;
+slang-whanging, backbiting sneak, I know what _he's_ here for."
+
+On that the blood surged to Ferry's brow, but he set his mouth firmly,
+locked arms with the speaker and led him down the veranda. Gholson took
+on an uglier pallor than before and went back into the house. I followed
+him. He moved slowly up the two flights of hall stairs and into a room
+close under the roof, called the "soldiers' room". It had three double
+beds, one of them ours. Without a fault in the dreary rhythm of his
+motions he went to the bedpost where hung his revolver, and turning to
+me buckled the weapon at his waist with hands that kept the same
+unbroken measure though they trembled and were as pallid as his face. In
+the same slow beat he shook his head.
+
+"Smith, I rejoice! O--oh! I rejoice and am glad when I'm reviled and
+persecuted by the hounds of hell, and spoken evil against falsely for my
+religion's sake."
+
+"Now, Gholson, that's nonsense!"
+
+"O--oh! that's what it's for! that's what he meant by 'slang-whanging.'
+That's what it's for from first to last, no matter what it's for in
+between; and I know what it's for in between, too, and Ned Ferry knows.
+Did you see Ned Ferry take him under his protection? O--oh! they're two
+of one hell-scorched kind!" My companion stood gripping the bedpost and
+fumbling at his holster. I sank to the bed, facing him, expecting his
+rage to burn itself out in words, but when he began again his teeth
+were clenched. "You heard him tell Ned Ferry he knows why I'm here. It's
+true! he does know! he knows I'm here to protect a certain person from
+him and--"
+
+"From whom? from Harry Helm? Oh, Gholson, that's too fantastical!"
+
+"From him and the likes of him! Not that he loves her; that's the
+difference between them two cotton-mouth moccasins; Ned Ferry, hell
+grind him! does--or thinks he does; that other whelp _don't,_ and knows
+he don't; he's only enam'--"
+
+"HUSH!" He ceased. "I swear, Scott Gholson, you must choose your words
+better when you allude--Lieutenant Helm is the last man in the brigade
+to be under _my_ protection, but--oh, you're crazy, man, and blind
+besides. Harry Helm is not in love, but he thinks he is, though with
+quite another person!"
+
+"O--oh! whether he loves or not, or whoever he loves, I know who he
+hates; he hates me and my religion; our religion, Smith, mine and yours;
+because it's put me between him and her. What was that the preacher said
+this morning? 'The carnal mind, being enmity against God, is enmity
+against them that serve God.' O--oh, I accept his enmity! it proves my
+religion isn't vain! I'm glad to get it!"
+
+All this from his oscillating head, through his set teeth, in one malign
+monotone. As he quoted the preacher he mechanically drew his revolver.
+There was no bravado in this; he might lie, but he did not know how to
+sham; did not know, now, that his face was drawn with pain. Holding the
+weapon in one hand, under his absent gaze he turned it from side to side
+on the palm of the other. I put out my hand for it, but he dropped it
+into the holster and tried to return my smile.
+
+"Do you propose to call him out?" I asked. "You can't call out an
+officer; you'll be sent to the water-batteries at Mobile."
+
+"I've thought of all that," he droned.
+
+"Then why do you put that thing on?"
+
+"Why do I put it on? Why, I--you know what I told you about that
+Yankee--"
+
+"Gholson," I exclaimed, for I saw that murder, even double murder, was
+hatching in his heart, with Charlotte Oliver for its cause, and looked
+hard into his evil eyes until they overmatched mine; whereupon I made as
+if suddenly convinced. "You're right!" I turned, whipped on my own belt
+with its two "persuaders," and blandly smoothing my ribs, added "Now!
+here are two ready, Yankees or no Yankees."
+
+I never saw a face so unconsciously marked with misery as Gholson's was
+when we started downstairs. I stopped him on a landing. "Understand, you
+and I are friends,--hmm? I think Lieutenant Helm owes you an apology,
+and if you'll keep away from him I'll try to bring it to you."
+
+The reply began with a vindictive gleam. "You needn't; I ain't got any
+more use for it than for him. I never apologized to a man in my life,
+Smith, nor I never accepted an apology from one; that's not my way."
+
+Near the bottom of the second flight we met Charlotte, who, to make bad
+worse, would have passed with no more than a smile, but the look of
+Gholson startled her and she noticed our arms. With an arresting eye I
+offered a sprightly comment on the heat of the day, and while she was
+replying with the same gaiety I whispered "Take him with you."
+
+How nimbly her mind moved! "Oh Mr. Gholson!" she said, and laughed to
+gain an instant for invention.
+
+"Mr. Gholson, can _you_ tell me the first line of the last hymn we sang
+this morning?" Her beam was irresistible, and they went to the large
+parlor. I turned into the smaller one, opposite, where Squire Sessions
+started from a stolen doze and, having heard of my feeling for books,
+thrust into my hands, and left me with, the "Bible Defense of Slavery."
+
+As I moved to a window which let out upon the side veranda the two
+lieutenants came around from the front and stood almost against it,
+outside; and as I intended to begin upon Harry as soon as Squire
+Sessions was safely upstairs, this suited me well enough. But the moment
+they came to the spot I heard Ned Ferry doing precisely what I had
+planned to do. At the same time, from across the hall came the sound of
+the piano and of Charlotte's voice, now a few bars, then an interval of
+lively speech, again a few bars, then more speech, and then a sustained
+melody as she lent herself to the kind flattery of Gholson's
+songless soul.
+
+"But he is!" I overheard the aide-de-camp say; "he is a backbiting
+sneak, and I tell you again he's backbitten nobody more than he
+has you!"
+
+"And I tell you again, Harry, that is my business."
+
+"If he wants to fight me he can; I'll waive my rank."
+
+"No, you will not, you have no right; our poor little rank, it doesn't
+belong to us, Harry, 'tis we belong to it. 'If he wants to fight!'--Do
+you take him for a rabbit? He is a brave man, you know that, old fellow.
+Of course he wants to fight. But he cannot! For the court-martial he
+would not care so much; I would not, you would not; 'tis his religion
+forbids him."
+
+"O--oh!" groaned Harry in Gholson's exact tone, "'Hark from the tombs'!"
+
+"Ah!" said Ferry, "he does not live up to it? Well, of course! who
+does? But we will pass that; the main question is, Will you express the
+regret, and so forth, as I have suggested, and do yourself credit,
+Harry, as an officer and a gentleman, or--will you fight?"
+
+"But you say his religion, so called, won't let him fight!"
+
+"That's what I think; but if it forbids him, and if consequently he will
+not, well,--Harry,--I will."
+
+"You will what!"
+
+"I will have to fight you in his place."
+
+"Why, Ned!--Ned!--you--you astound me! Wha'--what do you mean?"
+
+"That is what I mean, Harry. You know--many times you have heard me
+say--I don't believe in that kind of thing; I find that worse than the
+religion of Gholson; yet still,--what shall I say?--we are but soldiers
+anyhow--this time I make an exception in your favor. And of course this
+is confidential, on both sides; but you must make peace with Gholson, or
+you must fight with me."
+
+"Oh, good Lord!--Ned!--Good Lord A'mighty! but this is too absurd. Why,
+Ned, don't you see that the bottom cause of this trouble isn't--"
+
+"I know what is the bottom cause of this trouble very well, Harry; you
+can hear her in yonder, now, singing. Wherever Gholson is he hears her,
+too, like-wise. Perchance 'tis to him she is singing. If she can sing to
+him, are you too good to apologise?"
+
+"Oh, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, Ned, damned if I don't!
+George! I'll apologize! Rather than lose your friendship I'd apologize
+to the devil!"
+
+Ferry's thanks came eagerly. "Well, anyhow, old boy," he added, "in such
+a case to back down is braver than to fight; but to apologize to the
+devil--that is not hard; on the contrary, to keep _from_ apologizing to
+the devil--ah! I wish I could always do that!--I wonder where is
+Dick Smith."
+
+I stealthily laid down the "Bible Defense of Slavery" and was going
+upstairs three steps at a stride, when I came upon Camille and Estelle.
+My aim was to get Harry's revolver to him before he should have the
+exasperating surprise of finding Gholson armed, and to contrive a
+pretext for so doing; and happily a word from the two sisters gave me my
+cue. With the fire-arms of both officers I came downstairs and out upon
+the veranda loud-footed, humming--
+
+  "'To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
+  Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be--'
+
+"Gentlemen, I hope I'm not too officious; they say we're all going for a
+walk in the lily-pond woods, and I reckon you'd rather not leave these
+things behind."
+
+Both thanked me and buckled on their belongings, but Ferry's look was
+peculiarly intelligent; "I was in the small parlor, looking for you," he
+said; "I thought you would be near the music." And so he had seen
+Gholson with his revolver on him, and must have understood it!
+
+"Smith," said Harry, "will you be so kind as to say to Gholson--oh,
+Lord! Ned, this is heavy drags on a sandy road! I--"
+
+"That's all right, Harry, I withdraw the request."
+
+"Well, you needn't; I was in the wrong. Smith, will you say to
+Gholson--" His voice dropped to a strictly private rumble.
+
+"Yes, Lieutenant, I'll do so with pleasure, and I'm sure what you say
+will have the proper--here are the ladies."
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+TORCH AND SWORD
+
+"Now give me your hand, Miss Camille; now jump!" So twice and once again
+the rivulet was passed which ran from the lily-pond, she and I leading
+all the others on the return from the woodland afternoon walk. We turned
+and faced away from the declining sun and across the clear pool to where
+its upper end, dotted with lily-pads, lay in a deep recess of the woods.
+There were green and purple garlands of wild passion-flower around her
+hat and about the white and blue fabrics at her waist. At the head of
+the pond, with Ferry beside her, stood black-haired Cecile canopied by
+overhanging boughs, her hat bedecked with the red spikes of the
+Indian-shot and wound with orange masses of love-vine. Nearer to us
+around the shore was Estelle of the red-brown hair and red-brown eyes
+and brows and lashes, whose cheek seemed always to glow with ever rising
+but never confessed emotion; and with her walked Gholson. Near the
+waterside also, but farthest up the path, came Miss Harper and
+Charlotte Oliver.
+
+Harry was not with us. The settlement of his trouble with Gholson
+awaited his return out of the region north of us, whither Ferry had
+suggested his riding on an easy reconnaissance. Camille and I were just
+turning again, when there came abruptly into our scene the last gallant
+show of martial finery any of us ever saw until the war was over and
+there was nothing for our side to make itself fine for. On the road from
+the house we heard a sound of galloping, and the next moment General
+Austin and his entire staff (less only Harry) reined up at the edge of
+the pond, ablaze with all the good clothes they could muster and
+betraying just enough hard usage to give a stirring show of the war's
+heroic reality. The General, on a beautiful cream-colored horse, wore
+long yellow gauntlets and a yellow sash; from throat to waist the
+sunlight glistened upon the over-abundant gold lace of his new uniform,
+his legs were knee-deep in shining boots, and his soft gray hat was
+looped up on one side and plumed according to Regulations with one
+drooping ostrich feather. Behind halted in pleasing confusion captains
+and captains, flashing with braids, bars, buckles, buttons, bands,
+sword-knots, swords and brave eyes, and gaily lifting hats and caps,
+twice, and twice again, and once more, to the ladies--God bless them!
+Major Harper, the oldest, most refined and most soldierly of them all,
+was also the handsomest. Old Dismukes was with them; burly, bushy,
+dingy, on a huge roan charger. Camille asked me who he was, and I was
+about to reply that he was a bloodthirsty brute without a redeeming
+trait, when he lifted his shaggy brows at me and smiled, and as I smiled
+back I told her he was our senior colonel, rough at times, but the
+bravest of the brave. Meantime the General rode forward over a stretch
+of shallow water, Ned Ferry ran back along the margin to meet him, and
+at the saddlebow they spoke a moment together privately, while at more
+distance but openly to us all Major Harper informed his sister that with
+one night's camp and another day's dust the brigade would be down in
+Louisiana. Camille turned upon me and hurrahed, the Arkansas colonel
+smiled upon her approvingly, the ladies all waved, the General lifted
+his plumed hat, faced about, passed through his turning cavalcade and
+drew it after him at a gallop.
+
+Our promenaders hurried into close order and with quick step and eager
+converse we moved toward the house. In raptures scintillant with their
+own beauty the three Harper girls inflated each item of the day's news
+and the morrow's outlook, and it was almost as pretty to see Miss
+Harper's keen black eyes and loving-tolerant smile go back and forth
+from Camille to Estelle, from Estelle to Cecile, and round again, as
+each maiden added some new extravagance to the glad vaunting of the
+last, and looked, for confirmation, to the gallant who toiled to keep
+her under her parasol. Suddenly the three girls broke into song with an
+adaptation of "Oh, carry me back" which substituted "Louisiana" for
+"Virginia," but whose absurd quaverings I will not betray in words to a
+generation that never knew the frantic times to which they belonged. I
+felt a shamefacedness for them even then, yet when I glanced behind,
+Miss Harper was singing with us in the most exalted earnest. We had
+nearly reached the field-gate, the big white one on the highway, and
+were noting that the dust of the General and his retinue had barely
+vanished from the southern stretch of the road, when one feminine voice
+said "What's that?" another exclaimed "See yonder!" and Miss Harper
+cried "Why, gentlemen, somebody's house is burning!"
+
+Beyond the grove and the fields north of it, and beyond their farther
+bound of trees, in the northwest, was rising and unfolding into the
+peaceful Sabbath heavens a massive black column of the peculiar heavy
+smoke made by the burning of baled and stored cotton. We ran, two and
+two, into the road and up toward the grove-gate. "Don't stumble," I
+warned Camille as she looked back to see if any one besides me was
+holding his partner's hand. Inside the gate we paused, we two, still
+hand in hand. Her brown hair had shaken low upon her temples in two
+voluptuous masses between which she lifted her eyes to mine, my hand
+tightened on hers, and hers gave a little spasm of its own.
+
+"Oh, Dick!" she whispered; but before I could rally from the blissful
+shock of it to reply, her face changed distressfully, and pointing
+beyond me, she drank a great breath, and cried, "Look!"
+
+Sure enough, out there on the sky-line, in the north-east this time,
+another column of smoke was lifting its first billow over the tree-tops.
+"Oh, Dick!" she exclaimed, in beautiful alarm, "what does it mean?"
+
+"It means the Yankees,--love," I said, and when she gasped her dismay
+without letting on to have heard the last word, I felt that fires were
+cheap at any price.
+
+"There are others there besides Yankees," said Gholson to the general
+company as they joined us; "Yankees have got more sense than to start
+fires ahead of their march." On the same instant with Ned Ferry I sprang
+half-way to the top of the grove fence and peered out across road and
+fields upon the farthest point in line with the second fire. There we
+saw two horsemen reconnoitring, one a very commanding figure, the other
+mean enough. Ferry used his glass, but no glass was needed to tell
+either of us that Gholson's reckoning was true; those two were
+not Federals.
+
+The ladies flew to the house and the rest of us to the stable. In its
+door Ferry stopped to look back upon the road while Gholson and I darted
+in, but now he, too, sprang to his horse's side. "How many, Lieutenant?"
+I cried, as the three of us saddled up.
+
+"About a hundred; same we saw yesterday; captain at the rear; that means
+our fellows are close behind them."
+
+For a moment more I could hear the thunder of their speeding column;
+then the grove seemed to swallow it up, and the stillness was grim.
+"Come on!" cried Ferry, swinging up, and after him we sprang. "They've
+dismounted on the far edge of the grove," said Gholson to me as we rode
+abreast, with Ferry a length ahead; "they'll form line on each side the
+road at right angles to it!" and again he was right. Ferry led
+northeastward, but hardly had we made half a dozen leaps when he waved
+me to a near corner of the flower-garden palings and I saw Miss Harper
+beckoning and Charlotte holding up my carbine and his sword. Miss Harper
+was drawn up as straight as a dart, her black eyes flashing and her lips
+charged with practical information that began to flow the moment I was
+near enough to hear her guarded voice. "They've all put their horses in
+the locks of the road fence, just beyond the big white gate--"
+
+"We know," I interrupted, leaning and snatching the weapons from
+Charlotte's hands. She kissed them good-bye.
+
+"Ah, yes, yes!" she said, "they know all we can tell them and all we
+can't!"
+
+The only response I could give was the shower of loose earth thrown upon
+both women by my horse's heels as I whirled and sped after my leader. He
+and Gholson were half a broad field ahead of me, but I followed only at
+their speed, designing to hand over the sword so nearly at the moment of
+going into action that I might stay by its owner's side unrebuked; and
+my plan was not in vain. Up the highway our Louisianians burst into view
+in column at full speed; I knew them by their captain, a man noted
+throughout the brigade for the showiness of his dress; and the next
+instant, away across the fields beyond the highroad, Quinn and his
+scouts broke out of the woods, heading for the gap in the woods-pasture
+fence. As each friendly column caught sight of the other, long cheers
+rang across the narrowing interval between them. Through that other gap
+which I had noted in my walk with Ferry he and Gholson reached the road,
+sped forward on it to a rise that overlooked the fields, and halted.
+Ferry rose on tiptoe in the stirrups, lifted his cap in air, pointed
+triumphantly backward to the grove, and was recognized by both columns
+at once. Again they cheered; at a full run I reached his side and threw
+his sword into his hand. Both columns saw him belt it on and flash it
+out, their cheers swelled again, the Louisianians hurtled down upon us,
+and we turned and were at the front of the onset.
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+THE CHARGE IN THE LANE
+
+The instant Ferry wheeled at the flaming captain's side you could see he
+was unwelcome. I heard him tell what we knew of the foe and the ground;
+I saw him glance back at the blown condition of the speeding column and
+then say "You've got them anyhow, Captain; you'll get every man of them
+without a scratch, only if you will take your time."
+
+But the Captain answered headily; "No, sir! I've tried that twice
+already; this time I'll cut them in two and be in their rear at one
+dash! Bring in your company behind mine, if you choose."
+
+Ferry drew back a few ranks but stayed with the column; Quinn had had
+the toil of the chase, he should have also the glory of the fight. So
+Ferry sent Gholson--whose horsemanship won a cheer from the passing
+Louisianians as he cleared the roadside fence--across to Quinn, bidding
+the Lieutenant slacken speed and count himself a reserve. And then into
+the broad lane between grove and woods-pasture, with the charging yell,
+the Louisianians thundered. Ah! but my Creole gentleman was a sight,
+with his straight blade lifted in air and his face turned back on us
+aglow with the joy of battle! I was huzzaing back at him and we were
+passing the front gate of the grove avenue, when down through it came
+from the house, with a tremor of echoes, the first shot; a shot and then
+a woman's scream, and his blazing eyes said to me, "He is there! That
+was Oliver!"
+
+There was no time for speech. The shot was not a signal, yet on the
+instant and in our very teeth, on our right and our left, the cross-fire
+of the hidden and waiting foe flashed and pealed, and left and right, a
+life for a life, our carbines answered from the saddle. For a moment the
+odds against us were awful. In an instant the road was so full of fallen
+horses and dismounted men that the jaded column faltered in confusion.
+Our cunning enemy, seeing us charge in column, had swung the two
+extremes of their line forward and inward. So, crouching and firing upon
+us mounted, each half could fire toward the other with impunity, and
+what bullets missed their mark buzzed and whined about our ears and
+pecked the top rails of either fence like hail on a window. A wounded
+horse drove mine back upon his haunches and caused him to plant a hoof
+full on the breast of one of our Louisianians stretched dead on his back
+as though he had lain there for an hour. Another man, pale, dazed,
+unhurt, stood on the ground, unaware that he was under point-blank fire,
+holding by the bits his beautiful horse, that pawed the earth
+majestically and at every second or third breath blew from his flapping
+nostrils a cloud of scarlet spray. They blocked up half the road. As we
+swerved round them the horse of the company's first lieutenant slid
+forward and downward with knees and nose in the dust, hurling his rider
+into a lock of the fence, and the rider rose and rushed to the road
+again barely in time to catch a glittering form that dropped rein and
+sword and reeled backward from the saddle. It was his captain, shot
+through the breast. An instant later our tangled column parted to right
+and left, dashed into the locks of the two fences, sprang to the ground,
+and began to repay the enemy in the coin of their own issue. Only a
+dozen or so did otherwise, and it was my luck to be one of these.
+Espying Ned Ferry at the very front, in the road, standing in his
+stirrups and shouting back for followers to carry the charge on through,
+we spurred toward him and he turned and led. Then what was my next
+fortune but to see, astride of my stolen horse, the towering leader of
+the foe, Captain Jewett.
+
+He came into the road a few rods ahead of us through a gap his men had
+earlier made opposite the big white gate. He answered our fierce halloo,
+as he crossed, by a pistol-shot at Ferry, but Ferry only glanced around
+at me and pointed after him with his sword. A number of blue-coats afoot
+followed him to the gap but at our onset scattered backward, sturdily
+returning our fire. Into the gap and into the enemy's left rear went
+Ferry and his horsemen, but I turned the other way and spurred through
+the woods-pasture gate after the Federal leader, he on my horse and I on
+his. Down the highway, on either side, stood his brave men's horses in
+the angles of the worm-fence, and two or three horse-holders took a shot
+at me as I sped in after the man who was bent on reaching the right of
+his divided force before Quinn should strike it, as I was bent on
+foiling him. Twice I fired at his shapely back, and twice, while he kept
+his speed among the tree-trunks, he looked back at me as coolly as at an
+odd passer-by and sent me a ball from his revolver. A few more bounds
+carried him near enough to his force to shout his commands, but half a
+hundred cheers suddenly resounded in the depth of the woods-pasture, and
+Quinn and his men charged upon the foe's right and rear. I joined the
+shout and the shouters; in a moment the enemy were throwing down their
+arms, and I turned to regain the road to the pond. For I had marked
+Jewett burst through Quinn's line and with a score of shots ringing
+after him make one last brave dash--for escape. Others, pursuing him,
+bent northward, but my instinct was right, his last hope was for his
+horse-holders, and at a sharp angle of the by-road, where it reached the
+pond, exactly where Camille and I had stood not an hour before, I came
+abruptly upon Cricket--riderless. I seized his rein, and as I bent and
+snapped the halter of one horse on the snaffle of the other I saw the
+missing horseman. Leaping from the saddle I ran to him. He was lying on
+his face in the shallow water where General Austin and his staff had so
+gaily halted a short while before, and as I caught sight of him he
+rolled upon his back and tried to lift his bemired head.
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+FALLEN HEROES
+
+I dropped to my knee in the reddening pool and passed my arm under his
+head.
+
+"Thank you," he said, and repeated the word as I wet my handkerchief and
+wiped the mire from his face; "thank you;--no, no,"--I was opening his
+shirt--"that's useless; get me where you can turn me over; you've hit me
+in the back, my lad."
+
+"I?--I hit you? Oh, Captain Jewett, thank God, I didn't hit you at all!"
+
+"What's the difference, boy; you didn't aim to miss, did you? I didn't.
+It's not my only hurt; I think I broke something inside when I fell from
+the sad'--ah! that's _your_ bugle, isn't it? It's my last fight--oh, the
+devil! my good boy, don't begin to cry again; war's war; give me some
+water.... Thank you! And now, if you don't want me to bleed to death get
+me out of this slop, and--yes,--easy!--that's it--easy--oh, God! oh, let
+me down, boy, let me _down, you're killing me!_ Oh!--" he fainted away.
+
+With his unconscious head still on my arm I faced toward the hundred
+after-sounds of the fray and hallooed for help. To my surprise it
+promptly came. Three blundering boys we were who lifted him into the
+saddle and bore him to the house reeling and moaning astride of Cricket,
+the poor beast half dead with hard going. The sinking sun was as red as
+October when we issued into the highroad and moved up it to the grove
+gate through the bloody wreckage of the fray. The Louisianians were
+camping in the woods-pasture, Ferry's scouts in the grove, and the
+captive Federals were in the road between, shut in by heavy guards. At
+our appearance they crowded around us, greeting their undone commander
+with proud words of sympathy and love, and he thanked them as proudly
+and lovingly, though he could scarcely speak, more than to ask every
+moment for water. A number of our Sessions house group crowded out to
+meet us at the veranda steps; Camille; Harry Helm with his right hand
+bandaged; Cecile, attended by two or three Sessions children; and behind
+all Miss Harper exclaiming "Ah, my boy, you're a welcome sight--Oh! is
+that Captain Jewett!"
+
+Two or three bystanders helped us bear him upstairs, where, turning from
+the bedside, I pressed Camille with eager questions.
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry? he's unhurt--and so is Mr. Gholson! Mr. Gholson's
+gone to Franklin for doctors; Lieutenant Ferry sent him; he's been
+sending everybody everywhere faster than anybody else could think of
+anything!"
+
+I asked where Ferry was now. Her eyes refilled--they were red from
+earlier distresses--and she motioned across the hall: "The captain of
+the Louisianians, you know, has sent for him!"
+
+"Yes," I said, "the Captain's hit hard. I saw him when he was struck."
+
+"Oh, Dick! then you were at the very front!"
+
+"Did you think I was at the rear?"
+
+She looked down. "I couldn't help hoping it."
+
+"Then you were thinking of me."
+
+"I prayed for you."
+
+Such news seemed but ill-gotten gains, to come before I had gathered
+courage to inquire after Charlotte Oliver. "Wh'--where is--where are
+the others?"
+
+"They're all about the house, tending the wounded; Mrs. Sessions is with
+the Squire, of course,--dear, brave old gentleman! we thought he was
+killed, but Charlotte found the ball had glanced."
+
+I asked if it was Oliver who shot him, and she nodded. "It was down at
+the front door; the Squire said he'd shoot him if he shot Charlotte, and
+Charlotte declared she'd shoot him if he shot the Squire, and all at
+once he shot at her and struck him."
+
+"Who was it that screamed; was it she?"
+
+My informant's head drooped low and she murmured, "It was I."
+
+"Then _you_ were at the front."
+
+"Did you think I was at the rear?"
+
+I fear I answered evasively. I added that I must go to Lieutenant Ferry,
+and started toward the door, but she touched my arm. "Oh, Dick, you
+should have heard him praise you to her!--and when he said you had
+chased Captain Jewett and was missing, she cried; but now I'll tell her
+you're here." She started away but returned. "Oh, Dick, isn't it
+wonderful how we're always victorious! why don't those poor Yankees give
+up the struggle? they must see that God is on our side!"
+
+As she left me, Ned Ferry came out with a sad face, but smiled gladly on
+me and caught me fondly by the arm. On hearing my brief report he
+saddened more than ever, and when I said I had promised Jewett he should
+hand his sword to none but him, "Oh!"--he smiled tenderly--"I don't want
+to refuse it; go in and hang it at the head of his bed as he would do in
+his own tent; I'll wait here."
+
+I pointed to the door he had softly closed behind him: "How is it in
+there?"
+
+"Ah, Richard, in there the war is all over."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"So called."
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+"SAYS QUINN, S'E"
+
+Lieutenant Helm came out as I went in, and I paused an instant to ask
+him in fierce suspicion if he had bandaged his hand himself. "No," he
+whispered, "Miss Camille." It was a lie, but I did not learn that until
+months after. "Come downstairs as soon as you can," he added, "there's a
+hot supper down there; first come first served." We parted.
+
+I found Miss Harper fanning the wounded giant and bathing his brows,
+and my smiles were ample explanation of my act as I hung the sword up.
+Then I brought in my leader. "Captain Jewett," he said after a nearly
+silent exchange of greetings, "I wish we had you uninjured."
+
+"Ah, no, Lieutenant, this is bad enough. Lieutenant, there is one
+matter--"
+
+"Yes, Captain, what is that?"
+
+"The villain who set those fires--you know who he is, I hope."
+
+"Yes, Captain, I know."
+
+"He didn't begin that until after he left me. I had some private reasons
+for not killing him when I might have done it."
+
+"Yes, Captain, I know that, too."
+
+"Yet if I had caught him again I would have strung him up to the first
+limb."
+
+"I have sent some picked men to catch him if they can," said Ferry, and
+the racked sufferer lifted a hand in approval. Camille came to her aunt
+and whispered "Mr. Gholson with two doctors." The wounded captive
+heard her.
+
+"Lieutenant," he panted, "I hope you'll--do me the favor--to let my turn
+with those gentlemen--come last,--after my boys,--will you?"
+
+"Ah! Captain, even our boys wouldn't allow that; no, here's a doctor,
+now."
+
+I went down to the supper-table. Camille was there, dispensing its
+promiscuous hospitality to men who ate like pigs. I would as leave have
+found her behind a French-market coffee-stand. Harry Helm, nursing his
+bandaged hand, was lolling back from the board and quizzing her with
+compliments while she cut up his food. A fellow in the chair next mine
+said he had seen me with Ferry when we joined the Louisianians' charge.
+"Your aide-de-camp friend over yonder's a-gitt'n' lots o' sweetenin'
+with his grub; well, he deserves it."
+
+I asked how he deserved it. "Why, we wouldn't 'a' got here in time if he
+hadn't 'a' met-up with us. That man Gholson, he's another good one."
+
+The latter remark seemed to me a feeler, and I ignored it, and inquired
+how Lieutenant Helm had got that furlough. (Furlough was our slang for a
+light wound.) "Oh, he got it mighty fair! Did you see that Yankee
+lieutenant with the big sabre-cut on his shoulder? Well, your friend
+yonder gave him that--and got the Yankee's pistol-shot in his hand. But
+that saved Gholson's life, for that shot was aimed to give Gholson a
+furlough to kingdom-come. Are they kinfolks?"
+
+I mumbled that they were not even friends. "Well, now, I suspicioned
+that,--when I first see 'em meet at the head of our column! But the
+aide-de-camp he took it so good-natured that, thinks I,--"
+
+Another of Ferry's men, seated opposite, swallowed hurriedly, and
+covertly put in--"Y' ought to hear what Quinn said to Gholson just now
+as they met-up out here in the hall. Quinn thought they were alone. Says
+Quinn, as cold as a fish, s's'e 'Mr. Gholson,' s'e, 'you're not a
+coward, sir, and that's why I'm curious to ask you a question,' s'e. And
+says Gholson, just as cold, s'e 'I'm prepared, Lieutenant Quinn, to
+answer it.' And says Quinn, s'e 'Why was it, that when Harry Helm struck
+that blow which saved your life, and which you knew was meant to save
+it, and you seen his sword shot out of his hand and three or four
+Yankees makin' a dead set to kill him, and nothin' else in any
+particular danger at all, why was it, Mr. Gholson, that you never turned
+a hand nor an eye to save him?'"
+
+"Great Scott! wha'd Gholson say?"
+
+"Gholson, s'e, 'I done as I done, sir, from my highest sense o' duty.
+This ain't Lieutenant Helm's own little private war, Lieutenant Quinn,
+nor mine, nor yours.'"
+
+"Jo'! that to Quinn! wha'd Quinn answer?"
+
+"Why, with that Quinn popped them big glass eyes o' his'n till the
+whites showed clear round the blue, and s'e 'I know it better than you
+do; that's just what it suited you to forget. Oh! I'd already seen
+through you in one flash, you sneak. It's good for you you're not in my
+command; I'd lift you to a higher sense of whose war this is, damn you,
+if I had to hang you up by the thumbs.' With that he started right on
+by, Gholson a-keepin' his face to him as he passed, when Ned Ferry
+and--her--came out o' the parlor, and Ned turned out on the rear gallery
+with Quinn while she sort o' smiled at Gholson to come to her and sent
+him off on some business or other. George! I never seen her so
+beautiful."
+
+Thereupon occurred a brief exchange of comments which seemed to me to
+carry by implication as fine a praise as could possibly come from two
+rough fellows of the camp. Speaking the names of Ferry and Charlotte in
+undertone, of course, but with the unrestraint of soldiers, they said
+their say without a shadow of inuendo in word or smile. Her presence,
+they agreed, always made them feel as though something out of the common
+"was bound to happen pretty quick," while his, they said, assured them
+that "whatever did happen would happen right." I turned with a frown as
+Harry laughed irrelevantly, and saw Camille and him smiling at me with
+childish playfulness. Then suddenly their smile changed and went beyond
+me, two or three men softly said "Smith!" and I was out of my chair and
+standing when Charlotte Oliver, in a low voice, tenderly accosted me.
+
+"Oh, Richard Thorndyke Smith!--alive and well! Lieutenant Ferry wants
+you; he has just gone to his camp-fire."
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+A HORSE! A HORSE!
+
+Night had fully come. A few bivouac fires burned low in the grove, and
+at one of them near the grove gate I found our young commander. On a
+bench made of a fence-rail and two forked stakes he sat between Quinn
+and the first-lieutenant of the Louisianians. The doctor whom I had seen
+before sat humped on his horse, facing the three young men and making
+clumsy excuses to Ferry for leaving. The other physician would stay for
+some time yet, he said, and he, himself, was leaving his instruments,
+such as they were, and would return in the morning. "Fact is, my son's a
+surgeon, and he taken all my best instruments with _him._"
+
+"When; where is he?" eagerly asked Quinn, seeing Ferry was not going to
+ask.
+
+"My son? Oh, he's in Virginia, with General Lee."
+
+"Hell!" grunted Quinn, but the doctor pretended to listen to Ferry.
+
+"Ah, but we move south at day-light; the prisoners and wounded we send
+east, to Hazlehurst," said our leader, with a restraining hand on
+Quinn's knee. The other lieutenant made some inquiry of him, and the
+doctor was ignored, but stayed on, and as I stood waiting to be noticed
+I gathered a number of facts. The lightly injured would go in a
+plantation wagon; for the few gravely hurt there was the Harpers'
+ambulance, which had just arrived to take the ladies back to Squire
+Wall's, near Brookhaven, alas! instead of to Louisiana. For the ladies
+Charlotte's spring-wagon was to be appropriated, one of them riding
+beside it on horseback, and there was to be sent with them, besides
+Charlotte's old black driver, "a reliable man well mounted." Whoever
+that was to be it was not Harry, for he was to go south with a small
+guard, bearing the body of the Louisiana captain to his home between the
+hostile lines behind Port Hudson.
+
+"Good-night, gentlemen," said the doctor at last. As he passed into the
+darkness Quinn bent a mock frown upon his young superior.
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry, the next time I have to express my disgust please to
+keep your hand off my knee, will you?"
+
+Ferry's response was to lay it back again and there ensued a puerile
+tussle that put me in a precious pout, that I should be kept waiting by
+such things. But presently the three parted to resume their several
+cares, and the moment Ferry touched my arm to turn me back toward the
+house I was once more his worshipper. "Well!" he began, "you have now
+_two_ fine horses, eh?"
+
+"Oh, by Regulations, I suppose, I ought to turn one of them over to
+Major Harper. I wish it were to you, Lieutenant; I'd keep my own--he'll
+be all right in a day or two--and give you Captain Jewett's."
+
+"Well,--just for a day or two,--do that, while I lend my horse to a
+friend."
+
+I had already asked myself what was to become of Charlotte Oliver while
+the Harpers were preempting her little wagon, and now I took keen alarm.
+"Why, Lieutenant, I shall be glad! But why not lend Captain Jewett's
+horse and keep yours? Yours is right now the finest and freshest mount
+in the command."
+
+"Yes, 'tis for that I lend him."
+
+We went on in silence. Startled and distressed, I pondered. What was her
+new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this
+from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would
+know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like
+smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry
+with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now,
+unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse
+to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing himself to speed
+Beauty--oh, how different! What was the all-subordinating need?
+
+As we entered the hall I came to a conviction which lightened my heart;
+the all-subordinating need was--Oliver. I thought I could see why. The
+spring of all his devilish behavior lay in those relations to her for
+which I knew she counted herself chargeable through her past mistakes.
+Unless I guessed wrong her motives had risen. I believed her aim was
+now, at whatever self-hazard, to stop this hideous one-woman's war, and
+to speed her unfinished story to the fairest possible outcome for all
+God's creatures, however splendidly or miserably the "fool in it" should
+win or lose. We stopped and waited for Cecile and the remaining doctor,
+she with a lighted candle, to come down the stairs. From two rooms
+below, where most of the wounded lay, there came women's voices softly
+singing, and Charlotte's was among them. Their song was one listening to
+which many a boy in blue, many a lad in gray, has died: "Rock me to
+sleep, mother."
+
+Cecile and the doctor had come from the bedside of the Union captain,
+where Miss Harper remained. "I've done all I can," he said to Ferry; "we
+old chill-and-fever doctors wa'n't made for war-times; he may get well
+and he may not."
+
+"Smith," said Ferry, "go up and stay with him till further orders."
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+"BEAR A MESSAGE AND A TOKEN"
+
+Late in the night Gholson came to the Union captain's bedside for Miss
+Harper. Charlotte had sent him; the doctor had left word what to do if a
+certain patient's wound should re-open, and this had happened. The three
+had succeeded in stanching it, but Charlotte had prevailed upon Miss
+Harper to lie down, and the weary lady had, against all her intentions,
+fallen asleep. I was alone with the wounded captain. He did not really
+sleep, but under the weight of his narcotics drowsed, muttered, stirred,
+moaned, and now and then spoke out.
+
+Sitting in the open window, I marked the few red points of dying
+firelight grow fewer in the bivouac under the grove. Out there by the
+gate Ned Ferry slept. Fireflies blinked, and beyond the hazy fields rose
+the wasted moon, by the regal slowness of whose march I measured the
+passage of time as I had done two nights before. My vigil was a sad one,
+but, in health, in love, in the last of my teens and in the silent
+company of such a moon, my straying thoughts lingered most about the
+maiden who had "prayed for me." My hopes grew mightily. Yet with them
+grew my sense of need to redouble a lover's diligence. I resolved never
+again to leave great gaps in my line of circumvallation about the city
+of my siege, as I had done in the past--two days. I should move to the
+final assault, now, at the earliest favorable moment, and the next
+should see the rose-red flag of surrender rise on her temples; in war it
+is white, but in love it is red.
+
+First favorable moment; ah! but when would that be? Who was to convey
+the Harpers to Hazlehurst? Well, thank Heaven! not Harry. Scott Gholson?
+Gholson was due at headquarters. Poor Gholson! much rest for racked
+nerves had he found here; what with Ferry, and Harry, and the fight, and
+Quinn, I wondered he did not lie down and die under the pure suffocation
+of his "tchagrin." Even a crocodile, I believed, could suffer from
+chagrin, give him as many good causes as Gholson had accumulated. But
+no, the heaven of "Charlie Tolliver's" presence and commands--she seemed
+to have taken entire possession of him--lifted and sustained him above
+the clouds of all unkinder things.
+
+A faint stir at the threshold caught my ear and I discerned in the hall
+a young negro woman. The light of an unseen candle made her known at a
+glance; she had been here since the previous evening, as I knew, though
+it chanced that I had not seen her; Oliver's best wedding-gift, the
+slave maid whom I had seen with Charlotte in the curtained wagon at
+Gallatin. I stole out to her; she courtesied. "Miss Charlotte say ef you
+want he'p you fine me a-sett'n' on de step o' de stairs hafe-ways down."
+
+I inquired if she was leaving us. "She a-gitt'n' ready, suh; Misteh
+Goshen done gone to de sta-able to git de hosses." The girl suddenly
+seemed pleased with herself. "Mis' Charlotte would 'a' been done gone
+when de yethehs went--dem-ah two scouts what was sent ayfteh _him_--ef I
+hadn' spoke' up when I did."
+
+"Indeed! how was that?"
+
+"Why, I says, s' I, 'Mis' Charlotte, how we know he ain' gwine fo' to
+double on his huntehs? Betteh wait a spell, and den ef no word come back
+dat he a-doublin', you kin be sho' he done lit out fo' to jine de
+Yankees roun' Pote Hudsom.'"
+
+"Why did you tell her that? You want him caught; so do I; but you know
+she doesn't want to catch him, and you don't want her to. Neither do I.
+Nor neither do we want Lieutenant Ferry to catch him."
+
+"No, suh, dass so. But same time, while she no notion o' gitt'n' him
+cotch, she believe she dess djuty-bound to head-off his devilment. 'Tis
+dess like I heah' Mr. Goshen say to Miss Hahpeh, 'Dis ain't ow own
+li'l pri'--'"
+
+I waved her away and went back into the room; the Captain had called. He
+asked the time of night; I said it was well after two; he murmured, was
+quiet, and after a moment spoke my name. I answered, and he whispered
+"Coralie Rothvelt--she's here; I--recognized her voice--when they were
+singing. Did you know I knew her?"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"Daring game that was you fellows let her put up on us night before
+last, my boy,--and it hung by a thread. If our officers had only asked
+the old man his name--it would have been--a flash of light. If I had
+dreamed, when I saw--you and Ned Ferry--yesterday,--that Coralie
+Rothvelt was--Charlotte Oliver,--and could have known her then--as
+I've--learned to know her--to-day--from her--worst enemy,--you know,--"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"I should--have turned back, my boy." After a silence the hero said more
+to himself than to me "Ah, if my brother were here to-night--I
+might live!"
+
+Many days afterward I thought myself dull not to have guessed what that
+speech meant, but now I was too distressed by the change I saw coming
+over him to do any surmising. He began to say things entirely to
+himself. "Home!" he murmured; "sweet, sweet home!--my home! my
+country!--My God, my country, my home!--Smith,--you know what that is
+you're--wiping off my brow,--don't you?"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"I--I didn't want you to be--taken too unpleasantly by surprise--just at
+the--end. You know what's--happening,--don't you?"
+
+"Yes, Captain." As I wiped the brow again I heard the tread of two
+horses down in front of the house; they were Gholson's, and Ned Ferry's
+for Charlotte. "Captain, may I go and bring her--tell her what you say,
+and bring her?"
+
+"Do you think she'd come? She'd have gone to Ship Island if I had caught
+her."
+
+"I know she'll come."
+
+"I wish she would; she could 'bear a message and a token,' as the song
+says."
+
+She came. I met her outside the door, and for a moment I feared she
+would come no farther. "How can I, Richard! Oh, how can I?" she
+whispered; "this is my doing!" But presently she stood at the bedside
+calm and compassionate, in the dark dress and limp hat of two nights
+before. The dying man's eyes were lustrous with gratitude.
+
+"I have one or two things," he said, after a few words of greeting,
+"that I'd like to send home--to my mother--and my wife; some
+trifles--and a message or two; if I--if--if I--"
+
+"Will you let me take them?" Charlotte asked. I did not see or hear what
+they were; Gholson beckoned me into the hall. He did not whisper; there
+are some people, you know, who can never exercise enough
+self-suppression to whisper; he mumbled. He admitted the dying had some
+rights, but--he feared the delay might result unfortunately; wanted me
+to tell Charlotte so, and was sure I was ever so wrong to ask to have
+Ned Ferry awakened for the common incident of a prisoner's death; he
+would let him know the moment he awoke.
+
+When I came back into the room the captive had asked Charlotte to pray.
+"Tisn't that I'm--the least bit afraid," he was saying.
+
+"Oh, no," she responded, wiping his brow, "why should you be? Dying
+isn't nearly so fearful a thing as living. I'd rather, now, you'd pray
+for me; I'm such an unbeliever--in the beliefs, I mean, the beliefs the
+church people think we can't get on without. My religion is scarcely
+anything but longings and strivings"--she sadly smiled--"longings and
+strivings and hopes."
+
+"Yet you wouldn't--"
+
+"Part with it? Oh, not for the world beside!"
+
+"Neither would I--with mine." The soldier folded his hands in
+supplication. "Neither would I--though mine, O Lord--is only
+the--old-fashioned sort--for whose beliefs our fathers--used to kill one
+another; God have mercy--on them--and us."
+
+There was a great stillness. Against the bedside Charlotte had sunk to
+her knees, and under the broad brim of her Leghorn hat leaned her brow
+upon her folded hands. Thus, presently, she spoke again.
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+CHARLOTTE SINGS
+
+"I know, Captain," she said, "that we can't have longings, strivings, or
+hopes, without beliefs; beliefs are what they live on. I believe in
+being strong and sweet and true for the pure sake of being so; and yet
+more for the world's sake; and as much more again for God's sake as God
+is greater than his works. I believe in beauty and in joy. I believe
+they are the goal of all goodness and of all God's work and wish. As to
+resurrection, punishment, and reward, I can't see what my noblest choice
+has to do with them; they seem to me to be God's part of the matter;
+mine is to love perfect beauty and perfect joy, both in and infinitely
+beyond myself, with the desiring love with which I rejoice to believe
+God loves them, and to pity the lack of them with the loving pity with
+which God pities it. And above all I believe that no beauty and no joy
+can be perfect apart from a love that loves the whole world's joy better
+than any separate joy of any separate soul."
+
+"Thank you," was murmured from the pillow. Then, as Charlotte once more
+wiped the damp brow, the captive said, with much labor, "After that--war
+seems--an awful thing. I suppose it isn't half so much a crime--as it is
+a--penalty--for the crimes that bring it on. But anyhow--you
+know--being--" The bugle rang out the reveille.
+
+"Being a soldier," said Charlotte, "you want to die like one?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!--the best I can. I'd like to sit half up--and hold my
+sword--if there's--no objection. I've loved it so! It would almost be
+like holding--the hand that's far away. Of course, it isn't really
+necessary, but--it would be more like--dying--for my country."
+
+He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his
+hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing
+from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts
+had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled
+close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of
+Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly:
+"Dying--really?" He turned to his fellows--"Boys, Captain's dying."
+
+Every Northern eye was lifted to the window and I turned away.
+"Richard!" gently called Charlotte, and I saw the end was at hand; a new
+anguish was on the brow; yet the soldier was asking for a song; "a
+soldier's song, will you?"
+
+"Why, Captain," she replied, "you know, we don't sing the same words to
+our soldier-songs that you do--except in the hymns. Shall I sing 'Am I a
+soldier of the cross?'"
+
+He did not answer promptly; but when he did he said "Yes--sing that."
+
+She sang it. As the second stanza was begun we heard a responsive swell
+grow softly to fuller and fuller volume beneath the windows; the
+prisoners were singing. I heard an austere voice forbid it, but it rose
+straight on from strength to strength:
+
+"Sure I must fight if I would win,
+   Increase my courage, Lord.
+I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
+   Supported by thy word."
+
+The dying man lifted a hand and Charlotte ceased. He had not heard the
+muffled chorus of his followers below; or it may be that he had, and
+that the degree of liberty they seemed to be enjoying prompted him to
+seek the new favor he now asked. I did not catch his words, but
+Charlotte heard, and answered tenderly, yet with a thrill of pain so
+keen she could not conceal it even from him.
+
+"Oh! you wouldn't ask a rebel to sing that," she sighed, "would you?"
+
+He made no rejoinder except that his eyes were insistent. She wiped his
+temples. "I hate to refuse you."
+
+His gaze was grateful. She spoke again: "I suppose I oughtn't to mind
+it."
+
+Miss Harper came in, and Charlotte, taking her hand without a glance,
+told the Captain's hard request under her voice. Miss Harper, too, in
+her turn, gave a start of pain, but when the dying eyes and smile turned
+pleadingly to her she said, "Why, if you can, Charlotte, dear, but oh!
+how can you?"
+
+Charlotte addressed the wounded man: "Just a little bit of it, will that
+do?" and as he eagerly assented she added, to Miss Harper, "You know,
+dear, in its history it's no more theirs than ours."
+
+"No, not so much," said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and
+thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing:
+
+  "O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
+  What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"
+
+But guardedly as she began, the effect on the huddled crowd below was
+instant and electrical. They heard almost the first note; looking down
+anxiously, I saw the wonder and enthusiasm pass from man to man. They
+heard the first two lines in awed, ecstatic silence; but at the third,
+warily, first one, then three, then a dozen, then a score, bereft of
+arms, standard, and leader, little counting ever again to see freedom,
+flag, or home, they raised their voices, by the dawn's early light, in
+their song of songs.
+
+Our main body were out in the highway, just facing into column, and the
+effect on them I could not see. The prisoners' guards, though instantly
+ablaze with indignation, were so taken by surprise that for two or three
+seconds, with carbines at a ready, they--and even their sergeant in
+command--only darted fierce looks here and there and up at me. The
+prisoners must have been used to singing in ordered chorus, for one of
+them strode into their middle, and smiling sturdily at the maddened
+guard and me, led the song evenly. "No, sir!" he cried, as I made an
+angry sign for them to desist, "one verse through, if every damned fool
+of us dies for it--let the Captain hear it boys--sing!
+
+  "'The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air--'"
+
+Charlotte had ceased, in consternation not for the conditions without
+more than for those within. With the first strong swell of the song from
+below, the dying leader strove to sit upright and to lift his blade, but
+failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss
+Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching
+his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face
+untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into and over
+the strain.
+
+"Club that man over the head!" cried the sergeant of the guard, and one
+of his men swung a gun; but the Yankee sprang inside of its sweep,
+crying, "Sing her through, boys!" grappled his opponent, and hurled him
+back. In the same instant the sergeant called steadily, "Guard,
+ready--aim--"
+
+There sounded a clean slap of levelled carbines, yet from the prisoners
+came the continued song in its closing couplet:
+
+  "The star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave!--"
+
+and out of the midst of its swell the oaths and curses and defiant
+laughter of a dozen men crying, with tears in their eyes, "Shoot! shoot!
+why don't you shoot?"
+
+But the command to fire did not come; suddenly there was a drumming of
+hoofs, then their abrupt stoppage, and the voice of a vigilant commander
+called, "Attention!"
+
+With a few words to the sergeant, more brief than harsh, and while the
+indomitable singers pressed on to the very close of the stanza without a
+sign from him to desist, Ferry bade the subaltern resume his command,
+and turned toward me at the window. He lifted his sword and spoke in a
+lowered tone, the sullen guard stood to their arms, and every captive
+looked up for my reply.
+
+"Shall I come?" he inquired; but I shook my head.
+
+"What!--gone?" he asked again, and I nodded. He turned and trotted
+lightly after the departing column. I remember his pensive mien as he
+moved down the grove, and how a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above
+his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender
+mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and
+let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his
+place under the window and was beckoning for my attention.
+
+"Is she coming?" he called up, and Charlotte, at my side, spoke
+downward:
+
+"I shall be with you in a moment."
+
+While he waited the second lieutenant of the Louisianians came, and as
+guard and prisoners started away she came out upon the veranda steps.
+Across her knee, as she and Gholson galloped off by a road across
+fields, lay in a wrapping of corn-husks the huge sabre of the dead
+northerner.
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+HARRY LAUGHS
+
+The first hush of the deserted camp-ground was lost in the songs of
+returning birds. Captain Jewett, his majestic length blanket-bound from
+brow to heel as trimly as a bale, had been laid under ground, and the
+Harpers stood in prayer at the grave's head and foot with hats on for
+their journey. The burial squad, turned guard of honor to the dead
+captain of the Louisianians, were riding away on either side of a light
+wagon that bore his mortal part. I, after all, was to be the Harpers'
+guardian on their way.
+
+Day widened into its first perfection as we moved down the highroad
+toward a near fork whose right was to lead Harry and his solemn cortege
+southward, while the left should be our eastward course. Camille and I
+rode horseback, side by side, with no one near enough to smile at my
+sentimental laudations of the morning's splendors, or at her for
+repaying my eloquence with looks so full of tender worship, personal
+acceptance and self-bestowal, that to tell of them here would make as
+poor a show as to lift a sea-flower out of the sea; they call for
+piccolo notes and I am no musician.
+
+The familiar little leather-curtained wagon was just ahead of us,
+bearing the other three Harpers, the old negro driver and--to complete
+its overloading--his daughter, Charlotte's dark maid. Beside the wheels
+ambled and babbled Harry Helm. At the bridge he fell back to us and
+found us talking of Charlotte. Camille was telling me how well Charlotte
+knew the region south of us, and how her plan was to dine at mid-day
+with such a friend and to pass the night with such another; but the
+moment Harry came up she began to upbraid him in her mellowest
+flute-notes for not telling us that he had got his wound in saving--
+
+"Now, you ladies--" cried the teased aide-de-camp, "I--I didn't save
+Gholson's life! I didn't try to save it! I only tried to split a
+Yankee's head and didn't even do that! Dick Smith, if you tell anybody
+else that I saved--Well, who did, then? Good Lordy! if I'd known that to
+save a man's life would make all this fuss I wouldn't 'a' done it! Why,
+Quinn and I had to sit and listen to Ned Ferry a solid half-hour last
+night, telling us the decent things he'd known Gholson to do, and the
+allowances we'd ought to make for a man with Gholson's sort of a
+conscience! And then, to cap--to clap--to clap the ki'--to cap--the
+_climax_--consound that word, I never did know what it meant--to clap
+the climax, Ned sends for Gholson and gets Quinn to speak to him
+civilly--aw, haw, haw!--Quinn showing all the time how he hated the job,
+like a cat when you make him jump over a stick! And then he led us on,
+with just a word here and there, until we all agreed as smooth as glass,
+that all Quinn had said was my fault, and all I had done was Gholson's
+fault, and all Gholson had said or done or left undone was our fault,
+and the rest was partly Ned's fault, but mostly accident."
+
+Camille declared she did not and would not believe there had been any
+fault with any one, anywhere, and especially with Mr. Gholson, and I
+liked Lieutenant Helm less than ever, noticing anew the unaccountable
+freedom with which Camille seemed to think herself entitled to rebuke
+him. "Oh, I'm in your power," he cried to her, "and I'll call him a
+spotless giraffe if you want me to! that's what he is; I've always
+thought so!" The spring-wagon was taking the left fork and he cantered
+ahead to begin his good-byes there and save her for the last. When he
+made his adieu to her he said, "Won't you let Mr. Smith halt here with
+me a few moments? I want to speak of one or two matters that--"
+
+She resigned me almost with scorn; which privately amused me, and, I
+felt sure, hoodwinked the aide-de-camp.
+
+"Say, Dick!" he began, as she moved away, "look here, I'm going to tell
+you something; Ned Ferry's in love with Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"Yes, I do, mean it! Smith, Ned's a grand fellow. I'm glad I came here
+yesterday."
+
+"Yes, you've secured a furlough."
+
+"Oh, this thing, yes; don't you wish you had it! No, I'm glad I came,
+for what I've learned. I'm glad for what Ned Ferry has taught me a man
+can do, and keep from doing, when he's got the upper hold of himself.
+And I'm glad for what she--you know who--by George! any man would know
+who ever saw her, for she draws every man who comes within her range, as
+naturally as a rose draws a bee. I'm glad for what she has taught me a
+woman can _be_, and can keep from being, so long as she knows there's
+one real man to live up to! just _up to_, mind you, I don't even say to
+live _for_."
+
+I stared with surprise. Was this the trivial Harry talking? Fact is, the
+pair we were talking about had by some psychical magic rarified the
+atmosphere for all of us until half our notes were above our
+normal pitch.
+
+"Do you mean she loves him; what sign of such a thing did she show
+yesterday or last evening?"
+
+"Not a sign of a sign! And yet I'll swear it! Do you know where she's
+gone?"
+
+"To-day? I think I do."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Well, Lieutenant, if I were she, _I_ should go straight into the Yankee
+lines behind Port Hudson. She's got Jewett's messages and his sword, and
+the Yank's won't know her as a Confederate any better than they ever
+did; for it's only these men whom we've captured who have found out
+she's Charlotte Oliver, or that she had any knowing part in General
+Austin's ruse."
+
+"If Oliver doesn't tell," said Harry, lifting his bad hand in pain.
+
+"He will not dare! If she can only get her word in first and tell them,
+herself, that he's Charlotte Oliver's husband and has just led the
+finest company of Federal scouts in the two States to destruction--"
+
+"Hi! that ought to cook his dough!--with her face--and her voice!"
+
+"Yes," I responded, "--and his breath."
+
+"And why do you think she wants to do this?" asked Harry.
+
+"She doesn't want to do it; but she feels she must, knowing that every
+blow he strikes from now on is struck on her account. I believe she's
+gone to warn the Yankees that his whole animus is personal revenge and
+that he will sacrifice anything or anybody, any principle or pledge or
+cause, at any moment, to wreak that private vengeance, in whole or
+in part."
+
+"Dick Smith, yes! But don't you see, besides, what she _does_ want? Why,
+she wants to keep Oliver and Ferry apart until somebody else for whom
+she doesn't care as she cares for Ned, say you, or I, or--or--"
+
+"Gholson?"
+
+"Gholson, no! she can't trust Gholson, Gholson's conscience is too
+vindictive; that's why she's keeping him with her as long as she can.
+No, but until some of us, I say, can give Oliver a thousand times better
+than he ought ever to get--except for her sake--"
+
+"Yes, you mean a soldier's clean death; and what you want of me is for
+me to say that I, for one, will lose no honest chance to give it to him,
+isn't it?"
+
+"What I want of you, Smith, is to tell you that _I_ shall lose no such
+chance."
+
+"Well, neither shall I."
+
+"Bully for you, Dick; bully boy with the glass eye! You see, you're one
+of only half a dozen or so that know Oliver when they see him; so Ned
+will soon be sending you after him. Ned's got a conscience, too, you
+know, as squirmy as Gholson's. Oh, Lord! yes, you don't often _see_ it,
+but it's as big and hard as a conscript's ague-cake." The Lieutenant
+gathered his rein; "Smith, I want Ned and her to get one another;
+that's me!"
+
+I was tempted to say it was me, too, but I forbore and only said it was
+I.
+
+"All the same," said Harry, "I'm sorry for the little girl!"
+
+"Little girl?"
+
+"Oh, come, now, you know!" He leaned to me and whispered, "Miss Cecile!"
+
+"Lieutenant," I replied, with a flush, realizing what I owed to the
+family as a prospective member of it, "you're mistaking a little
+patriotic ardor--"
+
+"Pat who--oh? I tell you, my covey,--and of course, you understand, I
+wouldn't breathe it any further--"
+
+"I'd rather you would not."
+
+"Phew-ew! I don't know why in the devil _you'd_ rather I would not,
+but--Smith,--she's so dead-gone in love with Ned Ferry, that if she
+doesn't get him--I George! it'll e'en a'most kill her!"
+
+I guffawed in derision. "And she didn't even have to tell you so! She
+can't even hide its deadly intensity from the casual bystander! haw!
+haw! haw! And it's all the outcome of a _three-days acquaintance_! It
+beats Doctor Swiftgrow's Mustache Invigor'--aw, haw! haw!" "Oh, you
+think so? Pity you couldn't get a few barrels of it--aw, haw! haw!" said
+Harry, and my laughter left off where his began. But, some way hurting
+his hand, he, too, stopped short. I drew my horse back.
+
+"Is that all you've noticed?" I smilingly inquired. "Isn't anybody else
+mortally in love with anybody else? You can't make me believe that's all
+you know!"
+
+"Well, then, I sha'n't try. I do know one thing more; heard it
+yesterday. Like to hear it?"
+
+"Like! Why, I'm just that dead-gone with curiosity that if I don't hear
+it it'll e'en a'most kill me--aw, haw! haw! haw!"
+
+"Well, I'm tired saving people's lives, but we won't count this one; you
+say you want to hear it--I can't give you all of it but it begins:
+
+"'Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair!
+  O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!'--
+
+"Haw! haw! haw! Good-bye, Smith,--aw, haw! haw! haw!--and it's all the
+outcome of a three-days acquaintance!--haw! haw! haw!--Oh,
+say!--Smith!"--I was leaving him--"that's right, go back and begin
+over!--'Return! return!'--aw, haw! haw! haw!"
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+UNIMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIAL
+
+On the second night after that morning of frantic mortification I was
+riding at Ned Ferry's side, in Louisiana. The camp of the brigade was a
+few miles behind us. Somewhere in front of us, fireless and close hid,
+lay our company of scouts, ahead of whose march he had pushed the day
+before to confer with the General, and we were now on our way to rejoin
+them. Under our horses' feet was that old Plank-road which every
+"buttermilk ranger" must remember--whether dead or not, I am tempted to
+say,--who rode under either flag in the Felicianas in '63 and '64.
+
+Late in the evening of the day on which I had conducted the Harpers to
+Squire Wall's I had received a despatch ordering me to board the next
+morning's train at Brookhaven with my horse. On it I should find a
+number of cases of those shoes I had seen at Hazlehurst. At Tangipahoa I
+was to transfer them to one or two army-wagons which would by that time
+have reached there, and bring them across to Clinton, where a guard
+would meet and join me to conduct the wagons to camp. And thus I had
+done, bearing with me a sad vision of dear dark Miss Harper fluttering
+her handkerchief above her three nieces' heads, one of whom refrained
+until the opportunity had all but gone, to wave good-bye to the visibly
+wretched author of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes." My
+lucky Cricket had gone three nights and two whole days with no harness
+but his halter, and to-night, beside the Yankee's horse, that still bore
+Ned Ferry, he was as good as new. My leader and I talked of Charlotte.
+In the middle of this day's forenoon Gholson had come into camp
+reporting at the General's tent the long ride she had made on Monday; as
+good a fifty miles as Ferry's own. We called it, now, Ferry and I, a
+most clever achievement for a woman. "Many women," he said, "know how to
+ride, but she knows how to march."
+
+"I think you must have taught her," I responded, and he enjoyed his
+inability to deny it. So I ventured farther and said she seemed to me
+actually to have reached, in the few days since I had first seen her, a
+finer spiritual stature.
+
+"She?" he asked; "ah! she is of the kind that must grow or die. Yes, you
+may be right; but in that time she has kept me so occupied growing,
+myself, that I did not notice she was doing the same. But also, I think,
+the eyes with which we look at her have grown."
+
+"She has outgrown this work," I insisted.
+
+"Those letters--to the newspapers?"
+
+"No, this other; this work which she has to do by craft and wiles and
+disguises. Lieutenant, I don't believe she can go on doing that now with
+her past skill, since life has become to her a nobler story than it
+promised to be."
+
+My companion lifted higher in the saddle with delight. Then soberly he
+said, "We have got to lose her." I turned inquiringly and he continued:
+"She has done me the honor to tell me--Miss Harper and me--that if she
+succeeds in what she is now trying to do--you know?--"
+
+"I think I do. It's to prevent Oliver from making himself useful to the
+enemy, isn't it?"
+
+"Well--like that; and she says if she comes out all right she will leave
+us; yes, for the hospital service."
+
+"Hosp'--Oh--oh! gangrene, typhoid, lock-jaw, itch, small-pox! Isn't she
+deep enough in the hospital service already, with her quinine dolls?"
+
+"Ah! but she cannot continue to play dolls that way; she must find
+something else. I see you have my temptation; yes, the desire to see her
+always doing something splendid. That is not 'real life,' as you call
+it. And besides, was not that you said one time to me 'No splendor
+shines at last so far as a hidden splendor'?"
+
+"No, sir! I suppose it's true, but I never want to see her splendor
+shining through pock-marks." The reply won from him a gesture of
+approval, and this gave me a reckless tongue. "Why, if I were you,
+Lieutenant, she simply shouldn't go! Good Heaven! isn't she far enough
+away at the nearest? How can you tamely--no, I don't mean tamely,
+but--how can you _endure_ to let this matter drift--how can you
+endure it?"
+
+At the beginning of my question he straightened exactly as I had seen
+him do in the middle of the lane when our recoiled column was
+staggering; but as my extravagance flamed up he quieted rebukingly, and
+with a quieter smile than ever asked "Is that a soldier's question?
+Smith, is there not something wrong with you to-night?"
+
+"There always is," I replied.
+
+"No, but to-night I think you are taking that 'lower fork' you talk
+sometimes about. Of course, if you don't want to tell--"
+
+"_May_ I tell you?"
+
+"Ah, certainly! Is it that little Harper girl?"
+
+I nodded, all choked up. When I could speak I had to drop the words by
+ones and twos, and did not so much as say them as let them bleed from my
+lips; and never while I live shall I forget the sweet, grave, perfect
+sympathy with which my friend listened and led me on, and listened and
+led me on. I said I had never believed in love at first sight until now
+when it had come upon me to darken and embitter my life henceforth.
+
+He replied that certainly love sometimes _germinated_ at first sight,
+and I interrupted greedily that that was all I claimed--except that love
+could also, at times, _grow to maturity_ with amazing speed, a speed I
+never could have credited previous to these last four days. And he
+admitted as much, but thought time only could prove such love; whereto I
+rejoined that that was what she had answered.
+
+He glanced at me suddenly, then smoothed his horse's mane, and said,
+gently, "That means you have declared yourself to her?"
+
+I confessed I had, and told him how, on our journey to Squire Wall's,
+being stung to desperation by the infantile way in which she had drooled
+out to others what my love had sacredly confided to her alone, I had
+abruptly confronted her with the fact, and in the ensuing debate,
+carried away by the torrent of my emotions, had offered her my love, for
+life and all.
+
+"And she--ah, yes. I see; and I see, too, that in all she ever said or
+did or seemed, before, she never made herself such a treasure to be
+longed for and fought and lived for as in the way in which she--"
+He paused.
+
+"Refused me! Oh, it's so; it's so! Ah! if you could have witnessed her
+dignity, her wisdom, her grace, her compassionate immovableness, you'd
+never think of her as the little Harper girl again. She said that if the
+unpremeditated, headlong way in which I had told my passion were my only
+mistake, and if it were only for my sake, she would not, if she could,
+answer favorably, and that I, myself, at last, would not have a girl who
+would have a man who would offer his love in that way, and that she
+would not have a man who would have a girl who would have a man who
+should offer his love in that way."
+
+I call it one of the sweetest kindnesses ever done me, that Ned Ferry
+heard me to the end of that speech and did not smile. Instead he asked
+"Did she say that as if a'--as if--amused?"
+
+"No, Lieutenant, she nearly cried. Oh, I wish we were on some dangerous
+errand to-night, instead of just camp and bed!"
+
+"Well, that's all right, Richard; we are."
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+"CAN I GET THERE BY CANDLE-LIGHT?"
+
+After a few minutes we quitted the public way by an obscure path in the
+woods on our right. When we had followed this for two or three miles we
+turned to the left again and pressed as softly as we could into a low
+tangled ground where the air seemed stagnant and mosquitoes stung
+savagely. We wiped away the perspiration in streams. I pushed forward to
+Ferry's side and whispered my belief that at last we were to see rain.
+
+"Yes," he said, "and with thunder and lightning; just what we want
+to-night."
+
+I asked why. "Oh, they hate our thunder-storms, those Yankee patrols."
+
+Presently we were in a very dark road, and at a point where it dropped
+suddenly between steep sides we halted in black shadow. A gleam of pale
+sand, a whisper of deep flowing waters, and a farther glimmer of more
+sands beyond them challenged our advance. We had come to a "grapevine
+ferry." The scow was on the other side, the water too shoal for the
+horses to swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the
+blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering,
+long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little
+sinner the screech-owl. Ferry murmured to me to answer it and I sent the
+same faint horror-stricken tremolo back. Again it came to us, from not
+farther than one might toss his cap, and I followed Ferry down to the
+water's edge. The grapevine guy swayed at our side, we heard the scow
+slide from the sands, and in a few moments, moved by two videttes, it
+touched our shore. Soon we were across, the two videttes riding with us,
+and beyond a sharp rise, in an old opening made by the swoop of a
+hurricane, we entered the silent unlighted bivouac of Ferry's scouts.
+Ferry got down and sat on the earth talking with Quinn, while the
+sergeants quietly roused the sleepers to horse.
+
+Now we marched, and when we had gone a mile or so Ned Ferry turned
+aside, taking with him only Sergeant Jim, Kendall, another private, and
+me. We went at an alert walk single-file for the better part of an hour
+and stopped at length in a narrow untilled "deadening." Beyond it at our
+left a faint redness shone just above the tree-tops. At our right, in
+the northwest, a similar glow was ruddier, the heavens being darker
+there except when once or twice they paled with silent lightnings.
+Sergeant Jim went forward alone and on foot, and presently was back
+again, whispering to Ferry and remounting.
+
+Ferry led Kendall and me into the woods, the other two remaining. We
+found rising ground, and had ridden but a few minutes when from its
+crest we looked upon a startling sight. In front of us was a stretch of
+specially well farmed land. Our woods swept round it on both sides,
+crossed a highway, and gradually closed in again so as to terminate the
+opening about half a mile away. Always the same crops, bottom cause of
+the war: from us to the road an admirable planting of cotton, and from
+there to the farther woods as goodly a show of thick corn. The whole
+acreage swept downward to that terminus, at the same time sinking inward
+from the two sides. On the highway shone the lighted rear window of a
+roadside "store," and down the two sides of the whole tract stretched
+the hundred tent-fires of two brigade camps of the enemy's cavalry.
+Their new, white canvases were pitched in long, even alleys following
+the borders of the wood, from which the brush had been cut away far
+enough for half of them to stand under the trees. The men had quieted
+down to sleep, but at one tent very near us a group of regimental
+officers sat in the light of a torch-basket, and by them were planted
+their colors. A quartet of capital voices were singing, and one who
+joined the chorus, standing by the flag, absently yet caressingly spread
+it at such breadth that we easily read on it the name of the command.
+Let me leave that out.
+
+As they sang, and as we sat in our saddles behind the low fence that ran
+quite round the opening, Ferry turned from looking across into the
+lighted window on the road and handed me his field-glass. "How many
+candles do you see in there?"
+
+I saw two. "Yes," he said, dismounting and motioning me to do the same.
+Kendall took our bridles. Leaving him with the animals we went over the
+fence, through the cotton, across the road at a point terribly near the
+lighted and guarded shop, and on down the field of corn, to and over its
+farthest fence; stooping, gliding, halting, crouching, in the
+cotton-rows and corn-rows; taking every posture two upright gentlemen
+would rather not take; while nevertheless I swelled with pride, to be
+alone at the side--or even at the heels--of one who, for all this
+apparent skulking and grovelling, and in despite of all the hidden
+drawings of his passion for a fair woman at this hour somewhere in
+peril, kept his straight course in lion-hearted pursuit of his duty (as
+he saw it) to a whole world of loves and lovers, martyrs and fighters,
+hosts of whom had as good a right to their heart's desire as I to mine
+or he to his; and I remembered Charlotte Oliver saying, on her knees, "I
+believe no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart from a love that loves
+the whole world's joy better than any separate joy of any
+separate soul."
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+"YES, AND BACK AGAIN"
+
+One matter of surprise to me was that this whole property had escaped
+molestation. I wondered who could be so favored by the enemy and yet be
+so devoted to our cause as to signal us from his window with their
+sentinels at his doors; and as we passed beyond the cornfield's farther
+fence I ventured to ask Ferry.
+
+"Aaron Goldschmidt," he whispered, as we descended into a dry, tangled
+swamp. In the depths of this wild, beside a roofed pen of logs stored
+with half a dozen bales of cotton, we were presently in the company of a
+very small man who tossed a hand in token of great amusement.
+
+"Hello, Ned!" he whispered in antic irony; "what an accident is dat,
+meeding so! Whoever is expecting someding like dis!"
+
+"Well, I hope nobody, Isidore; I hardly expected it myself, your father
+set those candles so close the one behind the other."
+
+Isidore doubled with mirth and as suddenly straightened. "Your horse is
+here since yesterday. _She_ left him--by my father. She didn't t'ink t'e
+Yankees is going to push away out here to-night. But he is a pusher,
+t'at Grierson! You want him to-night, t'at horse? He is here by me, but
+I t'ink you best not take him, hmm? To cross t'e creek and go round t'e
+ot'er way take you more as all night; and to go back t'is same way you
+come, even if I wrap him up in piece paper you haven't got a lawch
+insite pocket you can carry him?" He laughed silently and the next
+instant was more in earnest than ever.
+
+"_She_ is in a tight place! She hires my mother's pony to ride in to
+headquarters." He called them hatekvartuss, but we need not. "I t'ink
+she is not a prisoner--_unless_--she wants to come back." He doubled
+again. "Anyhow, I wish you can see her to-night; she got another
+doll-baby for t'e gildren, and she give you waluable informations by de
+hatfull.... Find her? I tell you how you find her in finfty-nine
+minutes--vedder permitting, t'at is."
+
+The last phrase was fitted to a listening pose, and the first mutter of
+the pending thunder-storm came out of the northwest. Then Isidore
+hastened through the practical details of his proposition. Ferry drew a
+breath of enthusiasm. "Can I have my horse, bridled and saddled, in
+three minutes?"
+
+"I pring um in two!" said Isidore, and vanished. Ferry turned with an
+overmastering joy in every note of his whispered utterance. "After all!"
+he said, and I could have thrown my arms around him in pure delight to
+hear duty and heart's desire striking twelve together.
+
+"Smith," he asked, "can you start back without me? Then go at once; I
+shall overtake you on my horse."
+
+I stole through the cornfield safely; the frequent lightnings were still
+so well below the zenith as to hide me in a broad confusion of monstrous
+shadows. But when I came to cross the road no crouching or gliding would
+do. I must go erect and only at the speed of some ordinary official
+errand. So I did, at a point between two opposite fence-gaps, closely
+after an electric gleam, and I was rejoicing in the thick darkness that
+followed, when all at once the whole landscape shone like day and I
+stood in the middle of the road, in point-blank view of a small squad, a
+"visiting patrol". They were trotting toward me in the highway, hardly a
+hundred yards off. As the darkness came again and the thunder crashed
+like falling timbers, I started into the cotton-field at an easy
+double-quick. The hoofs of one horse quickened to a gallop. A strong
+wind swept over, big rain-drops tapped me on the shoulder and pattered
+on the cotton-plants, the sound of the horse's galloping ceased as he
+turned after me in the soft field, and presently came the quiet call
+"Halt, there, you on foot." I went faster. I knew by my pursuer's
+coming alone that he did not take me for a Confederate, and that the
+worst I should get, to begin with, would be the flat of his sabre.
+Shrewdly loading my tongue with that hard northern _r_ which I hated
+more than all unrighteousness, I called back "Oh, I'm under orders! go
+halt some fool who's got time to halt!"
+
+I obliqued as if bound for the headquarters fire where we had seen the
+singers, the lightning branched over the black sky like tree-roots, the
+thunder crashed and pounded again, the wind stopped in mid-career, and
+the rain came straight down in sheets. "Halt!" yelled the horseman. He
+lifted his blade, but I darted aside and doubled, and as he whirled
+around after me, another rider, meeting him and reining in at such close
+quarters that the mud flew over all three of us, lifted his hand
+and said--
+
+"He is right, sergeant, he is carrying out my orders." Ferry's black
+silk handkerchief about his neck covered his Confederate bars of rank,
+and the Federal may or may not have noted the absence of
+shoulder-straps; our arms remained undrawn; and so the sergeant,
+catching a breath or two of disconcertion, caught nothing else. While
+Ferry spoke on for another instant I showed my heels; then he left the
+dripping Yankee mouthing an angry question and loped after me, and over
+the low fence went the two of us almost together.
+
+Kendall was not there, the Federal camp-makers had tardily repaired
+their blunder by posting guards; but these were not looking for their
+enemies from the side of their own camp, and as we cleared the fence in
+the full blaze of a lightning flash, only two or three wild shots sang
+after us. In the black downpour Ferry reached me an invisible hand. I
+leapt astride his horse's croup, and trusting the good beast to pick his
+way among the trees himself, we sped away. Soon we came upon our three
+men waiting with the horses, and no great while afterward the five of us
+rejoined our command. The storm lulled to mild glimmerings and a gentle
+shower, and the whole company, in one long single file, began to sweep
+hurriedly, stealthily, and on a wide circuit of obscurest byways, deeper
+than ever into the enemy's lines.
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+CHARLOTTE IN THE TENTS OF THE FOE
+
+From certain rank signs of bad management in the Federal camp one could
+easily guess that our circuit was designed to bring us around to its
+rear. That a colonel's tent--the one where the singers were--was not
+where the colonel's tent belonged was a trifle, but the slovenliness
+with which the forest borders of the camp were guarded was a graver
+matter. Evidently those troops were at least momentarily in unworthy
+hands, and I was so remarking to Kendall when a murmured command came
+back from Ferry, to tell Dick Smith to stop that whispering. I was
+sorry, for I wanted to add that I knew we were not going to attack the
+camp itself. That was on Wednesday night. Charlotte and Gholson had
+made their ride of fifty miles on Monday. The friends with whom she
+stopped at nightfall contrived to cram him into their crowded soldiers'
+room, and he had given the whole company of his room-mates, as they sat
+up in their beds, a full account of the fight at Sessions's, Charlotte's
+care of the sick and dying, and the singing, by her and the blue-coats,
+of their battle-song. Next morning Charlotte, without Gholson--who
+turned off to camp--rode on to Goldschmidt's store, just beyond which
+there was then still a Confederate picket. Here she hired Mrs.
+Goldschmidt's pony, rode to the picket, and presented the Coralie
+Rothvelt pass.
+
+"Miss Coralie Rothvelt; yes, all right," said the officer, "the men that
+rode with you this morning told me all about you." He went with her as
+far as his videttes, and thence she rode alone to a picket of the
+Federal army and by her request was conducted under guard to the
+headquarters of a corps commander. To him and his chief-of-staff she
+told the fate of Jewett's scouts and delivered the messages of their
+dying leader; and then she tendered the hero's sword.
+
+The staff-officer cut away its cornhusk wrapping and read aloud the
+owner's name on the hilt. The General laid the mighty weapon across his
+palm and sternly shut his lips. "How did you get through the enemy's
+pickets with this?"
+
+"I had a Confederate general's pass."
+
+"Ah! Is the Confederate general as nameless as yourself?"
+
+"I am not nameless; I only ask leave to withhold my name until I have
+told one or two other things."
+
+"But you don't mind confessing you're an out-and-out rebel sympathizer?"
+
+Under the broad-brimmed hat her smile grew to a sparkle. "No, I enjoy
+it."
+
+The chief-of-staff smiled, but the General darkened and pressed his
+questions. At length he summed up. "So, then, you wish me to believe
+that you did all you did, and now have come into our lines at a most
+extraordinary and exhausting speed and running the ugliest kinds of
+risks, in mere human sympathy for a dying stranger, he being a Union
+officer and you a secessionist of"--a courtly bow--"the very elect;
+that's your meaning, is it not?"
+
+"No, General; in the first place, I am not one of any elect."
+
+A flattering glimmer of amusement came into the two men's faces, but
+some change in Charlotte's manner arrested it and brought an enhanced
+deference.
+
+"In the second place, I am not here merely on this errand."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"No, General. And in the last place, my motive in this errand is no mere
+sympathy for any one person; I am here from a sense of public duty--"
+The speaker seemed suddenly overtaken by emotions, dropped her words
+with pained evenness, and fingered the lace handkerchief in her lap.
+
+"Pardon," interrupted the General, "the sunlight annoys you. Major, will
+you drop that curtain?" "Thank you. One thing I am here for, General,
+is to tell you something, and I have to begin by asking that neither of
+you will ever say how you learned it."
+
+The two men bowed.
+
+"Thank you. Please understand, also, I have never uttered this but to
+one friend, a lady. There was no need; I have not wanted aid or counsel,
+even from friends. But I feel duty bound to tell it to you, now,
+because, for one thing, the brave soldier who wore that sword--" Her
+eyes rose to the weapon and fell again; she bit her lip.
+
+"Yes--well--what of him?"
+
+"He was lured to disaster and death by a man whose supreme purpose was,
+and is to-day, revenge upon me. That man drew him to his ruin purely in
+search of my life." Charlotte sat with her strange in-looking,
+out-looking gaze holding the gaze of her questioner until for relief
+he spoke.
+
+"Why, young lady, it's hard to doubt anything you say, but really that
+sounds rather fanciful. Why should you think it?"
+
+"I do not think it, I know it. He sends me his own assurance of it by
+his own father, so that his revenge may be fuller by my knowing daily
+and hourly that he is on my trail."
+
+"And you appeal to me for protection?"
+
+She smiled. "No. I am not seeking to divert his fury from myself, but to
+confine it to myself. Fancy yourself a human-hearted woman, General, and
+murder being done day by day because you are alive." "Oh, this is
+incredible! What is its occasion, its origin? How are you in any way
+responsible?"
+
+"Why, largely I am not. Yet in degree I am, General, because of
+shortcomings of mine--faults--errors--that--oh--that have their bearing
+in the case, don't you see?"
+
+"No, I don't; pray don't ask me to draw inferences; I might infer too
+much."
+
+"Yes, you might, easily," said Charlotte; "for I only mean shortcomings
+of the kind we readily excuse in others though we never can or should
+pardon them in ourselves."
+
+The General turned an arch smile of perplexity upon his chief-of-staff.
+"I don't think we're quite up to that line of perpetual snow,
+Walter, are we?"
+
+The chief-of-staff "guessed they were not."
+
+Charlotte resumed. "I have come to you in the common interest, to warn
+you against that man. I believe he is on his way here to offer his
+services as a guide. He is fearless, untiring, and knows all this region
+by heart."
+
+"Union man, I take it, is he not?"
+
+"No, he's Federal, Confederate or guerilla as it may suit his bloody
+ends."
+
+"And you want me not to make use of him."
+
+"Oh, more than that; I want him stopped!--stopped from killing and
+burning on his and my private account. But I want much more than that,
+too. I know how you commonly stop such men."
+
+"We hang them to the first tree."
+
+"Yes, our side does the same. If I wanted such a fate to overtake him I
+should only have to let him alone. At risks too hideous to name I have
+saved him from it twice. I am here to-day chiefly to circumvent his
+purposes; but if I may do so in the way I wish to propose to you, I
+shall also save him once more. I am willing to save him--in that
+way--although by so doing I shall lose--fearfully." She dropped her
+glance and turned aside.
+
+"How do you propose to circumvent and yet save him?"
+
+"By getting you to send him so far to your own army's rear that he
+cannot get back; to compel him to leave the country; to go into your
+country, where law and order reign as they cannot here between
+the lines."
+
+"And you consider that a reasonable request?"
+
+"Oh, sir, I must make it! I can ask no less!"
+
+"But you say if this scheme works you lose by it. What will you lose?"
+
+"I may lose track of him! If I lose track of him I may have to go
+through a long life not knowing whether he is dead or alive."
+
+"And suppose--why,--young lady, I thought you were unmarried. I--oh,
+what do you mean; is he--?"
+
+Charlotte's head drooped and her hands trembled. "Yes, by law and church
+decree he is my husband."
+
+"Good Heaven!" murmured the General, drew a breath, and folded his arms.
+"But, madam! if a man _abandons_ his wife--"
+
+"I abandoned him."
+
+"Good for you!" "It was vital for me. But I did it on evidence which
+our laws ignore, the testimony of slaves. Oh, General, don't try to
+untangle me; only stop him!"
+
+"Ah! madam, I'll do the little I can. How am I to know him?"
+
+"By a pistol-wound in his right hand, got last week. He would have got
+it in his brain but for my pleading. His name is Oliver."
+
+"Oliver; hmm! any relation to Charlotte Oliver, your so called newspaper
+correspondent? I'd like to stop her.--How?--I don't quite hear you."
+
+"I am Charlotte Oliver."
+
+The two officers glanced sharply at each other. When the General turned
+again he flushed resentfully. "Have you never resumed your maiden name?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then, madam, tell me this! With a whole world of other people's names
+to choose from, why _have_ you borrowed Charlotte Oliver's? Have you
+come here determined to be sent to prison, Miss Coralie Rothvelt?"
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+STAY TILL TO-MORROW
+
+Charlotte did not move an eyelash. Gradually a happy confidence lighted
+her face. "Freedom or prison is to me a secondary question. I came here
+determined to use only the truth. No wild creature loves to be free more
+than I do. I want to go back into our lines, and to go at once; but--I
+am Charlotte Oliver."
+
+"Young lady, listen to me. I know your story is nearly all true. I know
+some good things about you which you have modestly left out; one of the
+rebels who stopped where you did last night and rode with you this
+morning was brought to me a prisoner half an hour ago. But he said your
+name was Rothvelt. How's that?"
+
+"Unfortunately, General, my name is Charlotte Oliver. Two or three times
+I have had use for so much concealment as there was in the childish
+prank of turning my name wrong side out." The speaker made a sign to the
+chief-of-staff: "Write the two names side by side and see if they
+are not one."
+
+He was already doing so, and nodded laughingly to his superior.
+Charlotte spoke on. "I tell you the truth only, gentlemen, though I tell
+you no more of it than I must. I have run many a risk to get the truth,
+and to get it early. If it is your suspicion that by so doing, or in any
+other way, I have forfeited a lady's liberty, let me hear and answer.
+If not--"
+
+"Oh, I'll have to send you to the provost-martial at Baton Rouge and let
+you settle that with him."
+
+"Ah, no, General! By the name of the lady you love best, I beg you to
+see my need and let me go. I promise you never henceforth to offend your
+cause except in that mere woman's sympathy with what you call rebellion,
+for which women are not so much as banished by you--or if they are, then
+banish me! Treat me no better, and no worse, than a 'registered enemy'!"
+
+The General shook his head. "Your registration has been in the open
+field of military action; sometimes, I fear, between the lines. At least
+it has been with your pen."
+
+"General, I have laid down the pen."
+
+"Indeed! to take up what?"
+
+"The spoon!" said Charlotte, with that smile which no man ever wholly
+resisted. "I leave the sword and its questions to my brother man, in the
+blue and in the gray--God save it!--and have pledged myself to the gray,
+to work from now on only under the yellow flag of mercy and healing."
+
+"Yes, of course; mercy--and comfort--and every sort of unarmed aid--to
+rebels."
+
+"To the men you call so, yes. Yet I pledge you, General, to deal as
+tenderly with every man in blue who comes within range of my care as I
+did with Captain Jewett."
+
+"Oh, I know you did even better than you've told me, but I'd be a fool
+to send you back on the instant, so. Stay till to-morrow or next day."
+The captor smiled. "Major, I think we owe the lady that much
+hospitality."
+
+The Major thought so, and that she must need a day's rest, more than she
+realized. She could be made in every way comfortable--under guard at
+"Mr. Gilmer's." The Gilmers were Unionists, whose fine character had
+been their only protection through two years of ostracism, yet he
+believed they would treat her well. "Oh! not there, please," said
+Charlotte; "I hear they are to give some of your officers a dance
+to-morrow evening!" and there followed a parley that called forth all
+her playfullest tact. "Oh, no," she said, at one critical point, "I'm
+not so narrow or sour but I could dance with a blue uniform; but
+suppose--why, suppose one's friends in gray should catch one dancing
+with one's enemies in blue. Such things have happened, you know."
+
+"It sha'n't happen to-morrow night," laughed the General.
+
+She offered to nurse the Federal sick, instead, in the command's
+field-hospital, but no, the General rose to end the interview. "My dear
+young lady, the saintliest thing we can let you do is to dance at that
+merrymaking."
+
+She rose. "As a prisoner under guard, General, I can nurse the sick, but
+I will not dance."
+
+The General smiled. "I'll take your parole."
+
+"Oh! exact a parole from a woman?"
+
+"Good gracious, why shouldn't I! As for you,--ha!--I'd as soon turn a
+commissioned rebel officer loose in my camp unparoled as you."
+
+"Then take my parole! I give it! you have it! I'll take the chances."
+
+"And the dances?" asked the Major.
+
+"Very good," said the General, "you are now on parole. See the lady
+conducted to Squire Gilmer's, Major. And now, Miss--eh,--day after
+to-morrow morning I shall either pass you beyond my lines or else send
+you to Baton Rouge. Good-day." When Charlotte found herself alone in a
+room of the Gilmer house she lay down upon the bed staring and sighing
+with dismay; she was bound by a parole! If within its limit of time
+Oliver should appear, "It will mean Baton Rouge for me!" she cried under
+her breath, starting up and falling back again; "Baton Rouge, New
+Orleans, Ship Island!" She was in as feminine a fright as though she had
+never braved a danger. Suddenly a new distress overwhelmed her:
+if--if--someone to deliver her should come--"Oh Heaven! I am
+paroled!--bound hand and foot by my insane parole!"
+
+Softly she sprang from the bed, paced the floor, went to the window,
+seemed to look out upon the landscape; but in truth she was looking in
+upon herself. There she saw a most unaccountable tendency for her
+judgment--after some long overstrain--momentarily, but all at once, to
+swoon, collapse, turn upside down like a boy's kite and dart to earth;
+an impulse--while fancying she was playing the supremely courageous or
+generous or clever part--suddenly to surrender the key of the situation,
+the vital point in whatever she might be striving for. "Ah me, ah me!
+why did I give my parole?"
+
+At the close of the next day--"Walter," said the General as the
+chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--"oh, thud
+devil!--you going to that dance?"
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+THE DANCE AT GILMER'S
+
+All the while that I recount these scenes there come to me soft
+orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking
+of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music
+which I heard first--and last--in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other
+so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the
+daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into
+a roof; wail and huzza, camp-fire, litter and grave; battlefield stench;
+fiddle and flame; and ever in the midst these impromptu merrymakings to
+keep us from going stark mad, one and all,--as so many literally did.
+
+The Gilmer daughters were fair, but they were only three, and the
+Gilmers were the sole Unionists in their neighborhood. "Still, a few
+girls will come," said Charlotte, sparkling first blue and then black at
+a sparkling captain who said that, after all, the chief-of-staff had
+decided he couldn't attend. I know she sparkled first blue and then
+black, for she always did so when she told of it in later days.
+
+"They say," responded the captain, "that in this handy little world
+there are always a few to whom policy is the best honesty; is that the
+few who will come?"
+
+"You are cynical," said Charlotte, "this is only their unarmed way of
+saving house and home for the brothers to come back to when you are
+purged out of the land."
+
+When the time came there were partners for eight gallants, and the
+gallants numbered sixteen. They counted off by twos; the evens waited
+while the odds danced the half of each set, and then the odds waited and
+cooled, tried to cool, out on the veranda. But when a reel was called
+the whole twenty-four danced together, while the fiddler (from the
+contraband camp) improvised exultant words to his electrifying tunes.
+
+      "O _ladies_ ramble in,
+          Whilst de _beaux_ ramble out,
+For to guile[1] dat golden _cha--ain._
+      My _Lawdy!_ it's a sin
+          Fo' a _fiddleh_ not to shout!
+Miss _Charlotte's_ a-comin' down de _la--ane_!"
+
+[Footnote 1: Coil.]
+
+Now the dance is off, but now it is on again, and again. The fiddler
+toils to finer and finer heights of enthusiasm; slippers twinkle,
+top-boots flash, the evens come in (to the waltz) and the odds, out on
+the veranda, tell one another confidentially how damp they are. Was ever
+an evening so smotheringly hot! Through the house-grove, where the
+darkness grows blacker and blacker and the tepid air more and more
+breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their
+horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet
+for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.]
+One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture:
+the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room,
+and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and
+fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, and on
+their haunches at every door, the squalid field-hands making grotesque
+silhouettes against the yellow glow that streamed out into the trees.
+
+Now the lightning seems nearer. Hark, that was thunder; soft, but real.
+At last the air moves; there is a breeze, and the girls come out on the
+gallants' arms to drink it in. As they lift their brows and sigh their
+comfort the lightning grows brighter, the thunder comes more promptly
+and louder, and the maidens flinch and half scream, yet linger for one
+more draft of the blessed coolness. Suddenly an inverted tree of
+blinding light branches down the sky, and the thunder crashes in one's
+very ears; the couples recoil into a group at the door, the lightning
+again fills heaven and earth, it shows the bending trees far afield, and
+the thunders peal at each other as if here were all Vicksburg and Port
+Hudson, with Porter and Farragut going by. So for a space; then the wind
+drops to a zephyr, and though the sky still blazes and crashes, and
+flames and roars, the house purrs with content under the sweet strokings
+of the rain.
+
+Let it pour! the dining-room is the centre of all things; the ladies sip
+the custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the
+punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs
+on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat;
+and the couples are again on the floor. The departing thunders grumble
+as they go, the rain falls more and more sparingly, and now it is a
+waltz, and now a quadrille, and now it's a reel again, with Miss Sallie
+or Louise or Laura or Lucille or Miss Flora "a-comin' down de lane!"
+
+So come the stars again, one by one. In a pause between dances Charlotte
+and the staff captain go to the veranda's far end and stand against the
+rail. The night is still very dark, the air motionless. Charlotte is
+remarking how far they can hear the dripping of the grove, when she
+gives a start and the captain an amused grunt; a soft, heart-broken,
+ear-searching quaver comes from just over yonder by the horses. "One of
+those pesky little screech-owls," he says. "Don't know as I ever heard
+one before under just these condi'--humph! there's another, around on
+this side."
+
+"I think I will go in," says Charlotte, with a pretence of languor. As
+they do so the same note sounds a third time; her pace quickens, and in
+passing a bright window, with a woman's protecting impulse she changes
+from his left arm to his right so as to be on the side next the owls. A
+moment later she is alone in the middle of her room, a lighted candle in
+one hand, a regally dressed doll in the other, and in her heart the cry,
+"Oh, Edgard, Edgard, my parole, my parole!"
+
+Once more she is downstairs, in the lane which the dancers are making
+for their last reel. Two of the gallants have gone out to see the
+horses, and something keeps them, but there is no need to wait. The
+fiddle rings a chord! the merry double line straightens down the hall
+from front door to rear, bang! says the fiddler's foot--"hands
+round!"--and hands round it is! In the first of the evening they had
+been obliged to tell the fiddler the names of the dancers, but now he
+knows them all and throws off his flattering personalities and his
+overworked rhymes with an impartial rotation and unflagging ardor. Once
+in a while some one privately gives him a new nickname for the next man
+"a-comin' down de lane," and as he yawps it out the whole dance gathers
+new mirth and speed.
+
+Now the third couple clasp hands, arch arms, and let the whole
+countermarching train sweep through; and a beautiful arch they make, for
+they are the aforesaid captain and Charlotte Oliver. "Hands
+round!"--hurrah for the whirling ellipse; and now it's "right and left"
+and two ellipses glide opposite ways, "to quile dat golden chain." In
+the midst of the whirl, when every hand is in some other and men and
+girls are tossing their heads to get their locks out of their eyes, at
+the windows come unnoticed changes and two men loiter in by the front
+hall door, close to the fiddler. One has his sword on, and each his
+pistols, and their boots and mud-splashed uniforms of dubious blue are
+wet and steamy. The one without the sword gives the fiddler a fresh name
+to sing out when the spinning ring shall straighten into its two gay
+ranks again, and bids him--commandingly--to yell it; and with never a
+suspicion of what it stands for, the stamping and scraping fiddler
+shouts the name of a man who "loves a good story with a
+positive passion."
+
+    "Come _a-left_, come a-right,
+       Come yo' _lily_-white hand,
+Fo' to _quile_ dat _golden cha--ain_.
+    O _ladies_ caper light--
+       Sweetest _ladies_ in de land--
+NED FERRY's a-comin' down de la--ane!"
+
+[Illustration: Musical Notation]
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+HE'S DEAD.--IS SHE ALIVE?
+
+Cries of masculine anger and feminine affright filled the hall, but one
+ringing order for silence hushed all, and the dance stood still with Ned
+Ferry in its centre. In his right hand, shoulder high, he held not his
+sword, but Charlotte's fingers lightly poised for the turn in the
+arrested dance. "Stand, gentlemen, every man is covered by two; look at
+the doors; look at the windows." The staff captain daringly sprang for
+the front door, but Ferry's quick boot caught his instep and he struck
+the floor full length. Like lightning Ferry's sword was out, but he only
+gave it a deferential sweep. "Sir! better luck next time!--Lieutenant
+Quinn, put the Captain in your front rank."
+
+Quinn hustled the captives "down a lane," as the fiddler might have
+said, of Ferry's scouts, mounted them on their own horses at the door,
+and hurried them away. Charlotte had vanished but was back again in hat
+and riding-skirt. Ferry caught her hand and they ran to the front
+veranda steps just as the prisoners and guard rode swiftly from them.
+Kendall and I had the stirrup ready for her; the saddle was a man's, but
+she made a horn of its pommel, and in a flash the four of us were
+mounted. Nevertheless before we could move the grove resounded with
+shots, and Ferry, bidding us ride on after the fleeing guard, wheeled
+and galloped to where half our troop were holding back their assailants
+in the dark. But then, to our distraction, Charlotte would not fly.
+"Richard, I'm paroled!"--"Charlotte Oliver, you're my prisoner!" I
+reached for her bridle, but she avoided me and with a cry of
+recollection wheeled and was on her way back. "I forgot something! I can
+get it, I left the room lighted!"
+
+I remember vividly yet the high purpose and girlish propitiation that
+rang together in her voice. Kendall dashed after her while I went
+against a wet bough that all but threw me; but before he could reach her
+she flew up the steps, crying "Hold my horse!"
+
+"Mine, too!" I cried, springing up after her. How queerly the inner
+house stood alight and silent, its guests and inmates hidden, while
+outside pistols and carbines flashed and cracked. I came upon Charlotte,
+just recrossing her chamber to leave it, with her doll in her arms.
+"Come!" I cried, "our line is falling back behind the house!" Her head
+flinched aside, a bit of her hat flew from it, and a pistol-ball buried
+itself in the ceiling straight over my head. We ran downstairs together,
+pulling, pushing and imploring each other in the name of honor, duty and
+heaven to let him--let her--go out first through the bright hall door.
+Kendall was not in sight, but in a dim half-light a few yards off we saw
+Oliver. He was afoot, bending low, and gliding toward us with his
+revolver in his left hand. He fired as I did; her clutch spoiled my aim;
+with eager eyes she straightened to her finest height, cried "Richard!
+tell Lieutenant Ferry he--" and with a long sigh sank into my arms. A
+rush of hoofs sounded behind Oliver, he glanced up, and Ferry's blade
+fell across his brow and launched him face upward to the ground. I saw
+a bunch of horses, with mine, at the foot of the steps, and a bunch of
+men at the top; Ferry snatched Charlotte's limp form from me and said
+over his shoulder as he went down the steps, "Go get him and bring him
+along, dead or alive!"
+
+I called a man to my aid and was unlucky in not getting the cool-headed
+Kendall, for my own wits were gone. The next moment all had left us and
+I was down on the ground toiling frantically, with no help but one hand
+of my mounted companion, to heave the stalwart frame of Oliver up to
+my saddle.
+
+"Why, he's dead!" cried the lad, letting him slide half-way down when we
+had all but got him up; "don't you see he's dead? His head's laid wide
+open! He's as dead as a mackerel! I'll _swear_ we ain't got any right to
+get captured trying to save a dead Yankee."
+
+I was in despair; our horses had caught our frenzy and were plunging to
+be after their fellows, and a fresh body of the enemy were hurtling into
+the grove. Dropping my burden I vaulted up, and we scurried away, saved
+only by the enemy's healthy fear of an ambush. The first man we came up
+with was Quinn, with the rear-guard. "Is he dead?" he growled.
+
+"Dead as Adam!" said I, and my comrade put in "Head laid wide open!"
+
+"Drop back into the ranks," said Quinn to him. "Smith, ride on to
+Lieutenant Ferry. Corporal,"--to a man near him--"you know the way so
+well, go with him."
+
+The two of us sprang forward. How long or what way we went I have now
+no clear idea, but at length we neared again the grapevine ferry. The
+stream was swollen, we swam our horses, and on the farther side we found
+Kendall waiting. To the corporal's inquiry he replied that Ferry had
+just passed on. "You know Roy's; two miles off the Plank Road by the
+first right? He expects to stop there."
+
+"Is she alive, Kendall?" I interrupted. "Is she alive?"
+
+"No," said he, to some further question of the corporal; "I'm to wait
+here for the command."
+
+"Is she alive, Kendall?" I asked again.
+
+"Hello, Smith." He scanned my dripping horse. "Your saddle's slipped,
+Smith. Yes, she's alive."
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+
+IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS RIGHT ARM
+
+"There they are!" said the corporal and I at the same moment, when we
+had been but a few minutes on the Plank-road. Two men were ahead of us
+riding abreast, and a few rods in front of them was a third horseman,
+apparently alone. Two others had pushed on, one to the house, the other
+for surgical aid. The two in the rear knew us and let us come up
+unchallenged; the corporal stayed with them, and I rode on to my
+leader's side.
+
+Charlotte lay in his double clasp balanced so lightly on the horse's
+crest as hardly to feel the jar of his motion, though her head lay as
+nearly level with it as Ferry's bending shoulders and the hollow of his
+lowered right arm would allow; from under his other arm her relaxed
+figure, in its long riding-skirt, trailed down over his knee and
+stirrup; her broad limp hat, as if it had been so placed in sport, hung
+at his back with its tie-ribbons round his throat, while the black
+masses of her hair spread in ravishing desolation over and under his
+supporting arm. Her face was fearfully pale, the brows glistened with
+the damp of nervous shock, and every few moments she feebly brought a
+handkerchief to her lips to wipe away the blood that rose to them with
+every sigh. Steadfastly, except when her eyes closed now and then in
+deathly exhaustion, her gaze melted into his like a suffering babe's
+into its mother's. From time to time a brief word passed between them,
+and with joy I noticed that it was always in French; I hoped with my
+whole heart and soul that they had already said things, and were saying
+things yet, which no one else ought to hear. I waited some time for his
+notice, and when he gave it it was only by saying to her in a full voice
+and in English "Dick Smith is here, alongside of us."
+
+Her response was a question, which he repeated: "Is he hurt? no, Richard
+never gets hurt. Shall he tell us whatever he knows?"
+
+He bent low for the faint reply, and when it came he sparkled with
+pride. "'It matters little,' she says, 'to either of us, now.' Give your
+report; but _I_ tell you"--there came a tiger look in his eyes--"there
+is now no turning back; we shall go on." I answered with soft elation:
+"My news needn't turn you back: Oliver is dead."
+
+He drew a long breath, murmured "My God!" and then suddenly asked "You
+found him so, or--?"
+
+"We found him so; had to leave him so; head laid wide open; we were
+about to be captured--thought the news would be better than nothing--"
+
+"Certainly, yes, certainly. Now I want you to ride to the brigade camp
+and telegraph Miss Harper this: 'She needs you. Come instantly.
+Durand.'"--I repeated it to him.--"Right," he said. "Send that first;
+and after that--here is a military secret for you to tell to General
+Austin; I think you like that kind, eh? Tell him I would not send it
+verbally if I had my hands free. You know that regiment at whose
+headquarters we saw them singing; well, tell him they are to make a move
+to-day, a bad mistake, and I think if he will stay right there where he
+is till they make it, we can catch the whole lot of them. As soon as
+they move I shall report to him."
+
+Two gasping words from Charlotte brought his ear down, and with a
+worshipping light in his eyes he said to her "Yes,--yes!" and then to
+me, "Yes, I shall report to him _in person_. Now, Smith, the top of
+your speed!"
+
+Reveille was sounding as I entered the camp. In the middle of my story
+to the General--"Saddle my horse," he said to an attendant, "and send
+Mr. Gholson to me. Yes, Smith, well, what then?"--I resumed, but in a
+minute--"Mr. Gholson, good-morning. My compliments to Major Harper, Mr.
+Gholson, and ask him if he wouldn't like to take a ride with me; and
+let me have about four couriers; and send word to Colonel Dismukes that
+I shall call at his headquarters to see him a moment, on my way out of
+camp. Now, Smith, you've given me the gist of the matter, haven't you?
+Oh, I think you have; good-morning."
+
+Gholson had helped me get the despatch off to Miss Harper, whose coming
+no one could be more eager to hasten. Before leaving camp I saw him
+again. He was strangely reticent; my news seemed to benumb and sicken
+him. But as I remounted he began without connection--"You see, she'll be
+absolutely alone until Miss Harper gets there; not a friend within call!
+_He_ won't be there, she won't let him stay; she dislikes him too much;
+I _know_ that, Smith. Why, Smith, she wouldn't ever 'a' let him carry
+her off the field if she'd been conscious; she'd sooner 'a' gone to Ship
+Island, or to death!" He looked as though he would rather she had. His
+tongue, now it had started, could not stop. "Ned Ferry can't stay by
+her; he mustn't! he hadn't ought to use around anywheres near her."
+
+I gave a sort of assent--attended with nausea--and turned to my saddle,
+but he clung. "Why, how can he hang around that way, Smith, and he a
+suitor who's just killed her husband? Of course, now, he'd ought to know
+he can't ever be one henceforth. I'm sorry for him, but--"
+
+"Good-morning," I interrupted, quite in the General's manner, and made a
+spirited exit, but it proved a false one; one thing had to be said, and
+I returned. "Gholson, if she should be worse hurt than--" "Ah! you're
+thinking of the chaplain; I've already sent him. Yonder he goes, now;
+you can show him the way."
+
+"Understand," I said as I wheeled, "I fully expect her to recover."
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!" replied my co-religionist, with feverish zest; "we must
+have faith--for her sake! But o--oh! Smith, what a chastening judgment
+this is against dancing!"
+
+I moved away, looking back at him, and seeing by his starved look how he
+was racking his jaded brain for some excuse to go with me, I honestly
+believe I was sorry for him. The chaplain was a thick-set, clean-shaven,
+politic little fellow whose "Good-mawning, brothah?" had the heavy
+sweetness of perfumed lard. We conversed fluently on spiritual matters
+and also on Ned Ferry. He asked me if the Lieutenant was "a believer."
+
+"Why," said I, "as to that, Lieutenant Ferry believes there's something
+right about everything that's beautiful, and something wrong about
+everything that isn't. Now, of course that's a very dangerous idea, and
+yet--" So I went on; ah me! the nightmare of it hangs over me yet,
+"religionist" though I am, after a fashion, unto this day. In Ferry's
+defence I maintained that only so much of any man's religion as fitted
+him, and fitted him not as his saddle or his clothes, but as his nervous
+system fitted him, was really his, or was really religion. I said I knew
+a man whose ready-made religion, small as it was, bagged all over him
+and made him as grotesque as a child in his father's trousers. The
+chaplain tittered so approvingly that I straightened to spout again, but
+just then we saw three distant figures that I knew at a glance.
+
+"There he is, now!--Excuse me, sir--" I clapped in the spurs, but the
+chaplain clattered stoutly after me. The two horsemen moving from us
+were the General and Major Harper, and the one meeting them was Ned
+Ferry. Between the three and us rose out of a hollow the squad of
+couriers. And yonder came the sun.
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+
+A CRUEL BOOK AND A FOOL OR TWO
+
+I could see by Ferry's face that there was no worse news. He met me
+aside, and privately bade me go to Roy's (where Charlotte was). "Kendall
+is there," he said; "I leave you and him in charge. That will rest your
+horses. Kendall has your Yankee horse, his own is sick. You and Kendall
+get all the sleep you can, you may get none to-night."
+
+"Lieutenant," I began eagerly as he was drawing away, "is--?"
+
+"Yes! oh, yes, yes!" His eyes danced, and a soft laugh came, as happy as
+a child's. "The surgeon is yonder, he will tell you."
+
+This person Kendall and I had the luck to meet at the Roy's
+breakfast-table. "Yes, left lung," he said. "No, hardly 'perforated,'
+but the top deeply grazed." The ball, he said, had passed on and out,
+and he went into particulars with me, while I wondered if Kendall knew,
+as I did, what parts of the body the pleura, the thorax, the clavicle
+and the pyemia were.
+
+We lay down to sleep on some fodder in the Widow Roy's stable, while
+around three sides of the place, in a deep wooded hollow, Quinn and the
+company, well guarded by hidden videttes, drowsed in secret bivouac. I
+dreamed. I had feared I should, and it would have been a sort of bitter
+heart's-ease to tell Kendall of my own particular haunting trouble. For
+now, peril and darkness, storm, hard riding, the uproar and rage of
+man-killing, all past and gone, my special private wretchedness came
+back to me bigger than ever, like a neglected wound stiffened and
+swollen as it has grown cold. But Kendall would not talk, and when I
+dreamed, my dream was not of Camille. It seemed to me there was a hot
+fight on at the front, and that I, in a sweat of terror, was at the
+rear, hiding among the wagons and telling Gholson pale-faced lies as to
+why I was there. All at once Gholson became Oliver, alive,
+bloody-handed, glaring on me spectrally, cursing, threatening, and
+demanding his wife. His head seemed not "laid wide open," but to have
+only a streak of the skull bared by Ferry's glancing left-cut and a
+strip of the scalp turned inside out. Cecile drew his head down and
+showed it to me, in a transport of reproaches, as though my false report
+had wronged no one else so ruinously as her.
+
+I awoke aghast. If Kendall had still been with me I might, in the first
+flush of my distress, have told my vision; but in the place where
+Kendall had lain lay Harry Helm. Kendall was gone; a long beam of
+afternoon sunlight shone across my lair through a chink in the log
+stable. I sprang half up with an exclamation, and Harry awoke with a
+luxurious yawn and smile. Kendall, he said, had left with the company,
+which had marched. Quinn was in command and had told Harry that he was
+only going to show the enemy that there was no other hostile force in
+their front, and get himself chased away southeastward.
+
+"I don't know whether he was telling me the truth or not," said Helm, as
+we led our saddled horses toward the house; "I reckon he didn't want me
+alongside of him with this arm in a sling." The hand was bad; lines of
+pain were on the aide's face. He had taken the dead Louisianian home,
+got back to camp, and ridden down here to get the latest news concerning
+Charlotte. Kendall had already given him our story of the night; I had
+to answer only one inquiry. "Oh, yes," was my reply, "head laid wide
+open!" But to think of my next meeting with Ned Ferry almost made
+me sick.
+
+Harry was delighted. "That lays their way wide open--Ned's and hers!
+Smith, some God-forsaken fool brought a chaplain here to talk religion
+to her! He hasn't seen her--Doctor wouldn't let him; but he's here yet,
+and--George! if I was them I'd put him to a better use than what he came
+here for, and I'd do it so quick it would make his head swim!" He went
+on into all the arguments for it; the awkwardnesses of Charlotte's new
+situation, her lack of means for even a hand-to-mouth daily existence,
+and so on. Seeing an ambulance coming in through the front gate, and in
+order not to lose the chance for my rejoinder, I interrupted.
+"Lieutenant, she will not allow it! She will make him wait a proper time
+before he may as much as begin a courtship, and then he will have to
+begin at the beginning. She's not going to let Ned Ferry narrow or lower
+her life or his--no, neither of them is going to let the other do
+it--because a piece of luck has laid the way wide open!" I ended with a
+pomp of prophecy, yet I could hear Ned Ferry saying again, with
+Charlotte's assenting eyes in his, "There is no turning back."
+
+The driver of the ambulance did not know why he had been ordered to
+report here, but when the Widow Roy came to the door she brought
+explanation enough. A courier had come to her and gone again, and the
+chaplain and the surgeon and every one else of any "army sort" except us
+two had "put out," and she was in a sad flurry. "The Lieutenant," she
+said, "writes in this-yeh note that this-yeh place won't be safe f'om
+the Yankees much longer'n to-day, and fo' us to send the wounded lady in
+the avalanch. Which she says, her own self, it'd go rough with her to
+fall into they hands again. My married daughter she's a-goin' with her,
+and the'd ought to be a Mr. Sm'--oh, my Lawdy! you ain't reg-lahly in
+the ahmy, air you?"
+
+With some slave men to help us, Harry and I bore Charlotte out and laid
+her in the ambulance, mattress and all, on an under bedding of fodder.
+She had begged off from opiates, and was as full of the old starlight as
+if the day, still strong, were gone. I helped the married daughter up
+beside the driver, Harry and I mounted, and we set forth for the
+brigade camp. Mrs. Roy's daughter had with her a new romance, which she
+had been reading to Charlotte. Now she was eager to resume it, and
+Charlotte consented. It was a work of some merit; I have the volume yet,
+inscribed to me on the fly-leaf "from C.O.," as I have once already
+stated, in my account of my friend "The Solitary." At the end of a mile
+we made a change; Harry rode a few yards ahead with an officer who
+happened to overtake us, I took the reins from the ambulance driver, and
+he followed on my horse; I thought I could drive more smoothly than he.
+
+And so I began to hear the tale. I was startled by its strong reminder
+of Charlotte's own life; but Charlotte answered my anxious glance with a
+brow so unfretted that I let the reading go on, and so made a cruel
+mistake. At every turning-point in the story its reader would have
+paused to talk it over, but Charlotte, with a steadily darkling brow,
+murmured each time "Go on," and I was silent, hoping that farther along
+there would be a better place to stop for good. Not so; the story's
+whirling flood swept us forward to a juncture ever drawing nearer and
+clearer, clearer and crueler, where a certain man would have to choose
+between the woman he loved and that breadth and fruitfulness of life to
+which his splendid gifts imperiously pointed him. Oh, you story-tellers!
+Every next page put the question plainer, drove the iron deeper: must a
+man, or even may a man, wed his love, when she stands between him and
+his truest career, a drawback and drag upon his finest service to his
+race and day? And, oh, me! who let my eye quail when Charlotte searched
+it, as though her own case had brought that question to me before ever
+we had seen this book. And, oh, that impenetrable woman reading! Her
+husband was in Lee's army, out of which, she boasted, she would steal
+him in a minute if she could. She was with us, now, only because, at
+whatever cost to others, she was going where no advancement of the
+enemy's lines could shut her off from him; and so stop reading a moment
+she must, to declare her choice for Love as against all the careers on
+earth, and to put that choice fairly to shame by the unworthiness of her
+pleadings in its defence. I intervened; I put her grovelling arguments
+aside and thrust better ones in, for the same choice, and then, in the
+fear that they were not enough, stumbled into special pleading and
+protested that the book itself had put the question unfairly.
+
+"Shut it," said Charlotte, with a sigh like that which had risen when
+the lead first struck her. "If I could be moved ever so little,--"
+she said.
+
+I had the driver tie my horse behind the vehicle and resume the lines.
+Then the soldier's wife and I moved Charlotte, and when the reader began
+to handle the book again wishfully our patient said, with the kindest
+voice, "Read the rest of it to yourself; I know how it will end; it will
+end to please you, not as it ought; not as it ought."
+
+For a while we went in silence, and she must have seen that my heart was
+in a rage, for with suffering on her brow, amusement on her lips, and a
+sweet desperation in her eyes, she murmured my name. "Richard:--what
+fun it must have been to live in those old Dark Ages--when all you had
+to do--was to turn any one passion into--one splendid virtue--at the
+expense--of all the rest."
+
+I could answer pleadingly that it were far better not to talk now. But
+she would go on, until in my helplessness I remarked how beautiful the
+day had been. Her eyes changed; she looked into mine with her calm
+inward-outward ken, and once more with smiling lips and suffering brow
+murmured, "Yes." I marvelled she should betray such wealth of meaning to
+such as I; yet it was like her splendid bravery to do it.
+
+At the brigade's picket, where I was angry that Ferry did not meet us,
+and had resumed the saddle and stretched all the curtains of the
+ambulance, who should appear but Scott Gholson. Harry and I were riding
+abreast in advance of the ambulance. Gholson and he barely said
+good-evening. I asked him where was Lieutenant Ferry, and scarcely noted
+his words, so promptly convinced was I by their mere tone that he had
+somehow contrived to get Ferry sent on a distant errand. "Is she
+better?" he inquired; "has the hemorrhage stopped?"
+
+"It's begun again," growled Harry, who wanted both of us to suffer all
+we could. Gholson led us through the camp. A large proportion of the men
+were sleeping when as yet it was hardly night.
+
+"Has the brigade got marching orders?" I asked, and he said the three
+regiments had, though not the battery. He passed over to me two pint
+bottles filled, corked, and dangling from his fingers by a stout double
+twine on the neck of each. "Every man has them," he said; "hang one on
+each side of your belt in front of your pistol."
+
+I held them up and scowled from them to Harry, and we both laughed, so
+transparent was Gholson's purpose to get every one away from our patient
+who yearned to be near her. "One in front of each pistol," I said, so
+tying them; "but use the pistols first, I suppose."
+
+"Yes," replied Gholson, "pistols first, and then the turpentine."
+Whereat Harry and I exchanged glances again, it came so pat that Scott
+Gholson should be a dispenser of inflammables. At a house a mile behind
+the camp the surgeon stood waiting for us. He frowned at me the instant
+he saw Charlotte, and I heard him swear. As we bore her in with Gholson
+and me next her head she murmured to him:
+
+"Mr. Gholson, when does the command move?"
+
+"At twelve," he replied, and I bent and softly added "That's why--"
+
+"Yes," she said, with a quick, understanding look, and wiped her lips as
+daintily as if it were with wine they were crimsoned.
+
+
+
+L
+
+
+THE BOTTOM OF THE WHIRLWIND
+
+On my way back through camp with Gholson I saw old Dismukes. He called
+me to him, quit his cards, and led me into his tent. There, very
+beguilingly, he questioned me at much length, evidently seeking to draw
+from the web of my replies the thread of Ferry's and Charlotte's story;
+and as I saw that he believed in both of them with all his brutal might,
+I let him win a certain success. "Head laid wide open!" he said
+gleefully, and boiled over with happy blasphemings.
+
+I left him, found supper, and had been long asleep tinder a tree, when I
+grabbed savagely at some one for silently shaking me, and found it was
+Ned Ferry. His horse's bridle was in his hand; his face was more filled
+with the old pain than I had ever seen it; he spoke low and hurriedly.
+"Come, tell me what this means."
+
+In an envelope addressed to him in the handwriting I had first seen at
+Lucius Oliver's I found a scripture-text, a heading torn from a tract
+which the chaplain may have sent in to Charlotte in the morning. I
+turned it to the light of my fire. Under this printed line she had
+pencilled her name.
+
+I asked if he had seen her. "Ah, no! the Doctor has drugged her to
+sleep; but that woman who came with you was still in the parlor, reading
+a book, and she gave me this. What does it mean?"
+
+"Lieutenant," I replied, choking with dismay, "why mind her meanings
+now? Ought you not rather to ignore them? She is fevered, dejected,
+overwrought. Why, sir, she is the very woman to say and mean things now
+which she would never say or mean at any other time!" But my tone must
+have shown that I was only groping in desperation after anything
+plausible, and he waved my suggestions away.
+
+"The Doctor says that woman has been reading her an exciting story."
+
+"Yes, and that helps to account--"
+
+"Richard, it helps the wrong way; _I know that story_. After hearing
+that story she is, yes! the one woman of all women to send me _this_."
+
+I took it again. The signature was extended in full, with the surname
+blackly underlined. The first clause of the print, too, was so treated.
+"_Keep thy heart_," it read; "_Keep thy heart_ with all diligence; for
+out of it are the issues of life.--Charlotte _Oliver_."
+
+"Why, Lieutenant, that is just what you have done--"
+
+"You think so? But I _have done_. I will keep it no longer! Ah, I never
+kept it; 'twas she! Without taking it from me she kept it--'with all
+diligence'; otherwise I should have lost it--and her, too--and all that
+is finest and hardest to keep--long ago. Give me that paper; come;
+saddle up; you may go with me if you want, as my courier." No bugle had
+sounded, yet the whole camp was softly and diligently astir. We rode
+toward the staff tents; the pulse of enterprise enlivened him once more,
+though he clung to the same theme. "I have _her_ heart now, Smith, and I
+will keep _that_ with all diligence, for out of _that_ are the issues
+of _my_ life--if I live. And if I do live I will have her if I have to
+steal her even from herself, as last night from the Yankees."
+
+Three hours later the stars still gleamed down through the balmy night
+above the long westward-galloping column of our brigade, that for those
+three hours had not slackened from the one unmitigated speed. The
+Federal regiment of whose plans Charlotte had apprised Ferry had been
+camped well to southward of this course, but in the day just past they
+had marched to the north, intending a raid around our right and into our
+rear. To-night they were resting in a wide natural meadow through the
+middle of which ran this road we were on. Around the southern edge of
+this inviting camp-ground by a considerable stream of water; the
+northern side was on rising ground and skirted by woods, and in these
+woods as day began to break stood our brigade, its presence utterly
+unsuspected in all that beautiful meadow whitened over with lane upon
+lane of the tents of the regiment of Federal cavalry, whose pickets we
+had already silently surprised and captured. Now, as warily as quails,
+we moved along an unused, woodcutters' road and began to trot up a
+gentle slope beyond whose crest the forest sank to the meadow. We were
+within a few yards of this crest, when a small mounted patrol came up
+from the other side, stood an instant profiled against the sky, bent
+low, gazed, wheeled and vanished.
+
+Over the crest we swept after them at a gallop and saw them half-way
+down an even incline, going at a mad run and yelling "Saddle up! saddle
+up! the rebels are coming! saddle up!" The bugles had begun the
+reveille; it ceased, and the next instant they were sounding the call To
+Arms. It was only a call to death; already we were half across the short
+decline and coming like a tornado; in the white camp the bluecoats were
+running hither and yon deaf to the brave shoutings of their captains;
+above the swelling thunder of our hoofs rose the mad yell of the onset;
+and now carbines peal and pistols crack, and here are the tents so close
+you may touch them, and yonder is one already in a light blaze, and at
+every hand and under every horse's foot is the crouching, quailing,
+falling foe, the air is one crash of huzzas and groans, screams, shots
+and commands, horses with riders and horses without plunge through the
+flames and smoke of the burning tents, and again and again I see Ned
+Ferry with the flat of his unstained sword strike pistol or carbine from
+hands too brave to cast them tamely down, and hear him cry "Throw down
+your arms! For God's sake throw down your arms and run to the road! run
+to the public road!"
+
+And still every moment men fell, and what could we do but smite while
+the foe's bugles still rang out from beside his unfurled standard.
+Thitherward sprang a swarm of us and found a brave group massed on foot
+around the colors, men and officers shoulder to shoulder in sudden
+equality. I saw Ned Ferry make straight for their commander, who alone
+had out his sabre; the rest stood with cocked revolvers, and at twenty
+yards fired low. Ferry's horse was hit; he reared, but the spur carried
+him on; his rider's sword flashed up and then down, the Federal's sabre
+turned it, the pistols cracked in our very faces, and down went my
+leader and his horse into the bottom of the whirlwind, right under the
+standard. I saw the standard-bearer bring down one of our men on top of
+Ferry, and as Ferry half regained his feet the Federal aimed point-blank
+against his breast. But it was I who fired and the Federal who fell. As
+he reeled I stretched out for the standard, and exactly together Ned
+Ferry and I seized it--the same standard we had seen the night before.
+But instantly, graciously, he thrust it from him. "Tis yours!" he cried
+in the midst of a general huzza, smiling up at it and me as I swung the
+trophy over my head. Then he turned ghastly pale, his smile faded to an
+unmeaning stare, two or three men leaped to his side, and he sank
+lifelessly into their arms beside his dying horse.
+
+I was swinging from the saddle to my leader's relief, when a familiar
+voice forbade it, and old Dismukes came by at a long trot, pointing
+forward with the reddest sabre I ever saw, and bellowing to right and
+left with oaths and curses "Fall in, every man, on yon line! Ride to yon
+line and fall in, there's more Yankees coming! Ride down yonder and
+fa'--_here_, you, Legs, there! follow me, and shoot down every man that
+stops to plunder!"
+
+Now I saw the new firing-line, out on our left, and as the rattle of it
+quickened, the Colonel galloped, still roaring out his rallying-cries
+and wiping his reeking blade across his charger's mane. Throngs gathered
+after him; the high-road swarmed with prisoners double-quicking to the
+rear under mounted guards; here, thinly stretched across the road at
+right-angles, were our horse-holders, steadily, coolly falling back;
+farther forward, yet vividly near, was our skirmish-line, crackling and
+smoking, and beyond it the enemy's, in the edge of a wood, not yet quite
+venturing to fling itself upon us. We passed General Austin standing,
+mounted, at the top of the rise, with a number of his staff about him.
+Minie balls had begun to sing about them and us, and some officer was
+telling me rudely I had no business bringing that standard--when
+something struck like a sledge high up on my side, almost in the
+arm-pit; I told one of our men I was wounded and gave him the trophy,
+our horse-holders suddenly came forward, every man afoot rose into his
+saddle, and my horse wheeled and hurried rearward at a speed I strove in
+vain to check. Then the old messmate to whom I had said good-bye at this
+very hour just a week before, came and held me by the right arm, while I
+begged him like a drunk-and-disorderly to let me go and find Ned Ferry.
+
+But he said Lieutenant Ferry was in a captured ambulance ahead of us and
+of our hundreds of prisoners, that a full creek and a burning bridge
+were between us and the foe, and that the fight was over.
+
+
+
+LI
+
+
+UNDER THE ROOM WHERE CHARLOTTE LAY
+
+The fight was over only in degree. Our brigade was drawing away into the
+north and the enemy were pressing revengefully after them. Our hundreds
+of prisoners and our few wounded were being taken back eastward over the
+road by which we had come in the night, and even after we had turned
+into it I saw a Yankee shell kill a wounded man and his horse not thirty
+yards from me.
+
+Before we had gone another mile I met Harry Helm. The General had left
+him in camp with flat orders to remain, but at daylight he had ridden
+out to find us. He was in two tremendous moods at once; lifted to heaven
+on the glory of our deeds, yet heart-broken over the fate of Ned Ferry.
+"Surgeon's told him he can't live, Dick! And all the effect that's
+had--'No opiates, then, Doctor,' s'e, 'till I get off these two or three
+despatches.' So there he lies in that ambulance cross-questioning
+prisoners and making everybody bring him every scrap of information, as
+if he were General Austin and Major Harper rolled into one and they were
+wounded instead of him--By George! Dick, he knows you're hit and just
+how you're hit, and has sent me to find you!"
+
+I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we
+were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about
+it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn,
+and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now
+remounting, both of them openly in tears. "Hello, Kendall."
+
+"Hello, Smith." He turned sharply from me, horse and all.
+
+"Good-morning, sergeant, is Lieutenant Ferry--worse?"
+
+The sergeant only jabbed in the spurs, and leapt away with Kendall,
+bearing despatches to the brigade. Harry, looking back to me from the
+ambulance, called softly, "All right again; it was only a bad swoon!"
+
+"Hello, Smith," said some one whom I was too sick and dizzy to
+recognize, "one of those prisoners says he saw Oliver dead."
+
+They say two or three men sprang to catch me, but the first thing I knew
+was that the ambulance was under way and I in it on my back within
+elbow-touch of Ferry, looking up into a surgeon's face. "How's the
+Lieutenant?" I asked.
+
+"Oh--getting on, getting on," he replied. Doctors think patients are
+fools.
+
+In a parlor under the room where Charlotte lay they made a bed for Ferry
+and one for me, and here, lapped in luxury and distinction, I promptly
+fell asleep, and when I reopened my eyes it was again afternoon. In the
+other bed Ferry was slumbering, and quite across the room, beside a
+closed door, sat Cecile and Camille. The latter tiptoed to me. Her
+whispers were as soft as breathing, and when I answered or questioned,
+her ear sank as near as you would put a rose to smell it. "The
+Lieutenant, sleeping? yes, this hour past; surgeons surprised and more
+hopeful. Miss Estelle? in another room with other wounded. Her aunt?
+upstairs with Charlotte, who was--oh--getting on, getting on." That made
+me anxious.
+
+"Does Charlotte," I asked, "know--everything?"
+
+Camille allowed herself all the motions of a laugh, and said "No, not
+quite everything;" and then with solemn tenderness she added that
+Charlotte knew about Ferry. "And she knows about _you,"_ the whisperer
+went on; "they all know."
+
+I thought she was alluding to the verses, and had an instant of terror
+and rage before I saw what she meant. She glided back to the door and
+the two opened it an inch or so to answer some inquirer without. I saw
+her no more until bedtime, when she stood at her aunt's elbow to hand
+and hold things, while Miss Harper, to my all but screaming
+embarrassment, bared the whole upper half of one side of me and washed
+and dressed my wound anew. Ferry it was imperative to let alone, but
+when I awoke the next morning there was a radiance of joy throughout all
+the house; for he had slept and improved. The next morning again he was
+ever so much stronger, and Harry Helm rode off in simulated disgust, not
+seeing "any fun in hanging round girls who were hanging round
+other fellows."
+
+Another day arose. A courier brought passes for our three or four other
+wounded to go home as soon as they were fit to travel, and by night they
+were all gone. At early bedtime came two surgeons of high rank all the
+way from Johnston's army up in Mississippi. General Austin had asked
+this favor by telegraph. Harry had been gone thirty-six hours, and Ferry
+was just asking if he had not yet got back, when the surgeons came in to
+the room. A pleasantry or two consumed a few moments. Then the surgeon
+in charge of us told of a symptom or two, to which they responded only
+"hmm," and began the examination. Miss Harper sent her three nieces
+away. I lay and listened in the busy stillness. Presently one of the
+examiners murmured with a certain positiveness to the other, who after a
+moment's silence replied with conviction; Miss Harper touched our
+surgeon's arm inquiringly and he looked back in a glad way and nodded.
+Miss Harper nodded to me; they had located the ball! Now the
+conversation turned upon men and events of the day, while one of the
+visitors, with his back to the patient, opened a case of glittering
+knives. Presently the professional heads came so close together as quite
+to hide the patient; they spoke once or twice in a manly soothing tone.
+Miss Harper stroked my temples to keep me down, one of the busy ones
+spoke again, and lo! the thing was done, there was the ball in the
+basin. As the men of blood sped through their kind after-work the news
+flew to and fro; Camille wept,--since she could not hurrah,--Cecile told
+Charlotte, the heavenly-minded Estelle was confirmed in her faith, Miss
+Harper's black eyes, after a brief overflow, were keener and kindlier
+than ever, and as the surgeons spoke the word "done," Ferry asked again
+if Harry had not got back yet. Pretty soon Harry did arrive, with news
+of great feats by our cavalry against our old enemy Grierson, in which
+Austin's brigade had covered themselves with glory, and in which he had
+had his own share; his hand was swelled as big as his heart. In all the
+Confederacy no houseful went to sleep that night in sweeter content. I
+sank into perfect bliss planning a double wedding.
+
+
+
+LII
+
+
+SAME BOOK AND LIGHT-HEAD HARRY
+
+The next day found me so robustly happy that I was allowed to dress and
+walk out to the front door. Three days later the surgeons were gone, all
+three, and at the approach of dew-fall Cecile and Harry, Camille and I,
+walked in a field-path, gathered hedge roses, and debated the problem of
+Mrs. Roy's daughter's book, which all of us were reading and none
+had finished.
+
+"A woman," I remarked, "who, for very love of a man, can say to him, 'Go
+on up the hill without me, I have a ball and chain on my foot and you
+shall not carry them and me, you have a race to run,'--a woman so
+wonderfully good as to say that--"
+
+"Ah, no!" interrupted Cecile, with her killing Creole accent, "not a
+woman so _good_ to say that, only with the so-good _sanse_ to say it."
+
+Harry was openly vexed. "Well, either way! would any true man leave
+_that_ woman behind?" and I tried to put in that that was what I had
+been leading up to; but it makes me smile yet, to recall how jauntily
+she discomfited us both. She triumphed with the airy ease of a king-bird
+routing a crow in the upper blue. Camille had more than once told me
+that Cecile was wise beyond the hope of her two cousins to emulate her;
+which had only increased my admiration for Camille; yet now I began to
+see how the sisters came by their belief. In the present discussion she
+was easily first among the four of us. At the same time her sensuous
+graces also took unquestionable preeminence; city-bred though she was,
+she had the guise of belonging to the landscape, or, rather, of the
+landscape's belonging, by some fairy prerogative, to her. She seemed
+just let loose into the world, yet as ready and swift to make right use
+of it as any humming-bird let into a garden; as untimorous as any such,
+and as elusive. In this sultry June air she had all the animation both
+of mind and of frame that might have been expected of her on a keen,
+clear winter day. Her face never bore the same expression at the
+beginning and middle, or at either of these and the close, of any of her
+speeches, yet every change was lovely, the sign of a happy play of
+feeling, and proof of a mercurial intelligence. No report of them by
+this untrained pen would fully bear me out, and the best tribute I can
+offer is to avoid the task.
+
+It was a sweet mercy in her to change the subject, and tactful to change
+it to Charlotte, as if Charlotte were quite an unrelated theme. The
+cousins vied with each other ever so prettily in telling how beautiful
+the patient was on her couch of enfeeblement and pain, how her former
+loveliness had increased, and what new nobility it had taken on. That
+any such problem overhung her life as that which we had just been
+weighing, seemed never to have entered their thought, and if they had
+ever conceived of a passion already conscious between Charlotte and
+Ferry, they veiled the fact with charming feminine art.
+
+When we got back to the house Harry detained me on the veranda alone.
+Camille told me how long I might tarry. It was heaven to have her bit in
+my mouth, and I found it hard to be grum even when Harry beat with his
+good hand the rhythm of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes."
+
+"Dick," he said, suddenly grave as he walked me down the veranda, "her
+cousin Cecile! isn't it awful? Now that poor girl's gone back to Ned's
+bedside; back to her torture! Why _do_ they let her? My George! it's
+merciless! Has her aunt no eyes?"
+
+"But, Lieutenant, you don't know she loves him; there are signs, I
+admit; but proofs, no. She's lost color, and her curves are more
+slender, but, my goodness! a dozen things might account for that."
+
+"Dick Smith,"--my questioner worked himself up over the rail and sat out
+on the shelf that held the bucket of drinking-water and its gourd--"do
+you imagine she didn't know, when we were talking about that book, that
+she was arguing against the union of Ned Ferry and Charlotte Oliver?
+_Didn't_ she do it bravely! Richard, my friend, she couldn't have done
+it if she had suspected us of suspecting her. It's a bleeding pity! And
+yet you can't side with her, for I just swear Ned's got to have
+Charlotte Ol'--what? No, he won't overhear a blank word; here's his
+window shut, right here. He's got to have her, I say, and he's got to
+have her just as soon as the two of 'em can stand up together to be
+sworn in! Don't you say so?"
+
+I replied that I was not aware of any one who did not say so.
+
+"Well, I can name several! I don't call Scott Gholson anybody, but
+there's Major Harper--No, I'm not talking too loud, Ned isn't hearing a
+word. Major Harper's so hot against this thing that he brought it up,
+with me, yesterday on the battlefield."
+
+"Major Harper doesn't really know her," I softly remarked.
+
+Harry swore with military energy. "I told him he didn't, and he fairly
+snorted. _We_ don't know her, he says; you nor I nor his sister nor his
+niece nor his daughters, oh, we don't know her at all; and neither do we
+know Ned; Ned has graceful manners, and she's a born actress, and we're
+simply infatuated by their romantic situation. Good Lordy! he got up on
+his Charleston pride-of-family like a circus-girl on stilts, and 'Edgard
+Ferry-Durand has got a great public career before him,' s's he, 'and no
+true friend will let him think of taking a wife who is all history and
+no antecedents, a blockade-runner, a spy, and the brand-new widow of a
+blackguard and a jayhawker she had run away from practically on her
+wedding-night.' Hy Jo'! the way he went on, you'd 'a' thought he was
+already Ned's uncle-in-l'--" The speaker's face took a sudden
+distress--"Great Caesar!" He pointed up to the second-story front room
+and slipped down from the shelf just as Estelle came out to us with her
+aunt's message for me to come in.
+
+"How's the fair patient?" I hurried to ask as the three of us went.
+
+"Why, Mr. Smith, she's actually been sitting up--in the twilight--at
+the open window--while Aunt Martha and I smoothed up her bed."
+Harry groaned.
+
+"She's still very weak," said Aunt Martha when we came to her; "the
+moment her bed was made up she asked to lie down again."
+
+"Yes," softly exclaimed Camille, "but, oh, aunt Martha, with such
+courage in those eyes!"
+
+"Smith," privately asked the agonized Harry, "what would you do if you
+were in my place; go and cut your throat from ear to ear?"
+
+"No," I said, as black as an executioner, "but I wish you'd done it
+yesterday."
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+
+"CAPTAIN, THEY'VE GOT US"
+
+More days slipped by. Neighbors pressed sweet favors upon us; calls,
+joyful rumors, delicacies, flowers. One day Major Harper paid us a
+flying visit, got kisses galore, and had his coat sponged and his
+buttons reanimated. In the small town some three miles northwest of us
+he was accumulating a great lot of captured stuff. On another day came
+General Austin and stayed a whole hour. Ferry took healing delight in
+these visits, asking no end of questions about the movements afield,
+and about the personal fortunes of everyone he knew. When the General
+told him Ferry's scouts were doing better without him than with him--"I
+thought he would smile himself into three pieces," said the General at
+the supper-table.
+
+On a second call from Major Harper, when handed a document to open and
+read, he went through it carefully twice, and then dropping it on the
+coverlet asked--"and Quinn?"
+
+"Oh, Quinn's turn will come."
+
+"Ah! Major, that is not fair to Quinn!" said Ferry. Yet when he took up
+the paper again he gazed on it with a happy gravity; it made him a
+captain. "By the by," he said, "that Yankee horse that Dick Smith
+captured at Sessions's; I'd like to buy that horse from you, Major."
+They made the sale. "And there's that captured ambulance still here,
+Major, with its team eating their heads off."
+
+"Yes, I'm going to take that away with me to-day."
+
+This meant that Charlotte's negro man and his daughter, her maid, had
+come with her spring-wagon, and Harry and I would have liked the Major
+better if he had smiled at this point, as he did not. Yet he was most
+lovable; sent so kind a message up to Charlotte that Harry and I
+wondered; and received back from her a reply so gracious that--since we
+could not wonder--we worshipped. In the evening of that day Ferry and
+Charlotte were transferred, she into the room behind her, and he
+upstairs into the one out of which she was taken. That night a slave and
+his wife, belonging to the place, ran away to the enemy. If they should
+tell the Yankees Ned Ferry was here--! "By Jo'!" said Harry Helm, "I'm
+glad I didn't cut my throat; I told that darkey, yesterday, Ned's name
+was O'Brien!"
+
+Toward the close of that day came tidings of the brigade's splendid work
+at a steamboat-landing on the Mississippi River, how they had stolen in
+by night between two great bodies of the enemy, burned a vast store of
+military supplies, and then brilliantly cut their way out; yet we were
+told to be ready to withdraw into Mississippi again as soon as our newly
+made captain could safely be moved. Pooh! what of that? Lee was on his
+way into Pennsylvania; the war was nearly over, sang the Harper girls,
+and we were the winners! They cheerily saw Helm and me, next morning,
+ride southward in search of further good news. At a cross-roads I
+proposed that we separate, and meet there again near the end of the day.
+He turned west; I went an hour's ride farther south and then turned
+west myself.
+
+When we met again I knew that he--while he did not know that I--had been
+to Gilmer's plantation. We wanted to see if the Federals had left a
+grave there. They had left three, and a young girl who had been one of
+the dancers told me she had seen Oliver's body carried off by two blue
+troopers who growled and cursed because they had been sent back to bury
+it. Neither Harry nor I mentioned the subject when we met at the
+cross-roads again, for we came on our horses' necks at a stretched out
+run; the Federals were rolling up from the south battalion after
+battalion, hoping to find Major Harper's store of supplies feebly
+guarded and even up with us for that steamboat-landing raid. Presently
+as we hurried northward we began to hear, off ahead of us on our left,
+the faint hot give-and-take of two skirmish lines. We came into the
+homestead grove at a constrained trot and found the ladies out on the
+veranda in liveliest suspense between scepticism and alarm.
+
+"Yes, they're fighting, now, on the edge of town," we said, "but our
+boys will keep them there." Our host and hostess moaned their unbelief.
+"However," added Harry, "I'll go tell the old man to hitch up the little
+mules and--"
+
+"You dawn't need," said Cecile, "'tis done!" and Camille confirmed her
+word, while the planter and his wife returned to the kitchen yard, where
+the servants were loading the smokehouse meat into a wagon to hide it in
+the woods; Miss Harper and Estelle went into the house, summoned by
+Charlotte's maid. On Ferry's chamber floor sounded three measured thumps
+of his scabbarded sword.
+
+"Dick, you answer that," exclaimed Harry, reining in half wheeled; "but
+keep him on his back, if you have to hold him down!" He spurred away to
+learn whether we had better stay or fly. I threw my rein to Camille and
+flew up the hall stairs.
+
+Ferry lay in bed with three pillows behind him and his sheathed sword
+across his lap. "Good-evening, Richard," he said, "you are returned just
+in time; will you please hand me my two pistol' from yonder?--thank
+you." He laid one beside each thigh. "Now please turn the head of my
+bed a little bit, to face the door--thank you; and now, good-bye. You
+hear those footstep' there in the room behind? she is dressing to go;
+the other ladies they are helping her. Richard, I place them in your
+charge; have them all ready to get into her wagon at a moment's notice,
+with you on your horse--and you better take that Jewett horse, too; he
+came to-day."
+
+I hesitated, but a single flash of authority from his eye was enough and
+I had passed half-way to the door, when, through the window over the
+front veranda, I saw a small body of horsemen trotting up through the
+grove. The dusk of the room hid me, but there was no mistaking them.
+"Too late, Captain," I said, "they've got us."
+
+"How many do you see?"
+
+"About sixteen. Our two horses will be Yankees again to-morrow."
+
+"Ah! not certainly. Where is your carbine?"
+
+"Just outside this door. They know you're here, Captain, they're
+surrounding the house." As I reached toward the door I heard his sword
+crawl out, the doorknob clicked without my touching it, the door swung
+and closed again, and Charlotte Oliver was with us. The light of the
+western window shone full upon her; she was in the same dress, hat and
+all, in which I had seen her the night we rode together alone. Though
+wasted and pale, she betrayed a flush on either cheek and a smile that
+mated with the sweet earnest of her eyes. She tendered me my carbine,
+patted my hand caressingly, and glided onward to Ferry's bedside. With
+my back to them and my ear to the door I hearkened outward. In the front
+doorway below sounded the jingling tread of cavalry-boots and a clank
+of sabres.
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+
+THE FIGHT IN THE DOORWAY
+
+Charlotte's whisper came to me: "Richard!" Standing by Ferry's pillow
+she spoke for him. "If they start upstairs come and stand like me, on
+the other side."
+
+I nodded and slyly opened the door enough to pass half-way out. Some man
+was parleying with Miss Harper. "Now, madam, you know you haven't locked
+up your parlor to maintain an abstract right; you've locked it up
+because you've got the man in there that I've come for."
+
+"Whom have you come for, sir?"
+
+"Lieutenant O'Brien, of the rebel army. Shall I order this man to kick
+that door in? Answer quickly."
+
+"Sir, there is no Lieutenant O'Brien in there, nor elsewhere in this
+house; there never has been."
+
+"Stand aside, madam."
+
+"Stop, sir! I command you! There is no Lieutenant of any name on this
+place!"
+
+"Oh, yes there is; he goes by various names, but one of them is Ned
+Ferry. Sergeant, we'll kick together; now!"--Bang!
+
+I leaned back into the room to say "It's all right! Oh, but that sweet
+woman's a 'coon! Let them batter!" As I thrust my head out again Miss
+Harper was exclaiming "Oh, sirs, don't do that!"--Bang!--"For the honor
+of your calling and your flag--" Bang!
+
+"There's no Lieutenant in there." Bang!
+
+"Corporal, go find an axe or something."
+
+"Oh, you need not, sirs, I'll unlock the door."
+
+"Well, be quick about it, and then stand clear; we don't want any woman
+hurt." The key rattled at the keyhole and then dropped to the floor.
+"You did that by intention! Give me that key!" He tried the lock. "We've
+jammed it, corporal, but another good kick will fetch it;
+now!"--Bang!--crash!--open flew the door.
+
+"Well, I will be damned!" said the officer.
+
+"Sir," said Miss Harper, "you give me no occasion to doubt it." She
+followed the men upstairs. "Estelle, go back to your sister and cousin;
+and if you, my dear,"--to our hostess--"will kindly go also, and stay
+with them--"
+
+I closed the door. It had no key, but there was a small catch to the
+knob and I turned it on while the men were looking into the adjacent
+rooms. When they reached ours Miss Harper was again at their front.
+Inside, the three of us silently noted our strategic advantages: we were
+in the darkest part of the room, the bed's covering was a dull red,
+Ferry had on his shirt of black silk, the white pillows were hidden at
+his back, Charlotte and I were darkly clad, the light from our west
+window would be in our assailants' faces as they entered, and they would
+be silhouetted against a similar light from the hall's front. We
+noiselessly cocked our weapons and Charlotte and I each sank to one
+knee. "The door is very thin," murmured Ferry, "we can fire before they
+enter; they will get, anyhow, our smoke, and if they fire as they rush
+in we can aim under their flash."
+
+It was only then that I observed that Charlotte was armed. But the fact
+made her seem only the more a true woman, since I knew that only for her
+honor or his life would she ever take deadly aim. Her weapon was the
+slender revolver she had carried ever since the day which had made her
+Charlotte Oliver, the thing without which she never could have reached
+this hour of blissful extremity.
+
+"In here there is a lady, ill," we heard Miss Harper say.
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+Ferry prompted in a whisper, the three of us cried "Yes!" and he added
+"Pass one side from the door, Miss Harper, we are going to shoot
+through it."
+
+"Hello, in there! Lieutenant Ferry, of Ferry's scouts,"--
+
+"_Captain_ Ferry," retorted Miss Harper, and I echoed the amendment.
+
+"Damn the difference; I give you one half-minute, Captain Ferry, to say
+you surrender! If you weren't wounded I wouldn't give you that.
+Corporal, go get a log out of that fireplace downstairs."
+
+"Oh, shame!" wailed Miss Harper, half-way down the hall.
+
+"Captain," called Ferry, "I give you one quarter-minute to get away from
+that door." He whispered to Charlotte, pointing to a panel of it higher
+than any one's head.
+
+"Oh, sirs," we again heard Miss Harper cry, "withhold! Captain Ferry,
+they have called in four more men!" We heard the four downstairs coming
+at a run. "Oh, sir--"
+
+"Go away, madam!" bellowed the officer as his men thundered into the
+upper hall. "Now, Captain Ferry, there are six of us here and three
+under each of your windows. Do you--?"
+
+"Oh, sir, the lady! the sick lady!"
+
+"That's his look-out, madam. If the sick lady isn't Charlotte Oli'--"
+
+"And if she is?" called Ferry, depressing Charlotte's weapon to an aim
+barely breast high.
+
+"Then throwing away your life won't save hers! Do you surren'--?"
+
+Ferry made a quick gesture for her to shoot low, but she solemnly shook
+her head and fired through the top of the uppermost panel, and the
+assault came.
+
+The log burst the door in at a blow, Ferry and I fired, and our foes
+sprang in. Certainly they were brave; the doorway let them in only by
+twos, and the fire-log, falling under foot, became a stumbling-block;
+yet in an instant the room was ringing and roaring with the fray and
+benighted with its smoke. Their first ball bit the top of my shoulder
+and buried itself in the wall--no, not their first, but the first save
+one; for the bureau mirror stood in dim shade, and the Federal leader
+made the easy mistake of firing right into it. The error sealed his
+fate; Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of
+his followers. They replied hotly but blindly, and in a moment the room
+was void of assailants. Ferry started to spring from the bed, but
+Charlotte threw her arms about him, and as she pressed her head hard
+down on his breast I could not help but hear "No, my treasure, my
+heart's whole treasure, no!"
+
+
+
+LV
+
+
+RESCUE AND RETREAT
+
+I sprang for the door, but the fire-log sent me sprawling with my
+shoulder on the threshold. As I went down I heard in the same breath the
+wounded officer wailing "Go back! go in! there are only four of them!
+don't leave one alive!" and Miss Harper all but screaming "Our men! our
+men! God be praised, our men are coming, they are here! Fly spoilers,
+for your lives, fly!"
+
+And it was true. Their hoofs rumbled, their carbines banged, and their
+charge struck three sides of the house at once. Rising only to my
+elbows,--and how I did that much, stiffened with my wound, the doctors
+will have to explain,--I laid my cheek to my rifle, and the light of two
+windows fell upon my gunsights. Every blue-coat in the hall was between
+me and its rear window, but one besides the officer was wounded, and
+with these two three others were busy; only the one remaining man saw
+me. Twice he levelled his revolver, and twice I had almost lined my
+sights on him, but twice Miss Harper unaware came between us. A third
+time he aimed, fired and missed. I am glad he fired first, for our two
+shots almost made one report, and-he plunged forward exactly as I had
+done over the fire-log, except that he reached the floor dead.
+
+[Illustration: Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the
+arms of his followers.]
+
+Thereupon came more things at once than can be told: Miss Harper's
+outcry of horror and pity; Charlotte's cry from the bedside--"Richard!
+Richard!" a rush of feet and shouts of rage in the hall below; and my
+leap to the head of the stairs, shouting to half a dozen gray-jackets
+"Two men, no more! two men to guard prisoners, no more! go back, all but
+you two! go back!"
+
+A sabreless officer with a bandaged hand flew up the stair and into my
+face. It was Helm. "The ladies! Smith, good God! Smith, where are
+the girls?"
+
+"In the smokehouse," cried Miss Harper from her knees beside the
+prostrate Federal officer; "go bring them!--Richard, Charlotte is
+calling you!"
+
+I ran to Ferry's door; Charlotte was leaning busily over his bared
+chest, while he, still holding a revolver in his right hand, caressed
+her arm with his left. "Dick, his wound has opened again, but we must
+get him away at once anyhow. Isn't my wagon still here?--oh, thank God!
+there it comes now, I hear it in the back yard!"
+
+A Confederate waiting on Miss Harper with basin and towels barely dodged
+me as I sprang to the far end of the hall and shouted down into the yard
+for Harry. The little mules, true enough, were just rattling round a
+half turn at the lower hall's back door, having been in hiding behind
+the stables. A score or so of cavalry were boisterously hurrying off
+across the yard with a few captured horses and prisoners, and I had to
+call the Lieutenant angrily a second time, to make him hear me amid
+their din and a happy confusion which he was helping to keep up in a
+fairer group. For here were all the missing feminine members of the
+household, white and colored, and Harry was clamorous with joy,
+compassion and applause, while Camille and Cecile, pink with weeping,
+stepped out across the high doorsill of the smokehouse, leading Ned
+Ferry's horse and mine.
+
+However, there was not the urgency for instant flight that Charlotte had
+thought there was; night fell; a whole regiment of our mounted infantry
+came silently up from the rear of the plantation and bivouacked without
+lights behind a quarter of a mile of worm-fence; our two wounded and
+three unharmed prisoners, or Miss Harper's, I should say, for it was in
+response to her entreaties that the latter had thrown down their arms,
+were taken away; the dead man was borne out; lights glowed in every
+room, the servants returned to their tasks, a maddening fragrance came
+from the kitchen, and the three nieces flitted everywhere in their
+benign activities, never discovering the hurt on my shoulder until
+everything else on earth had been discovered, and then--"Oh, Richard,
+Richard!" from Estelle, with "Reach-hard, Reach-hard!" from Cecile, and
+"Mr. Smith!" from Camille, as they bathed and bound it. At length a
+surgeon arrived, gave a cheering opinion of Ferry and of Charlotte, and
+scolded Harry savagely for the really bad condition of his hand. Then
+sounds grew few and faint, our lights went out, we lay down fully
+dressed, and nearly all of us, for a while, slept.
+
+But about two in the morning Harry awakened me, murmuring "Reach-hard!
+Reach-hard! come! our sick-train's moving. Ssh! General Austin's asleep
+in the next room!" I asked where Ferry was. "Already started," he
+whispered, "--in the General's own ambulance, with Charlotte Oliver in
+hers, on a mattress, like Ned, and the four Harpers in theirs." While we
+stole downstairs he murmured on "Our brigade's come up and General
+Austin will attack at daylight with this house as his headquarters."
+
+As we mounted I asked whither we were bound. "Tangipahoa," he said;
+"then by railroad to Brookhaven, and then out to Squire Wall's."
+
+At the first streak of dawn our slow caravan caught the distant notes of
+the battle opening behind us. "That's Fisher's battery!" joyously cried
+the aide-de-camp as we paused and hearkened back. "Well, thank the Lord,
+this time nobody's got to go back for her doll; she's got it with her; I
+saw her, just now, combing its hair." We descended into a woody hollow,
+the sounds of human strife died away, and field and forest offered us
+only beauty, fragrance, peace, and the love-songs of birds.
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+
+HOTEL DES INVALIDES
+
+A shattered crew we were when in the forenoon of the third day we
+reached our goal. Harry's hand was giving him less trouble, but both my
+small wounds were misbehaving as stoutly as their limitations would
+allow; my aches were cruel and incessant, my side was swollen and my
+shoulder hot. Miss Harper was "really ill," said the surgeon, but for
+whose coming with us we should hardly have brought our whole number
+through alive. Both Ferry and Charlotte were in a critical condition.
+"Take you in!" said our tearfully smiling Mrs. Wall; "why, we'd take yo'
+whole crowd in ef we had to go out and bunk undeh the trees owse'v's!...
+Oh, Mr. Smith, you po' _chi--ild!_... Oh, my Lawd! is this Lieutenant
+Do-wrong! Good Lawd, good Lawd! I think this waugh's gone on now jess
+long enough!"
+
+In the house she gave the younger Harpers a second kiss all round. "You
+po' dears, yo're hero-ines, now, and hencefo'th fo'evehmo'!" Harry and I
+agreed they were; it was one of the few points on which we thought
+alike. We even agreed that Estelle's grasp of earthly realities was not
+so feeble as we had thought it.
+
+"Fact is," I said to him, on our first day at the Walls', as he was
+leaving the soldiers' room, where I sat under the surgeon's inspection,
+"you were totally mistaken about her."
+
+"Yes, I was," he replied; "she's got more sense in a minute than
+Camille's got in a week," and shut the door between us.
+
+My blood leaped with rage, yet I sat perfectly calm, while the surgeon
+laughed like a hyena. "As soon as you can let me go, Doctor," I frigidly
+said, "I shall look up the Lieutenant. I consider that remark
+ungentlemanly, and his method of making it as worthy only of a coward."
+
+The surgeon cackled again. "If that man," I dispassionately resumed,
+"was not perfectly sure that I am too honorable a gentleman to give Miss
+Camille the faintest hint of what he has said, sooner than say it he
+would go out and cut his throat from ear to ear."
+
+"Well! you oughtn't to get mad at him for thinking you a gentleman."
+
+"He sha'n't take a low advantage of my being one. You think he's open
+and blunt--he's as sly as a mink. He praises the older sister at the
+younger's expense, when it's the younger one that he's so everlastingly
+stuck on that he can't behave _like_ a gentleman to any man to whom she
+shows the slightest preference." We heard a coming step, but I talked
+on: "Sense! poor simpleton! he knows he hasn't got"--the door opened and
+Harry stepped partly in, but I only raised my voice,--"hasn't got as
+much brains in his whole head as there is in one of her tracks."
+
+With something between a sob, a sputter and a shriek he shut himself out
+again. Harry was never deep but in a shallow way, and never shallow
+without a certain treacherous depth. When Ned Ferry the next day
+summoned me to his bedside I went with a choking throat, not doubting I
+was to give account of this matter,--until I saw the kindness of his
+pallid face. Then my silly heart rose as much too high as it had just
+been too low and I thought "Charlotte has surrendered!" All he wanted
+was to make me his scribe. But when we were done he softly asked, "That
+business of yours we talked about on the Plank-road--it looks
+any better?"
+
+I bit my lip, turned away and shook my head. "Well, anyhow," he said,
+"I am told there is nobody in your way."
+
+I faced him sharply--"Who told you that?" and felt sure he would name
+the tricky aide-de-camp. But he pointed to the room overhead, which
+again, as in the other house, was Charlotte's. I blushed consciously
+with gratitude. "Well," I said, "it makes me happy to see you beginning
+again to get well."
+
+Within the same hour I met unexpectedly two other persons. First, Harry
+Helm; who, before I could speak, was deluging me with words, telling me
+for the twentieth time how, on that evening of the indoor fight, coming
+with a platoon of Mississippians which he had procured merely as a
+guard, he was within a hundred yards of the house before our shots in
+the bedroom told him he was riding to a rescue. Then suddenly he began
+to assure me that in what he had said about the two sisters he had
+sought only to mislead the surgeon, who, he declared, was more utterly
+dead-gone on Camille than both of us put together. We parted, and
+within the next five minutes I confronted the maiden herself.
+
+She came from upstairs with a mixed armful of papers, books and sewing,
+said she had been with Charlotte, and said no more, only made a
+mysterious mouth. I inquired how Charlotte was. She shrugged, sank into
+a seat on the gallery, let her arm-load into her lap, and replied, "Ah!
+she lies up there and smiles and smiles, and calls us pet names, and
+says she's perfectly contented, and then cannot drop half asleep without
+looking as though she were pressing a knife into her own heart. Oh,
+Dick, what is the matter with her?"
+
+"What do you think,--Camille?"
+
+"Oh--I--I'm afraid to say it--even to Estelle, or aunt Martha, or--"
+
+"Say it to me," I murmured.
+
+"Oh, if I could only trust you!" she said, shaking her head sadly and
+trying to lift her arm's burden again without taking her eyes from mine.
+It went to her feet in a landslide, and out of one of the books
+fluttered three stems of sweet-pea each bearing two mated blossoms. I
+knew them in an instant, and in the next I had them. She would not let
+me pile the fallen freight anywhere but into her arm again, nor recover
+her eye before she was fully re-laden. Then she set her lips freezingly
+and said "Now give me back my flowers."
+
+I meekly gave them and she turned to go into the house; her head
+gradually sank forward as she went, and her unparagoned ear and neck
+flushed to a burning red. On the threshold, by some miscalculation, her
+burdened arm struck the jamb, and the whole load fell again. I sprang
+and began to gather the stuff into a chair, but she walked straight on
+as though nothing had occurred, and shut the nearest door behind her.
+
+In those days used to come out to see us Gregory, in his long-skirted
+black coat and full civilian dress; of whom I have told a separate
+history elsewhere. Very pointed was Camille's neglect of both Harry and
+me, to make herself lovely to the dark and diffident new-comer, while
+Estelle positively pursued me with compensatory sweetness; and Gregory,
+whenever he and I were alone together, labored to reassure me of his
+harmlessness by expatiating exclusively upon the charms of Cecile. She
+seemed to him like a guardian angel of Ferry and Charlotte, while yet
+everything she said or did was wholly free from that quality of
+other-worldliness which was beautiful in Estelle, but which would not
+have endured repetition in the sister or the cousin. There Harry and I,
+also, once more agreed. Cecile never allowed herself to reflect a spirit
+of saintliness, or even of sacrifice, but only of maidenly wisdom and
+sweet philosophy.
+
+"If it weren't for Charlotte," whispered the Lieutenant, "I could swear
+she was created for Ned Ferry!" and when I shook my head he, too,
+declared "No, no! if ever a match was made on high Charlotte was made
+for him and he for Charlotte; but, oh, Lord, Lord! Reach-hard Thorndyke
+Smith, how is this thing going to end?"
+
+That was the problem in the mind of every looker on, and the lookers-on
+were legion; the whole wide neighborhood came to see us. Gregory and
+others outstayed their furloughs; the surgeon lingered shamelessly. Of
+course, there were three girls besides Charlotte, and it was pure
+lying--as I told Helm--for some of those fellows to pretend that Captain
+Ferry's problem was all they stayed for; and yet it was the one
+heart-problem which was everybody's, and we were all in one fever to see
+forthwith a conclusion which "a decent respect to the opinions of
+mankind" required should not come for months.
+
+"Pooh!" said Harry, "'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind'
+requires just the reverse!" and the surgeon avowed that it was required
+by a decent respect to her powers of endurance; he was every day afraid
+her slow improvement would stop and she would begin to sink. He admitted
+the event could wait, but he wished to gracious we could have
+her decision.
+
+I said suppose it should be negative. "Oh, it won't!" exclaimed both he
+and Harry. "When it comes to the very point--"
+
+Gregory's approach interrupted us, but I remembered a trait in Charlotte
+of which I have spoken, and gave myself the hope that their prediction
+might prove well founded.
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+
+A YES AND A NO
+
+But now Charlotte's recovery took on new speed. Maybe her new brightness
+meant only that her heart was learning to bear its load; but we hoped
+that was just what it was unlearning, as she and Ferry sat at chess on
+the gallery in the afternoons.
+
+One night the fellows gave a dance in Brookhaven. We went in two wagons
+and by the light of mounted torch-bearers, and Charlotte and Ferry stood
+at the dooryard gate and sent after us their mirthful warnings and
+good-byes. It set some of us a-hoping--to see them there--a dooryard
+gate means so much. We fairly prayed he might compel her decision before
+she should turn to re-enter the house. But the following morning it was
+evident we had prayed in vain.
+
+On the next afternoon but one we heard that a great column of our
+soldiers was approaching on the nearest highway, bound up the railroad
+to Joe Johnston's army from the region about Port Hudson, and Charlotte
+instantly proposed that our ladies deal out food and drink from some
+shady spot on the roadside. It was one of those southern summer days
+when it verily seems hotter in the shade than in the sun--unless you are
+in the sun. The force was wholly artillery and infantry, the last
+Confederate infantry that region ever saw in column under arms; poor,
+limping, brown-faced, bloody-footed boys! their weapons were the only
+clean things, the only whole things, about them except their unbroken
+spirit; and when the very foremost command chanced to be one which the
+Harpers had seen in New Orleans the day it left there marching in
+faultless platoons and spotless equipments through the crowds that
+roared acclaim and farewell, our dear ladies, for one weak moment, wept.
+
+"Here come the real heroes, Harry," said my crippled leader; "we are
+dandies and toy-soldiers, by the side of those infantry boys, Doctor, we
+cavalry fellows;" and we cavalry fellows would have hid if we honorably
+could. Yet hardly had he spoken when he and a passing field-officer
+cried out in mutual recognition, and from that time until the rear-guard
+was clear gone by we received what the newspapers call "a continuous
+ovation." A group of brigade officers went back with us to Squire
+Wall's, to supper, and you could see by the worship they paid Charlotte
+that they knew her story. Her strength was far overtaxed, and the moment
+the last fond straggler had gone we came in out of the splendid
+moonlight.
+
+"Now, Charlotte, my dear," began Miss Harper, "you are too terribly
+tired to--why, where is Charlotte; did she not come in with us from
+the--gate?"
+
+Ferry, too, was missing. Mrs. Wall made eyes at the inquirer, Estelle
+and Cecile began to speak but deferred to each other, and Camille,
+putting on a deadly exhaustion, whined as she tottered to her smiling
+guardian, "Kiss your sweet baby good-night, auntie dear, and"--with a
+hand reached out to Estelle--"make Naughty come, too." She turned to say
+good-night to Cecile but spoiled her kiss with an unintended laugh. The
+surgeon, Harry and I bowed from the room and stepped out to the
+water-bucket and gourd. From there we could see the missing two,
+lingering at the dooryard gate, in the bright moonlight. As we finished
+drinking, "Gentlemen," murmured Harry, "I fear our position is too
+exposed to be tenable."
+
+The surgeon started upstairs. "I'll join you directly, Doctor," Harry
+said, and in a lower voice added "Smith and I will just lounge in and
+out of the hall here to sort o' show nobody needn't be in any hurry,
+don't you see?"
+
+But the other jerked his thumb toward the half-closed parlor, where
+Miss Harper and Cecile sat close, to each other absorbed in some matter
+of the tenderest privacy. "They'll attend to that," he muttered; "come
+on to bed and mind your own business."
+
+Harry huffed absurdly. "You go mind yours," he retorted, and then more
+generously added, "we'll be with you in a minute." The surgeon went, and
+the aide-de-camp, as we began to pace the hall, fairly took my breath by
+remarking without a hint of self-censure, "Damn a frivolous man!" Then
+irrelatively he added, "Those two out at that gate--this is a matter of
+life and death with them;" and when I would have qualified the
+declaration, he broke in upon me--"Right, Dick, you're right, it _is_
+worse; it's a choice between true life and death-in-life; whether
+they'll make life's long march in sunshine together or in
+darkness apart."
+
+Well, of course, it was no such simple question, and never could be
+while life held so many values more splendid than any wilfulness could
+win. There lay the whole of Charlotte's real difficulty--for she had
+made it all hers. But when I tried in some awkward way to say this Harry
+cut me short. "Oh, Dick, I--eh--you bother me! I want to tell you
+something and if I don't hurry I can't. Something's happened to me, old
+fellow, something that's sobered me more than I ever would 'a' thought
+anything could. I want to tell you because I can trust you with a
+secr'--wh'--what's the matter, did I hurt your wound? Honestly, I want
+to tell you because--well--because I've been deceiving you all along:
+I've deceived you shamefully, letting on to like this girl more than
+that, and so on and so on."
+
+"Yes, you thought you were deceiving me."
+
+"Oh, well, maybe I wasn't, but I want to tell you to-night because I'm
+going to camp in the morning. Oh, yes,"--he named the deepest place
+known--"the sight of those webfoot boys to-day was too much for me; I'm
+going; and Dick, when I told her I was going--"
+
+"_Told whom_?"
+
+"Aw, come, now, Dick, you know every bit as well as I know. Well, when I
+told her I was going I didn't dream I was going to tell her anything
+else; I give you my word! Where in the"--same place again--"I ever got
+the courage I'll never tell you, but all of a sudden thinks I, 'I'm
+never going to get anything but no, anyhow, and so, Dick, I've been and
+gone and done it!"
+
+I leaned on the stair-newel, sorry for the poor fool, but glad of this
+chance. "Why, Lieutenant, not many men would have done as well. You felt
+honor-bound not to slip away uncommitted, so you took your dose like a
+hero and licked the spoon." I felt that I was salting his wound, but we
+were soldiers and--I had the salt.
+
+He drew a sigh. "Yes, I took my dose--of astonishment. Dick, she said
+yes! Oh, good Lord, Dick, do you reckon they'll ever be such full-blown
+idiots as to let me have her?"
+
+I sank upon the steps; every pore in my body was a fountain of cold
+sweat: "Have whom?"
+
+"Cecile." He was going on to declare himself no more fit for her than
+for the presidency of the Confederate States, which was perfectly true;
+but I sprang up, caught him (on my well side) by one good hand, and had
+begun my enthusiastic congratulations, when Charlotte appeared and we
+swerved against the rail to let her pass upstairs. In some way as she
+went by it was made plain to us that she had said no. "Good-night,"
+ventured both of us, timorously.
+
+"Good-night," she responded, very musically, but as if from a great
+distance.
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+
+THE UPPER FORK OF THE ROAD
+
+Ferry, as he passed us, called my name, and I started after him. At
+Charlotte's door we heard the greeting of her black maid. The maid's
+father, who of late had been nightly dressing Ferry's wound and mine,
+came to us in Ferry's room; and there my Captain turned to greet me, his
+face white with calamity. He took me caressingly by a button of my
+jacket. "Can you have your wound washed to-night before mine?"
+
+"Why, certainly, if it's the least--"
+
+"Yes, thank you. And down here in this room instead of upstairs?"
+
+"Captain Ferry! if you knew how horribly it smells, you--"
+
+"Ah! don't I know?" he said, and as I sat naked from throat to waist
+with the old negro laving the sores, Ferry scanned them narrowly. "They
+are not so bad, Dick; you think a few hours in the saddle will not make
+them worse?"
+
+"Not if they're spent for you, Captain."
+
+"Yes, for me; also for much better. We shall ride for--"
+
+"You ride? Oh, Captain, you are in no condition--"
+
+"Tst!" he laid a finger on my lips; "'twill not be hard; we are not
+going on a scout--to jump fences." He began to make actual preparations,
+and presently helped me draw my shirt into place again over the clean
+bandages, while the old man went out after fresh water. "I am a hundred
+times more fit to go than to stay," he suddenly resumed. "I must go. Ah,
+idleness, there is nothing like idleness to drive a man mad; I must have
+something to do--to-night--at once." I wish I knew how to give the words
+with his quiet intensity.
+
+I began to unclothe his wound. "May I ask one thing?"
+
+"Ah! I know you; you want to ask am I taking that upper fork of the
+road. I am; 'tis for that I want you; so go you now to the stable,
+saddle our horses and bring them."
+
+When I reached the front steps with them Ferry was at the gallery's
+edge, Miss Harper, Cecile and Harry were on three sides of him, and he
+was explaining away our astonishing departure. We were going to
+Hazlehurst, to issue clothing and shoes to those ragged and barefoot
+fellows we had seen that afternoon, and the light of whose tentless camp
+was yonder in the sky, now, toward Brookhaven. We were to go that way,
+confer with their officers, telegraph from town for authorizations to be
+sent to us at Hazlehurst, and then to push on to that place and be ready
+to issue the stuff when the trains should come up from Brookhaven
+bringing the brigade. While he spoke Camille and Estelle joined us.
+"No," he said, "to start any later, 'twould be too late."
+
+To Harry's imploring protest that he, Ferry, was not fit to go to
+Hazlehurst horseback, he replied "Well! what we going to do? Those boys
+can't go to Big Black swamp bare-foot."
+
+Our dear friends were too well aware of the untold trouble to say a word
+about his coming back, but Miss Harper's parting injunction to me was to
+write them.
+
+The whole night and the following day were a toilsome time for us, but
+by fall of the next night the brigade had come in rags and passed newly
+clothed and shod, and in a room of the town tavern we dressed each
+other's hurts and sank to sleep on one bed. The night was hot, the pain
+of my wounds was like a great stone lying on them, and at the tragic
+moment of a frightful dream I awoke. "Captain," I murmured.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Did she give no reason?"
+
+"No." A silence followed; then he said, "You know the reason, I think."
+
+"Yes, I think I do; I think--"
+
+"Well? don't be afraid to say it."
+
+I got the words out in some form, that I believed Charlotte loved him
+deeply, as deeply, passionately, exaltedly, as ever a true woman loved
+a man--
+
+"Ah, me!" he lifted his arms wide and knitted his fingers on his brow.
+
+"And there is the whole trouble," I added. "She will not let you marry
+the woman whose--"
+
+"Whose husband I have killed.... Ah, God!... Ah, my God! why was I
+chosen to do that?... And you think, Dick, it was not a question of
+time; that I did not ask, maybe a little too soon?"
+
+"No, not as between sooner and later; and yet, in another way, possibly,
+yes." Without either of us stirring from the pillow I tried to explain.
+I pointed out that trait in Charlotte which I called an impulse suddenly
+to surrender the key of her situation, the vital point in her
+fortunes and fate.
+
+"Yes.... Yes," Ferry kept putting in.
+
+I went on to say that she seemed now to have learned, herself, that it
+was on this shoal she grounded at every low water of her physical and
+mental powers; as when over-fatigued, for instance; and that I should
+not wonder if she had bound herself never again at such a time to let
+her judgment follow her impulses. He laid his hand on me: "Stop; stop;
+you stab too deep. I thought to take her by surprise at that very point,
+and right there she has countermined. My God! can it be that I am served
+only right?"
+
+"No," I replied, although it was a thing I would have said Ned Ferry
+would not do, "no, no, it is she who has served both you and herself
+cruelly wrong. Captain, I believe that when Miss Harper has talked it
+over with her she will see her mistake as we all see it, and will call
+you back."
+
+"Ah, me! Ah, me! Do you believe that, Dick?"
+
+"I do, Captain; but at the same time--"
+
+"What, what? Speak out, Dick. You blame me some other way?"
+
+"Oh, no, indeed! I am the one to blame, the only one. If you had not,
+both of you, been so blameless--so splendidly blameless--I should hardly
+have let myself sink so deep into blame; but I knew you would never take
+the last glad step until you had seen the last sad proof that you might
+take it. Oh, Captain, to-night is the third time that in my dreams I
+have seen _that man_ alive."
+
+I do not know how long after that we lay silent, but it seemed an
+endless time before he exclaimed at last "My God! Dick, you should
+have told me."
+
+"I know it; I know I should! But it was only a dream, and--"
+
+"Ah! 'twas your doubt first and the dream after! But let us think no
+more of blame, we must settle the doubt. We shall begin that to-morrow."
+On my venturing to say more he interrupted. "Well, we can do nothing
+now; at the present, sleep is our first business." However, after a
+little, he spoke again, and, I believe, purely in order to soothe me to
+slumber, speculated and counselled with me for the better part of an
+hour concerning my own poor little love affair.
+
+At breakfast he told me the first step in his further plans would be for
+us to take the train for Tangipahoa, with our horses, on our way to our
+own camp; but just before the train came the telegraph brought General
+Austin's request--which, of course, carried all the weight of an
+order--for Ferry to remain here and make ready for further issues of
+quartermaster's stores. He turned on his heel and twisted his small
+mustache: "That means we are kept here to be kept here, Richard."
+
+It was a mistaken kindness, from our point of view, but it had the merit
+that it kept us busy. In two days the post-quartermaster's affairs and
+supplies were reduced to perfect order for the first time in their
+history. For two days more we ran a construction train and with a swarm
+of conscripts repaired two or three miles of road-bed and some
+trestle-work in a swamp; and at every respite in our strenuous
+activities we discoursed of the girls we'd left behind us; their minds,
+their manners, their features, figures, tastes and talents, and their
+walk and talk. So came the end of the week, and while the sun was still
+above the trees we went on down, inspecting the road beyond our repairs,
+on our own hand-car to Brookhaven. With heads bare, jackets in our laps,
+and muddy boots dangling over the car's front edge, and with six big
+negroes at the levers behind us, we watched the miles glide under our
+wheels and grow fewer and fewer between us and the shrine of our hearts.
+"Sing, Dick," said Ferry, and we chanted together, as we had done at
+every sunset these three days, "O my love is like a red, red rose." We
+could not have done it had we known that yonder glorious sun was setting
+forever upon the fortunes of our Southern Confederacy. It was the fourth
+of July; Lee was in full retreat from Gettysburg, Vicksburg was gone,
+Port Hudson was doomed, and all that was left for us now was to
+die hard.
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+
+UNDER CHARLOTTE'S WINDOW
+
+At the tavern, where we went to smarten up and to eat, we chanced upon
+Gregory. He was very shy of Ferry, because Ferry was a captain, but told
+me the latest news from the Wall place, where he had spent the previous
+evening. Harry and the surgeon were gone to camp, the Harpers were well,
+Charlotte was--better, after a bad turn of several days. We felt in duty
+bound to stay within hail of the telegraph office until it should close
+for the night; and when the operator was detained in it much beyond the
+usual time, Ferry, as we hovered near, said at length, "Well, I'm sorry
+for you, Dick; 'tis now too late for you to go yonder--this evening."
+
+"Didn't you intend to call, too?" "No," he said; yet the moment the
+operator turned the key in his door we sauntered away from the station,
+tavern, town, and out into the rain-famished country. We chose a road on
+high ground, under pines; the fact that a few miles of it would bring us
+to Squire Wall's was not sufficient reason for us to shun it, and we
+loitered on and on, discoursing philosophically on man and woman and the
+duties of each to other. Through habit we went softly, and so, in time,
+came up past a small garden under the house's southern side. Here
+silence was only decorum, for every window in the dark upper rooms was
+thrown open to the sultry air. The house's front was away from the
+direction of the town, and at a corner of this garden, where the road
+entered the open grove, the garden fence turned north at a right angle,
+while the road went on through the grove into wide cornfields beyond.
+
+We kept to the garden fence till it brought us along the dooryard front,
+facing the house. Thus far the whole place seemed fast asleep. Along the
+farthest, the northern, side a line of planted trees ran close to a
+narrow wing of but one room on each of its two stories, and the upper of
+these two rooms was Charlotte's. Where we paused, at the dooryard gate,
+we could not see this wing, but we knew its exterior perfectly; it had a
+narrow window in front, looking into the grove, and a broader one at the
+rear, that overlooked an open stretch of the Wall plantation. The place
+seemed fast asleep, I say, but we had not a doubt we were being
+watched--by the two terrible dogs that guarded the house but never
+barked. By this time they should have recognized us and ought to be
+coming forward and wagging faintly, as who should say "Yes, that's all
+right, but we have our orders."
+
+"Ah!"--Ferry guardedly pointed to the ground at the corner of the house
+nearest Charlotte's room; there were both the dogs, dim as phantoms and
+as silent, standing and peering not toward us but around to the wing
+side in a way to make one's blood stop. We drew deeper into the grove
+and made a short circuit that brought us in line with Charlotte's two
+windows, and there, at the farther one, with her back to us, sat
+Charlotte, looking toward Hazlehurst. The bloodthirsty beasts at the
+corner of the house were so intently waiting to spring upon something,
+somebody, between them and the nearer window, that we were secure from
+their notice. We had hardly more than become aware of these things when,
+in the line of planted trees, out of the depths of the one nearest the
+nearer window, sounded a note that brought Charlotte instantly to her
+feet; the same feeble, smothered cry she had heard the night she was
+wounded. She crossed to the front window and listened, first standing
+erect, and then stooping and leaning out. When we saw her do that we
+knew how little she cared for her life; Ferry beckoned me up from behind
+him; neither of us needed to say he feared the signal was from Oliver.
+"Watch here," he whispered, and keeping the deepest shade, started
+eagerly, with drawn revolver, toward the particular tree. I saw the dogs
+discover and recognize him and welcome his aid, yet I kept my closest
+watch on that tree's boughs and on Charlotte. She was wondering, I
+guessed, whether the call was from some messenger of Ferry, or was only
+a bird's cry. As if she decided it was the latter, she moved away, and
+had nearly re-crossed the room, when the same sad tremolo came searching
+the air again. Nevertheless she went on to the farther window and stood
+gazing out for the better part of a minute, while in my heart I besought
+her not to look behind. For Ferry and the dogs had vanished in shadow,
+and outside her nearer window, wavering now above and now below the
+sill, I could just descry a small pale object that reminded me of that
+missive Coralie Rothvelt had passed up to me outside the window-sill at
+old Lucius Oliver's house exactly a month before. From the upper depths
+of the nearest tree this small thing was being proffered on the end of a
+fishing-rod. Presently the rod must have tapped the sill, with such a
+start did she face about. Silently she ran, snatched the dumb messenger,
+and drew down the window-shade. A moment later the room glowed with a
+candle, while her shadow, falling upon the shade, revealed her scanning
+a letter, lifting her arms with emotion, and so passing out of the
+line of view.
+
+I waited on. So absorbed was I that I did not hear the coming of a
+horseman in the fields beyond the grove, nor the click of a field gate;
+but when the strange quietude of Ferry and the dogs had begun to
+reassure me I became aware of this new-comer approaching the dooryard.
+There he reined in and hallooed. I knew the voice. An answer came from
+an upper window. "Is this Squire Wall's?" asked the traveller. "Well,
+Squire, I'm from General Austin's headquarters, with orders to
+Captain Ferry."
+
+"Captain Ferry ain't stopping with us now, sir, he's 'way up at
+Hazlehurst."
+
+"Yes, sir. I didn't know but he might 'a' come down to spend to-morrow
+with you, it being the Sabbath. My name's Gholson, sir; I've got letters
+for the Miss Harpers; yes, sir; and one for Private Smith, from his
+mother, in New Orleans."
+
+"My sakes! yo' pow'ful welcome, Mr. Wholesome; just wait till I call off
+my dogs, sir, and I'll let you in."
+
+When the dogs came at the Squire's call I breathed relief. Ferry
+appeared behind me and beckoned me deeper into the grove. He sank upon a
+stump, whispering "That was worse than ten fights."
+
+"Who was it?" I asked. "Where is he?"
+
+He pointed to the field gate through which Gholson had come. In the
+field a small man was re-closing it cautiously, and now he mounted and
+rode away; it was Isidore Goldschmidt, of the Plank-road swamp. I was
+wondering why he had behaved in this skulking way, when Ferry, as if
+reading my thought, said, "Isidore can't afford to be found seventy-five
+miles inside our lines with no papers except a letter from a Yankee
+officer--and not knowing, himself, what's in it."
+
+"Oh! why should he risk his life to bring such a thing to her?"
+
+"Because three months ago she risked her life to save the life of his
+father, and now, since only last week, that Yankee has saved the life of
+his mother." I asked who this Yankee might be. "Well, that is yet more
+strange; he is the brother of Captain Jewett."
+
+We were moving to the house; at the steps we halted; the place was all
+alight and the ladies were arriving in the parlor. A beam of light
+touching Ferry's face made his smile haggard. I asked if this Jewett was
+another leader of scouts.
+
+"No, he is a high-rank surgeon. Yet I think he must have heard all about
+her; he wouldn't send that letter, that way, just for gratitude."
+
+"Yes," I responded, pondering, "he may easily have learned about her,"
+and I called to mind that chief-of-staff of whom Charlotte had told us.
+Then, remembering her emotional shadow-play on the window-shade, I
+added, "He knew at least what would be important news to her--Captain,
+I have it!"
+
+He made a motion of pain--"Don't say it!" and we read in each other's
+eyes the one conviction that from a surgeon's personal knowledge this
+man had written to warn Charlotte that Oliver was alive.
+
+
+
+LX
+
+
+TIDINGS
+
+All the glad difference between hope stark drowned and hope sighing back
+into life lightened Ferry's heart; he gripped my shoulder--the sound
+one, by good luck,--and drew me into the dining-room, where the whole
+company were gathered to see Gholson eat. Our entry was a fresh
+surprise. As we drank the flatteries of seven lovely welcomes, from
+behind Gholson I reconnoitred Charlotte, and the fullest confirmation of
+our guess was in the peaceful resolve of her eyes. I noted the Harpers,
+all, and dear Mrs. Wall's sweet freckled face, take new gladness of the
+happy change, while unable to define its cause.
+
+But now came raptures and rhapsodies over the opened letters. Ferry's
+orders had not been expected to reach him to-night, Gholson said, and so
+we insisted they and my letter should remain in the saddle-pockets while
+Gholson ate, and while the good news, public and personal, of the
+Harpers' letters went round.
+
+"But I thought the' was fi-ive letters," said the Squire as we were
+about to leave the board; at which Mrs. Wall mumbled to him to "hush
+up;" for the fifth was to Cecile.
+
+"Yes," guilefully said Charlotte, "Richard's letter!" and we all
+followed Gholson to where his saddle lay on the gallery. There he handed
+out Ferry's document and went on rummaging for mine.
+
+"The two were right here together," he said, "and Mr. Smith's was marked
+'valuable' and had something hard in one corner of it." Camille brought a
+candle, Estelle another; Gholson rose from his knee: "Smith, it's gone!
+I've lost it! And yet"--he slapped his breast-pockets--"no, it's
+somewhere in the grove; it's between here and that cornfield gate! I
+counted all the papers just this side of that gate, and I must 'a'
+dropped yours then!" Cecile brought a third light and we sallied forth
+into the motionless air, Estelle with a candle and Gholson, Camille
+with a candle and me, Cecile with a candle and Mrs. Wall, Miss Harper
+and the Squire, and Charlotte and Ferry. In the heart of the grove
+Estelle gave a soft cry, sprang, stooped, straightened, and handed me
+the letter.
+
+"Yes," exclaimed Camille as the three candle-bearers gathered close,
+"that's your mother's writing," and as we fell into marching order
+again, with the lights still in the front files, I opened it. It was
+thick and soft with sheet after sheet of thinnest paper. With these was
+a sealed letter, unaddressed, containing in one corner what seemed to be
+a ring. Around all was a sheet of writing of later date than any other.
+Wonderful, my mother's lines declared, was the Providence that had
+brought her wounded boy among such priceless friends; and wonderful that
+same Providence that now gave her the chance to send three weeks' daily
+letters in one, and to send them by a hand so sure that she ventured to
+add this other note, a matter so secret that it must be delivered only
+by my own hands, or hands which I could trust as my own, to Charlotte
+Oliver. We glanced back in search of Charlotte. She and Ferry were well
+in the rear of the procession, moving with laggard steps, she lighting
+his page with a borrowed candle, and he evidently reading not his
+orders, but the Federal surgeon's letter. "Oh, don't speak yet,"
+murmured Camille, "let them alone!"
+
+At the garden gate the most of the company passed on into the house,
+Gholson among them. His face, as for an instant he turned aside to me,
+betrayed a frozen rage; for Ferry and Charlotte tarried just at our
+backs, she seated on the "horse-block" and he leaning against it. A stir
+of air brought by the rising moon had blown out their light. Gholson
+left me, and Camille waited at my side while I tried to read by the
+flare of her guttering candle. "Come, my dear," said Miss Harper from
+half-way up the walk, but Charlotte called Miss Harper.
+
+"You'd better go in, Camille," insisted the aunt as she passed us, but
+Charlotte had just asked for our candle to relight her own, and she said
+to Miss Harper, "Let them stay, won't you?" and then to Ferry, "They
+might as well, mightn't they? Oh, now,"--as Camille handed her my
+mother's letter--"they must!" She toyed with the envelope's thinner edge
+without noticing the ring in the corner. "My dears," she said, looking
+frail and distressed, yet resolute, "I have positive intelligence--not
+through Captain, nor Richard, nor Mr. Gholson,--I'll tell you how some
+day--positive intelligence that--the dead--is not dead; the blow,
+Richard, glanced. I was foolish never to think of that possibility, it
+occurs so often. He was profoundly stunned, so that he didn't come-to
+until he was brought to a surgeon. It's from that surgeon I have the
+news; here's his letter."
+
+"Charlotte, my dear," interrupted Miss Harper, "tell us the remainder
+to-morrow, but now--"
+
+"No, sweetest friend, there will never be another chance like this;
+Captain Ferry's orders carry him to Jackson at daylight to-morrow,
+and--and we may not meet again for years; let me go on. When the gash
+was sewed up, the hand was really the worse hurt of the two, and after
+a few days he was sent down on a steamer to New Orleans with a great lot
+of other sick and wounded, and with the commanding general's warning not
+to come back on peril of his life. 'Tisn't easy to tell this, but you
+four have a particular right to know it from me and at once. So let me
+say"--she handed Ferry my mother's letter as if it were a burdensome
+distraction--"I'm not sorry for the mistake, Richard, which we all so
+innocently made; and you mustn't be sorry for me and be saying to
+yourselves that my captivity is on me again; for I'm happier tonight
+than I've been since the night the mistake was made."
+
+She dropped a hand to Ferry's to receive again the neglected letter, and
+chanced to take it by the corner that held the ring. With that she
+stared at us, fingered it, rended the envelope, gave one glance to her
+own name engraved inside a plain gold ring of the sort New Orleans girls
+bestow upon those to whom they are betrothed, and springing to the
+ground between our two candles, bent over the open page and cried
+through a flood of tears, "Oh, God, have mercy on him, he is gone! He is
+gone, Edgard! Oh, Edgard, he is gone at last; gone beyond all doubt, and
+our hands--our hands and our hearts are clean!"
+
+Ferry tossed away his candle and turned upon her, but she retreated into
+Miss Harper's arms laughing through her tears. "Oh, no, no! we've never
+hurried yet, never yet, my master in patience, and we'll not hurry now!
+Go and come again. Go, wait, hide your eyes till I cry 'whoop,' and
+come again and find me, and, I pledge you before these dear witnesses,
+I'll be 'it' for the rest of my life!"
+
+With the letter again held open, and bidding Miss Harper and Camille
+read with her, she swept a fleet glance along the close lines that told
+how Oliver, half cured of his wounds, had died in a congestive chill, of
+swamp-fever, the day he landed in New Orleans. "See, see, Richard, here
+your mother has copied the hospital's certificate."
+
+She read on aloud how two private Federal soldiers, hospital
+convalescents, had come to my mother telling her of his death, and how
+he had named my mother over and over in his delirium, desiring that she
+should be given charge of the small effects on his person and that she
+would return them to his father in the Confederacy. My mother wrote how
+she had been obliged secretly to buy back from the hospital steward a
+carte-de-visite photograph of Charlotte, and this ring; how, Oliver not
+being a Federal soldier, she had been allowed to assume the expense and
+task of his burial; how she had found the body already wrapped and
+bound, in the military way, when she first saw it, but heard the two
+convalescents praising to each other the strong, hard-used beauty of the
+hidden face, and was shown the suit of brown plantation jeans we all
+knew so well; and how, lastly, when her overbearing conscience compelled
+her to tell them she might find it easier to send the relics to the wife
+rather than the father, they had furtively advised her to do as
+she pleased.
+
+[Illustration: Springing to the ground between our two candles, she
+bent over the open page]
+
+"Charlotte," said Miss Harper, "the thing is an absolute certainty!
+Even without your likeness or--"
+
+"Ah, no, no, not without this! the ring, the ring! But with it, yes!
+This is the crowning proof! my ring to him! Oh, see my name inside it,
+Camille; this little signet is Heaven's own testimony and acquittal!
+Look, Richard, look at it now, for no living soul, no light of day,
+shall ever see it again--"
+
+"Sweet heart," replied Miss Harper, "very good! very good! but now say
+no more of that sort. God bless you, dear, just let yourself be happy.
+Good-night--no, no, sit still; stay where you are, love, while Camille
+and I go in and Richard steps around to the stable and puts our team
+into the road-wagon; for, Captain Ferry, neither you nor he is fit to
+walk into Brookhaven; we can bring the rig back when we come from church
+to-morrow."
+
+"No, Richard," said Charlotte, "get my wagon and the little Mexicans."
+Then to Miss Harper and Camille, "Good-night, dears; I'll wait here that
+long, if Captain Ferry will allow me." She turned to him with the
+moonlight in her eyes, that danced riotously as she said in her softest,
+deepest note, "You're afraid!" and I thanked Heaven that Coralie
+Rothvelt was still a pulsing reality in the bosom of Charlotte
+Oliver.
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+
+WHILE DESTINY MOVED ON
+
+Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the
+next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and
+Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited
+Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther
+to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him
+and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if
+our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was
+not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in
+practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh,
+the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the
+scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the
+groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood
+and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from
+sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long
+dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our
+brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring,
+with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the
+Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was
+kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried
+swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade
+going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge
+might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its
+captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be,
+in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called
+back to his commander, "Ferry's scouts!" the whole column cheered us. I
+feel the thrill of it to this hour.
+
+How busy we were kept, and how much oftener I wrote to Ferry, and to
+Camille, than to my mother. And how much closer I watched the trend of
+things that belonged only to this small story than I did that great
+theatre of a whole world's fortunes, whose arches spread and resounded
+from the city of Washington to the city of Mexico. In mid-August one of
+Camille's heartlessly infrequent letters brought me a mint of blithe
+news. Harry and Cecile were really engaged; Major Harper, aunt Martha,
+General Austin, Captain Ferry and Charlotte had all written the distant
+father in his behalf, and the distant father had capitulated.
+Furthermore, Captain Ferry's latest letter to Charlotte had brought word
+that in spite of all backsets he was promised by his physician that in
+ten days more he could safely take the field again. But, best of all,
+Major Harper, having spent a week with his family--not on leave, but on
+some mysterious business that somehow included a great train of pontoon
+bridges--had been so completely won over to Charlotte by her own sweet
+ways that, on his own suggestion to his sister, and their joint
+proposition, by correspondence, to Ferry, another group of letters,
+from Miss Harper, the Major and the General, had been sent to the
+Durands in New Orleans--father, mother, and grandmother--telling them
+all about Charlotte; her story, her beauty, her charms of manner, mind,
+and heart. And so, wrote my correspondent, the Wall household were
+living in confident hope and yet in unbearable suspense; for these
+things were now full two weeks old, and would have been told me sooner
+only that she, Camille, had promised never to tell them to any one
+whomsoever.
+
+A week later came another of these heartlessly infrequent letters. Mr.
+Gregory, it said,--oh, _hang_ Mr. Gregory!--had called the previous
+evening. Then followed the information that poor Mr. Gholson--oh, dear!
+the poor we have always with us!--had arrived again from camp so wasted
+with ague as to be a sight for tears. He had come consigned to "our
+hospital," an establishment which the Harpers, Charlotte and the Walls
+had set up in the old "summer-hotel" at Panacea Springs, and had
+contrived to get the medical authorities to adopt, officer and--in a
+manner--equip. They were giving dances there, to keep the soldiers
+cheerful, said the letter, in which its writer took her usual patriotic
+part, and Mr. Gregory--oh, save us alive! And now I was to prepare
+myself: the Durands had got the bunch of letters and had written a
+lovely reply to Captain Ferry, who had sent it to Charlotte, claiming
+her hand, and Charlotte had answered yes. If I thought I had ever seen
+her beautiful or blithe, or sweet, or happy, I ought to see her now;
+while as for the writer herself, nothing in all her life had ever so
+filled her with bliss, or ever could again.
+
+Ferry did not arrive, but day by day, night by night, we stalked the
+enemy, longing for our Captain to return to us. Quinn was fearless,
+daring, indefatigable; but Quinn was not Ferry. Often we talked it over
+by twos or fours; the swiftness of Ferry's divinations, the brilliant
+celerity with which he followed them out, the kindness of his care;
+Quinn's care of us was paternal, Ferry's was brotherly and motherly. We
+loved Quinn for the hate and scorn that overflowed from his very gaze
+upon everything false or base. But we loved Ferry for loving each and
+every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther
+yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious
+atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the
+carbonic-acid gas of Gholson's cant. We made great parade of recognizing
+his defects; it had all the fine show of a motion to reconsider. For
+example, we said, his serene obstinacy in small matters was equally
+exasperating and ridiculous; or, for another instance,--so and so; but
+in summing up we always lumped such failings as "the faults of his
+virtues," and neglected to catalogue them. Thinking it all over a
+thousand times since, I have concluded that the main source of his
+charm, what won our approval for whatever he did, however he did it, was
+that he seemed never to regard any one as the mere means to an
+end--except himself.
+
+If this history were more of war than of love--and really at times I
+fear it is--we might fill pages telling of the brigade's September and
+early October operations in that long tongue of devastated country which
+narrowed from northeast to southwest between Big Black on our front and
+the Tallahala and Bayou Pierre behind us. At Baker's Creek it had a
+bloody all-day fight, in which we took part after having been driven in
+upon the brigade. It was there that at dusk, to the uproarious delight
+of half the big camp, and with our Captain once more at our head, for he
+had rejoined us that very morning, we came last off the field, singing
+"Ned Ferry's a-comin' down de lane."
+
+On a day late in October our company were in bivouac after some hard
+night-riding. Some twenty-five miles west of us the brigade had been
+resting for several days on the old camp-ground at Gallatin, but now
+they were gone to Union Springs. Ferry, with a few men, was scouting
+eastward. Quinn awaited only his return in order to take half a dozen or
+so of picked fellows down southward and westward about Fayette. Between
+ten and eleven that night a corporal of the guard woke me, and as I
+flirted on my boots and jacket and saddled up, said Ferry was back and
+Quinn gone. I reported to Ferry, who handed me a despatch: "Give that to
+General Austin; he has gone back to Gallatin--without the brigade--to
+wait--with the others"--his smile broadened.
+
+"Captain,"--I swallowed a lump--"what others?"
+
+"Well,--all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm,
+Squire Wall, Mrs. Wall, the four Harper ladies, and--eh,--let me see, is
+that all?--ah, no, the old black man and his daughter, and--eh,--the
+two little mule'! that's all--stop! I was forgetting! What is that
+fellow's name we used to know? ah, yes; Charlie Toliver!" In a moment he
+sobered: "Yes, all will be yonder, and I wait only for Quinn to get back
+in the morning, to come myself." In the fulness of his joy he had to
+give my horse a parting slap. "Good-night! good-bye--till to-morrow!"
+
+I galloped away filled with an absurd foreboding that he was too sure,
+which may have come wholly from my bad temper at being started too late
+to see our ladies before morning. However, at two that night, my saddle
+laid under my head, and haversack under the saddle, I fell asleep with
+all Gallatin for my bedchamber, the courthouse square for my bed, the
+sky for my tester, the pole-star for my taper, hogs for mosquitoes and a
+club for a fan.
+
+
+
+LXII
+
+
+A TARRYING BRIDEGROOM
+
+Joyous was the dawn. With their places in the hospital filled for the
+brief time by Brookhaven friends, here were all our fairs, not to speak
+of the General, the Colonel, the Major, idlers of the town and region,
+and hospital bummers who had followed up unbidden and glaringly without
+wedding-garments. Cecile, Harry, Camille "and others" prepared the
+church. The General kept his tent, the Major rode to Hazlehurst, and the
+Colonel, bruised and stiffened by a late fall from his horse, lounged
+amiably just beyond talking range of the ladies and grumbled jokes to
+Chaplain Roly-poly, whose giggling enjoyment of them made us hope they
+were tempered to that clean-shaven lamb.
+
+However, there came a change. By mid-forenoon our gaiety ran on only by
+its momentum. The wedding was to be at eleven. At ten the Colonel,
+aside, told me, with a ferocious scowl, that my Captain ought to have
+arrived. At half-past he told me again, but Major Harper, returning from
+Hazlehurst, said, "Oh, any of a hundred trifles might have delayed him a
+short time; he would be along." The wedding-hour passed, the
+wedding-feast filled the air with good smells. Horsemen ambled a few
+miles up the road and came back without tidings. Then a courier, one of
+Ferry's scouts, galloped up to the General's tent, and presently the
+Major walked from it to the tavern and up to Charlotte's room, to say
+that Ferry was only detained by Quinn's non-arrival. "It's all right,"
+said everyone.
+
+Another hour wore on, another followed. The General and old Dismukes
+played cards and the latter began to smell of his drams, Harry and
+Cecile walked and talked apart, Camille kept me in leash with three
+other men, and about two o'clock came another courier with another bit
+of Ferry's writing; Quinn had returned. He had had a brush with
+jayhawkers in the night, had captured all but their leader, and had sent
+his prisoners in to brigade headquarters at Union Church, while he
+returned to Ferry's camp bringing with him, mortally wounded--"O--oh!
+Oh--oh!" exclaimed Charlotte, gazing at the missive,--"Sergeant
+Jim Langley!"
+
+"Does Ned say when he will start?" asked the Colonel, and Charlotte,
+reading again, said the sergeant, at the time of the writing, was not
+expected to live an hour. Whereupon the word went through town that
+Ferry was on his way to us.
+
+"Smith," said the Colonel, just not too full to keep up a majestic
+frown, "want to saddle my horse and yours?" and very soon we were off to
+meet the tardy bridegroom. The October sunshine was fiery, but the road
+led us through our old camp-ground for two or three shady miles before
+it forked to the right to cross the Natchez Trace, and to the left on
+its way to Union Springs, and at the fork we halted. "Smith, I reckon
+we'd best go back." I mentioned his bruises and the torrid sun-glare
+before us, but he cursed both with equal contempt; "No, but I must go
+back; I--I've left a--oh, I must go back to wet my whistle!"
+
+We had retraced our way but a few steps, when, looking behind me as a
+scout's habit is, I saw a horseman coming swiftly on the Union Church
+road. "Colonel," I said, "here comes Scott Gholson."
+
+Without pausing or turning an eye my hearer poured out a slow flood of
+curses. "If that whelp has come here of his own accord he's come for no
+good! Has he seen us?"
+
+Gholson had not seen us; we had been in deep shade when he came into
+sight, and happened at that moment to turn an angle that took us out of
+his line of view. In a minute or so we were again at the small bridge
+over the embowered creek which ran through the camping-ground. The water
+was low and clear, and the Colonel turned from the bridge as if to cross
+beneath it and let his beast drink, yet motioned back for me to go upon
+it. As I reached its middle he came under it in the stream and halted.
+Guessing his wish I turned my horse across the bridge and waited.
+Gholson was almost within hail before he knew me. He was a heaving lump
+of dust, sweat and pain.
+
+"Has Ned Ferry come?" was his first call. I shook my head. "Oh, thank
+God!" he cried with a wild gesture and sank low in the saddle; but
+instantly he roused again: "Oh, don't stop me, Smith; if I once stop I'm
+afraid I'll never get to her!"
+
+I stopped him. "Why, Gholson, you're burning up with fever."
+
+"Yes, I started with a shaking chill. I'm afraid, every minute, I'll go
+out of my head. Oh, Smith, Oliver's alive! He's alive, he's alive, and
+I've come to save his poor wife from a fate worse than death!"
+
+"Gholson, you are out of your head."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes, yes! and yet I know what I'm saying, I know what I'm
+saying!"
+
+"You do not! Gholson, Oliver's been food for worms these four months. I
+know he wasn't dead at Gilmer's; but he died--now, let me tell
+you--he--"
+
+"Smith, I know the whole story and you know only half!"
+
+"No, no! I know all and you know only half; I have seen the absolute--"
+
+"Proofs? no! you saw things taken from the body of another man in
+Oliver's clothes! Oliver swapped places with him on the boat going down
+to the city so's he could come back to these parts without being hung by
+the Yankees; swapped with a sick soldier, one of a pair that wanted to
+desert; swapped names, clothes, bandages, letters, everything. It was
+that soldier that died of the congestive chill and was buried by your
+mother with his face in a blanket--as, like enough, mine will be before
+another day is done--Oh, Lord, Lord! my head will burst!"
+
+"Gholson, you're mistaken yet! That soldier came to my mother--"
+
+"No, he never! the other one went to her, in cahoots with Oliver, and
+worked the thing all through so's to have the news of Oliver's death, so
+called, come back here to the Yankees and us; and to his wife, so's she
+_would_ marry Ned Ferry to her everlasting shame, and people would say
+they was served right when he killed 'em at last! O--oh! Smith,--"
+
+"Listen to me!" I had tried twice to interrupt and now I yelled; "was it
+Oliver, and a new gang, that Quinn fought last night, and have you got
+him at Union Church?"
+
+"Quinn didn't know it, for Oliver got away, but they got the Yankee
+deserter, and brought him in when everybody was asleep but me, and I
+cross-examined him. Oh, my friend, God's arm is not shortened that he
+cannot save! He maketh the wrath of the wicked to praise him! The man
+was dying then, but thank God, I choked the whole truth out of him with
+a halter over a limb, and then for three mortal hours I couldn't start
+because the squad that took him out to--Who--who is that?"
+
+The Colonel moved from under the bridge, spurred up the bank, and turned
+to us with a murderous smile. "Howdy, Gholson." The smile grew. "Had to
+stay with the hanging-squad to keep his mouth shut, you was going to
+say, wa'n't you? But you knew Captain Ferry would be delayed waiting for
+Quinn, too; yes. Does any one know this now besides us three; no! Good,
+we're well met! Smith and me are going to Union Church, and you'd better
+go with us; I've got a job that God A'mighty just built you two saints
+and me for; come, never mind Gallatin, Ferry's not there, and when he
+gets there Heaven ain't a-going to stop that wedding, and hell sha'n't."
+Gholson had barely caught his breath to demur when old Dismukes, roaring
+and snarling like a huge dog, whipped out his revolver, clutched the
+sick man's bosom, and hanging over him and bellowing blasphemies, yelled
+into his very teeth "Come!"
+
+We galloped. A courier from the brigade-camp met us, and the Colonel
+scribbled a purely false explanation of our absence, begging that no
+delay be made because of it. As the man left us, who should come up from
+behind us but Harry, asking what was the matter. "Matter enough for you
+to come along," said the Arkansan, and we went two and two, he and
+Gholson, Harry and I. We reached camp at sundown, and stopped to feed
+and rest our horses and to catch an hour's sleep. Gholson's fatigue was
+pitiful, but he ate like a wolf, slept, and awoke with but little fever.
+The Colonel kept him under his eye, forcing on him the honors of his
+own board, bed and bottle, and at nine we galloped again.
+
+Between eleven and twelve the Colonel, Harry and I were in a dense wood,
+moving noiselessly toward a clearing brilliantly lighted by the moon. I
+was guide. A few rods back in the woods Gholson was holding our horses
+and with cocked revolver detaining a young mulatto woman from whom the
+Colonel had extorted the knowledge which had brought us to this spot.
+The clearing was fenced, but was full of autumn weeds. Near the two
+sides next us, tilted awry on its high basement pillars, loomed an old
+cotton-gin house, its dark shadows falling toward us. A few yards beyond
+towered and gleamed a white-boled sycamore, and between the two the
+titanic arms of the horse-power press widened broadly downward out of
+the still night sky. The tree was the one which old Lucius Oliver had
+once pointed out to me at dawn.
+
+
+
+LXIII
+
+
+SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER TOLD TILL NOW
+
+At the fence I ceased to lead, and we crept near the gin-house from
+three sides, warily, though all the chances were that wherever Oliver
+lay he was heavy with drink. The Colonel stole in alone. He was lost to
+us for, I should say, five minutes; they seemed thirty; then there
+pealed upon the stillness an uproarious laugh mingled with oaths and
+curses, sounds of a plunge, a struggle, a groan, and old Dismukes
+calling "Come, boys, I've got him! Take it easy, take it easy, I've got
+him on the floor by the hair of his head; call Gholson!"
+
+Gholson brought the mulatress. In the feeble rays of an old tin lantern,
+on some gunny-sacking that lay about the gin-room floor, sat old
+Dismukes cross-legged and smiling, with arms folded and revolver
+dangling from his right hand, at full cock. On one side crouched Harry
+and I, on the other side Gholson and the slave woman. Facing him, half
+sat, half knelt Oliver, bound hand and foot, and gagged with his own
+knotted handkerchief. The lantern hung from a low beam just above his
+face; his eyes blazed across the short interval with the splendor of a
+hawk's. The dread issue of the hour seemed all at once to have taken
+from his outward aspect the baser signs of his habits and crimes, and I
+saw large extenuation for Charlotte's great mistake. From the big
+Colonel's face, too, the heaviness of drink was gone, and its smile grew
+almost fine as he spoke.
+
+"Ten minutes for prayer is a good while to allow you, my amiable friend;
+we ain't heard for our much speaking, are we, Brother Gholson? Still,
+we've given you that, and it's half gone. If you don't want the other
+half we won't force it on you; we've got that wedding to go to, and I'm
+afraid we'll be late."
+
+The bound man sat like a statue. The slave girl went upon her knees and
+began to pray for her master,--with whom she had remained after every
+other servant on the place had run off to the Federals, supplicating
+with a piteous fervor that drew tears down Harry's cheeks. "Humph!" said
+the Arkansan, still smiling straight into Oliver's eyes, "she'd better
+be thanking God for her freedom, for that's what we're going to give her
+to-night; we're going to take her and your poor old crippled father to
+the outposts and turn 'em loose, and if either of 'em ever shows up
+inside our lines after to-night, we'll hang 'em. You fixed the date of
+your death last June, and we're not going to let it be changed; that's
+when you died. Ain't it, Gholson? Whoever says it ain't fixes the date
+of his own funeral, eh, boys? I take pleasure in telling you we're not
+going to hang your father, because I believe in my bones you'd rather
+we'd hang him than not. Mr. Gholson, you're our most pious believer in
+obedience to orders; well, I'm going to give you one, and if you don't
+make a botch of it I sha'n't have to make a botch of you; understand?"
+
+Gholson's lips moved inaudibly, his jaws set hard, and he blanched; but
+the Colonel smiled once more: "I've heard that at one time you said, or
+implied, that Captain Ferry had betrayed his office, because when he had
+a fair chance to shoot this varmint he omitted, for private reasons, to
+do it. And I've heard you say, myself, that this isn't your own little
+private war. So,--just change seats with me."
+
+They exchanged. The slave girl sank forward upon her face moaning and
+sobbing. Harry silently wept. "Now, Gholson, you know me; draw--pistol."
+
+Gholson drew; I grew sick. "Ready,"--Gholson came to a ready and so did
+the Colonel; "aim," Gholson slowly aimed, the Colonel kept a ready, and
+Oliver, for the first time took his eyes from him and gazed at Gholson.
+"Fire!" Gholson fired; Oliver silently fell forward; with a stifled cry
+the girl sprang to him and drew his head into her lap, and he softly
+straightened out and was still. "Oh, sweet Jesus!" she cried, "Oh,
+sweet Jesus!"
+
+The amused Colonel held the lantern close down. "He's all right, Brother
+Gholson," was his verdict; the ball had gone to the heart. "Still, just
+to clinch the thing, we'll calcine him, gin-house and all."
+
+Gin-house and all, we burned him up. On our horses out in the open road
+to the house, we sat, the girl perched behind the Colonel, and watched
+the fire mount and whirl and crackle behind the awful black arms of the
+cotton-press. The Arkansan shook his head: "It's too fine; 'tain't a
+dog's death, after all. Lord! why didn't I think of it in time? we'd
+ought to 'a' just dropped him alive into that lint-box and turned the
+press down onto him with our horses!"
+
+When the pile was in one great flame we rode to the dwelling, and the
+girl was sent in to bid old Lucius begone. The doors stood open, a soft
+firelight shone from his room. We saw her form darken his chamber
+threshold and halt, and then she wailed: "Oh, Lawd God A'mighty! Oh,
+Lawd God A'mighty!"
+
+"Stop that noise! Gholson, hold the horses. Come. Lieutenant, come
+Smith, maybe he's killed himself, but it seems too good to be true.
+Here, girl, go cram what you can get into a pillow-case, and mount
+behind my saddle again; be quick, we're going to burn this hornet's
+nest too." Harry and I had already run to the old man's room, and, sure
+enough, there lay the aged assassin hideous in his fallen bulk, with his
+own bullet in his brain.
+
+Once more the Arkansan shook his head at the leaping flames. "Too good,
+too good for either of 'em, entirely; we've let 'em settle at five cents
+on the dollar. Here girl,"--he reached back and handed her a wad of
+greenbacks,--"here's your dividend; you're a preferred creditor." He had
+rifled the pockets of both the dead men, and this was their contents.
+"Now, boys, we'll dust, or we'll be getting shot at by some fool or
+other. We're leaving a fine horse hid away somewhere hereabouts, but we
+can't help that; come on."
+
+In due time the Colonel, with the slave girl, and Harry with her
+pillow-case of duds, turned toward Fayette, and Gholson and I toward the
+brigade, at Union Church. Then, at last, my old friend and
+co-religionist let his wrath loose. He began with a flood of curses,
+lifting high a loaded carbine which we had found with Oliver and which
+he was ordered to turn in. As he gave his ecstasy utterance it grew; he
+brandished the weapon like a Bedouin, dug the rowels into his overspent
+beast and curbed him back to his haunches, fisted him about the ears,
+gnashed with the pain of his own blows, and howled, and stood up in the
+stirrups and cursed again. I had heard church-members curse, but they
+were new church-members, camp converts, and their curses were an
+infant's cooing, to this. Unwittingly he caused his horse to stumble,
+and the torrent of his passion gathered force like rain after a peal of
+thunder; he clubbed the gun to bring it down upon the beautiful
+creature's head, and when I caught it on the rise he wrenched it from me
+as if I were a girl, threw it fifty feet away, sprang to the ground and
+caught it up, fired it in the air, and with one blow against a tree sent
+the stock flying, threw the barrel underfoot, leapt upon it, tore his
+hair and his hat, and cursed and champed and howled. I sat holding his
+horse and feeling my satisfaction rise like the mercury in a warmed
+thermometer. Contrasting this mood with the cold malignancy and resolve
+of his temper in the soldiers' room at Sessions's, I saw, to my delight,
+that our secret was forever imprisoned in his breast, gagged and chained
+down by the iron of his own inextricable infamy. At dawn he awakened me
+that he might persuade me to reject the evidences brought against his
+character by his doings and endurings of the night, and that he might
+rebuild the old house of words in which habitually he found shelter, too
+abysmally self-conceited ever to see his own hypocrisy. We breakfasted
+with the "attatchays"; after which he had barely secured my final
+assurance that our friendship remained unmarred, when old Dismukes and
+Harry mounted at the Colonel's tent, and the old brute, as they trotted
+out into the Gallatin road, beckoned me to join them.
+
+
+
+LXIV
+
+
+BY TWOS. MARCH
+
+The Arkansan was happy. "Come up, Legs," he bawled to me as soon as we
+were beyond the pickets, "come up from behind there; this ain't no
+dress parade."
+
+"Are they married?" I softly asked Harry at the first opportunity, but
+he could not tell me. He knew only that Ferry had been expected to
+arrive about an hour before midnight; if he arrived later the wedding
+would be deferred until to-day. On our whole ride we met no one from
+Gallatin until near the edge of the town we passed a smiling rider who
+called after us, "You-all a-hurryin' for nothin'!"
+
+We dropped to a more dignified gait and moved gayly in among our
+gathering friends, asking if we were in time. "No--o! you're too
+late!--but still we've waited for you; couldn't help ourselves; she
+wouldn't stir without you."
+
+The happy hubbub was bewildering. "Where's this one?" "Where's that
+one?" "See here, I'm looking for you!" "Now, you and I go together--"
+"Dick Smith! where's Dick Sm'--Miss Harper wants you, Smith, up at the
+bride's door." But Miss Harper only sent me in to Charlotte.
+
+"Richard, tell me," the fair vision began to say, but there the cloud
+left her brow. "No," she added, "you couldn't look so happy if there
+were the least thing wrong, could you?" Her fathoming eyes filled while
+her smile brightened, and meeting them squarely I replied "There's
+a-many a thing wrong, but not one for which this wedding need wait
+another minute."
+
+"God bless you, Richard!" she said; "and now _you_ may go tell Edgard I
+am coming."
+
+Old Gallatin is no more. I would not mention without reverence the
+perishing of a town however small, though no charm of antiquity, of art
+or of nature were lost in its dissolution. Yet it suits my fancy that
+old Gallatin has perished. Neither war nor famine, flood nor fever were
+the death of it; the railroad and Hazlehurst sapped its life. Some years
+ago, on a business trip for our company--not cavalry, insurance,--I went
+several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick,
+of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its
+square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In
+place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and
+houses had utterly vanished; a solitary "store," as transient as a
+toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling calico and molasses, shoes
+and snuff. But that was the only discord, and by turning my back on it I
+easily called up the long past scene: the wedding, the feast, the fiery
+punch, the General's toast to the bridal pair, and the heavy-eyed
+Colonel's bumper to their posterity! It was hardly drunk when a courier
+brought word that the enemy were across Big Black, and the brigade
+pressing north to meet them. Charlotte glided away to her room to be
+"back in a moment"; into their saddles went the General, the Colonel,
+the Major and the aide-de-camp, and thundered off across the bridge in
+the woods; Charlotte came back in riding-habit, and here was my horse
+with her saddle on him, and the Harpers and Mrs. Wall clasping and
+kissing her; and now her foot was in Ferry's hand and up she sprang to
+her seat, he vaulted to his, and away they galloped side by side, he for
+the uttermost front of reconnoissance and assault, she for the slow but
+successful uplifting of Sergeant Jim back to health and into his place
+in the train of our hero and hers. In the little leather-curtained
+wagon, with the old black man and his daughter, and all her mistress's
+small belongings, and with my saddle and bridle, I followed on to the
+house where lay the sergeant, and where my horse would be waiting to
+bear me on to Ferry's scouts.
+
+I saw the Harpers only twice again before the war was over. Nearly all
+winter our soldiering was down in the Felicianas, but by February we
+were once more at Big Black when Sherman with ten thousand of his
+destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three
+or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had
+fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went
+back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers
+set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were
+occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department
+headquarters in that State capital; yet Harry and Cecile did not wed
+until after the surrender. Gholson's passion far Charlotte really did
+half destroy him, while it lasted; nevertheless, one day about a year
+after her marriage, when I had the joy of visiting the Harpers, I saw
+that Gholson's heart was healed of that wound and had opened in a new
+place. That is why Estelle, with that danger-glow of emotion ever
+impending on her beautiful cheek, never married. She was of that kind
+whose love, once placed, can never remove itself, and she loved Gholson.
+Both Cecile and Camille had some gift to discern character, and some
+notion of their own value, and therefore are less to be excused for not
+choosing better husbands than they did; but Estelle could never see
+beyond the outer label of man, woman or child, and Gholson's label was
+his piety. She believed in it as implicitly, as consumingly, as he
+believed in it himself; and when her whole kindred spoke as one and said
+no, and she sent him away, _she_ knew she was a lifelong widow from that
+hour. Gholson found a wife, a rich widow ten years his senior, and so
+first of all, since we have reached the page for partings, good-bye
+Gholson. "Whom the gods love die young"--you must be sixty years old
+now, for they say you're still alive. And good-bye, old Dismukes; the
+Colonel made a fortune after the war, as a penitentiary lessee, but they
+say he has--how shall we phrase it?--gone to his reward? Let us
+hope not.
+
+But what is this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks?
+Our rocket has scaled the sky, poised, curved, burst, spread out all its
+stars, and dropped its stick. All is done unless we desire to watch the
+fading sparks slowly sink and melt into darkness. The General, the
+Major, his brother, their sister, my mother, Quinn, Kendall, Sergeant
+Jim, the Sessionses, the Walls--do not inquire too closely; some have
+vanished already, and soon all will be gone; then--another rocket; it is
+the only way, and why is it not a good one? Harry and Cecile--yes, they
+still shine, in "dear old New Orleans." Camille kept me on the
+tenter-hooks while she "turned away her eyes" for years; but one evening
+when we were reading an ancient book together out dropped those same old
+sweet-pea blossoms; whereupon I took her hand and--I have it yet. There,
+we have counted the last spark--stop, no! two lights beam out again;
+Edgard and Charlotte, our neighbors and dearest friends through all our
+life; they glow with nobility and loveliness yet, as they did in those
+young days when his sword led our dying fortunes, and she, in her gypsy
+wagon, followed them, binding the torn wound, and bathing the aching
+bruise and fevered head. Oh, Ned Ferry, my long-loved partner, as dear a
+leader still as ever you were in the days of bloody death, life's
+choicest gifts be yours, and be hers whose sons and daughters are yours,
+and the eldest and tallest of whom is the one you and she have
+named Richard.
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+OTHER BOOKS BY MR. CABLE
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+There are few living American writers who can reproduce for us more
+perfectly than MR. CABLE does, in his best moments, the speech, the
+manners, the whole social atmosphere of a remote time and peculiar
+people. A delicious flavor of humor permeates his stories.--_The New
+York Tribune_.
+
+STRONG HEARTS
+
+12mo, $1.25
+
+"Under the title "_Strong Hearts_," MR. CABLE has grouped three stories
+of varying length, which we think must stand as among the most charming
+things he has written. Not even in "_Old Creole Days_," is there found
+more delicate work, and yet underneath it there is felt the strong grasp
+of the master. There is so much delicacy, such a fine touch that one is
+wholly captivated by the handiwork until it is realized how much this is
+part and parcel of this picture."--_Brooklyn Eagle_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+_A New Edition of Mr. Cable's Romances comprising the following 5 vols.,
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+
+JOHN MARCH SOUTHERNER
+
+12mo, $1.50
+
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+in the South which has yet been offered in the world of
+fiction.--_The Outlook_.
+
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+
+-------------------------
+
+THE GRANDISSIMES
+
+A STORY OF CREOLE LIFE
+
+12mo, $1.50.
+
+"Such a book goes far towards establishing an epoch in fiction, and it
+places it beyond a doubt that we have in MR. CABLE a novelist of
+positive originality, and of the very first quality."--_The
+Boston Journal_.
+
++The Grandissimes.+ with 12 full-page illustrations and 8 head and tail
+pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
+original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.
+
+A Special limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net, $12.00_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+OLD CREOLE DAYS
+
+12mo, $1.50.
+
+Cameo Edition with an etching by Percy Moran, $1.25
+
+"These charming stories attract attention and commendation by their
+quaint delicacy of style, their faithful delineation of Creole
+character, and a marked originality."--_The New Orleans Picayune_.
+
++Old Creole Days.+ _With 8 full-page illustrations and 14 head and tail
+pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
+original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.
+
+A Special Limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
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+
+BONAVENTURE
+
+A PROSE PASTORAL OF ACADIAN LOUISIANA 12mo, $1.50
+
+"A noble, tender, beautiful tale."--MRS. L. C. MOULTON in _Boston
+Herald_.
+
+"MR. CABLE has never produced anything so delightful and so artistic as
+"Bonaventure." The charm of the pastoral life of these unlearned,
+unsuspicious people in rude homes far away from the stir of modern life
+is as novel as it is indescribable."--_North American Review_.
+
+DR. SEVIER 12mo, $1.50
+
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+
+-------------------------
+
+STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA
+
+Illustrated. 12mo, $2.00
+
+"What a field of romance, of color, of incident, of delicate feeling,
+and unique social conditions these stories show!"--_Hartford Courant_.
+
+"They are tales whose interest and variety seem inexhaustible.--MR.
+CABLE has done lasting service to literature in giving us this
+remarkable and delightful collection. In themselves they are memorably
+charming."--_Boston Transcript_.
+
+MADAME DELPHINE
+
+16mo, 75 cents
+
+"This is one of the gems of a collection of exquisite stories of the old
+Creole days in Louisiana."--_Boston Advertiser_.
+
+Ivory series edition, 16mo, 75c.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA
+
+ILLUSTRATED FROM DRAWINGS BY FENNEL
+
+Square 12mo, $2.50
+
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+
+-------------------------
+
+THE SILENT SOUTH
+
+Together with the Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease
+System. _Revised and Enlarged Edition_. With portrait.
+
+12mo, $1.00
+
+"Whatever other literature on these themes may arise Mr. Cable's book
+must be a permanent influence impossible for writers on either side to
+ignore."--_The Critic_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE NEGRO QUESTION
+
+12mo, 75c
+
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+Anglo-Saxon's fearless adhesion to what he deems right."--_The
+Churchman_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE CABLE STORY BOOK
+
+Selections for School Reading. Edited by Mary E. Burt and Lucy L. Cable.
+[_The Scribner Series of School Reading_]. Illustrated. 12mo, _net_ 60c.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cavalier,
+by George Washington Cable
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cavalier, by George Washington Cable
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
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+Title: The Cavalier
+
+Author: George Washington Cable
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9839]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 23, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAVALIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!"]
+
+THE CAVALIER
+
+BY
+
+GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+     I.    She Wanted to Laugh
+    II.    Lieutenant Ferry
+   III.    She
+    IV.    Three Days' Rations
+     V.    Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty
+    VI.    A Handsome Stranger
+   VII.    A Plague on Names!
+  VIII.    Another Curtained Wagon
+    IX.    The Dandy's Task
+     X.    The Soldier's Hour
+    XI.    Captain Jewett
+    XII.    In the General's Tent
+   XIII.    Good-Bye, Dick
+    XIV.    Coralie Rothvelt
+     XV.    Venus and Mars
+    XVI.    An Aching Conscience
+   XVII.    Two Under One Hat-Brim
+  XVIII.    The Jayhawkers
+    XIX.    Asleep in the Death-Trap
+     XX.    Charlotte Oliver
+    XXI.    The Fight on the Bridge
+   XXII.    We Speed a Parting Guest
+  XXIII.    Ferry Talks of Charlotte
+   XXIV.    A Million and a Half
+    XXV.    A Quiet Ride
+   XXVI.    A Salute Across the Dead-Line
+  XXVII.    Some Fall, Some Plunge
+ XXVIII.    Oldest Game on Earth
+   XXIX.    A Gnawing in the Dark
+    XXX.    Dignity and Impudence
+   XXXI.    The Red Star's Warning
+  XXXII.    A Martyr's Wrath
+ XXXIII.    Torch and Sword
+  XXXIV.    The Charge in the Lane
+   XXXV.    Fallen Heroes
+  XXXVI.    "Says Quinn, S'e"
+ XXXVII.    A Horse! A Horse!
+XXXVIII.    "Bear a Message and a Token"
+  XXXIX.    Charlotte Sings
+     XL.    Harry Laughs
+    XLI.    Unimportant and Confidential
+   XLII.    "Can I Get There by Candle-Light?"
+  XLIII.    "Yes, and Back Again"
+   XLIV.    Charlotte in the Tents of the Foe
+    XLV.    Stay Till To-Morrow
+   XLVI.    The Dance at Gilmer's
+  XLVII.    He's Dead--Is She Alive?
+ XLVIII.    In the Hollow of His Right Arm
+   XLIX.    A Cruel Book and a Fool or Two
+      L.    The Bottom of the Whirlwind
+     LI.    Under the Room Where Charlotte Lay
+    LII.    Same Book and Light-Head Harry
+   LIII.    "Captain, They've Got Us"
+    LIV.    The Fight in the Doorway
+     LV.    Rescue and Retreat
+    LVI.    Hôtel des Invalides
+   LVII.    A Yes and a No
+  LVIII.    The Upper Fork of the Road
+    LIX.    Under Charlotte's Window
+     LX.    Tidings
+    LXI.    While Destiny Moved On
+   LXII.    A Tarrying Bridegroom
+  LXIII.    Something I Have Never Told Till Now
+   LXIV.    By Twos. March
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!"
+
+"I surrender," he said, with amiable ease
+
+"Well, you _air_ in a hurry!"
+
+With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the fence like a deer
+
+Ferry saluted with his straight blade
+
+"Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very arch
+
+Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of his
+followers
+
+Springing to the ground between our two candles, she bent over the open
+page
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+SHE WANTED TO LAUGH
+
+Our camp was in the heart of Copiah County, Mississippi, a mile or so
+west of Gallatin and about six miles east of that once robber-haunted
+road, the Natchez Trace. Austin's brigade, we were, a detached body of
+mixed Louisiana and Mississippi cavalry, getting our breath again after
+two weeks' hard fighting of Grant. Grierson's raid had lately gone the
+entire length of the State, and we had had a hard, vain chase after
+him, also.
+
+Joe Johnston's shattered army was at Jackson, about forty-five miles to
+northward; beleaguered Vicksburg was in the Northwest, a trifle farther
+away; Natchez lay southwest, still more distant; and nearly twice as far
+in the south was our heartbroken New Orleans. We had paused to
+recuperate our animals, and there was a rumor that we were to get new
+clothing. Anyhow we had rags with honor, and a right to make as much
+noise as we chose.
+
+It was being made. The air was in anguish with the din of tree-felling
+and log-chopping, of stamping, neighing, braying, whooping, guffawing,
+and singing--all the daybreak charivari beloved of a camp of
+Confederate "critter companies." In the midst of it a chum and I sat
+close together on a log near the mess fire, and as the other boys of the
+mess lifted their heads from their saddle-tree pillows, from two of them
+at once came a slow, disdainful acceptance of the final lot of the
+wicked, made unsolicited on discovering that this chum and I had sat
+there talking together all night. I had the day before been wheedled
+into letting myself be detailed to be a quartermaster's clerk, and this
+comrade and I were never to snuggle under the one blanket again. The
+thought forbade slumber.
+
+"If I go to sleep," I said,--"you know how I dream. I shall have one of
+those dreams of mine to carry around in my memory for a year, like a
+bullet in my back." So there the dear fellow had sat all night to give
+me my hourly powders of reassurance that I could be a quartermaster's
+clerk without shame.
+
+"Certainly you can afford to fill a position which the leader of Ferry's
+scouts has filled just before you."
+
+But my unsoldierly motive for going to headquarters kept my misgivings
+alive. I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare
+was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and
+Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and "Les
+Misérables"--Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation--lent round; and where
+men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs. Ned
+Ferry had been Major Harper's clerk, but had managed in several
+instances to display such fitness to lead that General Austin had lately
+named him for promotion, and the quartermaster's clerk was now
+Lieutenant Ferry, raised from the ranks for gallantry, and followed
+ubiquitously by a chosen sixty or so drawn from the whole brigade. Could
+the like occur again? And could it occur to a chap who could not
+comprehend how it had ever occurred at all?
+
+By and by we breakfasted. After which, my precious horse not having
+finished his corn, I spread my blanket and let myself doze, but was soon
+awakened by the shouts of my companions laughing at me for laughing so
+piteously in my sleep.
+
+"Would I not tell my dream, as nice young men in the Bible always did?"
+
+"No, I would not!" But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had
+told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose
+tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather
+some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his
+example, but having got in, could only stay there. The boys furnished
+the moral; it was not complimentary.
+
+"Well, good-bye, fellows."
+
+"Good-bye, Smith." I have never liked my last name, but at that moment
+the boys contrived to put a kindness of tone into it which made it
+almost pleasing. "Good-bye, Smith, remember your failings."
+
+Remember! I had yet to make their discovery. But I was on the eve of
+making it.
+
+As I passed up the road through the midst of our nearly tentless camp I
+met a leather-curtained spring-wagon to which were attached a pair of
+little striped-legged mules driven by an old negro. Behind him, among
+the curtains, sat a lady and her black maid. The mistress was of
+strikingly graceful figure, in a most tasteful gown and broad Leghorn
+hat. Her small hands were daintily gloved. The mules stopped, and
+through her light veil I saw that she was handsome. Her eyes, full of
+thought, were blue, and yet were so spirited they might as well have
+been black, as her hair was. She, or fate for her, had crowded thirty
+years of life into twenty-five of time.
+
+For many a day I had not seen such charms of feminine attire, and yet I
+was not charmed. Every item of her fragrant drapery was from the world's
+open market, hence flagrantly un-Confederate, unpatriotic,
+reprehensible. Otherwise it might not have seemed to me that her thin
+nostrils had got their passionateness lately.
+
+"Are you not a New Orleans boy?" she asked as I lifted my képi and drew
+rein.
+
+Boy! humph! I frowned, made myself long, and confessed I had the honor
+to be from that city. Whereupon she let her long-lashed eyes take on as
+ravishing a covetousness as though I had been a pretty baby.
+
+"I knew it!" she said delightedly. "But tell me, honor bright,"--she
+sparkled with amusement--"you're not regularly enlisted, are you?"
+
+I clenched my teeth. "I am nineteen, madam."
+
+Her eyes danced, her brows arched. "Haven't you got"--she hid her smile
+with an embroidered handkerchief--"haven't you got your second figure
+upside down?" I glared, but with one look of hurt sisterliness she
+melted me. Then, pensive just long enough to say, "I was nineteen once,"
+she shot me a sidelong glance so roguish that I was dumb with
+indignation and tried to find my mustache, forgetting I had shaved it
+off to stimulate it. She smiled in sweet propitiation and then came
+gravely to business. "Have you come from beyond the pickets?"
+
+"No, madam."
+
+"Have you met any officer riding toward them?"
+
+I had not. Her driver gathered the reins and I drew back.
+
+"Good-bye, New Orleans soldier-boy," she said, gaily, and as I raised my
+cap she gave herself a fetching air and added, "I'll wager I know
+your name."
+
+"Madam,"--my cap went higher, my head lower--"I never bet."
+
+I could not divine what there was ridiculous about me, except a certain
+damage to my dress, of which she could not possibly be aware as long as
+I remained in the saddle. Yet plainly she wanted to laugh. I made it as
+plain that I did not.
+
+"Good-day, sir," she said, with forced severity, but as I smiled
+apologetically and moved my rein, she broke down under new temptation
+and, as the wagon moved away, twittered after me unseen,--"Good-bye, Mr.
+Smith."
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+LIEUTENANT FERRY
+
+I passed on, flattered but scandalized, wasting no guesses on how she
+knew me--if she really knew me at all--but taking my revenge by
+moralizing on her, to myself, as a sign of the times, until brigade
+headquarters were in full view, a few rods off the road; four or five
+good, white wall-tents in a green bit of old field backed by a thicket
+of young pines.
+
+Midway of this space I met Scott Gholson, clerk to the Adjutant-general.
+It was Gholson who had first spoken of me for this detail. He was an
+East Louisianian, of Tangipahoa; aged maybe twenty-six, but in effect
+older, having from birth eaten only ill-cooked food, and looking it;
+profoundly unconscious of any shortcoming in his education, which he had
+got from a small church-pecked college of the pelican sort that feed it
+raw from their own bosoms. One of his smallest deficiencies was that he
+had never seen as much art as there is in one handsome dinner-plate.
+Now, here he was, riding forth to learn for himself, privately, he said,
+why I did not appear. Yet he halted without turning, and seemed to wish
+he had not found me.
+
+"Did you"--he began, and stopped; "did you notice a"--he stopped again.
+
+"What, a leather-curtained spring-wagon?"
+
+"No-o!" he said, as if nobody but a gaping idiot would expect anybody
+not a gaping idiot to notice a leather-curtained spring-wagon. "No-o!
+did you notice the brown horse that man was riding who just now passed
+you as you turned off the road?"
+
+No, I barely remembered the rider had generously moved aside to let me
+go by. In pure sourness at the poverty of my dress and the perfection of
+his, I had avoided looking at him higher than his hundred-dollar boots.
+My feet were in uncolored cowhide, except the toes.
+
+"He noticed you," said Gholson; "he looked back at you and your bay.
+Wouldn't you like to turn back and see his horse?"
+
+"Why, hardly, if I'm behindhand now. Is it so fine as that?"
+
+"Well, no. It's the horse he captured the time he got the Yankee who had
+him prisoner."
+
+"Who?" I cried. "What! You don't mean to say--was that Lieutenant
+Ferry?"
+
+"Yes, so called. He wa'n't a lieutenant then, he was a clerk, like you
+or me."
+
+"Oh, I wish I had noticed him!"
+
+"We can see him yet if you--"
+
+"Do you want to see him?" I gathered my horse.
+
+"Me!--No, sir. But you spoke as if--"
+
+I shook my head and we moved toward the tents. This was worse than the
+dream; the rat had not seen the cockerel, but the cockerel had observed
+the rat--dropping into the barrel: the cockerel, yes, and not the
+cockerel alone, for I saw that Gholson was associating him with her of
+the curtained wagon. By now they were side and side. I asked if Ferry
+came often to headquarters. "Yes, quite as often as he's any business
+to." "Ah, ha!" thought I, and presently said I had heard he was a
+great favorite.
+
+"Well,--yes,--he--he is,--with some."
+
+"Don't you like him?"
+
+"Who, me? Oh!--I--I admire Ned Ferry--for a number of things. He's more
+foolhardy than brave; he's confessed as much to me. Women call him
+handsome. He sings; beautifully, I suppose; I can't sing a note; and
+wouldn't if I could. Still, if he only wouldn't sing drinking-songs
+--but, Smith, I think that to sing drinking-songs--and all
+the more to sing them as well as some folks think he does--is to
+advocate drinking, and to advocate drinking is next door to excusing
+drunkenness!"
+
+"Then Ned Ferry doesn't drink?"
+
+"Indeed he does! I don't like to say it, and I don't say he drinks 'too
+much', as they call it; but, Smith, he drinks with men who do! Oh, _I_
+admire him; only I do wish--"
+
+"Wish what?"
+
+"Oh, I--I wish he wouldn't play cards. Smith, I've seen him play cards
+with the shells bursting over us!"
+
+For my part I privately wished this saint wouldn't rub my uninteresting
+surname into me every time he spoke. As we dismounted near the tents I
+leaned against my saddle and asked further concerning the object of his
+loving anxiety. Was Ned Ferry generous, pleasant, frank?
+
+"Why, in outward manner, yes; but, Smith, he was raised to be a Catholic
+priest. I could a heap-sight easier trust him if he'd sometimes show
+distrust, himself. If he ever does I've never seen it. And yet--Oh,
+we're the best of friends, and I'm speaking now only as a friend and
+_toe_ a friend. Oh, if it wa'n't for just one thing, I could admit what
+Major Harper said of him not ten minutes ago to me; that you never
+finish talking to Ned Ferry without feeling a little brighter, happier
+and cleaner than when you began; whereas talking with some men it's just
+the reverse."
+
+I looked carefully at my companion and asked him if the Major had said
+_all_ of that. He had, and Gholson's hide had turned it without taking a
+scratch. "That's fine!--as to Ferry," I said.
+
+"Oh, yes,--it would be--if it was only _iso_. Trouble is, you keep
+remembering he's such a stumbling-block to any real spiritual inquirer.
+Yes, and to himself; for, you know, spiritually there's so much less
+hope for the moralist than what there is for the up-and-down reprobate!
+You know that,--_Smith_."
+
+My silence implied that I knew it, though I did not feel any brighter,
+happier or cleaner.
+
+"Smith, Ned Ferry is not only a Romanist, he's a romanticist. We--you
+and me--are religionists. _Our_ brightness and happiness air the
+brightness and happiness of faith; our cleanness is the cleanness of
+religious scruples. Worst of it with Ned is he's satisfied with the
+difference, I'm afraid! That's what makes him so pleasant to fellows who
+don't care a sou marquee about religion."
+
+I said one might respect religion even if he did not--
+
+"Oh, he's always _polite_ to it; but he's--he's read Voltaire! Oh, yes,
+Voltaire, George Sand, all those men. He questions the Bible, Smith. Not
+to me, though; hah, he knows better! Smith, I can discuss religion and
+not get mad, with any one who don't question the Bible; but if he does
+that, I just tell you, I wouldn't risk my soul in such a discussion!
+Would you?"
+
+I could hardly say, and we moved pensively toward Major Harper's tent.
+Evidently the main poison was still in Gholson's stomach, and when I
+glanced at him he asked, "What d'you reckon brought Ned Ferry here just
+at this time?"
+
+I made no reply. He looked momentous, leaned to me sidewise with a hand
+horizontally across his mouth, and whispered a name. It was new to me.
+"Charlie Toliver?" I murmured, for we were at the tent door.
+
+"The war-correspondent," whispered Gholson; "don't you know?" But the
+flap of the tent lifted and I could not reply.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+SHE
+
+Major Harper was the most capable officer on the brigade staff. I had
+never met a man of such force and dignity who was so modestly affable.
+His new clerk dined with him that first day, at noon in his tent, alone.
+Hot biscuits! with butter! and rock salt. Fried bacon also--somewhat
+vivacious, but still bacon. When the tent began to fill with the smoke
+of his meerschaum pipe, and while his black boy cleared the table for us
+to resume writing, we talked of books. Here was joy! I vaunted my love
+for history, biography, the poets, but spoke lightly of fiction.
+
+The smoker twinkled. "You're different from Ned Ferry," he said.
+
+"Has he a taste for fiction?" I asked, with a depreciative smirk.
+
+"Yes, a beautiful story is a thing Ned Ferry loves with a positive
+passion."
+
+"I suppose we might call him a romanticist," said I, "might we not?"
+
+The patient gentleman smiled again as he said, "Oh--Gholson can attend
+to that."
+
+I took up my pen, and until twilight we spoke thereafter only of
+abstracts and requisitions. But then he led me on to tell him all about
+myself. I explained why my first name was Richard and my second name
+Thorndyke, and dwelt especially on the enormous differences between the
+Smiths from whom we were and those from whom we were not descended.
+
+And then he told me about himself. He was a graduate of West Point, the
+only one on the brigade staff; was a widower, with a widowed brother, a
+maiden sister, two daughters, and a niece, all of one New Orleans
+household. The brothers and sister were Charlestonians, but the two men
+had married in New Orleans, twin sisters in a noted Creole family. The
+brother's daughter, I was told, spoke French better than English; the
+Major's elder daughter spoke English as perfectly as her father; and the
+younger, left in her aunt's care from infancy, knew no French at all. I
+wondered if they were as handsome as their white-haired father, and
+when I asked their names I learned that the niece, Cécile, was a year
+the junior of Estelle and as much the senior of Camille; but of the days
+of the years of the pilgrimage of any of the three "children" he gave me
+no slightest hint; they might be seven years older, or seven years
+younger, than his new clerk.
+
+To show him how little I cared for any girl's age whose father preferred
+not to mention it, I reverted to his sister and brother. She was in New
+Orleans, he said, with her nieces, but might at any moment be sent into
+the Confederacy, being one of General Butler's "registered enemies." The
+brother was--
+
+"Out here somewhere. No, not in the army exactly; no, nor in the navy,
+but--I expect him in camp to-night. If he comes you'll have to work when
+you ought to be asleep. No, he is not in the secret service, only in _a_
+secret service; running hospital supplies through the enemy's lines
+into ours."
+
+I was thrilled. _I_ was taken into the staff's confidence! Me, _Smith!_
+That _Major Harper_ would tell me part of a matter to conceal the rest
+of it did not enter my dreams, good as I was at dreaming. The flattery
+went to my brain, and presently, without the faintest preamble, I asked
+if there was any war-correspondent at headquarters just now. There came
+a hostile flash in his eyes, but instantly it passed, and with all his
+happy mildness he replied, "No, nor any room for one."
+
+Just then entered an ordnance-sergeant, so smart in his rags that the
+Major's affability seemed hardly a condescension. He asked me to supper
+with his mess--"of staff _attatchays_," he said, winking one eye and
+hitching his mouth; at which the Major laughed with kind disapprobation,
+and the jocose sergeant explained as we went that that was only one of
+Scott Gholson's mispronunciations the boys were trying to tease him
+out of.
+
+I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper,
+stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head
+(save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only Gholson
+was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious jests got
+off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind. Never had I
+been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing "All quiet along
+the Potomac to-night," and was courteously praised when I had done so.
+But there is where affliction overtook me; they debated its authorship.
+One said a certain newspaper correspondent, naming him, had proved it to
+be the work--I forget of whom. But I shall never forget what followed.
+Two or three challenged the literary preeminence of that correspondent,
+and from as many directions I was asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying
+back against a pile of saddles with my head in my hands, sodden with
+self-assurance, I replied, magnanimously, "Oh, I don't set up for a
+critic, but--well--would you call him a better man than
+Charlie Toliver?"
+
+"Who--o?" It was not one who asked; the whos came like shrapnel; and
+when, not knowing what else to do, I smiled as one dying, there went up
+a wail of mirth that froze my blood and then heated it to a fever. The
+company howled. They rolled over one another, crying, "Charlie
+Toliver!--Charlie Toliver!--Oh, Lord, where's Scott Gholson!--Charlie
+Toliver!"--and leaped up and huddled down and moaned and rolled and
+rose and looked for me.
+
+But, after all, fortune was merciful, and I was gone; the Major had
+summoned me--his brother had come. I went circuitously and alone. As I
+started, some fellow writhing on the grass cried, "Charlie Tol--oh, this
+is better than a tcharade!" and a flash of divination enlightened me.
+While I went I burned with shame, rage and nervous exhaustion; the name
+Scott Gholson had gasped in my ear was the name of her in the curtained
+wagon, and I cursed the day in which I had heard of Charlotte Oliver.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+THREE DAYS' RATIONS
+
+In the vocabulary of a prig, but in the wrath of a fishwoman, I
+execrated Scott Gholson; his jealousies, his disclosures, his religion,
+his mispronunciations; and Ned Ferry--that cockerel! Here was I in the
+barrel, and able only to squeal in irate terror at whoever looked down
+upon me. I could have crawled under a log and died. At the door of the
+Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve
+when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's
+nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling
+good joke Smith had just got off on Gholson!
+
+"We shall have to get Ned Ferry back here," the Major was saying as I
+entered, "to make you boys let Scott Gholson alone."
+
+The young man laughed and turned to go. "Why doesn't Ned Ferry make
+_her_ let Gholson alone? He can do it; he's got her round his finger as
+tight as she's got Gholson round hers."
+
+"Harry," replied the Major, from his table full of documents, "don't you
+know that any man who's got a woman wrapped round his finger has also
+got her wrapped round his throat?"
+
+The aide-de-camp laughed like a rustic and vanished. "Smith," said the
+Major, "your eyes are--"
+
+"I've been awake for forty-eight hours, Major. But--oh, I'm not
+sleepy."
+
+"Well, go get some sleep.--No, go at once; you'll be called when
+needed."
+
+But I was not needed; while I slept, who should come back and do my work
+in my stead but Ned Ferry. When I awoke it was with a bound of alarm to
+see clear day. The command was breaking camp. I rushed out of the tent
+with canteen, soap and comb, and ran into the arms of the mess-cook. We
+were alone. "Oh, yass, seh," he laughed as he poured the water into my
+hands, "th'ee days' rairtion. Seh? Lawd! dey done drawed and cook' befo'
+de fus' streak o' light. But you all right; here yo' habbersack, full
+up. Oh, I done fed yo' hoss. Here yo' jacket an' cap; and here yo'
+saddle an' bridle--Oh, you welcome; I dess tryin' to git shet of 'em
+so's I kin strak de tent."
+
+As I mounted, our wagonmaster rode by me, busy as a skipper in a storm.
+"Oh, here!" he cried, wheeled, and reaching something to me added,
+"that's your pass. Major Harper wants you as quick as you can show up.
+He says never mind the column, ride straight after him. Keep this road
+to Hazlehurst and then go down the main Brookhaven road till you
+overtake him. He's by himself--nearly."
+
+As the rider wheeled away I blurted out with anxious loudness in the
+general hubbub, "Isn't his brother with him?"
+
+He flashed back a glare of rebuke and then bellowed to heaven and earth,
+"Oh, the devil and Tom Walker! I don't keep run of sutlers and
+citizens!" He took a circuit, standing in his stirrups and calling
+orders to his teamsters, and as he neared me again he said very gently,
+"Good Lord! my boy, don't you know better than to shoot your mouth off
+like that? You'll find nobody with the Major but Ned Ferry, and I don't
+say you'll find him."
+
+I galloped to the road. Away down through the woods it was full of
+horsemen falling into line. With the nearest colonel was Lieutenant
+Helm, the aide-de-camp. I turned away from them toward Hazlehurst, but
+looked back distrustfully. Yes, sure enough, the whole command was
+facing into column the other way! My horse and I whirled and stood
+staring and swelling with indignation--we ordered south, and the brigade
+heading westward! He fretted, tramped, neighed, and began hurriedly to
+paw through the globe to head them off on the other side. He even
+threatened to rear; but when I showed him I was ashamed of that, he bore
+me proudly, and I sat him as proudly as he bore me, for he made me more
+than half my friends. And now as the aide-de-camp wheeled about from the
+receding column and came our way saluting cordially, we turned and
+trotted beside him jauntily. Our first talk was of saddles, but very
+soon I asked where the General was.
+
+"Out on the Natchez Trace waiting for the command. I'm carrying orders
+to Fisher's battery, down here by the cross-roads. Haven't you seen the
+General this morning? What! haven't seen him in his new uniform? Whoop!
+he's a blaze of glory! Look here, Smith, I believe you know who brought
+it to him!"
+
+"How on earth should I know?"
+
+"Oh, how innocent you always are! Look here! just tell me this; was it
+the Major's brother brought it, or was it Ned Ferry?"
+
+"Suppose it wasn't either."
+
+"I knew it! I knew it was her! Ah, you rogue, you know it was her!"
+
+"Well, that _might_ depend on who 'her' is." We had reached the
+cross-roads and he was turning south.
+
+"Look!" he said, and gave the glance and smile of the lady in the
+curtained wagon so perfectly that I cackled like a small boy. "Oh, you
+know that, do you? I dare you to say she didn't bring it!"
+
+"I give you my word I don't know!" called I as the distance grew between
+us. "And I give you my word I don't care!" he crowed back as we
+galloped apart. His speech was two or three words longer, but they are
+inappropriate at the end of a chapter, and I expurgate.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN, TWENTY
+
+On entering Hazlehurst I observed all about the railway-station a
+surprising amount of quartermaster's stores. A large part were cases of
+boots and shoes. Laden with such goods, a train of shabby box-cars stood
+facing south, its beggarly wood-burner engine sniffing and weeping,
+while the cork-legged conductor helped all hands wood up. Though homely,
+the picture was a stirring one. Up through the blue summer morning came
+the sun, bringing to mind the words of the dying Mirabeau, "If that is
+not God, at least it's his first cousin."
+
+Even in the character of the goods there was eloquence, and not a
+drollery in the scene, not even an ugliness, but was touched, was rife,
+with the woe of a war whose burning walls were falling in on us. And
+outward, too, upon others; a few up-ended cottonbales leaned against
+each other ragged and idle, while women and babes starved for want of
+them in far-away Lancaster.
+
+One of the cars furthest from the engine had no freight proper, only a
+number of trunks; and these were nearly hidden by the widely crinolined
+flounces of an elegant elderly lady who sat on the middle one. And now
+she, too, was hidden, and the wide doorway in the side of the car more
+than filled, by the fashionable gowns of three girls. On the ground
+below there stood a lieutenant in a homemade gray uniform, and at his
+back half a dozen big, slouching, barefoot boys squirted tobacco juice
+and gazed at the ladies. The officer scanned me, spoke to the ladies,
+scanned me again, and threw up an arm. "Ho--o! Come here! Hullo! Come
+here--if you please."
+
+If he had not said please he should have ho'd and hullo'd in vain, but
+at that word I turned. Before I had covered half the distance I read New
+Orleans! my dear, dear old New Orleans! in every line of those ladies'
+draperies, and at twenty-five yards I saw one noble family likeness in
+all four of their sweet faces. Oh, but those three maidens were fair!
+and I could name each by her name at a glance: Camille, Cécile, Estelle;
+eighteen, nineteen, twenty!
+
+There was a hush of attention among them as the lieutenant and I
+saluted. His left hand was gone at the wrist and the sleeve pinned back
+on itself. He asked my name; I told him. In the car there was a stir of
+deepening interest. I inquired if he was the post-quartermaster here.
+He was.
+
+"Ain't you Major Harper's quartermaster-sergeant?" he asked.
+
+"I am his clerk." In the car a flash of joy and then great decorum.
+
+As he handed me a writing he glowed kindly. It proved to be from Major
+Harper; a requisition upon this officer for shoes and clothing; not for
+a brigade, regiment or company, but for me alone, from hat to shoes. I
+tendered it back silently, and saw that he knew its purport already from
+the Major, and that the ladies knew it from him. The good fellow looked
+quite happy a moment, but then reddened as they joyfully crowded the
+car's doorway to see me fitted!
+
+"We can select out sev'l pair--" he began, but heard a puerile titter
+and lost his nerve. "Now, you boys that ain't got any business here,
+jest clair out!--Go! I tell you, aw I'll--" The boys loitered off toward
+the engine. "We can select out sev'l si-izes," he drawled, uncovering a
+box, "and fit you ove' in my office. You ain't so pow'ful long nor so
+pow'ful slim, but these-yeh gov'ment contrac's they seldom ev' allow
+fo' anybody so slim in the waist bein' so long in the, eh,--so, eh,--so
+long f'om thah down. But yet still, if you'll jest light off yo' hoss
+and come and look into this-yeh box--"
+
+Hmm! yes! I wouldn't have got off my horse and leaned over that box to
+save the Confederacy. "I thank you, Lieutenant, but I can't stop. If
+you'll hand me up a jacket and pair of shoes I'll sign for them and go.
+I don't want a hat, but I reckon I'd as well include shoes, although
+really,--" I glanced down brazenly at the stirrup-leathers that so
+snugly hid my naked toes.
+
+As the quartermaster lifted out a pair of brogans as broad as they were
+long, there came a cry of protestation from the freight-car group, that
+brought the entire herd of rustics from the woodpile and the locomotive.
+Miss Harper rose behind her nieces, tall, slender, dark, with keen
+black eyes as kind as they were penetrating. "My boy!" she cried, "you
+cannot wear those things!"
+
+Camille, the youngest, whispered to her, whereupon she beckoned.
+"Oh!--oh, do come here!--Mr. Smith, I am the sister of Major Harper.
+You're from New Orleans? Does your mother live in Apollo Street?"
+
+"Yes, madam, between Melpomene and Terpsichore."
+
+"Richard Thorndyke Smith! My dear boy," she cried, while the nieces
+gasped at each other with gestures and looks all the way between
+Terpsichore and Melpomene, and then the four cried in chorus, "We know
+your mother!"
+
+"We've got a letter for you from her!" exclaimed Camille.
+
+"And a suit of unie-fawm!" called Cécile, with her Creole accent.
+
+"We smuggled it through!" chanted the trio, ready to weep for virtuous
+joy. And then they clasped arms like the graces, about their aunt, and
+let her speak.
+
+"We all helped your mother make your uniform," she said. "In the short
+time we've known her we've learned to love her dearly." With military
+brevity she told how they had unexpectedly got a pass and were just out
+of New Orleans--"poor New Orleans!" put in Estelle, the eldest, the
+pensive one; that they had come up from Pontchatoula yesterday and last
+night, and had thrown themselves on beds in the "hotel" yonder without
+venturing to disrobe, and so had let her brother pass within a few
+steps of them while they slept! "Telegraph? My dear boy, we came but ten
+miles an hour, but we outran our despatch!" Now they had telegraphed
+again, to Brookhaven, and thanks to the post-quartermaster, were going
+down there at once on this train. While this was being told something
+else was going on. The youngest niece, Camille, had put herself entirely
+out of sight. Now she reappeared with very rosy cheeks, saying, "Here's
+the letter."
+
+My thanks were few and awkward, for there still hung to the missive a
+basting thread, and it was as warm as a nestling bird. I bent
+low--everybody was emotional in those days--kissed the fragrant thing,
+thrust it into my bosom, and blushed worse than Camille.
+
+"Poor boy!" said the aunt. "It's the first line you've had for months.
+Your sweet mother wrote, but her letters were all intercepted, and the
+last time she was warned that next time she'd be dealt with according to
+military usage! I'm glad we could give you this one at once. We can't
+give you the uniform, for we--why, girls, what--why, what nonsense!"
+
+Maybe I did not say vindictive things inside me just then! The three
+nieces had turned open-mouthed upon one another and sunk down upon their
+luggage with averted faces.
+
+"I say we can't give it to you now," Miss Harper persisted, with a
+motherly smile; "we're wearing it ourselves. We've had no time to take
+it off. I couldn't get the boots off me last night. And even if you had
+the boots, the other things--"
+
+"Aunt Martha!" moaned some one. "Well, in short," said the aunt,
+twinkling like her brother, "we can't deliver the goods, and--" She
+started as though some one had slapped her between the shoulder-blades.
+It was the engine caused it, whistling in the old, lawless way, putting
+a whoop, a howl, a scream and a wail into one. The young ladies quailed,
+the train jerked like several collisions, the bell began tardily to
+clang, and my steed whirled, cleared a packing case, whirled again, and
+stood facing the train, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flapping, not
+half so much frightened as insulted. The post-quartermaster waved to the
+ladies and they to us. For a last touch I lifted my cap high and backed
+my horse on drooping haunches--you've seen Buffalo Bill do it--and
+then, with a leap like a cricket's, and to a clapping of maidens' hands
+that made me whooping drunk, we stretched away, my horse and I, on a
+long smooth gallop, for Brookhaven.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+A HANDSOME STRANGER
+
+Certainly no cricket ever dropped blither music from his legs than did
+my beautiful horse that glorious morning as we clattered in perfect
+rhythm on the hard clean road of the wide pine forest. Ah! the forest is
+not there now; the lumbermen--
+
+For an hour or so the world seemed to have taken me for its center as
+smoothly as a sleeping top. Only after a good seven miles did my
+meditations begin to reveal any bitter in the sweet; but it was in
+recalling for the twentieth time the last sight of Camille, that I
+heard myself say, I know not whether softly or loudly,
+
+"Oh, hang the uniform!"
+
+The morning was almost sultry. As I halted in the clear ripples of a
+gravelly "branch" to let my horse drink, I heard no great way off the
+Harpers' train shrieking at cattle on the track, and looking up I
+noticed just behind me an unfrequented by-road carefully masked with
+brush, according to a new habit of the "citizens". The next moment my
+horse threw up his head to listen. Then I heard hoofs and voices, and
+presently there came trotting through the oak bushes and around the mask
+of brush two horsemen unusually well mounted, clad and armed. Their very
+dark gray uniforms were so trim and so nearly blue that my heart came
+into my throat; but then I noticed they carried neither carbines nor
+sabres, but repeaters only, a brace to each. They splashed lightly to
+either side of me, and the three horses drank together.
+
+"Good-morning," we said. One of the men was a sergeant. He scanned my
+animal, and then me, with a dawning smile. "That's a fightin'-cock of a
+horse you've got, sonny."
+
+"Yes, bub," I replied. The two men laughed so explosively that my horse
+lifted his head austerely.
+
+"Jim," said the younger, "I don't believe all the conscripts we've
+caught these three days are worth the powder they've cost!"
+
+"No," replied Sergeant Jim, "I doubt if the most of 'em are." I turned
+to him and drew down my under eyelid. "Will you kindly tell me, sir, if
+you see any unnatural discoloration in there?"
+
+He smiled. "No, but I can put some there if you want it."
+
+"Thank you, I couldn't let you take so much trouble--or risk."
+
+The three of us pattered out of the stream abreast. "No trouble,"
+replied the sergeant, "it wouldn't take half a minute."
+
+"No," I rejoined, "the first step would be the last."
+
+The men laughed again. "You must a-been born with all your teeth," said
+the private, as we quickened to a trot. "What makes you think we ain't
+after conscripts?"
+
+"Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for
+good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up
+we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all."
+
+The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds. Then
+the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh while
+Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would be
+horn-swoggled!
+
+"I'm willing," I responded, and we all laughed. The younger horseman
+asked my name. "Smith," I said, with dignity, and they laughed again,
+their laugh growing louder when I would not smile.
+
+"Well, say; maybe you'll tell us who this is we're about to meet up
+with."
+
+Through the shifting colonnades of pine, a hundred yards in front of
+us, came two horsemen in the same blue-gray of the pair beside me.
+"Whoever he is," I said, "that gray he's riding is his second best, or
+it's borrowed," for his mount, though good, was no match for him.
+
+"Borrowed!" echoed the sergeant. "If he doesn't own that mare no man
+does."
+
+"Nor no woman?" I asked, and again across the back of my neck my two
+companions gazed at each other.
+
+"By ganny!" exclaimed one, and--"You're a coon," murmured the other, as
+the new-comers drew near. The younger of these also was a private.
+Behind his elbow was swung a Maynard rifle. Both carried revolvers. The
+elder wore a long straight sword whose weather-dimmed orange sash showed
+at the front of a loose cut-away jacket. Under this garment was a shirt
+of strong black silk, made from some lady's gown and daintily corded
+with yellow. On the jacket's upturned collar were the two gilt bars of a
+first lieutenant, but the face above them shone with a combined
+intelligence and purity that drew my whole attention.
+
+A familiar friendship lighted every countenance but mine as this second
+pair turned and rode with us, the lieutenant in front on Sergeant Jim
+Longley's right, and the two privates with me between them behind. For
+some minutes the sergeant, in under-tone, made report to his young
+superior. Then in a small clearing he turned abruptly into a
+neighborhood road, and at his word my two companions pricked after him
+westward. I closed up beside the lieutenant; he praised the weather, and
+soon our talk was fluent though broken, as we moved sometimes at a trot
+and often faster. In stolen moments I scanned him with the jealousy of
+my youth. Five feet, ten; humph! I was five, nine and a thirty-second.
+In weight he looked to be just what I always had in mind in those
+prayers without words with which I mounted every pair of commissary
+scales I came to. The play of his form as our smooth-gaited horses sped
+through the flecking shades was worth watching for its stanch and supple
+grace. Alike below the saddle and above it he was as light as a leaf and
+as firm as a lance. I had long yearned to own a pair of shoulders not
+too square for beauty nor too sloping for strength, and lo, here they
+were, not mine, but his. No matter; the slender mustache he sported he
+was welcome to, I had shaved off nearly as good a one; wished now I
+hadn't. As once or twice he lifted his képi to the warm breeze I took
+new despair from the soft locks of darkest chestnut that lay on his head
+in manly order, ready enough to curl but waiving the privilege.
+
+"Cock-a-doodle-doo," thought I; "if those are not the same
+hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their
+first cousins!"
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+A PLAGUE ON NAMES!
+
+Once more I measured my man. Celerity, valor, endurance, they were his
+iridescent neck and tail feathers. On a certain piece of road where we
+went more slowly I mentioned abruptly my clerkship under Major Harper
+and watched for the effect, but there was none. Did he know the Major?
+Oh, yes, and we fell to piling item upon item in praise of the
+quartermaster's virtues and good looks. Presently, with shrewdest
+intent, I said the Major was fine enough to be the hero of a novel! Did
+not my companion think so?
+
+Yes, he thought so; but I believed the glow in his tone was for novels.
+I extolled the romance of actual life! I denounced that dullness which
+fails to see the poetry of daily experience, and goes wandering after
+the mirages of fiction! And I was ready to fight him if he liked. But he
+agreed with me most cordially.
+
+"And yet," he began to add,--
+
+"Yet what?" I snapped out, with horse eyes.
+
+"Doesn't a good story revive the poetry of our actual lives?" He wiped
+the rim of his cap with a handkerchief of yellow silk enriched at one
+corner with needlework.
+
+"Um-hm!" I thought; "Charlotte Oliver, eh?" I responded tartly that I
+had that very morning met four ladies the poetry of whose actual,
+visible loveliness had abundantly illustrated to me the needlessness and
+impertinence of fiction! By the way, did he not think feminine beauty
+was always in its ripest perfection at eighteen?
+
+Well, he thought a girl might be prettiest at eighteen and handsomest
+much later. And again I said to myself, "Charlotte Oliver!" But when I
+looked searchingly into his eyes their manly sweetness so abashed me
+that I dropped my glance and felt him looking at me. I remembered my
+fable and flinched. "Isn't your name--" I cried, and choked, and when I
+would have said Ferry, another word slipped out instead. He did not hear
+it plainly:
+
+"Cockerel, did you say?"
+
+A sweet color was I. "Yes, that's what I said; Cockerel. Isn't your last
+name Cockerel?"
+
+"No," he said, "my last name is Durand." He gave it the French
+pronunciation.
+
+"Mine is Smith," I said, and we galloped.
+
+A plague on names! But I was not done with them yet. We met other scouts
+coming out of the east, who also gave reports and went on westward,
+sometimes through the trackless woods. At a broad cross-road which
+spanned the whole State from the Alabama line to the Mississippi River
+stood another sergeant, with three men, waiting. They were the last.
+
+Again we galloped alone; and as our horses' hoofs beat drummers' music
+out of the round earth our dialogue drifted into confessions of our own
+most private theories of conduct, character and creation. Now that this
+man's name was not--Cockerel, my heart opened to him and we began to
+admit to each other the perplexities of this great, strange thing called
+Life. Especially we confessed how every waking hour found us jostled and
+torn between two opposite, unappeasable tendencies of soul; one an
+upward yearning after everything high and pure, the other a
+down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence. I was warmed and fed.
+Yet I was pained to find him so steeped in presumptuous error, so
+wayward of belief and unbelief. The sweet ease with which he overturned
+and emptied out some of my arguments gave me worse failure of the
+diaphragm than a high swing ever did. Nevertheless I responded; and he
+rejoined; and I rejoined again, and presently he gave me the notion that
+he was suffering some cruel moral strain.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+ANOTHER CURTAINED WAGON
+
+Upon whatever fundamental scheme we perseveringly concentrate our
+powers, upon whatever main road of occupation we take life's
+journey,--art, politics, commerce, science,--if only we will take its
+upper fork as often as the road divides, then will that road itself, and
+not necessarily any cross-road, lead us to the noblest, truest plane of
+convictions, affections, aspirations. Such a frame of mind may be quite
+without religiosity, as unconscious as health; but the proof of its
+religious reality will be that, as if it were a lighthouse light and we
+its keeper, everybody else, or at any rate everybody _out on the deep_,
+will see it plainer than we. Such is the gist of what this young man was
+saying to me, when our speculations were brought to an end by our
+overtaking a man well mounted, and a woman whose rough-gaited was
+followed by a colt.
+
+The pair took our pace, the man plying me with questions, and his wife,
+in front, telling Lieutenant Durand all the rumors of the day. Her scant
+hair was of a scorched red tone, she was freckled down into her collar,
+her elbows waggled to the mare's jog, and her voice was as flat as a
+duck's. Her nag had trouble to keep up, and her tiny faded bonnet had
+even more to keep on. Yet the day was near when the touch of those
+freckled hands was to seem to me kinder than the breath of flowers, as
+they bathed my foul-smelling wounds, and she would say, in the words of
+the old song, "Let me kiss him for his mother," and I should be helpless
+to prevent her. By and by the man raised his voice:--
+
+"Why, yo' name _is_ Smith, to be sho'! I thought you was jest a-tryin'
+to chaw me. Why, Major Harper alludened to you not mo'n a half-ow ago.
+Why, Miz Wall! oh, Miz Wall!"
+
+But the wife was absorbed. "Yayse, seh," she was saying to the
+lieutenant, "and he told us about they comin' in on the freight-kyahs
+f'om Hazlehurst black with dust and sut and a-smuttyin' him all oveh
+with they kisses and goin's-on. He tol' me he ain't neveh so enjoyed
+havin' his face dirty sence he was a boy. He would a-been plumb happy,
+ef on'y he could a-got his haynds on that clerk o' his'n. And when he
+tol' us what a gay two-hoss turn-out he'd sekyo'ed for the ladies to
+travel in, s' I, Majo', that's all right! You jest go on whicheveh way
+you got to go! Husband and me, we'll ride into Brookhaven and bring 'em
+out to ow place and jest take ca'e of 'em untel yo' clerk is _found_."
+
+"Miz Wall!" cried the husband--"She's busy talkin'.--Miz Wall!--she
+don't hyuh me. I hate to interrupt heh.--Oh, Miz Wall! hyuh's Majo'
+Harper's clerk, right now!"
+
+"Law, you hain't!" cried Mrs. Wall, smiling back as she jounced. "If you
+air, the Majo's sisteh's got written awdehs fo' you."
+
+I shot forward, but had hardly more than sent back my good-bye when
+around a bend of the road, in a wagon larger than Charlotte Oliver's,
+with the curtains rolled up, came the four Miss Harpers, unsooted and
+radiant. The aunt drove. We turned, all four, and rode with them, and
+while the seven chatted gaily I read to myself the Major's note. It bade
+me take these four ladies into my most jealous care and conduct them to
+a point about thirty miles west of where we then were. A dandy's task in
+a soldier's hour! I ground my teeth, but as I lifted my glance I found
+Camille's eyes resting on me and read anxiety in them before she could
+put on a smile of unemotional friendliness that faded rapidly into
+abstraction. She was as pretty as the bough of wild azaleas in her hand,
+yet moving forward I told her aunt the order's purport and that it
+implied the greatest despatch compatible with mortal endurance. The
+whole four seemed only delighted.
+
+But Mrs. Wall protested. No, no, her hospitality first, and a basket of
+refreshments to be stowed in the vehicle, besides. "Why, that'll
+_sa-ave_ ti-ime. You-all goin' to be supprised to find how hungry
+y'all ah, befo' you come to yo' journey's en', to-night, and them col'
+victuals goin' taste pow'ful fi-ine!"
+
+Our acceptance was unanimous. I even decided not to inform Lieutenant
+Durand until after the repast, that ladies under my escort did not pick
+acquaintanceship with soldiers on the public highway. But before the
+brief meal was over I was wishing him hanged. Hang the heaven-high
+theories that had so lately put me in love with him! Hang his melodious
+voice, his modest composure, his gold-barred collar, his easy command of
+topics! Hang the women! they feasted on his every word and look! Ah,
+ladies! if I were mean enough to tell it--that man doesn't believe in
+hell! He has a down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence; he has
+told me so!
+
+How fast acquaintance grew! When he addressed himself to Cécile, the
+cousin of the other two, her black eyes leapt with delight; for as
+calmly as if that were the only way, he spoke to her in French--asked
+her a question. She gave answer in happiest affirmation, and explained
+to her aunt that her Durand schoolmates of a year or two back were
+cousins to the Lieutenant. When the throng came out to the carry-all I
+was there and mounted. Squire Wall took me a few rods to point out where
+a fork of his private road led into the highway. Then the carry-all came
+merrily after, and with a regret that surprised me I answered our
+Lieutenant's farewell wave, forgave him all his charms, and saw him face
+westward and disappear by a bridle-path.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+THE DANDY'S TASK
+
+Westward likewise we soon were bickering. The morning sun shone high;
+the thin, hot dust blew out over the blackened ground of some forest
+"burn" or through the worm fence of some field where a gang of slave men
+and women might be ploughing or hoeing between the green rows of young
+cotton or corn. The level stretches were many, the slopes gradual, and
+to those sweet city-bird ladies everything was new and delightful; a log
+cabin!--with clay chimney on the outside!--a well and its
+well-sweep!--another cabin with its gourd-vines! They knew that blessed
+alchemy which turns all things into the poetry of the moment. Sweet they
+would have been anywhere to any eye or mind; but I was a homeless
+trooper lad, and sweeter to the soldier boy than water on the
+battlefield are short hours with ladies who love him for his banner
+and his rags.
+
+These four were charmed with an old field given up to sedge, its deep
+rain-gullies as red as gaping wounds, its dead trees in tatters of long
+gray moss. Estelle became a student of flowers, Cécile of birds, Camille
+of trees. All my explanations were alike enchantingly strange. To their
+minds it had never occurred that the land sloped the same way the water
+ran! When told that these woods abounded in deer and wild turkey they
+began to look out for them at every new turn of the road. And the turns
+came fast. Happy miles, happy leagues; each hour was of a mellower
+sweetness than the last; they seemed to ripen in the sun. The only
+drawback was my shame of a sentimental situation, but once or twice I
+longed to turn the whole equipage into the woods--or the ditch. As, for
+instance, when three pine-woods cavalrymen had no sooner got by us than
+they set up that ribald old camp-song,
+
+  "We're going to get married, mamma, mamma;
+  We're going to get married, but don't tell pa--"
+
+"Deserters, I don't doubt!" was my comment to the ladies. Tongue revenge
+is poor, but it is something.
+
+Except in such moments, however, the war seemed farther away than it had
+for months and months. But about eleven o'clock we began to find the way
+scored by the fresh ruts of heavy wheels and the dust deepened by
+hundred of hoofs. The tops and faces of the roadside banks were newly
+trampled and torn by clambering human feet. Here was a canteen, smashed
+in a wheel-track; yonder a fragment of harness; here lay a broken hame,
+there was the half of a russet brogan and yonder a ragged sock stained
+and bloody.
+
+"Why, what does all this mean?" asked Miss Harper amid her nieces'
+cries.
+
+I said it meant Fisher's battery hurrying to the front. Twenty miles
+since five that morning was a marvel, horse artillery though they were,
+for, as I pointed out by many signs, their animals were in ill
+condition. "We shall have to go round them by neighborhood roads," I
+said, and presently we were deeper than ever in woodland shades and
+sources of girlish wonderment. The humid depths showed every sort of
+green and gray, their trunks, bushes and boughs, bearded with hanging
+moss, robed with tangled vines and chapleted with mistletoe. We seemed
+to have got this earth quite to ourselves and very much to our liking.
+
+One o'clock. Miss Harper suggested a halt to feed the horses. I, knowing
+what it would cost me to dismount and go walking about, said no, thrice
+no; let us first get back upon the main road in front of that battery.
+On, therefore, we hurried, and soon the reality of the war was vivid to
+us again. In a stretch of wet road where the team had mutely begged
+leave to walk and the ladies had urged me to sing we had at length
+paused in a pebbly rivulet to allow the weary animals to drink, and the
+girls and the aunt and the greenwood and I were all in chorus
+bidding somebody
+
+  "Unloose the west port and let us go free,"
+
+when, just as our last note died among the trees one of us cried,
+"Listen!" and through the stillness there came from far away on our
+right the last three measures of a bugle sounding The March.
+
+My eyes rested in Camille's and hers in mine. A musical license gave us
+the courage. At the last note our gaze did not sink but took on more
+glow, while out of the forest behind us a distant echo answered the last
+measure of the strain. Then our eyes slowly fell; and however it may
+have seemed to her, to me it was as if the vanished strains were not
+only or chiefly of bugle and echo, but as though our two hearts had
+called and answered in that melodious unison.
+
+All that warm afternoon we paid the tiresome penalty of having pushed
+our animals too smartly at the outset. We grew sedate; sedate were the
+brows of the few strangers we met. We talked in pairs. When I spoke with
+Miss Harper the four listened. She asked about the evils of camp life;
+for she was one of that fine sort to whom righteousness seems every
+man's and woman's daily business, one of the most practical items in the
+world's affairs. And I said camp life was fearfully corrupting; that the
+merest boys cursed and swore and stole, or else were scorned as
+weaklings. Then I grew meekly silent and we talked in pairs again, and
+because I yearned to talk most with Camille I talked most with Estelle.
+Three times when I turned abruptly from her to Camille and called,
+"Hark!" the fagged-out horses halted, and as we struck our listening
+pose the bugle's faint sigh ever farther in our rear was but feebly
+proportioned to the amount of our gazing into each other's eyes.
+
+Once, when we were not halted or harkening, we heard overmuch; heard
+that which brought us to an instant stand and caused even Miss Harper to
+gaze on me with dismayed eyes and parted lips, and the blood to go
+thumping through my veins. From a few hundred yards off in the
+northwest, beyond the far corner of an old field and the woods at its
+back, two gunshots together, then a third, with sharp, hot cries of
+alarum and command, and then another and another shot, rang out and
+spread wanderingly across the tender landscape.
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+THE SOLDIER'S HOUR
+
+To regain the highroad we had turned into a northerly fork, and were in
+as lovely a spot as we had seen all day. Before us and close on our
+right were the dense woods of magnolia, water-oak, tupelo and a hundred
+other affluent things that towered and spread or clambered and hung. On
+the left lay the old field, tawny with bending sedge and teeming with
+the yellow rays of the sun's last hour. This field we overlooked through
+a fence-row of persimmon and wild plum. Among these bushes, half fallen
+into a rain-gully, a catalpa, of belated bloom, was loaded with blossoms
+and bees, and I was directing Camille's glance to it when the shots
+came. Another outcry or two followed, and then a weird silence.
+
+"Some of our boys attacked by a rabbit," I suggested, but still
+hearkened.
+
+"That was not play, Mr. Smith," Miss Harper had begun to respond, when a
+voice across the sedge-field called with startling clearness,
+
+"Hi! there goes one of them!--Halt!--Halt, you blue--" pop!--pop!--pop!
+
+"Prisoners making a break!" I forgot all my tatters and stood on tiptoe
+in the stirrups to overpeer the fence-row. The next instant--"Sh--sh!"
+said I and slid to the ground. "Hold this bridle!" I gave it to Camille.
+"Don't one of you make a sound or a motion; there's a Yankee coming
+across this field in the little gully just behind us."
+
+I bent low, ran a few steps, cocking my revolver as I went. Then I rose,
+peeped, bent again, ran, rose, peeped, waited a few seconds behind the
+catalpa, and without rising peeped once more. Here he came! He was an
+officer. His uniform was torn and one whole side of him showed he had at
+some earlier hour ridden through a hedge and fallen from his horse. On
+he came! nearer--nearer--oh, what a giant! Quickly, warily, he crouched
+under the fence where it hung low across the gully, and half through it
+in that huddled posture he found my revolver between his astonished
+eyes. I did not yell at him, for I did not want the men he had escaped
+from to come and take him from me; yet when I said, "Halt, or you die!"
+the four ladies heard me much too plainly. For, frankly, I said more and
+worse. I felt my slenderness, my beardless youth, my rags, and his
+daring, and to offset them all in a bunch, I--I cursed him. I let go
+only one big damn and I've never spoken one since, though I've done many
+a worse thing, of course. I protest it was my modesty prompted it then.
+
+"I surrender," he said, with amiable ease. I stepped back a pace and he
+drew out and straightened up--the tallest man I had ever seen. I laughed,
+he smiled, laughed; my eyes filled with tears, I blazed with rage, and in
+plain sight and hearing of those ladies he said, "That's all right, my
+son, get as scared as you like; only, you don't need to cry about it."
+
+"Hold your tongue!" I barked my wrath like a frightened puppy, drawing
+back a stride and laying my eye closer along the pistol. "If you call me
+your son again I'll send you to your fathers."
+
+His smile darkened. "I am your prisoner," he said, with a sudden
+splendid stateliness, and right then I guessed who he was.
+
+"Yess, sir, you are!" I retorted. "Move to that wagon! And if you take
+one step out of common time you'll never take another."
+
+The aunt and her nieces were standing in the carry-all, she majestic,
+they laughing and weeping in the one act. I waved them into their seats.
+
+"Halt!" We halted. "About face!" As the prisoner eyed me both of us
+listened. His equanimity was almost winsome, and I saw that friendliness
+was going to be his tactics.
+
+"Guess I'm the first Yankee y' ever caught, ain't I?" His smile was
+superior, but congratulatory.
+
+"You'll be the first prisoner I ever shot if you get any funnier!"
+
+We listened again. "They've gone the wrong way," I said, still savage.
+
+"No," he replied, "I came the wrong way."
+
+The ladies smiled; I glowered. "Take those horses by their heads and
+turn them to me!"
+
+An instant his superb eye resented, but then he pleasantly did my
+bidding. "Suits me well; rather chance it with you than with those I've
+just left."
+
+[Illustration: "I surrender," he said, with amiable ease.]
+
+"Easier to get away, you think?" I asked, with a worse frown than ever,
+as he stepped into the carry-all and took the lines.
+
+"No, not so easy; but those fellows are Arkansans, and they're in a bad
+humor with me."
+
+I took the hint and grew less ferocious. "While you," I said, "are
+Captain Jewett."
+
+"I am," was his reply, and my heart leaped for joy. We hurried away. My
+captive was the most daring Union scout between Vicksburg and New
+Orleans; these very Harpers knew that. The thing unknown to us was that
+already his fate was entangled with Ned Ferry's and Charlotte Oliver's,
+as yet more it would be, with theirs and ours, in days close at hand.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+CAPTAIN JEWETT
+
+Once more we were in the by-road which had brought us westward parallel
+with the highway. The prisoner drove. Aunt Martha sat beside him, slim,
+dark, black-eyed, stately, her silver-gray hair rolled high à la
+Pompadour. With a magnanimity rare in those bitter days she incited him
+to talk, first of New Orleans, where he had spent a month in camp on one
+of the public squares, and then of his far northern home, and of loved
+ones there, mother, wife and child. The nieces, too, gave a generous
+attention. Only I, riding beside the hind wheels, held solemnly aloof.
+
+"Front!" I once snapped out with a ring that made the trees reply and
+the ladies catch their breath. "If you steal one more look back here
+I'll put a ball into your leg."
+
+He smiled, chirped the horses up and resumed his chat. I heard him
+praise my horse and compare him not unfavorably with his own which he
+had lost that morning'. He and a few picked men had been surprised in a
+farmhouse at breakfast. They had made a leap and a dash, he said, but
+one horse and rider falling dead, his horse, unhurt, had tumbled over
+them, and here was his rider.
+
+I prompted Camille to ask if he had ever encountered Ned Ferry, and he
+laughed.
+
+"No," he said, but Ned Ferry had lately restored to him, by proxy, some
+lost letters, with an invitation to _come and see him_.
+
+I laughed insolently. The young ladies sparkled, and so did Miss Harper,
+as she asked him who had been the proxy.
+
+He said the proxy was a young woman who had a knack of getting passes
+through the lines, and the three girls exchanged looks as knowing as
+they were delighted.
+
+"I tell her as a friend," he said, "she'll get one into Fortress Monroe
+yet!"
+
+Miss Harper's keen eyes glittered. "You northerners hardly realize our
+feelings concerning the imprisonment of women, I think."
+
+"My dear madam, you don't realize ours. We don't want to imprison
+women."
+
+So there came a silence, and then a gay laugh as three of us at once
+asked if he had ever heard of Lieutenant Durand. "Durand!" he cried, and
+looked squarely around at me. I lifted the cocked revolver, but he kept
+his fine eyes on mine and I rubbed my ear with my wrist. "What?" he
+said, "an elegant, Creole-seeming young fellow, very handsome? Why, that
+fellow saved my life this very afternoon."
+
+The young ladies were in rapture. Miss Harper asked how he had done it.
+
+"If I tell you that," said the Captain, "you won't like me the least
+bit."
+
+Whereat Cécile replied, "Ah--well! we cou'n' like you the leaz bit
+any-'ow."
+
+"I suppose that's so," laughed the officer. "I'll tell you how it was.
+My guard were just about to hang me for saying I thought we had a right
+to make soldiers of the darkies, when your friend came galloping along,
+saw the thing, and rushed in and cut the halter with his sword. And when
+they demanded to know who and what he was, he told them Durand, and that
+they'd hear it again, for he should report them."
+
+"Oh, sir," cried Estelle, whose eyes, brows, lashes and hair were all of
+the same luminous red-brown, and in whose cheeks the rose seemed always
+to burn through the olive, "how can you and your people seek to kill
+such men as that?"
+
+"Such as which?" asked the Yankee, with a twinkle. "There were two
+kinds."
+
+"But, o-oh! sir!" exclaimed the trio, when Miss Harper waved them to
+forbear. There was yet some daylight left as we trundled into a broad
+highroad and turned northward. We passed a picket guard and then a whole
+regiment of cavalry going into camp. They scrambled to the sides of the
+road and stormed us with questions, chaffing us cruelly when I remained
+silent. "Lawd! look a' this-yeh Yank a-bringin' in ow desertehs!" "Hey,
+you big Yank, you jest let that po' little conscrip' go!"
+
+Headquarters, we heard from a courier who said he was the third sent out
+to find us, were at the "Sessions house" two miles further on. We sent
+him galloping back there, and after a while here came Major Harper and
+three or four others of the staff, including Harry Helm. What a flood of
+mirthful compliment there was at sight of us and our captive; Harry was
+positively silly. In the series of introductions that followed he was
+left paired with Camille, and I said things to myself. Major Harper rode
+by the prisoner. "Well, Captain," he said, "you've had some experiences
+since you left me this morning. Don't you want to give us your parole
+this time, temporarily, for an hour or so, and be more comfortable?"
+
+"Thank you, Major," the Federal affably replied, "that would be a great
+relief to this most extraordinary youngster that I've brought with me."
+He gave it and we turned into a lofty grove whitened with our
+headquarters tents.
+
+"Smith," said the Major, "your part is done, and well done. You needn't
+report to me again to-night; the General wishes to see you a moment.
+Captain, will you go with this young man to General Austin's tent?"
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+IN THE GENERAL'S TENT
+
+I went to Gholson. He told me I was relieved of my captive and bade me
+go care for my horse and return in half an hour. In going I passed close
+by the Sessions plantation house. Every door and window was thrown wide
+to the night air, and preparations were in progress for a dance; and as
+I returned, a slave boy ran across my path, toward the house, bearing a
+flaming pine torch and followed by two ambulances filled with daughters
+of the neighborhood in clouds of white gauze. I found the General in
+fatigue dress. His new finery hung on the tent-pole at his back. Old
+Dismukes, the bull-necked colonel of the Arkansans, lounged on a
+camp-cot. Both smoked cigars.
+
+The General asked me a number of idle questions and then said my
+prisoner had called me a good soldier. Old Dismukes smiled so broadly
+that I grew hot, believing the Yankee had told them of my tears.
+
+"Smith," said the Colonel, and then smoked and smiled again till my brow
+beaded,--"tired?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"That's a lie," he pleasantly remarked, and lay back, enjoying my silent
+wrath. "Send him, General," he added, "he's your man."
+
+The General looked at me between puffs of his cigar. "I hear you've
+ridden over fifty miles to-day."
+
+"Yes, General." "If I give you a good fresh horse can you go
+twenty-three miles more by midnight?"
+
+"Yes, General, if I don't have to save the horse."
+
+"The horse may have to save you," drawled the Arkansan.
+
+"I think you know Lieutenant Durand?" asked the General, with a
+quizzical eye.
+
+"Slightly."
+
+"Well, Smith, on his suggestion approved by Major Harper, I have
+detailed another clerk to the Major."
+
+Rills of perspiration tickled my back like flies. "Can't one man do the
+work?"
+
+"Yes, the new man is detailed in your place."
+
+I almost leaped from the ground in consternation. My whole frame
+throbbed, my mouth fell open, my tongue was tied.
+
+The man who had got me into this thing--this barrel--lifted the
+tent-flap. "Mr. Gholson," said the General, "write an order assigning
+Smith to Ferry's scouts."
+
+The flap fell again and my panic was turned into a joy qualified only by
+a reduced esteem for my general as a judge of character.
+
+Old Dismukes rose. "Good-night. Shall I send this boy that Yankee's
+horse?"
+
+"Oh I was forgetting that; yes, do!"
+
+At the door the Colonel gave me a last look. "Good-night, Legs."
+
+I dared not retort, but I looked so hard at his paunch that the General
+smiled. Then he asked me if I knew where we were then camped, and I said
+we were on the Meadville and Fayette road, near Franklin, twenty miles
+southeast of Fayette and--
+
+"That will do. Now, beyond Fayette, about seven miles north, there's a
+place--"
+
+"Clifton?"
+
+"Don't interrupt me, Smith. Yes, Clifton. You're not to reach there
+to-night--"
+
+"I can do it, General."
+
+"You can do as you're told; understand?" I understood.
+
+"The enemy are in Fayette to-night," he continued. "So when you get
+half-way to Fayette, just across Morgan's Creek, you'll take a dim fork
+on the right running north along the creek. Ever travel by the stars?"
+
+I began to tell how well I knew the stars, but he stopped me. "Yes;
+well, keep straight north till you strike the road running east and west
+between Fayette and Union Church. You'll find there a little
+polling-place called Wiggins. Turn west, toward Fayette, and on the
+north side of the main road, opposite the blacksmith's shop, you'll come
+to a small--"
+
+"I see."
+
+"What do you see?" His frown scared me to my finger-tips.
+
+"Why, I suppose I'm to find there a road down Cole's Creek to Clifton."
+
+"Smith, if you interrupt me again, sir, you'll find the road back to
+your regiment. Opposite that blacksmith's shop you'll see a white
+cottage. There's a young lady stopping there to-night, a stranger, a
+traveller. The old lady who lives there has taken her in at my request.
+See that the young lady gets this envelope. It's no great matter, merely
+a pass through our lines; but it's your ostensible business till you get
+there; understand?"
+
+I thought I did until I glanced at the superscription: Miss Coralie
+Rothvelt.
+
+"Now, here is another matter of much more importance." He showed, but
+retained, another envelope. "Behind the house where you're to find Miss
+Rothvelt there's a road into Cole's Creek bottom. The house you're to
+stop at to-night, say from twelve o'clock till three or half-past, is on
+that road, about five miles from Wiggins, from Clifton and from Fayette.
+I'm sending you there expecting the people in that house will rob you if
+you give them half a chance."
+
+"I understand, General; they'll not get it."
+
+"Smith, I want them to get it. I want them to rob you of this." He
+waggled the envelope. "I want this to fall into the hands of the enemy;
+as it will if those people rob you of it."
+
+I snapped my eyes. He smiled and then frowned. "I don't want a clumsy
+job, now, mind! I don't want you to get captured if you can possibly
+avoid it; but all the same they mustn't get this so easily as to suspect
+it's a bait. So I want you to give those villains that half-chance to
+rob you, but not the other half, or they may--oh, it's no play! You must
+manage to have this despatch taken from you totally against your will!
+Then you must reach Clifton shortly after daylight. Ferry's scouts are
+there, and you'll say to Lieutenant Ferry the single word, Rodney.
+Understand?" He pretended to be reconsidering. "I--don't know
+but--after all--I'd better send one of my staff instead of you."
+
+"Oh, General, if you send an officer they'll see the ruse! I can do it!
+I'll do it all right!"
+
+"I'm most afraid," he said, abstractedly, as he read my detail, which
+Gholson brought in. "Here,"--he handed it to me--"and here, here's the
+despatch too."
+
+"What's the name, General, of the man whose house I'm to go to?"
+
+"You'd best not know; I want you to seem to have stumbled upon the
+place. You can't miss it; there's no other house within two miles of it.
+Good-bye, my lad;"--he gave me his hand;--"good luck to you."
+
+Gholson, in the Adjutant-general's tent, told me Ned Ferry had named me
+to the General as a first-class horseman and the most insignificant-
+looking person he knew of who was fit for this venture.
+
+"Ned Ferry! What does Ned Ferry know about my fitness?"
+
+"Read the address on your despatch," said Gholson, resuming his pen.
+
+I snatched the document from my bosom, into which I had thrust it to
+seize the General's hand "Oh, Gholson!" I said, in deep-toned grief, as
+I looked up from the superscription, "is that honest!"
+
+He admitted that by the true religionist's standard it was not honest,
+but reminded me that Ned Ferry--in his blindness--was only a poor
+romanticist. The despatch was addressed to Lieutenant Edgard
+Ferry-Durand.
+
+Major Harper's black boy brought me the Yankee's horse with my bridle
+and saddle on him; an elegant animal as fresh as a dawn breeze. Also he
+produced a parcel, my new uniform, and a wee note whose breath smelt of
+lavender as it said,--
+
+"Papa tells us you are being sent off on courier duty to-night. What a
+heart-breaking thing is war! How full of cruel sepa'--"
+
+That piece of a word was scored out and "dangers" written in its place.
+The missive ended all too soon, with the statement that I was requested
+to call, on my way out of camp, at the side gallery of the house--
+Sessions's--and let the writer and her sister and her cousin and her
+father and her aunt see me in my new uniform and bid me good-bye.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+GOOD-BYE, DICK
+
+I found but one white figure under the dim veranda eaves. "Miss
+Camille?"
+
+"Wh'--who is that?" responded a musical voice. "Why, is that Mr. Smith?"
+as if I were the last person in the world one should have expected to
+see there. The like of those moments I had never known. I saw her eyes
+note the perfect fit of my uniform, though neither of us mentioned it. I
+tried to tell her that Lieutenant Durand was Ned Ferry and that I was
+now one of his scouts, but she had already heard both facts, and would
+not tell me what her father had said about me, it was so good. Standing
+at the veranda's edge a trifle above me, with her cheek against one of
+the posts and her gaze on her slipper, she asked if I was glad I was
+going with Ned Ferry, and I had no more sense than to say I was; but she
+would neither say she was glad nor tell why she was not.
+
+Through the open windows we could see the dancers. Now and then a pair
+of fanning promenaders came down the veranda, but on descrying us turned
+back. I said I was keeping her from the dance. To which she replied,
+drooping her head again, that she shouldn't dance that night.
+
+"Too tired?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Too warm?"
+
+"Oh, no, not too warm."
+
+"Why, then?"
+
+"Oh--I--just don't feel as if I could, that's all."
+
+My heart beat wildly and I wanted to ask if it was on my account; but I
+was too pusillanimous a coward, and when I feebly tried to look into her
+eyes she would not let me, which convinced me that she lacked candor. A
+dance ended. Gold-laced fellows came and sat on the veranda rail wiping
+wrists and brows with over-tasked handkerchiefs, and explaining the
+small mishaps of the floor. Two promenaders mentioned the hour. I gasped
+my amazement and extended my hand. "Good-bye."
+
+"Wait a moment," she murmured, and watched the promenading pair turn
+back. Then she asked if I had read my mother's letter. I said I had. And
+then, very pensively, with head bent and eyes once more down, she
+inquired if I liked to get letters. Which led, quite accidentally, to my
+asking leave to write to her.
+
+She replied that she did not mean that. Nevertheless, I insisted, would
+she? She only bent lower still. I asked the third time; and with nothing
+but the parting of her hair for me to look at, she nodded, and one of
+her braids fell over in front, and I took the pink-ribboned live end of
+it timorously between thumb and finger and felt as if I had hold of an
+electric battery.
+
+She backed half a step, and quite needlessly I let it go. Then she bade
+me not forget I had promised her the words of a certain song. "Want
+them? Indeed, yes! Did you not say it was an unpublished song written
+by a messmate of yours?--oh, Mr. Smith! I see why you stammer! You said
+'a member of your mess'! oh!--oh!--oh!--you wrote it, yourself! And you
+wrote it to-day! That explains--" She drew an awesome breath, rose to
+her toes and knit her knuckles under her throat.
+
+I was in the sweetest consternation. With the end of her braid once more
+in my fingers I made her promise to keep the dark secret, and so
+recited them.
+
+"Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
+  Turn away thine eyes ere my bosom burn,
+Lit with foolish hope to hear thy fondling sighs,
+  Like yon twilight dove's, breathe, Return, return!
+Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+  O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
+
+"Maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!
+  Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn.
+Breathe, O! breathe to me, as these love-languid skies
+  To yon twilight star breathe, Return, return!
+Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+  O maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!"
+
+"Mis-ter Smith! you wrote that?--to-day! Wh'--who is she?"
+
+"One too modest," I murmured, "to know her own portrait." I clutched the
+braid emotionally and let it go intending to retake it; but she dropped
+it behind her and said I was too imaginative to be safe.
+
+I stiffened proudly, turned and mounted my steed, but her eyes drew
+mine. I pressed close, bent over the saddle-bow, and said,
+"Good-bye, Camille."
+
+"Good-bye." I could barely hear it.
+
+"Oh!--good-bye, just anybody?" I asked; and thereupon she gathered up
+all her misplaced trust in me, all her maiden ignorance of what is in
+man, and all her sweet daring, to murmur--
+
+"Good-bye,--Dick."
+
+I caught my breath in rapture and rode away. She was there yet when I
+looked back--once--and again--and again. And when I looked a last time
+still she had not moved. Oh, Camille, Camille! to this day I see you
+standing there in pink-edged white, pure, silent, motionless, a
+summer-evening cloud; while I, my body clad in its unstained--only
+because unused--new uniform, and my soul tricked out in the
+foolhardiness and vanity of a boy's innocence, rode forth into the night
+and into the talons of overmastering temptation.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+CORALIE ROTHVELT
+
+The night was still and sultry. At one of the many camp-fires on the
+edge of the road I saw the Arkansas colonel sitting cross-legged on the
+ground, in trousers, socks and undershirt, playing poker.
+
+Out in the open country how sweet was the silence. Not yet have I
+forgotten one bright star of that night's sky. My mother and I had
+studied the stars together. Lately Camille, her letter said, had learned
+them with her. Now the heavens dropped meanings that were for me and for
+this night alone. While the form of the maiden--passing fair--yet
+glimmered in the firmament of my own mind, behind me in the south soared
+the Virgin; but as some trees screened the low glare of our camp I saw,
+just rising into view out of the southeast, the unmistakable eyes of the
+Scorpion. But these fanciful oracles only flattered my moral
+self-assurance, and I trust that will be remembered which I forgot, that
+I had not yet known the damsel from one sun to the next.
+
+I was moving briskly along, making my good steed acquainted with me,
+testing his education, how promptly for instance, he would respond to
+rein-touch and to leg-pressure, when I saw, in front, coming toward me,
+three riders. Two of them were very genteel chaps, though a hand of each
+was on the lock of his carbine. The third was a woman, veiled, and clad
+in some dark stuff that in the starlight seemed quite black and
+contrasted strongly with the paleness of her horse. Her hat, in
+particular, fastened my attention; if that was not the same soft-brimmed
+Leghorn I had seen yesterday morning, at least it was its twin sister. I
+halted, revolver in hand, and said, as they drew rein,--"Good-evening."
+
+"Good-evening," replied the nearer man. "How far is it to
+camp--Austin's?"
+
+"A short three miles."
+
+"To what command do you belong?" he asked.
+
+"Ferry's scouts. What command is yours, gentlemen?"
+
+"Ferry's scouts." He scrutinized me. "What command do you say you--"
+
+"Ferry's scouts," I repeated. "F-e-r-r-y-apostrophe s,
+Ferry's--s-k-o-w-t-s--scouts."
+
+The trio laughed, the young woman most musically.
+
+"How long have you belonged to Ferry's scouts?" sceptically demanded
+their spokesman.
+
+"About an hour and a quarter."
+
+"Oh! that-a-way."
+
+"Yes," I replied, "in that direction."
+
+The three laughed again and the men sank their carbines across their
+laps, while in a voice as refined as her figure their companion said,
+"Good-evening, Mr. Smith." She laid back her veil and even in the
+darkness I felt the witchery of her glance. "I was just coming to meet
+you," she continued, "to get the letter you're bringing me from General
+Austin. I feared you might try to come around by Fayette, not knowing
+the Yankees are there. These gentlemen didn't know it." "She just did
+save us!" laughed the man hitherto silent.
+
+"I'm Miss Coralie Rothvelt," she added, and then how she sparkled in the
+dark as she said, "I see you remember me."
+
+"I am but human."
+
+"And yet you never take a lady's name for granted?"
+
+"I am to know Miss Rothvelt by finding her in a certain place." My
+honeyed bow implied that her being just now very much out of place was
+no fault of mine.
+
+"Nonsense!" muttered both men, and I liked them the better.
+
+"My dear Smith," said Miss Rothvelt, "keep your trust. But if I part
+here with these two kind gentlemen--"
+
+"Who don't belong to Ferry's scouts at all," I still more sweetly added.
+
+"No," she laughed, "and if I go back with you to Wiggins--to the little
+white cottage, you know, opposite the blacksmith's shop,--you'll give me
+what you've got for me, won't you?" She dropped her head to one side and
+a mocking-bird chuckle rippled in her throat.
+
+"I shall count myself honored," said I, and we went, together and alone.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+VENUS AND MARS
+
+Since those days men have made "fire-proof" buildings. You know them;
+let certain aggravations combine--they burn like straw. We had barely
+started when I began to be threatened with a conflagration against which
+I should have called it an insult to have been warned. The adroit beauty
+at my side set in to explain more fully her presence. From her window
+she had seen those two trim fellows hurrying along in a fair way to
+blunder into the Federal pickets within an hour, had cautioned them, and
+had finally asked leave to come with them, they under her guidance, she
+under their protection.
+
+"You were so anxious to get the General's letter?" I asked.
+
+"I was so anxious about you," she replied, with feeling, and then broke
+into a quizzical laugh.
+
+I had not the faintest doubt she was lying. What was I to her? The times
+were fearfully out of joint; women as well as men were taking war's
+licenses, and with a boy's unmerciful directness I sprang to the
+conclusion that here was an adventuress. Yet I had some better thoughts
+too. While I felt a moral tipsiness going into all my veins, I asked
+myself if it was not mainly due to my own inability to rise in full
+manliness to a most exceptional situation. Her jaunty method of
+confronting it, was I not failing to regard _that_ with due magnanimity?
+Was this the truth, or after all ought I really to see that at every
+turn of her speech, by coy bendings of the head, by the dark seductions
+of dim half-captive locks about her oval temples, and by many an
+indescribable swaying of the form and of the voice, I was being--to
+speak it brutally--challenged? Even in the poetic obscurity of the night
+I lost all steadiness of eye as I pertly said--
+
+"And so here you are in this awful fix."
+
+"I'm enjoying one advantage," she replied, "which you do not."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Why, I can read my safety in your face. You can't read anything in
+mine; you're afraid to look."
+
+All I got by looking then was a mellow laugh from behind her relowered
+veil; but we were going at a swift trot, nearing a roadside fire of
+fence-rails left by some belated foraging team, and as she came into the
+glare of it I turned my eyes a second time. She was revealed in a garb
+of brown enriched by the red beams of the fire, and was on the gray mare
+I had seen that morning under Lieutenant Edgard Ferry-Durand.
+
+"You recognize her?" the rider asked, delightedly. "She's not stolen,
+she's only served her country a little better than usual to-day; haven't
+you, Cousin Sallie?" (Cousin Sallie was short for Confederate States.)
+
+The note of patriotism righted me and I looked a third time. The one art
+of dress worth knowing in '63 was to slight its fashions without
+offending them, and this pretty gift I had marked all day in the
+Harpers. But never have I seen it half so successful as in the veiled
+horsewoman illumined by the side-lights of those burning fence-rails.
+The white apparition at the veranda's edge gleamed in my mind, yet
+swiftly faded out, and a new fascination, more sudden than worthy heaved
+at my heart. Then the fire was behind us and we were in the deep night.
+
+On the crest of a ridge we slackened speed and my fellow-traveller
+lifted her veil and asked exultantly what those two splendid stars were
+that overhung yonder fringe of woods so low and so close to each other.
+The less brilliant one, I said, the red one, was Mars.
+
+"And the one following, almost at his side?"
+
+"Don't you know?" I asked.
+
+Her eyes flashed round upon me like stars themselves. "Not--Venus?" she
+whispered, snatched in her breath, bit her lip, and half averting her
+face, shot me through with both "twinklers" at once. Then she took a
+long look at the planets and suddenly exclaimed with a scandalized air--
+
+"They're going down into the woods together!"
+
+"Yes," I responded, "and without even waiting for Diana."
+
+She dropped the rein and lifted both arms toward them. "Oh, blessings on
+your glorious old heathen hearts, what do you want of Diana, or of any
+one in heaven or earth except each other!"
+
+Foolish, idle cry, and meant for no more, by a heart on fire with
+temptations of which I knew nothing. But then and there my poor
+adolescent soul found out that the preceptive stuff of which it had
+built its treasure-house and citadel was not fire-proof.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+AN ACHING CONSCIENCE
+
+Yet great is precept. Precept is a well. Up from its far depths by slow,
+humble, constant process you may draw, in a slender silver thread, and
+store for sudden use, the pure waters of character.
+
+It has happened, however, that a man's own armor has been the death of
+him. So the moral isolation of a young prig of good red blood who is
+laudably trying to pump his conduct higher than his character--for
+that's the way he gets his character higher--has its own peculiar
+dangers. Take this example: that he does not dream any one will, or can,
+in mere frivolity, coquette, dally, play mud-pies, with a passion the
+sacredest in subjection, the shamefulest in mutiny, and the deepest and
+most perilous to tamper with, in our nature. As hotly alive in the
+nethermost cavern of his heart as in that of the vilest rogue there is a
+kennel of hounds to which one word of sophistry is as the call to the
+chase, and such a word I believed my companion had knowingly spoken. I
+was gone as wanton-tipsy as any low-flung fool, and actually fancied
+myself invited to be valiant by this transparent embodiment of passion
+whose outburst of amorous rebellion had been uttered not because I was
+there, but only in pure recklessness of my presence. Of course I ought
+to have seen that this was a soul only over-rich in woman's love;
+mettlesome, aspiring, but untrained to renunciation; consciously
+superior in mind and soul to the throng about her, and caught in some
+hideous gin of iron-bound--convention-bound--or even law-bound--foul
+play. But I was so besotted as to suggest a base analogy between us and
+those two sinking stars.
+
+Unluckily she retorted with some playful parry that just lacked the
+saving quality of true resentment. How I rejoined would be small profit
+to tell. I had a fearful sense of falling; first like a wounded
+squirrel, dropping in fierce amazement, catching, holding on for a
+panting moment, then dropping, catching and dropping again, down from
+the top of the great tree where I had so lately sat scolding all the
+forest; and then, later, with an appalling passivity. And at every fresh
+exchange of words, while she laughed and fended, and fended and laughed,
+along with this passivity came a yet more appalling perversity; a
+passivity and perversity as of delirium, and as horrid to her as to me,
+though I little thought so then.
+
+We came where a line of dense woods on our left marked the bottom-lands
+of Morgan's Creek. With her two earlier companions my fellow-traveller
+had crossed a ford here shortly after sunset, seeing no one; but a guard
+might easily have been put here since, by the Federals in Fayette.
+Pretty soon the road, bending toward it, led us down between two fenced
+fields and we stealthily walked our horses. Close to a way-side tree I
+murmured that if she would keep my horse I would steal nearer on foot
+and reconnoitre, and I had partly risen from the saddle, when I was
+thrilled by the pressure of her hand upon mine on the saddle-bow. "Don't
+commit the soldier's deadliest sin, my dear Mr. Smith," she said under
+her breath, and smiled at my agitation; "I mean, don't lose time."
+
+I was about to put a false meaning even on that, when she added "We
+don't need the ford this time of year; let us ride back as if we gave up
+the trip--for there may be a vidette looking at us now in the edge of
+those bushes--and as soon as we get where we can't be seen let us take a
+circuit. We can cross the creek somewhere above and strike the Wiggins
+road up in the woods. You can find your way by the blessed stars, can't
+you--being the angel you are?"
+
+My whole nature was upheaved. You may smile, but my plight was awful. In
+the sultry night I grew cold. My bridle-hand, still lying under her
+palm, turned and folded its big stupid fingers over hers. Then our hands
+slid apart and we rode back. "I wish I were good enough to know the
+stars," she said, gazing up. "Tell me some of them."
+
+I told them. Two or three times my voice stuck in my throat, I found the
+sky so filled, so possessed, by constellations of evil name. At our back
+the Dragon writhed between the two Bears; over us hung the Eagle, and in
+the south were the Wolf, the Crow, the Hydra, the Serpent--"Oh, don't
+tell any more," she exclaimed. "Or rather--what are those three bright
+stars yonder? Why do you skip them?"
+
+"Those? That one is the Virgin's sheaf; and those two are the Balances."
+
+I failed to catch her reply. She spoke in a tone of pain and sunk her
+face in her hand. "Head ache?" I asked. "No." She straightened, and
+from under her coquettish hat bent upon me such a look as I had never
+seen. In her eyes, in her tightened lips, and in the lift of her head,
+was a whole history of hope, pride, pain, resolve, strife, bafflement
+and defiance. She could not have chosen to betray so much; she must have
+counted too fully on the shade of her hat-brim. The beautiful frown
+relaxed into a smile. "No," she repeated, "only an aching conscience.
+Ever have one?"
+
+I averted my face and answered with a nod.
+
+"I don't believe you! I don't believe you ever had cause for one!" She
+laid a hand again upon mine.
+
+I covered it fiercely and sunk my brow upon it. And thereupon the wave
+of folly drew back, and on the bared sands of recollection I saw, like
+drowned things, my mother's face, and Gholson's and the General's, and
+Major Harper's, and Ned Ferry's, and Camille's. Each in turn brought its
+separate and peculiar pang; and among those that came a second time and
+with a crueler pang than before was Camille's.
+
+"You're tired!" murmured the voice beside me, and the wave rolled in
+again. I lifted my brow and moved one hand from hers to make room on it
+for my lips, but her fingers slipped away and alighted compassionately
+on my neck. "You must be one ache from head to foot!" she whispered.
+
+I turned upon her choking with anger, but her melting beauty rendered me
+helpless. Black woods were on our left. "Shall we turn in here?"
+I asked.
+
+"Yes." She stooped low under the interlacing boughs and plunged with me
+into the double darkness.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+TWO UNDER ONE HAT-BRIM
+
+"Is this the conservatory?" playfully whispered Miss Rothvelt; and if a
+hot, damp air, motionless, and heavy with the sleeping breath of
+countless growths could make it so, a conservatory it was. Every
+slightest turn had to be alertly chosen, and the tangle of branches and
+vines made going by the stars nearly impossible. The undergrowth crowded
+us into single file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses
+came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were
+much the same until near the end of our détour, when my horse swerved
+abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake sounded almost under foot. The
+mare swerved, too, and hurried forward to my horse's side.
+
+"That was almost an adventure, itself," laughingly murmured my
+companion, as if adventures were what we were in search of. While she
+spoke we came out into a slender road and turned due north. "Did you,"
+she went on, childishly, "ever take a snake up by the tail, in your
+thumb and finger, and watch him try to double on himself and bite you? I
+have, it's great fun; makes you feel so creepy, and yet you know
+you're safe!"
+
+She laughed under her breath as if at hide-and-seek. Then we galloped,
+then trotted again, galloped, walked and trotted again. Two miles,
+three, four, we reckoned off, and slowed to a walk to come out
+cautiously upon the Union Church and Fayette road. A sound brought us
+to a halt. From the right, out on the main road, it came; it was made by
+the wheels of a loaded wagon. I leaned sidewise until her hat-brim was
+over me and whispered "Yankee foragers;" but as I drew my revolver we
+heard voices, I breathed a sigh of relief, and with her locks touching
+mine we chuckled to each other in the dark. The passers were slaves
+escaping to the Federal camp.
+
+Now they came into view, on the broader road, two whole ragged families
+with a four-mule team. They passed on. And then all at once the whole
+situation was too much for me. In the joy of release I groped out
+caressingly and touched my companion's cheek. Whereat she took my
+fingers and drew them to her lips--twice. The next moment I found--we
+found--my lifted wrists in the slender grasp of her two hands and she
+was murmuring incoherent protests. Suddenly she grew eloquent. "Oh,
+think what you are and have always been! Do you think I don't know? Do
+you suppose I would have put myself into this situation, or taken the
+liberties I have taken with you, if I had not known you, and known you
+well, before ever I saw you? Ah! I have heard such good things of you!
+and the moment I saw you I saw they were true!--Yes,--yes, I tell you
+they were, they are! And I'm not going to take my trust away from you
+now! You shall keep my trust as you have kept all others. You shall be
+as miserly of it as of your general's. You will keep it!" Her whispers
+grew more and more gentle. "My dear friend, my dear friend! what is this
+trust compared to the trust I wish I might lay on you?" What did she
+mean by that! Had she some schemer's use for me? I could not ask, for
+her little hands had gradually slipped from my wrists to my fingers and
+were softly, torturingly fondling them. Suddenly she laughed and threw
+her hands behind her back. "I'm blundering! Oh, Richard Smith, be kind
+to a woman's poor wits, and let me say to-morrow that I know one man who
+can be trusted--who I know can be trusted--to make a woman's folly her
+protection. Do you know, dear, that any woman who can say that, is
+richer than any who cannot? And I am but a woman, sometimes a bit silly.
+Trouble is I'm a live one and a whole one!--or else I'm a live one and
+not quite a whole one--I wonder which it is!"
+
+I mumbled something about never wishing to tempt any one.
+
+"Oh, you haven't tempted me," she replied, with kind amusement. "You
+couldn't if you should try. You're a true soldier, with a true soldier's
+ideals; and I'm pledged to help you keep them."
+
+"What do you mean?" I demanded. "To whom are you pledged for any such--"
+
+"Oh!--don't you wish you knew! Why, to myself, for instance. Come! duty
+calls."
+
+"Come!" I echoed. We swung into the broader road and followed the
+contrabands.
+
+We came as close to them as was wise, and had to walk our horses. I
+could discern Miss Rothvelt's features once more, and felt a truer
+deference than I had yet given her. Near the blacksmith's shop, in the
+dusk of some shade-trees, she once more touched my shoulder. I turned
+resentfully to bid her not do it, but her shadowy gaze stopped me.
+
+"Don't be moody," she said; "the whole mistake is four-fifths mine. And
+anyhow, repining is only a counterfeit repentance, you know. Come, I
+don't want to tease you. It's only myself I love to torment. I'm the
+snake I like to hold up by the tail. Did you never have some dull,
+incessant ache that seemed to pain less when you pressed hard on it?"
+She laughed, left me and rode into the cottage gate.
+
+What do you say?--Yes, she might have spoken more wisely. Yet always
+there vibrated in her voice a wealth of thought, now bitter, now sweet,
+and often both at once, and a splendor of emotions, beyond the scope of
+all ordinary natures. How far beyond my own scope they were, even with
+my passions at flood-tide and turbid as a back-street overflow, I
+failed to ponder while I passed around the paling fence alone.
+
+In the edge of the woods at the rear of this enclosure I found the road
+that led into Cole's Creek bottom, and there turned and waited. A corner
+of the cottage was still in view among its cedars and china-trees. In an
+intervening melon-patch blinked the yellow lamps of countless fireflies.
+And now there came the ghost of a sound from beyond the patch, then a
+glimpse of drapery, and I beheld again the subject of my thoughts. Such
+thoughts! Ah! why had I neither modesty, wit nor charity enough to see
+that yonder came a woman whose heart beat only more strongly than the
+hearts of all the common run of us, with impulses both kind and high,
+although society, by the pure defects of its awkward machinery, had
+incurably mutilated her fate; a woman wrestling with a deep-founded love
+that, held by her at arm's length, yielded only humiliations and by its
+torments kept her half ripe for any sudden treason even against that
+love itself.
+
+She came without her horse, pointing eagerly at the brightness of the
+sky above the unrisen moon. "Diana!" she whispered, and tossed a kiss
+toward it. "You saw me put the mare into the stable and go into the
+house by the back door?"
+
+"Yes," I said, and handed her, as I dismounted, the General's gift, the
+pass.
+
+She snatched it gaily, loosed a fastening at her throat and dropped the
+missive into her bosom. Then with passionate gravity she asked, "Now,
+are you going straight on to Clifton to-night--without stopping?"
+
+"I haven't been ordered to tell any one where I'm going."
+
+"Neither was Lieutenant Ferry," she dryly responded, "yet I have it from
+him."
+
+"He told you?--Ah! you're only guessing," I said, and saw that I was
+helping her to guess more correctly.
+
+"Pooh!" she replied, ever so prettily, "do you suppose I don't know?
+Ferry's scouts are at Clifton, and you've got a despatch for
+Lieutenant--eh,--Durand--hem!" She posed playfully. "Now, tell me;
+you're not to report to him till daylight, are you? Then why need you
+hurry on now? This house where I am is the only safe place for you to
+sleep in between here and Clifton. I'll wake you, myself, in good time."
+My heart pounded and rose in my throat, yet I managed to say, "My
+orders are plain." I flinched visibly, for again I had told too much. I
+pretended to listen toward the depths of the wood.
+
+She struck a mock-sentimental attitude and murmured musically--
+
+  "'The beating of our own hearts
+  Was all the sound we heard.'
+
+"Yes,"--she put away gaiety--"your orders are plain; and they're as
+cruel as they are plain!"
+
+"Cruel to you?" I took her hand from my arm and held it.
+
+"Oh! cruel to you, Richard, dear; to you! And--yes!--yes!--I'll
+confess. I'll confess--if only you'll do as I beg! Yes, ah yes, cruel to
+me! But don't ask how, and we'll see if you are man enough to keep a
+real woman's real secret! And first, promise me not to put up at that
+house which the General and Lieutenant Ferry--"
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry is not sending me to any house."
+
+"Pardon me, I know better. This is his scheme." She laid her free hand
+on our two. "Tell me you will not go to that house!"
+
+I attempted an evasion. "Oh--a blanket on the ground--face covered up in
+it from the mosquitos--is really--"
+
+"Right!" She laughed. "I wish a woman could choose that way. Oh! if
+you'll do that I'll go with you and stand guard over you!"
+
+Dolt that I was, I would have drawn her close, but she put me off with
+an outstretched arm and forbidden smile. "No!--No! this is a matter of
+life and death."
+
+I stepped back, heaving. "Who and what are you? Who and what are you?"
+
+"Why, who and what should I be?"
+
+"Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+"Hmm; Charlotte Oliver. Are you sure you have the name just right?"
+
+"Why haven't I got it right?"
+
+"Oh, I don't doubt you have; though I didn't know but it might be
+Charlie Toliver or something."
+
+I dilated. "Who told--did Ned Ferry tell you that story?"
+
+"He did. Or, to be accurate, Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. My dear Richard,
+we cannot be witty and remain un-talked-about."
+
+"I--I believe it yet! You are Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+She became frigid. "Do you know who and what Charlotte Oliver is?--No?
+Well, to begin with, she's a married woman--but pshaw! you believe
+nothing till it's proved. If I tell you who and what I am will you do
+what I've asked you; will you promise not to stop at Lucius Oliver's
+house?" She softly reached for my hand and pressed and stroked it.
+"Don't stop there, dear. Oh, say you will not!"
+
+"Is it so dangerous?"
+
+"General Austin believes it is. You're being used to bait a trap,
+Richard."
+
+I laughed a gay disdain. "Who is Lucius; is he Charlotte's husband?"
+
+The reply came slowly. "No; her husband is quite another man; this
+man's wife has been dead for years. No, Charlotte Oliver lives
+in--hark!"
+
+The sound we had heard was only some stir of nature in her sleep. "I
+must go," I said.
+
+"Oh, no, no! I cannot let you!" She clutched the hand she had been
+stroking.
+
+"Coralie! Coralie Rothvelt!"--my cry was an honest one--"you tempt me
+beyond human endurance."
+
+She threw my hand from her. "I know I do! I'm so unworthy to do it that
+I wouldn't have believed I could. You thought I was Charlotte
+Oliver--Heavens! boy, if you should breathe the atmosphere Charlotte
+Oliver has to live in! But understand again, for your soul's comfort,
+you haven't tempted me. Go, if you must; go, take your chances; and if
+you're spared ever to see your dear, dear little mother--"
+
+"My mother! Do you know my mother?"
+
+"Tell her I tried to keep my promise to her."
+
+"You promised her--what did you promise her?"
+
+"Only to take care of you whenever I had the chance. Go, now, you must!"
+
+"And was care for me your only motive in--"
+
+"No; no, Richard, I wanted, and I still want, you to take care of me!
+But go, now, go! at once or not at all! Good-bye!" She laughed and
+fluttered away. I sprang upon my horse and sped into the forest.
+
+Another mile, another half; then my horror and dismay broke into gesture
+and speech, and over and over I reviled myself as a fool, a traitorous
+fool, to be fooled into confession of my errand! I moaned with physical
+pain; every fatigue of the long day now levied payment, and my back,
+knees, shoulders, ached cruelly. But my heart ached most, and I bowed in
+the saddle and cried--
+
+"What have I done, oh, what have I done? My secret! my general's, my
+country's secret! That woman has got it--bought it with flatteries and
+lies! She has drawn it from my befouled soul like a charge from a gun!"
+
+For a moment I quite forgot how evident it was that she had gathered
+earlier inklings of it from some one else. Suddenly my thought was of
+something far more startling. It stopped my breath; I halted; I held my
+temples; I stared. What would she do with a secret she had taken such
+hazards to extort? Ah! she'd carry it straight to market--why not? She
+would give it to the enemy! Before my closed eyes came a vision of the
+issue--disaster to our arms; bleeding, maiming, death, and widows' and
+orphans' tears.
+
+"My God! she shall not!" I cried, and whirled about and galloped back.
+
+At the edge of the wood, where we had parted, I tied my horse, and crept
+along the moonlight shadows of the melon-patch to the stable. The door
+was ajar. In the interior gloom I passed my hands over the necks and
+heads of what I recognized to be the pair of small mules I had seen at
+Gallatin. Near a third stall were pegs for saddle and bridle, but they
+were empty. So was the stall; the mare was gone.
+
+"Gone to the Yankees at Fayette!" I moaned, and hurried back to my
+horse. To attempt to overtake one within those few miles would only make
+failure complete, and I scurried once more into the north with such a
+burden of alarm and anguish as I had never before known.
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+THE JAYHAWKERS
+
+IT was well that I was on the Federal captain's horse. He knew this sort
+of work and could do it quicker and more quietly than mine. Mine would
+have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it. Another
+advantage was the moon, and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I
+saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge
+of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins.
+Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young
+white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to
+startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the
+rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay
+ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw--for
+the excited dogs had pushed the door open--that two of the men were
+white, though but one wore shoes. On him the light fell revealingly as
+he and the yellow girl before him passed each other in the dance and
+faced again. He was decidedly blond. The other man, though silhouetted
+against the glare of burning pine-knots, I knew to be white by the
+flapping of his lank locks about his cheeks as he lent his eyes to the
+improvisation of his steps. His partner was a young black girl. I
+burned with scorn, and doubtless showed it, although I only asked whose
+plantation this was.
+
+"This-yeh pla-ace?" The rustic dragged his words lazily, chewed tobacco
+with his whole face, and looked my uniform over from cap to spur. "They
+say this-yeh place belong to a man which his name Lu-ucius Ol-i-veh."
+
+So! I honestly wished myself back in my old rags, until I reflected that
+my handsome mount was enough to get me all the damage these wretches
+could offer. Still I thought it safest to show an overbearing frown.
+
+"To what command do you fellows belong?"
+
+He spurted a pint to reply, "Fishe's batt'ry."
+
+"Oh! And where is the battery?"
+
+"You sa-ay 'Whah is it?'--ow batt'ry"--he champed noisily--"I dunno.
+Does you? Whah is it?"
+
+"It's twenty miles off; why are you not with it? What are you doing
+here?"
+
+"You sa-ay 'What we a-doin' hyuh?' Well, suh, I mought sa-ay we ain't
+a-doin' nuth'n'; but I"--he squirted again--"_will_ sa-ay that so fah as
+you _see_ what we a-doin', you _kin_ see, an' welcome; an' so fah as you
+don't see, it ain't none o' yo' damn' busi-ness."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, I was only asking a friendly question."
+
+"Yaas; well, that's all right, too, suh; I uz on'y a-givin' you a
+frien'ly aynsweh. I hope you like it."
+
+Our intercourse became more amiable and the fellow dragged in his advice
+that I spend the rest of the night at the house of Mr. Oliver. His
+acquaintance with that gentleman seemed to grow while we talked, and
+broke into bloom like a magician's rosebush. He described him as a kind
+old bird who made hospitality to strangers his meat and drink. A
+conjecture darted into my mind. "Why, yes! that is his married son, is
+he not, yonder in the cabin; the one with the fair hair?"
+
+"Who?--eh,--ole man Ol-i-veh? You sa--ay 'Is that his ma'-ied son, in
+yondeh; the one 'ith the fah hah? '--Eh,--no--o, suh,--eh,--yass,
+suh,--yass! Oh, yass, suh, thass his--tha'--thass his ma'ied son, in
+thah; yass, suh, the one 'ith the fah hah; yass, suh. I thought you
+meant the yetheh one."
+
+"I don't believe," said I, "I'd better put myself on the old gentleman
+when the mistress of the house is away."
+
+"_She_ ain't awa-ay."
+
+"Is she not! Isn't she the Mrs. Oliver--Charlotte Oliver--who is such
+friends--she and her husband, I mean, of course,--"
+
+"_Uv_ co'se!" The reptile giggled, squirted and nodded.
+
+"--With General Austin," I continued, "--and with Lieutenant Ferry?"
+
+"She air!" He was pleased. "Yass, we all good frien's togetheh."
+
+"But if she--oh, yes!--Yes, to be sure; she could easily have got here
+yesterday afternoon."
+
+"Thass thess when she arrove!" It was fascinating to watch the animal's
+cunning play across his face. The fiddle's tune changed and the dance
+quickened.
+
+"I naturally thought," resumed I, with a smile meant to refer to the
+blond dancer, "that the madam _must_ be away somewhere."
+
+My hearer grinned. "Oh, that ain't no sign. Boys will be boys. You know
+that, yo'se'f. An' o' co'se she know it. Oh, yass, she at home."
+
+"Well, I reckon I'll stop all night." I began to move on. His eyes
+followed greedily.
+
+"Sa-ay! I'll wrastle you fo' them-ah clo'es."
+
+I waved a pleasant refusal and rode toward the house.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+ASLEEP IN THE DEATH-TRAP
+
+The dwelling was entirely dark. I came close in the bright moonlight and
+hallooed. At my second hail the door came a small way open, and after a
+brief parley a man's voice bade me put up my horse and come in. The
+stable was a few steps to the right and rear. Returning, I took care to
+notice the form of the house: a hall from front to rear; one front and
+one rear room on each side of it; above the whole a low attic, probably
+occupied by the slave housemaids.
+
+I was met in the bare unpainted hall by a dropsical man of nearly sixty,
+holding a dim candle, a wax-myrtle dip wrapped on a corncob. He had a
+retreating chin, a throat-latch beard and a roving eye; stepped with one
+foot and slid with the other, spoke in a dejected voice, and had very
+poor use of his right hand. I followed him to the rear corner chamber,
+the one nearest the stable, feeling that, poor as the choice was, I
+should rather have him for my robber and murderer than those villains
+down at the quarters. I detained him in conversation while I drew off my
+boots and threw my jacket upon the back of a chair in such a way as to
+let my despatch be seen. The toss was a lucky one; the document, sealed
+with red wax, stuck out arrogantly from an inside pocket. Then, asking
+lively questions the while as if to conceal a blunder and its
+correction, I moved quickly between him and it and slipped the missive
+under a pillow of the fourpost bedstead.
+
+He was not wordy, and he tarried but a moment, yet he explained his
+paralysis. In the dreary monotone of a chronic sour temper he related
+that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing
+horses, and their officer, on being called by him "no gentleman," had
+struck him behind the ear with the butt of a carbine. I asked what
+punishment the officer received, and I noticed the plural pronoun as he
+icily replied, "We didn't enter any complaint."
+
+I said with genuine warmth that if he would give me that man's
+name--etc.
+
+He waited on the threshold with his dropsical back to me for my last
+word, and then, still in the same attitude, droned, "O-oh, he's dead.
+And anyhow," he finished out of sight in the hall, "that's not our way."
+
+I sat on the edge of the bed, in the moonlight, wishing I knew what
+their way was. I considered my small stock of facts. The one that
+appalled me most was the inward guilt which I brought with me to this
+ordeal. I wanted to say my childhood prayers and I could not. For I
+could not repent; at least the _emotion_ of repentance would not come.
+Moreover, every now and then there leapt across this blackness of guilt
+a forked lightning of fright, as I realized that I could no more plan
+than I could pray. No doubt Coralie Rothvelt, by this time in Fayette,
+was telling some Federal commander that a certain Confederate courier,
+now asleep at the house of Lucius Oliver, had let slip to her the fact
+that his despatches were written to be captured, and that, read with
+that knowledge, they would be of guiding value. What mine host himself
+might have in view for me I could not guess, but most likely those three
+rapscallions down at the quarters were already plotting my murder. So
+now for a counterplot--alas! the counterplot would not unfold for me!
+
+I rallied all my wits. Here was an open window. Through it the moonlight
+poured in upon the lower half of the bed. If I should lie with my eyes
+in the shadow of the headboard no one entering by the door opposite
+could see that I was looking. Good! but what to do when the time should
+come--ah me!--and "Oh, God!" and "Oh, God!" again. Ought I, now, to let
+the enemy get the despatch, or must I not rather keep it from him at
+whatever risk of death or disgrace? Ah! if I might only fight, and let
+the outcome decide for me! And why not? Yes, I would fight! And oh! how
+I would fight! If by fighting too well I should keep the despatch, why,
+that, as matters now stood, was likely to be the very best for my
+country's cause. On the other hand, should I fight till I fell dead or
+senseless and only then lose it, surely then it would be counted genuine
+and retain all its value to mislead. Oh, yes,--I could contrive nothing
+better--I would fight!
+
+I drew the counterpane aside, lay down under it revolver in hand, and
+then, for the first time since I had put on the glorious gray, found I
+could not face the thought of death. I grew steadily, penetratingly,
+excruciatingly cold, and presently--to the singular satisfaction of my
+conscience--began to shake from head to foot with a nervous chill. It
+was agonizing, but it was so much better than the spiritual chill of
+which it took the place! I felt as though I should never be warm again.
+Yet the attack slowly passed away, and with my finger once more close to
+the trigger, I lay trying to use my brain, when, without prayer or plan,
+I solved the riddle, what I should do, by doing the only thing I knew I
+ought not to do. I slept.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+CHARLOTTE OLIVER
+
+An envelope sealed with sealing-wax, unless it has also a wrapping of
+twine or tape whose only knot is under the seal, can be opened without
+breaking the seal. Gholson had once told me this. Hold a thin, sharp
+knife-blade to the spout of a boiling tea-kettle; then press the
+blade's edge under the edge of the seal. Repeat this operation many
+times. The wax will yield but a hair's-breadth each time, but a
+hair's-breadth counts, and in a few minutes the seal will be lifted
+entire. A touch of glue or paste will fasten it down again, and a seal
+so tampered with need betray the fact only to an eye already suspicious.
+
+As I say, I slept. The door between me and the hall had a lock, but no
+key; another door, letting from my room to the room in front of it, had
+no lock, but was bolted. I slept heavily and for an hour or more. Then I
+was aware of something being moved--slowly--slyly--by littles--under my
+pillow. The pillow was in a case of new unbleached cotton. When I first
+lay down, the cotton had so smelt of its newness that I thought it was
+enough, of itself, to keep me awake. Now this odor was veiled by
+another; a delicate perfume; a perfume I knew, and which brought again
+to me all the incidents of the night, and all their woe. I looked, and
+there, so close to the bedside that she could see my eyes as plainly as
+I saw hers, stood Coralie Rothvelt. In the door that opened into the
+hall were two young officers, staff swells, in the handsomest Federal
+blue. The moonlight lay in a broad flood between them and me. It
+silvered Miss Rothvelt from the crown of her hat to the floor, and
+brightened the earnest animation of her lovely face as she daintily
+tiptoed backward with one hand delicately poised in the air behind her,
+and the other still in the last pose of withdrawing from under the
+pillow--empty!
+
+My problem was indeed simplified. The despatch had been stolen, opened,
+read, re-sealed and returned. All I now had to do was to lie here till
+daybreak and then get away if I could, deliver the despatch to Ned
+Ferry, and tell him--ah! what?--how much? Oh, my bemired soul, how much
+must I tell? My shame I might bear; I might wash it out in blood at the
+battle's front; but my perfidy! how much was it perfidy to withhold; how
+much was it perfidy to confess?
+
+The heaviness of my soul, by reacting upon my frame and counterfeiting
+sleep better than I could have done it in cold blood, saved me, I fancy,
+from death or a northern prison. When I guessed my three visitors were
+gone I stirred, as in slumber, a trifle nearer the window, and for some
+minutes lay with my face half buried in the pillow. So lying, there
+stole to my ear a footfall. My finger felt the trigger, my lids lifted
+alertly, and as alertly reclosed. Outside the window one of the
+officers, rising by some slender foothold, had been looking in upon me,
+and in sinking down again and turning away had snapped a twig. He
+glanced back just as I opened my eyes, but once more my head was in
+shadow and the moonlight between us. When I peeped again he was
+moving away.
+
+Five, ten, fifteen minutes dragged by. Counting them helped me to lie
+still. Then I caught another pregnant sound, a mumbling of male voices
+in the adjoining front room. I waited a bit, hearkening laboriously, and
+then ever so gradually I slid from the bed, put on everything except my
+boots, and moved by inches to the door between the two rooms. It was
+very thin; "a good sounding-board," thought I as I listened for life or
+death and hoped my ear was the only one against it.
+
+The discussion warmed and I began to catch words and meanings. Oftenest
+they were old Lucius Oliver's, whose bad temper made him incautious.
+While his son and the other two jayhawkers obstinately pressed their
+scheme he kept saying, sourly, "That's--not--our--wa-ay!"
+
+At length he lost all prudence. "Nn--o!--Nnno--o, sir! Not in this house
+you don't; and not on this place! Wait till he's off my land; I'm not
+goin' to have the infernal rebels a-turpentinin' my house and a-burnin'
+it over my head. What _air_ you three skunks in such a sweat to git
+found out for, like a pack o' daymn' fools! I've swone to heaven and
+hell to git even ef revenge can ever git me even, and this ain't the way
+to git even. It's not--our--wa-ay!"
+
+His son's attitude exasperated him. "_You_ know this ain't ever been our
+way; you'd say so, yourself, ef you wa'n't skin full o' china-ball
+whiskey! What in all hell is the reason we can't do him as we've always
+done the others?"
+
+"Oh, shut your dirty face!" replied the son, while one of his cronies
+warned both against being overheard. But when this one added something
+further the old man snarled:
+
+"What's that about the horse?--The horse might git away and be evidence
+ag'inst us?--What?--Oh, now give the true reason; you want the horse,
+that's all! You two lickskillets air in this thing pyo'ly for the
+stealin's. Me and my son ain't bushwhackers, we're gentlemen! At least
+I'm one. Our game's revenge!"
+
+Not because of this speech, but of a soft rubbing sound on the
+window-sill behind me, my heart turned cold. Yet there I saw a most
+welcome sight. Against the outer edge of the sill an unseen hand was
+moving a forked stick to and fro. The tip of one of its tines was slit,
+in the slit was a white paper, and in the fork hung the bridle of my
+horse. I glided to the window. But there bethinking me how many a man
+had put his head out at just such a place and never got it back, I made
+a long sidewise reach, secured the paper, and read it.
+
+It was the envelope which had contained Coralie Rothvelt's pass. Its
+four flaps were spread open, and on the inside was scrawled in a large
+black writing the following:
+
+_Yankees gone, completely fooled. Do not stir till day, then ride for
+your life. We're not thwarting Lieutenant Ferry's plan, we're only
+improving upon it. When you report to him don't let blame fall upon the
+father and son whose roof this night saves you from a bloody death. Do
+this for the sake of her who is risking her life to save yours. We serve
+one cause; be wary--be brave--be true_.
+
+I stood equally amazed and alert. The voices still growled in the next
+room, and my horse's bridle still hung before the window. I peered out;
+there stood the priceless beast. I came a sly step nearer, and lo! in
+his shadow, flattened against the house, face outward, was Coralie
+Rothvelt comically holding the forked stick at a present-arms.
+Throbbing with a grateful, craving allegiance, I seized the rein. Then I
+bent low out the window and with my free hand touched her face as it
+turned upward into a beam of moonlight. She pressed my fingers to her
+lips, and then let me draw her hand as far as it could come and cover it
+with kisses. Then she drew me down and whispered "You'll do what
+I've asked?"
+
+When I said I would try she looked distressfully unassured and I added
+"I'll do whatever risks no life but mine."
+
+Her face spoke passionate thanks. "That's all I can ask!" she said,
+whispered "When you go--_keep the plain road,"_--and vanished.
+
+I sat by the window, capped, booted, belted, my bridle in one hand,
+revolver in the other. In all the house, now, there was no sound, and
+without there was a stillness only more vast. I could not tell whether
+certain sensations in my ear were given by insects in the grass and
+trees or merely by my overwrought nerves and tired neck. The moon sailed
+high, the air was at last comfortably cool, my horse stood and slept. I
+thought it must be half-past two.
+
+"Now it must be three." Miss Rothvelt's writing lay in my bosom beside
+my despatch. At each half-hour I re-read it. At three-and-a-half I
+happened to glance at the original superscription. A thought flashed
+upon me. I stared at her name, and began to mark off its letters one by
+one and to arrange them in a new order. I took C from Coralie and h from
+Rothvelt; after them I wrote a from Coralie and r from Rothvelt, l and o
+from Coralie and two t's and an e from Rothvelt, and behold, Charlotte!
+while the remaining letters gave me Oliver.
+
+Ah! where had my wits been? Yet without a suspicion that she was
+Charlotte Oliver one might have let the anagram go unsuspected for a
+lifetime. Evidently it concealed nothing from General Austin or Ned
+Ferry; most likely it was only the name she used in passing through the
+lines. At any rate I was convinced she was a good Confederate, and my
+heart rose.
+
+But why, then, this ardent zeal to save the necks of the two traitors
+"whose roof this night--" etc.? Manifestly she was moved by passion, not
+duty; love drove her on; but surely not love for them. "No," I guessed
+in a reverent whisper, "but love for Ned Ferry." It must have been
+through grace of some of her nobility and his, caught in my heart even
+before I was quite sure of it in theirs, that I sat and framed the
+following theory: Ned Ferry, loving Charlotte Oliver, yet coerced by his
+sense of a soldier's duty, had put passion's dictates wholly aside and
+had set about to bring these murderers to justice; doing this though he
+knew that she could never with honor or happiness to either of them
+become the wife of a man who had made her a widow, while she, aware of
+his love, a love so true that he would not breathe it to her while this
+hideous marriage held her, had ridden perilously in the dead of night to
+circumvent his plans if, with honor to both of them, it could be done.
+
+The half-hour dragged round to four. My horse roused up but kept as
+quiet as a clever dog. I heard a light sound in the hall; first a step
+and then a slide, then a step again and then a slide; Lucius Oliver was
+coming toward my door. The cords gathered in my throat and my finger
+stole to the trigger; Heaven only knew what noiseless feet might be
+following behind that loathsome shuffle. It reached the door and was
+still. And now the door opened, softly, slowly, and the paralytic stood
+looking in. The moonlight had swung almost out of the room, but a band
+of it fell glittering upon the revolver lying in my lap with my fingers
+on it, each exactly in place. Also it lighted my other hand, on the
+window-sill, with the bridle in it. Old Lucius was alone. In the gloom I
+could not see his venom gathering, but I could almost smell it.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+THE FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE
+
+"Good-morning," I murmured.
+
+"Good-morning," he responded, tardily and grimly. "Well, you _air_ in a
+hurry."
+
+"Not at all, sir. I'm sorry to seem so; it's not the tip-top of
+courtesy,--"
+
+"No, it ain't too stinkin' polite."
+
+"True; but neither are the enemy, and they're early risers, you know."
+
+"Well, good Lord! don't hang back for my sake!"
+
+I put on an offended esteem. "My dear sir, you've no call to take
+offence at me. I'm waiting because my business is too--well, if I must
+explain, it's--it's too important to be risked except by good safe
+daylight; that's all."
+
+[Illustration: "Well, you _air_ in a hurry!"]
+
+Oh, he wasn't taking offence. His reptile temper crawled into hiding,
+and when I said day was breaking, he said he would show me my way.
+
+"Why, I keep the plain road, don't I?"
+
+No, he would not; only wagons went that way, to cross the creek by a
+small bridge. I could cut off nearly two miles by taking the bridle-path
+that turned sharply down into the thick woods of the creek-bottom about
+a quarter of a mile from the house and crossed the stream at a sandy
+ford. "Ride round," he said, "and I'll show you from the front of
+the house."
+
+Thence he pointed out a distant sycamore looming high against the soft
+dawn. There was the fence-corner at which the bridle-path left the road.
+He icily declined pay for my lodging. "We never charge a Confederate
+soldier for anything; that's not our way."
+
+Day came swiftly. By the time I could trot down to the sycamore it was
+perfectly light even in the shade of an old cotton-gin house close
+inside the corner of the small field around which I was to turn. The
+vast arms of its horse-power press, spreading rigidly downward, offered
+the only weird aspect that lingered in the lovely morning. I have a
+later and shuddering memory of it, but now the dewy air was full of
+sweet odors, the squirrel barked from the woods, the woodpecker tapped,
+and the lark, the cardinal and the mocking-bird were singing all around.
+The lint-box of the old cotton-press was covered with wet
+morning-glories. I took the bridle-path between the woods and the field
+and very soon was down in the dense forest beyond them. But the moment
+I was hid from house and clearing I turned my horse square to the left,
+stooped to his neck, and made straight through the pathless tangle.
+
+Silence was silver this time, speed was golden. But every step met its
+obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers,
+brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held
+dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath,
+footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait
+were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road by that way as
+soon as they found I was flanking them. And so I strove on at the best
+speed I could make, and burst into the road with a crackle and crash
+that might have been heard a hundred yards away. One glance up the
+embowered alley, one glance down it, and I whirled to the right, drove
+in the spur, and flew for the bridge. A wild minute so--a turn in the
+road--no one in sight! Two minutes--another turn--no one yet!
+Three--three--another turn--no one in front, no one behind--
+
+The thunder of our own hoofs
+  Was all the sound we heard.
+
+A fourth turn and no one yet! A fifth--more abrupt than the others--and
+there--here--yonder now behind--was the path I had feared, but no one
+was in it, and the next instant the bridge flashed into view. With a
+great clatter I burst upon it, reached the middle, glanced back, and
+dropped complacently into a trot. Tame ending if--but as I looked
+forward again, what did I see? A mounted man. At the other end of the
+bridge, in the shade of overhanging trees, he moved into view, and well
+I knew the neat fit of that butternut homespun. He flourished a revolver
+above his head and in a drunken voice bade me halt.
+
+I halted; not making a point of valor or discretion, but because he was
+Charlotte Oliver's husband. I read his purpose and listened behind me as
+we parleyed. "Don't halt me, sir, I'm a courier and in a hurry."
+
+He hiccoughed. "Let's--s'--see y' orders."
+
+I took my weapon into my bridle-hand by the barrel and began to draw
+from my bosom the empty envelope addressed Coralie Rothvelt. At the same
+time I let my horse move forward again, while I still listened backward
+with my brain as busy as a mill. Was there here no hidden succor? Was
+that no part of Ned Ferry's plan--if the plan was his? Were those
+villains waiting yet, up at the ford? I could hear nothing at my back
+but the singing of innumerable birds.
+
+"Halt!" the drunkard growled again, and again I halted, wearing a look
+of timid awe, but as full of guile as a weasel. I reined in abruptly so
+as to make the reach between us the fullest length of my outstretched
+arm with the paper in two fingers as I leaned over the saddle-bow. He
+bent and reached unsteadily, and took the envelope; but hardly could his
+eye light upon the superscription before it met the muzzle of my weapon.
+
+"Don't move." My tone was affectionate. "Don't holla, or I'll give you
+to the crows. Back. Back off this bridge--quick! or I'll--" I pushed
+the pistol nearer; the danger was no less to him because I was
+thoroughly frightened. He backed; but he glared a devilish elation, for
+behind me beat the hoofs of both his horsemen. I had to change
+my tactics.
+
+"Halt! Turn as I turn, and keep your eye on _this."_
+
+Glad was I then to be on a true cavalryman's horse that answered the
+closing of my left leg and moved steadily around till I could see down
+the bridge. Oliver, after a step or two, stopped. "Turn!" I yelled, and
+swelled. "One, two,--"
+
+He turned. There was not a second to spare. The two long-haired fellows
+came nip and tuck. I see yet their long deer-hunters' rifles. But I
+remembered my pledge to this man's wife, and proudly found I had the
+nerve to hold the trigger still unpressed when at the apron of the
+bridge the rascals caught their first full sight of us as we sat
+humpshouldered, eye to eye, like one gray tomcat and one yellow one.
+They dragged their horses back upon their haunches. One leaped to the
+ground, the other aimed from the saddle; but the first shot that woke
+the echoes was neither theirs nor mine, but Sergeant Jim Langley's,
+though that, of course, I did not know. It came from a tree on our side
+of the water, some forty yards downstream. The man in the saddle fired
+wild, and as his horse wheeled and ran, the rider slowly toppled over
+backward out of saddle and stirrups and went slamming to the ground.
+
+His companion had no time to fire. Instantly after these two shots came
+a third, and some willows upstream filled with its white smoke. The
+second long rifle fell upon the bridge and its owner sank to his knees
+heaving out long cries of agony that swelled in a tremor of echoes up
+and down the stream. Another voice, stalwart, elated, cut through it
+like a sword. "Don't shoot, Smith, we're coming; save that hound for
+the halter!"
+
+The groans of the wounded man closed in behind it, a flood of agony, and
+my own outcry increased the din as I called "Come quick, come quick! the
+wounded fellow's remounting!"
+
+The wretch had lifted himself to his feet by a stirrup. Then, giving
+out, he had sunk prone, and now, still torturing the air with his horrid
+cries, was crawling for his rifle. Oliver saw I had a new inspiration.
+All the drunkenness left his eyes and they became the eyes of a snake,
+but too quickly for him to guess my purpose I turned my weapon from his
+face and fired. His revolver flew from his bleeding hand, a stream of
+curses started from his lips, and as I thrust my pistol into his face
+again and snatched his bridle he screamed to the crawling woodman
+"Shoot! shoot! Kill one or the other of us! Oh! shoot! shoot!"
+
+The rifle cracked, but its ball sang over us; a shot answered it behind
+me; the howling man's voice died in a gurgle, and Sergeant Jim ran by
+me, leaped upon the horse that had stayed beside his fallen rider, and
+was off hot-footed after the other. "Turn your prisoner over to Kendall,
+Smith," he cried, "and put out like hell for Clifton!"
+
+I gave no assent, and I believe Oliver guessed my purpose to save him,
+though his eyes were as venomous as ever. I flirted the rein off his
+horse's neck and said, savagely "Come! quick! trot! gallop!" The
+sergeant's young companion of the morning before dashed out of the
+bushes on his horse with Jim's horse in lead. "I've got him safe,
+Kendall," I cried, and my captive and I sped by him at a gallop on our
+way to Ned Ferry's command.
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+WE SPEED A PARTING GUEST
+
+Rising to higher ground, we turned into the Natchez, and Port Gibson
+road where a farm-house and country "store" constituted Clifton. Still
+at a gallop we left these behind and entered a broad lane between fields
+of tasselling corn, where we saw a gallant sight. In the early sunlight
+and in the pink dust of their own feet, down the red clay road at an
+easy trot in column by fours, the blue-gray of their dress flashing with
+the glint of the carbines at their backs, came Ferry's scouts with Ned
+Ferry at their head. There was his beautiful brown horse under him, too.
+My captive and I dropped to a walk, the column did the same, and Ferry
+trotted forward, beckoning us to halt. His face showed triumph and
+commendation, but no joy. Oliver answered his scrutiny with a blaze
+of defiance.
+
+"Good-morning, Smith, who is your prisoner?"
+
+"His name is Oliver."
+
+Ferry looked behind to the halted column. "Lieutenant Quinn, send two
+men to guard this one. Smith, where's Sergeant Langley; where's Kendall?
+Kendall?"
+
+While I told of the scrimmage, the guard relieved me of Oliver, and as I
+finished, three men galloped up and reined in. "All right," said
+one, saluting.
+
+"South?" asked our leader.
+
+"Before day," replied the new-comer, glowing with elation, and I grasped
+the fact that the enemy had taken our bait and I had not betrayed my
+country. The three men went to the column, and Ferry, looking up from
+the despatch which I had delivered to him, said--
+
+"Of course no one has seen this despatch, eh?--Oh!"--a smile--"yes?
+who?"
+
+"Two Federal officers."
+
+"Two--what?" His smile broadened. "You _know_ that?"
+
+"I saw them, Lieutenant, looking in at the door to see the despatch put
+back under my pillow. Yes, sir, by the same hand that had shown it
+to them."
+
+"Whose hand was it; that fellow's, yonder?" Oliver was several paces
+away.
+
+"No, Lieutenant, I don't believe he had anything to do with it; and I've
+no absolute proof, either, that he was at the bridge to rob or kill me.
+I threatened his life first, sir. At any rate that hand under my pillow
+was neither his nor his father's."
+
+"But they were present, eh?"
+
+"They were neither of them present, Lieutenant; that hand was Miss
+Coralie Rothvelt's."
+
+"Oh, no!" he murmured, "that cannot be!" "I saw her face, Lieutenant,
+nearer to mine than yours is now. But she did it to help us--oh, but I
+know that, sir! She came under my window and told me she had done it!
+She told me to tell you she hadn't thwarted your plan, but only improved
+on it, and I believe--Lieutenant, if you will hear me patiently through
+a confession which--" I choked with emotion.
+
+He lighted up with happy relief. "No, you need not make it. And you need
+not turn so pale." Whereat I turned red. "She saw the despatch was a
+trap for the Yankees, and used it so, you think? Ah, yes, Smith, I see
+it all, now; she pumped you dry."
+
+I could not speak, I shook my head, and for evidence in rebuttal I
+showed in my eyes two fountains of standing tears.
+
+"How, then, did she know?"
+
+"Lieutenant, she guessed! She must have just put two and two together
+and guessed! Or else, Lieutenant,--"
+
+"She must have pumped others before she pumped you, eh?" There was
+confession in his good humor. "But tell me; did she not see also this
+other trap, for this man and his father, and try to save them out of
+it?--oh, if you don't want--never mind." He laid a leg over the front of
+his saddle and sat thinking. So I see him to-day: his chestnut locks,
+his goodly limbs and shoulders, the graceful boots, cut-away jacket,
+faded sash, straight sword, and that look of care on his features which
+intensified the charm of their spiritual cleanness; behind him his band
+of picked heroes, and for background the June sky. Whenever I smell
+dewy corn-fields smitten with the sun that picture comes back to me.
+
+"No," he said again, "you need not tell me." By a placid light in his
+face I saw he understood. He drew his watch, put it back, thought on,
+and smiled at my uniform. "It has not the blue of the others," he said,
+"but indeed they are not all alike, and it will match the most of
+them--after a rain or two--and some dust. You have been trading horses?"
+
+I explained. While doing so I saw one of the guard reaching the
+prisoner's bridle to the other. Hah! Oliver had slapped the bridle free.
+In went his spurs! By a great buffet on the horse's neck he wheeled him,
+and with the rein dangling under the bits went over the fence like a
+deer. "Bang! bang! bang!"
+
+It was idle; a magic seems to shield a captive's leap for life. Away
+across the corn he went to the edge of a tangled wood, over the fence
+there again, and into the brush. "Halt! bang!" and "Halt! bang!" it was,
+at every bound, but now the pursuers came back empty-handed, some
+contemptuously silent, some laughing. Ferry glanced again at the time,
+and I was having within me a quarrel with him for his indifference at
+the prisoner's escape, when with cold severity he asked--
+
+"Why did you not fire?"
+
+I flushed with indignation, and my eye retorted to his that I had only
+followed his example. His answer was a smile. "You, also, have been
+guessing, eh?" he said, and when I glowed with gratitude he added,
+
+"Never mind, we must have a long talk. At present there is a verbal
+message for me; what is it?"
+
+"Verbal message? No, Lieutenant, she didn't--oh!--from the General! Yes!
+the General says--'Rodney.'"
+
+He turned and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, "Left
+into line wheel--march!" chanted our second in command.
+"Backwards--march!" and then "Right dress!" and the line, that had been
+a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning
+sun in their faces. Then Ferry called "Fours from the right, to march to
+the left--march!" and he and Quinn passed up the middle of the road
+along the front of the line, with yours truly close at their heels,
+while behind us the command broke into column again by fours from the
+right and set the pink dust afloat as they followed back northward over
+their own tracks with Sergeant Jim beside the first four as squadron
+right guide. I had got where I was by some mistake which I did not know
+how to correct,--I was no drill-master's pride,--and there was much
+suppressed amusement at my expense along the front as we rode down it.
+At every few steps until the whole line was a column Ned Ferry dropped
+some word of cheer, and each time there would come back an equally quiet
+and hearty reply. Near the middle he said "Brisk work ahead of us
+to-day, boys," and I heard the reiteration of his words run among the
+ranks. I also heard one man bid another warm some milk for the baby.
+Trotting by a grove where the company had passed the night, we presently
+took the walk to break by twos, and as we resumed the trot and turned
+westward into a by-road, Lieutenant Quinn dropped back to the column and
+sent me forward to the side of Ned Ferry. I went with cold shivers.
+
+[Illustration: With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the
+fence like a deer.]
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+FERRY TALKS OF CHARLOTTE
+
+"You have no carbine," said my commander. "And you have but one
+revolver; here is another."
+
+I knew it at a glance. "It's Oliver's," I said.
+
+"We'll call it yours now," he replied. "Kendall picked it up, but he has
+no need of it."
+
+I remarked irrelevantly that I had not noticed when Sergeant Jim and
+Kendall rejoined us, but Ferry stuck to the subject of the captured
+weapon. "Take it," he insisted; "if you are not fully armed you will
+find yourself holding horses every time we dismount to fight. And now,
+Smith, I shall not report to the General this matter of the Olivers; you
+shall tell him the whole of it, yourself; you are my scout, but you are
+his courier."
+
+"Lieutenant, I--I wish I knew the whole of it."
+
+"Tell him all you know."
+
+"Even things _she_ doesn't want told?"
+
+"Ah!"--he gave a Creole shrug--"that you must decide, on the honor of a
+good soldier. She has taken you into her confidence?"
+
+"Only into her service," I said, but he raised his brows. "That is
+more; certainly you are honored. What is it you would rather not tell
+the General and yet you must; do I know that already?"
+
+"Yes, for one thing, I've got to tell him that old Lucius Oliver can't
+be hung too high or too soon. For months he has been--"
+
+Ferry showed pain. "I know; save that for the General. And what else?"
+
+"Why, the other one--the son. Lieutenant, is she that monster's wife?"
+
+Ferry stroked his horse's neck and said very softly, "She is his wife."
+I had to wait long for him to say more, but at length, with the same
+measured mildness, he spoke on. This amazing Charlotte, bereft of
+father, brother and mother, ward of a light-headed married sister, and
+in these distracted times lacking any friend with the courage, wisdom
+and kind activity to probe the pretensions of her suitor, had been
+literally snared into marriage by this human spider, this Oliver, a man
+of just the measure to simulate with cunning and patient labor the
+character, bearing and antecedents of a true and exceptional gentleman
+for the sake of devouring a glorious woman.
+
+"But, eh!" I exclaimed, "how could ever such as she mistake him for--"
+
+"Ah, he is, I doubt not, but the burnt-out ruin of what he was half a
+year ago. You perceive, he has not succeeded; he has not devoured her;
+actually she has turned his fangs upon himself and has defeated his
+designs toward her as if by magic. And yet the only magic has been her
+vigilance, her courage, her sagacity. Smith,"--again he stroked the
+mane of his charger--"if I tell you--"
+
+I gave him no pledge but a look.
+
+"Since the hour of her marriage she has never gone into her chamber
+without locking the door; she has never come out of it unarmed."
+
+I remarked that had I been in her place I should either have sunk into
+the mire, so to speak, or thrown myself, literally, into the river.
+
+"Yes," he responded, "but not she! Her life is still hers; she will
+neither give it away nor throw it away. She wants it, and she wants
+it whole."
+
+"Did she say that to you?"
+
+He looked at me in wide surprise. "Ah! could you think she would speak
+with me on that subject? No, I have learned what I know from a man we
+shall meet to-day; the brother of Major Harper; and he, he has it
+from--" my companion smiled--"somebody you have known a pretty long
+time, I think, eh?"
+
+"I see; I see; you mean my mother!"
+
+He let me ponder the fact a long time. "Lieutenant," I asked at length,
+"did you know your plot against the two Olivers would cross her wishes?"
+
+"Ah!" was his quick response, "it crossed mine, like-wise. But, you
+know, this life we have to live, it is never for two people only."
+
+"No," I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, "no two persons, and
+above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or
+even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third
+person,--"
+
+"Hoh!" interrupted Ferry, in the manner of one to whom the fact was
+somehow of the most immediate and lively practical interest, "and to
+consider a thousand is better." Then, after a pause, "Yes," he said, "I
+know she could not like that move, but you remember our talk of
+yesterday, where we first met?"
+
+Indeed I did. Between young men, to whom the principles of living were
+still unproved weapons, there was, to my taste, just one sort of talk
+better than table-talk, and that was saddle-talk; I remembered vividly.
+
+"You mean when we were saying that on whatever road a man's journey
+lies, if he will, first of all, stick to that road, and then every time
+it divides take the--I see! you came to where the road divided!"
+
+"Yes, and of course I had to take the upper fork. I am glad you said
+that yesterday morning; it came as sometimes the artillery, eh?--just at
+the right moment."
+
+"I didn't say it, Lieutenant; you said it."
+
+"No, I think you said it;--sounds like you."
+
+"It was you who said it! and anyhow, it was you who had the strength to
+do it!"
+
+He laughed. "Oh!--a little strength, a little
+vanity,--pride--self-love--we have to use them all--as a good politician
+uses men."
+
+I looked him squarely in the eyes and began to burn. At every new
+unfolding of his confidence I had let my own vanity, pride, self-love be
+more and more flattered, and here at length was getting ready to esteem
+him less for showing such lack of reserve as to use _me_ as an
+escape-valve for his pent-up thoughts, when all at once I fancied I saw
+what he was trying to do. I believed he had guessed my temptations of
+the night and was making use of himself to warn me how to fight them. "I
+understand," said I, humbly.
+
+But this only pleasantly mystified him. He glanced all over me with a
+playful eye and said, "You must have a carbine the first time our
+ordnance-wagon finds us. Drop back, now, into the ranks."
+
+I did so; but I felt sure I should ride beside him again as soon as he
+could make an opportunity; for it was plain that by a subtle unconfessed
+accord he and _she_ had chosen me to be a true friend between them.
+
+About noon, while taking a brief rest to give our horses a bite, we were
+joined by an ambulance carrying Major Harper's brother and some freight
+which certainly was not hospital stores. When we remounted, this vehicle
+moved on with us, in the middle of the column, and I was called to ride
+beside it and tell all about the arrival of Miss Harper and her nieces
+at Hazlehurst, and their journey from Brookhaven to camp. Ned Ferry rode
+on the side opposite me and I noticed that all the fellows nearest the
+ambulance were choice men; Sergeant Jim was not there, but Kendall was
+one, and a young chap on a large white-footed pacer was another. Having
+finished my task I had gathered my horse to fall back to my place at the
+rear, when my distinguished auditor said, "I'm acquainted with your
+mother, you know."
+
+He was not so handsome as his brother, though younger. His affability
+came by gleams. I asked how that good fortune had come to my mother, and
+he replied that there was hardly time now for another story; we might
+be interrupted--by the Yankees. "Ask the young lady you met yesterday
+evening," he added, with a knowing gleam, and smiled me away; and when
+by and by the enemy did interrupt, I had forgiven him. Whoever failed to
+answer my questions, in those days, incurred my forgiveness.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+A MILLION AND A HALF
+
+About mid-afternoon I awoke from deep sleep on a bed of sand in the
+roasting shade of a cottonwood jungle. A corporal was shaking me and
+whispering "Make no noise; mount and fall in."
+
+Round about in the stifling thicket a score of men were doing so.
+Lieutenant Quinn stood by, and at his side Sergeant Jim seemed to have
+just come among us. The place was pathless; only in two directions could
+one see farther than a few yards. Through one narrow opening came an
+intolerable glare of sunlight from a broad sheet of gliding water, while
+by another break in the motionless foliage could be seen in milder
+light, filling nearly the whole northern view, the tawny flood of the
+Mississippi. A stretch of the farther shore was open fields lying very
+low and hidden by a levee.
+
+As we noiselessly fell into line, counting off in a whisper and rubbing
+from ourselves and our tortured horses the flies we were forbidden to
+slap, I noticed rising from close under that farther levee and some two
+miles upstream, a small cloud of dust coming rapidly down the hidden
+levee road. It seemed to be raised entirely by one or two vehicles.
+Behind us our own main shore was wholly concealed by this mass of
+cottonwoods on the sands between it and the stream, on a spit of which
+we stood ambushed. On the water, a hundred and fifty yards or so from
+the jungle, pointed obliquely across the vast current, was a large skiff
+with six men in it. Four were rowing with all their power, a fifth sat
+in the bow and the other in the stern. Quinn, in the saddle, watched
+through his glass the cottonwoods from which the skiff had emerged at
+the bottom of a sheltered bay. Now he shifted his gaze to the little
+whirl of dust across the river, and now he turned to smile at Jim, but
+his eye lighted on me instead. I risked a knowing look and motioned with
+my lips, "Just in time!"
+
+"No," he murmured, "they're late; we've been waiting for them."
+
+The sergeant's low order broke the platoon into column by file, Quinn
+rode toward its head with his blade drawn, and as he passed me he handed
+me his glass. "Here, you with no carbine, stay and watch that boat till
+I send for you. If there's firing, look sharp to see if any one there is
+hit, and who, and how hard. Watch the boat, nothing else."
+
+He moved straight landward through the cottonwoods, followed by the men
+in single file, but halted them while the rear was still discernible in
+the green tangle. Presently they unslung carbines, and I distinctly
+heard galloping. It was not far beyond the cottonwoods. The Yankees were
+after us. Suddenly it ceased. Over yonder, shoreward in the thicket,
+came a sharp command and then a second, and then, right on the front of
+the jungle, at the water's edge, the shots began to puff and crack, and
+the yellow river out here around the boat to spit!--spit!--in wicked
+white splashes. Every second their number grew. Behind me Quinn and his
+men stole away. But orders are orders and I had no choice but to watch
+the boat. The man in the stern had his back to me, and no face among the
+other five did I know. They were fast getting away, but the splashes
+came thick and close and presently one ball found its mark. The man at
+the stern hurriedly changed places with an oarsman; and as the relieved
+rower took his new seat he turned slowly upon his face as if in mortal
+pain, and I saw that the fresh hand at the oar was the brother of Major
+Harper. Just as I made the discovery "Boom!" said my small dust-cloud
+across the river, and "hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry--" like
+a train on a trestle-work--"boom!"--a shell left its gray track in the
+still air over the skiff and burst in the tops of the cottonwoods. The
+green thicket grew pale with the bomb's white smoke, yet "crack! crack!"
+and "spit! spit!" persisted the blue-coats' rifles. "Boom!" said again
+the field-piece on yonder side the water. Its shell came rattling
+through the air to burst on this side, out of the flashing and cracking
+of rifles and the sulphurous bomb smoke arose cries of men getting
+mangled, and I whimpered and gnawed my lips for joy, and I watched the
+boat, but no second shot came aboard, and--"Boom!--hurry-hurry-hurry-
+hurry"--ah! the frightful skill of it! A third shell tore the
+cottonwoods, its smoke slowly broadened out, a Federal bugle beyond
+the thicket sounded the Rally, and the cracking of carbines ceased.
+
+Now Major Harper's brother passes a word to the man at the boat's bow,
+whereupon this man springs up and a Confederate officer's braids flash
+on his sleeve as he waves to the western shore to cease firing. I still
+watch the boat, but I listen behind me. I hear voices of command, the
+Federal sergeants hurrying the troop out of the jungle and back to their
+horses. Then there comes a single voice, the commander's evidently; but
+before it can cease it is swallowed up in a low thunder of hoofs and
+then in a burst of cries and cheers which themselves the next moment are
+drowned in a rattle of carbine and pistol shots--Ferry is down on them
+out of hiding. Thick and silent above the din rises the dust of the
+turmoil, and out of all the hubbub under it I can single out the voice
+of the Federal captain yelling curses and orders at his panic-stricken
+men. And now the mêlée rolls southward, the crackle of shots grows less
+and then more again, and then all at once comes the crash of Quinn's
+platoon out of ambush, their cheer, their charge, the crackle of pistols
+again, and then another cheer and charge--what is that! Ferry re-formed
+and down on them afresh? No, it was the hard-used but gallant foe
+cutting their way out and getting off after all.
+
+The skiff was touching the farther shore and the three oarsmen lifting
+their stricken comrade out and bearing him to the top of the levee, when
+Kendall came to recall me. On our way back he told me of the fight,
+beginning with the results: none of our own men killed outright, but
+four badly wounded and already started eastward in the ambulance left us
+by the Major's brother; some others more slightly hurt. My questions
+were headlong and his answers quiet; he was a slow-spoken daredevil; I
+wish he came more than he does into this story.
+
+Not slow-spoken did we find the command when we reached the road where
+they were falling into line. After a brief but vain pursuit, here were
+almost the haste and tumult of the onset; the sweat of it still reeked
+on everyone; the ground was strewn with its wreckage and its brute and
+human dead, and the pools of their blood were still warm. Squarely
+across the middle of the road, begrimed with dust, and with a dead
+Federal under him and another on top, lay the big white-footed pacer. At
+one side the enemy's fallen wounded were being laid in the shade to be
+left behind. In our ranks, here was a man with an arm in a bloody
+handkerchief, there one with his head so bound, and yonder a young
+fellow jesting wildly while he let his garments be cut and a flesh-wound
+in his side be rudely stanched. Here there was laughter at one who had
+been saved by his belt-buckle, and here at one who had dropped like dead
+from his horse, but had caught another horse and charged on. But these
+details imply a delay where in fact there was none; the moment Ferry
+spied me he asked "Did he get across?" and while I answered he motioned
+me into the line. Then he changed it into a column, commanded silence,
+and led us across country eastward. For those few wounded who would not
+give up their places in the ranks it was a weary ten miles that brought
+us swiftly back to a point within five miles of that Clifton which we
+had left in the morning. And yet a lovely ten miles it was, withal. You
+would hardly have known this tousled crowd for the same dandy crew that
+had smiled so flippantly upon me at sunrise, though they smiled as
+flippantly now with faces powder-blackened, hair and eyelashes matted
+and gummed with sweat and dust, and shoulders and thighs caked with
+grime. Yet to Ned Ferry as well as to me--I saw it in his eye every time
+he looked at them--these grimy fellows did more to beautify those ten
+miles than did June woods beflowered and perfumed with magnolia, bay and
+muscadine, or than slant sunlight in glade or grove.
+
+In a stretch of timber where we broke ranks for a short rest, unbitting
+but not unsaddling, a lot of fellows pressed me to tell them about the
+boat on the river. "You heard what was in it, didn't you?" asked one
+nearly as young as I.
+
+"Besides the men? No. Same that was in the ambulance, I suppose; what
+was it?"
+
+"Don't you know? Oh, I remember, you were asleep when Quinn told us.
+Well, sir,"--he tried to speak calmly but he had to speak somehow or
+explode--"it was soldiers' pay--for Dick Taylor's army, over in the
+Trans-Mississippi; a million and a half dollars!" He was as proud to
+tell the news as he would have been to own the money.
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+A QUIET RIDE
+
+Where Ferry's scouts camped that night I do not know, for we had gone
+only two or three miles beyond our first momentary halting-place when
+their leader left them to Quinn and sprang away southward over fence,
+hedge, road, ditch--whatever lay across his bee-line, and by his order I
+followed at his heels.
+
+In a secluded north-and-south road he looked back and beckoned me to his
+side: "You saw Major Harper's brother land safe and sound, you say? He
+told you this morning he is acquainted with your mother, eh; but
+not how?"
+
+"No, except that it was through--"
+
+"Yes, I know. But you don't know even how your mother is acquainted with
+her."
+
+"No, though of course if she lived in the city, common sympathies might
+easily bring them together."
+
+"She did not live in the city; she lived across the river from the city.
+'Tis but a year ago her father died. He was an owner of steamboats. She
+made many river trips with him, and I suppose that explains how she
+knows the country about Baton Rouge, Natchez, Grand Gulf, Rodney, better
+than she knows the city. But the boats are gone now; some turned into
+gunboats, one burnt when the city fell, another confiscated. I think
+they didn't manage her bringing-up very well."
+
+"Maybe not," I replied, being nothing if not disputatious, "and she does
+strike me as one thrown upon her own intuitions for everything; but if
+she's the lady she is entirely by her own personal quality, Lieutenant,
+she's a wonder!"
+
+"Ah, but she is a wonder. In a state of society more finished--"
+
+"She would be incredible," I said for him, and he accepted the clause by
+a gesture, and after a meditative pause went on with her history. The
+subject of our conversation had first met Oliver, it seemed, when by
+reason of some daring performance in the military field--near Milliken's
+Bend, in the previous autumn--he was the hero of the moment. Even so it
+was strange enough that he should capture her; one would as soon look to
+see Vicksburg fall; but the world was upside down, everything was
+happening as if in a tornado, and he cast his net of lies; lies of his
+own, and lies of two or three match-making friends who chose to believe,
+at no cost to themselves, that war, with one puff of its breath, had
+cleansed him of his vices and that marriage would complete the happy
+change. This was in Natchez, Ferry went on to say. Most fortunately for
+the bride one of the bridegroom's wedding gifts was a certain young
+slave girl; before the wedding was an hour past--before the
+orange-blossoms were out of the bride's hair--this slave maid had told
+her what he was, "And you know what that is."
+
+We rode in silence while I tried to think what it must be to a woman of
+her warmth--of her impulsive energies--to be, week in, week out, month
+after month, besieged by that man's law-protected blandishments and
+stratagems. "I wish you would use me in her service every time there is
+a chance," I said.
+
+"The chances are few," he answered; "even to General Austin she laughs
+and says we must let the story work itself out; that she is the fool in
+it, but there is a chance for the fool to win if not too much burdened
+with help."
+
+"How did you make her acquaintance?" I ventured to ask.
+
+"You remember the last time the brigade was in this piece of country?"
+he rejoined.
+
+I did; it had been only some five weeks earlier; Grant had driven us
+through Port Gibson, General Bowen had retired across the north fork of
+Bayou Pierre, and we had been cut off and forced to come down here.
+
+"Yes; well, she came to us that night, round the enemy's right, with a
+letter from Major Harper's brother--he was then in New Orleans--and with
+information of her own that saved the brigade. I had just got my
+company. I took it off next morning on my first scout, whilst the
+brigade went to Raymond. She was my guide all that day; six times she
+was my guide before the end of May. Yet the most I have learned about
+her has come to me in the last few days."
+
+"She has a fearful game to play."
+
+"Oh!--yes, that is what she would call it; but me, I say--though not as
+Gholson would mean it, you know,--she has a soul to save. If it is a
+game, it is a very delicate one; let her play it as nearly alone as she
+can." "Yes," said I, "a man's hand in it would be only his foot in it;"
+and Ferry was pleased. He scanned me all over in the same bright way he
+had done it in the morning, and remarked "This time I see they have
+given you a carbine."
+
+We went down into some low lands, crossed a creek or two, and in one of
+them gave our horses and ourselves a good scrubbing. On a dim path in
+thick woods we paused at a worm fence lying squarely across our way. It
+was staked and ridered and its zig-zags were crowded with brambles and
+wild-plum. A hundred yards to our left, still overhung by the woods, it
+turned south. Beyond it in our front lay a series of open fields, in
+which, except this one just at hand, the crops were standing high. The
+nearer half of this one, a breadth of maybe a hundred yards, though
+planted in corn, was now given up to grass, and live-stock, getting into
+it at some unseen point, had eaten and trampled everywhere. The farther
+half was thinly covered with a poor stand of cotton, and between the
+corn and the cotton a small, trench-like watercourse crossed our line of
+view at right angles and vanished in the woods at the field's eastern
+edge. The farther border of this run was densely masked by a growth of
+brake-cane entirely lacking on the side next us. Between the cotton and
+the next field beyond, a double line of rail fence indicated the Fayette
+and Union Church road. Suddenly Ferry looked through his field-glasses,
+and my glance followed the direction in which they were pointed. Dust
+again; one can get tired of dust! Some two miles off, a little southward
+of the setting sun, a golden haze of it floated across a low
+background of trees.
+
+"'Tis the enemy, I think," he said, "but only scouts, I suppose."
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+A SALUTE ACROSS THE DEAD-LINE
+
+I was not seeking enemies just then and was not pleased. "Didn't the
+Yankees fall back this morning before day and move southward?" I asked.
+
+"For what would they do that?" inquired my leader, still using the
+glass, but before I could reply he gave a soft hiss, dropped the glass,
+and turned his unaided eye upon a point close beyond our field, in the
+road. Now again he lifted the glass, and I saw over there two small,
+black, moving objects. They passed behind some fence-row foliage,
+reappeared nearer, and suddenly bobbed smartly up to the roadside
+fence--the dusty hats of two Federal horsemen. The wearers sat looking
+over into the field between them and us. I asked Ferry if he wasn't
+afraid they would see us.
+
+"That is what we want," was his reply; "only, they must not know we want
+it. Keep very still; don't move." At that word they espied us and
+galloped back.
+
+We turned to our left and hurried along our own fence-line, first
+eastward, then south, and reined up behind some live brush at the edge
+of the public road. "Soon know how many they are, now," he said, smiling
+back at me.
+
+"Are you going to count them?" It seemed so much easier to let them
+count us.
+
+"Yes," he replied. "Wish we had our boys here," he added, and did not
+need to tell me how he would have posted them; the place was so
+favorable for an ambush that those Yankees had no doubt been looking for
+us before they saw us. Half of us would be in the locks of these
+highroad fences to lure them on, and half in the little gully masked
+with canes to take them in the flank. "We would count many times our own
+number before they should pass," he added.
+
+"Can't we make them think our men are here?" I suggested. "Couldn't I go
+back to where this fence crosses the gully and let them see me opening a
+gap in it?"
+
+He was amused. "Go if you want; but be quick; here they come already, a
+small bunch of them."
+
+By the time I reached the spot they were in plain view, six men and an
+officer. I leaped to the ground, tugged at a rail and threw one end off.
+I thought I had never handled rails so heavy and slippery in my life. As
+I got a second one down I looked across to the road. The officer was
+distributing his men. Barely a mile behind was the dust of their column.
+The third rail stuck and the sweat began to pour down into my eyes and
+collar. Two of the blue-coats easily let down a panel of fence on the
+far side of the road and pushed into the tall corn; three others came
+galloping across the thin cotton to reconnoitre the fringe of canes; the
+officer and the remaining man cantered on up the road toward the spot
+where I could see Ferry observing everything from the saddle behind his
+mask of leaves. Of a sudden the Federal commander descried me wildly at
+work. He paused and pointed me out to the man at his back, but had no
+glass and seemed puzzled. At his word the man pricked up to the fence
+to come over it, but his horse was of another mind, and the impatient
+officer, crowding him away, cleared the fence himself and came across
+the furrows at a nimble trot. Still I tussled with the rails, and grew
+peevish. The enemy was counted, closely enough! one troop. Their dust
+showed it, the small advance guard proved it.
+
+"Hello!" called the Federal officer, "who are you, over there?"
+
+He might have known by looking a trifle more narrowly; I saw plainly,
+thrillingly, who he was; but his attention was diverted by some signal
+from the men he had sent to the fringe of cane; they had found the
+tracks of horses leading through the canes into the corn. But now he
+hailed me again. "Here, you! what are you doing at that fence? Who
+are you?"
+
+He was within easy range and was still trotting nearer. I snatched up my
+carbine, aimed, and then recovered, looking sharply to my left as if
+restrained by the command of some one behind the canes. The Federal's
+cool daring filled me with admiration. Had the foes he was looking for
+been actually in hiding here they could have picked him out of his
+saddle like a bird off a bush. His only chance was that they would not
+let themselves be teased into firing prematurely on any one man or six.
+Ferry beckoned me. I mounted and trotted down the woods side of the
+fence, at the same time the Federal's six men approached from three
+directions, and down the road the main column entered upon the scene.
+
+The officer halted with revolver drawn and sent a man back with some
+order to the main body. And then Ferry's beautiful brown horse, as
+though of his own choice, reared straight up where he stood, dropped his
+forelegs upon his breast, rose, over the fence, master and all, as
+unlaboriously as a kite, trotted out from the brush and halted in the
+open field. His rider's outdrawn sword flashed to the setting sun. The
+Federal, pointing here and there was deploying his remaining five men
+toward the spot I had left, but glancing round and seeing Ferry he
+trotted toward him. Thereupon Ferry advanced at a walk, and I--for I had
+followed him--moved at the same gait a few paces behind. "Halt him,"
+said my leader.
+
+"Halt!" I yelled with carbine at a ready, and the Federal halted. In
+fact he had come to a small hollow full of bushes and grapevines and had
+no choice but to halt or go round it.
+
+"Don't swallow him," said Ferry, smilingly, "this isn't your private
+war."
+
+"He's on my private horse!" I retorted.
+
+"Well, you're on his," replied my commander. The giant before us,
+mounted on Cricket, was my prisoner of the previous day.
+
+"Who are you?" he was calling imperiously.
+
+"Captain Jewett ought to know," Ferry called back, and on that the
+questioner recognized us both. He became very stately. "Lieutenant
+Durand, I believe."
+
+"At times," said Lieutenant Durand.
+
+"And at other times--?"
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry--Ferry's scouts."
+
+The Federal expanded with surprise and then with austere pleasure. He
+glanced toward his five men galloping back to him having found no enemy,
+and then at his column, which had just halted. Frowning, he motioned the
+advance guard to the road again and once more hailed Ferry while he
+pointed at me. He straightened and swelled still more as he began his
+question, but as he finished it a smile went all over him. "Is that your
+entire present force?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Then what the devil do you want?" he thundered.
+
+"We have what we wanted," said Ferry, "only now we desire to cross the
+road."
+
+"You're not asking my permission?"
+
+"I am afraid not."
+
+"I admit you are quite able to cross without."
+
+"Thank you," said Ferry; "will you pardon me for passing in front of
+you?"
+
+The Federal's pistol slid into its holster and his sabre flashed out. He
+threw its curved point up in a splendid salute. Ferry saluted with his
+straight blade. Then both swords rang back into their scabbards, and
+Jewett whirled away toward his column. For a moment we lingered, then
+faced to the left, trotted, galloped. Over the fence and into the road
+went he--went I. Down it, as we crossed, the blue column was just moving
+again. Then the woods on the south swallowed us up.
+
+[Illustration: Ferry saluted with his straight blade.]
+
+"If Captain Jewett will only go on to Union Church," said Ferry, "Quinn
+will see that he never gets back."
+
+"But you think he will not go on?"
+
+"Ah, now he is discovered, surely not. I think he will turn back at
+Wiggins."
+
+"Why Wiggins? does he know Coralie Rothvelt?"
+
+"Yes, he does; and if since last night he has maybe found out she is
+Charlotte Oliver,--"
+
+"Oh! Lieutenant Ferry, oh! would such a man as that come hunting down a
+woman, with a troop of cavalry?"
+
+"He is not hunting her; yet, should he find her, I have the fear he
+would do his duty as a soldier, anyhow. No, he _was_ looking, I think,
+for Ferry's scouts."
+
+"But if she should be at Wiggins--"
+
+My leader smiled at my simplicity. "She is not at Wiggins."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+SOME FALL, SOME PLUNGE
+
+At a farm-house well hidden in the woods of a creek we got a brave
+supper for the asking and had our uniforms wonderfully cleaned and
+pressed, and at ten that evening we dismounted before the three brightly
+illumined tents of General Austin, Major Harper and that amiable cipher
+our Adjutant-general. On the front of the last the shadow of a deeply
+absorbed writer showed through the canvas, and Ferry murmured to me "The
+ever toiling." It was Scott Gholson. I had heard the same name for him
+the evening before, from her whose own lovely shadow fell so visibly and
+so often upon the bright curtain of Ned Ferry's thought.
+
+My leader went in while I held our horses. Then he and Gholson came out
+and entered the General's tent; from which Gholson soon emerged again
+and sent an orderly away into the gloom of the sleeping camp, and I
+heard a small body of men mount and set off northward. Presently Ferry
+came out and sent me in, and to my delight I found, on standing before
+the General, that I did not need to tell what Charlotte Oliver wanted
+kept back.
+
+"No, never mind that," he said, "Miss Rothvelt was here and saw me this
+afternoon, herself." Up to the point of my arrival at the bridge I had
+merely to fumble my cap and answer his crisp questions. But there he
+lighted a fresh cigar and said "Now, go on."
+
+Gholson dropped in with something to be signed, and the General waved
+him to wait and hear. For Gholson, despite the sappy fetor of his mental
+temperament, had abilities that made him almost a private secretary to
+the General. Who, nevertheless, knew him thoroughly. When I had
+described Oliver's escape and would have hurried on to later details,
+General Austin raised a hand.
+
+"Hold on; you say nearly everybody fired at Oliver; who did not?" "I
+did not, General."
+
+"Did Lieutenant Ferry fire?"
+
+I said he did not. The General turned his strong eyes to Gholson's and
+kept them there while he took three luxurious puffs at his cigar. Then
+he took the waiting paper, and as he wrote his name on it he said,
+smiling, "I wish you had been in Lieutenant Ferry's place, Mr. Gholson;
+you would have done your duty."
+
+The flattered Gholson received the signed paper and passed out, and the
+General smiled again, at his back. I hope no one has ever smiled the
+same way at mine.
+
+Ferry and I slept side by side that night, and he told me two companies
+of our Louisianians were gone to cut off Jewett and his band. "Still, I
+think they will be much too late," he said, and when I rather violently
+turned the conversation aside to the subject of Scott Gholson, saying,
+to begin with, that Gholson had wonderful working powers, he replied,
+"'Tis true. Yet he says the brigade surgeon told him to-day he is on the
+verge of a nervous break-down." But on my inquiring as to the cause of
+our friend's condition, my bedmate pretended to be asleep.
+
+We rose at dawn and rode eastward, he and I alone, some fourteen miles,
+to the Sessions's, where the dance had been two nights earlier. On
+entering the stable to put up our horses we suddenly looked at each
+other very straight, while Ferry's countenance confessed more pleasure
+than surprise, though a touch of care showed with it. "I did not know
+this," he said, "and I did not expect it."
+
+What we saw was the leather-curtained spring-wagon and its little
+striped-legged mules. The old negro in charge of them bowed gravely to
+me and smiled affectionately upon Ferry. About an hour later Gholson
+appeared. He took such hurried pains to explain his coming that any fool
+could have seen the real reason. The brigade surgeon had warned him--Oh!
+had I heard?--Oh! from Ned Ferry, yes. The cause of his threatened
+breakdown, he said, was the perpetual and fearful grind of work into
+which of late he had--fallen.
+
+"Did the doctor say 'fallen'?" I shrewdly asked.
+
+"No, the doctor said 'plunged,' but--did Ned Fer'--who put that into
+your head?"
+
+"Nobody; some fall, you know, some plunge." I did not ask the cause of
+the plunge; the two little mules told me that. He would never have come,
+Gholson hurried on to say, had not Major Harper kindly suggested that a
+Sabbath spent with certain four ladies would be a timely preventive.
+
+"What!" I cried, "are they here t'--too? Why,--where's their carryall?
+'Tisn't in the stable; I've looked!"
+
+"No, it was here, but yesterday, when the fighting threatened to be
+heavy, it was sent to the front. Smith, I didn't know Charlie Tolliver
+was here!"
+
+I believed him. But I saw he was not in search of a preventive. Ah, no!
+he was ill of that old, old malady which more than any other abhors a
+preventive. Waking in the summer dawn and finding Ned Ferry risen and
+vanished hitherward, a rival's instinct had moved him to follow, as the
+seeker for wild honey follows the bee. He had come not for the cure of
+his honey-sickness, but for more--more--more--all he could find--of the
+honey. "Smith," he said, with a painful screw of his features, "I'm
+mightily troubled about Ned Ferry!"
+
+"Yes," I dishonestly responded, "his polished irreligion--"
+
+"Oh, no! No," he groaned, "it isn't that so much just now, though I know
+that to a true religionist like you the society of such a mere
+romanticist--"
+
+We were interrupted.
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+OLDEST GAME ON EARTH
+
+The cause of our interruption was Camille Harper. We had been pacing the
+side veranda and she came out upon it with an unconscious song on her
+lips, and on one finger a tiny basket.
+
+Her gentle irruption found me standing almost on the spot where she had
+stood two evenings before and said good-bye to me. From this point a
+path led to the rear of the house, where within a light paling fence
+bloomed a garden. She gave us a blithe good-morning as she passed,
+descended the two or three side steps, and tripped toward the garden
+gate, a wee affair which she might have lifted off its hinges with one
+thumb. I saw her try its latch two or three times and then turn back
+discomfited because the loose frame had sagged a trifle and needed to be
+raised half an inch. I did not understand the helplessness of girls as
+well then as I do now; I ran and opened the gate; and when I shut it
+again she and I were alone inside.
+
+She let me cut the flowers. "You know who's here?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," I guilefully replied, "I came with him."
+
+"I don't mean Lieutenant Ferry," she responded, "nor anybody you'd ever
+guess if you don't know; but you do, don't you?"
+
+I said I knew and went on gathering sweet-pea blossoms.
+
+"Did you ever see her?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, stepping away for some roses, "I--saw her--by
+chance--for a moment--she was in the wagon she's got here--last
+--eh,--Thursday--morn'--" I came back trimming the roses, and
+as she reached for them and our glances met, she laughed and replied,
+with a roguish droop of the head--
+
+"She told us about it. And you needn't look so disturbed; she only
+praised you."
+
+Still I frowned. "How does it come that she's here, anyhow?"
+
+"Why! she's got to be everywhere! She's a war-correspondent! She was at
+the front yesterday nearly the whole time, near enough to see some of
+the fighting, and to hear it all! she calls it 'only a skirmish'!"
+
+"When did she get here?"
+
+"About five in the morning. But we didn't see her then; she shut herself
+up and wrote and wrote and wrote! They say she runs the most daring
+risks! And they say she's so wise in finding out what the Yankees are
+going to do and why they're going to do it, that they'd be nearly as
+glad to catch her as to catch Lieutenant Ferry! Didn't you know? Ah, you
+knew!" She attempted a reproachful glance, but exhaled happiness like a
+fragrance. I asked how she had heard these things.
+
+"How did I hear them? Let me see. Oh, yes! from--from Harry."
+
+I flinched angrily. "From what?"
+
+She looked into her basket and fingered its flowers. "That's what he
+asked me to call him."
+
+I stiffened up as though I heard a thief picking the lock of my lawful
+treasure. She threw me, side wise, a bantering smile and then a more
+winsome glance, but I refused to see either. I burned with so many
+feelings at once that I could no more have told them than I could have
+raised a tune. "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be
+very arch.
+
+"Like whom?"
+
+"You know perfectly well," she replied.
+
+"No, I do not like him. Do you?"
+
+"Why,--yes,--I do. I--I thought everybody did." She averted her face and
+toyed with the sweet-pea vines. Suddenly she gulped, faced me, blinked
+rapidly, and said "If I oughtn't to call him--that,--then I oughtn't to
+have called--" she dropped her eyes and bit her lip.
+
+"_That_," I replied, "is a very different matter! At least I had hoped
+it was!"
+
+Her rejoinder came in a low, grieved monotone: "Did you say _had_
+hoped?"
+
+It was the sweetest question my ear had ever caught, and I asked her, I
+scarce know how, if I might still say "do hope".
+
+"Why, I--I didn't know you ever did say it. I don't see that I have any
+right to forbid you saying things--to--to yourself."
+
+So we played the game--oldest game on earth--and loveliest. Bungling
+moves we made, as you see, and sometimes did not know whose move it was.
+At length she admitted that this _is_ a very unsafe world in which to be
+kind to soldiers. I told how _fickle_ some of them were. She would not
+say she would--or wouldn't--make my case a permanent exception or a
+solitary one; yet with me she blissfully pooh-poohed the idea that our
+acquaintance was new, she being so wonderfully like my mother, and I
+being so wonderfully ditto, ditto. And when I burst into a blazing
+eulogy of my mother, my listener gave me kinder looks than I ever
+deserved of any woman alive. On my trying to reciprocate, she asked me
+for more flowers and hurried back to our earlier theme.
+
+"And really, you know, they say she's almost as truly a scout as Ned
+Fer'--as Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. She's from New Orleans, you know, and
+she's like us, half-Creole; but her other half is Highland Scotch--isn't
+that romantic! When she told us about it she laughed and said it
+explained some things in her which nothing else could excuse! Wasn't
+that funny!--oh, pshaw! it doesn't sound a bit funny as I tell it, but
+she said it in such a droll way! She was so full of fun and frolic that
+day! You can't conceive how full of them she is--sometimes; how soberly
+she _can_ say the funniest things, and how _funnily_ she can say the
+soberest things!"
+
+[Illustration: "Don't you like him?" she asked, and tried to be very
+arch.]
+
+"You say she was so full of fun that day; what day?"
+
+The young thing gaped at me, gasped, and melted half to the ground:
+"O--oh--I've let it out!"
+
+"Yes, you may as well go right on, now."
+
+She straightened to her toes, covered her open mouth an instant, and
+then said "Yes, we knew her--at our house--in New Orleans--poor New
+Orleans! Your mother--oh, your splendid, lovely little mother is such a
+brave Confederate!"
+
+"My mother brought her to your house?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes! and that's why it isn't wrong to tell _you_. Charlotte's
+been three times through the lines, to and from the city; once by way of
+Natchez and twice through Baton Rouge. And oh, the things she's brought
+out to our poor boys in the hospitals!"
+
+"Generals' uniforms, for example?"
+
+"Oh, now you're real mean! No! what she's brought the most of is--guess!
+You'll never guess it in the world!"
+
+"Hindoo grammars!--No? Well, then,--perfumery!"
+
+"Ah, you! No, I'll tell you." She spoke prudently; I had to bow my ear
+so close that it tingled: "Dolls!"
+
+My amazement was genuine. "For our sick soldiers!" I sighed.
+
+Her eyes danced; she leaned away and nodded. Then she drew nearer than
+before: "Dolls!" she murmured again;--"and pincushions!--and
+emeries!--and 'rats'! you know, for ladies' hair--and chignon-cushions!"
+
+"For our sick soldiers!"
+
+"Yes!--stuffed with quinine!" She laughed in her handkerchief till the
+smell of the sweet-peas was lost in the odor of frangipani, and she
+staggered almost into my arms. But that sobered her. "And when we speak
+of the risk she runs of being sent to Ship Island she laughs and says,
+'Life is strife.' She says she'd like it long, but she's got to have
+it broad."
+
+"Life is strife indeed to her," I said.
+
+"Oh! do you know that too?--and another reason she gives for taking
+those awful risks is that 'it's the best use she can make of her silly
+streak'--as if she had any such thing!"
+
+"Why did my mother bring her to you?"
+
+"Oh! she had letters from uncle to aunt Martha! He thinks she's
+wonderful!"
+
+"Does your father think so, too?"
+
+"My father? no; but he's prejudiced! That's one of the things I can
+never understand--why nearly all the girls I know have such
+prejudiced fathers."
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+A GNAWING IN THE DARK
+
+On our return to the veranda, Camille and I, we found on its front the
+house's entire company except only the children of the family. Mrs.
+Sessions, Estelle and Cécile formed one group, Squire Sessions and
+Charlotte Oliver made a pair, and Ferry and Miss Harper another. Our
+posies created a lively demonstration; Camille yielded them to Estelle,
+and Estelle took them into the house to arrange them in water. Gholson
+went with her; it was painful to see her zest for his society.
+
+Miss Harper "knocked me down," as we boys used to say, to Charlotte
+Oliver; "Charlotte, my dear, you already know Mr. Smith, I believe?"
+
+I had expected to see again, and to feel, as well, the starry charms of
+Coralie Rothvelt; but what I confronted was far different. The charms
+were here, unquenched by this stare of daylight, but from them shone a
+lustre of womanliness wholly new. It seemed to grow on even when a
+tricksy gleam shot through it as she replied, "Yes, our acquaintance
+dates from Gallatin."
+
+With a spasm of eagerness I said it did: "Our
+acquai'--hh--Gallatin--hh--" But my soul cried like a culprit, "No, no,
+it begins only now!" and my whole being stood under arrest before the
+accusing truth that from Gallatin till now my acquaintance had been
+solely with that false phase of her which I knew as Coralie Rothvelt. At
+the same her kind eyes sweetly granted me a stripling's acquittal--oh!
+why did it have to be a stripling's?
+
+Wonderful eyes she had; deep blue, as I have said, in color; black, in
+spirit; never so wonderful as when having sparkled black they quieted to
+blue again. Always then there came the slightest of contractions at the
+outer corners of the delicate lids, that gave a fourfold expression of
+thought, passion, tenderness and intrepidity. I never saw that silent
+meaning in but one other pair of eyes; wherever it turned it said--at
+the same time saying many other things but saying this always
+plainest--"I see both out and in; I know myself--and thee." Never but in
+one other pair of eyes? no; and whose were those? Ned Ferry's.
+
+"Don't you love to see Charlotte and him look at each other in that
+steady way when they're talking together?" Camille asked me later. But
+rather coldly I inquired why I should; I felt acutely enough without
+admitting it to Camille, that Charlotte and Ferry were meeting on ground
+far above me; and when Gholson, in his turn, called to my notice, in
+Charlotte's case, this unique gaze, and contrasted it with her beautiful
+yet strangely childish mouth, I asked a second time why she was
+here, anyhow.
+
+"She's here," murmured Gholson, "because she has to live! To live she
+must have means, Smith, and to have means she must either get them
+herself or she must--" and again he poised his hand horizontally across
+his mouth and whispered--"live with her hus'--"
+
+I jerked my head away--"Yes, yes." Scott Gholson was the only one of us
+who could give that wretch that title. "Gholson," I said, for I kept him
+plied with questions to prevent his questioning me, "how did that man
+ever get her?"
+
+The rest of the company were going into the house; he glanced furtively
+after them and grabbed my arm; you would have thought he was about to
+lay bare the whole tragedy in five words; "Smith,--nobody knows!"
+
+"Do you believe she has told Ned Ferry anything?"
+
+"Never! About herself? no, sir!" He bent and whispered: "She despises
+him; she keeps in with him, but it's to get the news, that's all; that's
+positively all." On our way to the stable to saddle up--for we were all
+going to church--he told me what he knew of her story. I had heard it
+all and more, but I listened with unfeigned interest, for he recited it
+with flashes of heat and rancor that betrayed a cruel infatuation eating
+into his very bone and brain, the guilt of which was only intensified by
+the sour legality of his moral sense.
+
+The church we went to was in Franklin, but the preacher was a man of
+note, a Vicksburg refugee. On the way back Gholson and I rode for a time
+near enough to Squire Sessions and Ned Ferry to know the sermon was
+being discussed by them, and something they said gave my companion
+occasion to murmur to me in a tone of eager censure that Ned Ferry's
+morals were better than his religion.
+
+I said I wished mine were.
+
+"Ah, Smith, be not deceived! Whenever you see a man bringing forth the
+fruits of the Spirit while he neglects the regularly appointed means of
+grace, you _know_ there's something wrong, don't you? He went to church
+this morning--_of course_; but how often does he go? What's wrong with
+our dear friend--I don't like to say it, for I admire him so; I don't
+like to say it, and I never have said it, but, Smith,--Ned Ferry's a
+romanticist. We are relig'--what?"
+
+"O--oh, nothing!"
+
+At one point our way sloped down to a ramshackle wooden bridge that
+spanned a narrow bit of running water at the edge of a wood. Beyond it
+the road led out between two fields whose high worm-fences made it a
+broad lane. The farther limit of this sea of sunlight was the grove that
+hid the Sessions house on the left; on the right it was the
+woods-pasture in which lay concealed a lily-pond. As Gholson and I
+crossed the bridge we came upon a most enlivening view of our own
+procession out in the noonday blaze before us; the Sessions buggy; then
+Charlotte' little wagon; next the Sessions family carriage full of
+youngsters; and lastly, on their horses, Squire Sessions--tall, fleshy,
+clean-shaven, silver-haired--and Ned Ferry. Mrs. Sessions and Miss
+Harper, in the buggy, were just going by a big white gate in the
+right-hand fence, through which a private way led eastward to the
+lily-pond. A happy sight they were, the children in the rear vehicle
+waving handkerchiefs back at us, and nothing in the scene made the
+faintest confession that my pet song, which I was again humming, was pat
+to the hour:
+
+  "To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
+   Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be broke."
+
+"Gholson, if it isn't Ned Ferry's religion that's worrying you just now
+about him, what is it?"
+
+My companion looked at me as if what he must say was too large for his
+throat. He made a gesture of lament toward Ferry and broke out, "O--oh
+Smith,"--nearly all Gholson's oh's were groans--"why is he here? The
+scout is 'the eyes of the army'! a man whose perpetual vigilance at the
+very foremost front--"
+
+"Why, what do you mean? You know we're here to rejoin the company as it
+comes down from Union Church to camp here to-night. _That's_ what we're
+here for."
+
+"Yes,--yes,--but, oh, don't you _see_, Smith? For you, yourself, that's
+all right; you've got to stay with him, and I'm glad you have. But
+he--oh why did he not go on hours ago, to meet them?"
+
+"Why should he? Isn't it good to leave one's lieutenant sometimes in
+command; isn't it bad not to?"
+
+Gholson's eyes turned green. "Does Ned Ferry give that as his reason?"
+
+"I haven't asked his reason; I've asked you a question."
+
+"Well, I'll answer it. Do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?"
+
+"Of course I do, and Ned Ferry does; don't you?"
+
+"No! Smith, there ain't a braver man in Grant's army than that one
+right now a-straddle of your horse. Why, just the way he got your horse
+night before--"
+
+"Oh, hang him and the horse! you've told me that three times; what of
+it?"
+
+"Smith, he's out here to make a new record for himself, at whatever
+cost!"
+
+"And do you imagine Ned Ferry hasn't thought of that?"
+
+"Ah-h, there are times when a man hasn't got his thinking powers; you
+ought to know that, Smith,--"
+
+"Mr. Gholson, what do you mean by that?"
+
+"Oh! I certainly didn't mean anything against you, Smith. Why is your
+manner so strange to me to-day? Oh, Smith, if you knew what--if I could
+speak to you in sacred confidence--I--I wouldn't injure Ned Ferry in
+your eyes, nor in anybody's; I only tell you what I do tell so you may
+help me to help him. But he's staying here, Smith, and keeping you here,
+to be near one whose name--without her a-dreaming of it--is already
+coupled with--why,--why, what made you start that a-way again, Smith?"
+
+"Nothing; I didn't start. 'Coupled with somebody's name,' you say. With
+whose? Go on."
+
+"With his, Smith, and most injuriously. He's here to tempt her to forget
+she's not--" He faltered.
+
+"Free?" said I, and he nodded with tragic solemnity.
+
+"You know who I mean, of course?"
+
+"Certainly; you mean Mrs. Sessions."
+
+He shook his head bitterly. "Oh, well, then, of course I know. How am I
+to help you to help him; help him to do what?"
+
+"O--oh! to tear himself away from her, Smith. I want you to appeal to
+him. He's taken a great shine to you. You can appeal to his feeling for
+romance--poetry--whatever he calls his hell-fired--I mean his
+unfortunate impiety. You know how, and I don't. And there you reach the
+foundations of his character, as far as it's got any; there's his
+conscience if it's anywhere!"
+
+I find myself giving but a faint impression of the spirit in which
+Gholson spoke; it went away beyond a mere backbiting mood and became a
+temper so vindictive and so venomously purposeful that I was startled;
+his condition seemed so fearfully like that of the old paralytic when he
+whined "That's not our way."
+
+"Smith," my companion went on, "we ought to protect Ned Ferry from
+himself!" The words came through his clenched teeth. "And even more we
+ought to protect her. Who's to do it if we don't? Smith, I believe
+Providence has been a-preparing you to do this, all through these last
+three nights and days!"
+
+He looked at me for an answer until I became frightened. Was my late
+folly known to this crawling maligner after all? A sweet-scented
+preparation I've had, thought I, but aloud I said only, "If Ned Ferry
+clears out, I suppose we must clear out, too."
+
+"Why, eh,--I--I don't know that my movements need have anything to do
+with his. Yours, of course,--"
+
+"Yes," I interrupted, beginning to boil.
+
+"I know," he said, "that comes hard; you'll have to tear _yourself_
+away--"
+
+He stared at me and hushed. A panic was surging through me; must I be
+brought to book by such as he? "Mr. Gholson," I cried, all scorn
+without, all terror within; "Mr. Gholson, I--Mr. Gholson, sir!--" and
+set my jaws and heaved for breath.
+
+"Why, Smith,--" He extended a soothing hand.
+
+"No explanation, sir, if you please! I can get away from here without
+tearing myself, which is more than you can boast. Any fool can see why
+_you_ are here. Stop, I take that back, sir! I don't play tit-for-tat
+with my tongue."
+
+Gholson turned red on the brow and ashen about the lips. "I don't call
+that tit-for-tat, Mr. Smith. I remind you of an innocent attachment for
+a young girl; you accuse me of harboring a guilty passion for--" All at
+once he ceased with open lips, and then said as he drew a long breath of
+relief, "Smith, I beg your pardon! We've each misunderstood the other; I
+see, now, who you meant; you meant Miss Estelle Harper!"
+
+"Whom else could I mean?" Disdain was in my voice, but he ought to have
+seen the falsehood in my eye, for I could feel it there.
+
+"_Of_ course!" he said; "of course! But, Smith, my mind was so
+full--just for the moment, you know,--of her we were speaking of in
+connection with Ned Ferry--Do you know? she's so unprotected and tagged
+after and talked about that it seems to me sometimes, in this nervous
+condition of mine, that if I could catch the entire gang of her
+pursuers in one hole I'd--I'd _end 'em_ like so many rats. That sort of
+feeling is mere impulse, of course," he went on, "and only shows how
+near I am to that nervous breakdown. Yes, the Harper ladies are mighty
+lovely and hard enough to leave, but that's all I meant to you, and I'm
+sorry I touched your feelings. I'm _tchagrined_. Anyhow, all this is
+between us, you know. I wouldn't ever have confessed such feelings as I
+did just now except to a friend who knows as well as you do that if I
+ever should do a man a mortal injury I wouldn't do it in a spirit of
+resentment. You know that, don't you? No, that's not my way--Why,
+Smith, what gives you those starts? That's the third time you've done
+that this morning."
+
+I said that entering the cool shade of the Sessions grove after the
+blazing heat of that long lane gave any one the right to a little
+shudder, and as we turned toward the house Gholson murmured "If you say
+you'll speak to Ned as I've asked you, I'll sort o' toll Squire Sessions
+off with me so's to give you the chance. It's for his own sake, you
+know, and you're the only one can do it."
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE
+
+I knew Ned Ferry was having that inner strife with which we ought always
+to credit even Gholson's sort, and I had a loving ambition to help him
+"take the upper fork." So doing, I might help Charlotte Oliver fulfil
+the same principle, win the same victory. When, therefore, Gholson put
+the question to me squarely, Would I speak to Ferry? I consented, and as
+the four of us, horsemen, left our beasts in the stable munching corn,
+Gholson began a surprisingly animated talk with our host, and Ferry,
+with a quizzical smile, said to me "Talk with you?--shall be happy to;
+we'll just make a slight _détour_ on this side the grove and
+woods-pasture, eh?"
+
+He meant the north side, opposite that one by which we had come from
+church. Here the landscape was much the same as there; wide fields on
+each side the fenced highway that still ran north and south, and woods
+for the sky-line everywhere. We chose an easy footpath along the
+northern fence of the grove, crossed the highway, and passed on a few
+steps alongside the woods-pasture fence. We talked as we went, he giving
+the kindest heed to my every word though I could see that, like any good
+soldier, he was scanning all the ground for its fighting values, and,
+not to be outdone, I, myself, pointed out, a short way up the public
+road, a fence-gap on the left, made by our camping soldiers two nights
+before. It was at another such gap, in the woods-pasture fence, that we
+turned back by a path through it which led into the wood and so again
+toward the highway and the house-grove. The evening General Austin sent
+me to Wiggins it was at this gap that I saw old Dismukes sitting
+cross-legged on the ground, playing poker; and here, now, I summoned the
+desperation to speak directly to my point.
+
+I had already tried hard to get something said, but had found myself at
+every turn entangled in generalities. Now, stammering and gagging I
+remarked that our experiences of the morning, both in church and out,
+had in some way combined with an earlier word of his own to me, and
+given me a valuable thought. "You remember, when I wanted to shoot that
+Yankee off my horse?"
+
+"Yes; and I said--what?"
+
+"You said 'This isn't your private war.' Lieutenant, I hope those words
+may last in my memory forever and come to me in every moral situation in
+which I may find myself."
+
+"Yes? Well, I think that's good."
+
+"It seems to me, Lieutenant Ferry, that in every problem of moral
+conduct we confront we really hold in trust an interest of all mankind.
+To solve that problem bravely and faithfully is to make life just so
+much easier for everybody; and to fail to do so is to make it just so
+much harder to solve by whoever has next to face it." Whurroo! my blood
+was up now, let him look to himself!
+
+"Yes?" said Ferry, picking at the underbrush as we sauntered, and for
+some time he said no more. Then he asked, "You want me to apply that to
+myself, in--in the present case?" and to my tender amazement, while his
+eyes seemed to count his slackening steps, he laid his arm across my
+shoulders.
+
+An hour of avowal could not have told me more; could not have filled me
+half so full of sympathy, admiration and love, as did that one slight
+motion. It befitted the day, a day outwardly so quiescent, yet in which
+so much was going on. A realization of this quiet activity kept us
+silent until we had come through the woods-pasture to its southern
+border, and so through the big white field-gate into the public road;
+now we turned up toward the grove-gate, and here I spoke again. "Do you
+still think we ought to wait here for the command?"
+
+That from a private soldier to his captain! Yet all my leader answered
+was "You think there's cause to change our mind?"
+
+"I don't know, Lieutenant; do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?"
+
+"Yes, I think so; and you?"
+
+"Why, eh,--Lieutenant, I don't believe there's a braver man in Grant's
+army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why, just the way he
+got him, night before last,--you've heard that, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, the General told me. And so you think--"
+
+"Lieutenant, I can't help believing he's out here to make a new record
+for himself, at whatever cost!"
+
+We went on some steps in silence and entered the gate of the
+house-grove; and just as Ferry would have replied we discovered before
+us in the mottled shade of the driveway, with her arm on Cécile's
+shoulders as his lay on mine, and with _her_ eyes counting _her_
+slackening steps, Charlotte Oliver. They must have espied us already out
+in the highway, for they also were turned toward the house, and as we
+neared them Charlotte faced round with a cheery absence of surprise and
+said "Mr. Smith, don't we owe each other a better acquaintance? Suppose
+we settle up."
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+THE RED STAR'S WARNING
+
+It seemed quite as undeniable, as we stood there, that Ned Ferry owed
+Cécile a better acquaintance. Every new hour enhanced her graces, and
+were I, here, less engrossed with her companion, I could pitch the
+praises of Cécile upon almost as high and brilliant a key--there may be
+room for that yet. Ferry moved on at her side. Charlotte stayed a moment
+to laugh at a squirrel, and then turned to walk, saying with eyes on
+the earth--
+
+"If I tell you something, will you never tell?"
+
+I looked down too. "Suppose I should feel sure it ought to be told."
+
+"If you wait till you do you may tell it; that will suit me well
+enough."
+
+"I will always suit you the best I can."
+
+"I don't know why you should," she said.
+
+"You risked your life to save mine; and you risked it when I did not
+deserve so much as your respect."
+
+"Oh!--we must never talk about that again, Richard; you saw me in the
+evilest guise I ever wore, and that is saying much."
+
+"But," I responded, "you put it on for a better reason than you could
+tell me then or can tell me now, though now I know your story."
+
+"Please don't forget," she murmured, "that you know too much." "No, no!
+I don't know half enough; I know only what Miss Camilla
+and--and--Gholson could tell me," was my tricky reply, and I tried to
+look straight into her eyes, but they took that faint introspective
+contraction of which I have spoken, and gazed through me like sunlight
+through glass. Then again she bent her glance upon her steps, saying--
+
+"Ah, Richard, you have found out all you could, and I am glad of it,
+except of what I, myself, have had to betray to you; for _that_ was more
+than one would want to tell her twin brother. But I had to create you
+_my_ scout, and I had only two or three hours for my whole work of
+creation."
+
+"Well, you completed it." We went on some steps, and then she said--
+
+"You tell me I risked my life to save yours; I risked more than life,
+and I risked it for more than to save yours. Yet I did not save your
+life; you saved it, yourself, and--" here her low tone thrilled like a
+harp-string--"you risked it--frightfully--at that bridge--merely to save
+the promise you made me that you need not have made at all--oh, you
+needn't shake your head; I _know_."
+
+"Ah, how you gild my base metal!"
+
+"No, no, I have the story exactly, and from one who has no mind to
+praise you."
+
+"From Gholson?"
+
+"Gholson! no! I have it from Lucius Oliver, who had it from his son. He
+told me carefully, quietly and entirely, in pure spleen, so that I might
+know that they know--think they know, that is,--why you and--he in front
+of us yonder--would not shoot his son when--"
+
+"When as soldiers it was our simple du'--"
+
+"Yes; and also that I may understand that he--the son--has sworn by that
+right hand you mutilated that the 'pair of you' shall die before
+he does."
+
+"I ought not to have shown him that envelope addressed to you."
+
+"Ah, but if it saved your life!"
+
+"And this is what you don't want me to tell? Ah, I see; for me to know
+it is enough; I can put it to him as a theory. I can say Oliver is not a
+man to be put upon the defensive, and that he is more than likely to be
+hunting 'the pair of us'--" All at once I thought of something.
+
+"What made you give that sudden start?" she asked as we faced about in
+the driveway to make our walk a moment longer; "that's a bad habit
+you've got; why do you do it?"
+
+I fancied the thrilling freshness of the question I was about to put
+would be explanation enough. "Do you believe Jewett has gone back into
+his own lines?"
+
+"I don't know; hasn't he?"
+
+"Oh, I don't _know_, either, but--well, I don't believe there's a braver
+man in Grant's army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why,
+just the way he got him, night before last,--you've heard that, have
+you not?"
+
+"Yes, I've heard it; he is a very daring man; what of it?"
+
+"Why, I can't help thinking he's out here to make a new record for
+himself, at whatever cost!"
+
+A note of distress hung on my hearer's stifled voice; her head went
+lower and she laid her fingers pensively to her lips. "It would be like
+him," I heard her murmur, and when I asked if she meant Jewett she
+shook her head.
+
+"No," I said, "you mean it would be like Oliver to join him," and with
+that the sudden start was hers. "He wouldn't have to touch Ned Ferry or
+me," I went on, heartlessly, "nor to come near us, to make us rue the
+hour we let ourselves forget this wasn't our private war."
+
+She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she
+looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it,
+won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do
+I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her
+eyes began forewith.
+
+A light footfall sounded behind us, and Camille gave both her hands to
+my companion. "I was in the hall," she said, "telling Cécile she was
+like a white star that had come out by day, when I saw you here looking
+like a great red one; and you're still more like a red, red rose, and
+I've come to get some of your fragrance."
+
+"I'd exchange for yours any day, and thank you, dear," responded
+Charlotte; "you're a bunch of sweet-peas. Isn't she, Mr. Smith?"
+
+The bunch beamed an ecstatic bliss. What was the explanation; had her
+father arrived, or--or somebody else? The question went through me like
+an arrow. Was the cause of this heavenly radiance somebody else?--that
+was the barb; or was it I?--that was the soothing feather.
+
+In gratitude for Charlotte's word she sank backward in a long obeisance.
+"May it please your ladyship, dinner is served. Oh, Mr. Smith, I've been
+listening to Mr. Gholson talking with aunt Martha and Estelle; I don't
+wonder you and he are friends; I think his ideas of religion are
+perfectly beautiful!"
+
+At our two-o'clock dinner I found that our company had been reinforced.
+On one side of Camille sat I; but on the other side sat "Harry."
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+A MARTYR'S WRATH
+
+Great news the aide-de-camp brought us; from Lee, from Longstreet, Bragg
+and Johnston. Johnston was about to fall upon Grant's rear. Across the
+Mississippi Dick Taylor was expected this very day to deal the same
+adversary a crippling blow, and it was partly to mask this movement that
+we had made our feint upon the Federals near Natchez. Now these had
+fallen back, and our force had cunningly slipped away southward. Only
+General Austin and his staff had not gone when Lieutenant Helm left the
+front, and they were about to go.
+
+Toward the end of the meal Mrs. Sessions, in her amiable plantation
+drawl, said she hoped the bearer of so much good tidings had not come to
+take away Lieutenant Ferry; and when Harry, flushing, asked what had
+given her such a thought, the simple soul replied that Mr. Gholson had
+told her he "suspicioned as much."
+
+At once there arose the prettiest clamor all round the board, in which
+Charlotte and Cécile joined for the obvious purpose of making confusion.
+Gholson turned yellow and spoke things nobody heard, and Ferry tried to
+drown Harry's loud declarations that the word he had brought to Ferry
+was for him to stay, and that he had found him saddling up to go in
+search of his company. "Isn't that so, Ned?--Now,--now,--isn't that so?"
+
+We left the table all laughing but Gholson. He tried to say something to
+Harry, which the latter waved away with mock gaiety until on the side
+veranda we got beyond view of the ladies, when the aide-de-camp reddened
+angrily and turned his back. As the two lieutenants were lighting
+cigarettes together, Harry, thinking Gholson had left us, blurted out,
+"Oh, that's all very well for you to say, Ned, but, damn him, he's not
+the sort of man that has the right to 'suspicion' me of anything;
+slang-whanging, backbiting sneak, I know what _he's_ here for."
+
+On that the blood surged to Ferry's brow, but he set his mouth firmly,
+locked arms with the speaker and led him down the veranda. Gholson took
+on an uglier pallor than before and went back into the house. I followed
+him. He moved slowly up the two flights of hall stairs and into a room
+close under the roof, called the "soldiers' room". It had three double
+beds, one of them ours. Without a fault in the dreary rhythm of his
+motions he went to the bedpost where hung his revolver, and turning to
+me buckled the weapon at his waist with hands that kept the same
+unbroken measure though they trembled and were as pallid as his face. In
+the same slow beat he shook his head.
+
+"Smith, I rejoice! O--oh! I rejoice and am glad when I'm reviled and
+persecuted by the hounds of hell, and spoken evil against falsely for my
+religion's sake."
+
+"Now, Gholson, that's nonsense!"
+
+"O--oh! that's what it's for! that's what he meant by 'slang-whanging.'
+That's what it's for from first to last, no matter what it's for in
+between; and I know what it's for in between, too, and Ned Ferry knows.
+Did you see Ned Ferry take him under his protection? O--oh! they're two
+of one hell-scorched kind!" My companion stood gripping the bedpost and
+fumbling at his holster. I sank to the bed, facing him, expecting his
+rage to burn itself out in words, but when he began again his teeth
+were clenched. "You heard him tell Ned Ferry he knows why I'm here. It's
+true! he does know! he knows I'm here to protect a certain person from
+him and--"
+
+"From whom? from Harry Helm? Oh, Gholson, that's too fantastical!"
+
+"From him and the likes of him! Not that he loves her; that's the
+difference between them two cotton-mouth moccasins; Ned Ferry, hell
+grind him! does--or thinks he does; that other whelp _don't,_ and knows
+he don't; he's only enam'--"
+
+"HUSH!" He ceased. "I swear, Scott Gholson, you must choose your words
+better when you allude--Lieutenant Helm is the last man in the brigade
+to be under _my_ protection, but--oh, you're crazy, man, and blind
+besides. Harry Helm is not in love, but he thinks he is, though with
+quite another person!"
+
+"O--oh! whether he loves or not, or whoever he loves, I know who he
+hates; he hates me and my religion; our religion, Smith, mine and yours;
+because it's put me between him and her. What was that the preacher said
+this morning? 'The carnal mind, being enmity against God, is enmity
+against them that serve God.' O--oh, I accept his enmity! it proves my
+religion isn't vain! I'm glad to get it!"
+
+All this from his oscillating head, through his set teeth, in one malign
+monotone. As he quoted the preacher he mechanically drew his revolver.
+There was no bravado in this; he might lie, but he did not know how to
+sham; did not know, now, that his face was drawn with pain. Holding the
+weapon in one hand, under his absent gaze he turned it from side to side
+on the palm of the other. I put out my hand for it, but he dropped it
+into the holster and tried to return my smile.
+
+"Do you propose to call him out?" I asked. "You can't call out an
+officer; you'll be sent to the water-batteries at Mobile."
+
+"I've thought of all that," he droned.
+
+"Then why do you put that thing on?"
+
+"Why do I put it on? Why, I--you know what I told you about that
+Yankee--"
+
+"Gholson," I exclaimed, for I saw that murder, even double murder, was
+hatching in his heart, with Charlotte Oliver for its cause, and looked
+hard into his evil eyes until they overmatched mine; whereupon I made as
+if suddenly convinced. "You're right!" I turned, whipped on my own belt
+with its two "persuaders," and blandly smoothing my ribs, added "Now!
+here are two ready, Yankees or no Yankees."
+
+I never saw a face so unconsciously marked with misery as Gholson's was
+when we started downstairs. I stopped him on a landing. "Understand, you
+and I are friends,--hmm? I think Lieutenant Helm owes you an apology,
+and if you'll keep away from him I'll try to bring it to you."
+
+The reply began with a vindictive gleam. "You needn't; I ain't got any
+more use for it than for him. I never apologized to a man in my life,
+Smith, nor I never accepted an apology from one; that's not my way."
+
+Near the bottom of the second flight we met Charlotte, who, to make bad
+worse, would have passed with no more than a smile, but the look of
+Gholson startled her and she noticed our arms. With an arresting eye I
+offered a sprightly comment on the heat of the day, and while she was
+replying with the same gaiety I whispered "Take him with you."
+
+How nimbly her mind moved! "Oh Mr. Gholson!" she said, and laughed to
+gain an instant for invention.
+
+"Mr. Gholson, can _you_ tell me the first line of the last hymn we sang
+this morning?" Her beam was irresistible, and they went to the large
+parlor. I turned into the smaller one, opposite, where Squire Sessions
+started from a stolen doze and, having heard of my feeling for books,
+thrust into my hands, and left me with, the "Bible Defense of Slavery."
+
+As I moved to a window which let out upon the side veranda the two
+lieutenants came around from the front and stood almost against it,
+outside; and as I intended to begin upon Harry as soon as Squire
+Sessions was safely upstairs, this suited me well enough. But the moment
+they came to the spot I heard Ned Ferry doing precisely what I had
+planned to do. At the same time, from across the hall came the sound of
+the piano and of Charlotte's voice, now a few bars, then an interval of
+lively speech, again a few bars, then more speech, and then a sustained
+melody as she lent herself to the kind flattery of Gholson's
+songless soul.
+
+"But he is!" I overheard the aide-de-camp say; "he is a backbiting
+sneak, and I tell you again he's backbitten nobody more than he
+has you!"
+
+"And I tell you again, Harry, that is my business."
+
+"If he wants to fight me he can; I'll waive my rank."
+
+"No, you will not, you have no right; our poor little rank, it doesn't
+belong to us, Harry, 'tis we belong to it. 'If he wants to fight!'--Do
+you take him for a rabbit? He is a brave man, you know that, old fellow.
+Of course he wants to fight. But he cannot! For the court-martial he
+would not care so much; I would not, you would not; 'tis his religion
+forbids him."
+
+"O--oh!" groaned Harry in Gholson's exact tone, "'Hark from the tombs'!"
+
+"Ah!" said Ferry, "he does not live up to it? Well, of course! who
+does? But we will pass that; the main question is, Will you express the
+regret, and so forth, as I have suggested, and do yourself credit,
+Harry, as an officer and a gentleman, or--will you fight?"
+
+"But you say his religion, so called, won't let him fight!"
+
+"That's what I think; but if it forbids him, and if consequently he will
+not, well,--Harry,--I will."
+
+"You will what!"
+
+"I will have to fight you in his place."
+
+"Why, Ned!--Ned!--you--you astound me! Wha'--what do you mean?"
+
+"That is what I mean, Harry. You know--many times you have heard me
+say--I don't believe in that kind of thing; I find that worse than the
+religion of Gholson; yet still,--what shall I say?--we are but soldiers
+anyhow--this time I make an exception in your favor. And of course this
+is confidential, on both sides; but you must make peace with Gholson, or
+you must fight with me."
+
+"Oh, good Lord!--Ned!--Good Lord A'mighty! but this is too absurd. Why,
+Ned, don't you see that the bottom cause of this trouble isn't--"
+
+"I know what is the bottom cause of this trouble very well, Harry; you
+can hear her in yonder, now, singing. Wherever Gholson is he hears her,
+too, like-wise. Perchance 'tis to him she is singing. If she can sing to
+him, are you too good to apologise?"
+
+"Oh, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, Ned, damned if I don't!
+George! I'll apologize! Rather than lose your friendship I'd apologize
+to the devil!"
+
+Ferry's thanks came eagerly. "Well, anyhow, old boy," he added, "in such
+a case to back down is braver than to fight; but to apologize to the
+devil--that is not hard; on the contrary, to keep _from_ apologizing to
+the devil--ah! I wish I could always do that!--I wonder where is
+Dick Smith."
+
+I stealthily laid down the "Bible Defense of Slavery" and was going
+upstairs three steps at a stride, when I came upon Camille and Estelle.
+My aim was to get Harry's revolver to him before he should have the
+exasperating surprise of finding Gholson armed, and to contrive a
+pretext for so doing; and happily a word from the two sisters gave me my
+cue. With the fire-arms of both officers I came downstairs and out upon
+the veranda loud-footed, humming--
+
+  "'To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,
+  Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be--'
+
+"Gentlemen, I hope I'm not too officious; they say we're all going for a
+walk in the lily-pond woods, and I reckon you'd rather not leave these
+things behind."
+
+Both thanked me and buckled on their belongings, but Ferry's look was
+peculiarly intelligent; "I was in the small parlor, looking for you," he
+said; "I thought you would be near the music." And so he had seen
+Gholson with his revolver on him, and must have understood it!
+
+"Smith," said Harry, "will you be so kind as to say to Gholson--oh,
+Lord! Ned, this is heavy drags on a sandy road! I--"
+
+"That's all right, Harry, I withdraw the request."
+
+"Well, you needn't; I was in the wrong. Smith, will you say to
+Gholson--" His voice dropped to a strictly private rumble.
+
+"Yes, Lieutenant, I'll do so with pleasure, and I'm sure what you say
+will have the proper--here are the ladies."
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+TORCH AND SWORD
+
+"Now give me your hand, Miss Camille; now jump!" So twice and once again
+the rivulet was passed which ran from the lily-pond, she and I leading
+all the others on the return from the woodland afternoon walk. We turned
+and faced away from the declining sun and across the clear pool to where
+its upper end, dotted with lily-pads, lay in a deep recess of the woods.
+There were green and purple garlands of wild passion-flower around her
+hat and about the white and blue fabrics at her waist. At the head of
+the pond, with Ferry beside her, stood black-haired Cécile canopied by
+overhanging boughs, her hat bedecked with the red spikes of the
+Indian-shot and wound with orange masses of love-vine. Nearer to us
+around the shore was Estelle of the red-brown hair and red-brown eyes
+and brows and lashes, whose cheek seemed always to glow with ever rising
+but never confessed emotion; and with her walked Gholson. Near the
+waterside also, but farthest up the path, came Miss Harper and
+Charlotte Oliver.
+
+Harry was not with us. The settlement of his trouble with Gholson
+awaited his return out of the region north of us, whither Ferry had
+suggested his riding on an easy reconnaissance. Camille and I were just
+turning again, when there came abruptly into our scene the last gallant
+show of martial finery any of us ever saw until the war was over and
+there was nothing for our side to make itself fine for. On the road from
+the house we heard a sound of galloping, and the next moment General
+Austin and his entire staff (less only Harry) reined up at the edge of
+the pond, ablaze with all the good clothes they could muster and
+betraying just enough hard usage to give a stirring show of the war's
+heroic reality. The General, on a beautiful cream-colored horse, wore
+long yellow gauntlets and a yellow sash; from throat to waist the
+sunlight glistened upon the over-abundant gold lace of his new uniform,
+his legs were knee-deep in shining boots, and his soft gray hat was
+looped up on one side and plumed according to Regulations with one
+drooping ostrich feather. Behind halted in pleasing confusion captains
+and captains, flashing with braids, bars, buckles, buttons, bands,
+sword-knots, swords and brave eyes, and gaily lifting hats and caps,
+twice, and twice again, and once more, to the ladies--God bless them!
+Major Harper, the oldest, most refined and most soldierly of them all,
+was also the handsomest. Old Dismukes was with them; burly, bushy,
+dingy, on a huge roan charger. Camille asked me who he was, and I was
+about to reply that he was a bloodthirsty brute without a redeeming
+trait, when he lifted his shaggy brows at me and smiled, and as I smiled
+back I told her he was our senior colonel, rough at times, but the
+bravest of the brave. Meantime the General rode forward over a stretch
+of shallow water, Ned Ferry ran back along the margin to meet him, and
+at the saddlebow they spoke a moment together privately, while at more
+distance but openly to us all Major Harper informed his sister that with
+one night's camp and another day's dust the brigade would be down in
+Louisiana. Camille turned upon me and hurrahed, the Arkansas colonel
+smiled upon her approvingly, the ladies all waved, the General lifted
+his plumed hat, faced about, passed through his turning cavalcade and
+drew it after him at a gallop.
+
+Our promenaders hurried into close order and with quick step and eager
+converse we moved toward the house. In raptures scintillant with their
+own beauty the three Harper girls inflated each item of the day's news
+and the morrow's outlook, and it was almost as pretty to see Miss
+Harper's keen black eyes and loving-tolerant smile go back and forth
+from Camille to Estelle, from Estelle to Cécile, and round again, as
+each maiden added some new extravagance to the glad vaunting of the
+last, and looked, for confirmation, to the gallant who toiled to keep
+her under her parasol. Suddenly the three girls broke into song with an
+adaptation of "Oh, carry me back" which substituted "Louisiana" for
+"Virginia," but whose absurd quaverings I will not betray in words to a
+generation that never knew the frantic times to which they belonged. I
+felt a shamefacedness for them even then, yet when I glanced behind,
+Miss Harper was singing with us in the most exalted earnest. We had
+nearly reached the field-gate, the big white one on the highway, and
+were noting that the dust of the General and his retinue had barely
+vanished from the southern stretch of the road, when one feminine voice
+said "What's that?" another exclaimed "See yonder!" and Miss Harper
+cried "Why, gentlemen, somebody's house is burning!"
+
+Beyond the grove and the fields north of it, and beyond their farther
+bound of trees, in the northwest, was rising and unfolding into the
+peaceful Sabbath heavens a massive black column of the peculiar heavy
+smoke made by the burning of baled and stored cotton. We ran, two and
+two, into the road and up toward the grove-gate. "Don't stumble," I
+warned Camille as she looked back to see if any one besides me was
+holding his partner's hand. Inside the gate we paused, we two, still
+hand in hand. Her brown hair had shaken low upon her temples in two
+voluptuous masses between which she lifted her eyes to mine, my hand
+tightened on hers, and hers gave a little spasm of its own.
+
+"Oh, Dick!" she whispered; but before I could rally from the blissful
+shock of it to reply, her face changed distressfully, and pointing
+beyond me, she drank a great breath, and cried, "Look!"
+
+Sure enough, out there on the sky-line, in the north-east this time,
+another column of smoke was lifting its first billow over the tree-tops.
+"Oh, Dick!" she exclaimed, in beautiful alarm, "what does it mean?"
+
+"It means the Yankees,--love," I said, and when she gasped her dismay
+without letting on to have heard the last word, I felt that fires were
+cheap at any price.
+
+"There are others there besides Yankees," said Gholson to the general
+company as they joined us; "Yankees have got more sense than to start
+fires ahead of their march." On the same instant with Ned Ferry I sprang
+half-way to the top of the grove fence and peered out across road and
+fields upon the farthest point in line with the second fire. There we
+saw two horsemen reconnoitring, one a very commanding figure, the other
+mean enough. Ferry used his glass, but no glass was needed to tell
+either of us that Gholson's reckoning was true; those two were
+not Federals.
+
+The ladies flew to the house and the rest of us to the stable. In its
+door Ferry stopped to look back upon the road while Gholson and I darted
+in, but now he, too, sprang to his horse's side. "How many, Lieutenant?"
+I cried, as the three of us saddled up.
+
+"About a hundred; same we saw yesterday; captain at the rear; that means
+our fellows are close behind them."
+
+For a moment more I could hear the thunder of their speeding column;
+then the grove seemed to swallow it up, and the stillness was grim.
+"Come on!" cried Ferry, swinging up, and after him we sprang. "They've
+dismounted on the far edge of the grove," said Gholson to me as we rode
+abreast, with Ferry a length ahead; "they'll form line on each side the
+road at right angles to it!" and again he was right. Ferry led
+northeastward, but hardly had we made half a dozen leaps when he waved
+me to a near corner of the flower-garden palings and I saw Miss Harper
+beckoning and Charlotte holding up my carbine and his sword. Miss Harper
+was drawn up as straight as a dart, her black eyes flashing and her lips
+charged with practical information that began to flow the moment I was
+near enough to hear her guarded voice. "They've all put their horses in
+the locks of the road fence, just beyond the big white gate--"
+
+"We know," I interrupted, leaning and snatching the weapons from
+Charlotte's hands. She kissed them good-bye.
+
+"Ah, yes, yes!" she said, "they know all we can tell them and all we
+can't!"
+
+The only response I could give was the shower of loose earth thrown upon
+both women by my horse's heels as I whirled and sped after my leader. He
+and Gholson were half a broad field ahead of me, but I followed only at
+their speed, designing to hand over the sword so nearly at the moment of
+going into action that I might stay by its owner's side unrebuked; and
+my plan was not in vain. Up the highway our Louisianians burst into view
+in column at full speed; I knew them by their captain, a man noted
+throughout the brigade for the showiness of his dress; and the next
+instant, away across the fields beyond the highroad, Quinn and his
+scouts broke out of the woods, heading for the gap in the woods-pasture
+fence. As each friendly column caught sight of the other, long cheers
+rang across the narrowing interval between them. Through that other gap
+which I had noted in my walk with Ferry he and Gholson reached the road,
+sped forward on it to a rise that overlooked the fields, and halted.
+Ferry rose on tiptoe in the stirrups, lifted his cap in air, pointed
+triumphantly backward to the grove, and was recognized by both columns
+at once. Again they cheered; at a full run I reached his side and threw
+his sword into his hand. Both columns saw him belt it on and flash it
+out, their cheers swelled again, the Louisianians hurtled down upon us,
+and we turned and were at the front of the onset.
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+THE CHARGE IN THE LANE
+
+The instant Ferry wheeled at the flaming captain's side you could see he
+was unwelcome. I heard him tell what we knew of the foe and the ground;
+I saw him glance back at the blown condition of the speeding column and
+then say "You've got them anyhow, Captain; you'll get every man of them
+without a scratch, only if you will take your time."
+
+But the Captain answered headily; "No, sir! I've tried that twice
+already; this time I'll cut them in two and be in their rear at one
+dash! Bring in your company behind mine, if you choose."
+
+Ferry drew back a few ranks but stayed with the column; Quinn had had
+the toil of the chase, he should have also the glory of the fight. So
+Ferry sent Gholson--whose horsemanship won a cheer from the passing
+Louisianians as he cleared the roadside fence--across to Quinn, bidding
+the Lieutenant slacken speed and count himself a reserve. And then into
+the broad lane between grove and woods-pasture, with the charging yell,
+the Louisianians thundered. Ah! but my Creole gentleman was a sight,
+with his straight blade lifted in air and his face turned back on us
+aglow with the joy of battle! I was huzzaing back at him and we were
+passing the front gate of the grove avenue, when down through it came
+from the house, with a tremor of echoes, the first shot; a shot and then
+a woman's scream, and his blazing eyes said to me, "He is there! That
+was Oliver!"
+
+There was no time for speech. The shot was not a signal, yet on the
+instant and in our very teeth, on our right and our left, the cross-fire
+of the hidden and waiting foe flashed and pealed, and left and right, a
+life for a life, our carbines answered from the saddle. For a moment the
+odds against us were awful. In an instant the road was so full of fallen
+horses and dismounted men that the jaded column faltered in confusion.
+Our cunning enemy, seeing us charge in column, had swung the two
+extremes of their line forward and inward. So, crouching and firing upon
+us mounted, each half could fire toward the other with impunity, and
+what bullets missed their mark buzzed and whined about our ears and
+pecked the top rails of either fence like hail on a window. A wounded
+horse drove mine back upon his haunches and caused him to plant a hoof
+full on the breast of one of our Louisianians stretched dead on his back
+as though he had lain there for an hour. Another man, pale, dazed,
+unhurt, stood on the ground, unaware that he was under point-blank fire,
+holding by the bits his beautiful horse, that pawed the earth
+majestically and at every second or third breath blew from his flapping
+nostrils a cloud of scarlet spray. They blocked up half the road. As we
+swerved round them the horse of the company's first lieutenant slid
+forward and downward with knees and nose in the dust, hurling his rider
+into a lock of the fence, and the rider rose and rushed to the road
+again barely in time to catch a glittering form that dropped rein and
+sword and reeled backward from the saddle. It was his captain, shot
+through the breast. An instant later our tangled column parted to right
+and left, dashed into the locks of the two fences, sprang to the ground,
+and began to repay the enemy in the coin of their own issue. Only a
+dozen or so did otherwise, and it was my luck to be one of these.
+Espying Ned Ferry at the very front, in the road, standing in his
+stirrups and shouting back for followers to carry the charge on through,
+we spurred toward him and he turned and led. Then what was my next
+fortune but to see, astride of my stolen horse, the towering leader of
+the foe, Captain Jewett.
+
+He came into the road a few rods ahead of us through a gap his men had
+earlier made opposite the big white gate. He answered our fierce halloo,
+as he crossed, by a pistol-shot at Ferry, but Ferry only glanced around
+at me and pointed after him with his sword. A number of blue-coats afoot
+followed him to the gap but at our onset scattered backward, sturdily
+returning our fire. Into the gap and into the enemy's left rear went
+Ferry and his horsemen, but I turned the other way and spurred through
+the woods-pasture gate after the Federal leader, he on my horse and I on
+his. Down the highway, on either side, stood his brave men's horses in
+the angles of the worm-fence, and two or three horse-holders took a shot
+at me as I sped in after the man who was bent on reaching the right of
+his divided force before Quinn should strike it, as I was bent on
+foiling him. Twice I fired at his shapely back, and twice, while he kept
+his speed among the tree-trunks, he looked back at me as coolly as at an
+odd passer-by and sent me a ball from his revolver. A few more bounds
+carried him near enough to his force to shout his commands, but half a
+hundred cheers suddenly resounded in the depth of the woods-pasture, and
+Quinn and his men charged upon the foe's right and rear. I joined the
+shout and the shouters; in a moment the enemy were throwing down their
+arms, and I turned to regain the road to the pond. For I had marked
+Jewett burst through Quinn's line and with a score of shots ringing
+after him make one last brave dash--for escape. Others, pursuing him,
+bent northward, but my instinct was right, his last hope was for his
+horse-holders, and at a sharp angle of the by-road, where it reached the
+pond, exactly where Camille and I had stood not an hour before, I came
+abruptly upon Cricket--riderless. I seized his rein, and as I bent and
+snapped the halter of one horse on the snaffle of the other I saw the
+missing horseman. Leaping from the saddle I ran to him. He was lying on
+his face in the shallow water where General Austin and his staff had so
+gaily halted a short while before, and as I caught sight of him he
+rolled upon his back and tried to lift his bemired head.
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+FALLEN HEROES
+
+I dropped to my knee in the reddening pool and passed my arm under his
+head.
+
+"Thank you," he said, and repeated the word as I wet my handkerchief and
+wiped the mire from his face; "thank you;--no, no,"--I was opening his
+shirt--"that's useless; get me where you can turn me over; you've hit me
+in the back, my lad."
+
+"I?--I hit you? Oh, Captain Jewett, thank God, I didn't hit you at all!"
+
+"What's the difference, boy; you didn't aim to miss, did you? I didn't.
+It's not my only hurt; I think I broke something inside when I fell from
+the sad'--ah! that's _your_ bugle, isn't it? It's my last fight--oh, the
+devil! my good boy, don't begin to cry again; war's war; give me some
+water.... Thank you! And now, if you don't want me to bleed to death get
+me out of this slop, and--yes,--easy!--that's it--easy--oh, God! oh, let
+me down, boy, let me _down, you're killing me!_ Oh!--" he fainted away.
+
+With his unconscious head still on my arm I faced toward the hundred
+after-sounds of the fray and hallooed for help. To my surprise it
+promptly came. Three blundering boys we were who lifted him into the
+saddle and bore him to the house reeling and moaning astride of Cricket,
+the poor beast half dead with hard going. The sinking sun was as red as
+October when we issued into the highroad and moved up it to the grove
+gate through the bloody wreckage of the fray. The Louisianians were
+camping in the woods-pasture, Ferry's scouts in the grove, and the
+captive Federals were in the road between, shut in by heavy guards. At
+our appearance they crowded around us, greeting their undone commander
+with proud words of sympathy and love, and he thanked them as proudly
+and lovingly, though he could scarcely speak, more than to ask every
+moment for water. A number of our Sessions house group crowded out to
+meet us at the veranda steps; Camille; Harry Helm with his right hand
+bandaged; Cécile, attended by two or three Sessions children; and behind
+all Miss Harper exclaiming "Ah, my boy, you're a welcome sight--Oh! is
+that Captain Jewett!"
+
+Two or three bystanders helped us bear him upstairs, where, turning from
+the bedside, I pressed Camille with eager questions.
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry? he's unhurt--and so is Mr. Gholson! Mr. Gholson's
+gone to Franklin for doctors; Lieutenant Ferry sent him; he's been
+sending everybody everywhere faster than anybody else could think of
+anything!"
+
+I asked where Ferry was now. Her eyes refilled--they were red from
+earlier distresses--and she motioned across the hall: "The captain of
+the Louisianians, you know, has sent for him!"
+
+"Yes," I said, "the Captain's hit hard. I saw him when he was struck."
+
+"Oh, Dick! then you were at the very front!"
+
+"Did you think I was at the rear?"
+
+She looked down. "I couldn't help hoping it."
+
+"Then you were thinking of me."
+
+"I prayed for you."
+
+Such news seemed but ill-gotten gains, to come before I had gathered
+courage to inquire after Charlotte Oliver. "Wh'--where is--where are
+the others?"
+
+"They're all about the house, tending the wounded; Mrs. Sessions is with
+the Squire, of course,--dear, brave old gentleman! we thought he was
+killed, but Charlotte found the ball had glanced."
+
+I asked if it was Oliver who shot him, and she nodded. "It was down at
+the front door; the Squire said he'd shoot him if he shot Charlotte, and
+Charlotte declared she'd shoot him if he shot the Squire, and all at
+once he shot at her and struck him."
+
+"Who was it that screamed; was it she?"
+
+My informant's head drooped low and she murmured, "It was I."
+
+"Then _you_ were at the front."
+
+"Did you think I was at the rear?"
+
+I fear I answered evasively. I added that I must go to Lieutenant Ferry,
+and started toward the door, but she touched my arm. "Oh, Dick, you
+should have heard him praise you to her!--and when he said you had
+chased Captain Jewett and was missing, she cried; but now I'll tell her
+you're here." She started away but returned. "Oh, Dick, isn't it
+wonderful how we're always victorious! why don't those poor Yankees give
+up the struggle? they must see that God is on our side!"
+
+As she left me, Ned Ferry came out with a sad face, but smiled gladly on
+me and caught me fondly by the arm. On hearing my brief report he
+saddened more than ever, and when I said I had promised Jewett he should
+hand his sword to none but him, "Oh!"--he smiled tenderly--"I don't want
+to refuse it; go in and hang it at the head of his bed as he would do in
+his own tent; I'll wait here."
+
+I pointed to the door he had softly closed behind him: "How is it in
+there?"
+
+"Ah, Richard, in there the war is all over."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"So called."
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+"SAYS QUINN, S'E"
+
+Lieutenant Helm came out as I went in, and I paused an instant to ask
+him in fierce suspicion if he had bandaged his hand himself. "No," he
+whispered, "Miss Camille." It was a lie, but I did not learn that until
+months after. "Come downstairs as soon as you can," he added, "there's a
+hot supper down there; first come first served." We parted.
+
+I found Miss Harper fanning the wounded giant and bathing his brows,
+and my smiles were ample explanation of my act as I hung the sword up.
+Then I brought in my leader. "Captain Jewett," he said after a nearly
+silent exchange of greetings, "I wish we had you uninjured."
+
+"Ah, no, Lieutenant, this is bad enough. Lieutenant, there is one
+matter--"
+
+"Yes, Captain, what is that?"
+
+"The villain who set those fires--you know who he is, I hope."
+
+"Yes, Captain, I know."
+
+"He didn't begin that until after he left me. I had some private reasons
+for not killing him when I might have done it."
+
+"Yes, Captain, I know that, too."
+
+"Yet if I had caught him again I would have strung him up to the first
+limb."
+
+"I have sent some picked men to catch him if they can," said Ferry, and
+the racked sufferer lifted a hand in approval. Camille came to her aunt
+and whispered "Mr. Gholson with two doctors." The wounded captive
+heard her.
+
+"Lieutenant," he panted, "I hope you'll--do me the favor--to let my turn
+with those gentlemen--come last,--after my boys,--will you?"
+
+"Ah! Captain, even our boys wouldn't allow that; no, here's a doctor,
+now."
+
+I went down to the supper-table. Camille was there, dispensing its
+promiscuous hospitality to men who ate like pigs. I would as leave have
+found her behind a French-market coffee-stand. Harry Helm, nursing his
+bandaged hand, was lolling back from the board and quizzing her with
+compliments while she cut up his food. A fellow in the chair next mine
+said he had seen me with Ferry when we joined the Louisianians' charge.
+"Your aide-de-camp friend over yonder's a-gitt'n' lots o' sweetenin'
+with his grub; well, he deserves it."
+
+I asked how he deserved it. "Why, we wouldn't 'a' got here in time if he
+hadn't 'a' met-up with us. That man Gholson, he's another good one."
+
+The latter remark seemed to me a feeler, and I ignored it, and inquired
+how Lieutenant Helm had got that furlough. (Furlough was our slang for a
+light wound.) "Oh, he got it mighty fair! Did you see that Yankee
+lieutenant with the big sabre-cut on his shoulder? Well, your friend
+yonder gave him that--and got the Yankee's pistol-shot in his hand. But
+that saved Gholson's life, for that shot was aimed to give Gholson a
+furlough to kingdom-come. Are they kinfolks?"
+
+I mumbled that they were not even friends. "Well, now, I suspicioned
+that,--when I first see 'em meet at the head of our column! But the
+aide-de-camp he took it so good-natured that, thinks I,--"
+
+Another of Ferry's men, seated opposite, swallowed hurriedly, and
+covertly put in--"Y' ought to hear what Quinn said to Gholson just now
+as they met-up out here in the hall. Quinn thought they were alone. Says
+Quinn, as cold as a fish, s's'e 'Mr. Gholson,' s'e, 'you're not a
+coward, sir, and that's why I'm curious to ask you a question,' s'e. And
+says Gholson, just as cold, s'e 'I'm prepared, Lieutenant Quinn, to
+answer it.' And says Quinn, s'e 'Why was it, that when Harry Helm struck
+that blow which saved your life, and which you knew was meant to save
+it, and you seen his sword shot out of his hand and three or four
+Yankees makin' a dead set to kill him, and nothin' else in any
+particular danger at all, why was it, Mr. Gholson, that you never turned
+a hand nor an eye to save him?'"
+
+"Great Scott! wha'd Gholson say?"
+
+"Gholson, s'e, 'I done as I done, sir, from my highest sense o' duty.
+This ain't Lieutenant Helm's own little private war, Lieutenant Quinn,
+nor mine, nor yours.'"
+
+"Jo'! that to Quinn! wha'd Quinn answer?"
+
+"Why, with that Quinn popped them big glass eyes o' his'n till the
+whites showed clear round the blue, and s'e 'I know it better than you
+do; that's just what it suited you to forget. Oh! I'd already seen
+through you in one flash, you sneak. It's good for you you're not in my
+command; I'd lift you to a higher sense of whose war this is, damn you,
+if I had to hang you up by the thumbs.' With that he started right on
+by, Gholson a-keepin' his face to him as he passed, when Ned Ferry
+and--her--came out o' the parlor, and Ned turned out on the rear gallery
+with Quinn while she sort o' smiled at Gholson to come to her and sent
+him off on some business or other. George! I never seen her so
+beautiful."
+
+Thereupon occurred a brief exchange of comments which seemed to me to
+carry by implication as fine a praise as could possibly come from two
+rough fellows of the camp. Speaking the names of Ferry and Charlotte in
+undertone, of course, but with the unrestraint of soldiers, they said
+their say without a shadow of inuendo in word or smile. Her presence,
+they agreed, always made them feel as though something out of the common
+"was bound to happen pretty quick," while his, they said, assured them
+that "whatever did happen would happen right." I turned with a frown as
+Harry laughed irrelevantly, and saw Camille and him smiling at me with
+childish playfulness. Then suddenly their smile changed and went beyond
+me, two or three men softly said "Smith!" and I was out of my chair and
+standing when Charlotte Oliver, in a low voice, tenderly accosted me.
+
+"Oh, Richard Thorndyke Smith!--alive and well! Lieutenant Ferry wants
+you; he has just gone to his camp-fire."
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+A HORSE! A HORSE!
+
+Night had fully come. A few bivouac fires burned low in the grove, and
+at one of them near the grove gate I found our young commander. On a
+bench made of a fence-rail and two forked stakes he sat between Quinn
+and the first-lieutenant of the Louisianians. The doctor whom I had seen
+before sat humped on his horse, facing the three young men and making
+clumsy excuses to Ferry for leaving. The other physician would stay for
+some time yet, he said, and he, himself, was leaving his instruments,
+such as they were, and would return in the morning. "Fact is, my son's a
+surgeon, and he taken all my best instruments with _him._"
+
+"When; where is he?" eagerly asked Quinn, seeing Ferry was not going to
+ask.
+
+"My son? Oh, he's in Virginia, with General Lee."
+
+"Hell!" grunted Quinn, but the doctor pretended to listen to Ferry.
+
+"Ah, but we move south at day-light; the prisoners and wounded we send
+east, to Hazlehurst," said our leader, with a restraining hand on
+Quinn's knee. The other lieutenant made some inquiry of him, and the
+doctor was ignored, but stayed on, and as I stood waiting to be noticed
+I gathered a number of facts. The lightly injured would go in a
+plantation wagon; for the few gravely hurt there was the Harpers'
+ambulance, which had just arrived to take the ladies back to Squire
+Wall's, near Brookhaven, alas! instead of to Louisiana. For the ladies
+Charlotte's spring-wagon was to be appropriated, one of them riding
+beside it on horseback, and there was to be sent with them, besides
+Charlotte's old black driver, "a reliable man well mounted." Whoever
+that was to be it was not Harry, for he was to go south with a small
+guard, bearing the body of the Louisiana captain to his home between the
+hostile lines behind Port Hudson.
+
+"Good-night, gentlemen," said the doctor at last. As he passed into the
+darkness Quinn bent a mock frown upon his young superior.
+
+"Lieutenant Ferry, the next time I have to express my disgust please to
+keep your hand off my knee, will you?"
+
+Ferry's response was to lay it back again and there ensued a puerile
+tussle that put me in a precious pout, that I should be kept waiting by
+such things. But presently the three parted to resume their several
+cares, and the moment Ferry touched my arm to turn me back toward the
+house I was once more his worshipper. "Well!" he began, "you have now
+_two_ fine horses, eh?"
+
+"Oh, by Regulations, I suppose, I ought to turn one of them over to
+Major Harper. I wish it were to you, Lieutenant; I'd keep my own--he'll
+be all right in a day or two--and give you Captain Jewett's."
+
+"Well,--just for a day or two,--do that, while I lend my horse to a
+friend."
+
+I had already asked myself what was to become of Charlotte Oliver while
+the Harpers were preempting her little wagon, and now I took keen alarm.
+"Why, Lieutenant, I shall be glad! But why not lend Captain Jewett's
+horse and keep yours? Yours is right now the finest and freshest mount
+in the command."
+
+"Yes, 'tis for that I lend him."
+
+We went on in silence. Startled and distressed, I pondered. What was her
+new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this
+from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would
+know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like
+smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry
+with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now,
+unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse
+to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing himself to speed
+Beauty--oh, how different! What was the all-subordinating need?
+
+As we entered the hall I came to a conviction which lightened my heart;
+the all-subordinating need was--Oliver. I thought I could see why. The
+spring of all his devilish behavior lay in those relations to her for
+which I knew she counted herself chargeable through her past mistakes.
+Unless I guessed wrong her motives had risen. I believed her aim was
+now, at whatever self-hazard, to stop this hideous one-woman's war, and
+to speed her unfinished story to the fairest possible outcome for all
+God's creatures, however splendidly or miserably the "fool in it" should
+win or lose. We stopped and waited for Cécile and the remaining doctor,
+she with a lighted candle, to come down the stairs. From two rooms
+below, where most of the wounded lay, there came women's voices softly
+singing, and Charlotte's was among them. Their song was one listening to
+which many a boy in blue, many a lad in gray, has died: "Rock me to
+sleep, mother."
+
+Cécile and the doctor had come from the bedside of the Union captain,
+where Miss Harper remained. "I've done all I can," he said to Ferry; "we
+old chill-and-fever doctors wa'n't made for war-times; he may get well
+and he may not."
+
+"Smith," said Ferry, "go up and stay with him till further orders."
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+"BEAR A MESSAGE AND A TOKEN"
+
+Late in the night Gholson came to the Union captain's bedside for Miss
+Harper. Charlotte had sent him; the doctor had left word what to do if a
+certain patient's wound should re-open, and this had happened. The three
+had succeeded in stanching it, but Charlotte had prevailed upon Miss
+Harper to lie down, and the weary lady had, against all her intentions,
+fallen asleep. I was alone with the wounded captain. He did not really
+sleep, but under the weight of his narcotics drowsed, muttered, stirred,
+moaned, and now and then spoke out.
+
+Sitting in the open window, I marked the few red points of dying
+firelight grow fewer in the bivouac under the grove. Out there by the
+gate Ned Ferry slept. Fireflies blinked, and beyond the hazy fields rose
+the wasted moon, by the regal slowness of whose march I measured the
+passage of time as I had done two nights before. My vigil was a sad one,
+but, in health, in love, in the last of my teens and in the silent
+company of such a moon, my straying thoughts lingered most about the
+maiden who had "prayed for me." My hopes grew mightily. Yet with them
+grew my sense of need to redouble a lover's diligence. I resolved never
+again to leave great gaps in my line of circumvallation about the city
+of my siege, as I had done in the past--two days. I should move to the
+final assault, now, at the earliest favorable moment, and the next
+should see the rose-red flag of surrender rise on her temples; in war it
+is white, but in love it is red.
+
+First favorable moment; ah! but when would that be? Who was to convey
+the Harpers to Hazlehurst? Well, thank Heaven! not Harry. Scott Gholson?
+Gholson was due at headquarters. Poor Gholson! much rest for racked
+nerves had he found here; what with Ferry, and Harry, and the fight, and
+Quinn, I wondered he did not lie down and die under the pure suffocation
+of his "tchagrin." Even a crocodile, I believed, could suffer from
+chagrin, give him as many good causes as Gholson had accumulated. But
+no, the heaven of "Charlie Tolliver's" presence and commands--she seemed
+to have taken entire possession of him--lifted and sustained him above
+the clouds of all unkinder things.
+
+A faint stir at the threshold caught my ear and I discerned in the hall
+a young negro woman. The light of an unseen candle made her known at a
+glance; she had been here since the previous evening, as I knew, though
+it chanced that I had not seen her; Oliver's best wedding-gift, the
+slave maid whom I had seen with Charlotte in the curtained wagon at
+Gallatin. I stole out to her; she courtesied. "Miss Charlotte say ef you
+want he'p you fine me a-sett'n' on de step o' de stairs hafe-ways down."
+
+I inquired if she was leaving us. "She a-gitt'n' ready, suh; Misteh
+Goshen done gone to de sta-able to git de hosses." The girl suddenly
+seemed pleased with herself. "Mis' Charlotte would 'a' been done gone
+when de yethehs went--dem-ah two scouts what was sent ayfteh _him_--ef I
+hadn' spoke' up when I did."
+
+"Indeed! how was that?"
+
+"Why, I says, s' I, 'Mis' Charlotte, how we know he ain' gwine fo' to
+double on his huntehs? Betteh wait a spell, and den ef no word come back
+dat he a-doublin', you kin be sho' he done lit out fo' to jine de
+Yankees roun' Pote Hudsom.'"
+
+"Why did you tell her that? You want him caught; so do I; but you know
+she doesn't want to catch him, and you don't want her to. Neither do I.
+Nor neither do we want Lieutenant Ferry to catch him."
+
+"No, suh, dass so. But same time, while she no notion o' gitt'n' him
+cotch, she believe she dess djuty-bound to head-off his devilment. 'Tis
+dess like I heah' Mr. Goshen say to Miss Hahpeh, 'Dis ain't ow own
+li'l pri'--'"
+
+I waved her away and went back into the room; the Captain had called. He
+asked the time of night; I said it was well after two; he murmured, was
+quiet, and after a moment spoke my name. I answered, and he whispered
+"Coralie Rothvelt--she's here; I--recognized her voice--when they were
+singing. Did you know I knew her?"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"Daring game that was you fellows let her put up on us night before
+last, my boy,--and it hung by a thread. If our officers had only asked
+the old man his name--it would have been--a flash of light. If I had
+dreamed, when I saw--you and Ned Ferry--yesterday,--that Coralie
+Rothvelt was--Charlotte Oliver,--and could have known her then--as
+I've--learned to know her--to-day--from her--worst enemy,--you know,--"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"I should--have turned back, my boy." After a silence the hero said more
+to himself than to me "Ah, if my brother were here to-night--I
+might live!"
+
+Many days afterward I thought myself dull not to have guessed what that
+speech meant, but now I was too distressed by the change I saw coming
+over him to do any surmising. He began to say things entirely to
+himself. "Home!" he murmured; "sweet, sweet home!--my home! my
+country!--My God, my country, my home!--Smith,--you know what that is
+you're--wiping off my brow,--don't you?"
+
+"Yes, Captain."
+
+"I--I didn't want you to be--taken too unpleasantly by surprise--just at
+the--end. You know what's--happening,--don't you?"
+
+"Yes, Captain." As I wiped the brow again I heard the tread of two
+horses down in front of the house; they were Gholson's, and Ned Ferry's
+for Charlotte. "Captain, may I go and bring her--tell her what you say,
+and bring her?"
+
+"Do you think she'd come? She'd have gone to Ship Island if I had caught
+her."
+
+"I know she'll come."
+
+"I wish she would; she could 'bear a message and a token,' as the song
+says."
+
+She came. I met her outside the door, and for a moment I feared she
+would come no farther. "How can I, Richard! Oh, how can I?" she
+whispered; "this is my doing!" But presently she stood at the bedside
+calm and compassionate, in the dark dress and limp hat of two nights
+before. The dying man's eyes were lustrous with gratitude.
+
+"I have one or two things," he said, after a few words of greeting,
+"that I'd like to send home--to my mother--and my wife; some
+trifles--and a message or two; if I--if--if I--"
+
+"Will you let me take them?" Charlotte asked. I did not see or hear what
+they were; Gholson beckoned me into the hall. He did not whisper; there
+are some people, you know, who can never exercise enough
+self-suppression to whisper; he mumbled. He admitted the dying had some
+rights, but--he feared the delay might result unfortunately; wanted me
+to tell Charlotte so, and was sure I was ever so wrong to ask to have
+Ned Ferry awakened for the common incident of a prisoner's death; he
+would let him know the moment he awoke.
+
+When I came back into the room the captive had asked Charlotte to pray.
+"Tisn't that I'm--the least bit afraid," he was saying.
+
+"Oh, no," she responded, wiping his brow, "why should you be? Dying
+isn't nearly so fearful a thing as living. I'd rather, now, you'd pray
+for me; I'm such an unbeliever--in the beliefs, I mean, the beliefs the
+church people think we can't get on without. My religion is scarcely
+anything but longings and strivings"--she sadly smiled--"longings and
+strivings and hopes."
+
+"Yet you wouldn't--"
+
+"Part with it? Oh, not for the world beside!"
+
+"Neither would I--with mine." The soldier folded his hands in
+supplication. "Neither would I--though mine, O Lord--is only
+the--old-fashioned sort--for whose beliefs our fathers--used to kill one
+another; God have mercy--on them--and us."
+
+There was a great stillness. Against the bedside Charlotte had sunk to
+her knees, and under the broad brim of her Leghorn hat leaned her brow
+upon her folded hands. Thus, presently, she spoke again.
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+CHARLOTTE SINGS
+
+"I know, Captain," she said, "that we can't have longings, strivings, or
+hopes, without beliefs; beliefs are what they live on. I believe in
+being strong and sweet and true for the pure sake of being so; and yet
+more for the world's sake; and as much more again for God's sake as God
+is greater than his works. I believe in beauty and in joy. I believe
+they are the goal of all goodness and of all God's work and wish. As to
+resurrection, punishment, and reward, I can't see what my noblest choice
+has to do with them; they seem to me to be God's part of the matter;
+mine is to love perfect beauty and perfect joy, both in and infinitely
+beyond myself, with the desiring love with which I rejoice to believe
+God loves them, and to pity the lack of them with the loving pity with
+which God pities it. And above all I believe that no beauty and no joy
+can be perfect apart from a love that loves the whole world's joy better
+than any separate joy of any separate soul."
+
+"Thank you," was murmured from the pillow. Then, as Charlotte once more
+wiped the damp brow, the captive said, with much labor, "After that--war
+seems--an awful thing. I suppose it isn't half so much a crime--as it is
+a--penalty--for the crimes that bring it on. But anyhow--you
+know--being--" The bugle rang out the reveillé.
+
+"Being a soldier," said Charlotte, "you want to die like one?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!--the best I can. I'd like to sit half up--and hold my
+sword--if there's--no objection. I've loved it so! It would almost be
+like holding--the hand that's far away. Of course, it isn't really
+necessary, but--it would be more like--dying--for my country."
+
+He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his
+hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing
+from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts
+had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled
+close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of
+Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly:
+"Dying--really?" He turned to his fellows--"Boys, Captain's dying."
+
+Every Northern eye was lifted to the window and I turned away.
+"Richard!" gently called Charlotte, and I saw the end was at hand; a new
+anguish was on the brow; yet the soldier was asking for a song; "a
+soldier's song, will you?"
+
+"Why, Captain," she replied, "you know, we don't sing the same words to
+our soldier-songs that you do--except in the hymns. Shall I sing 'Am I a
+soldier of the cross?'"
+
+He did not answer promptly; but when he did he said "Yes--sing that."
+
+She sang it. As the second stanza was begun we heard a responsive swell
+grow softly to fuller and fuller volume beneath the windows; the
+prisoners were singing. I heard an austere voice forbid it, but it rose
+straight on from strength to strength:
+
+"Sure I must fight if I would win,
+   Increase my courage, Lord.
+I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
+   Supported by thy word."
+
+The dying man lifted a hand and Charlotte ceased. He had not heard the
+muffled chorus of his followers below; or it may be that he had, and
+that the degree of liberty they seemed to be enjoying prompted him to
+seek the new favor he now asked. I did not catch his words, but
+Charlotte heard, and answered tenderly, yet with a thrill of pain so
+keen she could not conceal it even from him.
+
+"Oh! you wouldn't ask a rebel to sing that," she sighed, "would you?"
+
+He made no rejoinder except that his eyes were insistent. She wiped his
+temples. "I hate to refuse you."
+
+His gaze was grateful. She spoke again: "I suppose I oughtn't to mind
+it."
+
+Miss Harper came in, and Charlotte, taking her hand without a glance,
+told the Captain's hard request under her voice. Miss Harper, too, in
+her turn, gave a start of pain, but when the dying eyes and smile turned
+pleadingly to her she said, "Why, if you can, Charlotte, dear, but oh!
+how can you?"
+
+Charlotte addressed the wounded man: "Just a little bit of it, will that
+do?" and as he eagerly assented she added, to Miss Harper, "You know,
+dear, in its history it's no more theirs than ours."
+
+"No, not so much," said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and
+thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing:
+
+  "O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
+  What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"
+
+But guardedly as she began, the effect on the huddled crowd below was
+instant and electrical. They heard almost the first note; looking down
+anxiously, I saw the wonder and enthusiasm pass from man to man. They
+heard the first two lines in awed, ecstatic silence; but at the third,
+warily, first one, then three, then a dozen, then a score, bereft of
+arms, standard, and leader, little counting ever again to see freedom,
+flag, or home, they raised their voices, by the dawn's early light, in
+their song of songs.
+
+Our main body were out in the highway, just facing into column, and the
+effect on them I could not see. The prisoners' guards, though instantly
+ablaze with indignation, were so taken by surprise that for two or three
+seconds, with carbines at a ready, they--and even their sergeant in
+command--only darted fierce looks here and there and up at me. The
+prisoners must have been used to singing in ordered chorus, for one of
+them strode into their middle, and smiling sturdily at the maddened
+guard and me, led the song evenly. "No, sir!" he cried, as I made an
+angry sign for them to desist, "one verse through, if every damned fool
+of us dies for it--let the Captain hear it boys--sing!
+
+  "'The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air--'"
+
+Charlotte had ceased, in consternation not for the conditions without
+more than for those within. With the first strong swell of the song from
+below, the dying leader strove to sit upright and to lift his blade, but
+failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss
+Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching
+his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face
+untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into and over
+the strain.
+
+"Club that man over the head!" cried the sergeant of the guard, and one
+of his men swung a gun; but the Yankee sprang inside of its sweep,
+crying, "Sing her through, boys!" grappled his opponent, and hurled him
+back. In the same instant the sergeant called steadily, "Guard,
+ready--aim--"
+
+There sounded a clean slap of levelled carbines, yet from the prisoners
+came the continued song in its closing couplet:
+
+  "The star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave!--"
+
+and out of the midst of its swell the oaths and curses and defiant
+laughter of a dozen men crying, with tears in their eyes, "Shoot! shoot!
+why don't you shoot?"
+
+But the command to fire did not come; suddenly there was a drumming of
+hoofs, then their abrupt stoppage, and the voice of a vigilant commander
+called, "Attention!"
+
+With a few words to the sergeant, more brief than harsh, and while the
+indomitable singers pressed on to the very close of the stanza without a
+sign from him to desist, Ferry bade the subaltern resume his command,
+and turned toward me at the window. He lifted his sword and spoke in a
+lowered tone, the sullen guard stood to their arms, and every captive
+looked up for my reply.
+
+"Shall I come?" he inquired; but I shook my head.
+
+"What!--gone?" he asked again, and I nodded. He turned and trotted
+lightly after the departing column. I remember his pensive mien as he
+moved down the grove, and how a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above
+his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender
+mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and
+let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his
+place under the window and was beckoning for my attention.
+
+"Is she coming?" he called up, and Charlotte, at my side, spoke
+downward:
+
+"I shall be with you in a moment."
+
+While he waited the second lieutenant of the Louisianians came, and as
+guard and prisoners started away she came out upon the veranda steps.
+Across her knee, as she and Gholson galloped off by a road across
+fields, lay in a wrapping of corn-husks the huge sabre of the dead
+northerner.
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+HARRY LAUGHS
+
+The first hush of the deserted camp-ground was lost in the songs of
+returning birds. Captain Jewett, his majestic length blanket-bound from
+brow to heel as trimly as a bale, had been laid under ground, and the
+Harpers stood in prayer at the grave's head and foot with hats on for
+their journey. The burial squad, turned guard of honor to the dead
+captain of the Louisianians, were riding away on either side of a light
+wagon that bore his mortal part. I, after all, was to be the Harpers'
+guardian on their way.
+
+Day widened into its first perfection as we moved down the highroad
+toward a near fork whose right was to lead Harry and his solemn cortége
+southward, while the left should be our eastward course. Camille and I
+rode horseback, side by side, with no one near enough to smile at my
+sentimental laudations of the morning's splendors, or at her for
+repaying my eloquence with looks so full of tender worship, personal
+acceptance and self-bestowal, that to tell of them here would make as
+poor a show as to lift a sea-flower out of the sea; they call for
+piccolo notes and I am no musician.
+
+The familiar little leather-curtained wagon was just ahead of us,
+bearing the other three Harpers, the old negro driver and--to complete
+its overloading--his daughter, Charlotte's dark maid. Beside the wheels
+ambled and babbled Harry Helm. At the bridge he fell back to us and
+found us talking of Charlotte. Camille was telling me how well Charlotte
+knew the region south of us, and how her plan was to dine at mid-day
+with such a friend and to pass the night with such another; but the
+moment Harry came up she began to upbraid him in her mellowest
+flute-notes for not telling us that he had got his wound in saving--
+
+"Now, you ladies--" cried the teased aide-de-camp, "I--I didn't save
+Gholson's life! I didn't try to save it! I only tried to split a
+Yankee's head and didn't even do that! Dick Smith, if you tell anybody
+else that I saved--Well, who did, then? Good Lordy! if I'd known that to
+save a man's life would make all this fuss I wouldn't 'a' done it! Why,
+Quinn and I had to sit and listen to Ned Ferry a solid half-hour last
+night, telling us the decent things he'd known Gholson to do, and the
+allowances we'd ought to make for a man with Gholson's sort of a
+conscience! And then, to cap--to clap--to clap the ki'--to cap--the
+_climax_--consound that word, I never did know what it meant--to clap
+the climax, Ned sends for Gholson and gets Quinn to speak to him
+civilly--aw, haw, haw!--Quinn showing all the time how he hated the job,
+like a cat when you make him jump over a stick! And then he led us on,
+with just a word here and there, until we all agreed as smooth as glass,
+that all Quinn had said was my fault, and all I had done was Gholson's
+fault, and all Gholson had said or done or left undone was our fault,
+and the rest was partly Ned's fault, but mostly accident."
+
+Camille declared she did not and would not believe there had been any
+fault with any one, anywhere, and especially with Mr. Gholson, and I
+liked Lieutenant Helm less than ever, noticing anew the unaccountable
+freedom with which Camille seemed to think herself entitled to rebuke
+him. "Oh, I'm in your power," he cried to her, "and I'll call him a
+spotless giraffe if you want me to! that's what he is; I've always
+thought so!" The spring-wagon was taking the left fork and he cantered
+ahead to begin his good-byes there and save her for the last. When he
+made his adieu to her he said, "Won't you let Mr. Smith halt here with
+me a few moments? I want to speak of one or two matters that--"
+
+She resigned me almost with scorn; which privately amused me, and, I
+felt sure, hoodwinked the aide-de-camp.
+
+"Say, Dick!" he began, as she moved away, "look here, I'm going to tell
+you something; Ned Ferry's in love with Charlotte Oliver!"
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"Yes, I do, mean it! Smith, Ned's a grand fellow. I'm glad I came here
+yesterday."
+
+"Yes, you've secured a furlough."
+
+"Oh, this thing, yes; don't you wish you had it! No, I'm glad I came,
+for what I've learned. I'm glad for what Ned Ferry has taught me a man
+can do, and keep from doing, when he's got the upper hold of himself.
+And I'm glad for what she--you know who--by George! any man would know
+who ever saw her, for she draws every man who comes within her range, as
+naturally as a rose draws a bee. I'm glad for what she has taught me a
+woman can _be_, and can keep from being, so long as she knows there's
+one real man to live up to! just _up to_, mind you, I don't even say to
+live _for_."
+
+I stared with surprise. Was this the trivial Harry talking? Fact is, the
+pair we were talking about had by some psychical magic rarified the
+atmosphere for all of us until half our notes were above our
+normal pitch.
+
+"Do you mean she loves him; what sign of such a thing did she show
+yesterday or last evening?"
+
+"Not a sign of a sign! And yet I'll swear it! Do you know where she's
+gone?"
+
+"To-day? I think I do."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Well, Lieutenant, if I were she, _I_ should go straight into the Yankee
+lines behind Port Hudson. She's got Jewett's messages and his sword, and
+the Yank's won't know her as a Confederate any better than they ever
+did; for it's only these men whom we've captured who have found out
+she's Charlotte Oliver, or that she had any knowing part in General
+Austin's ruse."
+
+"If Oliver doesn't tell," said Harry, lifting his bad hand in pain.
+
+"He will not dare! If she can only get her word in first and tell them,
+herself, that he's Charlotte Oliver's husband and has just led the
+finest company of Federal scouts in the two States to destruction--"
+
+"Hi! that ought to cook his dough!--with her face--and her voice!"
+
+"Yes," I responded, "--and his breath."
+
+"And why do you think she wants to do this?" asked Harry.
+
+"She doesn't want to do it; but she feels she must, knowing that every
+blow he strikes from now on is struck on her account. I believe she's
+gone to warn the Yankees that his whole animus is personal revenge and
+that he will sacrifice anything or anybody, any principle or pledge or
+cause, at any moment, to wreak that private vengeance, in whole or
+in part."
+
+"Dick Smith, yes! But don't you see, besides, what she _does_ want? Why,
+she wants to keep Oliver and Ferry apart until somebody else for whom
+she doesn't care as she cares for Ned, say you, or I, or--or--"
+
+"Gholson?"
+
+"Gholson, no! she can't trust Gholson, Gholson's conscience is too
+vindictive; that's why she's keeping him with her as long as she can.
+No, but until some of us, I say, can give Oliver a thousand times better
+than he ought ever to get--except for her sake--"
+
+"Yes, you mean a soldier's clean death; and what you want of me is for
+me to say that I, for one, will lose no honest chance to give it to him,
+isn't it?"
+
+"What I want of you, Smith, is to tell you that _I_ shall lose no such
+chance."
+
+"Well, neither shall I."
+
+"Bully for you, Dick; bully boy with the glass eye! You see, you're one
+of only half a dozen or so that know Oliver when they see him; so Ned
+will soon be sending you after him. Ned's got a conscience, too, you
+know, as squirmy as Gholson's. Oh, Lord! yes, you don't often _see_ it,
+but it's as big and hard as a conscript's ague-cake." The Lieutenant
+gathered his rein; "Smith, I want Ned and her to get one another;
+that's me!"
+
+I was tempted to say it was me, too, but I forbore and only said it was
+I.
+
+"All the same," said Harry, "I'm sorry for the little girl!"
+
+"Little girl?"
+
+"Oh, come, now, you know!" He leaned to me and whispered, "Miss Cécile!"
+
+"Lieutenant," I replied, with a flush, realizing what I owed to the
+family as a prospective member of it, "you're mistaking a little
+patriotic ardor--"
+
+"Pat who--oh? I tell you, my covey,--and of course, you understand, I
+wouldn't breathe it any further--"
+
+"I'd rather you would not."
+
+"Phew-ew! I don't know why in the devil _you'd_ rather I would not,
+but--Smith,--she's so dead-gone in love with Ned Ferry, that if she
+doesn't get him--I George! it'll e'en a'most kill her!"
+
+I guffawed in derision. "And she didn't even have to tell you so! She
+can't even hide its deadly intensity from the casual bystander! haw!
+haw! haw! And it's all the outcome of a _three-days acquaintance_! It
+beats Doctor Swiftgrow's Mustache Invigor'--aw, haw! haw!" "Oh, you
+think so? Pity you couldn't get a few barrels of it--aw, haw! haw!" said
+Harry, and my laughter left off where his began. But, some way hurting
+his hand, he, too, stopped short. I drew my horse back.
+
+"Is that all you've noticed?" I smilingly inquired. "Isn't anybody else
+mortally in love with anybody else? You can't make me believe that's all
+you know!"
+
+"Well, then, I sha'n't try. I do know one thing more; heard it
+yesterday. Like to hear it?"
+
+"Like! Why, I'm just that dead-gone with curiosity that if I don't hear
+it it'll e'en a'most kill me--aw, haw! haw! haw!"
+
+"Well, I'm tired saving people's lives, but we won't count this one; you
+say you want to hear it--I can't give you all of it but it begins:
+
+"'Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair!
+  O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!'--
+
+"Haw! haw! haw! Good-bye, Smith,--aw, haw! haw! haw!--and it's all the
+outcome of a three-days acquaintance!--haw! haw! haw!--Oh,
+say!--Smith!"--I was leaving him--"that's right, go back and begin
+over!--'Return! return!'--aw, haw! haw! haw!"
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+UNIMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIAL
+
+On the second night after that morning of frantic mortification I was
+riding at Ned Ferry's side, in Louisiana. The camp of the brigade was a
+few miles behind us. Somewhere in front of us, fireless and close hid,
+lay our company of scouts, ahead of whose march he had pushed the day
+before to confer with the General, and we were now on our way to rejoin
+them. Under our horses' feet was that old Plank-road which every
+"buttermilk ranger" must remember--whether dead or not, I am tempted to
+say,--who rode under either flag in the Felicianas in '63 and '64.
+
+Late in the evening of the day on which I had conducted the Harpers to
+Squire Wall's I had received a despatch ordering me to board the next
+morning's train at Brookhaven with my horse. On it I should find a
+number of cases of those shoes I had seen at Hazlehurst. At Tangipahoa I
+was to transfer them to one or two army-wagons which would by that time
+have reached there, and bring them across to Clinton, where a guard
+would meet and join me to conduct the wagons to camp. And thus I had
+done, bearing with me a sad vision of dear dark Miss Harper fluttering
+her handkerchief above her three nieces' heads, one of whom refrained
+until the opportunity had all but gone, to wave good-bye to the visibly
+wretched author of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes." My
+lucky Cricket had gone three nights and two whole days with no harness
+but his halter, and to-night, beside the Yankee's horse, that still bore
+Ned Ferry, he was as good as new. My leader and I talked of Charlotte.
+In the middle of this day's forenoon Gholson had come into camp
+reporting at the General's tent the long ride she had made on Monday; as
+good a fifty miles as Ferry's own. We called it, now, Ferry and I, a
+most clever achievement for a woman. "Many women," he said, "know how to
+ride, but she knows how to march."
+
+"I think you must have taught her," I responded, and he enjoyed his
+inability to deny it. So I ventured farther and said she seemed to me
+actually to have reached, in the few days since I had first seen her, a
+finer spiritual stature.
+
+"She?" he asked; "ah! she is of the kind that must grow or die. Yes, you
+may be right; but in that time she has kept me so occupied growing,
+myself, that I did not notice she was doing the same. But also, I think,
+the eyes with which we look at her have grown."
+
+"She has outgrown this work," I insisted.
+
+"Those letters--to the newspapers?"
+
+"No, this other; this work which she has to do by craft and wiles and
+disguises. Lieutenant, I don't believe she can go on doing that now with
+her past skill, since life has become to her a nobler story than it
+promised to be."
+
+My companion lifted higher in the saddle with delight. Then soberly he
+said, "We have got to lose her." I turned inquiringly and he continued:
+"She has done me the honor to tell me--Miss Harper and me--that if she
+succeeds in what she is now trying to do--you know?--"
+
+"I think I do. It's to prevent Oliver from making himself useful to the
+enemy, isn't it?"
+
+"Well--like that; and she says if she comes out all right she will leave
+us; yes, for the hospital service."
+
+"Hosp'--Oh--oh! gangrene, typhoid, lock-jaw, itch, small-pox! Isn't she
+deep enough in the hospital service already, with her quinine dolls?"
+
+"Ah! but she cannot continue to play dolls that way; she must find
+something else. I see you have my temptation; yes, the desire to see her
+always doing something splendid. That is not 'real life,' as you call
+it. And besides, was not that you said one time to me 'No splendor
+shines at last so far as a hidden splendor'?"
+
+"No, sir! I suppose it's true, but I never want to see her splendor
+shining through pock-marks." The reply won from him a gesture of
+approval, and this gave me a reckless tongue. "Why, if I were you,
+Lieutenant, she simply shouldn't go! Good Heaven! isn't she far enough
+away at the nearest? How can you tamely--no, I don't mean tamely,
+but--how can you _endure_ to let this matter drift--how can you
+endure it?"
+
+At the beginning of my question he straightened exactly as I had seen
+him do in the middle of the lane when our recoiled column was
+staggering; but as my extravagance flamed up he quieted rebukingly, and
+with a quieter smile than ever asked "Is that a soldier's question?
+Smith, is there not something wrong with you to-night?"
+
+"There always is," I replied.
+
+"No, but to-night I think you are taking that 'lower fork' you talk
+sometimes about. Of course, if you don't want to tell--"
+
+"_May_ I tell you?"
+
+"Ah, certainly! Is it that little Harper girl?"
+
+I nodded, all choked up. When I could speak I had to drop the words by
+ones and twos, and did not so much as say them as let them bleed from my
+lips; and never while I live shall I forget the sweet, grave, perfect
+sympathy with which my friend listened and led me on, and listened and
+led me on. I said I had never believed in love at first sight until now
+when it had come upon me to darken and embitter my life henceforth.
+
+He replied that certainly love sometimes _germinated_ at first sight,
+and I interrupted greedily that that was all I claimed--except that love
+could also, at times, _grow to maturity_ with amazing speed, a speed I
+never could have credited previous to these last four days. And he
+admitted as much, but thought time only could prove such love; whereto I
+rejoined that that was what she had answered.
+
+He glanced at me suddenly, then smoothed his horse's mane, and said,
+gently, "That means you have declared yourself to her?"
+
+I confessed I had, and told him how, on our journey to Squire Wall's,
+being stung to desperation by the infantile way in which she had drooled
+out to others what my love had sacredly confided to her alone, I had
+abruptly confronted her with the fact, and in the ensuing debate,
+carried away by the torrent of my emotions, had offered her my love, for
+life and all.
+
+"And she--ah, yes. I see; and I see, too, that in all she ever said or
+did or seemed, before, she never made herself such a treasure to be
+longed for and fought and lived for as in the way in which she--"
+He paused.
+
+"Refused me! Oh, it's so; it's so! Ah! if you could have witnessed her
+dignity, her wisdom, her grace, her compassionate immovableness, you'd
+never think of her as the little Harper girl again. She said that if the
+unpremeditated, headlong way in which I had told my passion were my only
+mistake, and if it were only for my sake, she would not, if she could,
+answer favorably, and that I, myself, at last, would not have a girl who
+would have a man who would offer his love in that way, and that she
+would not have a man who would have a girl who would have a man who
+should offer his love in that way."
+
+I call it one of the sweetest kindnesses ever done me, that Ned Ferry
+heard me to the end of that speech and did not smile. Instead he asked
+"Did she say that as if a'--as if--amused?"
+
+"No, Lieutenant, she nearly cried. Oh, I wish we were on some dangerous
+errand to-night, instead of just camp and bed!"
+
+"Well, that's all right, Richard; we are."
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+"CAN I GET THERE BY CANDLE-LIGHT?"
+
+After a few minutes we quitted the public way by an obscure path in the
+woods on our right. When we had followed this for two or three miles we
+turned to the left again and pressed as softly as we could into a low
+tangled ground where the air seemed stagnant and mosquitoes stung
+savagely. We wiped away the perspiration in streams. I pushed forward to
+Ferry's side and whispered my belief that at last we were to see rain.
+
+"Yes," he said, "and with thunder and lightning; just what we want
+to-night."
+
+I asked why. "Oh, they hate our thunder-storms, those Yankee patrols."
+
+Presently we were in a very dark road, and at a point where it dropped
+suddenly between steep sides we halted in black shadow. A gleam of pale
+sand, a whisper of deep flowing waters, and a farther glimmer of more
+sands beyond them challenged our advance. We had come to a "grapevine
+ferry." The scow was on the other side, the water too shoal for the
+horses to swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the
+blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering,
+long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little
+sinner the screech-owl. Ferry murmured to me to answer it and I sent the
+same faint horror-stricken tremolo back. Again it came to us, from not
+farther than one might toss his cap, and I followed Ferry down to the
+water's edge. The grapevine guy swayed at our side, we heard the scow
+slide from the sands, and in a few moments, moved by two videttes, it
+touched our shore. Soon we were across, the two videttes riding with us,
+and beyond a sharp rise, in an old opening made by the swoop of a
+hurricane, we entered the silent unlighted bivouac of Ferry's scouts.
+Ferry got down and sat on the earth talking with Quinn, while the
+sergeants quietly roused the sleepers to horse.
+
+Now we marched, and when we had gone a mile or so Ned Ferry turned
+aside, taking with him only Sergeant Jim, Kendall, another private, and
+me. We went at an alert walk single-file for the better part of an hour
+and stopped at length in a narrow untilled "deadening." Beyond it at our
+left a faint redness shone just above the tree-tops. At our right, in
+the northwest, a similar glow was ruddier, the heavens being darker
+there except when once or twice they paled with silent lightnings.
+Sergeant Jim went forward alone and on foot, and presently was back
+again, whispering to Ferry and remounting.
+
+Ferry led Kendall and me into the woods, the other two remaining. We
+found rising ground, and had ridden but a few minutes when from its
+crest we looked upon a startling sight. In front of us was a stretch of
+specially well farmed land. Our woods swept round it on both sides,
+crossed a highway, and gradually closed in again so as to terminate the
+opening about half a mile away. Always the same crops, bottom cause of
+the war: from us to the road an admirable planting of cotton, and from
+there to the farther woods as goodly a show of thick corn. The whole
+acreage swept downward to that terminus, at the same time sinking inward
+from the two sides. On the highway shone the lighted rear window of a
+roadside "store," and down the two sides of the whole tract stretched
+the hundred tent-fires of two brigade camps of the enemy's cavalry.
+Their new, white canvases were pitched in long, even alleys following
+the borders of the wood, from which the brush had been cut away far
+enough for half of them to stand under the trees. The men had quieted
+down to sleep, but at one tent very near us a group of regimental
+officers sat in the light of a torch-basket, and by them were planted
+their colors. A quartet of capital voices were singing, and one who
+joined the chorus, standing by the flag, absently yet caressingly spread
+it at such breadth that we easily read on it the name of the command.
+Let me leave that out.
+
+As they sang, and as we sat in our saddles behind the low fence that ran
+quite round the opening, Ferry turned from looking across into the
+lighted window on the road and handed me his field-glass. "How many
+candles do you see in there?"
+
+I saw two. "Yes," he said, dismounting and motioning me to do the same.
+Kendall took our bridles. Leaving him with the animals we went over the
+fence, through the cotton, across the road at a point terribly near the
+lighted and guarded shop, and on down the field of corn, to and over its
+farthest fence; stooping, gliding, halting, crouching, in the
+cotton-rows and corn-rows; taking every posture two upright gentlemen
+would rather not take; while nevertheless I swelled with pride, to be
+alone at the side--or even at the heels--of one who, for all this
+apparent skulking and grovelling, and in despite of all the hidden
+drawings of his passion for a fair woman at this hour somewhere in
+peril, kept his straight course in lion-hearted pursuit of his duty (as
+he saw it) to a whole world of loves and lovers, martyrs and fighters,
+hosts of whom had as good a right to their heart's desire as I to mine
+or he to his; and I remembered Charlotte Oliver saying, on her knees, "I
+believe no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart from a love that loves
+the whole world's joy better than any separate joy of any
+separate soul."
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+"YES, AND BACK AGAIN"
+
+One matter of surprise to me was that this whole property had escaped
+molestation. I wondered who could be so favored by the enemy and yet be
+so devoted to our cause as to signal us from his window with their
+sentinels at his doors; and as we passed beyond the cornfield's farther
+fence I ventured to ask Ferry.
+
+"Aaron Goldschmidt," he whispered, as we descended into a dry, tangled
+swamp. In the depths of this wild, beside a roofed pen of logs stored
+with half a dozen bales of cotton, we were presently in the company of a
+very small man who tossed a hand in token of great amusement.
+
+"Hello, Ned!" he whispered in antic irony; "what an accident is dat,
+meeding so! Whoever is expecting someding like dis!"
+
+"Well, I hope nobody, Isidore; I hardly expected it myself, your father
+set those candles so close the one behind the other."
+
+Isidore doubled with mirth and as suddenly straightened. "Your horse is
+here since yesterday. _She_ left him--by my father. She didn't t'ink t'e
+Yankees is going to push away out here to-night. But he is a pusher,
+t'at Grierson! You want him to-night, t'at horse? He is here by me, but
+I t'ink you best not take him, hmm? To cross t'e creek and go round t'e
+ot'er way take you more as all night; and to go back t'is same way you
+come, even if I wrap him up in piece paper you haven't got a lawch
+insite pocket you can carry him?" He laughed silently and the next
+instant was more in earnest than ever.
+
+"_She_ is in a tight place! She hires my mother's pony to ride in to
+headquarters." He called them hatekvartuss, but we need not. "I t'ink
+she is not a prisoner--_unless_--she wants to come back." He doubled
+again. "Anyhow, I wish you can see her to-night; she got another
+doll-baby for t'e gildren, and she give you waluable informations by de
+hatfull.... Find her? I tell you how you find her in finfty-nine
+minutes--vedder permitting, t'at is."
+
+The last phrase was fitted to a listening pose, and the first mutter of
+the pending thunder-storm came out of the northwest. Then Isidore
+hastened through the practical details of his proposition. Ferry drew a
+breath of enthusiasm. "Can I have my horse, bridled and saddled, in
+three minutes?"
+
+"I pring um in two!" said Isidore, and vanished. Ferry turned with an
+overmastering joy in every note of his whispered utterance. "After all!"
+he said, and I could have thrown my arms around him in pure delight to
+hear duty and heart's desire striking twelve together.
+
+"Smith," he asked, "can you start back without me? Then go at once; I
+shall overtake you on my horse."
+
+I stole through the cornfield safely; the frequent lightnings were still
+so well below the zenith as to hide me in a broad confusion of monstrous
+shadows. But when I came to cross the road no crouching or gliding would
+do. I must go erect and only at the speed of some ordinary official
+errand. So I did, at a point between two opposite fence-gaps, closely
+after an electric gleam, and I was rejoicing in the thick darkness that
+followed, when all at once the whole landscape shone like day and I
+stood in the middle of the road, in point-blank view of a small squad, a
+"visiting patrol". They were trotting toward me in the highway, hardly a
+hundred yards off. As the darkness came again and the thunder crashed
+like falling timbers, I started into the cotton-field at an easy
+double-quick. The hoofs of one horse quickened to a gallop. A strong
+wind swept over, big rain-drops tapped me on the shoulder and pattered
+on the cotton-plants, the sound of the horse's galloping ceased as he
+turned after me in the soft field, and presently came the quiet call
+"Halt, there, you on foot." I went faster. I knew by my pursuer's
+coming alone that he did not take me for a Confederate, and that the
+worst I should get, to begin with, would be the flat of his sabre.
+Shrewdly loading my tongue with that hard northern _r_ which I hated
+more than all unrighteousness, I called back "Oh, I'm under orders! go
+halt some fool who's got time to halt!"
+
+I obliqued as if bound for the headquarters fire where we had seen the
+singers, the lightning branched over the black sky like tree-roots, the
+thunder crashed and pounded again, the wind stopped in mid-career, and
+the rain came straight down in sheets. "Halt!" yelled the horseman. He
+lifted his blade, but I darted aside and doubled, and as he whirled
+around after me, another rider, meeting him and reining in at such close
+quarters that the mud flew over all three of us, lifted his hand
+and said--
+
+"He is right, sergeant, he is carrying out my orders." Ferry's black
+silk handkerchief about his neck covered his Confederate bars of rank,
+and the Federal may or may not have noted the absence of
+shoulder-straps; our arms remained undrawn; and so the sergeant,
+catching a breath or two of disconcertion, caught nothing else. While
+Ferry spoke on for another instant I showed my heels; then he left the
+dripping Yankee mouthing an angry question and loped after me, and over
+the low fence went the two of us almost together.
+
+Kendall was not there, the Federal camp-makers had tardily repaired
+their blunder by posting guards; but these were not looking for their
+enemies from the side of their own camp, and as we cleared the fence in
+the full blaze of a lightning flash, only two or three wild shots sang
+after us. In the black downpour Ferry reached me an invisible hand. I
+leapt astride his horse's croup, and trusting the good beast to pick his
+way among the trees himself, we sped away. Soon we came upon our three
+men waiting with the horses, and no great while afterward the five of us
+rejoined our command. The storm lulled to mild glimmerings and a gentle
+shower, and the whole company, in one long single file, began to sweep
+hurriedly, stealthily, and on a wide circuit of obscurest byways, deeper
+than ever into the enemy's lines.
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+CHARLOTTE IN THE TENTS OF THE FOE
+
+From certain rank signs of bad management in the Federal camp one could
+easily guess that our circuit was designed to bring us around to its
+rear. That a colonel's tent--the one where the singers were--was not
+where the colonel's tent belonged was a trifle, but the slovenliness
+with which the forest borders of the camp were guarded was a graver
+matter. Evidently those troops were at least momentarily in unworthy
+hands, and I was so remarking to Kendall when a murmured command came
+back from Ferry, to tell Dick Smith to stop that whispering. I was
+sorry, for I wanted to add that I knew we were not going to attack the
+camp itself. That was on Wednesday night. Charlotte and Gholson had
+made their ride of fifty miles on Monday. The friends with whom she
+stopped at nightfall contrived to cram him into their crowded soldiers'
+room, and he had given the whole company of his room-mates, as they sat
+up in their beds, a full account of the fight at Sessions's, Charlotte's
+care of the sick and dying, and the singing, by her and the blue-coats,
+of their battle-song. Next morning Charlotte, without Gholson--who
+turned off to camp--rode on to Goldschmidt's store, just beyond which
+there was then still a Confederate picket. Here she hired Mrs.
+Goldschmidt's pony, rode to the picket, and presented the Coralie
+Rothvelt pass.
+
+"Miss Coralie Rothvelt; yes, all right," said the officer, "the men that
+rode with you this morning told me all about you." He went with her as
+far as his videttes, and thence she rode alone to a picket of the
+Federal army and by her request was conducted under guard to the
+headquarters of a corps commander. To him and his chief-of-staff she
+told the fate of Jewett's scouts and delivered the messages of their
+dying leader; and then she tendered the hero's sword.
+
+The staff-officer cut away its cornhusk wrapping and read aloud the
+owner's name on the hilt. The General laid the mighty weapon across his
+palm and sternly shut his lips. "How did you get through the enemy's
+pickets with this?"
+
+"I had a Confederate general's pass."
+
+"Ah! Is the Confederate general as nameless as yourself?"
+
+"I am not nameless; I only ask leave to withhold my name until I have
+told one or two other things."
+
+"But you don't mind confessing you're an out-and-out rebel sympathizer?"
+
+Under the broad-brimmed hat her smile grew to a sparkle. "No, I enjoy
+it."
+
+The chief-of-staff smiled, but the General darkened and pressed his
+questions. At length he summed up. "So, then, you wish me to believe
+that you did all you did, and now have come into our lines at a most
+extraordinary and exhausting speed and running the ugliest kinds of
+risks, in mere human sympathy for a dying stranger, he being a Union
+officer and you a secessionist of"--a courtly bow--"the very elect;
+that's your meaning, is it not?"
+
+"No, General; in the first place, I am not one of any elect."
+
+A flattering glimmer of amusement came into the two men's faces, but
+some change in Charlotte's manner arrested it and brought an enhanced
+deference.
+
+"In the second place, I am not here merely on this errand."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"No, General. And in the last place, my motive in this errand is no mere
+sympathy for any one person; I am here from a sense of public duty--"
+The speaker seemed suddenly overtaken by emotions, dropped her words
+with pained evenness, and fingered the lace handkerchief in her lap.
+
+"Pardon," interrupted the General, "the sunlight annoys you. Major, will
+you drop that curtain?" "Thank you. One thing I am here for, General,
+is to tell you something, and I have to begin by asking that neither of
+you will ever say how you learned it."
+
+The two men bowed.
+
+"Thank you. Please understand, also, I have never uttered this but to
+one friend, a lady. There was no need; I have not wanted aid or counsel,
+even from friends. But I feel duty bound to tell it to you, now,
+because, for one thing, the brave soldier who wore that sword--" Her
+eyes rose to the weapon and fell again; she bit her lip.
+
+"Yes--well--what of him?"
+
+"He was lured to disaster and death by a man whose supreme purpose was,
+and is to-day, revenge upon me. That man drew him to his ruin purely in
+search of my life." Charlotte sat with her strange in-looking,
+out-looking gaze holding the gaze of her questioner until for relief
+he spoke.
+
+"Why, young lady, it's hard to doubt anything you say, but really that
+sounds rather fanciful. Why should you think it?"
+
+"I do not think it, I know it. He sends me his own assurance of it by
+his own father, so that his revenge may be fuller by my knowing daily
+and hourly that he is on my trail."
+
+"And you appeal to me for protection?"
+
+She smiled. "No. I am not seeking to divert his fury from myself, but to
+confine it to myself. Fancy yourself a human-hearted woman, General, and
+murder being done day by day because you are alive." "Oh, this is
+incredible! What is its occasion, its origin? How are you in any way
+responsible?"
+
+"Why, largely I am not. Yet in degree I am, General, because of
+shortcomings of mine--faults--errors--that--oh--that have their bearing
+in the case, don't you see?"
+
+"No, I don't; pray don't ask me to draw inferences; I might infer too
+much."
+
+"Yes, you might, easily," said Charlotte; "for I only mean shortcomings
+of the kind we readily excuse in others though we never can or should
+pardon them in ourselves."
+
+The General turned an arch smile of perplexity upon his chief-of-staff.
+"I don't think we're quite up to that line of perpetual snow,
+Walter, are we?"
+
+The chief-of-staff "guessed they were not."
+
+Charlotte resumed. "I have come to you in the common interest, to warn
+you against that man. I believe he is on his way here to offer his
+services as a guide. He is fearless, untiring, and knows all this region
+by heart."
+
+"Union man, I take it, is he not?"
+
+"No, he's Federal, Confederate or guerilla as it may suit his bloody
+ends."
+
+"And you want me not to make use of him."
+
+"Oh, more than that; I want him stopped!--stopped from killing and
+burning on his and my private account. But I want much more than that,
+too. I know how you commonly stop such men."
+
+"We hang them to the first tree."
+
+"Yes, our side does the same. If I wanted such a fate to overtake him I
+should only have to let him alone. At risks too hideous to name I have
+saved him from it twice. I am here to-day chiefly to circumvent his
+purposes; but if I may do so in the way I wish to propose to you, I
+shall also save him once more. I am willing to save him--in that
+way--although by so doing I shall lose--fearfully." She dropped her
+glance and turned aside.
+
+"How do you propose to circumvent and yet save him?"
+
+"By getting you to send him so far to your own army's rear that he
+cannot get back; to compel him to leave the country; to go into your
+country, where law and order reign as they cannot here between
+the lines."
+
+"And you consider that a reasonable request?"
+
+"Oh, sir, I must make it! I can ask no less!"
+
+"But you say if this scheme works you lose by it. What will you lose?"
+
+"I may lose track of him! If I lose track of him I may have to go
+through a long life not knowing whether he is dead or alive."
+
+"And suppose--why,--young lady, I thought you were unmarried. I--oh,
+what do you mean; is he--?"
+
+Charlotte's head drooped and her hands trembled. "Yes, by law and church
+decree he is my husband."
+
+"Good Heaven!" murmured the General, drew a breath, and folded his arms.
+"But, madam! if a man _abandons_ his wife--"
+
+"I abandoned him."
+
+"Good for you!" "It was vital for me. But I did it on evidence which
+our laws ignore, the testimony of slaves. Oh, General, don't try to
+untangle me; only stop him!"
+
+"Ah! madam, I'll do the little I can. How am I to know him?"
+
+"By a pistol-wound in his right hand, got last week. He would have got
+it in his brain but for my pleading. His name is Oliver."
+
+"Oliver; hmm! any relation to Charlotte Oliver, your so called newspaper
+correspondent? I'd like to stop her.--How?--I don't quite hear you."
+
+"I am Charlotte Oliver."
+
+The two officers glanced sharply at each other. When the General turned
+again he flushed resentfully. "Have you never resumed your maiden name?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then, madam, tell me this! With a whole world of other people's names
+to choose from, why _have_ you borrowed Charlotte Oliver's? Have you
+come here determined to be sent to prison, Miss Coralie Rothvelt?"
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+STAY TILL TO-MORROW
+
+Charlotte did not move an eyelash. Gradually a happy confidence lighted
+her face. "Freedom or prison is to me a secondary question. I came here
+determined to use only the truth. No wild creature loves to be free more
+than I do. I want to go back into our lines, and to go at once; but--I
+am Charlotte Oliver."
+
+"Young lady, listen to me. I know your story is nearly all true. I know
+some good things about you which you have modestly left out; one of the
+rebels who stopped where you did last night and rode with you this
+morning was brought to me a prisoner half an hour ago. But he said your
+name was Rothvelt. How's that?"
+
+"Unfortunately, General, my name is Charlotte Oliver. Two or three times
+I have had use for so much concealment as there was in the childish
+prank of turning my name wrong side out." The speaker made a sign to the
+chief-of-staff: "Write the two names side by side and see if they
+are not one."
+
+He was already doing so, and nodded laughingly to his superior.
+Charlotte spoke on. "I tell you the truth only, gentlemen, though I tell
+you no more of it than I must. I have run many a risk to get the truth,
+and to get it early. If it is your suspicion that by so doing, or in any
+other way, I have forfeited a lady's liberty, let me hear and answer.
+If not--"
+
+"Oh, I'll have to send you to the provost-martial at Baton Rouge and let
+you settle that with him."
+
+"Ah, no, General! By the name of the lady you love best, I beg you to
+see my need and let me go. I promise you never henceforth to offend your
+cause except in that mere woman's sympathy with what you call rebellion,
+for which women are not so much as banished by you--or if they are, then
+banish me! Treat me no better, and no worse, than a 'registered enemy'!"
+
+The General shook his head. "Your registration has been in the open
+field of military action; sometimes, I fear, between the lines. At least
+it has been with your pen."
+
+"General, I have laid down the pen."
+
+"Indeed! to take up what?"
+
+"The spoon!" said Charlotte, with that smile which no man ever wholly
+resisted. "I leave the sword and its questions to my brother man, in the
+blue and in the gray--God save it!--and have pledged myself to the gray,
+to work from now on only under the yellow flag of mercy and healing."
+
+"Yes, of course; mercy--and comfort--and every sort of unarmed aid--to
+rebels."
+
+"To the men you call so, yes. Yet I pledge you, General, to deal as
+tenderly with every man in blue who comes within range of my care as I
+did with Captain Jewett."
+
+"Oh, I know you did even better than you've told me, but I'd be a fool
+to send you back on the instant, so. Stay till to-morrow or next day."
+The captor smiled. "Major, I think we owe the lady that much
+hospitality."
+
+The Major thought so, and that she must need a day's rest, more than she
+realized. She could be made in every way comfortable--under guard at
+"Mr. Gilmer's." The Gilmers were Unionists, whose fine character had
+been their only protection through two years of ostracism, yet he
+believed they would treat her well. "Oh! not there, please," said
+Charlotte; "I hear they are to give some of your officers a dance
+to-morrow evening!" and there followed a parley that called forth all
+her playfullest tact. "Oh, no," she said, at one critical point, "I'm
+not so narrow or sour but I could dance with a blue uniform; but
+suppose--why, suppose one's friends in gray should catch one dancing
+with one's enemies in blue. Such things have happened, you know."
+
+"It sha'n't happen to-morrow night," laughed the General.
+
+She offered to nurse the Federal sick, instead, in the command's
+field-hospital, but no, the General rose to end the interview. "My dear
+young lady, the saintliest thing we can let you do is to dance at that
+merrymaking."
+
+She rose. "As a prisoner under guard, General, I can nurse the sick, but
+I will not dance."
+
+The General smiled. "I'll take your parole."
+
+"Oh! exact a parole from a woman?"
+
+"Good gracious, why shouldn't I! As for you,--ha!--I'd as soon turn a
+commissioned rebel officer loose in my camp unparoled as you."
+
+"Then take my parole! I give it! you have it! I'll take the chances."
+
+"And the dances?" asked the Major.
+
+"Very good," said the General, "you are now on parole. See the lady
+conducted to Squire Gilmer's, Major. And now, Miss--eh,--day after
+to-morrow morning I shall either pass you beyond my lines or else send
+you to Baton Rouge. Good-day." When Charlotte found herself alone in a
+room of the Gilmer house she lay down upon the bed staring and sighing
+with dismay; she was bound by a parole! If within its limit of time
+Oliver should appear, "It will mean Baton Rouge for me!" she cried under
+her breath, starting up and falling back again; "Baton Rouge, New
+Orleans, Ship Island!" She was in as feminine a fright as though she had
+never braved a danger. Suddenly a new distress overwhelmed her:
+if--if--someone to deliver her should come--"Oh Heaven! I am
+paroled!--bound hand and foot by my insane parole!"
+
+Softly she sprang from the bed, paced the floor, went to the window,
+seemed to look out upon the landscape; but in truth she was looking in
+upon herself. There she saw a most unaccountable tendency for her
+judgment--after some long overstrain--momentarily, but all at once, to
+swoon, collapse, turn upside down like a boy's kite and dart to earth;
+an impulse--while fancying she was playing the supremely courageous or
+generous or clever part--suddenly to surrender the key of the situation,
+the vital point in whatever she might be striving for. "Ah me, ah me!
+why did I give my parole?"
+
+At the close of the next day--"Walter," said the General as the
+chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--"oh, thud
+devil!--you going to that dance?"
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+THE DANCE AT GILMER'S
+
+All the while that I recount these scenes there come to me soft
+orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking
+of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music
+which I heard first--and last--in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other
+so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the
+daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into
+a roof; wail and huzza, camp-fire, litter and grave; battlefield stench;
+fiddle and flame; and ever in the midst these impromptu merrymakings to
+keep us from going stark mad, one and all,--as so many literally did.
+
+The Gilmer daughters were fair, but they were only three, and the
+Gilmers were the sole Unionists in their neighborhood. "Still, a few
+girls will come," said Charlotte, sparkling first blue and then black at
+a sparkling captain who said that, after all, the chief-of-staff had
+decided he couldn't attend. I know she sparkled first blue and then
+black, for she always did so when she told of it in later days.
+
+"They say," responded the captain, "that in this handy little world
+there are always a few to whom policy is the best honesty; is that the
+few who will come?"
+
+"You are cynical," said Charlotte, "this is only their unarmed way of
+saving house and home for the brothers to come back to when you are
+purged out of the land."
+
+When the time came there were partners for eight gallants, and the
+gallants numbered sixteen. They counted off by twos; the evens waited
+while the odds danced the half of each set, and then the odds waited and
+cooled, tried to cool, out on the veranda. But when a reel was called
+the whole twenty-four danced together, while the fiddler (from the
+contraband camp) improvised exultant words to his electrifying tunes.
+
+      "O _ladies_ ramble in,
+          Whilst de _beaux_ ramble out,
+For to guile[1] dat golden _cha--ain._
+      My _Lawdy!_ it's a sin
+          Fo' a _fiddleh_ not to shout!
+Miss _Charlotte's_ a-comin' down de _la--ane_!"
+
+[Footnote 1: Coil.]
+
+Now the dance is off, but now it is on again, and again. The fiddler
+toils to finer and finer heights of enthusiasm; slippers twinkle,
+top-boots flash, the evens come in (to the waltz) and the odds, out on
+the veranda, tell one another confidentially how damp they are. Was ever
+an evening so smotheringly hot! Through the house-grove, where the
+darkness grows blacker and blacker and the tepid air more and more
+breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their
+horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet
+for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.]
+One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture:
+the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room,
+and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and
+fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, and on
+their haunches at every door, the squalid field-hands making grotesque
+silhouettes against the yellow glow that streamed out into the trees.
+
+Now the lightning seems nearer. Hark, that was thunder; soft, but real.
+At last the air moves; there is a breeze, and the girls come out on the
+gallants' arms to drink it in. As they lift their brows and sigh their
+comfort the lightning grows brighter, the thunder comes more promptly
+and louder, and the maidens flinch and half scream, yet linger for one
+more draft of the blessed coolness. Suddenly an inverted tree of
+blinding light branches down the sky, and the thunder crashes in one's
+very ears; the couples recoil into a group at the door, the lightning
+again fills heaven and earth, it shows the bending trees far afield, and
+the thunders peal at each other as if here were all Vicksburg and Port
+Hudson, with Porter and Farragut going by. So for a space; then the wind
+drops to a zephyr, and though the sky still blazes and crashes, and
+flames and roars, the house purrs with content under the sweet strokings
+of the rain.
+
+Let it pour! the dining-room is the centre of all things; the ladies sip
+the custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the
+punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs
+on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat;
+and the couples are again on the floor. The departing thunders grumble
+as they go, the rain falls more and more sparingly, and now it is a
+waltz, and now a quadrille, and now it's a reel again, with Miss Sallie
+or Louise or Laura or Lucille or Miss Flora "a-comin' down de lane!"
+
+So come the stars again, one by one. In a pause between dances Charlotte
+and the staff captain go to the veranda's far end and stand against the
+rail. The night is still very dark, the air motionless. Charlotte is
+remarking how far they can hear the dripping of the grove, when she
+gives a start and the captain an amused grunt; a soft, heart-broken,
+ear-searching quaver comes from just over yonder by the horses. "One of
+those pesky little screech-owls," he says. "Don't know as I ever heard
+one before under just these condi'--humph! there's another, around on
+this side."
+
+"I think I will go in," says Charlotte, with a pretence of languor. As
+they do so the same note sounds a third time; her pace quickens, and in
+passing a bright window, with a woman's protecting impulse she changes
+from his left arm to his right so as to be on the side next the owls. A
+moment later she is alone in the middle of her room, a lighted candle in
+one hand, a regally dressed doll in the other, and in her heart the cry,
+"Oh, Edgard, Edgard, my parole, my parole!"
+
+Once more she is downstairs, in the lane which the dancers are making
+for their last reel. Two of the gallants have gone out to see the
+horses, and something keeps them, but there is no need to wait. The
+fiddle rings a chord! the merry double line straightens down the hall
+from front door to rear, bang! says the fiddler's foot--"hands
+round!"--and hands round it is! In the first of the evening they had
+been obliged to tell the fiddler the names of the dancers, but now he
+knows them all and throws off his flattering personalities and his
+overworked rhymes with an impartial rotation and unflagging ardor. Once
+in a while some one privately gives him a new nickname for the next man
+"a-comin' down de lane," and as he yawps it out the whole dance gathers
+new mirth and speed.
+
+Now the third couple clasp hands, arch arms, and let the whole
+countermarching train sweep through; and a beautiful arch they make, for
+they are the aforesaid captain and Charlotte Oliver. "Hands
+round!"--hurrah for the whirling ellipse; and now it's "right and left"
+and two ellipses glide opposite ways, "to quile dat golden chain." In
+the midst of the whirl, when every hand is in some other and men and
+girls are tossing their heads to get their locks out of their eyes, at
+the windows come unnoticed changes and two men loiter in by the front
+hall door, close to the fiddler. One has his sword on, and each his
+pistols, and their boots and mud-splashed uniforms of dubious blue are
+wet and steamy. The one without the sword gives the fiddler a fresh name
+to sing out when the spinning ring shall straighten into its two gay
+ranks again, and bids him--commandingly--to yell it; and with never a
+suspicion of what it stands for, the stamping and scraping fiddler
+shouts the name of a man who "loves a good story with a
+positive passion."
+
+    "Come _a-left_, come a-right,
+       Come yo' _lily_-white hand,
+Fo' to _quile_ dat _golden cha--ain_.
+    O _ladies_ caper light--
+       Sweetest _ladies_ in de land--
+NED FERRY's a-comin' down de la--ane!"
+
+[Illustration: Musical Notation]
+
+
+
+XLVII
+
+
+HE'S DEAD.--IS SHE ALIVE?
+
+Cries of masculine anger and feminine affright filled the hall, but one
+ringing order for silence hushed all, and the dance stood still with Ned
+Ferry in its centre. In his right hand, shoulder high, he held not his
+sword, but Charlotte's fingers lightly poised for the turn in the
+arrested dance. "Stand, gentlemen, every man is covered by two; look at
+the doors; look at the windows." The staff captain daringly sprang for
+the front door, but Ferry's quick boot caught his instep and he struck
+the floor full length. Like lightning Ferry's sword was out, but he only
+gave it a deferential sweep. "Sir! better luck next time!--Lieutenant
+Quinn, put the Captain in your front rank."
+
+Quinn hustled the captives "down a lane," as the fiddler might have
+said, of Ferry's scouts, mounted them on their own horses at the door,
+and hurried them away. Charlotte had vanished but was back again in hat
+and riding-skirt. Ferry caught her hand and they ran to the front
+veranda steps just as the prisoners and guard rode swiftly from them.
+Kendall and I had the stirrup ready for her; the saddle was a man's, but
+she made a horn of its pommel, and in a flash the four of us were
+mounted. Nevertheless before we could move the grove resounded with
+shots, and Ferry, bidding us ride on after the fleeing guard, wheeled
+and galloped to where half our troop were holding back their assailants
+in the dark. But then, to our distraction, Charlotte would not fly.
+"Richard, I'm paroled!"--"Charlotte Oliver, you're my prisoner!" I
+reached for her bridle, but she avoided me and with a cry of
+recollection wheeled and was on her way back. "I forgot something! I can
+get it, I left the room lighted!"
+
+I remember vividly yet the high purpose and girlish propitiation that
+rang together in her voice. Kendall dashed after her while I went
+against a wet bough that all but threw me; but before he could reach her
+she flew up the steps, crying "Hold my horse!"
+
+"Mine, too!" I cried, springing up after her. How queerly the inner
+house stood alight and silent, its guests and inmates hidden, while
+outside pistols and carbines flashed and cracked. I came upon Charlotte,
+just recrossing her chamber to leave it, with her doll in her arms.
+"Come!" I cried, "our line is falling back behind the house!" Her head
+flinched aside, a bit of her hat flew from it, and a pistol-ball buried
+itself in the ceiling straight over my head. We ran downstairs together,
+pulling, pushing and imploring each other in the name of honor, duty and
+heaven to let him--let her--go out first through the bright hall door.
+Kendall was not in sight, but in a dim half-light a few yards off we saw
+Oliver. He was afoot, bending low, and gliding toward us with his
+revolver in his left hand. He fired as I did; her clutch spoiled my aim;
+with eager eyes she straightened to her finest height, cried "Richard!
+tell Lieutenant Ferry he--" and with a long sigh sank into my arms. A
+rush of hoofs sounded behind Oliver, he glanced up, and Ferry's blade
+fell across his brow and launched him face upward to the ground. I saw
+a bunch of horses, with mine, at the foot of the steps, and a bunch of
+men at the top; Ferry snatched Charlotte's limp form from me and said
+over his shoulder as he went down the steps, "Go get him and bring him
+along, dead or alive!"
+
+I called a man to my aid and was unlucky in not getting the cool-headed
+Kendall, for my own wits were gone. The next moment all had left us and
+I was down on the ground toiling frantically, with no help but one hand
+of my mounted companion, to heave the stalwart frame of Oliver up to
+my saddle.
+
+"Why, he's dead!" cried the lad, letting him slide half-way down when we
+had all but got him up; "don't you see he's dead? His head's laid wide
+open! He's as dead as a mackerel! I'll _swear_ we ain't got any right to
+get captured trying to save a dead Yankee."
+
+I was in despair; our horses had caught our frenzy and were plunging to
+be after their fellows, and a fresh body of the enemy were hurtling into
+the grove. Dropping my burden I vaulted up, and we scurried away, saved
+only by the enemy's healthy fear of an ambush. The first man we came up
+with was Quinn, with the rear-guard. "Is he dead?" he growled.
+
+"Dead as Adam!" said I, and my comrade put in "Head laid wide open!"
+
+"Drop back into the ranks," said Quinn to him. "Smith, ride on to
+Lieutenant Ferry. Corporal,"--to a man near him--"you know the way so
+well, go with him."
+
+The two of us sprang forward. How long or what way we went I have now
+no clear idea, but at length we neared again the grapevine ferry. The
+stream was swollen, we swam our horses, and on the farther side we found
+Kendall waiting. To the corporal's inquiry he replied that Ferry had
+just passed on. "You know Roy's; two miles off the Plank Road by the
+first right? He expects to stop there."
+
+"Is she alive, Kendall?" I interrupted. "Is she alive?"
+
+"No," said he, to some further question of the corporal; "I'm to wait
+here for the command."
+
+"Is she alive, Kendall?" I asked again.
+
+"Hello, Smith." He scanned my dripping horse. "Your saddle's slipped,
+Smith. Yes, she's alive."
+
+
+
+XLVIII
+
+
+IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS RIGHT ARM
+
+"There they are!" said the corporal and I at the same moment, when we
+had been but a few minutes on the Plank-road. Two men were ahead of us
+riding abreast, and a few rods in front of them was a third horseman,
+apparently alone. Two others had pushed on, one to the house, the other
+for surgical aid. The two in the rear knew us and let us come up
+unchallenged; the corporal stayed with them, and I rode on to my
+leader's side.
+
+Charlotte lay in his double clasp balanced so lightly on the horse's
+crest as hardly to feel the jar of his motion, though her head lay as
+nearly level with it as Ferry's bending shoulders and the hollow of his
+lowered right arm would allow; from under his other arm her relaxed
+figure, in its long riding-skirt, trailed down over his knee and
+stirrup; her broad limp hat, as if it had been so placed in sport, hung
+at his back with its tie-ribbons round his throat, while the black
+masses of her hair spread in ravishing desolation over and under his
+supporting arm. Her face was fearfully pale, the brows glistened with
+the damp of nervous shock, and every few moments she feebly brought a
+handkerchief to her lips to wipe away the blood that rose to them with
+every sigh. Steadfastly, except when her eyes closed now and then in
+deathly exhaustion, her gaze melted into his like a suffering babe's
+into its mother's. From time to time a brief word passed between them,
+and with joy I noticed that it was always in French; I hoped with my
+whole heart and soul that they had already said things, and were saying
+things yet, which no one else ought to hear. I waited some time for his
+notice, and when he gave it it was only by saying to her in a full voice
+and in English "Dick Smith is here, alongside of us."
+
+Her response was a question, which he repeated: "Is he hurt? no, Richard
+never gets hurt. Shall he tell us whatever he knows?"
+
+He bent low for the faint reply, and when it came he sparkled with
+pride. "'It matters little,' she says, 'to either of us, now.' Give your
+report; but _I_ tell you"--there came a tiger look in his eyes--"there
+is now no turning back; we shall go on." I answered with soft elation:
+"My news needn't turn you back: Oliver is dead."
+
+He drew a long breath, murmured "My God!" and then suddenly asked "You
+found him so, or--?"
+
+"We found him so; had to leave him so; head laid wide open; we were
+about to be captured--thought the news would be better than nothing--"
+
+"Certainly, yes, certainly. Now I want you to ride to the brigade camp
+and telegraph Miss Harper this: 'She needs you. Come instantly.
+Durand.'"--I repeated it to him.--"Right," he said. "Send that first;
+and after that--here is a military secret for you to tell to General
+Austin; I think you like that kind, eh? Tell him I would not send it
+verbally if I had my hands free. You know that regiment at whose
+headquarters we saw them singing; well, tell him they are to make a move
+to-day, a bad mistake, and I think if he will stay right there where he
+is till they make it, we can catch the whole lot of them. As soon as
+they move I shall report to him."
+
+Two gasping words from Charlotte brought his ear down, and with a
+worshipping light in his eyes he said to her "Yes,--yes!" and then to
+me, "Yes, I shall report to him _in person_. Now, Smith, the top of
+your speed!"
+
+Reveillé was sounding as I entered the camp. In the middle of my story
+to the General--"Saddle my horse," he said to an attendant, "and send
+Mr. Gholson to me. Yes, Smith, well, what then?"--I resumed, but in a
+minute--"Mr. Gholson, good-morning. My compliments to Major Harper, Mr.
+Gholson, and ask him if he wouldn't like to take a ride with me; and
+let me have about four couriers; and send word to Colonel Dismukes that
+I shall call at his headquarters to see him a moment, on my way out of
+camp. Now, Smith, you've given me the gist of the matter, haven't you?
+Oh, I think you have; good-morning."
+
+Gholson had helped me get the despatch off to Miss Harper, whose coming
+no one could be more eager to hasten. Before leaving camp I saw him
+again. He was strangely reticent; my news seemed to benumb and sicken
+him. But as I remounted he began without connection--"You see, she'll be
+absolutely alone until Miss Harper gets there; not a friend within call!
+_He_ won't be there, she won't let him stay; she dislikes him too much;
+I _know_ that, Smith. Why, Smith, she wouldn't ever 'a' let him carry
+her off the field if she'd been conscious; she'd sooner 'a' gone to Ship
+Island, or to death!" He looked as though he would rather she had. His
+tongue, now it had started, could not stop. "Ned Ferry can't stay by
+her; he mustn't! he hadn't ought to use around anywheres near her."
+
+I gave a sort of assent--attended with nausea--and turned to my saddle,
+but he clung. "Why, how can he hang around that way, Smith, and he a
+suitor who's just killed her husband? Of course, now, he'd ought to know
+he can't ever be one henceforth. I'm sorry for him, but--"
+
+"Good-morning," I interrupted, quite in the General's manner, and made a
+spirited exit, but it proved a false one; one thing had to be said, and
+I returned. "Gholson, if she should be worse hurt than--" "Ah! you're
+thinking of the chaplain; I've already sent him. Yonder he goes, now;
+you can show him the way."
+
+"Understand," I said as I wheeled, "I fully expect her to recover."
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!" replied my co-religionist, with feverish zest; "we must
+have faith--for her sake! But o--oh! Smith, what a chastening judgment
+this is against dancing!"
+
+I moved away, looking back at him, and seeing by his starved look how he
+was racking his jaded brain for some excuse to go with me, I honestly
+believe I was sorry for him. The chaplain was a thick-set, clean-shaven,
+politic little fellow whose "Good-mawning, brothah?" had the heavy
+sweetness of perfumed lard. We conversed fluently on spiritual matters
+and also on Ned Ferry. He asked me if the Lieutenant was "a believer."
+
+"Why," said I, "as to that, Lieutenant Ferry believes there's something
+right about everything that's beautiful, and something wrong about
+everything that isn't. Now, of course that's a very dangerous idea, and
+yet--" So I went on; ah me! the nightmare of it hangs over me yet,
+"religionist" though I am, after a fashion, unto this day. In Ferry's
+defence I maintained that only so much of any man's religion as fitted
+him, and fitted him not as his saddle or his clothes, but as his nervous
+system fitted him, was really his, or was really religion. I said I knew
+a man whose ready-made religion, small as it was, bagged all over him
+and made him as grotesque as a child in his father's trousers. The
+chaplain tittered so approvingly that I straightened to spout again, but
+just then we saw three distant figures that I knew at a glance.
+
+"There he is, now!--Excuse me, sir--" I clapped in the spurs, but the
+chaplain clattered stoutly after me. The two horsemen moving from us
+were the General and Major Harper, and the one meeting them was Ned
+Ferry. Between the three and us rose out of a hollow the squad of
+couriers. And yonder came the sun.
+
+
+
+XLIX
+
+
+A CRUEL BOOK AND A FOOL OR TWO
+
+I could see by Ferry's face that there was no worse news. He met me
+aside, and privately bade me go to Roy's (where Charlotte was). "Kendall
+is there," he said; "I leave you and him in charge. That will rest your
+horses. Kendall has your Yankee horse, his own is sick. You and Kendall
+get all the sleep you can, you may get none to-night."
+
+"Lieutenant," I began eagerly as he was drawing away, "is--?"
+
+"Yes! oh, yes, yes!" His eyes danced, and a soft laugh came, as happy as
+a child's. "The surgeon is yonder, he will tell you."
+
+This person Kendall and I had the luck to meet at the Roy's
+breakfast-table. "Yes, left lung," he said. "No, hardly 'perforated,'
+but the top deeply grazed." The ball, he said, had passed on and out,
+and he went into particulars with me, while I wondered if Kendall knew,
+as I did, what parts of the body the pleura, the thorax, the clavicle
+and the pyemia were.
+
+We lay down to sleep on some fodder in the Widow Roy's stable, while
+around three sides of the place, in a deep wooded hollow, Quinn and the
+company, well guarded by hidden videttes, drowsed in secret bivouac. I
+dreamed. I had feared I should, and it would have been a sort of bitter
+heart's-ease to tell Kendall of my own particular haunting trouble. For
+now, peril and darkness, storm, hard riding, the uproar and rage of
+man-killing, all past and gone, my special private wretchedness came
+back to me bigger than ever, like a neglected wound stiffened and
+swollen as it has grown cold. But Kendall would not talk, and when I
+dreamed, my dream was not of Camille. It seemed to me there was a hot
+fight on at the front, and that I, in a sweat of terror, was at the
+rear, hiding among the wagons and telling Gholson pale-faced lies as to
+why I was there. All at once Gholson became Oliver, alive,
+bloody-handed, glaring on me spectrally, cursing, threatening, and
+demanding his wife. His head seemed not "laid wide open," but to have
+only a streak of the skull bared by Ferry's glancing left-cut and a
+strip of the scalp turned inside out. Cécile drew his head down and
+showed it to me, in a transport of reproaches, as though my false report
+had wronged no one else so ruinously as her.
+
+I awoke aghast. If Kendall had still been with me I might, in the first
+flush of my distress, have told my vision; but in the place where
+Kendall had lain lay Harry Helm. Kendall was gone; a long beam of
+afternoon sunlight shone across my lair through a chink in the log
+stable. I sprang half up with an exclamation, and Harry awoke with a
+luxurious yawn and smile. Kendall, he said, had left with the company,
+which had marched. Quinn was in command and had told Harry that he was
+only going to show the enemy that there was no other hostile force in
+their front, and get himself chased away southeastward.
+
+"I don't know whether he was telling me the truth or not," said Helm, as
+we led our saddled horses toward the house; "I reckon he didn't want me
+alongside of him with this arm in a sling." The hand was bad; lines of
+pain were on the aide's face. He had taken the dead Louisianian home,
+got back to camp, and ridden down here to get the latest news concerning
+Charlotte. Kendall had already given him our story of the night; I had
+to answer only one inquiry. "Oh, yes," was my reply, "head laid wide
+open!" But to think of my next meeting with Ned Ferry almost made
+me sick.
+
+Harry was delighted. "That lays their way wide open--Ned's and hers!
+Smith, some God-forsaken fool brought a chaplain here to talk religion
+to her! He hasn't seen her--Doctor wouldn't let him; but he's here yet,
+and--George! if I was them I'd put him to a better use than what he came
+here for, and I'd do it so quick it would make his head swim!" He went
+on into all the arguments for it; the awkwardnesses of Charlotte's new
+situation, her lack of means for even a hand-to-mouth daily existence,
+and so on. Seeing an ambulance coming in through the front gate, and in
+order not to lose the chance for my rejoinder, I interrupted.
+"Lieutenant, she will not allow it! She will make him wait a proper time
+before he may as much as begin a courtship, and then he will have to
+begin at the beginning. She's not going to let Ned Ferry narrow or lower
+her life or his--no, neither of them is going to let the other do
+it--because a piece of luck has laid the way wide open!" I ended with a
+pomp of prophecy, yet I could hear Ned Ferry saying again, with
+Charlotte's assenting eyes in his, "There is no turning back."
+
+The driver of the ambulance did not know why he had been ordered to
+report here, but when the Widow Roy came to the door she brought
+explanation enough. A courier had come to her and gone again, and the
+chaplain and the surgeon and every one else of any "army sort" except us
+two had "put out," and she was in a sad flurry. "The Lieutenant," she
+said, "writes in this-yeh note that this-yeh place won't be safe f'om
+the Yankees much longer'n to-day, and fo' us to send the wounded lady in
+the avalanch. Which she says, her own self, it'd go rough with her to
+fall into they hands again. My married daughter she's a-goin' with her,
+and the'd ought to be a Mr. Sm'--oh, my Lawdy! you ain't reg-lahly in
+the ahmy, air you?"
+
+With some slave men to help us, Harry and I bore Charlotte out and laid
+her in the ambulance, mattress and all, on an under bedding of fodder.
+She had begged off from opiates, and was as full of the old starlight as
+if the day, still strong, were gone. I helped the married daughter up
+beside the driver, Harry and I mounted, and we set forth for the
+brigade camp. Mrs. Roy's daughter had with her a new romance, which she
+had been reading to Charlotte. Now she was eager to resume it, and
+Charlotte consented. It was a work of some merit; I have the volume yet,
+inscribed to me on the fly-leaf "from C.O.," as I have once already
+stated, in my account of my friend "The Solitary." At the end of a mile
+we made a change; Harry rode a few yards ahead with an officer who
+happened to overtake us, I took the reins from the ambulance driver, and
+he followed on my horse; I thought I could drive more smoothly than he.
+
+And so I began to hear the tale. I was startled by its strong reminder
+of Charlotte's own life; but Charlotte answered my anxious glance with a
+brow so unfretted that I let the reading go on, and so made a cruel
+mistake. At every turning-point in the story its reader would have
+paused to talk it over, but Charlotte, with a steadily darkling brow,
+murmured each time "Go on," and I was silent, hoping that farther along
+there would be a better place to stop for good. Not so; the story's
+whirling flood swept us forward to a juncture ever drawing nearer and
+clearer, clearer and crueler, where a certain man would have to choose
+between the woman he loved and that breadth and fruitfulness of life to
+which his splendid gifts imperiously pointed him. Oh, you story-tellers!
+Every next page put the question plainer, drove the iron deeper: must a
+man, or even may a man, wed his love, when she stands between him and
+his truest career, a drawback and drag upon his finest service to his
+race and day? And, oh, me! who let my eye quail when Charlotte searched
+it, as though her own case had brought that question to me before ever
+we had seen this book. And, oh, that impenetrable woman reading! Her
+husband was in Lee's army, out of which, she boasted, she would steal
+him in a minute if she could. She was with us, now, only because, at
+whatever cost to others, she was going where no advancement of the
+enemy's lines could shut her off from him; and so stop reading a moment
+she must, to declare her choice for Love as against all the careers on
+earth, and to put that choice fairly to shame by the unworthiness of her
+pleadings in its defence. I intervened; I put her grovelling arguments
+aside and thrust better ones in, for the same choice, and then, in the
+fear that they were not enough, stumbled into special pleading and
+protested that the book itself had put the question unfairly.
+
+"Shut it," said Charlotte, with a sigh like that which had risen when
+the lead first struck her. "If I could be moved ever so little,--"
+she said.
+
+I had the driver tie my horse behind the vehicle and resume the lines.
+Then the soldier's wife and I moved Charlotte, and when the reader began
+to handle the book again wishfully our patient said, with the kindest
+voice, "Read the rest of it to yourself; I know how it will end; it will
+end to please you, not as it ought; not as it ought."
+
+For a while we went in silence, and she must have seen that my heart was
+in a rage, for with suffering on her brow, amusement on her lips, and a
+sweet desperation in her eyes, she murmured my name. "Richard:--what
+fun it must have been to live in those old Dark Ages--when all you had
+to do--was to turn any one passion into--one splendid virtue--at the
+expense--of all the rest."
+
+I could answer pleadingly that it were far better not to talk now. But
+she would go on, until in my helplessness I remarked how beautiful the
+day had been. Her eyes changed; she looked into mine with her calm
+inward-outward ken, and once more with smiling lips and suffering brow
+murmured, "Yes." I marvelled she should betray such wealth of meaning to
+such as I; yet it was like her splendid bravery to do it.
+
+At the brigade's picket, where I was angry that Ferry did not meet us,
+and had resumed the saddle and stretched all the curtains of the
+ambulance, who should appear but Scott Gholson. Harry and I were riding
+abreast in advance of the ambulance. Gholson and he barely said
+good-evening. I asked him where was Lieutenant Ferry, and scarcely noted
+his words, so promptly convinced was I by their mere tone that he had
+somehow contrived to get Ferry sent on a distant errand. "Is she
+better?" he inquired; "has the hemorrhage stopped?"
+
+"It's begun again," growled Harry, who wanted both of us to suffer all
+we could. Gholson led us through the camp. A large proportion of the men
+were sleeping when as yet it was hardly night.
+
+"Has the brigade got marching orders?" I asked, and he said the three
+regiments had, though not the battery. He passed over to me two pint
+bottles filled, corked, and dangling from his fingers by a stout double
+twine on the neck of each. "Every man has them," he said; "hang one on
+each side of your belt in front of your pistol."
+
+I held them up and scowled from them to Harry, and we both laughed, so
+transparent was Gholson's purpose to get every one away from our patient
+who yearned to be near her. "One in front of each pistol," I said, so
+tying them; "but use the pistols first, I suppose."
+
+"Yes," replied Gholson, "pistols first, and then the turpentine."
+Whereat Harry and I exchanged glances again, it came so pat that Scott
+Gholson should be a dispenser of inflammables. At a house a mile behind
+the camp the surgeon stood waiting for us. He frowned at me the instant
+he saw Charlotte, and I heard him swear. As we bore her in with Gholson
+and me next her head she murmured to him:
+
+"Mr. Gholson, when does the command move?"
+
+"At twelve," he replied, and I bent and softly added "That's why--"
+
+"Yes," she said, with a quick, understanding look, and wiped her lips as
+daintily as if it were with wine they were crimsoned.
+
+
+
+L
+
+
+THE BOTTOM OF THE WHIRLWIND
+
+On my way back through camp with Gholson I saw old Dismukes. He called
+me to him, quit his cards, and led me into his tent. There, very
+beguilingly, he questioned me at much length, evidently seeking to draw
+from the web of my replies the thread of Ferry's and Charlotte's story;
+and as I saw that he believed in both of them with all his brutal might,
+I let him win a certain success. "Head laid wide open!" he said
+gleefully, and boiled over with happy blasphemings.
+
+I left him, found supper, and had been long asleep tinder a tree, when I
+grabbed savagely at some one for silently shaking me, and found it was
+Ned Ferry. His horse's bridle was in his hand; his face was more filled
+with the old pain than I had ever seen it; he spoke low and hurriedly.
+"Come, tell me what this means."
+
+In an envelope addressed to him in the handwriting I had first seen at
+Lucius Oliver's I found a scripture-text, a heading torn from a tract
+which the chaplain may have sent in to Charlotte in the morning. I
+turned it to the light of my fire. Under this printed line she had
+pencilled her name.
+
+I asked if he had seen her. "Ah, no! the Doctor has drugged her to
+sleep; but that woman who came with you was still in the parlor, reading
+a book, and she gave me this. What does it mean?"
+
+"Lieutenant," I replied, choking with dismay, "why mind her meanings
+now? Ought you not rather to ignore them? She is fevered, dejected,
+overwrought. Why, sir, she is the very woman to say and mean things now
+which she would never say or mean at any other time!" But my tone must
+have shown that I was only groping in desperation after anything
+plausible, and he waved my suggestions away.
+
+"The Doctor says that woman has been reading her an exciting story."
+
+"Yes, and that helps to account--"
+
+"Richard, it helps the wrong way; _I know that story_. After hearing
+that story she is, yes! the one woman of all women to send me _this_."
+
+I took it again. The signature was extended in full, with the surname
+blackly underlined. The first clause of the print, too, was so treated.
+"_Keep thy heart_," it read; "_Keep thy heart_ with all diligence; for
+out of it are the issues of life.--Charlotte _Oliver_."
+
+"Why, Lieutenant, that is just what you have done--"
+
+"You think so? But I _have done_. I will keep it no longer! Ah, I never
+kept it; 'twas she! Without taking it from me she kept it--'with all
+diligence'; otherwise I should have lost it--and her, too--and all that
+is finest and hardest to keep--long ago. Give me that paper; come;
+saddle up; you may go with me if you want, as my courier." No bugle had
+sounded, yet the whole camp was softly and diligently astir. We rode
+toward the staff tents; the pulse of enterprise enlivened him once more,
+though he clung to the same theme. "I have _her_ heart now, Smith, and I
+will keep _that_ with all diligence, for out of _that_ are the issues
+of _my_ life--if I live. And if I do live I will have her if I have to
+steal her even from herself, as last night from the Yankees."
+
+Three hours later the stars still gleamed down through the balmy night
+above the long westward-galloping column of our brigade, that for those
+three hours had not slackened from the one unmitigated speed. The
+Federal regiment of whose plans Charlotte had apprised Ferry had been
+camped well to southward of this course, but in the day just past they
+had marched to the north, intending a raid around our right and into our
+rear. To-night they were resting in a wide natural meadow through the
+middle of which ran this road we were on. Around the southern edge of
+this inviting camp-ground by a considerable stream of water; the
+northern side was on rising ground and skirted by woods, and in these
+woods as day began to break stood our brigade, its presence utterly
+unsuspected in all that beautiful meadow whitened over with lane upon
+lane of the tents of the regiment of Federal cavalry, whose pickets we
+had already silently surprised and captured. Now, as warily as quails,
+we moved along an unused, woodcutters' road and began to trot up a
+gentle slope beyond whose crest the forest sank to the meadow. We were
+within a few yards of this crest, when a small mounted patrol came up
+from the other side, stood an instant profiled against the sky, bent
+low, gazed, wheeled and vanished.
+
+Over the crest we swept after them at a gallop and saw them half-way
+down an even incline, going at a mad run and yelling "Saddle up! saddle
+up! the rebels are coming! saddle up!" The bugles had begun the
+reveillé; it ceased, and the next instant they were sounding the call To
+Arms. It was only a call to death; already we were half across the short
+decline and coming like a tornado; in the white camp the bluecoats were
+running hither and yon deaf to the brave shoutings of their captains;
+above the swelling thunder of our hoofs rose the mad yell of the onset;
+and now carbines peal and pistols crack, and here are the tents so close
+you may touch them, and yonder is one already in a light blaze, and at
+every hand and under every horse's foot is the crouching, quailing,
+falling foe, the air is one crash of huzzas and groans, screams, shots
+and commands, horses with riders and horses without plunge through the
+flames and smoke of the burning tents, and again and again I see Ned
+Ferry with the flat of his unstained sword strike pistol or carbine from
+hands too brave to cast them tamely down, and hear him cry "Throw down
+your arms! For God's sake throw down your arms and run to the road! run
+to the public road!"
+
+And still every moment men fell, and what could we do but smite while
+the foe's bugles still rang out from beside his unfurled standard.
+Thitherward sprang a swarm of us and found a brave group massed on foot
+around the colors, men and officers shoulder to shoulder in sudden
+equality. I saw Ned Ferry make straight for their commander, who alone
+had out his sabre; the rest stood with cocked revolvers, and at twenty
+yards fired low. Ferry's horse was hit; he reared, but the spur carried
+him on; his rider's sword flashed up and then down, the Federal's sabre
+turned it, the pistols cracked in our very faces, and down went my
+leader and his horse into the bottom of the whirlwind, right under the
+standard. I saw the standard-bearer bring down one of our men on top of
+Ferry, and as Ferry half regained his feet the Federal aimed point-blank
+against his breast. But it was I who fired and the Federal who fell. As
+he reeled I stretched out for the standard, and exactly together Ned
+Ferry and I seized it--the same standard we had seen the night before.
+But instantly, graciously, he thrust it from him. "Tis yours!" he cried
+in the midst of a general huzza, smiling up at it and me as I swung the
+trophy over my head. Then he turned ghastly pale, his smile faded to an
+unmeaning stare, two or three men leaped to his side, and he sank
+lifelessly into their arms beside his dying horse.
+
+I was swinging from the saddle to my leader's relief, when a familiar
+voice forbade it, and old Dismukes came by at a long trot, pointing
+forward with the reddest sabre I ever saw, and bellowing to right and
+left with oaths and curses "Fall in, every man, on yon line! Ride to yon
+line and fall in, there's more Yankees coming! Ride down yonder and
+fa'--_here_, you, Legs, there! follow me, and shoot down every man that
+stops to plunder!"
+
+Now I saw the new firing-line, out on our left, and as the rattle of it
+quickened, the Colonel galloped, still roaring out his rallying-cries
+and wiping his reeking blade across his charger's mane. Throngs gathered
+after him; the high-road swarmed with prisoners double-quicking to the
+rear under mounted guards; here, thinly stretched across the road at
+right-angles, were our horse-holders, steadily, coolly falling back;
+farther forward, yet vividly near, was our skirmish-line, crackling and
+smoking, and beyond it the enemy's, in the edge of a wood, not yet quite
+venturing to fling itself upon us. We passed General Austin standing,
+mounted, at the top of the rise, with a number of his staff about him.
+Minie balls had begun to sing about them and us, and some officer was
+telling me rudely I had no business bringing that standard--when
+something struck like a sledge high up on my side, almost in the
+arm-pit; I told one of our men I was wounded and gave him the trophy,
+our horse-holders suddenly came forward, every man afoot rose into his
+saddle, and my horse wheeled and hurried rearward at a speed I strove in
+vain to check. Then the old messmate to whom I had said good-bye at this
+very hour just a week before, came and held me by the right arm, while I
+begged him like a drunk-and-disorderly to let me go and find Ned Ferry.
+
+But he said Lieutenant Ferry was in a captured ambulance ahead of us and
+of our hundreds of prisoners, that a full creek and a burning bridge
+were between us and the foe, and that the fight was over.
+
+
+
+LI
+
+
+UNDER THE ROOM WHERE CHARLOTTE LAY
+
+The fight was over only in degree. Our brigade was drawing away into the
+north and the enemy were pressing revengefully after them. Our hundreds
+of prisoners and our few wounded were being taken back eastward over the
+road by which we had come in the night, and even after we had turned
+into it I saw a Yankee shell kill a wounded man and his horse not thirty
+yards from me.
+
+Before we had gone another mile I met Harry Helm. The General had left
+him in camp with flat orders to remain, but at daylight he had ridden
+out to find us. He was in two tremendous moods at once; lifted to heaven
+on the glory of our deeds, yet heart-broken over the fate of Ned Ferry.
+"Surgeon's told him he can't live, Dick! And all the effect that's
+had--'No opiates, then, Doctor,' s'e, 'till I get off these two or three
+despatches.' So there he lies in that ambulance cross-questioning
+prisoners and making everybody bring him every scrap of information, as
+if he were General Austin and Major Harper rolled into one and they were
+wounded instead of him--By George! Dick, he knows you're hit and just
+how you're hit, and has sent me to find you!"
+
+I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we
+were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about
+it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn,
+and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now
+remounting, both of them openly in tears. "Hello, Kendall."
+
+"Hello, Smith." He turned sharply from me, horse and all.
+
+"Good-morning, sergeant, is Lieutenant Ferry--worse?"
+
+The sergeant only jabbed in the spurs, and leapt away with Kendall,
+bearing despatches to the brigade. Harry, looking back to me from the
+ambulance, called softly, "All right again; it was only a bad swoon!"
+
+"Hello, Smith," said some one whom I was too sick and dizzy to
+recognize, "one of those prisoners says he saw Oliver dead."
+
+They say two or three men sprang to catch me, but the first thing I knew
+was that the ambulance was under way and I in it on my back within
+elbow-touch of Ferry, looking up into a surgeon's face. "How's the
+Lieutenant?" I asked.
+
+"Oh--getting on, getting on," he replied. Doctors think patients are
+fools.
+
+In a parlor under the room where Charlotte lay they made a bed for Ferry
+and one for me, and here, lapped in luxury and distinction, I promptly
+fell asleep, and when I reopened my eyes it was again afternoon. In the
+other bed Ferry was slumbering, and quite across the room, beside a
+closed door, sat Cécile and Camille. The latter tiptoed to me. Her
+whispers were as soft as breathing, and when I answered or questioned,
+her ear sank as near as you would put a rose to smell it. "The
+Lieutenant, sleeping? yes, this hour past; surgeons surprised and more
+hopeful. Miss Estelle? in another room with other wounded. Her aunt?
+upstairs with Charlotte, who was--oh--getting on, getting on." That made
+me anxious.
+
+"Does Charlotte," I asked, "know--everything?"
+
+Camille allowed herself all the motions of a laugh, and said "No, not
+quite everything;" and then with solemn tenderness she added that
+Charlotte knew about Ferry. "And she knows about _you,"_ the whisperer
+went on; "they all know."
+
+I thought she was alluding to the verses, and had an instant of terror
+and rage before I saw what she meant. She glided back to the door and
+the two opened it an inch or so to answer some inquirer without. I saw
+her no more until bedtime, when she stood at her aunt's elbow to hand
+and hold things, while Miss Harper, to my all but screaming
+embarrassment, bared the whole upper half of one side of me and washed
+and dressed my wound anew. Ferry it was imperative to let alone, but
+when I awoke the next morning there was a radiance of joy throughout all
+the house; for he had slept and improved. The next morning again he was
+ever so much stronger, and Harry Helm rode off in simulated disgust, not
+seeing "any fun in hanging round girls who were hanging round
+other fellows."
+
+Another day arose. A courier brought passes for our three or four other
+wounded to go home as soon as they were fit to travel, and by night they
+were all gone. At early bedtime came two surgeons of high rank all the
+way from Johnston's army up in Mississippi. General Austin had asked
+this favor by telegraph. Harry had been gone thirty-six hours, and Ferry
+was just asking if he had not yet got back, when the surgeons came in to
+the room. A pleasantry or two consumed a few moments. Then the surgeon
+in charge of us told of a symptom or two, to which they responded only
+"hmm," and began the examination. Miss Harper sent her three nieces
+away. I lay and listened in the busy stillness. Presently one of the
+examiners murmured with a certain positiveness to the other, who after a
+moment's silence replied with conviction; Miss Harper touched our
+surgeon's arm inquiringly and he looked back in a glad way and nodded.
+Miss Harper nodded to me; they had located the ball! Now the
+conversation turned upon men and events of the day, while one of the
+visitors, with his back to the patient, opened a case of glittering
+knives. Presently the professional heads came so close together as quite
+to hide the patient; they spoke once or twice in a manly soothing tone.
+Miss Harper stroked my temples to keep me down, one of the busy ones
+spoke again, and lo! the thing was done, there was the ball in the
+basin. As the men of blood sped through their kind after-work the news
+flew to and fro; Camille wept,--since she could not hurrah,--Cécile told
+Charlotte, the heavenly-minded Estelle was confirmed in her faith, Miss
+Harper's black eyes, after a brief overflow, were keener and kindlier
+than ever, and as the surgeons spoke the word "done," Ferry asked again
+if Harry had not got back yet. Pretty soon Harry did arrive, with news
+of great feats by our cavalry against our old enemy Grierson, in which
+Austin's brigade had covered themselves with glory, and in which he had
+had his own share; his hand was swelled as big as his heart. In all the
+Confederacy no houseful went to sleep that night in sweeter content. I
+sank into perfect bliss planning a double wedding.
+
+
+
+LII
+
+
+SAME BOOK AND LIGHT-HEAD HARRY
+
+The next day found me so robustly happy that I was allowed to dress and
+walk out to the front door. Three days later the surgeons were gone, all
+three, and at the approach of dew-fall Cécile and Harry, Camille and I,
+walked in a field-path, gathered hedge roses, and debated the problem of
+Mrs. Roy's daughter's book, which all of us were reading and none
+had finished.
+
+"A woman," I remarked, "who, for very love of a man, can say to him, 'Go
+on up the hill without me, I have a ball and chain on my foot and you
+shall not carry them and me, you have a race to run,'--a woman so
+wonderfully good as to say that--"
+
+"Ah, no!" interrupted Cécile, with her killing Creole accent, "not a
+woman so _good_ to say that, only with the so-good _sanse_ to say it."
+
+Harry was openly vexed. "Well, either way! would any true man leave
+_that_ woman behind?" and I tried to put in that that was what I had
+been leading up to; but it makes me smile yet, to recall how jauntily
+she discomfited us both. She triumphed with the airy ease of a king-bird
+routing a crow in the upper blue. Camille had more than once told me
+that Cécile was wise beyond the hope of her two cousins to emulate her;
+which had only increased my admiration for Camille; yet now I began to
+see how the sisters came by their belief. In the present discussion she
+was easily first among the four of us. At the same time her sensuous
+graces also took unquestionable preëminence; city-bred though she was,
+she had the guise of belonging to the landscape, or, rather, of the
+landscape's belonging, by some fairy prerogative, to her. She seemed
+just let loose into the world, yet as ready and swift to make right use
+of it as any humming-bird let into a garden; as untimorous as any such,
+and as elusive. In this sultry June air she had all the animation both
+of mind and of frame that might have been expected of her on a keen,
+clear winter day. Her face never bore the same expression at the
+beginning and middle, or at either of these and the close, of any of her
+speeches, yet every change was lovely, the sign of a happy play of
+feeling, and proof of a mercurial intelligence. No report of them by
+this untrained pen would fully bear me out, and the best tribute I can
+offer is to avoid the task.
+
+It was a sweet mercy in her to change the subject, and tactful to change
+it to Charlotte, as if Charlotte were quite an unrelated theme. The
+cousins vied with each other ever so prettily in telling how beautiful
+the patient was on her couch of enfeeblement and pain, how her former
+loveliness had increased, and what new nobility it had taken on. That
+any such problem overhung her life as that which we had just been
+weighing, seemed never to have entered their thought, and if they had
+ever conceived of a passion already conscious between Charlotte and
+Ferry, they veiled the fact with charming feminine art.
+
+When we got back to the house Harry detained me on the veranda alone.
+Camille told me how long I might tarry. It was heaven to have her bit in
+my mouth, and I found it hard to be grum even when Harry beat with his
+good hand the rhythm of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes."
+
+"Dick," he said, suddenly grave as he walked me down the veranda, "her
+cousin Cécile! isn't it awful? Now that poor girl's gone back to Ned's
+bedside; back to her torture! Why _do_ they let her? My George! it's
+merciless! Has her aunt no eyes?"
+
+"But, Lieutenant, you don't know she loves him; there are signs, I
+admit; but proofs, no. She's lost color, and her curves are more
+slender, but, my goodness! a dozen things might account for that."
+
+"Dick Smith,"--my questioner worked himself up over the rail and sat out
+on the shelf that held the bucket of drinking-water and its gourd--"do
+you imagine she didn't know, when we were talking about that book, that
+she was arguing against the union of Ned Ferry and Charlotte Oliver?
+_Didn't_ she do it bravely! Richard, my friend, she couldn't have done
+it if she had suspected us of suspecting her. It's a bleeding pity! And
+yet you can't side with her, for I just swear Ned's got to have
+Charlotte Ol'--what? No, he won't overhear a blank word; here's his
+window shut, right here. He's got to have her, I say, and he's got to
+have her just as soon as the two of 'em can stand up together to be
+sworn in! Don't you say so?"
+
+I replied that I was not aware of any one who did not say so.
+
+"Well, I can name several! I don't call Scott Gholson anybody, but
+there's Major Harper--No, I'm not talking too loud, Ned isn't hearing a
+word. Major Harper's so hot against this thing that he brought it up,
+with me, yesterday on the battlefield."
+
+"Major Harper doesn't really know her," I softly remarked.
+
+Harry swore with military energy. "I told him he didn't, and he fairly
+snorted. _We_ don't know her, he says; you nor I nor his sister nor his
+niece nor his daughters, oh, we don't know her at all; and neither do we
+know Ned; Ned has graceful manners, and she's a born actress, and we're
+simply infatuated by their romantic situation. Good Lordy! he got up on
+his Charleston pride-of-family like a circus-girl on stilts, and 'Edgard
+Ferry-Durand has got a great public career before him,' s's he, 'and no
+true friend will let him think of taking a wife who is all history and
+no antecedents, a blockade-runner, a spy, and the brand-new widow of a
+blackguard and a jayhawker she had run away from practically on her
+wedding-night.' Hy Jo'! the way he went on, you'd 'a' thought he was
+already Ned's uncle-in-l'--" The speaker's face took a sudden
+distress--"Great Caesar!" He pointed up to the second-story front room
+and slipped down from the shelf just as Estelle came out to us with her
+aunt's message for me to come in.
+
+"How's the fair patient?" I hurried to ask as the three of us went.
+
+"Why, Mr. Smith, she's actually been sitting up--in the twilight--at
+the open window--while Aunt Martha and I smoothed up her bed."
+Harry groaned.
+
+"She's still very weak," said Aunt Martha when we came to her; "the
+moment her bed was made up she asked to lie down again."
+
+"Yes," softly exclaimed Camille, "but, oh, aunt Martha, with such
+courage in those eyes!"
+
+"Smith," privately asked the agonized Harry, "what would you do if you
+were in my place; go and cut your throat from ear to ear?"
+
+"No," I said, as black as an executioner, "but I wish you'd done it
+yesterday."
+
+
+
+LIII.
+
+
+"CAPTAIN, THEY'VE GOT US"
+
+More days slipped by. Neighbors pressed sweet favors upon us; calls,
+joyful rumors, delicacies, flowers. One day Major Harper paid us a
+flying visit, got kisses galore, and had his coat sponged and his
+buttons reanimated. In the small town some three miles northwest of us
+he was accumulating a great lot of captured stuff. On another day came
+General Austin and stayed a whole hour. Ferry took healing delight in
+these visits, asking no end of questions about the movements afield,
+and about the personal fortunes of everyone he knew. When the General
+told him Ferry's scouts were doing better without him than with him--"I
+thought he would smile himself into three pieces," said the General at
+the supper-table.
+
+On a second call from Major Harper, when handed a document to open and
+read, he went through it carefully twice, and then dropping it on the
+coverlet asked--"and Quinn?"
+
+"Oh, Quinn's turn will come."
+
+"Ah! Major, that is not fair to Quinn!" said Ferry. Yet when he took up
+the paper again he gazed on it with a happy gravity; it made him a
+captain. "By the by," he said, "that Yankee horse that Dick Smith
+captured at Sessions's; I'd like to buy that horse from you, Major."
+They made the sale. "And there's that captured ambulance still here,
+Major, with its team eating their heads off."
+
+"Yes, I'm going to take that away with me to-day."
+
+This meant that Charlotte's negro man and his daughter, her maid, had
+come with her spring-wagon, and Harry and I would have liked the Major
+better if he had smiled at this point, as he did not. Yet he was most
+lovable; sent so kind a message up to Charlotte that Harry and I
+wondered; and received back from her a reply so gracious that--since we
+could not wonder--we worshipped. In the evening of that day Ferry and
+Charlotte were transferred, she into the room behind her, and he
+upstairs into the one out of which she was taken. That night a slave and
+his wife, belonging to the place, ran away to the enemy. If they should
+tell the Yankees Ned Ferry was here--! "By Jo'!" said Harry Helm, "I'm
+glad I didn't cut my throat; I told that darkey, yesterday, Ned's name
+was O'Brien!"
+
+Toward the close of that day came tidings of the brigade's splendid work
+at a steamboat-landing on the Mississippi River, how they had stolen in
+by night between two great bodies of the enemy, burned a vast store of
+military supplies, and then brilliantly cut their way out; yet we were
+told to be ready to withdraw into Mississippi again as soon as our newly
+made captain could safely be moved. Pooh! what of that? Lee was on his
+way into Pennsylvania; the war was nearly over, sang the Harper girls,
+and we were the winners! They cheerily saw Helm and me, next morning,
+ride southward in search of further good news. At a cross-roads I
+proposed that we separate, and meet there again near the end of the day.
+He turned west; I went an hour's ride farther south and then turned
+west myself.
+
+When we met again I knew that he--while he did not know that I--had been
+to Gilmer's plantation. We wanted to see if the Federals had left a
+grave there. They had left three, and a young girl who had been one of
+the dancers told me she had seen Oliver's body carried off by two blue
+troopers who growled and cursed because they had been sent back to bury
+it. Neither Harry nor I mentioned the subject when we met at the
+cross-roads again, for we came on our horses' necks at a stretched out
+run; the Federals were rolling up from the south battalion after
+battalion, hoping to find Major Harper's store of supplies feebly
+guarded and even up with us for that steamboat-landing raid. Presently
+as we hurried northward we began to hear, off ahead of us on our left,
+the faint hot give-and-take of two skirmish lines. We came into the
+homestead grove at a constrained trot and found the ladies out on the
+veranda in liveliest suspense between scepticism and alarm.
+
+"Yes, they're fighting, now, on the edge of town," we said, "but our
+boys will keep them there." Our host and hostess moaned their unbelief.
+"However," added Harry, "I'll go tell the old man to hitch up the little
+mules and--"
+
+"You dawn't need," said Cécile, "'tis done!" and Camille confirmed her
+word, while the planter and his wife returned to the kitchen yard, where
+the servants were loading the smokehouse meat into a wagon to hide it in
+the woods; Miss Harper and Estelle went into the house, summoned by
+Charlotte's maid. On Ferry's chamber floor sounded three measured thumps
+of his scabbarded sword.
+
+"Dick, you answer that," exclaimed Harry, reining in half wheeled; "but
+keep him on his back, if you have to hold him down!" He spurred away to
+learn whether we had better stay or fly. I threw my rein to Camille and
+flew up the hall stairs.
+
+Ferry lay in bed with three pillows behind him and his sheathed sword
+across his lap. "Good-evening, Richard," he said, "you are returned just
+in time; will you please hand me my two pistol' from yonder?--thank
+you." He laid one beside each thigh. "Now please turn the head of my
+bed a little bit, to face the door--thank you; and now, good-bye. You
+hear those footstep' there in the room behind? she is dressing to go;
+the other ladies they are helping her. Richard, I place them in your
+charge; have them all ready to get into her wagon at a moment's notice,
+with you on your horse--and you better take that Jewett horse, too; he
+came to-day."
+
+I hesitated, but a single flash of authority from his eye was enough and
+I had passed half-way to the door, when, through the window over the
+front veranda, I saw a small body of horsemen trotting up through the
+grove. The dusk of the room hid me, but there was no mistaking them.
+"Too late, Captain," I said, "they've got us."
+
+"How many do you see?"
+
+"About sixteen. Our two horses will be Yankees again to-morrow."
+
+"Ah! not certainly. Where is your carbine?"
+
+"Just outside this door. They know you're here, Captain, they're
+surrounding the house." As I reached toward the door I heard his sword
+crawl out, the doorknob clicked without my touching it, the door swung
+and closed again, and Charlotte Oliver was with us. The light of the
+western window shone full upon her; she was in the same dress, hat and
+all, in which I had seen her the night we rode together alone. Though
+wasted and pale, she betrayed a flush on either cheek and a smile that
+mated with the sweet earnest of her eyes. She tendered me my carbine,
+patted my hand caressingly, and glided onward to Ferry's bedside. With
+my back to them and my ear to the door I hearkened outward. In the front
+doorway below sounded the jingling tread of cavalry-boots and a clank
+of sabres.
+
+
+
+LIV
+
+
+THE FIGHT IN THE DOORWAY
+
+Charlotte's whisper came to me: "Richard!" Standing by Ferry's pillow
+she spoke for him. "If they start upstairs come and stand like me, on
+the other side."
+
+I nodded and slyly opened the door enough to pass half-way out. Some man
+was parleying with Miss Harper. "Now, madam, you know you haven't locked
+up your parlor to maintain an abstract right; you've locked it up
+because you've got the man in there that I've come for."
+
+"Whom have you come for, sir?"
+
+"Lieutenant O'Brien, of the rebel army. Shall I order this man to kick
+that door in? Answer quickly."
+
+"Sir, there is no Lieutenant O'Brien in there, nor elsewhere in this
+house; there never has been."
+
+"Stand aside, madam."
+
+"Stop, sir! I command you! There is no Lieutenant of any name on this
+place!"
+
+"Oh, yes there is; he goes by various names, but one of them is Ned
+Ferry. Sergeant, we'll kick together; now!"--Bang!
+
+I leaned back into the room to say "It's all right! Oh, but that sweet
+woman's a 'coon! Let them batter!" As I thrust my head out again Miss
+Harper was exclaiming "Oh, sirs, don't do that!"--Bang!--"For the honor
+of your calling and your flag--" Bang!
+
+"There's no Lieutenant in there." Bang!
+
+"Corporal, go find an axe or something."
+
+"Oh, you need not, sirs, I'll unlock the door."
+
+"Well, be quick about it, and then stand clear; we don't want any woman
+hurt." The key rattled at the keyhole and then dropped to the floor.
+"You did that by intention! Give me that key!" He tried the lock. "We've
+jammed it, corporal, but another good kick will fetch it;
+now!"--Bang!--crash!--open flew the door.
+
+"Well, I will be damned!" said the officer.
+
+"Sir," said Miss Harper, "you give me no occasion to doubt it." She
+followed the men upstairs. "Estelle, go back to your sister and cousin;
+and if you, my dear,"--to our hostess--"will kindly go also, and stay
+with them--"
+
+I closed the door. It had no key, but there was a small catch to the
+knob and I turned it on while the men were looking into the adjacent
+rooms. When they reached ours Miss Harper was again at their front.
+Inside, the three of us silently noted our strategic advantages: we were
+in the darkest part of the room, the bed's covering was a dull red,
+Ferry had on his shirt of black silk, the white pillows were hidden at
+his back, Charlotte and I were darkly clad, the light from our west
+window would be in our assailants' faces as they entered, and they would
+be silhouetted against a similar light from the hall's front. We
+noiselessly cocked our weapons and Charlotte and I each sank to one
+knee. "The door is very thin," murmured Ferry, "we can fire before they
+enter; they will get, anyhow, our smoke, and if they fire as they rush
+in we can aim under their flash."
+
+It was only then that I observed that Charlotte was armed. But the fact
+made her seem only the more a true woman, since I knew that only for her
+honor or his life would she ever take deadly aim. Her weapon was the
+slender revolver she had carried ever since the day which had made her
+Charlotte Oliver, the thing without which she never could have reached
+this hour of blissful extremity.
+
+"In here there is a lady, ill," we heard Miss Harper say.
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+Ferry prompted in a whisper, the three of us cried "Yes!" and he added
+"Pass one side from the door, Miss Harper, we are going to shoot
+through it."
+
+"Hello, in there! Lieutenant Ferry, of Ferry's scouts,"--
+
+"_Captain_ Ferry," retorted Miss Harper, and I echoed the amendment.
+
+"Damn the difference; I give you one half-minute, Captain Ferry, to say
+you surrender! If you weren't wounded I wouldn't give you that.
+Corporal, go get a log out of that fireplace downstairs."
+
+"Oh, shame!" wailed Miss Harper, half-way down the hall.
+
+"Captain," called Ferry, "I give you one quarter-minute to get away from
+that door." He whispered to Charlotte, pointing to a panel of it higher
+than any one's head.
+
+"Oh, sirs," we again heard Miss Harper cry, "withhold! Captain Ferry,
+they have called in four more men!" We heard the four downstairs coming
+at a run. "Oh, sir--"
+
+"Go away, madam!" bellowed the officer as his men thundered into the
+upper hall. "Now, Captain Ferry, there are six of us here and three
+under each of your windows. Do you--?"
+
+"Oh, sir, the lady! the sick lady!"
+
+"That's his look-out, madam. If the sick lady isn't Charlotte Oli'--"
+
+"And if she is?" called Ferry, depressing Charlotte's weapon to an aim
+barely breast high.
+
+"Then throwing away your life won't save hers! Do you surren'--?"
+
+Ferry made a quick gesture for her to shoot low, but she solemnly shook
+her head and fired through the top of the uppermost panel, and the
+assault came.
+
+The log burst the door in at a blow, Ferry and I fired, and our foes
+sprang in. Certainly they were brave; the doorway let them in only by
+twos, and the fire-log, falling under foot, became a stumbling-block;
+yet in an instant the room was ringing and roaring with the fray and
+benighted with its smoke. Their first ball bit the top of my shoulder
+and buried itself in the wall--no, not their first, but the first save
+one; for the bureau mirror stood in dim shade, and the Federal leader
+made the easy mistake of firing right into it. The error sealed his
+fate; Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of
+his followers. They replied hotly but blindly, and in a moment the room
+was void of assailants. Ferry started to spring from the bed, but
+Charlotte threw her arms about him, and as she pressed her head hard
+down on his breast I could not help but hear "No, my treasure, my
+heart's whole treasure, no!"
+
+
+
+LV
+
+
+RESCUE AND RETREAT
+
+I sprang for the door, but the fire-log sent me sprawling with my
+shoulder on the threshold. As I went down I heard in the same breath the
+wounded officer wailing "Go back! go in! there are only four of them!
+don't leave one alive!" and Miss Harper all but screaming "Our men! our
+men! God be praised, our men are coming, they are here! Fly spoilers,
+for your lives, fly!"
+
+And it was true. Their hoofs rumbled, their carbines banged, and their
+charge struck three sides of the house at once. Rising only to my
+elbows,--and how I did that much, stiffened with my wound, the doctors
+will have to explain,--I laid my cheek to my rifle, and the light of two
+windows fell upon my gunsights. Every blue-coat in the hall was between
+me and its rear window, but one besides the officer was wounded, and
+with these two three others were busy; only the one remaining man saw
+me. Twice he levelled his revolver, and twice I had almost lined my
+sights on him, but twice Miss Harper unaware came between us. A third
+time he aimed, fired and missed. I am glad he fired first, for our two
+shots almost made one report, and-he plunged forward exactly as I had
+done over the fire-log, except that he reached the floor dead.
+
+[Illustration: Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the
+arms of his followers.]
+
+Thereupon came more things at once than can be told: Miss Harper's
+outcry of horror and pity; Charlotte's cry from the bedside--"Richard!
+Richard!" a rush of feet and shouts of rage in the hall below; and my
+leap to the head of the stairs, shouting to half a dozen gray-jackets
+"Two men, no more! two men to guard prisoners, no more! go back, all but
+you two! go back!"
+
+A sabreless officer with a bandaged hand flew up the stair and into my
+face. It was Helm. "The ladies! Smith, good God! Smith, where are
+the girls?"
+
+"In the smokehouse," cried Miss Harper from her knees beside the
+prostrate Federal officer; "go bring them!--Richard, Charlotte is
+calling you!"
+
+I ran to Ferry's door; Charlotte was leaning busily over his bared
+chest, while he, still holding a revolver in his right hand, caressed
+her arm with his left. "Dick, his wound has opened again, but we must
+get him away at once anyhow. Isn't my wagon still here?--oh, thank God!
+there it comes now, I hear it in the back yard!"
+
+A Confederate waiting on Miss Harper with basin and towels barely dodged
+me as I sprang to the far end of the hall and shouted down into the yard
+for Harry. The little mules, true enough, were just rattling round a
+half turn at the lower hall's back door, having been in hiding behind
+the stables. A score or so of cavalry were boisterously hurrying off
+across the yard with a few captured horses and prisoners, and I had to
+call the Lieutenant angrily a second time, to make him hear me amid
+their din and a happy confusion which he was helping to keep up in a
+fairer group. For here were all the missing feminine members of the
+household, white and colored, and Harry was clamorous with joy,
+compassion and applause, while Camille and Cécile, pink with weeping,
+stepped out across the high doorsill of the smokehouse, leading Ned
+Ferry's horse and mine.
+
+However, there was not the urgency for instant flight that Charlotte had
+thought there was; night fell; a whole regiment of our mounted infantry
+came silently up from the rear of the plantation and bivouacked without
+lights behind a quarter of a mile of worm-fence; our two wounded and
+three unharmed prisoners, or Miss Harper's, I should say, for it was in
+response to her entreaties that the latter had thrown down their arms,
+were taken away; the dead man was borne out; lights glowed in every
+room, the servants returned to their tasks, a maddening fragrance came
+from the kitchen, and the three nieces flitted everywhere in their
+benign activities, never discovering the hurt on my shoulder until
+everything else on earth had been discovered, and then--"Oh, Richard,
+Richard!" from Estelle, with "Reach-hard, Reach-hard!" from Cécile, and
+"Mr. Smith!" from Camille, as they bathed and bound it. At length a
+surgeon arrived, gave a cheering opinion of Ferry and of Charlotte, and
+scolded Harry savagely for the really bad condition of his hand. Then
+sounds grew few and faint, our lights went out, we lay down fully
+dressed, and nearly all of us, for a while, slept.
+
+But about two in the morning Harry awakened me, murmuring "Reach-hard!
+Reach-hard! come! our sick-train's moving. Ssh! General Austin's asleep
+in the next room!" I asked where Ferry was. "Already started," he
+whispered, "--in the General's own ambulance, with Charlotte Oliver in
+hers, on a mattress, like Ned, and the four Harpers in theirs." While we
+stole downstairs he murmured on "Our brigade's come up and General
+Austin will attack at daylight with this house as his headquarters."
+
+As we mounted I asked whither we were bound. "Tangipahoa," he said;
+"then by railroad to Brookhaven, and then out to Squire Wall's."
+
+At the first streak of dawn our slow caravan caught the distant notes of
+the battle opening behind us. "That's Fisher's battery!" joyously cried
+the aide-de-camp as we paused and hearkened back. "Well, thank the Lord,
+this time nobody's got to go back for her doll; she's got it with her; I
+saw her, just now, combing its hair." We descended into a woody hollow,
+the sounds of human strife died away, and field and forest offered us
+only beauty, fragrance, peace, and the love-songs of birds.
+
+
+
+LVI
+
+
+HÔTEL DES INVALIDES
+
+A shattered crew we were when in the forenoon of the third day we
+reached our goal. Harry's hand was giving him less trouble, but both my
+small wounds were misbehaving as stoutly as their limitations would
+allow; my aches were cruel and incessant, my side was swollen and my
+shoulder hot. Miss Harper was "really ill," said the surgeon, but for
+whose coming with us we should hardly have brought our whole number
+through alive. Both Ferry and Charlotte were in a critical condition.
+"Take you in!" said our tearfully smiling Mrs. Wall; "why, we'd take yo'
+whole crowd in ef we had to go out and bunk undeh the trees owse'v's!...
+Oh, Mr. Smith, you po' _chi--ild!_... Oh, my Lawd! is this Lieutenant
+Do-wrong! Good Lawd, good Lawd! I think this waugh's gone on now jess
+long enough!"
+
+In the house she gave the younger Harpers a second kiss all round. "You
+po' dears, yo're hero-ines, now, and hencefo'th fo'evehmo'!" Harry and I
+agreed they were; it was one of the few points on which we thought
+alike. We even agreed that Estelle's grasp of earthly realities was not
+so feeble as we had thought it.
+
+"Fact is," I said to him, on our first day at the Walls', as he was
+leaving the soldiers' room, where I sat under the surgeon's inspection,
+"you were totally mistaken about her."
+
+"Yes, I was," he replied; "she's got more sense in a minute than
+Camille's got in a week," and shut the door between us.
+
+My blood leaped with rage, yet I sat perfectly calm, while the surgeon
+laughed like a hyena. "As soon as you can let me go, Doctor," I frigidly
+said, "I shall look up the Lieutenant. I consider that remark
+ungentlemanly, and his method of making it as worthy only of a coward."
+
+The surgeon cackled again. "If that man," I dispassionately resumed,
+"was not perfectly sure that I am too honorable a gentleman to give Miss
+Camille the faintest hint of what he has said, sooner than say it he
+would go out and cut his throat from ear to ear."
+
+"Well! you oughtn't to get mad at him for thinking you a gentleman."
+
+"He sha'n't take a low advantage of my being one. You think he's open
+and blunt--he's as sly as a mink. He praises the older sister at the
+younger's expense, when it's the younger one that he's so everlastingly
+stuck on that he can't behave _like_ a gentleman to any man to whom she
+shows the slightest preference." We heard a coming step, but I talked
+on: "Sense! poor simpleton! he knows he hasn't got"--the door opened and
+Harry stepped partly in, but I only raised my voice,--"hasn't got as
+much brains in his whole head as there is in one of her tracks."
+
+With something between a sob, a sputter and a shriek he shut himself out
+again. Harry was never deep but in a shallow way, and never shallow
+without a certain treacherous depth. When Ned Ferry the next day
+summoned me to his bedside I went with a choking throat, not doubting I
+was to give account of this matter,--until I saw the kindness of his
+pallid face. Then my silly heart rose as much too high as it had just
+been too low and I thought "Charlotte has surrendered!" All he wanted
+was to make me his scribe. But when we were done he softly asked, "That
+business of yours we talked about on the Plank-road--it looks
+any better?"
+
+I bit my lip, turned away and shook my head. "Well, anyhow," he said,
+"I am told there is nobody in your way."
+
+I faced him sharply--"Who told you that?" and felt sure he would name
+the tricky aide-de-camp. But he pointed to the room overhead, which
+again, as in the other house, was Charlotte's. I blushed consciously
+with gratitude. "Well," I said, "it makes me happy to see you beginning
+again to get well."
+
+Within the same hour I met unexpectedly two other persons. First, Harry
+Helm; who, before I could speak, was deluging me with words, telling me
+for the twentieth time how, on that evening of the indoor fight, coming
+with a platoon of Mississippians which he had procured merely as a
+guard, he was within a hundred yards of the house before our shots in
+the bedroom told him he was riding to a rescue. Then suddenly he began
+to assure me that in what he had said about the two sisters he had
+sought only to mislead the surgeon, who, he declared, was more utterly
+dead-gone on Camille than both of us put together. We parted, and
+within the next five minutes I confronted the maiden herself.
+
+She came from upstairs with a mixed armful of papers, books and sewing,
+said she had been with Charlotte, and said no more, only made a
+mysterious mouth. I inquired how Charlotte was. She shrugged, sank into
+a seat on the gallery, let her arm-load into her lap, and replied, "Ah!
+she lies up there and smiles and smiles, and calls us pet names, and
+says she's perfectly contented, and then cannot drop half asleep without
+looking as though she were pressing a knife into her own heart. Oh,
+Dick, what is the matter with her?"
+
+"What do you think,--Camille?"
+
+"Oh--I--I'm afraid to say it--even to Estelle, or aunt Martha, or--"
+
+"Say it to me," I murmured.
+
+"Oh, if I could only trust you!" she said, shaking her head sadly and
+trying to lift her arm's burden again without taking her eyes from mine.
+It went to her feet in a landslide, and out of one of the books
+fluttered three stems of sweet-pea each bearing two mated blossoms. I
+knew them in an instant, and in the next I had them. She would not let
+me pile the fallen freight anywhere but into her arm again, nor recover
+her eye before she was fully re-laden. Then she set her lips freezingly
+and said "Now give me back my flowers."
+
+I meekly gave them and she turned to go into the house; her head
+gradually sank forward as she went, and her unparagoned ear and neck
+flushed to a burning red. On the threshold, by some miscalculation, her
+burdened arm struck the jamb, and the whole load fell again. I sprang
+and began to gather the stuff into a chair, but she walked straight on
+as though nothing had occurred, and shut the nearest door behind her.
+
+In those days used to come out to see us Gregory, in his long-skirted
+black coat and full civilian dress; of whom I have told a separate
+history elsewhere. Very pointed was Camille's neglect of both Harry and
+me, to make herself lovely to the dark and diffident new-comer, while
+Estelle positively pursued me with compensatory sweetness; and Gregory,
+whenever he and I were alone together, labored to reassure me of his
+harmlessness by expatiating exclusively upon the charms of Cécile. She
+seemed to him like a guardian angel of Ferry and Charlotte, while yet
+everything she said or did was wholly free from that quality of
+other-worldliness which was beautiful in Estelle, but which would not
+have endured repetition in the sister or the cousin. There Harry and I,
+also, once more agreed. Cécile never allowed herself to reflect a spirit
+of saintliness, or even of sacrifice, but only of maidenly wisdom and
+sweet philosophy.
+
+"If it weren't for Charlotte," whispered the Lieutenant, "I could swear
+she was created for Ned Ferry!" and when I shook my head he, too,
+declared "No, no! if ever a match was made on high Charlotte was made
+for him and he for Charlotte; but, oh, Lord, Lord! Reach-hard Thorndyke
+Smith, how is this thing going to end?"
+
+That was the problem in the mind of every looker on, and the lookers-on
+were legion; the whole wide neighborhood came to see us. Gregory and
+others outstayed their furloughs; the surgeon lingered shamelessly. Of
+course, there were three girls besides Charlotte, and it was pure
+lying--as I told Helm--for some of those fellows to pretend that Captain
+Ferry's problem was all they stayed for; and yet it was the one
+heart-problem which was everybody's, and we were all in one fever to see
+forthwith a conclusion which "a decent respect to the opinions of
+mankind" required should not come for months.
+
+"Pooh!" said Harry, "'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind'
+requires just the reverse!" and the surgeon avowed that it was required
+by a decent respect to her powers of endurance; he was every day afraid
+her slow improvement would stop and she would begin to sink. He admitted
+the event could wait, but he wished to gracious we could have
+her decision.
+
+I said suppose it should be negative. "Oh, it won't!" exclaimed both he
+and Harry. "When it comes to the very point--"
+
+Gregory's approach interrupted us, but I remembered a trait in Charlotte
+of which I have spoken, and gave myself the hope that their prediction
+might prove well founded.
+
+
+
+LVII
+
+
+A YES AND A NO
+
+But now Charlotte's recovery took on new speed. Maybe her new brightness
+meant only that her heart was learning to bear its load; but we hoped
+that was just what it was unlearning, as she and Ferry sat at chess on
+the gallery in the afternoons.
+
+One night the fellows gave a dance in Brookhaven. We went in two wagons
+and by the light of mounted torch-bearers, and Charlotte and Ferry stood
+at the dooryard gate and sent after us their mirthful warnings and
+good-byes. It set some of us a-hoping--to see them there--a dooryard
+gate means so much. We fairly prayed he might compel her decision before
+she should turn to re-enter the house. But the following morning it was
+evident we had prayed in vain.
+
+On the next afternoon but one we heard that a great column of our
+soldiers was approaching on the nearest highway, bound up the railroad
+to Joe Johnston's army from the region about Port Hudson, and Charlotte
+instantly proposed that our ladies deal out food and drink from some
+shady spot on the roadside. It was one of those southern summer days
+when it verily seems hotter in the shade than in the sun--unless you are
+in the sun. The force was wholly artillery and infantry, the last
+Confederate infantry that region ever saw in column under arms; poor,
+limping, brown-faced, bloody-footed boys! their weapons were the only
+clean things, the only whole things, about them except their unbroken
+spirit; and when the very foremost command chanced to be one which the
+Harpers had seen in New Orleans the day it left there marching in
+faultless platoons and spotless equipments through the crowds that
+roared acclaim and farewell, our dear ladies, for one weak moment, wept.
+
+"Here come the real heroes, Harry," said my crippled leader; "we are
+dandies and toy-soldiers, by the side of those infantry boys, Doctor, we
+cavalry fellows;" and we cavalry fellows would have hid if we honorably
+could. Yet hardly had he spoken when he and a passing field-officer
+cried out in mutual recognition, and from that time until the rear-guard
+was clear gone by we received what the newspapers call "a continuous
+ovation." A group of brigade officers went back with us to Squire
+Wall's, to supper, and you could see by the worship they paid Charlotte
+that they knew her story. Her strength was far overtaxed, and the moment
+the last fond straggler had gone we came in out of the splendid
+moonlight.
+
+"Now, Charlotte, my dear," began Miss Harper, "you are too terribly
+tired to--why, where is Charlotte; did she not come in with us from
+the--gate?"
+
+Ferry, too, was missing. Mrs. Wall made eyes at the inquirer, Estelle
+and Cécile began to speak but deferred to each other, and Camille,
+putting on a deadly exhaustion, whined as she tottered to her smiling
+guardian, "Kiss your sweet baby good-night, auntie dear, and"--with a
+hand reached out to Estelle--"make Naughty come, too." She turned to say
+good-night to Cécile but spoiled her kiss with an unintended laugh. The
+surgeon, Harry and I bowed from the room and stepped out to the
+water-bucket and gourd. From there we could see the missing two,
+lingering at the dooryard gate, in the bright moonlight. As we finished
+drinking, "Gentlemen," murmured Harry, "I fear our position is too
+exposed to be tenable."
+
+The surgeon started upstairs. "I'll join you directly, Doctor," Harry
+said, and in a lower voice added "Smith and I will just lounge in and
+out of the hall here to sort o' show nobody needn't be in any hurry,
+don't you see?"
+
+But the other jerked his thumb toward the half-closed parlor, where
+Miss Harper and Cécile sat close, to each other absorbed in some matter
+of the tenderest privacy. "They'll attend to that," he muttered; "come
+on to bed and mind your own business."
+
+Harry huffed absurdly. "You go mind yours," he retorted, and then more
+generously added, "we'll be with you in a minute." The surgeon went, and
+the aide-de-camp, as we began to pace the hall, fairly took my breath by
+remarking without a hint of self-censure, "Damn a frivolous man!" Then
+irrelatively he added, "Those two out at that gate--this is a matter of
+life and death with them;" and when I would have qualified the
+declaration, he broke in upon me--"Right, Dick, you're right, it _is_
+worse; it's a choice between true life and death-in-life; whether
+they'll make life's long march in sunshine together or in
+darkness apart."
+
+Well, of course, it was no such simple question, and never could be
+while life held so many values more splendid than any wilfulness could
+win. There lay the whole of Charlotte's real difficulty--for she had
+made it all hers. But when I tried in some awkward way to say this Harry
+cut me short. "Oh, Dick, I--eh--you bother me! I want to tell you
+something and if I don't hurry I can't. Something's happened to me, old
+fellow, something that's sobered me more than I ever would 'a' thought
+anything could. I want to tell you because I can trust you with a
+secr'--wh'--what's the matter, did I hurt your wound? Honestly, I want
+to tell you because--well--because I've been deceiving you all along:
+I've deceived you shamefully, letting on to like this girl more than
+that, and so on and so on."
+
+"Yes, you thought you were deceiving me."
+
+"Oh, well, maybe I wasn't, but I want to tell you to-night because I'm
+going to camp in the morning. Oh, yes,"--he named the deepest place
+known--"the sight of those webfoot boys to-day was too much for me; I'm
+going; and Dick, when I told her I was going--"
+
+"_Told whom_?"
+
+"Aw, come, now, Dick, you know every bit as well as I know. Well, when I
+told her I was going I didn't dream I was going to tell her anything
+else; I give you my word! Where in the"--same place again--"I ever got
+the courage I'll never tell you, but all of a sudden thinks I, 'I'm
+never going to get anything but no, anyhow, and so, Dick, I've been and
+gone and done it!"
+
+I leaned on the stair-newel, sorry for the poor fool, but glad of this
+chance. "Why, Lieutenant, not many men would have done as well. You felt
+honor-bound not to slip away uncommitted, so you took your dose like a
+hero and licked the spoon." I felt that I was salting his wound, but we
+were soldiers and--I had the salt.
+
+He drew a sigh. "Yes, I took my dose--of astonishment. Dick, she said
+yes! Oh, good Lord, Dick, do you reckon they'll ever be such full-blown
+idiots as to let me have her?"
+
+I sank upon the steps; every pore in my body was a fountain of cold
+sweat: "Have whom?"
+
+"Cécile." He was going on to declare himself no more fit for her than
+for the presidency of the Confederate States, which was perfectly true;
+but I sprang up, caught him (on my well side) by one good hand, and had
+begun my enthusiastic congratulations, when Charlotte appeared and we
+swerved against the rail to let her pass upstairs. In some way as she
+went by it was made plain to us that she had said no. "Good-night,"
+ventured both of us, timorously.
+
+"Good-night," she responded, very musically, but as if from a great
+distance.
+
+
+
+LVIII
+
+
+THE UPPER FORK OF THE ROAD
+
+Ferry, as he passed us, called my name, and I started after him. At
+Charlotte's door we heard the greeting of her black maid. The maid's
+father, who of late had been nightly dressing Ferry's wound and mine,
+came to us in Ferry's room; and there my Captain turned to greet me, his
+face white with calamity. He took me caressingly by a button of my
+jacket. "Can you have your wound washed to-night before mine?"
+
+"Why, certainly, if it's the least--"
+
+"Yes, thank you. And down here in this room instead of upstairs?"
+
+"Captain Ferry! if you knew how horribly it smells, you--"
+
+"Ah! don't I know?" he said, and as I sat naked from throat to waist
+with the old negro laving the sores, Ferry scanned them narrowly. "They
+are not so bad, Dick; you think a few hours in the saddle will not make
+them worse?"
+
+"Not if they're spent for you, Captain."
+
+"Yes, for me; also for much better. We shall ride for--"
+
+"You ride? Oh, Captain, you are in no condition--"
+
+"Tst!" he laid a finger on my lips; "'twill not be hard; we are not
+going on a scout--to jump fences." He began to make actual preparations,
+and presently helped me draw my shirt into place again over the clean
+bandages, while the old man went out after fresh water. "I am a hundred
+times more fit to go than to stay," he suddenly resumed. "I must go. Ah,
+idleness, there is nothing like idleness to drive a man mad; I must have
+something to do--to-night--at once." I wish I knew how to give the words
+with his quiet intensity.
+
+I began to unclothe his wound. "May I ask one thing?"
+
+"Ah! I know you; you want to ask am I taking that upper fork of the
+road. I am; 'tis for that I want you; so go you now to the stable,
+saddle our horses and bring them."
+
+When I reached the front steps with them Ferry was at the gallery's
+edge, Miss Harper, Cécile and Harry were on three sides of him, and he
+was explaining away our astonishing departure. We were going to
+Hazlehurst, to issue clothing and shoes to those ragged and barefoot
+fellows we had seen that afternoon, and the light of whose tentless camp
+was yonder in the sky, now, toward Brookhaven. We were to go that way,
+confer with their officers, telegraph from town for authorizations to be
+sent to us at Hazlehurst, and then to push on to that place and be ready
+to issue the stuff when the trains should come up from Brookhaven
+bringing the brigade. While he spoke Camille and Estelle joined us.
+"No," he said, "to start any later, 'twould be too late."
+
+To Harry's imploring protest that he, Ferry, was not fit to go to
+Hazlehurst horseback, he replied "Well! what we going to do? Those boys
+can't go to Big Black swamp bare-foot."
+
+Our dear friends were too well aware of the untold trouble to say a word
+about his coming back, but Miss Harper's parting injunction to me was to
+write them.
+
+The whole night and the following day were a toilsome time for us, but
+by fall of the next night the brigade had come in rags and passed newly
+clothed and shod, and in a room of the town tavern we dressed each
+other's hurts and sank to sleep on one bed. The night was hot, the pain
+of my wounds was like a great stone lying on them, and at the tragic
+moment of a frightful dream I awoke. "Captain," I murmured.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Did she give no reason?"
+
+"No." A silence followed; then he said, "You know the reason, I think."
+
+"Yes, I think I do; I think--"
+
+"Well? don't be afraid to say it."
+
+I got the words out in some form, that I believed Charlotte loved him
+deeply, as deeply, passionately, exaltedly, as ever a true woman loved
+a man--
+
+"Ah, me!" he lifted his arms wide and knitted his fingers on his brow.
+
+"And there is the whole trouble," I added. "She will not let you marry
+the woman whose--"
+
+"Whose husband I have killed.... Ah, God!... Ah, my God! why was I
+chosen to do that?... And you think, Dick, it was not a question of
+time; that I did not ask, maybe a little too soon?"
+
+"No, not as between sooner and later; and yet, in another way, possibly,
+yes." Without either of us stirring from the pillow I tried to explain.
+I pointed out that trait in Charlotte which I called an impulse suddenly
+to surrender the key of her situation, the vital point in her
+fortunes and fate.
+
+"Yes.... Yes," Ferry kept putting in.
+
+I went on to say that she seemed now to have learned, herself, that it
+was on this shoal she grounded at every low water of her physical and
+mental powers; as when over-fatigued, for instance; and that I should
+not wonder if she had bound herself never again at such a time to let
+her judgment follow her impulses. He laid his hand on me: "Stop; stop;
+you stab too deep. I thought to take her by surprise at that very point,
+and right there she has countermined. My God! can it be that I am served
+only right?"
+
+"No," I replied, although it was a thing I would have said Ned Ferry
+would not do, "no, no, it is she who has served both you and herself
+cruelly wrong. Captain, I believe that when Miss Harper has talked it
+over with her she will see her mistake as we all see it, and will call
+you back."
+
+"Ah, me! Ah, me! Do you believe that, Dick?"
+
+"I do, Captain; but at the same time--"
+
+"What, what? Speak out, Dick. You blame me some other way?"
+
+"Oh, no, indeed! I am the one to blame, the only one. If you had not,
+both of you, been so blameless--so splendidly blameless--I should hardly
+have let myself sink so deep into blame; but I knew you would never take
+the last glad step until you had seen the last sad proof that you might
+take it. Oh, Captain, to-night is the third time that in my dreams I
+have seen _that man_ alive."
+
+I do not know how long after that we lay silent, but it seemed an
+endless time before he exclaimed at last "My God! Dick, you should
+have told me."
+
+"I know it; I know I should! But it was only a dream, and--"
+
+"Ah! 'twas your doubt first and the dream after! But let us think no
+more of blame, we must settle the doubt. We shall begin that to-morrow."
+On my venturing to say more he interrupted. "Well, we can do nothing
+now; at the present, sleep is our first business." However, after a
+little, he spoke again, and, I believe, purely in order to soothe me to
+slumber, speculated and counselled with me for the better part of an
+hour concerning my own poor little love affair.
+
+At breakfast he told me the first step in his further plans would be for
+us to take the train for Tangipahoa, with our horses, on our way to our
+own camp; but just before the train came the telegraph brought General
+Austin's request--which, of course, carried all the weight of an
+order--for Ferry to remain here and make ready for further issues of
+quartermaster's stores. He turned on his heel and twisted his small
+mustache: "That means we are kept here to be kept here, Richard."
+
+It was a mistaken kindness, from our point of view, but it had the merit
+that it kept us busy. In two days the post-quartermaster's affairs and
+supplies were reduced to perfect order for the first time in their
+history. For two days more we ran a construction train and with a swarm
+of conscripts repaired two or three miles of road-bed and some
+trestle-work in a swamp; and at every respite in our strenuous
+activities we discoursed of the girls we'd left behind us; their minds,
+their manners, their features, figures, tastes and talents, and their
+walk and talk. So came the end of the week, and while the sun was still
+above the trees we went on down, inspecting the road beyond our repairs,
+on our own hand-car to Brookhaven. With heads bare, jackets in our laps,
+and muddy boots dangling over the car's front edge, and with six big
+negroes at the levers behind us, we watched the miles glide under our
+wheels and grow fewer and fewer between us and the shrine of our hearts.
+"Sing, Dick," said Ferry, and we chanted together, as we had done at
+every sunset these three days, "O my love is like a red, red rose." We
+could not have done it had we known that yonder glorious sun was setting
+forever upon the fortunes of our Southern Confederacy. It was the fourth
+of July; Lee was in full retreat from Gettysburg, Vicksburg was gone,
+Port Hudson was doomed, and all that was left for us now was to
+die hard.
+
+
+
+LIX
+
+
+UNDER CHARLOTTE'S WINDOW
+
+At the tavern, where we went to smarten up and to eat, we chanced upon
+Gregory. He was very shy of Ferry, because Ferry was a captain, but told
+me the latest news from the Wall place, where he had spent the previous
+evening. Harry and the surgeon were gone to camp, the Harpers were well,
+Charlotte was--better, after a bad turn of several days. We felt in duty
+bound to stay within hail of the telegraph office until it should close
+for the night; and when the operator was detained in it much beyond the
+usual time, Ferry, as we hovered near, said at length, "Well, I'm sorry
+for you, Dick; 'tis now too late for you to go yonder--this evening."
+
+"Didn't you intend to call, too?" "No," he said; yet the moment the
+operator turned the key in his door we sauntered away from the station,
+tavern, town, and out into the rain-famished country. We chose a road on
+high ground, under pines; the fact that a few miles of it would bring us
+to Squire Wall's was not sufficient reason for us to shun it, and we
+loitered on and on, discoursing philosophically on man and woman and the
+duties of each to other. Through habit we went softly, and so, in time,
+came up past a small garden under the house's southern side. Here
+silence was only decorum, for every window in the dark upper rooms was
+thrown open to the sultry air. The house's front was away from the
+direction of the town, and at a corner of this garden, where the road
+entered the open grove, the garden fence turned north at a right angle,
+while the road went on through the grove into wide cornfields beyond.
+
+We kept to the garden fence till it brought us along the dooryard front,
+facing the house. Thus far the whole place seemed fast asleep. Along the
+farthest, the northern, side a line of planted trees ran close to a
+narrow wing of but one room on each of its two stories, and the upper of
+these two rooms was Charlotte's. Where we paused, at the dooryard gate,
+we could not see this wing, but we knew its exterior perfectly; it had a
+narrow window in front, looking into the grove, and a broader one at the
+rear, that overlooked an open stretch of the Wall plantation. The place
+seemed fast asleep, I say, but we had not a doubt we were being
+watched--by the two terrible dogs that guarded the house but never
+barked. By this time they should have recognized us and ought to be
+coming forward and wagging faintly, as who should say "Yes, that's all
+right, but we have our orders."
+
+"Ah!"--Ferry guardedly pointed to the ground at the corner of the house
+nearest Charlotte's room; there were both the dogs, dim as phantoms and
+as silent, standing and peering not toward us but around to the wing
+side in a way to make one's blood stop. We drew deeper into the grove
+and made a short circuit that brought us in line with Charlotte's two
+windows, and there, at the farther one, with her back to us, sat
+Charlotte, looking toward Hazlehurst. The bloodthirsty beasts at the
+corner of the house were so intently waiting to spring upon something,
+somebody, between them and the nearer window, that we were secure from
+their notice. We had hardly more than become aware of these things when,
+in the line of planted trees, out of the depths of the one nearest the
+nearer window, sounded a note that brought Charlotte instantly to her
+feet; the same feeble, smothered cry she had heard the night she was
+wounded. She crossed to the front window and listened, first standing
+erect, and then stooping and leaning out. When we saw her do that we
+knew how little she cared for her life; Ferry beckoned me up from behind
+him; neither of us needed to say he feared the signal was from Oliver.
+"Watch here," he whispered, and keeping the deepest shade, started
+eagerly, with drawn revolver, toward the particular tree. I saw the dogs
+discover and recognize him and welcome his aid, yet I kept my closest
+watch on that tree's boughs and on Charlotte. She was wondering, I
+guessed, whether the call was from some messenger of Ferry, or was only
+a bird's cry. As if she decided it was the latter, she moved away, and
+had nearly re-crossed the room, when the same sad tremolo came searching
+the air again. Nevertheless she went on to the farther window and stood
+gazing out for the better part of a minute, while in my heart I besought
+her not to look behind. For Ferry and the dogs had vanished in shadow,
+and outside her nearer window, wavering now above and now below the
+sill, I could just descry a small pale object that reminded me of that
+missive Coralie Rothvelt had passed up to me outside the window-sill at
+old Lucius Oliver's house exactly a month before. From the upper depths
+of the nearest tree this small thing was being proffered on the end of a
+fishing-rod. Presently the rod must have tapped the sill, with such a
+start did she face about. Silently she ran, snatched the dumb messenger,
+and drew down the window-shade. A moment later the room glowed with a
+candle, while her shadow, falling upon the shade, revealed her scanning
+a letter, lifting her arms with emotion, and so passing out of the
+line of view.
+
+I waited on. So absorbed was I that I did not hear the coming of a
+horseman in the fields beyond the grove, nor the click of a field gate;
+but when the strange quietude of Ferry and the dogs had begun to
+reassure me I became aware of this new-comer approaching the dooryard.
+There he reined in and hallooed. I knew the voice. An answer came from
+an upper window. "Is this Squire Wall's?" asked the traveller. "Well,
+Squire, I'm from General Austin's headquarters, with orders to
+Captain Ferry."
+
+"Captain Ferry ain't stopping with us now, sir, he's 'way up at
+Hazlehurst."
+
+"Yes, sir. I didn't know but he might 'a' come down to spend to-morrow
+with you, it being the Sabbath. My name's Gholson, sir; I've got letters
+for the Miss Harpers; yes, sir; and one for Private Smith, from his
+mother, in New Orleans."
+
+"My sakes! yo' pow'ful welcome, Mr. Wholesome; just wait till I call off
+my dogs, sir, and I'll let you in."
+
+When the dogs came at the Squire's call I breathed relief. Ferry
+appeared behind me and beckoned me deeper into the grove. He sank upon a
+stump, whispering "That was worse than ten fights."
+
+"Who was it?" I asked. "Where is he?"
+
+He pointed to the field gate through which Gholson had come. In the
+field a small man was re-closing it cautiously, and now he mounted and
+rode away; it was Isidore Goldschmidt, of the Plank-road swamp. I was
+wondering why he had behaved in this skulking way, when Ferry, as if
+reading my thought, said, "Isidore can't afford to be found seventy-five
+miles inside our lines with no papers except a letter from a Yankee
+officer--and not knowing, himself, what's in it."
+
+"Oh! why should he risk his life to bring such a thing to her?"
+
+"Because three months ago she risked her life to save the life of his
+father, and now, since only last week, that Yankee has saved the life of
+his mother." I asked who this Yankee might be. "Well, that is yet more
+strange; he is the brother of Captain Jewett."
+
+We were moving to the house; at the steps we halted; the place was all
+alight and the ladies were arriving in the parlor. A beam of light
+touching Ferry's face made his smile haggard. I asked if this Jewett was
+another leader of scouts.
+
+"No, he is a high-rank surgeon. Yet I think he must have heard all about
+her; he wouldn't send that letter, that way, just for gratitude."
+
+"Yes," I responded, pondering, "he may easily have learned about her,"
+and I called to mind that chief-of-staff of whom Charlotte had told us.
+Then, remembering her emotional shadow-play on the window-shade, I
+added, "He knew at least what would be important news to her--Captain,
+I have it!"
+
+He made a motion of pain--"Don't say it!" and we read in each other's
+eyes the one conviction that from a surgeon's personal knowledge this
+man had written to warn Charlotte that Oliver was alive.
+
+
+
+LX
+
+
+TIDINGS
+
+All the glad difference between hope stark drowned and hope sighing back
+into life lightened Ferry's heart; he gripped my shoulder--the sound
+one, by good luck,--and drew me into the dining-room, where the whole
+company were gathered to see Gholson eat. Our entry was a fresh
+surprise. As we drank the flatteries of seven lovely welcomes, from
+behind Gholson I reconnoitred Charlotte, and the fullest confirmation of
+our guess was in the peaceful resolve of her eyes. I noted the Harpers,
+all, and dear Mrs. Wall's sweet freckled face, take new gladness of the
+happy change, while unable to define its cause.
+
+But now came raptures and rhapsodies over the opened letters. Ferry's
+orders had not been expected to reach him to-night, Gholson said, and so
+we insisted they and my letter should remain in the saddle-pockets while
+Gholson ate, and while the good news, public and personal, of the
+Harpers' letters went round.
+
+"But I thought the' was fi-ive letters," said the Squire as we were
+about to leave the board; at which Mrs. Wall mumbled to him to "hush
+up;" for the fifth was to Cécile.
+
+"Yes," guilefully said Charlotte, "Richard's letter!" and we all
+followed Gholson to where his saddle lay on the gallery. There he handed
+out Ferry's document and went on rummaging for mine.
+
+"The two were right here together," he said, "and Mr. Smith's was marked
+'valuable' and had something hard in one corner of it." Camille brought a
+candle, Estelle another; Gholson rose from his knee: "Smith, it's gone!
+I've lost it! And yet"--he slapped his breast-pockets--"no, it's
+somewhere in the grove; it's between here and that cornfield gate! I
+counted all the papers just this side of that gate, and I must 'a'
+dropped yours then!" Cécile brought a third light and we sallied forth
+into the motionless air, Estelle with a candle and Gholson, Camille
+with a candle and me, Cécile with a candle and Mrs. Wall, Miss Harper
+and the Squire, and Charlotte and Ferry. In the heart of the grove
+Estelle gave a soft cry, sprang, stooped, straightened, and handed me
+the letter.
+
+"Yes," exclaimed Camille as the three candle-bearers gathered close,
+"that's your mother's writing," and as we fell into marching order
+again, with the lights still in the front files, I opened it. It was
+thick and soft with sheet after sheet of thinnest paper. With these was
+a sealed letter, unaddressed, containing in one corner what seemed to be
+a ring. Around all was a sheet of writing of later date than any other.
+Wonderful, my mother's lines declared, was the Providence that had
+brought her wounded boy among such priceless friends; and wonderful that
+same Providence that now gave her the chance to send three weeks' daily
+letters in one, and to send them by a hand so sure that she ventured to
+add this other note, a matter so secret that it must be delivered only
+by my own hands, or hands which I could trust as my own, to Charlotte
+Oliver. We glanced back in search of Charlotte. She and Ferry were well
+in the rear of the procession, moving with laggard steps, she lighting
+his page with a borrowed candle, and he evidently reading not his
+orders, but the Federal surgeon's letter. "Oh, don't speak yet,"
+murmured Camille, "let them alone!"
+
+At the garden gate the most of the company passed on into the house,
+Gholson among them. His face, as for an instant he turned aside to me,
+betrayed a frozen rage; for Ferry and Charlotte tarried just at our
+backs, she seated on the "horse-block" and he leaning against it. A stir
+of air brought by the rising moon had blown out their light. Gholson
+left me, and Camille waited at my side while I tried to read by the
+flare of her guttering candle. "Come, my dear," said Miss Harper from
+half-way up the walk, but Charlotte called Miss Harper.
+
+"You'd better go in, Camille," insisted the aunt as she passed us, but
+Charlotte had just asked for our candle to relight her own, and she said
+to Miss Harper, "Let them stay, won't you?" and then to Ferry, "They
+might as well, mightn't they? Oh, now,"--as Camille handed her my
+mother's letter--"they must!" She toyed with the envelope's thinner edge
+without noticing the ring in the corner. "My dears," she said, looking
+frail and distressed, yet resolute, "I have positive intelligence--not
+through Captain, nor Richard, nor Mr. Gholson,--I'll tell you how some
+day--positive intelligence that--the dead--is not dead; the blow,
+Richard, glanced. I was foolish never to think of that possibility, it
+occurs so often. He was profoundly stunned, so that he didn't come-to
+until he was brought to a surgeon. It's from that surgeon I have the
+news; here's his letter."
+
+"Charlotte, my dear," interrupted Miss Harper, "tell us the remainder
+to-morrow, but now--"
+
+"No, sweetest friend, there will never be another chance like this;
+Captain Ferry's orders carry him to Jackson at daylight to-morrow,
+and--and we may not meet again for years; let me go on. When the gash
+was sewed up, the hand was really the worse hurt of the two, and after
+a few days he was sent down on a steamer to New Orleans with a great lot
+of other sick and wounded, and with the commanding general's warning not
+to come back on peril of his life. 'Tisn't easy to tell this, but you
+four have a particular right to know it from me and at once. So let me
+say"--she handed Ferry my mother's letter as if it were a burdensome
+distraction--"I'm not sorry for the mistake, Richard, which we all so
+innocently made; and you mustn't be sorry for me and be saying to
+yourselves that my captivity is on me again; for I'm happier tonight
+than I've been since the night the mistake was made."
+
+She dropped a hand to Ferry's to receive again the neglected letter, and
+chanced to take it by the corner that held the ring. With that she
+stared at us, fingered it, rended the envelope, gave one glance to her
+own name engraved inside a plain gold ring of the sort New Orleans girls
+bestow upon those to whom they are betrothed, and springing to the
+ground between our two candles, bent over the open page and cried
+through a flood of tears, "Oh, God, have mercy on him, he is gone! He is
+gone, Edgard! Oh, Edgard, he is gone at last; gone beyond all doubt, and
+our hands--our hands and our hearts are clean!"
+
+Ferry tossed away his candle and turned upon her, but she retreated into
+Miss Harper's arms laughing through her tears. "Oh, no, no! we've never
+hurried yet, never yet, my master in patience, and we'll not hurry now!
+Go and come again. Go, wait, hide your eyes till I cry 'whoop,' and
+come again and find me, and, I pledge you before these dear witnesses,
+I'll be 'it' for the rest of my life!"
+
+With the letter again held open, and bidding Miss Harper and Camille
+read with her, she swept a fleet glance along the close lines that told
+how Oliver, half cured of his wounds, had died in a congestive chill, of
+swamp-fever, the day he landed in New Orleans. "See, see, Richard, here
+your mother has copied the hospital's certificate."
+
+She read on aloud how two private Federal soldiers, hospital
+convalescents, had come to my mother telling her of his death, and how
+he had named my mother over and over in his delirium, desiring that she
+should be given charge of the small effects on his person and that she
+would return them to his father in the Confederacy. My mother wrote how
+she had been obliged secretly to buy back from the hospital steward a
+carte-de-visite photograph of Charlotte, and this ring; how, Oliver not
+being a Federal soldier, she had been allowed to assume the expense and
+task of his burial; how she had found the body already wrapped and
+bound, in the military way, when she first saw it, but heard the two
+convalescents praising to each other the strong, hard-used beauty of the
+hidden face, and was shown the suit of brown plantation jeans we all
+knew so well; and how, lastly, when her overbearing conscience compelled
+her to tell them she might find it easier to send the relics to the wife
+rather than the father, they had furtively advised her to do as
+she pleased.
+
+[Illustration: Springing to the ground between our two candles, she
+bent over the open page]
+
+"Charlotte," said Miss Harper, "the thing is an absolute certainty!
+Even without your likeness or--"
+
+"Ah, no, no, not without this! the ring, the ring! But with it, yes!
+This is the crowning proof! my ring to him! Oh, see my name inside it,
+Camille; this little signet is Heaven's own testimony and acquittal!
+Look, Richard, look at it now, for no living soul, no light of day,
+shall ever see it again--"
+
+"Sweet heart," replied Miss Harper, "very good! very good! but now say
+no more of that sort. God bless you, dear, just let yourself be happy.
+Good-night--no, no, sit still; stay where you are, love, while Camille
+and I go in and Richard steps around to the stable and puts our team
+into the road-wagon; for, Captain Ferry, neither you nor he is fit to
+walk into Brookhaven; we can bring the rig back when we come from church
+to-morrow."
+
+"No, Richard," said Charlotte, "get my wagon and the little Mexicans."
+Then to Miss Harper and Camille, "Good-night, dears; I'll wait here that
+long, if Captain Ferry will allow me." She turned to him with the
+moonlight in her eyes, that danced riotously as she said in her softest,
+deepest note, "You're afraid!" and I thanked Heaven that Coralie
+Rothvelt was still a pulsing reality in the bosom of Charlotte
+Oliver.
+
+
+
+LXI
+
+
+WHILE DESTINY MOVED ON
+
+Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the
+next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and
+Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited
+Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther
+to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him
+and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if
+our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was
+not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in
+practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh,
+the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the
+scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the
+groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood
+and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from
+sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long
+dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our
+brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring,
+with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the
+Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was
+kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried
+swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade
+going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge
+might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its
+captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be,
+in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called
+back to his commander, "Ferry's scouts!" the whole column cheered us. I
+feel the thrill of it to this hour.
+
+How busy we were kept, and how much oftener I wrote to Ferry, and to
+Camille, than to my mother. And how much closer I watched the trend of
+things that belonged only to this small story than I did that great
+theatre of a whole world's fortunes, whose arches spread and resounded
+from the city of Washington to the city of Mexico. In mid-August one of
+Camille's heartlessly infrequent letters brought me a mint of blithe
+news. Harry and Cécile were really engaged; Major Harper, aunt Martha,
+General Austin, Captain Ferry and Charlotte had all written the distant
+father in his behalf, and the distant father had capitulated.
+Furthermore, Captain Ferry's latest letter to Charlotte had brought word
+that in spite of all backsets he was promised by his physician that in
+ten days more he could safely take the field again. But, best of all,
+Major Harper, having spent a week with his family--not on leave, but on
+some mysterious business that somehow included a great train of pontoon
+bridges--had been so completely won over to Charlotte by her own sweet
+ways that, on his own suggestion to his sister, and their joint
+proposition, by correspondence, to Ferry, another group of letters,
+from Miss Harper, the Major and the General, had been sent to the
+Durands in New Orleans--father, mother, and grandmother--telling them
+all about Charlotte; her story, her beauty, her charms of manner, mind,
+and heart. And so, wrote my correspondent, the Wall household were
+living in confident hope and yet in unbearable suspense; for these
+things were now full two weeks old, and would have been told me sooner
+only that she, Camille, had promised never to tell them to any one
+whomsoever.
+
+A week later came another of these heartlessly infrequent letters. Mr.
+Gregory, it said,--oh, _hang_ Mr. Gregory!--had called the previous
+evening. Then followed the information that poor Mr. Gholson--oh, dear!
+the poor we have always with us!--had arrived again from camp so wasted
+with ague as to be a sight for tears. He had come consigned to "our
+hospital," an establishment which the Harpers, Charlotte and the Walls
+had set up in the old "summer-hotel" at Panacea Springs, and had
+contrived to get the medical authorities to adopt, officer and--in a
+manner--equip. They were giving dances there, to keep the soldiers
+cheerful, said the letter, in which its writer took her usual patriotic
+part, and Mr. Gregory--oh, save us alive! And now I was to prepare
+myself: the Durands had got the bunch of letters and had written a
+lovely reply to Captain Ferry, who had sent it to Charlotte, claiming
+her hand, and Charlotte had answered yes. If I thought I had ever seen
+her beautiful or blithe, or sweet, or happy, I ought to see her now;
+while as for the writer herself, nothing in all her life had ever so
+filled her with bliss, or ever could again.
+
+Ferry did not arrive, but day by day, night by night, we stalked the
+enemy, longing for our Captain to return to us. Quinn was fearless,
+daring, indefatigable; but Quinn was not Ferry. Often we talked it over
+by twos or fours; the swiftness of Ferry's divinations, the brilliant
+celerity with which he followed them out, the kindness of his care;
+Quinn's care of us was paternal, Ferry's was brotherly and motherly. We
+loved Quinn for the hate and scorn that overflowed from his very gaze
+upon everything false or base. But we loved Ferry for loving each and
+every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther
+yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious
+atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the
+carbonic-acid gas of Gholson's cant. We made great parade of recognizing
+his defects; it had all the fine show of a motion to reconsider. For
+example, we said, his serene obstinacy in small matters was equally
+exasperating and ridiculous; or, for another instance,--so and so; but
+in summing up we always lumped such failings as "the faults of his
+virtues," and neglected to catalogue them. Thinking it all over a
+thousand times since, I have concluded that the main source of his
+charm, what won our approval for whatever he did, however he did it, was
+that he seemed never to regard any one as the mere means to an
+end--except himself.
+
+If this history were more of war than of love--and really at times I
+fear it is--we might fill pages telling of the brigade's September and
+early October operations in that long tongue of devastated country which
+narrowed from northeast to southwest between Big Black on our front and
+the Tallahala and Bayou Pierre behind us. At Baker's Creek it had a
+bloody all-day fight, in which we took part after having been driven in
+upon the brigade. It was there that at dusk, to the uproarious delight
+of half the big camp, and with our Captain once more at our head, for he
+had rejoined us that very morning, we came last off the field, singing
+"Ned Ferry's a-comin' down de lane."
+
+On a day late in October our company were in bivouac after some hard
+night-riding. Some twenty-five miles west of us the brigade had been
+resting for several days on the old camp-ground at Gallatin, but now
+they were gone to Union Springs. Ferry, with a few men, was scouting
+eastward. Quinn awaited only his return in order to take half a dozen or
+so of picked fellows down southward and westward about Fayette. Between
+ten and eleven that night a corporal of the guard woke me, and as I
+flirted on my boots and jacket and saddled up, said Ferry was back and
+Quinn gone. I reported to Ferry, who handed me a despatch: "Give that to
+General Austin; he has gone back to Gallatin--without the brigade--to
+wait--with the others"--his smile broadened.
+
+"Captain,"--I swallowed a lump--"what others?"
+
+"Well,--all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm,
+Squire Wall, Mrs. Wall, the four Harper ladies, and--eh,--let me see, is
+that all?--ah, no, the old black man and his daughter, and--eh,--the
+two little mule'! that's all--stop! I was forgetting! What is that
+fellow's name we used to know? ah, yes; Charlie Toliver!" In a moment he
+sobered: "Yes, all will be yonder, and I wait only for Quinn to get back
+in the morning, to come myself." In the fulness of his joy he had to
+give my horse a parting slap. "Good-night! good-bye--till to-morrow!"
+
+I galloped away filled with an absurd foreboding that he was too sure,
+which may have come wholly from my bad temper at being started too late
+to see our ladies before morning. However, at two that night, my saddle
+laid under my head, and haversack under the saddle, I fell asleep with
+all Gallatin for my bedchamber, the courthouse square for my bed, the
+sky for my tester, the pole-star for my taper, hogs for mosquitoes and a
+club for a fan.
+
+
+
+LXII
+
+
+A TARRYING BRIDEGROOM
+
+Joyous was the dawn. With their places in the hospital filled for the
+brief time by Brookhaven friends, here were all our fairs, not to speak
+of the General, the Colonel, the Major, idlers of the town and region,
+and hospital bummers who had followed up unbidden and glaringly without
+wedding-garments. Cécile, Harry, Camille "and others" prepared the
+church. The General kept his tent, the Major rode to Hazlehurst, and the
+Colonel, bruised and stiffened by a late fall from his horse, lounged
+amiably just beyond talking range of the ladies and grumbled jokes to
+Chaplain Roly-poly, whose giggling enjoyment of them made us hope they
+were tempered to that clean-shaven lamb.
+
+However, there came a change. By mid-forenoon our gaiety ran on only by
+its momentum. The wedding was to be at eleven. At ten the Colonel,
+aside, told me, with a ferocious scowl, that my Captain ought to have
+arrived. At half-past he told me again, but Major Harper, returning from
+Hazlehurst, said, "Oh, any of a hundred trifles might have delayed him a
+short time; he would be along." The wedding-hour passed, the
+wedding-feast filled the air with good smells. Horsemen ambled a few
+miles up the road and came back without tidings. Then a courier, one of
+Ferry's scouts, galloped up to the General's tent, and presently the
+Major walked from it to the tavern and up to Charlotte's room, to say
+that Ferry was only detained by Quinn's non-arrival. "It's all right,"
+said everyone.
+
+Another hour wore on, another followed. The General and old Dismukes
+played cards and the latter began to smell of his drams, Harry and
+Cécile walked and talked apart, Camille kept me in leash with three
+other men, and about two o'clock came another courier with another bit
+of Ferry's writing; Quinn had returned. He had had a brush with
+jayhawkers in the night, had captured all but their leader, and had sent
+his prisoners in to brigade headquarters at Union Church, while he
+returned to Ferry's camp bringing with him, mortally wounded--"O--oh!
+Oh--oh!" exclaimed Charlotte, gazing at the missive,--"Sergeant
+Jim Langley!"
+
+"Does Ned say when he will start?" asked the Colonel, and Charlotte,
+reading again, said the sergeant, at the time of the writing, was not
+expected to live an hour. Whereupon the word went through town that
+Ferry was on his way to us.
+
+"Smith," said the Colonel, just not too full to keep up a majestic
+frown, "want to saddle my horse and yours?" and very soon we were off to
+meet the tardy bridegroom. The October sunshine was fiery, but the road
+led us through our old camp-ground for two or three shady miles before
+it forked to the right to cross the Natchez Trace, and to the left on
+its way to Union Springs, and at the fork we halted. "Smith, I reckon
+we'd best go back." I mentioned his bruises and the torrid sun-glare
+before us, but he cursed both with equal contempt; "No, but I must go
+back; I--I've left a--oh, I must go back to wet my whistle!"
+
+We had retraced our way but a few steps, when, looking behind me as a
+scout's habit is, I saw a horseman coming swiftly on the Union Church
+road. "Colonel," I said, "here comes Scott Gholson."
+
+Without pausing or turning an eye my hearer poured out a slow flood of
+curses. "If that whelp has come here of his own accord he's come for no
+good! Has he seen us?"
+
+Gholson had not seen us; we had been in deep shade when he came into
+sight, and happened at that moment to turn an angle that took us out of
+his line of view. In a minute or so we were again at the small bridge
+over the embowered creek which ran through the camping-ground. The water
+was low and clear, and the Colonel turned from the bridge as if to cross
+beneath it and let his beast drink, yet motioned back for me to go upon
+it. As I reached its middle he came under it in the stream and halted.
+Guessing his wish I turned my horse across the bridge and waited.
+Gholson was almost within hail before he knew me. He was a heaving lump
+of dust, sweat and pain.
+
+"Has Ned Ferry come?" was his first call. I shook my head. "Oh, thank
+God!" he cried with a wild gesture and sank low in the saddle; but
+instantly he roused again: "Oh, don't stop me, Smith; if I once stop I'm
+afraid I'll never get to her!"
+
+I stopped him. "Why, Gholson, you're burning up with fever."
+
+"Yes, I started with a shaking chill. I'm afraid, every minute, I'll go
+out of my head. Oh, Smith, Oliver's alive! He's alive, he's alive, and
+I've come to save his poor wife from a fate worse than death!"
+
+"Gholson, you are out of your head."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes, yes! and yet I know what I'm saying, I know what I'm
+saying!"
+
+"You do not! Gholson, Oliver's been food for worms these four months. I
+know he wasn't dead at Gilmer's; but he died--now, let me tell
+you--he--"
+
+"Smith, I know the whole story and you know only half!"
+
+"No, no! I know all and you know only half; I have seen the absolute--"
+
+"Proofs? no! you saw things taken from the body of another man in
+Oliver's clothes! Oliver swapped places with him on the boat going down
+to the city so's he could come back to these parts without being hung by
+the Yankees; swapped with a sick soldier, one of a pair that wanted to
+desert; swapped names, clothes, bandages, letters, everything. It was
+that soldier that died of the congestive chill and was buried by your
+mother with his face in a blanket--as, like enough, mine will be before
+another day is done--Oh, Lord, Lord! my head will burst!"
+
+"Gholson, you're mistaken yet! That soldier came to my mother--"
+
+"No, he never! the other one went to her, in cahoots with Oliver, and
+worked the thing all through so's to have the news of Oliver's death, so
+called, come back here to the Yankees and us; and to his wife, so's she
+_would_ marry Ned Ferry to her everlasting shame, and people would say
+they was served right when he killed 'em at last! O--oh! Smith,--"
+
+"Listen to me!" I had tried twice to interrupt and now I yelled; "was it
+Oliver, and a new gang, that Quinn fought last night, and have you got
+him at Union Church?"
+
+"Quinn didn't know it, for Oliver got away, but they got the Yankee
+deserter, and brought him in when everybody was asleep but me, and I
+cross-examined him. Oh, my friend, God's arm is not shortened that he
+cannot save! He maketh the wrath of the wicked to praise him! The man
+was dying then, but thank God, I choked the whole truth out of him with
+a halter over a limb, and then for three mortal hours I couldn't start
+because the squad that took him out to--Who--who is that?"
+
+The Colonel moved from under the bridge, spurred up the bank, and turned
+to us with a murderous smile. "Howdy, Gholson." The smile grew. "Had to
+stay with the hanging-squad to keep his mouth shut, you was going to
+say, wa'n't you? But you knew Captain Ferry would be delayed waiting for
+Quinn, too; yes. Does any one know this now besides us three; no! Good,
+we're well met! Smith and me are going to Union Church, and you'd better
+go with us; I've got a job that God A'mighty just built you two saints
+and me for; come, never mind Gallatin, Ferry's not there, and when he
+gets there Heaven ain't a-going to stop that wedding, and hell sha'n't."
+Gholson had barely caught his breath to demur when old Dismukes, roaring
+and snarling like a huge dog, whipped out his revolver, clutched the
+sick man's bosom, and hanging over him and bellowing blasphemies, yelled
+into his very teeth "Come!"
+
+We galloped. A courier from the brigade-camp met us, and the Colonel
+scribbled a purely false explanation of our absence, begging that no
+delay be made because of it. As the man left us, who should come up from
+behind us but Harry, asking what was the matter. "Matter enough for you
+to come along," said the Arkansan, and we went two and two, he and
+Gholson, Harry and I. We reached camp at sundown, and stopped to feed
+and rest our horses and to catch an hour's sleep. Gholson's fatigue was
+pitiful, but he ate like a wolf, slept, and awoke with but little fever.
+The Colonel kept him under his eye, forcing on him the honors of his
+own board, bed and bottle, and at nine we galloped again.
+
+Between eleven and twelve the Colonel, Harry and I were in a dense wood,
+moving noiselessly toward a clearing brilliantly lighted by the moon. I
+was guide. A few rods back in the woods Gholson was holding our horses
+and with cocked revolver detaining a young mulatto woman from whom the
+Colonel had extorted the knowledge which had brought us to this spot.
+The clearing was fenced, but was full of autumn weeds. Near the two
+sides next us, tilted awry on its high basement pillars, loomed an old
+cotton-gin house, its dark shadows falling toward us. A few yards beyond
+towered and gleamed a white-boled sycamore, and between the two the
+titanic arms of the horse-power press widened broadly downward out of
+the still night sky. The tree was the one which old Lucius Oliver had
+once pointed out to me at dawn.
+
+
+
+LXIII
+
+
+SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER TOLD TILL NOW
+
+At the fence I ceased to lead, and we crept near the gin-house from
+three sides, warily, though all the chances were that wherever Oliver
+lay he was heavy with drink. The Colonel stole in alone. He was lost to
+us for, I should say, five minutes; they seemed thirty; then there
+pealed upon the stillness an uproarious laugh mingled with oaths and
+curses, sounds of a plunge, a struggle, a groan, and old Dismukes
+calling "Come, boys, I've got him! Take it easy, take it easy, I've got
+him on the floor by the hair of his head; call Gholson!"
+
+Gholson brought the mulatress. In the feeble rays of an old tin lantern,
+on some gunny-sacking that lay about the gin-room floor, sat old
+Dismukes cross-legged and smiling, with arms folded and revolver
+dangling from his right hand, at full cock. On one side crouched Harry
+and I, on the other side Gholson and the slave woman. Facing him, half
+sat, half knelt Oliver, bound hand and foot, and gagged with his own
+knotted handkerchief. The lantern hung from a low beam just above his
+face; his eyes blazed across the short interval with the splendor of a
+hawk's. The dread issue of the hour seemed all at once to have taken
+from his outward aspect the baser signs of his habits and crimes, and I
+saw large extenuation for Charlotte's great mistake. From the big
+Colonel's face, too, the heaviness of drink was gone, and its smile grew
+almost fine as he spoke.
+
+"Ten minutes for prayer is a good while to allow you, my amiable friend;
+we ain't heard for our much speaking, are we, Brother Gholson? Still,
+we've given you that, and it's half gone. If you don't want the other
+half we won't force it on you; we've got that wedding to go to, and I'm
+afraid we'll be late."
+
+The bound man sat like a statue. The slave girl went upon her knees and
+began to pray for her master,--with whom she had remained after every
+other servant on the place had run off to the Federals, supplicating
+with a piteous fervor that drew tears down Harry's cheeks. "Humph!" said
+the Arkansan, still smiling straight into Oliver's eyes, "she'd better
+be thanking God for her freedom, for that's what we're going to give her
+to-night; we're going to take her and your poor old crippled father to
+the outposts and turn 'em loose, and if either of 'em ever shows up
+inside our lines after to-night, we'll hang 'em. You fixed the date of
+your death last June, and we're not going to let it be changed; that's
+when you died. Ain't it, Gholson? Whoever says it ain't fixes the date
+of his own funeral, eh, boys? I take pleasure in telling you we're not
+going to hang your father, because I believe in my bones you'd rather
+we'd hang him than not. Mr. Gholson, you're our most pious believer in
+obedience to orders; well, I'm going to give you one, and if you don't
+make a botch of it I sha'n't have to make a botch of you; understand?"
+
+Gholson's lips moved inaudibly, his jaws set hard, and he blanched; but
+the Colonel smiled once more: "I've heard that at one time you said, or
+implied, that Captain Ferry had betrayed his office, because when he had
+a fair chance to shoot this varmint he omitted, for private reasons, to
+do it. And I've heard you say, myself, that this isn't your own little
+private war. So,--just change seats with me."
+
+They exchanged. The slave girl sank forward upon her face moaning and
+sobbing. Harry silently wept. "Now, Gholson, you know me; draw--pistol."
+
+Gholson drew; I grew sick. "Ready,"--Gholson came to a ready and so did
+the Colonel; "aim," Gholson slowly aimed, the Colonel kept a ready, and
+Oliver, for the first time took his eyes from him and gazed at Gholson.
+"Fire!" Gholson fired; Oliver silently fell forward; with a stifled cry
+the girl sprang to him and drew his head into her lap, and he softly
+straightened out and was still. "Oh, sweet Jesus!" she cried, "Oh,
+sweet Jesus!"
+
+The amused Colonel held the lantern close down. "He's all right, Brother
+Gholson," was his verdict; the ball had gone to the heart. "Still, just
+to clinch the thing, we'll calcine him, gin-house and all."
+
+Gin-house and all, we burned him up. On our horses out in the open road
+to the house, we sat, the girl perched behind the Colonel, and watched
+the fire mount and whirl and crackle behind the awful black arms of the
+cotton-press. The Arkansan shook his head: "It's too fine; 'tain't a
+dog's death, after all. Lord! why didn't I think of it in time? we'd
+ought to 'a' just dropped him alive into that lint-box and turned the
+press down onto him with our horses!"
+
+When the pile was in one great flame we rode to the dwelling, and the
+girl was sent in to bid old Lucius begone. The doors stood open, a soft
+firelight shone from his room. We saw her form darken his chamber
+threshold and halt, and then she wailed: "Oh, Lawd God A'mighty! Oh,
+Lawd God A'mighty!"
+
+"Stop that noise! Gholson, hold the horses. Come. Lieutenant, come
+Smith, maybe he's killed himself, but it seems too good to be true.
+Here, girl, go cram what you can get into a pillow-case, and mount
+behind my saddle again; be quick, we're going to burn this hornet's
+nest too." Harry and I had already run to the old man's room, and, sure
+enough, there lay the aged assassin hideous in his fallen bulk, with his
+own bullet in his brain.
+
+Once more the Arkansan shook his head at the leaping flames. "Too good,
+too good for either of 'em, entirely; we've let 'em settle at five cents
+on the dollar. Here girl,"--he reached back and handed her a wad of
+greenbacks,--"here's your dividend; you're a preferred creditor." He had
+rifled the pockets of both the dead men, and this was their contents.
+"Now, boys, we'll dust, or we'll be getting shot at by some fool or
+other. We're leaving a fine horse hid away somewhere hereabouts, but we
+can't help that; come on."
+
+In due time the Colonel, with the slave girl, and Harry with her
+pillow-case of duds, turned toward Fayette, and Gholson and I toward the
+brigade, at Union Church. Then, at last, my old friend and
+co-religionist let his wrath loose. He began with a flood of curses,
+lifting high a loaded carbine which we had found with Oliver and which
+he was ordered to turn in. As he gave his ecstasy utterance it grew; he
+brandished the weapon like a Bedouin, dug the rowels into his overspent
+beast and curbed him back to his haunches, fisted him about the ears,
+gnashed with the pain of his own blows, and howled, and stood up in the
+stirrups and cursed again. I had heard church-members curse, but they
+were new church-members, camp converts, and their curses were an
+infant's cooing, to this. Unwittingly he caused his horse to stumble,
+and the torrent of his passion gathered force like rain after a peal of
+thunder; he clubbed the gun to bring it down upon the beautiful
+creature's head, and when I caught it on the rise he wrenched it from me
+as if I were a girl, threw it fifty feet away, sprang to the ground and
+caught it up, fired it in the air, and with one blow against a tree sent
+the stock flying, threw the barrel underfoot, leapt upon it, tore his
+hair and his hat, and cursed and champed and howled. I sat holding his
+horse and feeling my satisfaction rise like the mercury in a warmed
+thermometer. Contrasting this mood with the cold malignancy and resolve
+of his temper in the soldiers' room at Sessions's, I saw, to my delight,
+that our secret was forever imprisoned in his breast, gagged and chained
+down by the iron of his own inextricable infamy. At dawn he awakened me
+that he might persuade me to reject the evidences brought against his
+character by his doings and endurings of the night, and that he might
+rebuild the old house of words in which habitually he found shelter, too
+abysmally self-conceited ever to see his own hypocrisy. We breakfasted
+with the "attatchays"; after which he had barely secured my final
+assurance that our friendship remained unmarred, when old Dismukes and
+Harry mounted at the Colonel's tent, and the old brute, as they trotted
+out into the Gallatin road, beckoned me to join them.
+
+
+
+LXIV
+
+
+BY TWOS. MARCH
+
+The Arkansan was happy. "Come up, Legs," he bawled to me as soon as we
+were beyond the pickets, "come up from behind there; this ain't no
+dress parade."
+
+"Are they married?" I softly asked Harry at the first opportunity, but
+he could not tell me. He knew only that Ferry had been expected to
+arrive about an hour before midnight; if he arrived later the wedding
+would be deferred until to-day. On our whole ride we met no one from
+Gallatin until near the edge of the town we passed a smiling rider who
+called after us, "You-all a-hurryin' for nothin'!"
+
+We dropped to a more dignified gait and moved gayly in among our
+gathering friends, asking if we were in time. "No--o! you're too
+late!--but still we've waited for you; couldn't help ourselves; she
+wouldn't stir without you."
+
+The happy hubbub was bewildering. "Where's this one?" "Where's that
+one?" "See here, I'm looking for you!" "Now, you and I go together--"
+"Dick Smith! where's Dick Sm'--Miss Harper wants you, Smith, up at the
+bride's door." But Miss Harper only sent me in to Charlotte.
+
+"Richard, tell me," the fair vision began to say, but there the cloud
+left her brow. "No," she added, "you couldn't look so happy if there
+were the least thing wrong, could you?" Her fathoming eyes filled while
+her smile brightened, and meeting them squarely I replied "There's
+a-many a thing wrong, but not one for which this wedding need wait
+another minute."
+
+"God bless you, Richard!" she said; "and now _you_ may go tell Edgard I
+am coming."
+
+Old Gallatin is no more. I would not mention without reverence the
+perishing of a town however small, though no charm of antiquity, of art
+or of nature were lost in its dissolution. Yet it suits my fancy that
+old Gallatin has perished. Neither war nor famine, flood nor fever were
+the death of it; the railroad and Hazlehurst sapped its life. Some years
+ago, on a business trip for our company--not cavalry, insurance,--I went
+several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick,
+of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its
+square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In
+place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and
+houses had utterly vanished; a solitary "store," as transient as a
+toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling calico and molasses, shoes
+and snuff. But that was the only discord, and by turning my back on it I
+easily called up the long past scene: the wedding, the feast, the fiery
+punch, the General's toast to the bridal pair, and the heavy-eyed
+Colonel's bumper to their posterity! It was hardly drunk when a courier
+brought word that the enemy were across Big Black, and the brigade
+pressing north to meet them. Charlotte glided away to her room to be
+"back in a moment"; into their saddles went the General, the Colonel,
+the Major and the aide-de-camp, and thundered off across the bridge in
+the woods; Charlotte came back in riding-habit, and here was my horse
+with her saddle on him, and the Harpers and Mrs. Wall clasping and
+kissing her; and now her foot was in Ferry's hand and up she sprang to
+her seat, he vaulted to his, and away they galloped side by side, he for
+the uttermost front of reconnoissance and assault, she for the slow but
+successful uplifting of Sergeant Jim back to health and into his place
+in the train of our hero and hers. In the little leather-curtained
+wagon, with the old black man and his daughter, and all her mistress's
+small belongings, and with my saddle and bridle, I followed on to the
+house where lay the sergeant, and where my horse would be waiting to
+bear me on to Ferry's scouts.
+
+I saw the Harpers only twice again before the war was over. Nearly all
+winter our soldiering was down in the Felicianas, but by February we
+were once more at Big Black when Sherman with ten thousand of his
+destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three
+or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had
+fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went
+back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers
+set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were
+occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department
+headquarters in that State capital; yet Harry and Cécile did not wed
+until after the surrender. Gholson's passion far Charlotte really did
+half destroy him, while it lasted; nevertheless, one day about a year
+after her marriage, when I had the joy of visiting the Harpers, I saw
+that Gholson's heart was healed of that wound and had opened in a new
+place. That is why Estelle, with that danger-glow of emotion ever
+impending on her beautiful cheek, never married. She was of that kind
+whose love, once placed, can never remove itself, and she loved Gholson.
+Both Cécile and Camille had some gift to discern character, and some
+notion of their own value, and therefore are less to be excused for not
+choosing better husbands than they did; but Estelle could never see
+beyond the outer label of man, woman or child, and Gholson's label was
+his piety. She believed in it as implicitly, as consumingly, as he
+believed in it himself; and when her whole kindred spoke as one and said
+no, and she sent him away, _she_ knew she was a lifelong widow from that
+hour. Gholson found a wife, a rich widow ten years his senior, and so
+first of all, since we have reached the page for partings, good-bye
+Gholson. "Whom the gods love die young"--you must be sixty years old
+now, for they say you're still alive. And good-bye, old Dismukes; the
+Colonel made a fortune after the war, as a penitentiary lessee, but they
+say he has--how shall we phrase it?--gone to his reward? Let us
+hope not.
+
+But what is this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks?
+Our rocket has scaled the sky, poised, curved, burst, spread out all its
+stars, and dropped its stick. All is done unless we desire to watch the
+fading sparks slowly sink and melt into darkness. The General, the
+Major, his brother, their sister, my mother, Quinn, Kendall, Sergeant
+Jim, the Sessionses, the Walls--do not inquire too closely; some have
+vanished already, and soon all will be gone; then--another rocket; it is
+the only way, and why is it not a good one? Harry and Cécile--yes, they
+still shine, in "dear old New Orleans." Camille kept me on the
+tenter-hooks while she "turned away her eyes" for years; but one evening
+when we were reading an ancient book together out dropped those same old
+sweet-pea blossoms; whereupon I took her hand and--I have it yet. There,
+we have counted the last spark--stop, no! two lights beam out again;
+Edgard and Charlotte, our neighbors and dearest friends through all our
+life; they glow with nobility and loveliness yet, as they did in those
+young days when his sword led our dying fortunes, and she, in her gypsy
+wagon, followed them, binding the torn wound, and bathing the aching
+bruise and fevered head. Oh, Ned Ferry, my long-loved partner, as dear a
+leader still as ever you were in the days of bloody death, life's
+choicest gifts be yours, and be hers whose sons and daughters are yours,
+and the eldest and tallest of whom is the one you and she have
+named Richard.
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+OTHER BOOKS BY MR. CABLE
+
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+There are few living American writers who can reproduce for us more
+perfectly than MR. CABLE does, in his best moments, the speech, the
+manners, the whole social atmosphere of a remote time and peculiar
+people. A delicious flavor of humor permeates his stories.--_The New
+York Tribune_.
+
+STRONG HEARTS
+
+12mo, $1.25
+
+"Under the title "_Strong Hearts_," MR. CABLE has grouped three stories
+of varying length, which we think must stand as among the most charming
+things he has written. Not even in "_Old Creole Days_," is there found
+more delicate work, and yet underneath it there is felt the strong grasp
+of the master. There is so much delicacy, such a fine touch that one is
+wholly captivated by the handiwork until it is realized how much this is
+part and parcel of this picture."--_Brooklyn Eagle_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+_A New Edition of Mr. Cable's Romances comprising the following 5 vols.,
+printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt top and bound in sateen with full
+gilt design. Each 12mo, $1.50. The set, 5 volumes, in a box, $7.50_.
+
+JOHN MARCH SOUTHERNER
+
+12mo, $1.50
+
+"The most careful and thorough going study of the reconstruction period
+in the South which has yet been offered in the world of
+fiction.--_The Outlook_.
+
+"In many respects MR. CABLE'S finest work."--_Boston Advertiser_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE GRANDISSIMES
+
+A STORY OF CREOLE LIFE
+
+12mo, $1.50.
+
+"Such a book goes far towards establishing an epoch in fiction, and it
+places it beyond a doubt that we have in MR. CABLE a novelist of
+positive originality, and of the very first quality."--_The
+Boston Journal_.
+
++The Grandissimes.+ with 12 full-page illustrations and 8 head and tail
+pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
+original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.
+
+A Special limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net, $12.00_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+OLD CREOLE DAYS
+
+12mo, $1.50.
+
+Cameo Edition with an etching by Percy Moran, $1.25
+
+"These charming stories attract attention and commendation by their
+quaint delicacy of style, their faithful delineation of Creole
+character, and a marked originality."--_The New Orleans Picayune_.
+
++Old Creole Days.+ _With 8 full-page illustrations and 14 head and tail
+pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
+original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.
+
+A Special Limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net $12.00_.
+
+BONAVENTURE
+
+A PROSE PASTORAL OF ACADIAN LOUISIANA 12mo, $1.50
+
+"A noble, tender, beautiful tale."--MRS. L. C. MOULTON in _Boston
+Herald_.
+
+"MR. CABLE has never produced anything so delightful and so artistic as
+"Bonaventure." The charm of the pastoral life of these unlearned,
+unsuspicious people in rude homes far away from the stir of modern life
+is as novel as it is indescribable."--_North American Review_.
+
+DR. SEVIER 12mo, $1.50
+
+"The story contains a most attractive blending of vivid descriptions of
+local scenery, with admirable delineations of personal character."--_The
+Congregationalist_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA
+
+Illustrated. 12mo, $2.00
+
+"What a field of romance, of color, of incident, of delicate feeling,
+and unique social conditions these stories show!"--_Hartford Courant_.
+
+"They are tales whose interest and variety seem inexhaustible.--MR.
+CABLE has done lasting service to literature in giving us this
+remarkable and delightful collection. In themselves they are memorably
+charming."--_Boston Transcript_.
+
+MADAME DELPHINE
+
+16mo, 75 cents
+
+"This is one of the gems of a collection of exquisite stories of the old
+Creole days in Louisiana."--_Boston Advertiser_.
+
+Ivory series edition, 16mo, 75c.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA
+
+ILLUSTRATED FROM DRAWINGS BY FENNEL
+
+Square 12mo, $2.50
+
+"As a history of the Louisiana Creoles, it occupies a field in which it
+will not find a competitor. Mr. Cable has given us an exceedingly
+attractive piece of work."--_The Nation_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE SILENT SOUTH
+
+Together with the Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease
+System. _Revised and Enlarged Edition_. With portrait.
+
+12mo, $1.00
+
+"Whatever other literature on these themes may arise Mr. Cable's book
+must be a permanent influence impossible for writers on either side to
+ignore."--_The Critic_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE NEGRO QUESTION
+
+12mo, 75c
+
+"Mr. Cable has the Puritan conscience, the agitator's courage, and the
+Anglo-Saxon's fearless adhesion to what he deems right."--_The
+Churchman_.
+
+-------------------------
+
+THE CABLE STORY BOOK
+
+Selections for School Reading. Edited by Mary E. Burt and Lucy L. Cable.
+[_The Scribner Series of School Reading_]. Illustrated. 12mo, _net_ 60c.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cavalier,
+by George Washington Cable
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+Title: The Cavalier
+
+Author: George Washington Cable
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9839]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAVALIER ***
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+</pre>
+
+<table width="80%"><tr><td>
+<a name="imgone" id="imgone"></a><img src="001.jpg" alt="Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!" />
+</td>
+<td>
+<center>
+<h1>THE CAVALIER</h1>
+<h2>BY
+</h2>
+<h2>GEORGE W. CABLE
+</h2>
+<h2>1901
+</h2>
+</center>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="4">
+      <div align="center"><strong>CONTENTS</strong> </div>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>
+      <div align="right"><strong>CHAPTER</strong> </div>
+    </td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+
+    <td>
+      <div align="right"><strong>CHAPTER</strong></div>
+    </td>
+    <td>&nbsp; </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>
+      <p align="right"><strong>I. <br />
+        II.<br />
+        III. <br />
+        IV. <br />
+        V. <br />
+        VI.<br />
+        VII.<br />
+        VIII.<br />
+        IX.<br />
+        X.<br />
+        XI.<br />
+        XII.<br />
+        XIII.<br />
+        XIV.<br />
+        XV.<br />
+        XVI.<br />
+        XVII.<br />
+        XVIII.<br />
+        XIX.<br />
+        XX.<br />
+        XXI.<br />
+        XXII.<br />
+        XXIII.<br />
+        XXIV.<br />
+        XXV.<br />
+        XXVI.<br />
+        XXVII.<br />
+        XXVIII.<br />
+        XXIX.<br />
+        XXX.<br />
+        XXXI.<br />
+        XXXII.</strong></p>
+    </td>
+    <td align="left"><a href="#I">She Wanted to Laugh</a><br />
+      <a href="#II">Lieutenant Ferry</a><br />
+      <a href="#III">She</a><br />
+      <a href="#IV">Three Days' Rations</a><br />
+      <a href="#V">Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty</a><br />
+      <a href="#VI">A Handsome Stranger</a><br />
+      <a href="#VII">A Plague on Names!</a><br />
+      <a href="#VIII">Another Curtained Wagon</a><br />
+      <a href="#IX">The Dandy's Task</a><br />
+      <a href="#X">The Soldier's Hour</a><br />
+      <a href="#XI">Captain Jewett</a><br />
+      <a href="#XII">In the General's Tent</a><br />
+      <a href="#XIII">Good-Bye, Dick</a><br />
+      <a href="#XIV">Coralie Rothvelt</a><br />
+      <a href="#XV">Venus and Mars</a><br />
+      <a href="#XVI">An Aching Conscience</a><br />
+      <a href="#XVII">Two Under One Hat-Brim</a><br />
+      <a href="#XVIII">The Jayhawkers</a><br />
+      <a href="#XIX">Asleep in the Death-Trap</a><br />
+      <a href="#XX">Charlotte Oliver</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXI">The Fight on the Bridge</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXII">We Speed a Parting Guest</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXIII">Ferry Talks of Charlotte</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXIV">A Million and a Half</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXV">A Quiet Ride</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXVI">A Salute Across the Dead-Line</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXVII">Some Fall, Some Plunge</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXVIII">Oldest Game on Earth</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXIX">A Gnawing in the Dark</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXX">Dignity and Impudence</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXI">The Red Star's Warning</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXIII">A Martyr's Wrath</a></td>
+
+    <td>
+      <div align="right"><strong>XXXIII.<br />
+        XXXIV.<br />
+        XXXV.<br />
+        XXXVI.<br />
+        XXXVII.<br />
+        XXXVIII.<br />
+        XXXIX.<br />
+        XL.<br />
+        XLI.<br />
+        XLII.<br />
+        XLIII.<br />
+        XLIV.<br />
+        XLV.<br />
+        XLVI.<br />
+        XLVII.<br />
+        XLVIII.<br />
+        XLIX.<br />
+        L.<br />
+        LI.<br />
+        LII.<br />
+        LIII.<br />
+        LIV.<br />
+        LV.<br />
+        LVI.<br />
+        LVII.<br />
+        LVIII.<br />
+        LIX.<br />
+        LX.<br />
+        LXI.<br />
+        LXII.<br />
+        LXIII.<br />
+        LXIV.</strong></div>
+    </td>
+    <td align="left"><a href="#XXXIII">Torch and Sword</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXIV">The Charge in the Lane</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXV">Fallen Heroes</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXVI">&quot;Says Quinn, S'e&quot;</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXVII">A Horse! A Horse!</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXVIII">&quot;Bear a Message and a Token&quot;</a><br />
+      <a href="#XXXIX">Charlotte Sings</a><br />
+      <a href="#XL">Harry Laughs</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLI">Unimportant and Confidential</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLII">&quot;Can I Get There by Candle-Light?&quot;</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLIII">&quot;Yes, and Back Again&quot;</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLIV">Charlotte in the Tents of the Foe</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLV">Stay Till To-Morrow</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLVI">The Dance at Gilmer's</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLVII">He's Dead--Is She Alive?</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLVIII">In the Hollow of His Right Arm</a><br />
+      <a href="#XLIX">A Cruel Book and a Fool or Two</a><br />
+      <a href="#L">The Bottom of the Whirlwind</a><br />
+      <a href="#LI">Under the Room Where Charlotte Lay</a><br />
+      <a href="#LII">Same Book and Light-Head Harry</a><br />
+      <a href="#LIII">&quot;Captain, They've Got Us&quot;</a><br />
+      <a href="#LIV">The Fight in the Doorway</a><br />
+      <a href="#LV">Rescue and Retreat</a><br />
+      <a href="#LVI">H&ocirc;tel des Invalides</a><br />
+      <a href="#LVII">A Yes and a No</a><br />
+      <a href="#LVIII">The Upper Fork of the Road</a><br />
+      <a href="#LIX">Under Charlotte's Window</a><br />
+      <a href="#LX">Tidings</a><br />
+      <a href="#LXI">While Destiny Moved On</a><br />
+      <a href="#LXII">A Tarrying Bridegroom</a><br />
+      <a href="#LXIII">Something I Have Never Told Till Now</a><br />
+      <a href="#LXIV">By Twos. March</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td>
+<h3>ILLUSTRATIONS</h3>
+<h4><a href="#imgone">&quot;Stand, gentlemen! Every man is covered by two!&quot;</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgtwo">&quot;I surrender,&quot; he said, with amiable ease</a>
+<br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgthree">&quot;Well, you <em>air</em> in a hurry!&quot;
+</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgfour">With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the fence like a deer
+</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgfive">Ferry saluted with his straight blade
+</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgsix">&quot;Don't you like him?&quot; she asked, and tried to be very arch
+</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgseven">Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of his followers
+</a><br />
+<br />
+<a href="#imgeight">Springing to the ground between our two candles, she bent over the open
+page
+</a></h4>
+<br />
+<br />
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<table width="75%" align="center">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<h2><a name="I" id="I">I</a></h2>
+<p><strong>SHE WANTED TO LAUGH</strong></p>
+
+<p>Our camp was in the heart of Copiah County, Mississippi, a mile or so
+west of Gallatin and about six miles east of that once robber-haunted
+road, the Natchez Trace. Austin's brigade, we were, a detached body of
+mixed Louisiana and Mississippi cavalry, getting our breath again after
+two weeks' hard fighting of Grant. Grierson's raid had lately gone the
+entire length of the State, and we had had a hard, vain chase after
+him, also.
+</p>
+<p>Joe Johnston's shattered army was at Jackson, about forty-five miles to
+northward; beleaguered Vicksburg was in the Northwest, a trifle farther
+away; Natchez lay southwest, still more distant; and nearly twice as far
+in the south was our heartbroken New Orleans. We had paused to
+recuperate our animals, and there was a rumor that we were to get new
+clothing. Anyhow we had rags with honor, and a right to make as much
+noise as we chose.
+</p>
+<p>It was being made. The air was in anguish with the din of tree-felling
+and log-chopping, of stamping, neighing, braying, whooping, guffawing,
+and singing--all the daybreak charivari beloved of a camp of
+Confederate &quot;critter companies.&quot; In the midst of it a chum and I sat close together on a log near the mess fire, and as the other boys of the mess lifted their heads from their saddle-tree pillows, from two of them at once came a slow, disdainful acceptance of the final lot of the
+wicked, made unsolicited on discovering that this chum and I had sat
+there talking together all night. I had the day before been wheedled
+into letting myself be detailed to be a quartermaster's clerk, and this
+comrade and I were never to snuggle under the one blanket again. The
+thought forbade slumber.
+</p>
+<p>&quot;If I go to sleep,&quot; I said,--&quot;you know how I dream. I shall have one of those dreams of mine to carry around in my memory for a year, like a bullet in my back.&quot; So there the dear fellow had sat all night to give me my hourly powders of reassurance that I could be a quartermaster's clerk without shame.
+</p>
+<p>&quot;Certainly you can afford to fill a position which the leader of Ferry's scouts has filled just before you.&quot;
+</p>
+<p>But my unsoldierly motive for going to headquarters kept my misgivings
+alive. I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare
+was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and
+Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and &quot;Les
+Mis&eacute;rables&quot;--Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation--lent round; and where men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs. Ned Ferry had been Major Harper's clerk, but had managed in several
+instances to display such fitness to lead that General Austin had lately
+named him for promotion, and the quartermaster's clerk was now
+Lieutenant Ferry, raised from the ranks for gallantry, and followed
+ubiquitously by a chosen sixty or so drawn from the whole brigade. Could
+the like occur again? And could it occur to a chap who could not
+comprehend how it had ever occurred at all?
+</p>
+<p>By and by we breakfasted. After which, my precious horse not having
+finished his corn, I spread my blanket and let myself doze, but was soon
+awakened by the shouts of my companions laughing at me for laughing so
+piteously in my sleep.
+</p>
+<p>&quot;Would I not tell my dream, as nice young men in the Bible always did?&quot;
+</p>
+<p>&quot;No, I would not!&quot; But I had to yield. My dream was that our General had told me a fable. It was of a young rat, which seeing a cockerel, whose tail was scarcely longer than his own, leap down into a barrel, gather some stray grains of corn and fly out again, was tempted to follow his example, but having got in, could only stay there. The boys furnished the moral; it was not complimentary.
+</p>
+<p>&quot;Well, good-bye, fellows.&quot;
+</p>
+<p>&quot;Good-bye, Smith.&quot; I have never liked my last name, but at that moment the boys contrived to put a kindness of tone into it which made it
+</p>almost pleasing. &quot;Good-bye, Smith, remember your failings.&quot;
+
+<p>Remember! I had yet to make their discovery. But I was on the eve of
+making it.
+</p>
+<p>As I passed up the road through the midst of our nearly tentless camp I
+met a leather-curtained spring-wagon to which were attached a pair of
+little striped-legged mules driven by an old negro. Behind him, among
+the curtains, sat a lady and her black maid. The mistress was of
+strikingly graceful figure, in a most tasteful gown and broad Leghorn
+hat. Her small hands were daintily gloved. The mules stopped, and
+through her light veil I saw that she was handsome. Her eyes, full of
+thought, were blue, and yet were so spirited they might as well have
+been black, as her hair was. She, or fate for her, had crowded thirty
+years of life into twenty-five of time.
+</p>
+<p>For many a day I had not seen such charms of feminine attire, and yet I
+was not charmed. Every item of her fragrant drapery was from the world's
+open market, hence flagrantly un-Confederate, unpatriotic,
+reprehensible. Otherwise it might not have seemed to me that her thin
+nostrils had got their passionateness lately.
+</p>
+<p>&quot;Are you not a New Orleans boy?&quot; she asked as I lifted my k&eacute;pi and drew
+rein.</p>
+
+<p>Boy! humph! I frowned, made myself long, and confessed I had the honor
+to be from that city. Whereupon she let her long-lashed eyes take on as
+ravishing a covetousness as though I had been a pretty baby.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew it!&quot; she said delightedly. &quot;But tell me, honor bright,&quot;--she
+sparkled with amusement--&quot;you're not regularly enlisted, are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I clenched my teeth. &quot;I am nineteen, madam.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes danced, her brows arched. &quot;Haven't you got&quot;--she hid her smile
+with an embroidered handkerchief--&quot;haven't you got your second figure
+upside down?&quot; I glared, but with one look of hurt sisterliness she
+melted me. Then, pensive just long enough to say, &quot;I was nineteen once,&quot;
+she shot me a sidelong glance so roguish that I was dumb with
+indignation and tried to find my mustache, forgetting I had shaved it
+off to stimulate it. She smiled in sweet propitiation and then came
+gravely to business. &quot;Have you come from beyond the pickets?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, madam.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you met any officer riding toward them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had not. Her driver gathered the reins and I drew back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-bye, New Orleans soldier-boy,&quot; she said, gaily, and as I raised my
+cap she gave herself a fetching air and added, &quot;I'll wager I know
+your name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madam,&quot;--my cap went higher, my head lower--&quot;I never bet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could not divine what there was ridiculous about me, except a certain
+damage to my dress, of which she could not possibly be aware as long as
+I remained in the saddle. Yet plainly she wanted to laugh. I made it as
+plain that I did not.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-day, sir,&quot; she said, with forced severity, but as I smiled apologetically and moved my rein, she broke down under new temptation and, as the wagon moved away, twittered after me unseen,--&quot;Good-bye, Mr. Smith.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="II" id="II">II</a></h2>
+<p><strong>LIEUTENANT FERRY</strong></p>
+
+<p>I passed on, flattered but scandalized, wasting no guesses on how she
+knew me--if she really knew me at all--but taking my revenge by
+moralizing on her, to myself, as a sign of the times, until brigade
+headquarters were in full view, a few rods off the road; four or five
+good, white wall-tents in a green bit of old field backed by a thicket
+of young pines.</p>
+
+<p>Midway of this space I met Scott Gholson, clerk to the Adjutant-general.
+It was Gholson who had first spoken of me for this detail. He was an
+East Louisianian, of Tangipahoa; aged maybe twenty-six, but in effect
+older, having from birth eaten only ill-cooked food, and looking it;
+profoundly unconscious of any shortcoming in his education, which he had
+got from a small church-pecked college of the pelican sort that feed it
+raw from their own bosoms. One of his smallest deficiencies was that he
+had never seen as much art as there is in one handsome dinner-plate.
+Now, here he was, riding forth to learn for himself, privately, he said,
+why I did not appear. Yet he halted without turning, and seemed to wish
+he had not found me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you&quot;--he began, and stopped; &quot;did you notice a&quot;--he stopped again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What, a leather-curtained spring-wagon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No-o!&quot; he said, as if nobody but a gaping idiot would expect anybody not a gaping idiot to notice a leather-curtained spring-wagon. &quot;No-o! did you notice the brown horse that man was riding who just now passed you as you turned off the road?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No, I barely remembered the rider had generously moved aside to let me
+go by. In pure sourness at the poverty of my dress and the perfection of
+his, I had avoided looking at him higher than his hundred-dollar boots.
+My feet were in uncolored cowhide, except the toes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He noticed you,&quot; said Gholson; &quot;he looked back at you and your bay.
+Wouldn't you like to turn back and see his horse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, hardly, if I'm behindhand now. Is it so fine as that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, no. It's the horse he captured the time he got the Yankee who had
+him prisoner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who?&quot; I cried. &quot;What! You don't mean to say--was that Lieutenant
+Ferry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, so called. He wa'n't a lieutenant then, he was a clerk, like you
+or me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I wish I had noticed him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We can see him yet if you--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you want to see him?&quot; I gathered my horse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me!--No, sir. But you spoke as if--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head and we moved toward the tents. This was worse than the
+dream; the rat had not seen the cockerel, but the cockerel had observed
+the rat--dropping into the barrel: the cockerel, yes, and not the
+cockerel alone, for I saw that Gholson was associating him with her of
+the curtained wagon. By now they were side and side. I asked if Ferry
+came often to headquarters. &quot;Yes, quite as often as he's any business
+to.&quot; &quot;Ah, ha!&quot; thought I, and presently said I had heard he was a
+great favorite.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,--yes,--he--he is,--with some.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you like him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who, me? Oh!--I--I admire Ned Ferry--for a number of things. He's more
+foolhardy than brave; he's confessed as much to me. Women call him
+handsome. He sings; beautifully, I suppose; I can't sing a note; and
+wouldn't if I could. Still, if he only wouldn't sing drinking-songs
+--but, Smith, I think that to sing drinking-songs--and all
+the more to sing them as well as some folks think he does--is to
+advocate drinking, and to advocate drinking is next door to excusing
+drunkenness!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then Ned Ferry doesn't drink?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed he does! I don't like to say it, and I don't say he drinks 'too
+much', as they call it; but, Smith, he drinks with men who do! Oh, <em>I</em>
+admire him; only I do wish--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wish what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I--I wish he wouldn't play cards. Smith, I've seen him play cards
+with the shells bursting over us!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For my part I privately wished this saint wouldn't rub my uninteresting
+surname into me every time he spoke. As we dismounted near the tents I
+leaned against my saddle and asked further concerning the object of his
+loving anxiety. Was Ned Ferry generous, pleasant, frank?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, in outward manner, yes; but, Smith, he was raised to be a Catholic
+priest. I could a heap-sight easier trust him if he'd sometimes show
+distrust, himself. If he ever does I've never seen it. And yet--Oh,
+we're the best of friends, and I'm speaking now only as a friend and
+<em>toe</em> a friend. Oh, if it wa'n't for just one thing, I could admit what
+Major Harper said of him not ten minutes ago to me; that you never
+finish talking to Ned Ferry without feeling a little brighter, happier
+and cleaner than when you began; whereas talking with some men it's just
+the reverse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked carefully at my companion and asked him if the Major had said
+<em>all</em> of that. He had, and Gholson's hide had turned it without taking a
+scratch. &quot;That's fine!--as to Ferry,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes,--it would be--if it was only <em>iso</em>. Trouble is, you keep
+remembering he's such a stumbling-block to any real spiritual inquirer.
+Yes, and to himself; for, you know, spiritually there's so much less
+hope for the moralist than what there is for the up-and-down reprobate!
+You know that,--<em>Smith</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My silence implied that I knew it, though I did not feel any brighter,
+happier or cleaner.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, Ned Ferry is not only a Romanist, he's a romanticist. We--you
+and me--are religionists. <em>Our</em> brightness and happiness air the
+brightness and happiness of faith; our cleanness is the cleanness of
+religious scruples. Worst of it with Ned is he's satisfied with the
+difference, I'm afraid! That's what makes him so pleasant to fellows who
+don't care a sou marquee about religion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said one might respect religion even if he did not--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, he's always <em>polite</em> to it; but he's--he's read Voltaire! Oh, yes,
+Voltaire, George Sand, all those men. He questions the Bible, Smith. Not
+to me, though; hah, he knows better! Smith, I can discuss religion and
+not get mad, with any one who don't question the Bible; but if he does
+that, I just tell you, I wouldn't risk my soul in such a discussion!
+Would you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could hardly say, and we moved pensively toward Major Harper's tent.
+Evidently the main poison was still in Gholson's stomach, and when I
+glanced at him he asked, &quot;What d'you reckon brought Ned Ferry here just
+at this time?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I made no reply. He looked momentous, leaned to me sidewise with a hand
+horizontally across his mouth, and whispered a name. It was new to me.
+&quot;Charlie Toliver?&quot; I murmured, for we were at the tent door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The war-correspondent,&quot; whispered Gholson; &quot;don't you know?&quot; But the
+flap of the tent lifted and I could not reply.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="III" id="III">III</a></h2>
+<p><strong>SHE</strong></p>
+
+<p>Major Harper was the most capable officer on the brigade staff. I had
+never met a man of such force and dignity who was so modestly affable.
+His new clerk dined with him that first day, at noon in his tent, alone.
+Hot biscuits! with butter! and rock salt. Fried bacon also--somewhat
+vivacious, but still bacon. When the tent began to fill with the smoke
+of his meerschaum pipe, and while his black boy cleared the table for us
+to resume writing, we talked of books. Here was joy! I vaunted my love
+for history, biography, the poets, but spoke lightly of fiction.</p>
+
+<p>The smoker twinkled. &quot;You're different from Ned Ferry,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has he a taste for fiction?&quot; I asked, with a depreciative smirk.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, a beautiful story is a thing Ned Ferry loves with a positive
+passion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose we might call him a romanticist,&quot; said I, &quot;might we not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The patient gentleman smiled again as he said, &quot;Oh--Gholson can attend
+to that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took up my pen, and until twilight we spoke thereafter only of
+abstracts and requisitions. But then he led me on to tell him all about
+myself. I explained why my first name was Richard and my second name
+Thorndyke, and dwelt especially on the enormous differences between the
+Smiths from whom we were and those from whom we were not descended.</p>
+
+<p>And then he told me about himself. He was a graduate of West Point, the
+only one on the brigade staff; was a widower, with a widowed brother, a
+maiden sister, two daughters, and a niece, all of one New Orleans
+household. The brothers and sister were Charlestonians, but the two men
+had married in New Orleans, twin sisters in a noted Creole family. The
+brother's daughter, I was told, spoke French better than English; the
+Major's elder daughter spoke English as perfectly as her father; and the
+younger, left in her aunt's care from infancy, knew no French at all. I
+wondered if they were as handsome as their white-haired father, and
+when I asked their names I learned that the niece, C&eacute;cile, was a year
+the junior of Estelle and as much the senior of Camille; but of the days
+of the years of the pilgrimage of any of the three &quot;children&quot; he gave me
+no slightest hint; they might be seven years older, or seven years
+younger, than his new clerk.</p>
+
+<p>To show him how little I cared for any girl's age whose father preferred
+not to mention it, I reverted to his sister and brother. She was in New
+Orleans, he said, with her nieces, but might at any moment be sent into
+the Confederacy, being one of General Butler's &quot;registered enemies.&quot; The
+brother was--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Out here somewhere. No, not in the army exactly; no, nor in the navy,
+but--I expect him in camp to-night. If he comes you'll have to work when
+you ought to be asleep. No, he is not in the secret service, only in <em>a</em>
+secret service; running hospital supplies through the enemy's lines
+into ours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was thrilled. <em>I</em> was taken into the staff's confidence! Me, <em>Smith!</em>
+That <em>Major Harper</em> would tell me part of a matter to conceal the rest
+of it did not enter my dreams, good as I was at dreaming. The flattery
+went to my brain, and presently, without the faintest preamble, I asked
+if there was any war-correspondent at headquarters just now. There came
+a hostile flash in his eyes, but instantly it passed, and with all his
+happy mildness he replied, &quot;No, nor any room for one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Just then entered an ordnance-sergeant, so smart in his rags that the
+Major's affability seemed hardly a condescension. He asked me to supper
+with his mess--&quot;of staff <em>attatchays</em>,&quot; he said, winking one eye and
+hitching his mouth; at which the Major laughed with kind disapprobation,
+and the jocose sergeant explained as we went that that was only one of
+Scott Gholson's mispronunciations the boys were trying to tease him
+out of.</p>
+
+<p>I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper,
+stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head
+(save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only Gholson
+was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious jests got
+off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind. Never had I
+been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing &quot;All quiet along
+the Potomac to-night,&quot; and was courteously praised when I had done so.
+But there is where affliction overtook me; they debated its authorship.
+One said a certain newspaper correspondent, naming him, had proved it to
+be the work--I forget of whom. But I shall never forget what followed.
+Two or three challenged the literary preeminence of that correspondent,
+and from as many directions I was asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying
+back against a pile of saddles with my head in my hands, sodden with
+self-assurance, I replied, magnanimously, &quot;Oh, I don't set up for a
+critic, but--well--would you call him a better man than
+Charlie Toliver?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who--o?&quot; It was not one who asked; the whos came like shrapnel; and
+when, not knowing what else to do, I smiled as one dying, there went up
+a wail of mirth that froze my blood and then heated it to a fever. The
+company howled. They rolled over one another, crying, &quot;Charlie
+Toliver!--Charlie Toliver!--Oh, Lord, where's Scott Gholson!--Charlie
+Toliver!&quot;--and leaped up and huddled down and moaned and rolled and
+rose and looked for me.</p>
+
+<p>But, after all, fortune was merciful, and I was gone; the Major had
+summoned me--his brother had come. I went circuitously and alone. As I
+started, some fellow writhing on the grass cried, &quot;Charlie Tol--oh, this
+is better than a tcharade!&quot; and a flash of divination enlightened me.
+While I went I burned with shame, rage and nervous exhaustion; the name
+Scott Gholson had gasped in my ear was the name of her in the curtained
+wagon, and I cursed the day in which I had heard of Charlotte Oliver.</p>
+
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<a name="IV" id="IV">IV</a>
+<p><strong>THREE DAYS' RATIONS</strong></p>
+
+<p>In the vocabulary of a prig, but in the wrath of a fishwoman, I
+execrated Scott Gholson; his jealousies, his disclosures, his religion,
+his mispronunciations; and Ned Ferry--that cockerel! Here was I in the
+barrel, and able only to squeal in irate terror at whoever looked down
+upon me. I could have crawled under a log and died. At the door of the
+Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve
+when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's
+nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling
+good joke Smith had just got off on Gholson!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall have to get Ned Ferry back here,&quot; the Major was saying as I
+entered, &quot;to make you boys let Scott Gholson alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young man laughed and turned to go. &quot;Why doesn't Ned Ferry make
+<em>her</em> let Gholson alone? He can do it; he's got her round his finger as
+tight as she's got Gholson round hers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Harry,&quot; replied the Major, from his table full of documents, &quot;don't you
+know that any man who's got a woman wrapped round his finger has also
+got her wrapped round his throat?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The aide-de-camp laughed like a rustic and vanished. &quot;Smith,&quot; said the
+Major, &quot;your eyes are--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been awake for forty-eight hours, Major. But--oh, I'm not
+sleepy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, go get some sleep.--No, go at once; you'll be called when
+needed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But I was not needed; while I slept, who should come back and do my work
+in my stead but Ned Ferry. When I awoke it was with a bound of alarm to
+see clear day. The command was breaking camp. I rushed out of the tent
+with canteen, soap and comb, and ran into the arms of the mess-cook. We
+were alone. &quot;Oh, yass, seh,&quot; he laughed as he poured the water into my
+hands, &quot;th'ee days' rairtion. Seh? Lawd! dey done drawed and cook' befo'
+de fus' streak o' light. But you all right; here yo' habbersack, full
+up. Oh, I done fed yo' hoss. Here yo' jacket an' cap; and here yo'
+saddle an' bridle--Oh, you welcome; I dess tryin' to git shet of 'em
+so's I kin strak de tent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As I mounted, our wagonmaster rode by me, busy as a skipper in a storm.
+&quot;Oh, here!&quot; he cried, wheeled, and reaching something to me added,
+&quot;that's your pass. Major Harper wants you as quick as you can show up.
+He says never mind the column, ride straight after him. Keep this road
+to Hazlehurst and then go down the main Brookhaven road till you
+overtake him. He's by himself--nearly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As the rider wheeled away I blurted out with anxious loudness in the
+general hubbub, &quot;Isn't his brother with him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He flashed back a glare of rebuke and then bellowed to heaven and earth,
+&quot;Oh, the devil and Tom Walker! I don't keep run of sutlers and
+citizens!&quot; He took a circuit, standing in his stirrups and calling
+orders to his teamsters, and as he neared me again he said very gently,
+&quot;Good Lord! my boy, don't you know better than to shoot your mouth off
+like that? You'll find nobody with the Major but Ned Ferry, and I don't
+say you'll find him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I galloped to the road. Away down through the woods it was full of
+horsemen falling into line. With the nearest colonel was Lieutenant
+Helm, the aide-de-camp. I turned away from them toward Hazlehurst, but
+looked back distrustfully. Yes, sure enough, the whole command was
+facing into column the other way! My horse and I whirled and stood
+staring and swelling with indignation--we ordered south, and the brigade
+heading westward! He fretted, tramped, neighed, and began hurriedly to
+paw through the globe to head them off on the other side. He even
+threatened to rear; but when I showed him I was ashamed of that, he bore
+me proudly, and I sat him as proudly as he bore me, for he made me more
+than half my friends. And now as the aide-de-camp wheeled about from the
+receding column and came our way saluting cordially, we turned and
+trotted beside him jauntily. Our first talk was of saddles, but very
+soon I asked where the General was.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Out on the Natchez Trace waiting for the command. I'm carrying orders
+to Fisher's battery, down here by the cross-roads. Haven't you seen the
+General this morning? What! haven't seen him in his new uniform? Whoop!
+he's a blaze of glory! Look here, Smith, I believe you know who brought
+it to him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How on earth should I know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, how innocent you always are! Look here! just tell me this; was it
+the Major's brother brought it, or was it Ned Ferry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Suppose it wasn't either.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew it! I knew it was her! Ah, you rogue, you know it was her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, that <em>might</em> depend on who 'her' is.&quot; We had reached the
+cross-roads and he was turning south.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look!&quot; he said, and gave the glance and smile of the lady in the
+curtained wagon so perfectly that I cackled like a small boy. &quot;Oh, you
+know that, do you? I dare you to say she didn't bring it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I give you my word I don't know!&quot; called I as the distance grew between
+us. &quot;And I give you my word I don't care!&quot; he crowed back as we
+galloped apart. His speech was two or three words longer, but they are
+inappropriate at the end of a chapter, and I expurgate.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="V" id="V">V</a></h2>
+<p><strong>EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN, TWENTY</strong></p>
+
+<p>On entering Hazlehurst I observed all about the railway-station a
+surprising amount of quartermaster's stores. A large part were cases of
+boots and shoes. Laden with such goods, a train of shabby box-cars stood
+facing south, its beggarly wood-burner engine sniffing and weeping,
+while the cork-legged conductor helped all hands wood up. Though homely,
+the picture was a stirring one. Up through the blue summer morning came
+the sun, bringing to mind the words of the dying Mirabeau, &quot;If that is
+not God, at least it's his first cousin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Even in the character of the goods there was eloquence, and not a
+drollery in the scene, not even an ugliness, but was touched, was rife,
+with the woe of a war whose burning walls were falling in on us. And
+outward, too, upon others; a few up-ended cottonbales leaned against
+each other ragged and idle, while women and babes starved for want of
+them in far-away Lancaster.</p>
+
+<p>One of the cars furthest from the engine had no freight proper, only a
+number of trunks; and these were nearly hidden by the widely crinolined
+flounces of an elegant elderly lady who sat on the middle one. And now
+she, too, was hidden, and the wide doorway in the side of the car more
+than filled, by the fashionable gowns of three girls. On the ground
+below there stood a lieutenant in a homemade gray uniform, and at his
+back half a dozen big, slouching, barefoot boys squirted tobacco juice
+and gazed at the ladies. The officer scanned me, spoke to the ladies,
+scanned me again, and threw up an arm. &quot;Ho--o! Come here! Hullo! Come
+here--if you please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If he had not said please he should have ho'd and hullo'd in vain, but
+at that word I turned. Before I had covered half the distance I read New
+Orleans! my dear, dear old New Orleans! in every line of those ladies'
+draperies, and at twenty-five yards I saw one noble family likeness in
+all four of their sweet faces. Oh, but those three maidens were fair!
+and I could name each by her name at a glance: Camille, C&eacute;cile, Estelle;
+eighteen, nineteen, twenty!</p>
+
+<p>There was a hush of attention among them as the lieutenant and I
+saluted. His left hand was gone at the wrist and the sleeve pinned back
+on itself. He asked my name; I told him. In the car there was a stir of
+deepening interest. I inquired if he was the post-quartermaster here.
+He was.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ain't you Major Harper's quartermaster-sergeant?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am his clerk.&quot; In the car a flash of joy and then great decorum.</p>
+
+<p>As he handed me a writing he glowed kindly. It proved to be from Major
+Harper; a requisition upon this officer for shoes and clothing; not for
+a brigade, regiment or company, but for me alone, from hat to shoes. I
+tendered it back silently, and saw that he knew its purport already from
+the Major, and that the ladies knew it from him. The good fellow looked
+quite happy a moment, but then reddened as they joyfully crowded the
+car's doorway to see me fitted!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We can select out sev'l pair--&quot; he began, but heard a puerile titter
+and lost his nerve. &quot;Now, you boys that ain't got any business here,
+jest clair out!--Go! I tell you, aw I'll--&quot; The boys loitered off toward
+the engine. &quot;We can select out sev'l si-izes,&quot; he drawled, uncovering a
+box, &quot;and fit you ove' in my office. You ain't so pow'ful long nor so
+pow'ful slim, but these-yeh gov'ment contrac's they seldom ev' allow
+fo' anybody so slim in the waist bein' so long in the, eh,--so, eh,--so
+long f'om thah down. But yet still, if you'll jest light off yo' hoss
+and come and look into this-yeh box--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hmm! yes! I wouldn't have got off my horse and leaned over that box to
+save the Confederacy. &quot;I thank you, Lieutenant, but I can't stop. If
+you'll hand me up a jacket and pair of shoes I'll sign for them and go.
+I don't want a hat, but I reckon I'd as well include shoes, although
+really,--&quot; I glanced down brazenly at the stirrup-leathers that so
+snugly hid my naked toes.</p>
+
+<p>As the quartermaster lifted out a pair of brogans as broad as they were
+long, there came a cry of protestation from the freight-car group, that
+brought the entire herd of rustics from the woodpile and the locomotive.
+Miss Harper rose behind her nieces, tall, slender, dark, with keen
+black eyes as kind as they were penetrating. &quot;My boy!&quot; she cried, &quot;you
+cannot wear those things!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Camille, the youngest, whispered to her, whereupon she beckoned.
+&quot;Oh!--oh, do come here!--Mr. Smith, I am the sister of Major Harper.
+You're from New Orleans? Does your mother live in Apollo Street?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, madam, between Melpomene and Terpsichore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Richard Thorndyke Smith! My dear boy,&quot; she cried, while the nieces
+gasped at each other with gestures and looks all the way between
+Terpsichore and Melpomene, and then the four cried in chorus, &quot;We know
+your mother!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We've got a letter for you from her!&quot; exclaimed Camille.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And a suit of unie-fawm!&quot; called C&eacute;cile, with her Creole accent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We smuggled it through!&quot; chanted the trio, ready to weep for virtuous
+joy. And then they clasped arms like the graces, about their aunt, and
+let her speak.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We all helped your mother make your uniform,&quot; she said. &quot;In the short
+time we've known her we've learned to love her dearly.&quot; With military
+brevity she told how they had unexpectedly got a pass and were just out
+of New Orleans--&quot;poor New Orleans!&quot; put in Estelle, the eldest, the
+pensive one; that they had come up from Pontchatoula yesterday and last
+night, and had thrown themselves on beds in the &quot;hotel&quot; yonder without
+venturing to disrobe, and so had let her brother pass within a few
+steps of them while they slept! &quot;Telegraph? My dear boy, we came but ten
+miles an hour, but we outran our despatch!&quot; Now they had telegraphed
+again, to Brookhaven, and thanks to the post-quartermaster, were going
+down there at once on this train. While this was being told something
+else was going on. The youngest niece, Camille, had put herself entirely
+out of sight. Now she reappeared with very rosy cheeks, saying, &quot;Here's
+the letter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My thanks were few and awkward, for there still hung to the missive a
+basting thread, and it was as warm as a nestling bird. I bent
+low--everybody was emotional in those days--kissed the fragrant thing,
+thrust it into my bosom, and blushed worse than Camille.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor boy!&quot; said the aunt. &quot;It's the first line you've had for months.
+Your sweet mother wrote, but her letters were all intercepted, and the
+last time she was warned that next time she'd be dealt with according to
+military usage! I'm glad we could give you this one at once. We can't
+give you the uniform, for we--why, girls, what--why, what nonsense!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Maybe I did not say vindictive things inside me just then! The three
+nieces had turned open-mouthed upon one another and sunk down upon their
+luggage with averted faces.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say we can't give it to you now,&quot; Miss Harper persisted, with a
+motherly smile; &quot;we're wearing it ourselves. We've had no time to take
+it off. I couldn't get the boots off me last night. And even if you had
+the boots, the other things--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aunt Martha!&quot; moaned some one. &quot;Well, in short,&quot; said the aunt,
+twinkling like her brother, &quot;we can't deliver the goods, and--&quot; She
+started as though some one had slapped her between the shoulder-blades.
+It was the engine caused it, whistling in the old, lawless way, putting
+a whoop, a howl, a scream and a wail into one. The young ladies quailed,
+the train jerked like several collisions, the bell began tardily to
+clang, and my steed whirled, cleared a packing case, whirled again, and
+stood facing the train, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flapping, not
+half so much frightened as insulted. The post-quartermaster waved to the
+ladies and they to us. For a last touch I lifted my cap high and backed
+my horse on drooping haunches--you've seen Buffalo Bill do it--and
+then, with a leap like a cricket's, and to a clapping of maidens' hands
+that made me whooping drunk, we stretched away, my horse and I, on a
+long smooth gallop, for Brookhaven.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI">VI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A HANDSOME STRANGER</strong></p>
+
+<p>Certainly no cricket ever dropped blither music from his legs than did
+my beautiful horse that glorious morning as we clattered in perfect
+rhythm on the hard clean road of the wide pine forest. Ah! the forest is
+not there now; the lumbermen--</p>
+
+<p>For an hour or so the world seemed to have taken me for its center as
+smoothly as a sleeping top. Only after a good seven miles did my
+meditations begin to reveal any bitter in the sweet; but it was in
+recalling for the twentieth time the last sight of Camille, that I
+heard myself say, I know not whether softly or loudly,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, hang the uniform!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The morning was almost sultry. As I halted in the clear ripples of a
+gravelly &quot;branch&quot; to let my horse drink, I heard no great way off the
+Harpers' train shrieking at cattle on the track, and looking up I
+noticed just behind me an unfrequented by-road carefully masked with
+brush, according to a new habit of the &quot;citizens&quot;. The next moment my
+horse threw up his head to listen. Then I heard hoofs and voices, and
+presently there came trotting through the oak bushes and around the mask
+of brush two horsemen unusually well mounted, clad and armed. Their very
+dark gray uniforms were so trim and so nearly blue that my heart came
+into my throat; but then I noticed they carried neither carbines nor
+sabres, but repeaters only, a brace to each. They splashed lightly to
+either side of me, and the three horses drank together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning,&quot; we said. One of the men was a sergeant. He scanned my
+animal, and then me, with a dawning smile. &quot;That's a fightin'-cock of a
+horse you've got, sonny.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, bub,&quot; I replied. The two men laughed so explosively that my horse
+lifted his head austerely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jim,&quot; said the younger, &quot;I don't believe all the conscripts we've
+caught these three days are worth the powder they've cost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; replied Sergeant Jim, &quot;I doubt if the most of 'em are.&quot; I turned
+to him and drew down my under eyelid. &quot;Will you kindly tell me, sir, if
+you see any unnatural discoloration in there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled. &quot;No, but I can put some there if you want it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you, I couldn't let you take so much trouble--or risk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The three of us pattered out of the stream abreast. &quot;No trouble,&quot;
+replied the sergeant, &quot;it wouldn't take half a minute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I rejoined, &quot;the first step would be the last.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The men laughed again. &quot;You must a-been born with all your teeth,&quot; said
+the private, as we quickened to a trot. &quot;What makes you think we ain't
+after conscripts?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for
+good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up
+we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds. Then
+the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh while
+Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would be
+horn-swoggled!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm willing,&quot; I responded, and we all laughed. The younger horseman
+asked my name. &quot;Smith,&quot; I said, with dignity, and they laughed again,
+their laugh growing louder when I would not smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, say; maybe you'll tell us who this is we're about to meet up
+with.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Through the shifting colonnades of pine, a hundred yards in front of
+us, came two horsemen in the same blue-gray of the pair beside me.
+&quot;Whoever he is,&quot; I said, &quot;that gray he's riding is his second best, or
+it's borrowed,&quot; for his mount, though good, was no match for him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Borrowed!&quot; echoed the sergeant. &quot;If he doesn't own that mare no man
+does.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nor no woman?&quot; I asked, and again across the back of my neck my two
+companions gazed at each other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By ganny!&quot; exclaimed one, and--&quot;You're a coon,&quot; murmured the other, as
+the new-comers drew near. The younger of these also was a private.
+Behind his elbow was swung a Maynard rifle. Both carried revolvers. The
+elder wore a long straight sword whose weather-dimmed orange sash showed
+at the front of a loose cut-away jacket. Under this garment was a shirt
+of strong black silk, made from some lady's gown and daintily corded
+with yellow. On the jacket's upturned collar were the two gilt bars of a
+first lieutenant, but the face above them shone with a combined
+intelligence and purity that drew my whole attention.</p>
+
+<p>A familiar friendship lighted every countenance but mine as this second
+pair turned and rode with us, the lieutenant in front on Sergeant Jim
+Longley's right, and the two privates with me between them behind. For
+some minutes the sergeant, in under-tone, made report to his young
+superior. Then in a small clearing he turned abruptly into a
+neighborhood road, and at his word my two companions pricked after him
+westward. I closed up beside the lieutenant; he praised the weather, and
+soon our talk was fluent though broken, as we moved sometimes at a trot
+and often faster. In stolen moments I scanned him with the jealousy of
+my youth. Five feet, ten; humph! I was five, nine and a thirty-second.
+In weight he looked to be just what I always had in mind in those
+prayers without words with which I mounted every pair of commissary
+scales I came to. The play of his form as our smooth-gaited horses sped
+through the flecking shades was worth watching for its stanch and supple
+grace. Alike below the saddle and above it he was as light as a leaf and
+as firm as a lance. I had long yearned to own a pair of shoulders not
+too square for beauty nor too sloping for strength, and lo, here they
+were, not mine, but his. No matter; the slender mustache he sported he
+was welcome to, I had shaved off nearly as good a one; wished now I
+hadn't. As once or twice he lifted his k&eacute;pi to the warm breeze I took
+new despair from the soft locks of darkest chestnut that lay on his head
+in manly order, ready enough to curl but waiving the privilege.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cock-a-doodle-doo,&quot; thought I; &quot;if those are not the same
+hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their
+first cousins!&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII">VII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A PLAGUE ON NAMES!</strong></p>
+
+<p>Once more I measured my man. Celerity, valor, endurance, they were his
+iridescent neck and tail feathers. On a certain piece of road where we
+went more slowly I mentioned abruptly my clerkship under Major Harper
+and watched for the effect, but there was none. Did he know the Major?
+Oh, yes, and we fell to piling item upon item in praise of the
+quartermaster's virtues and good looks. Presently, with shrewdest
+intent, I said the Major was fine enough to be the hero of a novel! Did
+not my companion think so?</p>
+
+<p>Yes, he thought so; but I believed the glow in his tone was for novels.
+I extolled the romance of actual life! I denounced that dullness which
+fails to see the poetry of daily experience, and goes wandering after
+the mirages of fiction! And I was ready to fight him if he liked. But he
+agreed with me most cordially.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet,&quot; he began to add,--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet what?&quot; I snapped out, with horse eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Doesn't a good story revive the poetry of our actual lives?&quot; He wiped
+the rim of his cap with a handkerchief of yellow silk enriched at one
+corner with needlework.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Um-hm!&quot; I thought; &quot;Charlotte Oliver, eh?&quot; I responded tartly that I
+had that very morning met four ladies the poetry of whose actual,
+visible loveliness had abundantly illustrated to me the needlessness and
+impertinence of fiction! By the way, did he not think feminine beauty
+was always in its ripest perfection at eighteen?</p>
+
+<p>Well, he thought a girl might be prettiest at eighteen and handsomest
+much later. And again I said to myself, &quot;Charlotte Oliver!&quot; But when I
+looked searchingly into his eyes their manly sweetness so abashed me
+that I dropped my glance and felt him looking at me. I remembered my
+fable and flinched. &quot;Isn't your name--&quot; I cried, and choked, and when I
+would have said Ferry, another word slipped out instead. He did not hear
+it plainly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cockerel, did you say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A sweet color was I. &quot;Yes, that's what I said; Cockerel. Isn't your last
+name Cockerel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he said, &quot;my last name is Durand.&quot; He gave it the French
+pronunciation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mine is Smith,&quot; I said, and we galloped.</p>
+
+<p>A plague on names! But I was not done with them yet. We met other scouts
+coming out of the east, who also gave reports and went on westward,
+sometimes through the trackless woods. At a broad cross-road which
+spanned the whole State from the Alabama line to the Mississippi River
+stood another sergeant, with three men, waiting. They were the last.</p>
+
+<p>Again we galloped alone; and as our horses' hoofs beat drummers' music
+out of the round earth our dialogue drifted into confessions of our own
+most private theories of conduct, character and creation. Now that this
+man's name was not--Cockerel, my heart opened to him and we began to
+admit to each other the perplexities of this great, strange thing called
+Life. Especially we confessed how every waking hour found us jostled and
+torn between two opposite, unappeasable tendencies of soul; one an
+upward yearning after everything high and pure, the other a
+down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence. I was warmed and fed.
+Yet I was pained to find him so steeped in presumptuous error, so
+wayward of belief and unbelief. The sweet ease with which he overturned
+and emptied out some of my arguments gave me worse failure of the
+diaphragm than a high swing ever did. Nevertheless I responded; and he
+rejoined; and I rejoined again, and presently he gave me the notion that
+he was suffering some cruel moral strain.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII">VIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>ANOTHER CURTAINED WAGON</strong></p>
+
+<p>Upon whatever fundamental scheme we perseveringly concentrate our
+powers, upon whatever main road of occupation we take life's
+journey,--art, politics, commerce, science,--if only we will take its
+upper fork as often as the road divides, then will that road itself, and
+not necessarily any cross-road, lead us to the noblest, truest plane of
+convictions, affections, aspirations. Such a frame of mind may be quite
+without religiosity, as unconscious as health; but the proof of its
+religious reality will be that, as if it were a lighthouse light and we
+its keeper, everybody else, or at any rate everybody <em>out on the deep</em>,
+will see it plainer than we. Such is the gist of what this young man was
+saying to me, when our speculations were brought to an end by our
+overtaking a man well mounted, and a woman whose rough-gaited was
+followed by a colt.</p>
+
+<p>The pair took our pace, the man plying me with questions, and his wife,
+in front, telling Lieutenant Durand all the rumors of the day. Her scant
+hair was of a scorched red tone, she was freckled down into her collar,
+her elbows waggled to the mare's jog, and her voice was as flat as a
+duck's. Her nag had trouble to keep up, and her tiny faded bonnet had
+even more to keep on. Yet the day was near when the touch of those
+freckled hands was to seem to me kinder than the breath of flowers, as
+they bathed my foul-smelling wounds, and she would say, in the words of
+the old song, &quot;Let me kiss him for his mother,&quot; and I should be helpless
+to prevent her. By and by the man raised his voice:--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, yo' name <em>is</em> Smith, to be sho'! I thought you was jest a-tryin'
+to chaw me. Why, Major Harper alludened to you not mo'n a half-ow ago.
+Why, Miz Wall! oh, Miz Wall!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the wife was absorbed. &quot;Yayse, seh,&quot; she was saying to the
+lieutenant, &quot;and he told us about they comin' in on the freight-kyahs
+f'om Hazlehurst black with dust and sut and a-smuttyin' him all oveh
+with they kisses and goin's-on. He tol' me he ain't neveh so enjoyed
+havin' his face dirty sence he was a boy. He would a-been plumb happy,
+ef on'y he could a-got his haynds on that clerk o' his'n. And when he
+tol' us what a gay two-hoss turn-out he'd sekyo'ed for the ladies to
+travel in, s' I, Majo', that's all right! You jest go on whicheveh way
+you got to go! Husband and me, we'll ride into Brookhaven and bring 'em
+out to ow place and jest take ca'e of 'em untel yo' clerk is <em>found</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miz Wall!&quot; cried the husband--&quot;She's busy talkin'.--Miz Wall!--she
+don't hyuh me. I hate to interrupt heh.--Oh, Miz Wall! hyuh's Majo'
+Harper's clerk, right now!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Law, you hain't!&quot; cried Mrs. Wall, smiling back as she jounced. &quot;If you
+air, the Majo's sisteh's got written awdehs fo' you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I shot forward, but had hardly more than sent back my good-bye when
+around a bend of the road, in a wagon larger than Charlotte Oliver's,
+with the curtains rolled up, came the four Miss Harpers, unsooted and
+radiant. The aunt drove. We turned, all four, and rode with them, and
+while the seven chatted gaily I read to myself the Major's note. It bade
+me take these four ladies into my most jealous care and conduct them to
+a point about thirty miles west of where we then were. A dandy's task in
+a soldier's hour! I ground my teeth, but as I lifted my glance I found
+Camille's eyes resting on me and read anxiety in them before she could
+put on a smile of unemotional friendliness that faded rapidly into
+abstraction. She was as pretty as the bough of wild azaleas in her hand,
+yet moving forward I told her aunt the order's purport and that it
+implied the greatest despatch compatible with mortal endurance. The
+whole four seemed only delighted.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Wall protested. No, no, her hospitality first, and a basket of
+refreshments to be stowed in the vehicle, besides. &quot;Why, that'll
+<em>sa-ave</em> ti-ime. You-all goin' to be supprised to find how hungry
+y'all ah, befo' you come to yo' journey's en', to-night, and them col'
+victuals goin' taste pow'ful fi-ine!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Our acceptance was unanimous. I even decided not to inform Lieutenant
+Durand until after the repast, that ladies under my escort did not pick
+acquaintanceship with soldiers on the public highway. But before the
+brief meal was over I was wishing him hanged. Hang the heaven-high
+theories that had so lately put me in love with him! Hang his melodious
+voice, his modest composure, his gold-barred collar, his easy command of
+topics! Hang the women! they feasted on his every word and look! Ah,
+ladies! if I were mean enough to tell it--that man doesn't believe in
+hell! He has a down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence; he has
+told me so!</p>
+
+<p>How fast acquaintance grew! When he addressed himself to C&eacute;cile, the
+cousin of the other two, her black eyes leapt with delight; for as
+calmly as if that were the only way, he spoke to her in French--asked
+her a question. She gave answer in happiest affirmation, and explained
+to her aunt that her Durand schoolmates of a year or two back were
+cousins to the Lieutenant. When the throng came out to the carry-all I
+was there and mounted. Squire Wall took me a few rods to point out where
+a fork of his private road led into the highway. Then the carry-all came
+merrily after, and with a regret that surprised me I answered our
+Lieutenant's farewell wave, forgave him all his charms, and saw him face
+westward and disappear by a bridle-path.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX">IX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE DANDY'S TASK</strong></p>
+
+<p>Westward likewise we soon were bickering. The morning sun shone high;
+the thin, hot dust blew out over the blackened ground of some forest
+&quot;burn&quot; or through the worm fence of some field where a gang of slave men
+and women might be ploughing or hoeing between the green rows of young
+cotton or corn. The level stretches were many, the slopes gradual, and
+to those sweet city-bird ladies everything was new and delightful; a log
+cabin!--with clay chimney on the outside!--a well and its
+well-sweep!--another cabin with its gourd-vines! They knew that blessed
+alchemy which turns all things into the poetry of the moment. Sweet they
+would have been anywhere to any eye or mind; but I was a homeless
+trooper lad, and sweeter to the soldier boy than water on the
+battlefield are short hours with ladies who love him for his banner
+and his rags.</p>
+
+<p>These four were charmed with an old field given up to sedge, its deep
+rain-gullies as red as gaping wounds, its dead trees in tatters of long
+gray moss. Estelle became a student of flowers, C&eacute;cile of birds, Camille
+of trees. All my explanations were alike enchantingly strange. To their
+minds it had never occurred that the land sloped the same way the water
+ran! When told that these woods abounded in deer and wild turkey they
+began to look out for them at every new turn of the road. And the turns
+came fast. Happy miles, happy leagues; each hour was of a mellower
+sweetness than the last; they seemed to ripen in the sun. The only
+drawback was my shame of a sentimental situation, but once or twice I
+longed to turn the whole equipage into the woods--or the ditch. As, for
+instance, when three pine-woods cavalrymen had no sooner got by us than
+they set up that ribald old camp-song,</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;We're going to get married, mamma, mamma;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;We're going to get married, but don't tell pa--&quot;<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Deserters, I don't doubt!&quot; was my comment to the ladies. Tongue revenge
+is poor, but it is something.</p>
+
+<p>Except in such moments, however, the war seemed farther away than it had
+for months and months. But about eleven o'clock we began to find the way
+scored by the fresh ruts of heavy wheels and the dust deepened by
+hundred of hoofs. The tops and faces of the roadside banks were newly
+trampled and torn by clambering human feet. Here was a canteen, smashed
+in a wheel-track; yonder a fragment of harness; here lay a broken hame,
+there was the half of a russet brogan and yonder a ragged sock stained
+and bloody.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, what does all this mean?&quot; asked Miss Harper amid her nieces'
+cries.</p>
+
+<p>I said it meant Fisher's battery hurrying to the front. Twenty miles
+since five that morning was a marvel, horse artillery though they were,
+for, as I pointed out by many signs, their animals were in ill
+condition. &quot;We shall have to go round them by neighborhood roads,&quot; I
+said, and presently we were deeper than ever in woodland shades and
+sources of girlish wonderment. The humid depths showed every sort of
+green and gray, their trunks, bushes and boughs, bearded with hanging
+moss, robed with tangled vines and chapleted with mistletoe. We seemed
+to have got this earth quite to ourselves and very much to our liking.</p>
+
+<p>One o'clock. Miss Harper suggested a halt to feed the horses. I, knowing
+what it would cost me to dismount and go walking about, said no, thrice
+no; let us first get back upon the main road in front of that battery.
+On, therefore, we hurried, and soon the reality of the war was vivid to
+us again. In a stretch of wet road where the team had mutely begged
+leave to walk and the ladies had urged me to sing we had at length
+paused in a pebbly rivulet to allow the weary animals to drink, and the
+girls and the aunt and the greenwood and I were all in chorus
+bidding somebody</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Unloose the west port and let us go free,&quot;<br />
+
+<p>when, just as our last note died among the trees one of us cried,
+&quot;Listen!&quot; and through the stillness there came from far away on our
+right the last three measures of a bugle sounding The March.</p>
+
+<p>My eyes rested in Camille's and hers in mine. A musical license gave us
+the courage. At the last note our gaze did not sink but took on more
+glow, while out of the forest behind us a distant echo answered the last
+measure of the strain. Then our eyes slowly fell; and however it may
+have seemed to her, to me it was as if the vanished strains were not
+only or chiefly of bugle and echo, but as though our two hearts had
+called and answered in that melodious unison.</p>
+
+<p>All that warm afternoon we paid the tiresome penalty of having pushed
+our animals too smartly at the outset. We grew sedate; sedate were the
+brows of the few strangers we met. We talked in pairs. When I spoke with
+Miss Harper the four listened. She asked about the evils of camp life;
+for she was one of that fine sort to whom righteousness seems every
+man's and woman's daily business, one of the most practical items in the
+world's affairs. And I said camp life was fearfully corrupting; that the
+merest boys cursed and swore and stole, or else were scorned as
+weaklings. Then I grew meekly silent and we talked in pairs again, and
+because I yearned to talk most with Camille I talked most with Estelle.
+Three times when I turned abruptly from her to Camille and called,
+&quot;Hark!&quot; the fagged-out horses halted, and as we struck our listening
+pose the bugle's faint sigh ever farther in our rear was but feebly
+proportioned to the amount of our gazing into each other's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when we were not halted or harkening, we heard overmuch; heard
+that which brought us to an instant stand and caused even Miss Harper to
+gaze on me with dismayed eyes and parted lips, and the blood to go
+thumping through my veins. From a few hundred yards off in the
+northwest, beyond the far corner of an old field and the woods at its
+back, two gunshots together, then a third, with sharp, hot cries of
+alarum and command, and then another and another shot, rang out and
+spread wanderingly across the tender landscape.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="X" id="X">X</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE SOLDIER'S HOUR</strong></p>
+
+<p>To regain the highroad we had turned into a northerly fork, and were in
+as lovely a spot as we had seen all day. Before us and close on our
+right were the dense woods of magnolia, water-oak, tupelo and a hundred
+other affluent things that towered and spread or clambered and hung. On
+the left lay the old field, tawny with bending sedge and teeming with
+the yellow rays of the sun's last hour. This field we overlooked through
+a fence-row of persimmon and wild plum. Among these bushes, half fallen
+into a rain-gully, a catalpa, of belated bloom, was loaded with blossoms
+and bees, and I was directing Camille's glance to it when the shots
+came. Another outcry or two followed, and then a weird silence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some of our boys attacked by a rabbit,&quot; I suggested, but still
+hearkened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That was not play, Mr. Smith,&quot; Miss Harper had begun to respond, when a
+voice across the sedge-field called with startling clearness,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hi! there goes one of them!--Halt!--Halt, you blue--&quot; pop!--pop!--pop!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Prisoners making a break!&quot; I forgot all my tatters and stood on tiptoe
+in the stirrups to overpeer the fence-row. The next instant--&quot;Sh--sh!&quot;
+said I and slid to the ground. &quot;Hold this bridle!&quot; I gave it to Camille.
+&quot;Don't one of you make a sound or a motion; there's a Yankee coming
+across this field in the little gully just behind us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bent low, ran a few steps, cocking my revolver as I went. Then I rose,
+peeped, bent again, ran, rose, peeped, waited a few seconds behind the
+catalpa, and without rising peeped once more. Here he came! He was an
+officer. His uniform was torn and one whole side of him showed he had at
+some earlier hour ridden through a hedge and fallen from his horse. On
+he came! nearer--nearer--oh, what a giant! Quickly, warily, he crouched
+under the fence where it hung low across the gully, and half through it
+in that huddled posture he found my revolver between his astonished
+eyes. I did not yell at him, for I did not want the men he had escaped
+from to come and take him from me; yet when I said, &quot;Halt, or you die!&quot;
+the four ladies heard me much too plainly. For, frankly, I said more and
+worse. I felt my slenderness, my beardless youth, my rags, and his
+daring, and to offset them all in a bunch, I--I cursed him. I let go
+only one big damn and I've never spoken one since, though I've done many
+a worse thing, of course. I protest it was my modesty prompted it then.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I surrender,&quot; he said, with amiable ease. I stepped back a pace and he
+drew out and straightened up--the tallest man I had ever seen. I laughed,
+he smiled, laughed; my eyes filled with tears, I blazed with rage, and in
+plain sight and hearing of those ladies he said, &quot;That's all right, my
+son, get as scared as you like; only, you don't need to cry about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold your tongue!&quot; I barked my wrath like a frightened puppy, drawing
+back a stride and laying my eye closer along the pistol. &quot;If you call me
+your son again I'll send you to your fathers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His smile darkened. &quot;I am your prisoner,&quot; he said, with a sudden
+splendid stateliness, and right then I guessed who he was.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yess, sir, you are!&quot; I retorted. &quot;Move to that wagon! And if you take
+one step out of common time you'll never take another.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The aunt and her nieces were standing in the carry-all, she majestic,
+they laughing and weeping in the one act. I waved them into their seats.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt!&quot; We halted. &quot;About face!&quot; As the prisoner eyed me both of us
+listened. His equanimity was almost winsome, and I saw that friendliness
+was going to be his tactics.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Guess I'm the first Yankee y' ever caught, ain't I?&quot; His smile was
+superior, but congratulatory.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll be the first prisoner I ever shot if you get any funnier!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We listened again. &quot;They've gone the wrong way,&quot; I said, still savage.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he replied, &quot;I came the wrong way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The ladies smiled; I glowered. &quot;Take those horses by their heads and
+turn them to me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>An instant his superb eye resented, but then he pleasantly did my
+bidding. &quot;Suits me well; rather chance it with you than with those I've
+just left.&quot;</p>
+<a name="imgtwo" id="imgtwo"></a><img src="002.jpg" alt="I surrender, he said, with amiable ease." align="left" />
+
+<p>&quot;Easier to get away, you think?&quot; I asked, with a worse frown than ever,
+as he stepped into the carry-all and took the lines.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not so easy; but those fellows are Arkansans, and they're in a bad
+humor with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took the hint and grew less ferocious. &quot;While you,&quot; I said, &quot;are
+Captain Jewett.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am,&quot; was his reply, and my heart leaped for joy. We hurried away. My
+captive was the most daring Union scout between Vicksburg and New
+Orleans; these very Harpers knew that. The thing unknown to us was that
+already his fate was entangled with Ned Ferry's and Charlotte Oliver's,
+as yet more it would be, with theirs and ours, in days close at hand.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI">XI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>CAPTAIN JEWETT</strong></p>
+
+<p>Once more we were in the by-road which had brought us westward parallel
+with the highway. The prisoner drove. Aunt Martha sat beside him, slim,
+dark, black-eyed, stately, her silver-gray hair rolled high &agrave; la
+Pompadour. With a magnanimity rare in those bitter days she incited him
+to talk, first of New Orleans, where he had spent a month in camp on one
+of the public squares, and then of his far northern home, and of loved
+ones there, mother, wife and child. The nieces, too, gave a generous
+attention. Only I, riding beside the hind wheels, held solemnly aloof.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Front!&quot; I once snapped out with a ring that made the trees reply and
+the ladies catch their breath. &quot;If you steal one more look back here
+I'll put a ball into your leg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, chirped the horses up and resumed his chat. I heard him
+praise my horse and compare him not unfavorably with his own which he
+had lost that morning'. He and a few picked men had been surprised in a
+farmhouse at breakfast. They had made a leap and a dash, he said, but
+one horse and rider falling dead, his horse, unhurt, had tumbled over
+them, and here was his rider.</p>
+
+<p>I prompted Camille to ask if he had ever encountered Ned Ferry, and he
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he said, but Ned Ferry had lately restored to him, by proxy, some
+lost letters, with an invitation to <em>come and see him</em>.</p>
+
+<p>I laughed insolently. The young ladies sparkled, and so did Miss Harper,
+as she asked him who had been the proxy.</p>
+
+<p>He said the proxy was a young woman who had a knack of getting passes
+through the lines, and the three girls exchanged looks as knowing as
+they were delighted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tell her as a friend,&quot; he said, &quot;she'll get one into Fortress Monroe
+yet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Harper's keen eyes glittered. &quot;You northerners hardly realize our
+feelings concerning the imprisonment of women, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear madam, you don't realize ours. We don't want to imprison
+women.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So there came a silence, and then a gay laugh as three of us at once
+asked if he had ever heard of Lieutenant Durand. &quot;Durand!&quot; he cried, and
+looked squarely around at me. I lifted the cocked revolver, but he kept
+his fine eyes on mine and I rubbed my ear with my wrist. &quot;What?&quot; he
+said, &quot;an elegant, Creole-seeming young fellow, very handsome? Why, that
+fellow saved my life this very afternoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young ladies were in rapture. Miss Harper asked how he had done it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I tell you that,&quot; said the Captain, &quot;you won't like me the least
+bit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whereat C&eacute;cile replied, &quot;Ah--well! we cou'n' like you the leaz bit
+any-'ow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose that's so,&quot; laughed the officer. &quot;I'll tell you how it was.
+My guard were just about to hang me for saying I thought we had a right
+to make soldiers of the darkies, when your friend came galloping along,
+saw the thing, and rushed in and cut the halter with his sword. And when
+they demanded to know who and what he was, he told them Durand, and that
+they'd hear it again, for he should report them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sir,&quot; cried Estelle, whose eyes, brows, lashes and hair were all of
+the same luminous red-brown, and in whose cheeks the rose seemed always
+to burn through the olive, &quot;how can you and your people seek to kill
+such men as that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such as which?&quot; asked the Yankee, with a twinkle. &quot;There were two
+kinds.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, o-oh! sir!&quot; exclaimed the trio, when Miss Harper waved them to
+forbear. There was yet some daylight left as we trundled into a broad
+highroad and turned northward. We passed a picket guard and then a whole
+regiment of cavalry going into camp. They scrambled to the sides of the
+road and stormed us with questions, chaffing us cruelly when I remained
+silent. &quot;Lawd! look a' this-yeh Yank a-bringin' in ow desertehs!&quot; &quot;Hey,
+you big Yank, you jest let that po' little conscrip' go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Headquarters, we heard from a courier who said he was the third sent out
+to find us, were at the &quot;Sessions house&quot; two miles further on. We sent
+him galloping back there, and after a while here came Major Harper and
+three or four others of the staff, including Harry Helm. What a flood of
+mirthful compliment there was at sight of us and our captive; Harry was
+positively silly. In the series of introductions that followed he was
+left paired with Camille, and I said things to myself. Major Harper rode
+by the prisoner. &quot;Well, Captain,&quot; he said, &quot;you've had some experiences
+since you left me this morning. Don't you want to give us your parole
+this time, temporarily, for an hour or so, and be more comfortable?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you, Major,&quot; the Federal affably replied, &quot;that would be a great
+relief to this most extraordinary youngster that I've brought with me.&quot;
+He gave it and we turned into a lofty grove whitened with our
+headquarters tents.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; said the Major, &quot;your part is done, and well done. You needn't
+report to me again to-night; the General wishes to see you a moment.
+Captain, will you go with this young man to General Austin's tent?&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII">XII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>IN THE GENERAL'S TENT</strong></p>
+
+<p>I went to Gholson. He told me I was relieved of my captive and bade me
+go care for my horse and return in half an hour. In going I passed close
+by the Sessions plantation house. Every door and window was thrown wide
+to the night air, and preparations were in progress for a dance; and as
+I returned, a slave boy ran across my path, toward the house, bearing a
+flaming pine torch and followed by two ambulances filled with daughters
+of the neighborhood in clouds of white gauze. I found the General in
+fatigue dress. His new finery hung on the tent-pole at his back. Old
+Dismukes, the bull-necked colonel of the Arkansans, lounged on a
+camp-cot. Both smoked cigars.</p>
+
+<p>The General asked me a number of idle questions and then said my
+prisoner had called me a good soldier. Old Dismukes smiled so broadly
+that I grew hot, believing the Yankee had told them of my tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; said the Colonel, and then smoked and smiled again till my brow
+beaded,--&quot;tired?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's a lie,&quot; he pleasantly remarked, and lay back, enjoying my silent
+wrath. &quot;Send him, General,&quot; he added, &quot;he's your man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The General looked at me between puffs of his cigar. &quot;I hear you've
+ridden over fifty miles to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, General.&quot; &quot;If I give you a good fresh horse can you go
+twenty-three miles more by midnight?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, General, if I don't have to save the horse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The horse may have to save you,&quot; drawled the Arkansan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you know Lieutenant Durand?&quot; asked the General, with a
+quizzical eye.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Slightly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Smith, on his suggestion approved by Major Harper, I have
+detailed another clerk to the Major.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Rills of perspiration tickled my back like flies. &quot;Can't one man do the
+work?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, the new man is detailed in your place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I almost leaped from the ground in consternation. My whole frame
+throbbed, my mouth fell open, my tongue was tied.</p>
+
+<p>The man who had got me into this thing--this barrel--lifted the
+tent-flap. &quot;Mr. Gholson,&quot; said the General, &quot;write an order assigning
+Smith to Ferry's scouts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The flap fell again and my panic was turned into a joy qualified only by
+a reduced esteem for my general as a judge of character.</p>
+
+<p>Old Dismukes rose. &quot;Good-night. Shall I send this boy that Yankee's
+horse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh I was forgetting that; yes, do!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the door the Colonel gave me a last look. &quot;Good-night, Legs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I dared not retort, but I looked so hard at his paunch that the General
+smiled. Then he asked me if I knew where we were then camped, and I said
+we were on the Meadville and Fayette road, near Franklin, twenty miles
+southeast of Fayette and--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That will do. Now, beyond Fayette, about seven miles north, there's a
+place--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Clifton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't interrupt me, Smith. Yes, Clifton. You're not to reach there
+to-night--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can do it, General.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can do as you're told; understand?&quot; I understood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The enemy are in Fayette to-night,&quot; he continued. &quot;So when you get
+half-way to Fayette, just across Morgan's Creek, you'll take a dim fork
+on the right running north along the creek. Ever travel by the stars?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I began to tell how well I knew the stars, but he stopped me. &quot;Yes;
+well, keep straight north till you strike the road running east and west
+between Fayette and Union Church. You'll find there a little
+polling-place called Wiggins. Turn west, toward Fayette, and on the
+north side of the main road, opposite the blacksmith's shop, you'll come
+to a small--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you see?&quot; His frown scared me to my finger-tips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I suppose I'm to find there a road down Cole's Creek to Clifton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, if you interrupt me again, sir, you'll find the road back to
+your regiment. Opposite that blacksmith's shop you'll see a white
+cottage. There's a young lady stopping there to-night, a stranger, a
+traveller. The old lady who lives there has taken her in at my request.
+See that the young lady gets this envelope. It's no great matter, merely
+a pass through our lines; but it's your ostensible business till you get
+there; understand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thought I did until I glanced at the superscription: Miss Coralie
+Rothvelt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, here is another matter of much more importance.&quot; He showed, but
+retained, another envelope. &quot;Behind the house where you're to find Miss
+Rothvelt there's a road into Cole's Creek bottom. The house you're to
+stop at to-night, say from twelve o'clock till three or half-past, is on
+that road, about five miles from Wiggins, from Clifton and from Fayette.
+I'm sending you there expecting the people in that house will rob you if
+you give them half a chance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand, General; they'll not get it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, I want them to get it. I want them to rob you of this.&quot; He
+waggled the envelope. &quot;I want this to fall into the hands of the enemy;
+as it will if those people rob you of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I snapped my eyes. He smiled and then frowned. &quot;I don't want a clumsy
+job, now, mind! I don't want you to get captured if you can possibly
+avoid it; but all the same they mustn't get this so easily as to suspect
+it's a bait. So I want you to give those villains that half-chance to
+rob you, but not the other half, or they may--oh, it's no play! You must
+manage to have this despatch taken from you totally against your will!
+Then you must reach Clifton shortly after daylight. Ferry's scouts are
+there, and you'll say to Lieutenant Ferry the single word, Rodney.
+Understand?&quot; He pretended to be reconsidering. &quot;I--don't know
+but--after all--I'd better send one of my staff instead of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, General, if you send an officer they'll see the ruse! I can do it!
+I'll do it all right!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm most afraid,&quot; he said, abstractedly, as he read my detail, which
+Gholson brought in. &quot;Here,&quot;--he handed it to me--&quot;and here, here's the
+despatch too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the name, General, of the man whose house I'm to go to?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd best not know; I want you to seem to have stumbled upon the
+place. You can't miss it; there's no other house within two miles of it.
+Good-bye, my lad;&quot;--he gave me his hand;--&quot;good luck to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson, in the Adjutant-general's tent, told me Ned Ferry had named me
+to the General as a first-class horseman and the most insignificant-
+looking person he knew of who was fit for this venture.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ned Ferry! What does Ned Ferry know about my fitness?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Read the address on your despatch,&quot; said Gholson, resuming his pen.</p>
+
+<p>I snatched the document from my bosom, into which I had thrust it to
+seize the General's hand &quot;Oh, Gholson!&quot; I said, in deep-toned grief, as
+I looked up from the superscription, &quot;is that honest!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He admitted that by the true religionist's standard it was not honest,
+but reminded me that Ned Ferry--in his blindness--was only a poor
+romanticist. The despatch was addressed to Lieutenant Edgard
+Ferry-Durand.</p>
+
+<p>Major Harper's black boy brought me the Yankee's horse with my bridle
+and saddle on him; an elegant animal as fresh as a dawn breeze. Also he
+produced a parcel, my new uniform, and a wee note whose breath smelt of
+lavender as it said,--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Papa tells us you are being sent off on courier duty to-night. What a
+heart-breaking thing is war! How full of cruel sepa'--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That piece of a word was scored out and &quot;dangers&quot; written in its place.
+The missive ended all too soon, with the statement that I was requested
+to call, on my way out of camp, at the side gallery of the house--
+Sessions's--and let the writer and her sister and her cousin and her
+father and her aunt see me in my new uniform and bid me good-bye.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII">XIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>GOOD-BYE, DICK</strong></p>
+
+<p>I found but one white figure under the dim veranda eaves. &quot;Miss
+Camille?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wh'--who is that?&quot; responded a musical voice. &quot;Why, is that Mr. Smith?&quot;
+as if I were the last person in the world one should have expected to
+see there. The like of those moments I had never known. I saw her eyes
+note the perfect fit of my uniform, though neither of us mentioned it. I
+tried to tell her that Lieutenant Durand was Ned Ferry and that I was
+now one of his scouts, but she had already heard both facts, and would
+not tell me what her father had said about me, it was so good. Standing
+at the veranda's edge a trifle above me, with her cheek against one of
+the posts and her gaze on her slipper, she asked if I was glad I was
+going with Ned Ferry, and I had no more sense than to say I was; but she
+would neither say she was glad nor tell why she was not.</p>
+
+<p>Through the open windows we could see the dancers. Now and then a pair
+of fanning promenaders came down the veranda, but on descrying us turned
+back. I said I was keeping her from the dance. To which she replied,
+drooping her head again, that she shouldn't dance that night.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too tired?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too warm?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, not too warm.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh--I--just don't feel as if I could, that's all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My heart beat wildly and I wanted to ask if it was on my account; but I
+was too pusillanimous a coward, and when I feebly tried to look into her
+eyes she would not let me, which convinced me that she lacked candor. A
+dance ended. Gold-laced fellows came and sat on the veranda rail wiping
+wrists and brows with over-tasked handkerchiefs, and explaining the
+small mishaps of the floor. Two promenaders mentioned the hour. I gasped
+my amazement and extended my hand. &quot;Good-bye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait a moment,&quot; she murmured, and watched the promenading pair turn
+back. Then she asked if I had read my mother's letter. I said I had. And
+then, very pensively, with head bent and eyes once more down, she
+inquired if I liked to get letters. Which led, quite accidentally, to my
+asking leave to write to her.</p>
+
+<p>She replied that she did not mean that. Nevertheless, I insisted, would
+she? She only bent lower still. I asked the third time; and with nothing
+but the parting of her hair for me to look at, she nodded, and one of
+her braids fell over in front, and I took the pink-ribboned live end of
+it timorously between thumb and finger and felt as if I had hold of an
+electric battery.</p>
+
+<p>She backed half a step, and quite needlessly I let it go. Then she bade
+me not forget I had promised her the words of a certain song. &quot;Want
+them? Indeed, yes! Did you not say it was an unpublished song written
+by a messmate of yours?--oh, Mr. Smith! I see why you stammer! You said
+'a member of your mess'! oh!--oh!--oh!--you wrote it, yourself! And you
+wrote it to-day! That explains--&quot; She drew an awesome breath, rose to
+her toes and knit her knuckles under her throat.</p>
+
+<p>I was in the sweetest consternation. With the end of her braid once more
+in my fingers I made her promise to keep the dark secret, and so
+recited them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Turn away thine eyes ere my bosom burn,<br />
+Lit with foolish hope to hear thy fondling sighs,
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Like yon twilight dove's, breathe, Return, return!<br />
+Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+&nbsp;&nbsp;O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!<br />
+
+</p><p>&quot;Maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Turn again thine eyes, love's true mercy learn.<br />
+Breathe, O! breathe to me, as these love-languid skies
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To yon twilight star breathe, Return, return!<br />
+Turn again thine eyes, maiden passing fair.
+&nbsp;&nbsp;O maiden passing fair, turn again thine eyes!&quot;<br />
+
+</p><p>&quot;Mis-ter Smith! you wrote that?--to-day! Wh'--who is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One too modest,&quot; I murmured, &quot;to know her own portrait.&quot; I clutched the
+braid emotionally and let it go intending to retake it; but she dropped
+it behind her and said I was too imaginative to be safe.</p>
+
+<p>I stiffened proudly, turned and mounted my steed, but her eyes drew
+mine. I pressed close, bent over the saddle-bow, and said,
+&quot;Good-bye, Camille.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-bye.&quot; I could barely hear it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!--good-bye, just anybody?&quot; I asked; and thereupon she gathered up
+all her misplaced trust in me, all her maiden ignorance of what is in
+man, and all her sweet daring, to murmur--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-bye,--Dick.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I caught my breath in rapture and rode away. She was there yet when I
+looked back--once--and again--and again. And when I looked a last time
+still she had not moved. Oh, Camille, Camille! to this day I see you
+standing there in pink-edged white, pure, silent, motionless, a
+summer-evening cloud; while I, my body clad in its unstained--only
+because unused--new uniform, and my soul tricked out in the
+foolhardiness and vanity of a boy's innocence, rode forth into the night
+and into the talons of overmastering temptation.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV">XIV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>CORALIE ROTHVELT</strong></p>
+
+<p>The night was still and sultry. At one of the many camp-fires on the
+edge of the road I saw the Arkansas colonel sitting cross-legged on the
+ground, in trousers, socks and undershirt, playing poker.</p>
+
+<p>Out in the open country how sweet was the silence. Not yet have I
+forgotten one bright star of that night's sky. My mother and I had
+studied the stars together. Lately Camille, her letter said, had learned
+them with her. Now the heavens dropped meanings that were for me and for
+this night alone. While the form of the maiden--passing fair--yet
+glimmered in the firmament of my own mind, behind me in the south soared
+the Virgin; but as some trees screened the low glare of our camp I saw,
+just rising into view out of the southeast, the unmistakable eyes of the
+Scorpion. But these fanciful oracles only flattered my moral
+self-assurance, and I trust that will be remembered which I forgot, that
+I had not yet known the damsel from one sun to the next.</p>
+
+<p>I was moving briskly along, making my good steed acquainted with me,
+testing his education, how promptly for instance, he would respond to
+rein-touch and to leg-pressure, when I saw, in front, coming toward me,
+three riders. Two of them were very genteel chaps, though a hand of each
+was on the lock of his carbine. The third was a woman, veiled, and clad
+in some dark stuff that in the starlight seemed quite black and
+contrasted strongly with the paleness of her horse. Her hat, in
+particular, fastened my attention; if that was not the same soft-brimmed
+Leghorn I had seen yesterday morning, at least it was its twin sister. I
+halted, revolver in hand, and said, as they drew rein,--&quot;Good-evening.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-evening,&quot; replied the nearer man. &quot;How far is it to
+camp--Austin's?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A short three miles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To what command do you belong?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ferry's scouts. What command is yours, gentlemen?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ferry's scouts.&quot; He scrutinized me. &quot;What command do you say you--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ferry's scouts,&quot; I repeated. &quot;F-e-r-r-y-apostrophe s,
+Ferry's--s-k-o-w-t-s--scouts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The trio laughed, the young woman most musically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long have you belonged to Ferry's scouts?&quot; sceptically demanded
+their spokesman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About an hour and a quarter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! that-a-way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I replied, &quot;in that direction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The three laughed again and the men sank their carbines across their
+laps, while in a voice as refined as her figure their companion said,
+&quot;Good-evening, Mr. Smith.&quot; She laid back her veil and even in the
+darkness I felt the witchery of her glance. &quot;I was just coming to meet
+you,&quot; she continued, &quot;to get the letter you're bringing me from General
+Austin. I feared you might try to come around by Fayette, not knowing
+the Yankees are there. These gentlemen didn't know it.&quot; &quot;She just did
+save us!&quot; laughed the man hitherto silent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm Miss Coralie Rothvelt,&quot; she added, and then how she sparkled in the
+dark as she said, &quot;I see you remember me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am but human.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet you never take a lady's name for granted?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am to know Miss Rothvelt by finding her in a certain place.&quot; My
+honeyed bow implied that her being just now very much out of place was
+no fault of mine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nonsense!&quot; muttered both men, and I liked them the better.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Smith,&quot; said Miss Rothvelt, &quot;keep your trust. But if I part
+here with these two kind gentlemen--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who don't belong to Ferry's scouts at all,&quot; I still more sweetly added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; she laughed, &quot;and if I go back with you to Wiggins--to the little
+white cottage, you know, opposite the blacksmith's shop,--you'll give me
+what you've got for me, won't you?&quot; She dropped her head to one side and
+a mocking-bird chuckle rippled in her throat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall count myself honored,&quot; said I, and we went, together and alone.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV">XV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>VENUS AND MARS</strong></p>
+
+<p>Since those days men have made &quot;fire-proof&quot; buildings. You know them;
+let certain aggravations combine--they burn like straw. We had barely
+started when I began to be threatened with a conflagration against which
+I should have called it an insult to have been warned. The adroit beauty
+at my side set in to explain more fully her presence. From her window
+she had seen those two trim fellows hurrying along in a fair way to
+blunder into the Federal pickets within an hour, had cautioned them, and
+had finally asked leave to come with them, they under her guidance, she
+under their protection.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You were so anxious to get the General's letter?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was so anxious about you,&quot; she replied, with feeling, and then broke
+into a quizzical laugh.</p>
+
+<p>I had not the faintest doubt she was lying. What was I to her? The times
+were fearfully out of joint; women as well as men were taking war's
+licenses, and with a boy's unmerciful directness I sprang to the
+conclusion that here was an adventuress. Yet I had some better thoughts
+too. While I felt a moral tipsiness going into all my veins, I asked
+myself if it was not mainly due to my own inability to rise in full
+manliness to a most exceptional situation. Her jaunty method of
+confronting it, was I not failing to regard <em>that</em> with due magnanimity?
+Was this the truth, or after all ought I really to see that at every
+turn of her speech, by coy bendings of the head, by the dark seductions
+of dim half-captive locks about her oval temples, and by many an
+indescribable swaying of the form and of the voice, I was being--to
+speak it brutally--challenged? Even in the poetic obscurity of the night
+I lost all steadiness of eye as I pertly said--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so here you are in this awful fix.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm enjoying one advantage,&quot; she replied, &quot;which you do not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I can read my safety in your face. You can't read anything in
+mine; you're afraid to look.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All I got by looking then was a mellow laugh from behind her relowered
+veil; but we were going at a swift trot, nearing a roadside fire of
+fence-rails left by some belated foraging team, and as she came into the
+glare of it I turned my eyes a second time. She was revealed in a garb
+of brown enriched by the red beams of the fire, and was on the gray mare
+I had seen that morning under Lieutenant Edgard Ferry-Durand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You recognize her?&quot; the rider asked, delightedly. &quot;She's not stolen,
+she's only served her country a little better than usual to-day; haven't
+you, Cousin Sallie?&quot; (Cousin Sallie was short for Confederate States.)</p>
+
+<p>The note of patriotism righted me and I looked a third time. The one art
+of dress worth knowing in '63 was to slight its fashions without
+offending them, and this pretty gift I had marked all day in the
+Harpers. But never have I seen it half so successful as in the veiled
+horsewoman illumined by the side-lights of those burning fence-rails.
+The white apparition at the veranda's edge gleamed in my mind, yet
+swiftly faded out, and a new fascination, more sudden than worthy heaved
+at my heart. Then the fire was behind us and we were in the deep night.</p>
+
+<p>On the crest of a ridge we slackened speed and my fellow-traveller
+lifted her veil and asked exultantly what those two splendid stars were
+that overhung yonder fringe of woods so low and so close to each other.
+The less brilliant one, I said, the red one, was Mars.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the one following, almost at his side?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you know?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes flashed round upon me like stars themselves. &quot;Not--Venus?&quot; she
+whispered, snatched in her breath, bit her lip, and half averting her
+face, shot me through with both &quot;twinklers&quot; at once. Then she took a
+long look at the planets and suddenly exclaimed with a scandalized air--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They're going down into the woods together!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I responded, &quot;and without even waiting for Diana.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She dropped the rein and lifted both arms toward them. &quot;Oh, blessings on
+your glorious old heathen hearts, what do you want of Diana, or of any
+one in heaven or earth except each other!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Foolish, idle cry, and meant for no more, by a heart on fire with
+temptations of which I knew nothing. But then and there my poor
+adolescent soul found out that the preceptive stuff of which it had
+built its treasure-house and citadel was not fire-proof.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI">XVI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>AN ACHING CONSCIENCE</strong></p>
+
+<p>Yet great is precept. Precept is a well. Up from its far depths by slow,
+humble, constant process you may draw, in a slender silver thread, and
+store for sudden use, the pure waters of character.</p>
+
+<p>It has happened, however, that a man's own armor has been the death of
+him. So the moral isolation of a young prig of good red blood who is
+laudably trying to pump his conduct higher than his character--for
+that's the way he gets his character higher--has its own peculiar
+dangers. Take this example: that he does not dream any one will, or can,
+in mere frivolity, coquette, dally, play mud-pies, with a passion the
+sacredest in subjection, the shamefulest in mutiny, and the deepest and
+most perilous to tamper with, in our nature. As hotly alive in the
+nethermost cavern of his heart as in that of the vilest rogue there is a
+kennel of hounds to which one word of sophistry is as the call to the
+chase, and such a word I believed my companion had knowingly spoken. I
+was gone as wanton-tipsy as any low-flung fool, and actually fancied
+myself invited to be valiant by this transparent embodiment of passion
+whose outburst of amorous rebellion had been uttered not because I was
+there, but only in pure recklessness of my presence. Of course I ought
+to have seen that this was a soul only over-rich in woman's love;
+mettlesome, aspiring, but untrained to renunciation; consciously
+superior in mind and soul to the throng about her, and caught in some
+hideous gin of iron-bound--convention-bound--or even law-bound--foul
+play. But I was so besotted as to suggest a base analogy between us and
+those two sinking stars.</p>
+
+<p>Unluckily she retorted with some playful parry that just lacked the
+saving quality of true resentment. How I rejoined would be small profit
+to tell. I had a fearful sense of falling; first like a wounded
+squirrel, dropping in fierce amazement, catching, holding on for a
+panting moment, then dropping, catching and dropping again, down from
+the top of the great tree where I had so lately sat scolding all the
+forest; and then, later, with an appalling passivity. And at every fresh
+exchange of words, while she laughed and fended, and fended and laughed,
+along with this passivity came a yet more appalling perversity; a
+passivity and perversity as of delirium, and as horrid to her as to me,
+though I little thought so then.</p>
+
+<p>We came where a line of dense woods on our left marked the bottom-lands
+of Morgan's Creek. With her two earlier companions my fellow-traveller
+had crossed a ford here shortly after sunset, seeing no one; but a guard
+might easily have been put here since, by the Federals in Fayette.
+Pretty soon the road, bending toward it, led us down between two fenced
+fields and we stealthily walked our horses. Close to a way-side tree I
+murmured that if she would keep my horse I would steal nearer on foot
+and reconnoitre, and I had partly risen from the saddle, when I was
+thrilled by the pressure of her hand upon mine on the saddle-bow. &quot;Don't
+commit the soldier's deadliest sin, my dear Mr. Smith,&quot; she said under
+her breath, and smiled at my agitation; &quot;I mean, don't lose time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was about to put a false meaning even on that, when she added &quot;We
+don't need the ford this time of year; let us ride back as if we gave up
+the trip--for there may be a vidette looking at us now in the edge of
+those bushes--and as soon as we get where we can't be seen let us take a
+circuit. We can cross the creek somewhere above and strike the Wiggins
+road up in the woods. You can find your way by the blessed stars, can't
+you--being the angel you are?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My whole nature was upheaved. You may smile, but my plight was awful. In
+the sultry night I grew cold. My bridle-hand, still lying under her
+palm, turned and folded its big stupid fingers over hers. Then our hands
+slid apart and we rode back. &quot;I wish I were good enough to know the
+stars,&quot; she said, gazing up. &quot;Tell me some of them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told them. Two or three times my voice stuck in my throat, I found the
+sky so filled, so possessed, by constellations of evil name. At our back
+the Dragon writhed between the two Bears; over us hung the Eagle, and in
+the south were the Wolf, the Crow, the Hydra, the Serpent--&quot;Oh, don't
+tell any more,&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;Or rather--what are those three bright
+stars yonder? Why do you skip them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Those? That one is the Virgin's sheaf; and those two are the Balances.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I failed to catch her reply. She spoke in a tone of pain and sunk her
+face in her hand. &quot;Head ache?&quot; I asked. &quot;No.&quot; She straightened, and
+from under her coquettish hat bent upon me such a look as I had never
+seen. In her eyes, in her tightened lips, and in the lift of her head,
+was a whole history of hope, pride, pain, resolve, strife, bafflement
+and defiance. She could not have chosen to betray so much; she must have
+counted too fully on the shade of her hat-brim. The beautiful frown
+relaxed into a smile. &quot;No,&quot; she repeated, &quot;only an aching conscience.
+Ever have one?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I averted my face and answered with a nod.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't believe you! I don't believe you ever had cause for one!&quot; She
+laid a hand again upon mine.</p>
+
+<p>I covered it fiercely and sunk my brow upon it. And thereupon the wave
+of folly drew back, and on the bared sands of recollection I saw, like
+drowned things, my mother's face, and Gholson's and the General's, and
+Major Harper's, and Ned Ferry's, and Camille's. Each in turn brought its
+separate and peculiar pang; and among those that came a second time and
+with a crueler pang than before was Camille's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're tired!&quot; murmured the voice beside me, and the wave rolled in
+again. I lifted my brow and moved one hand from hers to make room on it
+for my lips, but her fingers slipped away and alighted compassionately
+on my neck. &quot;You must be one ache from head to foot!&quot; she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>I turned upon her choking with anger, but her melting beauty rendered me
+helpless. Black woods were on our left. &quot;Shall we turn in here?&quot;
+I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot; She stooped low under the interlacing boughs and plunged with me
+into the double darkness.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII">XVII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>TWO UNDER ONE HAT-BRIM</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is this the conservatory?&quot; playfully whispered Miss Rothvelt; and if a
+hot, damp air, motionless, and heavy with the sleeping breath of
+countless growths could make it so, a conservatory it was. Every
+slightest turn had to be alertly chosen, and the tangle of branches and
+vines made going by the stars nearly impossible. The undergrowth crowded
+us into single file. We scarcely exchanged another word until our horses
+came abreast in the creek and stopped to drink. Conditions beyond were
+much the same until near the end of our d&eacute;tour, when my horse swerved
+abruptly and the buzz of a rattlesnake sounded almost under foot. The
+mare swerved, too, and hurried forward to my horse's side.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That was almost an adventure, itself,&quot; laughingly murmured my
+companion, as if adventures were what we were in search of. While she
+spoke we came out into a slender road and turned due north. &quot;Did you,&quot;
+she went on, childishly, &quot;ever take a snake up by the tail, in your
+thumb and finger, and watch him try to double on himself and bite you? I
+have, it's great fun; makes you feel so creepy, and yet you know
+you're safe!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed under her breath as if at hide-and-seek. Then we galloped,
+then trotted again, galloped, walked and trotted again. Two miles,
+three, four, we reckoned off, and slowed to a walk to come out
+cautiously upon the Union Church and Fayette road. A sound brought us
+to a halt. From the right, out on the main road, it came; it was made by
+the wheels of a loaded wagon. I leaned sidewise until her hat-brim was
+over me and whispered &quot;Yankee foragers;&quot; but as I drew my revolver we
+heard voices, I breathed a sigh of relief, and with her locks touching
+mine we chuckled to each other in the dark. The passers were slaves
+escaping to the Federal camp.</p>
+
+<p>Now they came into view, on the broader road, two whole ragged families
+with a four-mule team. They passed on. And then all at once the whole
+situation was too much for me. In the joy of release I groped out
+caressingly and touched my companion's cheek. Whereat she took my
+fingers and drew them to her lips--twice. The next moment I found--we
+found--my lifted wrists in the slender grasp of her two hands and she
+was murmuring incoherent protests. Suddenly she grew eloquent. &quot;Oh,
+think what you are and have always been! Do you think I don't know? Do
+you suppose I would have put myself into this situation, or taken the
+liberties I have taken with you, if I had not known you, and known you
+well, before ever I saw you? Ah! I have heard such good things of you!
+and the moment I saw you I saw they were true!--Yes,--yes, I tell you
+they were, they are! And I'm not going to take my trust away from you
+now! You shall keep my trust as you have kept all others. You shall be
+as miserly of it as of your general's. You will keep it!&quot; Her whispers
+grew more and more gentle. &quot;My dear friend, my dear friend! what is this
+trust compared to the trust I wish I might lay on you?&quot; What did she
+mean by that! Had she some schemer's use for me? I could not ask, for
+her little hands had gradually slipped from my wrists to my fingers and
+were softly, torturingly fondling them. Suddenly she laughed and threw
+her hands behind her back. &quot;I'm blundering! Oh, Richard Smith, be kind
+to a woman's poor wits, and let me say to-morrow that I know one man who
+can be trusted--who I know can be trusted--to make a woman's folly her
+protection. Do you know, dear, that any woman who can say that, is
+richer than any who cannot? And I am but a woman, sometimes a bit silly.
+Trouble is I'm a live one and a whole one!--or else I'm a live one and
+not quite a whole one--I wonder which it is!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I mumbled something about never wishing to tempt any one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you haven't tempted me,&quot; she replied, with kind amusement. &quot;You
+couldn't if you should try. You're a true soldier, with a true soldier's
+ideals; and I'm pledged to help you keep them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean?&quot; I demanded. &quot;To whom are you pledged for any such--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!--don't you wish you knew! Why, to myself, for instance. Come! duty
+calls.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come!&quot; I echoed. We swung into the broader road and followed the
+contrabands.</p>
+
+<p>We came as close to them as was wise, and had to walk our horses. I
+could discern Miss Rothvelt's features once more, and felt a truer
+deference than I had yet given her. Near the blacksmith's shop, in the
+dusk of some shade-trees, she once more touched my shoulder. I turned
+resentfully to bid her not do it, but her shadowy gaze stopped me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't be moody,&quot; she said; &quot;the whole mistake is four-fifths mine. And
+anyhow, repining is only a counterfeit repentance, you know. Come, I
+don't want to tease you. It's only myself I love to torment. I'm the
+snake I like to hold up by the tail. Did you never have some dull,
+incessant ache that seemed to pain less when you pressed hard on it?&quot;
+She laughed, left me and rode into the cottage gate.</p>
+
+<p>What do you say?--Yes, she might have spoken more wisely. Yet always
+there vibrated in her voice a wealth of thought, now bitter, now sweet,
+and often both at once, and a splendor of emotions, beyond the scope of
+all ordinary natures. How far beyond my own scope they were, even with
+my passions at flood-tide and turbid as a back-street overflow, I
+failed to ponder while I passed around the paling fence alone.</p>
+
+<p>In the edge of the woods at the rear of this enclosure I found the road
+that led into Cole's Creek bottom, and there turned and waited. A corner
+of the cottage was still in view among its cedars and china-trees. In an
+intervening melon-patch blinked the yellow lamps of countless fireflies.
+And now there came the ghost of a sound from beyond the patch, then a
+glimpse of drapery, and I beheld again the subject of my thoughts. Such
+thoughts! Ah! why had I neither modesty, wit nor charity enough to see
+that yonder came a woman whose heart beat only more strongly than the
+hearts of all the common run of us, with impulses both kind and high,
+although society, by the pure defects of its awkward machinery, had
+incurably mutilated her fate; a woman wrestling with a deep-founded love
+that, held by her at arm's length, yielded only humiliations and by its
+torments kept her half ripe for any sudden treason even against that
+love itself.</p>
+
+<p>She came without her horse, pointing eagerly at the brightness of the
+sky above the unrisen moon. &quot;Diana!&quot; she whispered, and tossed a kiss
+toward it. &quot;You saw me put the mare into the stable and go into the
+house by the back door?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said, and handed her, as I dismounted, the General's gift, the
+pass.</p>
+
+<p>She snatched it gaily, loosed a fastening at her throat and dropped the
+missive into her bosom. Then with passionate gravity she asked, &quot;Now,
+are you going straight on to Clifton to-night--without stopping?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I haven't been ordered to tell any one where I'm going.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Neither was Lieutenant Ferry,&quot; she dryly responded, &quot;yet I have it from
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He told you?--Ah! you're only guessing,&quot; I said, and saw that I was
+helping her to guess more correctly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pooh!&quot; she replied, ever so prettily, &quot;do you suppose I don't know?
+Ferry's scouts are at Clifton, and you've got a despatch for
+Lieutenant--eh,--Durand--hem!&quot; She posed playfully. &quot;Now, tell me;
+you're not to report to him till daylight, are you? Then why need you
+hurry on now? This house where I am is the only safe place for you to
+sleep in between here and Clifton. I'll wake you, myself, in good time.&quot;
+My heart pounded and rose in my throat, yet I managed to say, &quot;My
+orders are plain.&quot; I flinched visibly, for again I had told too much. I
+pretended to listen toward the depths of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>She struck a mock-sentimental attitude and murmured musically--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;'The beating of our own hearts<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Was all the sound we heard.'<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot;--she put away gaiety--&quot;your orders are plain; and they're as
+cruel as they are plain!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cruel to you?&quot; I took her hand from my arm and held it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! cruel to you, Richard, dear; to you! And--yes!--yes!--I'll
+confess. I'll confess--if only you'll do as I beg! Yes, ah yes, cruel to
+me! But don't ask how, and we'll see if you are man enough to keep a
+real woman's real secret! And first, promise me not to put up at that
+house which the General and Lieutenant Ferry--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant Ferry is not sending me to any house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardon me, I know better. This is his scheme.&quot; She laid her free hand
+on our two. &quot;Tell me you will not go to that house!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I attempted an evasion. &quot;Oh--a blanket on the ground--face covered up in
+it from the mosquitos--is really--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Right!&quot; She laughed. &quot;I wish a woman could choose that way. Oh! if
+you'll do that I'll go with you and stand guard over you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dolt that I was, I would have drawn her close, but she put me off with
+an outstretched arm and forbidden smile. &quot;No!--No! this is a matter of
+life and death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stepped back, heaving. &quot;Who and what are you? Who and what are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, who and what should I be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Charlotte Oliver!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hmm; Charlotte Oliver. Are you sure you have the name just right?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why haven't I got it right?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I don't doubt you have; though I didn't know but it might be
+Charlie Toliver or something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I dilated. &quot;Who told--did Ned Ferry tell you that story?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He did. Or, to be accurate, Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. My dear Richard,
+we cannot be witty and remain un-talked-about.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I--I believe it yet! You are Charlotte Oliver!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She became frigid. &quot;Do you know who and what Charlotte Oliver is?--No?
+Well, to begin with, she's a married woman--but pshaw! you believe
+nothing till it's proved. If I tell you who and what I am will you do
+what I've asked you; will you promise not to stop at Lucius Oliver's
+house?&quot; She softly reached for my hand and pressed and stroked it.
+&quot;Don't stop there, dear. Oh, say you will not!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it so dangerous?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;General Austin believes it is. You're being used to bait a trap,
+Richard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed a gay disdain. &quot;Who is Lucius; is he Charlotte's husband?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The reply came slowly. &quot;No; her husband is quite another man; this
+man's wife has been dead for years. No, Charlotte Oliver lives
+in--hark!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sound we had heard was only some stir of nature in her sleep. &quot;I
+must go,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, no! I cannot let you!&quot; She clutched the hand she had been
+stroking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Coralie! Coralie Rothvelt!&quot;--my cry was an honest one--&quot;you tempt me
+beyond human endurance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She threw my hand from her. &quot;I know I do! I'm so unworthy to do it that
+I wouldn't have believed I could. You thought I was Charlotte
+Oliver--Heavens! boy, if you should breathe the atmosphere Charlotte
+Oliver has to live in! But understand again, for your soul's comfort,
+you haven't tempted me. Go, if you must; go, take your chances; and if
+you're spared ever to see your dear, dear little mother--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My mother! Do you know my mother?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell her I tried to keep my promise to her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You promised her--what did you promise her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only to take care of you whenever I had the chance. Go, now, you must!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And was care for me your only motive in--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; no, Richard, I wanted, and I still want, you to take care of me!
+But go, now, go! at once or not at all! Good-bye!&quot; She laughed and
+fluttered away. I sprang upon my horse and sped into the forest.</p>
+
+<p>Another mile, another half; then my horror and dismay broke into gesture
+and speech, and over and over I reviled myself as a fool, a traitorous
+fool, to be fooled into confession of my errand! I moaned with physical
+pain; every fatigue of the long day now levied payment, and my back,
+knees, shoulders, ached cruelly. But my heart ached most, and I bowed in
+the saddle and cried--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What have I done, oh, what have I done? My secret! my general's, my
+country's secret! That woman has got it--bought it with flatteries and
+lies! She has drawn it from my befouled soul like a charge from a gun!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I quite forgot how evident it was that she had gathered
+earlier inklings of it from some one else. Suddenly my thought was of
+something far more startling. It stopped my breath; I halted; I held my
+temples; I stared. What would she do with a secret she had taken such
+hazards to extort? Ah! she'd carry it straight to market--why not? She
+would give it to the enemy! Before my closed eyes came a vision of the
+issue--disaster to our arms; bleeding, maiming, death, and widows' and
+orphans' tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My God! she shall not!&quot; I cried, and whirled about and galloped back.</p>
+
+<p>At the edge of the wood, where we had parted, I tied my horse, and crept
+along the moonlight shadows of the melon-patch to the stable. The door
+was ajar. In the interior gloom I passed my hands over the necks and
+heads of what I recognized to be the pair of small mules I had seen at
+Gallatin. Near a third stall were pegs for saddle and bridle, but they
+were empty. So was the stall; the mare was gone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gone to the Yankees at Fayette!&quot; I moaned, and hurried back to my
+horse. To attempt to overtake one within those few miles would only make
+failure complete, and I scurried once more into the north with such a
+burden of alarm and anguish as I had never before known.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII">XVIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE JAYHAWKERS</strong></p>
+
+<p>IT was well that I was on the Federal captain's horse. He knew this sort
+of work and could do it quicker and more quietly than mine. Mine would
+have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it. Another
+advantage was the moon, and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I
+saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge
+of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins.
+Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young
+white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to
+startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the
+rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played &quot;I lay
+ten dollars down.&quot; There were three couples on the floor, and I saw--for
+the excited dogs had pushed the door open--that two of the men were
+white, though but one wore shoes. On him the light fell revealingly as
+he and the yellow girl before him passed each other in the dance and
+faced again. He was decidedly blond. The other man, though silhouetted
+against the glare of burning pine-knots, I knew to be white by the
+flapping of his lank locks about his cheeks as he lent his eyes to the
+improvisation of his steps. His partner was a young black girl. I
+burned with scorn, and doubtless showed it, although I only asked whose
+plantation this was.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This-yeh pla-ace?&quot; The rustic dragged his words lazily, chewed tobacco
+with his whole face, and looked my uniform over from cap to spur. &quot;They
+say this-yeh place belong to a man which his name Lu-ucius Ol-i-veh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So! I honestly wished myself back in my old rags, until I reflected that
+my handsome mount was enough to get me all the damage these wretches
+could offer. Still I thought it safest to show an overbearing frown.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To what command do you fellows belong?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He spurted a pint to reply, &quot;Fishe's batt'ry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! And where is the battery?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You sa-ay 'Whah is it?'--ow batt'ry&quot;--he champed noisily--&quot;I dunno.
+Does you? Whah is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's twenty miles off; why are you not with it? What are you doing
+here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You sa-ay 'What we a-doin' hyuh?' Well, suh, I mought sa-ay we ain't
+a-doin' nuth'n'; but I&quot;--he squirted again--&quot;<em>will</em> sa-ay that so fah as
+you <em>see</em> what we a-doin', you <em>kin</em> see, an' welcome; an' so fah as you
+don't see, it ain't none o' yo' damn' busi-ness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, that's all right, I was only asking a friendly question.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yaas; well, that's all right, too, suh; I uz on'y a-givin' you a
+frien'ly aynsweh. I hope you like it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Our intercourse became more amiable and the fellow dragged in his advice
+that I spend the rest of the night at the house of Mr. Oliver. His
+acquaintance with that gentleman seemed to grow while we talked, and
+broke into bloom like a magician's rosebush. He described him as a kind
+old bird who made hospitality to strangers his meat and drink. A
+conjecture darted into my mind. &quot;Why, yes! that is his married son, is
+he not, yonder in the cabin; the one with the fair hair?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who?--eh,--ole man Ol-i-veh? You sa--ay 'Is that his ma'-ied son, in
+yondeh; the one 'ith the fah hah? '--Eh,--no--o, suh,--eh,--yass,
+suh,--yass! Oh, yass, suh, thass his--tha'--thass his ma'ied son, in
+thah; yass, suh, the one 'ith the fah hah; yass, suh. I thought you
+meant the yetheh one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't believe,&quot; said I, &quot;I'd better put myself on the old gentleman
+when the mistress of the house is away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>She</em> ain't awa-ay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she not! Isn't she the Mrs. Oliver--Charlotte Oliver--who is such
+friends--she and her husband, I mean, of course,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>Uv</em> co'se!&quot; The reptile giggled, squirted and nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;--With General Austin,&quot; I continued, &quot;--and with Lieutenant Ferry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She air!&quot; He was pleased. &quot;Yass, we all good frien's togetheh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if she--oh, yes!--Yes, to be sure; she could easily have got here
+yesterday afternoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thass thess when she arrove!&quot; It was fascinating to watch the animal's
+cunning play across his face. The fiddle's tune changed and the dance
+quickened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I naturally thought,&quot; resumed I, with a smile meant to refer to the
+blond dancer, &quot;that the madam <em>must</em> be away somewhere.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My hearer grinned. &quot;Oh, that ain't no sign. Boys will be boys. You know
+that, yo'se'f. An' o' co'se she know it. Oh, yass, she at home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I reckon I'll stop all night.&quot; I began to move on. His eyes
+followed greedily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sa-ay! I'll wrastle you fo' them-ah clo'es.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I waved a pleasant refusal and rode toward the house.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX">XIX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>ASLEEP IN THE DEATH-TRAP</strong></p>
+
+<p>The dwelling was entirely dark. I came close in the bright moonlight and
+hallooed. At my second hail the door came a small way open, and after a
+brief parley a man's voice bade me put up my horse and come in. The
+stable was a few steps to the right and rear. Returning, I took care to
+notice the form of the house: a hall from front to rear; one front and
+one rear room on each side of it; above the whole a low attic, probably
+occupied by the slave housemaids.</p>
+
+<p>I was met in the bare unpainted hall by a dropsical man of nearly sixty,
+holding a dim candle, a wax-myrtle dip wrapped on a corncob. He had a
+retreating chin, a throat-latch beard and a roving eye; stepped with one
+foot and slid with the other, spoke in a dejected voice, and had very
+poor use of his right hand. I followed him to the rear corner chamber,
+the one nearest the stable, feeling that, poor as the choice was, I
+should rather have him for my robber and murderer than those villains
+down at the quarters. I detained him in conversation while I drew off my
+boots and threw my jacket upon the back of a chair in such a way as to
+let my despatch be seen. The toss was a lucky one; the document, sealed
+with red wax, stuck out arrogantly from an inside pocket. Then, asking
+lively questions the while as if to conceal a blunder and its
+correction, I moved quickly between him and it and slipped the missive
+under a pillow of the fourpost bedstead.</p>
+
+<p>He was not wordy, and he tarried but a moment, yet he explained his
+paralysis. In the dreary monotone of a chronic sour temper he related
+that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing
+horses, and their officer, on being called by him &quot;no gentleman,&quot; had
+struck him behind the ear with the butt of a carbine. I asked what
+punishment the officer received, and I noticed the plural pronoun as he
+icily replied, &quot;We didn't enter any complaint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said with genuine warmth that if he would give me that man's
+name--etc.</p>
+
+<p>He waited on the threshold with his dropsical back to me for my last
+word, and then, still in the same attitude, droned, &quot;O-oh, he's dead.
+And anyhow,&quot; he finished out of sight in the hall, &quot;that's not our way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sat on the edge of the bed, in the moonlight, wishing I knew what
+their way was. I considered my small stock of facts. The one that
+appalled me most was the inward guilt which I brought with me to this
+ordeal. I wanted to say my childhood prayers and I could not. For I
+could not repent; at least the <em>emotion</em> of repentance would not come.
+Moreover, every now and then there leapt across this blackness of guilt
+a forked lightning of fright, as I realized that I could no more plan
+than I could pray. No doubt Coralie Rothvelt, by this time in Fayette,
+was telling some Federal commander that a certain Confederate courier,
+now asleep at the house of Lucius Oliver, had let slip to her the fact
+that his despatches were written to be captured, and that, read with
+that knowledge, they would be of guiding value. What mine host himself
+might have in view for me I could not guess, but most likely those three
+rapscallions down at the quarters were already plotting my murder. So
+now for a counterplot--alas! the counterplot would not unfold for me!</p>
+
+<p>I rallied all my wits. Here was an open window. Through it the moonlight
+poured in upon the lower half of the bed. If I should lie with my eyes
+in the shadow of the headboard no one entering by the door opposite
+could see that I was looking. Good! but what to do when the time should
+come--ah me!--and &quot;Oh, God!&quot; and &quot;Oh, God!&quot; again. Ought I, now, to let
+the enemy get the despatch, or must I not rather keep it from him at
+whatever risk of death or disgrace? Ah! if I might only fight, and let
+the outcome decide for me! And why not? Yes, I would fight! And oh! how
+I would fight! If by fighting too well I should keep the despatch, why,
+that, as matters now stood, was likely to be the very best for my
+country's cause. On the other hand, should I fight till I fell dead or
+senseless and only then lose it, surely then it would be counted genuine
+and retain all its value to mislead. Oh, yes,--I could contrive nothing
+better--I would fight!</p>
+
+<p>I drew the counterpane aside, lay down under it revolver in hand, and
+then, for the first time since I had put on the glorious gray, found I
+could not face the thought of death. I grew steadily, penetratingly,
+excruciatingly cold, and presently--to the singular satisfaction of my
+conscience--began to shake from head to foot with a nervous chill. It
+was agonizing, but it was so much better than the spiritual chill of
+which it took the place! I felt as though I should never be warm again.
+Yet the attack slowly passed away, and with my finger once more close to
+the trigger, I lay trying to use my brain, when, without prayer or plan,
+I solved the riddle, what I should do, by doing the only thing I knew I
+ought not to do. I slept.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX">XX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>CHARLOTTE OLIVER</strong></p>
+
+<p>An envelope sealed with sealing-wax, unless it has also a wrapping of
+twine or tape whose only knot is under the seal, can be opened without
+breaking the seal. Gholson had once told me this. Hold a thin, sharp
+knife-blade to the spout of a boiling tea-kettle; then press the
+blade's edge under the edge of the seal. Repeat this operation many
+times. The wax will yield but a hair's-breadth each time, but a
+hair's-breadth counts, and in a few minutes the seal will be lifted
+entire. A touch of glue or paste will fasten it down again, and a seal
+so tampered with need betray the fact only to an eye already suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>As I say, I slept. The door between me and the hall had a lock, but no
+key; another door, letting from my room to the room in front of it, had
+no lock, but was bolted. I slept heavily and for an hour or more. Then I
+was aware of something being moved--slowly--slyly--by littles--under my
+pillow. The pillow was in a case of new unbleached cotton. When I first
+lay down, the cotton had so smelt of its newness that I thought it was
+enough, of itself, to keep me awake. Now this odor was veiled by
+another; a delicate perfume; a perfume I knew, and which brought again
+to me all the incidents of the night, and all their woe. I looked, and
+there, so close to the bedside that she could see my eyes as plainly as
+I saw hers, stood Coralie Rothvelt. In the door that opened into the
+hall were two young officers, staff swells, in the handsomest Federal
+blue. The moonlight lay in a broad flood between them and me. It
+silvered Miss Rothvelt from the crown of her hat to the floor, and
+brightened the earnest animation of her lovely face as she daintily
+tiptoed backward with one hand delicately poised in the air behind her,
+and the other still in the last pose of withdrawing from under the
+pillow--empty!</p>
+
+<p>My problem was indeed simplified. The despatch had been stolen, opened,
+read, re-sealed and returned. All I now had to do was to lie here till
+daybreak and then get away if I could, deliver the despatch to Ned
+Ferry, and tell him--ah! what?--how much? Oh, my bemired soul, how much
+must I tell? My shame I might bear; I might wash it out in blood at the
+battle's front; but my perfidy! how much was it perfidy to withhold; how
+much was it perfidy to confess?</p>
+
+<p>The heaviness of my soul, by reacting upon my frame and counterfeiting
+sleep better than I could have done it in cold blood, saved me, I fancy,
+from death or a northern prison. When I guessed my three visitors were
+gone I stirred, as in slumber, a trifle nearer the window, and for some
+minutes lay with my face half buried in the pillow. So lying, there
+stole to my ear a footfall. My finger felt the trigger, my lids lifted
+alertly, and as alertly reclosed. Outside the window one of the
+officers, rising by some slender foothold, had been looking in upon me,
+and in sinking down again and turning away had snapped a twig. He
+glanced back just as I opened my eyes, but once more my head was in
+shadow and the moonlight between us. When I peeped again he was
+moving away.</p>
+
+<p>Five, ten, fifteen minutes dragged by. Counting them helped me to lie
+still. Then I caught another pregnant sound, a mumbling of male voices
+in the adjoining front room. I waited a bit, hearkening laboriously, and
+then ever so gradually I slid from the bed, put on everything except my
+boots, and moved by inches to the door between the two rooms. It was
+very thin; &quot;a good sounding-board,&quot; thought I as I listened for life or
+death and hoped my ear was the only one against it.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion warmed and I began to catch words and meanings. Oftenest
+they were old Lucius Oliver's, whose bad temper made him incautious.
+While his son and the other two jayhawkers obstinately pressed their
+scheme he kept saying, sourly, &quot;That's--not--our--wa-ay!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At length he lost all prudence. &quot;Nn--o!--Nnno--o, sir! Not in this house
+you don't; and not on this place! Wait till he's off my land; I'm not
+goin' to have the infernal rebels a-turpentinin' my house and a-burnin'
+it over my head. What <em>air</em> you three skunks in such a sweat to git
+found out for, like a pack o' daymn' fools! I've swone to heaven and
+hell to git even ef revenge can ever git me even, and this ain't the way
+to git even. It's not--our--wa-ay!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His son's attitude exasperated him. &quot;<em>You</em> know this ain't ever been our
+way; you'd say so, yourself, ef you wa'n't skin full o' china-ball
+whiskey! What in all hell is the reason we can't do him as we've always
+done the others?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, shut your dirty face!&quot; replied the son, while one of his cronies
+warned both against being overheard. But when this one added something
+further the old man snarled:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's that about the horse?--The horse might git away and be evidence
+ag'inst us?--What?--Oh, now give the true reason; you want the horse,
+that's all! You two lickskillets air in this thing pyo'ly for the
+stealin's. Me and my son ain't bushwhackers, we're gentlemen! At least
+I'm one. Our game's revenge!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Not because of this speech, but of a soft rubbing sound on the
+window-sill behind me, my heart turned cold. Yet there I saw a most
+welcome sight. Against the outer edge of the sill an unseen hand was
+moving a forked stick to and fro. The tip of one of its tines was slit,
+in the slit was a white paper, and in the fork hung the bridle of my
+horse. I glided to the window. But there bethinking me how many a man
+had put his head out at just such a place and never got it back, I made
+a long sidewise reach, secured the paper, and read it.</p>
+
+<p>It was the envelope which had contained Coralie Rothvelt's pass. Its
+four flaps were spread open, and on the inside was scrawled in a large
+black writing the following:</p>
+
+<p><em>Yankees gone, completely fooled. Do not stir till day, then ride for
+your life. We're not thwarting Lieutenant Ferry's plan, we're only
+improving upon it. When you report to him don't let blame fall upon the
+father and son whose roof this night saves you from a bloody death. Do
+this for the sake of her who is risking her life to save yours. We serve
+one cause; be wary--be brave--be true</em>.</p>
+
+<p>I stood equally amazed and alert. The voices still growled in the next
+room, and my horse's bridle still hung before the window. I peered out;
+there stood the priceless beast. I came a sly step nearer, and lo! in
+his shadow, flattened against the house, face outward, was Coralie
+Rothvelt comically holding the forked stick at a present-arms.
+Throbbing with a grateful, craving allegiance, I seized the rein. Then I
+bent low out the window and with my free hand touched her face as it
+turned upward into a beam of moonlight. She pressed my fingers to her
+lips, and then let me draw her hand as far as it could come and cover it
+with kisses. Then she drew me down and whispered &quot;You'll do what
+I've asked?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When I said I would try she looked distressfully unassured and I added
+&quot;I'll do whatever risks no life but mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her face spoke passionate thanks. &quot;That's all I can ask!&quot; she said,
+whispered &quot;When you go--<em>keep the plain road,&quot;</em>--and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>I sat by the window, capped, booted, belted, my bridle in one hand,
+revolver in the other. In all the house, now, there was no sound, and
+without there was a stillness only more vast. I could not tell whether
+certain sensations in my ear were given by insects in the grass and
+trees or merely by my overwrought nerves and tired neck. The moon sailed
+high, the air was at last comfortably cool, my horse stood and slept. I
+thought it must be half-past two.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now it must be three.&quot; Miss Rothvelt's writing lay in my bosom beside
+my despatch. At each half-hour I re-read it. At three-and-a-half I
+happened to glance at the original superscription. A thought flashed
+upon me. I stared at her name, and began to mark off its letters one by
+one and to arrange them in a new order. I took C from Coralie and h from
+Rothvelt; after them I wrote a from Coralie and r from Rothvelt, l and o
+from Coralie and two t's and an e from Rothvelt, and behold, Charlotte!
+while the remaining letters gave me Oliver.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! where had my wits been? Yet without a suspicion that she was
+Charlotte Oliver one might have let the anagram go unsuspected for a
+lifetime. Evidently it concealed nothing from General Austin or Ned
+Ferry; most likely it was only the name she used in passing through the
+lines. At any rate I was convinced she was a good Confederate, and my
+heart rose.</p>
+
+<p>But why, then, this ardent zeal to save the necks of the two traitors
+&quot;whose roof this night--&quot; etc.? Manifestly she was moved by passion, not
+duty; love drove her on; but surely not love for them. &quot;No,&quot; I guessed
+in a reverent whisper, &quot;but love for Ned Ferry.&quot; It must have been
+through grace of some of her nobility and his, caught in my heart even
+before I was quite sure of it in theirs, that I sat and framed the
+following theory: Ned Ferry, loving Charlotte Oliver, yet coerced by his
+sense of a soldier's duty, had put passion's dictates wholly aside and
+had set about to bring these murderers to justice; doing this though he
+knew that she could never with honor or happiness to either of them
+become the wife of a man who had made her a widow, while she, aware of
+his love, a love so true that he would not breathe it to her while this
+hideous marriage held her, had ridden perilously in the dead of night to
+circumvent his plans if, with honor to both of them, it could be done.</p>
+
+<p>The half-hour dragged round to four. My horse roused up but kept as
+quiet as a clever dog. I heard a light sound in the hall; first a step
+and then a slide, then a step again and then a slide; Lucius Oliver was
+coming toward my door. The cords gathered in my throat and my finger
+stole to the trigger; Heaven only knew what noiseless feet might be
+following behind that loathsome shuffle. It reached the door and was
+still. And now the door opened, softly, slowly, and the paralytic stood
+looking in. The moonlight had swung almost out of the room, but a band
+of it fell glittering upon the revolver lying in my lap with my fingers
+on it, each exactly in place. Also it lighted my other hand, on the
+window-sill, with the bridle in it. Old Lucius was alone. In the gloom I
+could not see his venom gathering, but I could almost smell it.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI">XXI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning,&quot; I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning,&quot; he responded, tardily and grimly. &quot;Well, you <em>air</em> in a
+hurry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all, sir. I'm sorry to seem so; it's not the tip-top of
+courtesy,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, it ain't too stinkin' polite.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True; but neither are the enemy, and they're early risers, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, good Lord! don't hang back for my sake!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I put on an offended esteem. &quot;My dear sir, you've no call to take
+offence at me. I'm waiting because my business is too--well, if I must
+explain, it's--it's too important to be risked except by good safe
+daylight; that's all.&quot;</p>
+<a name="imgthree" id="imgthree"></a><img src="003.jpg" alt="Well, you air in a hurry!" align="left" />
+
+<p>Oh, he wasn't taking offence. His reptile temper crawled into hiding,
+and when I said day was breaking, he said he would show me my way.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I keep the plain road, don't I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No, he would not; only wagons went that way, to cross the creek by a
+small bridge. I could cut off nearly two miles by taking the bridle-path
+that turned sharply down into the thick woods of the creek-bottom about
+a quarter of a mile from the house and crossed the stream at a sandy
+ford. &quot;Ride round,&quot; he said, &quot;and I'll show you from the front of
+the house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thence he pointed out a distant sycamore looming high against the soft
+dawn. There was the fence-corner at which the bridle-path left the road.
+He icily declined pay for my lodging. &quot;We never charge a Confederate
+soldier for anything; that's not our way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Day came swiftly. By the time I could trot down to the sycamore it was
+perfectly light even in the shade of an old cotton-gin house close
+inside the corner of the small field around which I was to turn. The
+vast arms of its horse-power press, spreading rigidly downward, offered
+the only weird aspect that lingered in the lovely morning. I have a
+later and shuddering memory of it, but now the dewy air was full of
+sweet odors, the squirrel barked from the woods, the woodpecker tapped,
+and the lark, the cardinal and the mocking-bird were singing all around.
+The lint-box of the old cotton-press was covered with wet
+morning-glories. I took the bridle-path between the woods and the field
+and very soon was down in the dense forest beyond them. But the moment
+I was hid from house and clearing I turned my horse square to the left,
+stooped to his neck, and made straight through the pathless tangle.</p>
+
+<p>Silence was silver this time, speed was golden. But every step met its
+obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers,
+brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held
+dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath,
+footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait
+were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road by that way as
+soon as they found I was flanking them. And so I strove on at the best
+speed I could make, and burst into the road with a crackle and crash
+that might have been heard a hundred yards away. One glance up the
+embowered alley, one glance down it, and I whirled to the right, drove
+in the spur, and flew for the bridge. A wild minute so--a turn in the
+road--no one in sight! Two minutes--another turn--no one yet!
+Three--three--another turn--no one in front, no one behind--</p>
+
+<p>The thunder of our own hoofs
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Was all the sound we heard.<br />
+
+</p><p>A fourth turn and no one yet! A fifth--more abrupt than the others--and
+there--here--yonder now behind--was the path I had feared, but no one
+was in it, and the next instant the bridge flashed into view. With a
+great clatter I burst upon it, reached the middle, glanced back, and
+dropped complacently into a trot. Tame ending if--but as I looked
+forward again, what did I see? A mounted man. At the other end of the
+bridge, in the shade of overhanging trees, he moved into view, and well
+I knew the neat fit of that butternut homespun. He flourished a revolver
+above his head and in a drunken voice bade me halt.</p>
+
+<p>I halted; not making a point of valor or discretion, but because he was
+Charlotte Oliver's husband. I read his purpose and listened behind me as
+we parleyed. &quot;Don't halt me, sir, I'm a courier and in a hurry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He hiccoughed. &quot;Let's--s'--see y' orders.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took my weapon into my bridle-hand by the barrel and began to draw
+from my bosom the empty envelope addressed Coralie Rothvelt. At the same
+time I let my horse move forward again, while I still listened backward
+with my brain as busy as a mill. Was there here no hidden succor? Was
+that no part of Ned Ferry's plan--if the plan was his? Were those
+villains waiting yet, up at the ford? I could hear nothing at my back
+but the singing of innumerable birds.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt!&quot; the drunkard growled again, and again I halted, wearing a look
+of timid awe, but as full of guile as a weasel. I reined in abruptly so
+as to make the reach between us the fullest length of my outstretched
+arm with the paper in two fingers as I leaned over the saddle-bow. He
+bent and reached unsteadily, and took the envelope; but hardly could his
+eye light upon the superscription before it met the muzzle of my weapon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't move.&quot; My tone was affectionate. &quot;Don't holla, or I'll give you
+to the crows. Back. Back off this bridge--quick! or I'll--&quot; I pushed
+the pistol nearer; the danger was no less to him because I was
+thoroughly frightened. He backed; but he glared a devilish elation, for
+behind me beat the hoofs of both his horsemen. I had to change
+my tactics.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt! Turn as I turn, and keep your eye on <em>this.&quot;</em></p>
+
+<p>Glad was I then to be on a true cavalryman's horse that answered the
+closing of my left leg and moved steadily around till I could see down
+the bridge. Oliver, after a step or two, stopped. &quot;Turn!&quot; I yelled, and
+swelled. &quot;One, two,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned. There was not a second to spare. The two long-haired fellows
+came nip and tuck. I see yet their long deer-hunters' rifles. But I
+remembered my pledge to this man's wife, and proudly found I had the
+nerve to hold the trigger still unpressed when at the apron of the
+bridge the rascals caught their first full sight of us as we sat
+humpshouldered, eye to eye, like one gray tomcat and one yellow one.
+They dragged their horses back upon their haunches. One leaped to the
+ground, the other aimed from the saddle; but the first shot that woke
+the echoes was neither theirs nor mine, but Sergeant Jim Langley's,
+though that, of course, I did not know. It came from a tree on our side
+of the water, some forty yards downstream. The man in the saddle fired
+wild, and as his horse wheeled and ran, the rider slowly toppled over
+backward out of saddle and stirrups and went slamming to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>His companion had no time to fire. Instantly after these two shots came
+a third, and some willows upstream filled with its white smoke. The
+second long rifle fell upon the bridge and its owner sank to his knees
+heaving out long cries of agony that swelled in a tremor of echoes up
+and down the stream. Another voice, stalwart, elated, cut through it
+like a sword. &quot;Don't shoot, Smith, we're coming; save that hound for
+the halter!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The groans of the wounded man closed in behind it, a flood of agony, and
+my own outcry increased the din as I called &quot;Come quick, come quick! the
+wounded fellow's remounting!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wretch had lifted himself to his feet by a stirrup. Then, giving
+out, he had sunk prone, and now, still torturing the air with his horrid
+cries, was crawling for his rifle. Oliver saw I had a new inspiration.
+All the drunkenness left his eyes and they became the eyes of a snake,
+but too quickly for him to guess my purpose I turned my weapon from his
+face and fired. His revolver flew from his bleeding hand, a stream of
+curses started from his lips, and as I thrust my pistol into his face
+again and snatched his bridle he screamed to the crawling woodman
+&quot;Shoot! shoot! Kill one or the other of us! Oh! shoot! shoot!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The rifle cracked, but its ball sang over us; a shot answered it behind
+me; the howling man's voice died in a gurgle, and Sergeant Jim ran by
+me, leaped upon the horse that had stayed beside his fallen rider, and
+was off hot-footed after the other. &quot;Turn your prisoner over to Kendall,
+Smith,&quot; he cried, &quot;and put out like hell for Clifton!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I gave no assent, and I believe Oliver guessed my purpose to save him,
+though his eyes were as venomous as ever. I flirted the rein off his
+horse's neck and said, savagely &quot;Come! quick! trot! gallop!&quot; The
+sergeant's young companion of the morning before dashed out of the
+bushes on his horse with Jim's horse in lead. &quot;I've got him safe,
+Kendall,&quot; I cried, and my captive and I sped by him at a gallop on our
+way to Ned Ferry's command.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII">XXII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>WE SPEED A PARTING GUEST</strong></p>
+
+<p>Rising to higher ground, we turned into the Natchez, and Port Gibson
+road where a farm-house and country &quot;store&quot; constituted Clifton. Still
+at a gallop we left these behind and entered a broad lane between fields
+of tasselling corn, where we saw a gallant sight. In the early sunlight
+and in the pink dust of their own feet, down the red clay road at an
+easy trot in column by fours, the blue-gray of their dress flashing with
+the glint of the carbines at their backs, came Ferry's scouts with Ned
+Ferry at their head. There was his beautiful brown horse under him, too.
+My captive and I dropped to a walk, the column did the same, and Ferry
+trotted forward, beckoning us to halt. His face showed triumph and
+commendation, but no joy. Oliver answered his scrutiny with a blaze
+of defiance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning, Smith, who is your prisoner?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His name is Oliver.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry looked behind to the halted column. &quot;Lieutenant Quinn, send two
+men to guard this one. Smith, where's Sergeant Langley; where's Kendall?
+Kendall?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>While I told of the scrimmage, the guard relieved me of Oliver, and as I
+finished, three men galloped up and reined in. &quot;All right,&quot; said
+one, saluting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;South?&quot; asked our leader.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Before day,&quot; replied the new-comer, glowing with elation, and I grasped
+the fact that the enemy had taken our bait and I had not betrayed my
+country. The three men went to the column, and Ferry, looking up from
+the despatch which I had delivered to him, said--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course no one has seen this despatch, eh?--Oh!&quot;--a smile--&quot;yes?
+who?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Two Federal officers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Two--what?&quot; His smile broadened. &quot;You <em>know</em> that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw them, Lieutenant, looking in at the door to see the despatch put
+back under my pillow. Yes, sir, by the same hand that had shown it
+to them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whose hand was it; that fellow's, yonder?&quot; Oliver was several paces
+away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Lieutenant, I don't believe he had anything to do with it; and I've
+no absolute proof, either, that he was at the bridge to rob or kill me.
+I threatened his life first, sir. At any rate that hand under my pillow
+was neither his nor his father's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But they were present, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were neither of them present, Lieutenant; that hand was Miss
+Coralie Rothvelt's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no!&quot; he murmured, &quot;that cannot be!&quot; &quot;I saw her face, Lieutenant,
+nearer to mine than yours is now. But she did it to help us--oh, but I
+know that, sir! She came under my window and told me she had done it!
+She told me to tell you she hadn't thwarted your plan, but only improved
+on it, and I believe--Lieutenant, if you will hear me patiently through
+a confession which--&quot; I choked with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>He lighted up with happy relief. &quot;No, you need not make it. And you need
+not turn so pale.&quot; Whereat I turned red. &quot;She saw the despatch was a
+trap for the Yankees, and used it so, you think? Ah, yes, Smith, I see
+it all, now; she pumped you dry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could not speak, I shook my head, and for evidence in rebuttal I
+showed in my eyes two fountains of standing tears.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How, then, did she know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant, she guessed! She must have just put two and two together
+and guessed! Or else, Lieutenant,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She must have pumped others before she pumped you, eh?&quot; There was
+confession in his good humor. &quot;But tell me; did she not see also this
+other trap, for this man and his father, and try to save them out of
+it?--oh, if you don't want--never mind.&quot; He laid a leg over the front of
+his saddle and sat thinking. So I see him to-day: his chestnut locks,
+his goodly limbs and shoulders, the graceful boots, cut-away jacket,
+faded sash, straight sword, and that look of care on his features which
+intensified the charm of their spiritual cleanness; behind him his band
+of picked heroes, and for background the June sky. Whenever I smell
+dewy corn-fields smitten with the sun that picture comes back to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he said again, &quot;you need not tell me.&quot; By a placid light in his
+face I saw he understood. He drew his watch, put it back, thought on,
+and smiled at my uniform. &quot;It has not the blue of the others,&quot; he said,
+&quot;but indeed they are not all alike, and it will match the most of
+them--after a rain or two--and some dust. You have been trading horses?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I explained. While doing so I saw one of the guard reaching the
+prisoner's bridle to the other. Hah! Oliver had slapped the bridle free.
+In went his spurs! By a great buffet on the horse's neck he wheeled him,
+and with the rein dangling under the bits went over the fence like a
+deer. &quot;Bang! bang! bang!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was idle; a magic seems to shield a captive's leap for life. Away
+across the corn he went to the edge of a tangled wood, over the fence
+there again, and into the brush. &quot;Halt! bang!&quot; and &quot;Halt! bang!&quot; it was,
+at every bound, but now the pursuers came back empty-handed, some
+contemptuously silent, some laughing. Ferry glanced again at the time,
+and I was having within me a quarrel with him for his indifference at
+the prisoner's escape, when with cold severity he asked--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did you not fire?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I flushed with indignation, and my eye retorted to his that I had only
+followed his example. His answer was a smile. &quot;You, also, have been
+guessing, eh?&quot; he said, and when I glowed with gratitude he added,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind, we must have a long talk. At present there is a verbal
+message for me; what is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Verbal message? No, Lieutenant, she didn't--oh!--from the General! Yes!
+the General says--'Rodney.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, &quot;Left
+into line wheel--march!&quot; chanted our second in command.
+&quot;Backwards--march!&quot; and then &quot;Right dress!&quot; and the line, that had been
+a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning
+sun in their faces. Then Ferry called &quot;Fours from the right, to march to
+the left--march!&quot; and he and Quinn passed up the middle of the road
+along the front of the line, with yours truly close at their heels,
+while behind us the command broke into column again by fours from the
+right and set the pink dust afloat as they followed back northward over
+their own tracks with Sergeant Jim beside the first four as squadron
+right guide. I had got where I was by some mistake which I did not know
+how to correct,--I was no drill-master's pride,--and there was much
+suppressed amusement at my expense along the front as we rode down it.
+At every few steps until the whole line was a column Ned Ferry dropped
+some word of cheer, and each time there would come back an equally quiet
+and hearty reply. Near the middle he said &quot;Brisk work ahead of us
+to-day, boys,&quot; and I heard the reiteration of his words run among the
+ranks. I also heard one man bid another warm some milk for the baby.
+Trotting by a grove where the company had passed the night, we presently
+took the walk to break by twos, and as we resumed the trot and turned
+westward into a by-road, Lieutenant Quinn dropped back to the column and
+sent me forward to the side of Ned Ferry. I went with cold shivers.</p>
+<a name="imgfour" id="imgfour"></a><img src="004.jpg" alt="With the rein dangling under the bits he went over the fence like a deer." align="left" />
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII">XXIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>FERRY TALKS OF CHARLOTTE</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have no carbine,&quot; said my commander. &quot;And you have but one
+revolver; here is another.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I knew it at a glance. &quot;It's Oliver's,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll call it yours now,&quot; he replied. &quot;Kendall picked it up, but he has
+no need of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I remarked irrelevantly that I had not noticed when Sergeant Jim and
+Kendall rejoined us, but Ferry stuck to the subject of the captured
+weapon. &quot;Take it,&quot; he insisted; &quot;if you are not fully armed you will
+find yourself holding horses every time we dismount to fight. And now,
+Smith, I shall not report to the General this matter of the Olivers; you
+shall tell him the whole of it, yourself; you are my scout, but you are
+his courier.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant, I--I wish I knew the whole of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell him all you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Even things <em>she</em> doesn't want told?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot;--he gave a Creole shrug--&quot;that you must decide, on the honor of a
+good soldier. She has taken you into her confidence?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only into her service,&quot; I said, but he raised his brows. &quot;That is
+more; certainly you are honored. What is it you would rather not tell
+the General and yet you must; do I know that already?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, for one thing, I've got to tell him that old Lucius Oliver can't
+be hung too high or too soon. For months he has been--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry showed pain. &quot;I know; save that for the General. And what else?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, the other one--the son. Lieutenant, is she that monster's wife?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry stroked his horse's neck and said very softly, &quot;She is his wife.&quot;
+I had to wait long for him to say more, but at length, with the same
+measured mildness, he spoke on. This amazing Charlotte, bereft of
+father, brother and mother, ward of a light-headed married sister, and
+in these distracted times lacking any friend with the courage, wisdom
+and kind activity to probe the pretensions of her suitor, had been
+literally snared into marriage by this human spider, this Oliver, a man
+of just the measure to simulate with cunning and patient labor the
+character, bearing and antecedents of a true and exceptional gentleman
+for the sake of devouring a glorious woman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, eh!&quot; I exclaimed, &quot;how could ever such as she mistake him for--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, he is, I doubt not, but the burnt-out ruin of what he was half a
+year ago. You perceive, he has not succeeded; he has not devoured her;
+actually she has turned his fangs upon himself and has defeated his
+designs toward her as if by magic. And yet the only magic has been her
+vigilance, her courage, her sagacity. Smith,&quot;--again he stroked the
+mane of his charger--&quot;if I tell you--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I gave him no pledge but a look.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Since the hour of her marriage she has never gone into her chamber
+without locking the door; she has never come out of it unarmed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I remarked that had I been in her place I should either have sunk into
+the mire, so to speak, or thrown myself, literally, into the river.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he responded, &quot;but not she! Her life is still hers; she will
+neither give it away nor throw it away. She wants it, and she wants
+it whole.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did she say that to you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me in wide surprise. &quot;Ah! could you think she would speak
+with me on that subject? No, I have learned what I know from a man we
+shall meet to-day; the brother of Major Harper; and he, he has it
+from--&quot; my companion smiled--&quot;somebody you have known a pretty long
+time, I think, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see; I see; you mean my mother!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He let me ponder the fact a long time. &quot;Lieutenant,&quot; I asked at length,
+&quot;did you know your plot against the two Olivers would cross her wishes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; was his quick response, &quot;it crossed mine, like-wise. But, you
+know, this life we have to live, it is never for two people only.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I replied, with my eagerness to moralize, &quot;no two persons, and
+above all no one man and one woman, can ever be sure of their duty, or
+even of their happiness, till they consider at least one third
+person,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hoh!&quot; interrupted Ferry, in the manner of one to whom the fact was
+somehow of the most immediate and lively practical interest, &quot;and to
+consider a thousand is better.&quot; Then, after a pause, &quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;I
+know she could not like that move, but you remember our talk of
+yesterday, where we first met?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Indeed I did. Between young men, to whom the principles of living were
+still unproved weapons, there was, to my taste, just one sort of talk
+better than table-talk, and that was saddle-talk; I remembered vividly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mean when we were saying that on whatever road a man's journey
+lies, if he will, first of all, stick to that road, and then every time
+it divides take the--I see! you came to where the road divided!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, and of course I had to take the upper fork. I am glad you said
+that yesterday morning; it came as sometimes the artillery, eh?--just at
+the right moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't say it, Lieutenant; you said it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I think you said it;--sounds like you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was you who said it! and anyhow, it was you who had the strength to
+do it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. &quot;Oh!--a little strength, a little
+vanity,--pride--self-love--we have to use them all--as a good politician
+uses men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked him squarely in the eyes and began to burn. At every new
+unfolding of his confidence I had let my own vanity, pride, self-love be
+more and more flattered, and here at length was getting ready to esteem
+him less for showing such lack of reserve as to use <em>me</em> as an
+escape-valve for his pent-up thoughts, when all at once I fancied I saw
+what he was trying to do. I believed he had guessed my temptations of
+the night and was making use of himself to warn me how to fight them. &quot;I
+understand,&quot; said I, humbly.</p>
+
+<p>But this only pleasantly mystified him. He glanced all over me with a
+playful eye and said, &quot;You must have a carbine the first time our
+ordnance-wagon finds us. Drop back, now, into the ranks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did so; but I felt sure I should ride beside him again as soon as he
+could make an opportunity; for it was plain that by a subtle unconfessed
+accord he and <em>she</em> had chosen me to be a true friend between them.</p>
+
+<p>About noon, while taking a brief rest to give our horses a bite, we were
+joined by an ambulance carrying Major Harper's brother and some freight
+which certainly was not hospital stores. When we remounted, this vehicle
+moved on with us, in the middle of the column, and I was called to ride
+beside it and tell all about the arrival of Miss Harper and her nieces
+at Hazlehurst, and their journey from Brookhaven to camp. Ned Ferry rode
+on the side opposite me and I noticed that all the fellows nearest the
+ambulance were choice men; Sergeant Jim was not there, but Kendall was
+one, and a young chap on a large white-footed pacer was another. Having
+finished my task I had gathered my horse to fall back to my place at the
+rear, when my distinguished auditor said, &quot;I'm acquainted with your
+mother, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was not so handsome as his brother, though younger. His affability
+came by gleams. I asked how that good fortune had come to my mother, and
+he replied that there was hardly time now for another story; we might
+be interrupted--by the Yankees. &quot;Ask the young lady you met yesterday
+evening,&quot; he added, with a knowing gleam, and smiled me away; and when
+by and by the enemy did interrupt, I had forgiven him. Whoever failed to
+answer my questions, in those days, incurred my forgiveness.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV">XXIV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A MILLION AND A HALF</strong></p>
+
+<p>About mid-afternoon I awoke from deep sleep on a bed of sand in the
+roasting shade of a cottonwood jungle. A corporal was shaking me and
+whispering &quot;Make no noise; mount and fall in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Round about in the stifling thicket a score of men were doing so.
+Lieutenant Quinn stood by, and at his side Sergeant Jim seemed to have
+just come among us. The place was pathless; only in two directions could
+one see farther than a few yards. Through one narrow opening came an
+intolerable glare of sunlight from a broad sheet of gliding water, while
+by another break in the motionless foliage could be seen in milder
+light, filling nearly the whole northern view, the tawny flood of the
+Mississippi. A stretch of the farther shore was open fields lying very
+low and hidden by a levee.</p>
+
+<p>As we noiselessly fell into line, counting off in a whisper and rubbing
+from ourselves and our tortured horses the flies we were forbidden to
+slap, I noticed rising from close under that farther levee and some two
+miles upstream, a small cloud of dust coming rapidly down the hidden
+levee road. It seemed to be raised entirely by one or two vehicles.
+Behind us our own main shore was wholly concealed by this mass of
+cottonwoods on the sands between it and the stream, on a spit of which
+we stood ambushed. On the water, a hundred and fifty yards or so from
+the jungle, pointed obliquely across the vast current, was a large skiff
+with six men in it. Four were rowing with all their power, a fifth sat
+in the bow and the other in the stern. Quinn, in the saddle, watched
+through his glass the cottonwoods from which the skiff had emerged at
+the bottom of a sheltered bay. Now he shifted his gaze to the little
+whirl of dust across the river, and now he turned to smile at Jim, but
+his eye lighted on me instead. I risked a knowing look and motioned with
+my lips, &quot;Just in time!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he murmured, &quot;they're late; we've been waiting for them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant's low order broke the platoon into column by file, Quinn
+rode toward its head with his blade drawn, and as he passed me he handed
+me his glass. &quot;Here, you with no carbine, stay and watch that boat till
+I send for you. If there's firing, look sharp to see if any one there is
+hit, and who, and how hard. Watch the boat, nothing else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He moved straight landward through the cottonwoods, followed by the men
+in single file, but halted them while the rear was still discernible in
+the green tangle. Presently they unslung carbines, and I distinctly
+heard galloping. It was not far beyond the cottonwoods. The Yankees were
+after us. Suddenly it ceased. Over yonder, shoreward in the thicket,
+came a sharp command and then a second, and then, right on the front of
+the jungle, at the water's edge, the shots began to puff and crack, and
+the yellow river out here around the boat to spit!--spit!--in wicked
+white splashes. Every second their number grew. Behind me Quinn and his
+men stole away. But orders are orders and I had no choice but to watch
+the boat. The man in the stern had his back to me, and no face among the
+other five did I know. They were fast getting away, but the splashes
+came thick and close and presently one ball found its mark. The man at
+the stern hurriedly changed places with an oarsman; and as the relieved
+rower took his new seat he turned slowly upon his face as if in mortal
+pain, and I saw that the fresh hand at the oar was the brother of Major
+Harper. Just as I made the discovery &quot;Boom!&quot; said my small dust-cloud
+across the river, and &quot;hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry-hurry--&quot; like
+a train on a trestle-work--&quot;boom!&quot;--a shell left its gray track in the
+still air over the skiff and burst in the tops of the cottonwoods. The
+green thicket grew pale with the bomb's white smoke, yet &quot;crack! crack!&quot;
+and &quot;spit! spit!&quot; persisted the blue-coats' rifles. &quot;Boom!&quot; said again
+the field-piece on yonder side the water. Its shell came rattling
+through the air to burst on this side, out of the flashing and cracking
+of rifles and the sulphurous bomb smoke arose cries of men getting
+mangled, and I whimpered and gnawed my lips for joy, and I watched the
+boat, but no second shot came aboard, and--&quot;Boom!--hurry-hurry-hurry-
+hurry&quot;--ah! the frightful skill of it! A third shell tore the
+cottonwoods, its smoke slowly broadened out, a Federal bugle beyond
+the thicket sounded the Rally, and the cracking of carbines ceased.</p>
+
+<p>Now Major Harper's brother passes a word to the man at the boat's bow,
+whereupon this man springs up and a Confederate officer's braids flash
+on his sleeve as he waves to the western shore to cease firing. I still
+watch the boat, but I listen behind me. I hear voices of command, the
+Federal sergeants hurrying the troop out of the jungle and back to their
+horses. Then there comes a single voice, the commander's evidently; but
+before it can cease it is swallowed up in a low thunder of hoofs and
+then in a burst of cries and cheers which themselves the next moment are
+drowned in a rattle of carbine and pistol shots--Ferry is down on them
+out of hiding. Thick and silent above the din rises the dust of the
+turmoil, and out of all the hubbub under it I can single out the voice
+of the Federal captain yelling curses and orders at his panic-stricken
+men. And now the m&ecirc;l&eacute;e rolls southward, the crackle of shots grows less
+and then more again, and then all at once comes the crash of Quinn's
+platoon out of ambush, their cheer, their charge, the crackle of pistols
+again, and then another cheer and charge--what is that! Ferry re-formed
+and down on them afresh? No, it was the hard-used but gallant foe
+cutting their way out and getting off after all.</p>
+
+<p>The skiff was touching the farther shore and the three oarsmen lifting
+their stricken comrade out and bearing him to the top of the levee, when
+Kendall came to recall me. On our way back he told me of the fight,
+beginning with the results: none of our own men killed outright, but
+four badly wounded and already started eastward in the ambulance left us
+by the Major's brother; some others more slightly hurt. My questions
+were headlong and his answers quiet; he was a slow-spoken daredevil; I
+wish he came more than he does into this story.</p>
+
+<p>Not slow-spoken did we find the command when we reached the road where
+they were falling into line. After a brief but vain pursuit, here were
+almost the haste and tumult of the onset; the sweat of it still reeked
+on everyone; the ground was strewn with its wreckage and its brute and
+human dead, and the pools of their blood were still warm. Squarely
+across the middle of the road, begrimed with dust, and with a dead
+Federal under him and another on top, lay the big white-footed pacer. At
+one side the enemy's fallen wounded were being laid in the shade to be
+left behind. In our ranks, here was a man with an arm in a bloody
+handkerchief, there one with his head so bound, and yonder a young
+fellow jesting wildly while he let his garments be cut and a flesh-wound
+in his side be rudely stanched. Here there was laughter at one who had
+been saved by his belt-buckle, and here at one who had dropped like dead
+from his horse, but had caught another horse and charged on. But these
+details imply a delay where in fact there was none; the moment Ferry
+spied me he asked &quot;Did he get across?&quot; and while I answered he motioned
+me into the line. Then he changed it into a column, commanded silence,
+and led us across country eastward. For those few wounded who would not
+give up their places in the ranks it was a weary ten miles that brought
+us swiftly back to a point within five miles of that Clifton which we
+had left in the morning. And yet a lovely ten miles it was, withal. You
+would hardly have known this tousled crowd for the same dandy crew that
+had smiled so flippantly upon me at sunrise, though they smiled as
+flippantly now with faces powder-blackened, hair and eyelashes matted
+and gummed with sweat and dust, and shoulders and thighs caked with
+grime. Yet to Ned Ferry as well as to me--I saw it in his eye every time
+he looked at them--these grimy fellows did more to beautify those ten
+miles than did June woods beflowered and perfumed with magnolia, bay and
+muscadine, or than slant sunlight in glade or grove.</p>
+
+<p>In a stretch of timber where we broke ranks for a short rest, unbitting
+but not unsaddling, a lot of fellows pressed me to tell them about the
+boat on the river. &quot;You heard what was in it, didn't you?&quot; asked one
+nearly as young as I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Besides the men? No. Same that was in the ambulance, I suppose; what
+was it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you know? Oh, I remember, you were asleep when Quinn told us.
+Well, sir,&quot;--he tried to speak calmly but he had to speak somehow or
+explode--&quot;it was soldiers' pay--for Dick Taylor's army, over in the
+Trans-Mississippi; a million and a half dollars!&quot; He was as proud to
+tell the news as he would have been to own the money.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV">XXV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A QUIET RIDE</strong></p>
+
+<p>Where Ferry's scouts camped that night I do not know, for we had gone
+only two or three miles beyond our first momentary halting-place when
+their leader left them to Quinn and sprang away southward over fence,
+hedge, road, ditch--whatever lay across his bee-line, and by his order I
+followed at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>In a secluded north-and-south road he looked back and beckoned me to his
+side: &quot;You saw Major Harper's brother land safe and sound, you say? He
+told you this morning he is acquainted with your mother, eh; but
+not how?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, except that it was through--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I know. But you don't know even how your mother is acquainted with
+her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, though of course if she lived in the city, common sympathies might
+easily bring them together.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She did not live in the city; she lived across the river from the city.
+'Tis but a year ago her father died. He was an owner of steamboats. She
+made many river trips with him, and I suppose that explains how she
+knows the country about Baton Rouge, Natchez, Grand Gulf, Rodney, better
+than she knows the city. But the boats are gone now; some turned into
+gunboats, one burnt when the city fell, another confiscated. I think
+they didn't manage her bringing-up very well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Maybe not,&quot; I replied, being nothing if not disputatious, &quot;and she does
+strike me as one thrown upon her own intuitions for everything; but if
+she's the lady she is entirely by her own personal quality, Lieutenant,
+she's a wonder!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but she is a wonder. In a state of society more finished--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She would be incredible,&quot; I said for him, and he accepted the clause by
+a gesture, and after a meditative pause went on with her history. The
+subject of our conversation had first met Oliver, it seemed, when by
+reason of some daring performance in the military field--near Milliken's
+Bend, in the previous autumn--he was the hero of the moment. Even so it
+was strange enough that he should capture her; one would as soon look to
+see Vicksburg fall; but the world was upside down, everything was
+happening as if in a tornado, and he cast his net of lies; lies of his
+own, and lies of two or three match-making friends who chose to believe,
+at no cost to themselves, that war, with one puff of its breath, had
+cleansed him of his vices and that marriage would complete the happy
+change. This was in Natchez, Ferry went on to say. Most fortunately for
+the bride one of the bridegroom's wedding gifts was a certain young
+slave girl; before the wedding was an hour past--before the
+orange-blossoms were out of the bride's hair--this slave maid had told
+her what he was, &quot;And you know what that is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We rode in silence while I tried to think what it must be to a woman of
+her warmth--of her impulsive energies--to be, week in, week out, month
+after month, besieged by that man's law-protected blandishments and
+stratagems. &quot;I wish you would use me in her service every time there is
+a chance,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The chances are few,&quot; he answered; &quot;even to General Austin she laughs
+and says we must let the story work itself out; that she is the fool in
+it, but there is a chance for the fool to win if not too much burdened
+with help.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How did you make her acquaintance?&quot; I ventured to ask.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You remember the last time the brigade was in this piece of country?&quot;
+he rejoined.</p>
+
+<p>I did; it had been only some five weeks earlier; Grant had driven us
+through Port Gibson, General Bowen had retired across the north fork of
+Bayou Pierre, and we had been cut off and forced to come down here.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; well, she came to us that night, round the enemy's right, with a
+letter from Major Harper's brother--he was then in New Orleans--and with
+information of her own that saved the brigade. I had just got my
+company. I took it off next morning on my first scout, whilst the
+brigade went to Raymond. She was my guide all that day; six times she
+was my guide before the end of May. Yet the most I have learned about
+her has come to me in the last few days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has a fearful game to play.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!--yes, that is what she would call it; but me, I say--though not as
+Gholson would mean it, you know,--she has a soul to save. If it is a
+game, it is a very delicate one; let her play it as nearly alone as she
+can.&quot; &quot;Yes,&quot; said I, &quot;a man's hand in it would be only his foot in it;&quot;
+and Ferry was pleased. He scanned me all over in the same bright way he
+had done it in the morning, and remarked &quot;This time I see they have
+given you a carbine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We went down into some low lands, crossed a creek or two, and in one of
+them gave our horses and ourselves a good scrubbing. On a dim path in
+thick woods we paused at a worm fence lying squarely across our way. It
+was staked and ridered and its zig-zags were crowded with brambles and
+wild-plum. A hundred yards to our left, still overhung by the woods, it
+turned south. Beyond it in our front lay a series of open fields, in
+which, except this one just at hand, the crops were standing high. The
+nearer half of this one, a breadth of maybe a hundred yards, though
+planted in corn, was now given up to grass, and live-stock, getting into
+it at some unseen point, had eaten and trampled everywhere. The farther
+half was thinly covered with a poor stand of cotton, and between the
+corn and the cotton a small, trench-like watercourse crossed our line of
+view at right angles and vanished in the woods at the field's eastern
+edge. The farther border of this run was densely masked by a growth of
+brake-cane entirely lacking on the side next us. Between the cotton and
+the next field beyond, a double line of rail fence indicated the Fayette
+and Union Church road. Suddenly Ferry looked through his field-glasses,
+and my glance followed the direction in which they were pointed. Dust
+again; one can get tired of dust! Some two miles off, a little southward
+of the setting sun, a golden haze of it floated across a low
+background of trees.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Tis the enemy, I think,&quot; he said, &quot;but only scouts, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI">XXVI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A SALUTE ACROSS THE DEAD-LINE</strong></p>
+
+<p>I was not seeking enemies just then and was not pleased. &quot;Didn't the
+Yankees fall back this morning before day and move southward?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For what would they do that?&quot; inquired my leader, still using the
+glass, but before I could reply he gave a soft hiss, dropped the glass,
+and turned his unaided eye upon a point close beyond our field, in the
+road. Now again he lifted the glass, and I saw over there two small,
+black, moving objects. They passed behind some fence-row foliage,
+reappeared nearer, and suddenly bobbed smartly up to the roadside
+fence--the dusty hats of two Federal horsemen. The wearers sat looking
+over into the field between them and us. I asked Ferry if he wasn't
+afraid they would see us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is what we want,&quot; was his reply; &quot;only, they must not know we want
+it. Keep very still; don't move.&quot; At that word they espied us and
+galloped back.</p>
+
+<p>We turned to our left and hurried along our own fence-line, first
+eastward, then south, and reined up behind some live brush at the edge
+of the public road. &quot;Soon know how many they are, now,&quot; he said, smiling
+back at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you going to count them?&quot; It seemed so much easier to let them
+count us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he replied. &quot;Wish we had our boys here,&quot; he added, and did not
+need to tell me how he would have posted them; the place was so
+favorable for an ambush that those Yankees had no doubt been looking for
+us before they saw us. Half of us would be in the locks of these
+highroad fences to lure them on, and half in the little gully masked
+with canes to take them in the flank. &quot;We would count many times our own
+number before they should pass,&quot; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can't we make them think our men are here?&quot; I suggested. &quot;Couldn't I go
+back to where this fence crosses the gully and let them see me opening a
+gap in it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was amused. &quot;Go if you want; but be quick; here they come already, a
+small bunch of them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By the time I reached the spot they were in plain view, six men and an
+officer. I leaped to the ground, tugged at a rail and threw one end off.
+I thought I had never handled rails so heavy and slippery in my life. As
+I got a second one down I looked across to the road. The officer was
+distributing his men. Barely a mile behind was the dust of their column.
+The third rail stuck and the sweat began to pour down into my eyes and
+collar. Two of the blue-coats easily let down a panel of fence on the
+far side of the road and pushed into the tall corn; three others came
+galloping across the thin cotton to reconnoitre the fringe of canes; the
+officer and the remaining man cantered on up the road toward the spot
+where I could see Ferry observing everything from the saddle behind his
+mask of leaves. Of a sudden the Federal commander descried me wildly at
+work. He paused and pointed me out to the man at his back, but had no
+glass and seemed puzzled. At his word the man pricked up to the fence
+to come over it, but his horse was of another mind, and the impatient
+officer, crowding him away, cleared the fence himself and came across
+the furrows at a nimble trot. Still I tussled with the rails, and grew
+peevish. The enemy was counted, closely enough! one troop. Their dust
+showed it, the small advance guard proved it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello!&quot; called the Federal officer, &quot;who are you, over there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He might have known by looking a trifle more narrowly; I saw plainly,
+thrillingly, who he was; but his attention was diverted by some signal
+from the men he had sent to the fringe of cane; they had found the
+tracks of horses leading through the canes into the corn. But now he
+hailed me again. &quot;Here, you! what are you doing at that fence? Who
+are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was within easy range and was still trotting nearer. I snatched up my
+carbine, aimed, and then recovered, looking sharply to my left as if
+restrained by the command of some one behind the canes. The Federal's
+cool daring filled me with admiration. Had the foes he was looking for
+been actually in hiding here they could have picked him out of his
+saddle like a bird off a bush. His only chance was that they would not
+let themselves be teased into firing prematurely on any one man or six.
+Ferry beckoned me. I mounted and trotted down the woods side of the
+fence, at the same time the Federal's six men approached from three
+directions, and down the road the main column entered upon the scene.</p>
+
+<p>The officer halted with revolver drawn and sent a man back with some
+order to the main body. And then Ferry's beautiful brown horse, as
+though of his own choice, reared straight up where he stood, dropped his
+forelegs upon his breast, rose, over the fence, master and all, as
+unlaboriously as a kite, trotted out from the brush and halted in the
+open field. His rider's outdrawn sword flashed to the setting sun. The
+Federal, pointing here and there was deploying his remaining five men
+toward the spot I had left, but glancing round and seeing Ferry he
+trotted toward him. Thereupon Ferry advanced at a walk, and I--for I had
+followed him--moved at the same gait a few paces behind. &quot;Halt him,&quot;
+said my leader.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt!&quot; I yelled with carbine at a ready, and the Federal halted. In
+fact he had come to a small hollow full of bushes and grapevines and had
+no choice but to halt or go round it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't swallow him,&quot; said Ferry, smilingly, &quot;this isn't your private
+war.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's on my private horse!&quot; I retorted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you're on his,&quot; replied my commander. The giant before us,
+mounted on Cricket, was my prisoner of the previous day.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who are you?&quot; he was calling imperiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Jewett ought to know,&quot; Ferry called back, and on that the
+questioner recognized us both. He became very stately. &quot;Lieutenant
+Durand, I believe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At times,&quot; said Lieutenant Durand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And at other times--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant Ferry--Ferry's scouts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Federal expanded with surprise and then with austere pleasure. He
+glanced toward his five men galloping back to him having found no enemy,
+and then at his column, which had just halted. Frowning, he motioned the
+advance guard to the road again and once more hailed Ferry while he
+pointed at me. He straightened and swelled still more as he began his
+question, but as he finished it a smile went all over him. &quot;Is that your
+entire present force?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then what the devil do you want?&quot; he thundered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have what we wanted,&quot; said Ferry, &quot;only now we desire to cross the
+road.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're not asking my permission?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am afraid not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I admit you are quite able to cross without.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; said Ferry; &quot;will you pardon me for passing in front of
+you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Federal's pistol slid into its holster and his sabre flashed out. He
+threw its curved point up in a splendid salute. Ferry saluted with his
+straight blade. Then both swords rang back into their scabbards, and
+Jewett whirled away toward his column. For a moment we lingered, then
+faced to the left, trotted, galloped. Over the fence and into the road
+went he--went I. Down it, as we crossed, the blue column was just moving
+again. Then the woods on the south swallowed us up.</p>
+<a name="imgfive" id="imgfive"></a><img src="005.jpg" alt="Ferry saluted with his straight blade." align="left" />
+
+<p>&quot;If Captain Jewett will only go on to Union Church,&quot; said Ferry, &quot;Quinn
+will see that he never gets back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you think he will not go on?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, now he is discovered, surely not. I think he will turn back at
+Wiggins.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why Wiggins? does he know Coralie Rothvelt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, he does; and if since last night he has maybe found out she is
+Charlotte Oliver,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Lieutenant Ferry, oh! would such a man as that come hunting down a
+woman, with a troop of cavalry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is not hunting her; yet, should he find her, I have the fear he
+would do his duty as a soldier, anyhow. No, he <em>was</em> looking, I think,
+for Ferry's scouts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if she should be at Wiggins--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My leader smiled at my simplicity. &quot;She is not at Wiggins.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not know.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII">XXVII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>SOME FALL, SOME PLUNGE</strong></p>
+
+<p>At a farm-house well hidden in the woods of a creek we got a brave
+supper for the asking and had our uniforms wonderfully cleaned and
+pressed, and at ten that evening we dismounted before the three brightly
+illumined tents of General Austin, Major Harper and that amiable cipher
+our Adjutant-general. On the front of the last the shadow of a deeply
+absorbed writer showed through the canvas, and Ferry murmured to me &quot;The
+ever toiling.&quot; It was Scott Gholson. I had heard the same name for him
+the evening before, from her whose own lovely shadow fell so visibly and
+so often upon the bright curtain of Ned Ferry's thought.</p>
+
+<p>My leader went in while I held our horses. Then he and Gholson came out
+and entered the General's tent; from which Gholson soon emerged again
+and sent an orderly away into the gloom of the sleeping camp, and I
+heard a small body of men mount and set off northward. Presently Ferry
+came out and sent me in, and to my delight I found, on standing before
+the General, that I did not need to tell what Charlotte Oliver wanted
+kept back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, never mind that,&quot; he said, &quot;Miss Rothvelt was here and saw me this
+afternoon, herself.&quot; Up to the point of my arrival at the bridge I had
+merely to fumble my cap and answer his crisp questions. But there he
+lighted a fresh cigar and said &quot;Now, go on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson dropped in with something to be signed, and the General waved
+him to wait and hear. For Gholson, despite the sappy fetor of his mental
+temperament, had abilities that made him almost a private secretary to
+the General. Who, nevertheless, knew him thoroughly. When I had
+described Oliver's escape and would have hurried on to later details,
+General Austin raised a hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold on; you say nearly everybody fired at Oliver; who did not?&quot; &quot;I
+did not, General.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did Lieutenant Ferry fire?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said he did not. The General turned his strong eyes to Gholson's and
+kept them there while he took three luxurious puffs at his cigar. Then
+he took the waiting paper, and as he wrote his name on it he said,
+smiling, &quot;I wish you had been in Lieutenant Ferry's place, Mr. Gholson;
+you would have done your duty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The flattered Gholson received the signed paper and passed out, and the
+General smiled again, at his back. I hope no one has ever smiled the
+same way at mine.</p>
+
+<p>Ferry and I slept side by side that night, and he told me two companies
+of our Louisianians were gone to cut off Jewett and his band. &quot;Still, I
+think they will be much too late,&quot; he said, and when I rather violently
+turned the conversation aside to the subject of Scott Gholson, saying,
+to begin with, that Gholson had wonderful working powers, he replied,
+&quot;'Tis true. Yet he says the brigade surgeon told him to-day he is on the
+verge of a nervous break-down.&quot; But on my inquiring as to the cause of
+our friend's condition, my bedmate pretended to be asleep.</p>
+
+<p>We rose at dawn and rode eastward, he and I alone, some fourteen miles,
+to the Sessions's, where the dance had been two nights earlier. On
+entering the stable to put up our horses we suddenly looked at each
+other very straight, while Ferry's countenance confessed more pleasure
+than surprise, though a touch of care showed with it. &quot;I did not know
+this,&quot; he said, &quot;and I did not expect it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What we saw was the leather-curtained spring-wagon and its little
+striped-legged mules. The old negro in charge of them bowed gravely to
+me and smiled affectionately upon Ferry. About an hour later Gholson
+appeared. He took such hurried pains to explain his coming that any fool
+could have seen the real reason. The brigade surgeon had warned him--Oh!
+had I heard?--Oh! from Ned Ferry, yes. The cause of his threatened
+breakdown, he said, was the perpetual and fearful grind of work into
+which of late he had--fallen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did the doctor say 'fallen'?&quot; I shrewdly asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, the doctor said 'plunged,' but--did Ned Fer'--who put that into
+your head?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nobody; some fall, you know, some plunge.&quot; I did not ask the cause of
+the plunge; the two little mules told me that. He would never have come,
+Gholson hurried on to say, had not Major Harper kindly suggested that a
+Sabbath spent with certain four ladies would be a timely preventive.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; I cried, &quot;are they here t'--too? Why,--where's their carryall?
+'Tisn't in the stable; I've looked!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, it was here, but yesterday, when the fighting threatened to be
+heavy, it was sent to the front. Smith, I didn't know Charlie Tolliver
+was here!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I believed him. But I saw he was not in search of a preventive. Ah, no!
+he was ill of that old, old malady which more than any other abhors a
+preventive. Waking in the summer dawn and finding Ned Ferry risen and
+vanished hitherward, a rival's instinct had moved him to follow, as the
+seeker for wild honey follows the bee. He had come not for the cure of
+his honey-sickness, but for more--more--more--all he could find--of the
+honey. &quot;Smith,&quot; he said, with a painful screw of his features, &quot;I'm
+mightily troubled about Ned Ferry!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I dishonestly responded, &quot;his polished irreligion--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no! No,&quot; he groaned, &quot;it isn't that so much just now, though I know
+that to a true religionist like you the society of such a mere
+romanticist--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were interrupted.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII">XXVIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>OLDEST GAME ON EARTH</strong></p>
+
+<p>The cause of our interruption was Camille Harper. We had been pacing the
+side veranda and she came out upon it with an unconscious song on her
+lips, and on one finger a tiny basket.</p>
+
+<p>Her gentle irruption found me standing almost on the spot where she had
+stood two evenings before and said good-bye to me. From this point a
+path led to the rear of the house, where within a light paling fence
+bloomed a garden. She gave us a blithe good-morning as she passed,
+descended the two or three side steps, and tripped toward the garden
+gate, a wee affair which she might have lifted off its hinges with one
+thumb. I saw her try its latch two or three times and then turn back
+discomfited because the loose frame had sagged a trifle and needed to be
+raised half an inch. I did not understand the helplessness of girls as
+well then as I do now; I ran and opened the gate; and when I shut it
+again she and I were alone inside.</p>
+
+<p>She let me cut the flowers. &quot;You know who's here?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I guilefully replied, &quot;I came with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't mean Lieutenant Ferry,&quot; she responded, &quot;nor anybody you'd ever
+guess if you don't know; but you do, don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I knew and went on gathering sweet-pea blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you ever see her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I replied, stepping away for some roses, &quot;I--saw her--by
+chance--for a moment--she was in the wagon she's got here--last
+--eh,--Thursday--morn'--&quot; I came back trimming the roses, and
+as she reached for them and our glances met, she laughed and replied,
+with a roguish droop of the head--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She told us about it. And you needn't look so disturbed; she only
+praised you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Still I frowned. &quot;How does it come that she's here, anyhow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why! she's got to be everywhere! She's a war-correspondent! She was at
+the front yesterday nearly the whole time, near enough to see some of
+the fighting, and to hear it all! she calls it 'only a skirmish'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When did she get here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About five in the morning. But we didn't see her then; she shut herself
+up and wrote and wrote and wrote! They say she runs the most daring
+risks! And they say she's so wise in finding out what the Yankees are
+going to do and why they're going to do it, that they'd be nearly as
+glad to catch her as to catch Lieutenant Ferry! Didn't you know? Ah, you
+knew!&quot; She attempted a reproachful glance, but exhaled happiness like a
+fragrance. I asked how she had heard these things.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How did I hear them? Let me see. Oh, yes! from--from Harry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I flinched angrily. &quot;From what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked into her basket and fingered its flowers. &quot;That's what he
+asked me to call him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stiffened up as though I heard a thief picking the lock of my lawful
+treasure. She threw me, side wise, a bantering smile and then a more
+winsome glance, but I refused to see either. I burned with so many
+feelings at once that I could no more have told them than I could have
+raised a tune. &quot;Don't you like him?&quot; she asked, and tried to be
+very arch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Like whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know perfectly well,&quot; she replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I do not like him. Do you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why,--yes,--I do. I--I thought everybody did.&quot; She averted her face and
+toyed with the sweet-pea vines. Suddenly she gulped, faced me, blinked
+rapidly, and said &quot;If I oughtn't to call him--that,--then I oughtn't to
+have called--&quot; she dropped her eyes and bit her lip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>That</em>,&quot; I replied, &quot;is a very different matter! At least I had hoped
+it was!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her rejoinder came in a low, grieved monotone: &quot;Did you say <em>had</em>
+hoped?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was the sweetest question my ear had ever caught, and I asked her, I
+scarce know how, if I might still say &quot;do hope&quot;.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I--I didn't know you ever did say it. I don't see that I have any
+right to forbid you saying things--to--to yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So we played the game--oldest game on earth--and loveliest. Bungling
+moves we made, as you see, and sometimes did not know whose move it was.
+At length she admitted that this <em>is</em> a very unsafe world in which to be
+kind to soldiers. I told how <em>fickle</em> some of them were. She would not
+say she would--or wouldn't--make my case a permanent exception or a
+solitary one; yet with me she blissfully pooh-poohed the idea that our
+acquaintance was new, she being so wonderfully like my mother, and I
+being so wonderfully ditto, ditto. And when I burst into a blazing
+eulogy of my mother, my listener gave me kinder looks than I ever
+deserved of any woman alive. On my trying to reciprocate, she asked me
+for more flowers and hurried back to our earlier theme.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And really, you know, they say she's almost as truly a scout as Ned
+Fer'--as Lieutenant Ferry-Durand. She's from New Orleans, you know, and
+she's like us, half-Creole; but her other half is Highland Scotch--isn't
+that romantic! When she told us about it she laughed and said it
+explained some things in her which nothing else could excuse! Wasn't
+that funny!--oh, pshaw! it doesn't sound a bit funny as I tell it, but
+she said it in such a droll way! She was so full of fun and frolic that
+day! You can't conceive how full of them she is--sometimes; how soberly
+she <em>can</em> say the funniest things, and how <em>funnily</em> she can say the
+soberest things!&quot;</p>
+<a name="imgsix" id="imgsix"></a><img src="006.jpg" alt="Don't you like him? she asked, and tried to be very arch." align="left" />
+
+<p>&quot;You say she was so full of fun that day; what day?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young thing gaped at me, gasped, and melted half to the ground:
+&quot;O--oh--I've let it out!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you may as well go right on, now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She straightened to her toes, covered her open mouth an instant, and
+then said &quot;Yes, we knew her--at our house--in New Orleans--poor New
+Orleans! Your mother--oh, your splendid, lovely little mother is such a
+brave Confederate!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My mother brought her to your house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, oh, yes! and that's why it isn't wrong to tell <em>you</em>. Charlotte's
+been three times through the lines, to and from the city; once by way of
+Natchez and twice through Baton Rouge. And oh, the things she's brought
+out to our poor boys in the hospitals!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Generals' uniforms, for example?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, now you're real mean! No! what she's brought the most of is--guess!
+You'll never guess it in the world!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hindoo grammars!--No? Well, then,--perfumery!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you! No, I'll tell you.&quot; She spoke prudently; I had to bow my ear
+so close that it tingled: &quot;Dolls!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My amazement was genuine. &quot;For our sick soldiers!&quot; I sighed.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes danced; she leaned away and nodded. Then she drew nearer than
+before: &quot;Dolls!&quot; she murmured again;--&quot;and pincushions!--and
+emeries!--and 'rats'! you know, for ladies' hair--and chignon-cushions!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For our sick soldiers!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes!--stuffed with quinine!&quot; She laughed in her handkerchief till the
+smell of the sweet-peas was lost in the odor of frangipani, and she
+staggered almost into my arms. But that sobered her. &quot;And when we speak
+of the risk she runs of being sent to Ship Island she laughs and says,
+'Life is strife.' She says she'd like it long, but she's got to have
+it broad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Life is strife indeed to her,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! do you know that too?--and another reason she gives for taking
+those awful risks is that 'it's the best use she can make of her silly
+streak'--as if she had any such thing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did my mother bring her to you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! she had letters from uncle to aunt Martha! He thinks she's
+wonderful!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does your father think so, too?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My father? no; but he's prejudiced! That's one of the things I can
+never understand--why nearly all the girls I know have such
+prejudiced fathers.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX">XXIX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A GNAWING IN THE DARK</strong></p>
+
+<p>On our return to the veranda, Camille and I, we found on its front the
+house's entire company except only the children of the family. Mrs.
+Sessions, Estelle and C&eacute;cile formed one group, Squire Sessions and
+Charlotte Oliver made a pair, and Ferry and Miss Harper another. Our
+posies created a lively demonstration; Camille yielded them to Estelle,
+and Estelle took them into the house to arrange them in water. Gholson
+went with her; it was painful to see her zest for his society.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Harper &quot;knocked me down,&quot; as we boys used to say, to Charlotte
+Oliver; &quot;Charlotte, my dear, you already know Mr. Smith, I believe?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had expected to see again, and to feel, as well, the starry charms of
+Coralie Rothvelt; but what I confronted was far different. The charms
+were here, unquenched by this stare of daylight, but from them shone a
+lustre of womanliness wholly new. It seemed to grow on even when a
+tricksy gleam shot through it as she replied, &quot;Yes, our acquaintance
+dates from Gallatin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With a spasm of eagerness I said it did: &quot;Our
+acquai'--hh--Gallatin--hh--&quot; But my soul cried like a culprit, &quot;No, no,
+it begins only now!&quot; and my whole being stood under arrest before the
+accusing truth that from Gallatin till now my acquaintance had been
+solely with that false phase of her which I knew as Coralie Rothvelt. At
+the same her kind eyes sweetly granted me a stripling's acquittal--oh!
+why did it have to be a stripling's?</p>
+
+<p>Wonderful eyes she had; deep blue, as I have said, in color; black, in
+spirit; never so wonderful as when having sparkled black they quieted to
+blue again. Always then there came the slightest of contractions at the
+outer corners of the delicate lids, that gave a fourfold expression of
+thought, passion, tenderness and intrepidity. I never saw that silent
+meaning in but one other pair of eyes; wherever it turned it said--at
+the same time saying many other things but saying this always
+plainest--&quot;I see both out and in; I know myself--and thee.&quot; Never but in
+one other pair of eyes? no; and whose were those? Ned Ferry's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you love to see Charlotte and him look at each other in that
+steady way when they're talking together?&quot; Camille asked me later. But
+rather coldly I inquired why I should; I felt acutely enough without
+admitting it to Camille, that Charlotte and Ferry were meeting on ground
+far above me; and when Gholson, in his turn, called to my notice, in
+Charlotte's case, this unique gaze, and contrasted it with her beautiful
+yet strangely childish mouth, I asked a second time why she was
+here, anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's here,&quot; murmured Gholson, &quot;because she has to live! To live she
+must have means, Smith, and to have means she must either get them
+herself or she must--&quot; and again he poised his hand horizontally across
+his mouth and whispered--&quot;live with her hus'--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I jerked my head away--&quot;Yes, yes.&quot; Scott Gholson was the only one of us
+who could give that wretch that title. &quot;Gholson,&quot; I said, for I kept him
+plied with questions to prevent his questioning me, &quot;how did that man
+ever get her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the company were going into the house; he glanced furtively
+after them and grabbed my arm; you would have thought he was about to
+lay bare the whole tragedy in five words; &quot;Smith,--nobody knows!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you believe she has told Ned Ferry anything?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never! About herself? no, sir!&quot; He bent and whispered: &quot;She despises
+him; she keeps in with him, but it's to get the news, that's all; that's
+positively all.&quot; On our way to the stable to saddle up--for we were all
+going to church--he told me what he knew of her story. I had heard it
+all and more, but I listened with unfeigned interest, for he recited it
+with flashes of heat and rancor that betrayed a cruel infatuation eating
+into his very bone and brain, the guilt of which was only intensified by
+the sour legality of his moral sense.</p>
+
+<p>The church we went to was in Franklin, but the preacher was a man of
+note, a Vicksburg refugee. On the way back Gholson and I rode for a time
+near enough to Squire Sessions and Ned Ferry to know the sermon was
+being discussed by them, and something they said gave my companion
+occasion to murmur to me in a tone of eager censure that Ned Ferry's
+morals were better than his religion.</p>
+
+<p>I said I wished mine were.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Smith, be not deceived! Whenever you see a man bringing forth the
+fruits of the Spirit while he neglects the regularly appointed means of
+grace, you <em>know</em> there's something wrong, don't you? He went to church
+this morning--<em>of course</em>; but how often does he go? What's wrong with
+our dear friend--I don't like to say it, for I admire him so; I don't
+like to say it, and I never have said it, but, Smith,--Ned Ferry's a
+romanticist. We are relig'--what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O--oh, nothing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At one point our way sloped down to a ramshackle wooden bridge that
+spanned a narrow bit of running water at the edge of a wood. Beyond it
+the road led out between two fields whose high worm-fences made it a
+broad lane. The farther limit of this sea of sunlight was the grove that
+hid the Sessions house on the left; on the right it was the
+woods-pasture in which lay concealed a lily-pond. As Gholson and I
+crossed the bridge we came upon a most enlivening view of our own
+procession out in the noonday blaze before us; the Sessions buggy; then
+Charlotte' little wagon; next the Sessions family carriage full of
+youngsters; and lastly, on their horses, Squire Sessions--tall, fleshy,
+clean-shaven, silver-haired--and Ned Ferry. Mrs. Sessions and Miss
+Harper, in the buggy, were just going by a big white gate in the
+right-hand fence, through which a private way led eastward to the
+lily-pond. A happy sight they were, the children in the rear vehicle
+waving handkerchiefs back at us, and nothing in the scene made the
+faintest confession that my pet song, which I was again humming, was pat
+to the hour:</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be broke.&quot;<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson, if it isn't Ned Ferry's religion that's worrying you just now
+about him, what is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My companion looked at me as if what he must say was too large for his
+throat. He made a gesture of lament toward Ferry and broke out, &quot;O--oh
+Smith,&quot;--nearly all Gholson's oh's were groans--&quot;why is he here? The
+scout is 'the eyes of the army'! a man whose perpetual vigilance at the
+very foremost front--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, what do you mean? You know we're here to rejoin the company as it
+comes down from Union Church to camp here to-night. <em>That's</em> what we're
+here for.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,--yes,--but, oh, don't you <em>see</em>, Smith? For you, yourself, that's
+all right; you've got to stay with him, and I'm glad you have. But
+he--oh why did he not go on hours ago, to meet them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should he? Isn't it good to leave one's lieutenant sometimes in
+command; isn't it bad not to?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson's eyes turned green. &quot;Does Ned Ferry give that as his reason?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I haven't asked his reason; I've asked you a question.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'll answer it. Do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course I do, and Ned Ferry does; don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No! Smith, there ain't a braver man in Grant's army than that one
+right now a-straddle of your horse. Why, just the way he got your horse
+night before--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, hang him and the horse! you've told me that three times; what of
+it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, he's out here to make a new record for himself, at whatever
+cost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And do you imagine Ned Ferry hasn't thought of that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah-h, there are times when a man hasn't got his thinking powers; you
+ought to know that, Smith,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Gholson, what do you mean by that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! I certainly didn't mean anything against you, Smith. Why is your
+manner so strange to me to-day? Oh, Smith, if you knew what--if I could
+speak to you in sacred confidence--I--I wouldn't injure Ned Ferry in
+your eyes, nor in anybody's; I only tell you what I do tell so you may
+help me to help him. But he's staying here, Smith, and keeping you here,
+to be near one whose name--without her a-dreaming of it--is already
+coupled with--why,--why, what made you start that a-way again, Smith?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing; I didn't start. 'Coupled with somebody's name,' you say. With
+whose? Go on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With his, Smith, and most injuriously. He's here to tempt her to forget
+she's not--&quot; He faltered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Free?&quot; said I, and he nodded with tragic solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know who I mean, of course?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly; you mean Mrs. Sessions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head bitterly. &quot;Oh, well, then, of course I know. How am I
+to help you to help him; help him to do what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O--oh! to tear himself away from her, Smith. I want you to appeal to
+him. He's taken a great shine to you. You can appeal to his feeling for
+romance--poetry--whatever he calls his hell-fired--I mean his
+unfortunate impiety. You know how, and I don't. And there you reach the
+foundations of his character, as far as it's got any; there's his
+conscience if it's anywhere!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I find myself giving but a faint impression of the spirit in which
+Gholson spoke; it went away beyond a mere backbiting mood and became a
+temper so vindictive and so venomously purposeful that I was startled;
+his condition seemed so fearfully like that of the old paralytic when he
+whined &quot;That's not our way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; my companion went on, &quot;we ought to protect Ned Ferry from
+himself!&quot; The words came through his clenched teeth. &quot;And even more we
+ought to protect her. Who's to do it if we don't? Smith, I believe
+Providence has been a-preparing you to do this, all through these last
+three nights and days!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me for an answer until I became frightened. Was my late
+folly known to this crawling maligner after all? A sweet-scented
+preparation I've had, thought I, but aloud I said only, &quot;If Ned Ferry
+clears out, I suppose we must clear out, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, eh,--I--I don't know that my movements need have anything to do
+with his. Yours, of course,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I interrupted, beginning to boil.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know,&quot; he said, &quot;that comes hard; you'll have to tear <em>yourself</em>
+away--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stared at me and hushed. A panic was surging through me; must I be
+brought to book by such as he? &quot;Mr. Gholson,&quot; I cried, all scorn
+without, all terror within; &quot;Mr. Gholson, I--Mr. Gholson, sir!--&quot; and
+set my jaws and heaved for breath.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Smith,--&quot; He extended a soothing hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No explanation, sir, if you please! I can get away from here without
+tearing myself, which is more than you can boast. Any fool can see why
+<em>you</em> are here. Stop, I take that back, sir! I don't play tit-for-tat
+with my tongue.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson turned red on the brow and ashen about the lips. &quot;I don't call
+that tit-for-tat, Mr. Smith. I remind you of an innocent attachment for
+a young girl; you accuse me of harboring a guilty passion for--&quot; All at
+once he ceased with open lips, and then said as he drew a long breath of
+relief, &quot;Smith, I beg your pardon! We've each misunderstood the other; I
+see, now, who you meant; you meant Miss Estelle Harper!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whom else could I mean?&quot; Disdain was in my voice, but he ought to have
+seen the falsehood in my eye, for I could feel it there.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>Of</em> course!&quot; he said; &quot;of course! But, Smith, my mind was so
+full--just for the moment, you know,--of her we were speaking of in
+connection with Ned Ferry--Do you know? she's so unprotected and tagged
+after and talked about that it seems to me sometimes, in this nervous
+condition of mine, that if I could catch the entire gang of her
+pursuers in one hole I'd--I'd <em>end 'em</em> like so many rats. That sort of
+feeling is mere impulse, of course,&quot; he went on, &quot;and only shows how
+near I am to that nervous breakdown. Yes, the Harper ladies are mighty
+lovely and hard enough to leave, but that's all I meant to you, and I'm
+sorry I touched your feelings. I'm <em>tchagrined</em>. Anyhow, all this is
+between us, you know. I wouldn't ever have confessed such feelings as I
+did just now except to a friend who knows as well as you do that if I
+ever should do a man a mortal injury I wouldn't do it in a spirit of
+resentment. You know that, don't you? No, that's not my way--Why,
+Smith, what gives you those starts? That's the third time you've done
+that this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said that entering the cool shade of the Sessions grove after the
+blazing heat of that long lane gave any one the right to a little
+shudder, and as we turned toward the house Gholson murmured &quot;If you say
+you'll speak to Ned as I've asked you, I'll sort o' toll Squire Sessions
+off with me so's to give you the chance. It's for his own sake, you
+know, and you're the only one can do it.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX">XXX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE</strong></p>
+
+<p>I knew Ned Ferry was having that inner strife with which we ought always
+to credit even Gholson's sort, and I had a loving ambition to help him
+&quot;take the upper fork.&quot; So doing, I might help Charlotte Oliver fulfil
+the same principle, win the same victory. When, therefore, Gholson put
+the question to me squarely, Would I speak to Ferry? I consented, and as
+the four of us, horsemen, left our beasts in the stable munching corn,
+Gholson began a surprisingly animated talk with our host, and Ferry,
+with a quizzical smile, said to me &quot;Talk with you?--shall be happy to;
+we'll just make a slight <em>d&eacute;tour</em> on this side the grove and
+woods-pasture, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He meant the north side, opposite that one by which we had come from
+church. Here the landscape was much the same as there; wide fields on
+each side the fenced highway that still ran north and south, and woods
+for the sky-line everywhere. We chose an easy footpath along the
+northern fence of the grove, crossed the highway, and passed on a few
+steps alongside the woods-pasture fence. We talked as we went, he giving
+the kindest heed to my every word though I could see that, like any good
+soldier, he was scanning all the ground for its fighting values, and,
+not to be outdone, I, myself, pointed out, a short way up the public
+road, a fence-gap on the left, made by our camping soldiers two nights
+before. It was at another such gap, in the woods-pasture fence, that we
+turned back by a path through it which led into the wood and so again
+toward the highway and the house-grove. The evening General Austin sent
+me to Wiggins it was at this gap that I saw old Dismukes sitting
+cross-legged on the ground, playing poker; and here, now, I summoned the
+desperation to speak directly to my point.</p>
+
+<p>I had already tried hard to get something said, but had found myself at
+every turn entangled in generalities. Now, stammering and gagging I
+remarked that our experiences of the morning, both in church and out,
+had in some way combined with an earlier word of his own to me, and
+given me a valuable thought. &quot;You remember, when I wanted to shoot that
+Yankee off my horse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; and I said--what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You said 'This isn't your private war.' Lieutenant, I hope those words
+may last in my memory forever and come to me in every moral situation in
+which I may find myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes? Well, I think that's good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It seems to me, Lieutenant Ferry, that in every problem of moral
+conduct we confront we really hold in trust an interest of all mankind.
+To solve that problem bravely and faithfully is to make life just so
+much easier for everybody; and to fail to do so is to make it just so
+much harder to solve by whoever has next to face it.&quot; Whurroo! my blood
+was up now, let him look to himself!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes?&quot; said Ferry, picking at the underbrush as we sauntered, and for
+some time he said no more. Then he asked, &quot;You want me to apply that to
+myself, in--in the present case?&quot; and to my tender amazement, while his
+eyes seemed to count his slackening steps, he laid his arm across my
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>An hour of avowal could not have told me more; could not have filled me
+half so full of sympathy, admiration and love, as did that one slight
+motion. It befitted the day, a day outwardly so quiescent, yet in which
+so much was going on. A realization of this quiet activity kept us
+silent until we had come through the woods-pasture to its southern
+border, and so through the big white field-gate into the public road;
+now we turned up toward the grove-gate, and here I spoke again. &quot;Do you
+still think we ought to wait here for the command?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That from a private soldier to his captain! Yet all my leader answered
+was &quot;You think there's cause to change our mind?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know, Lieutenant; do you think Jewett has run back into his own
+lines?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I think so; and you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, eh,--Lieutenant, I don't believe there's a braver man in Grant's
+army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why, just the way he
+got him, night before last,--you've heard that, haven't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, the General told me. And so you think--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant, I can't help believing he's out here to make a new record
+for himself, at whatever cost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We went on some steps in silence and entered the gate of the
+house-grove; and just as Ferry would have replied we discovered before
+us in the mottled shade of the driveway, with her arm on C&eacute;cile's
+shoulders as his lay on mine, and with <em>her</em> eyes counting <em>her</em>
+slackening steps, Charlotte Oliver. They must have espied us already out
+in the highway, for they also were turned toward the house, and as we
+neared them Charlotte faced round with a cheery absence of surprise and
+said &quot;Mr. Smith, don't we owe each other a better acquaintance? Suppose
+we settle up.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI">XXXI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE RED STAR'S WARNING</strong></p>
+
+<p>It seemed quite as undeniable, as we stood there, that Ned Ferry owed
+C&eacute;cile a better acquaintance. Every new hour enhanced her graces, and
+were I, here, less engrossed with her companion, I could pitch the
+praises of C&eacute;cile upon almost as high and brilliant a key--there may be
+room for that yet. Ferry moved on at her side. Charlotte stayed a moment
+to laugh at a squirrel, and then turned to walk, saying with eyes on
+the earth--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I tell you something, will you never tell?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked down too. &quot;Suppose I should feel sure it ought to be told.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you wait till you do you may tell it; that will suit me well
+enough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will always suit you the best I can.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know why you should,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You risked your life to save mine; and you risked it when I did not
+deserve so much as your respect.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!--we must never talk about that again, Richard; you saw me in the
+evilest guise I ever wore, and that is saying much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But,&quot; I responded, &quot;you put it on for a better reason than you could
+tell me then or can tell me now, though now I know your story.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please don't forget,&quot; she murmured, &quot;that you know too much.&quot; &quot;No, no!
+I don't know half enough; I know only what Miss Camilla
+and--and--Gholson could tell me,&quot; was my tricky reply, and I tried to
+look straight into her eyes, but they took that faint introspective
+contraction of which I have spoken, and gazed through me like sunlight
+through glass. Then again she bent her glance upon her steps, saying--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Richard, you have found out all you could, and I am glad of it,
+except of what I, myself, have had to betray to you; for <em>that</em> was more
+than one would want to tell her twin brother. But I had to create you
+<em>my</em> scout, and I had only two or three hours for my whole work of
+creation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you completed it.&quot; We went on some steps, and then she said--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You tell me I risked my life to save yours; I risked more than life,
+and I risked it for more than to save yours. Yet I did not save your
+life; you saved it, yourself, and--&quot; here her low tone thrilled like a
+harp-string--&quot;you risked it--frightfully--at that bridge--merely to save
+the promise you made me that you need not have made at all--oh, you
+needn't shake your head; I <em>know</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, how you gild my base metal!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no, I have the story exactly, and from one who has no mind to
+praise you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From Gholson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson! no! I have it from Lucius Oliver, who had it from his son. He
+told me carefully, quietly and entirely, in pure spleen, so that I might
+know that they know--think they know, that is,--why you and--he in front
+of us yonder--would not shoot his son when--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When as soldiers it was our simple du'--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; and also that I may understand that he--the son--has sworn by that
+right hand you mutilated that the 'pair of you' shall die before
+he does.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I ought not to have shown him that envelope addressed to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but if it saved your life!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And this is what you don't want me to tell? Ah, I see; for me to know
+it is enough; I can put it to him as a theory. I can say Oliver is not a
+man to be put upon the defensive, and that he is more than likely to be
+hunting 'the pair of us'--&quot; All at once I thought of something.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What made you give that sudden start?&quot; she asked as we faced about in
+the driveway to make our walk a moment longer; &quot;that's a bad habit
+you've got; why do you do it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I fancied the thrilling freshness of the question I was about to put
+would be explanation enough. &quot;Do you believe Jewett has gone back into
+his own lines?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know; hasn't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I don't <em>know</em>, either, but--well, I don't believe there's a braver
+man in Grant's army than that one a-straddle of my horse to-day! Why,
+just the way he got him, night before last,--you've heard that, have
+you not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I've heard it; he is a very daring man; what of it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I can't help thinking he's out here to make a new record for
+himself, at whatever cost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A note of distress hung on my hearer's stifled voice; her head went
+lower and she laid her fingers pensively to her lips. &quot;It would be like
+him,&quot; I heard her murmur, and when I asked if she meant Jewett she
+shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I said, &quot;you mean it would be like Oliver to join him,&quot; and with
+that the sudden start was hers. &quot;He wouldn't have to touch Ned Ferry or
+me,&quot; I went on, heartlessly, &quot;nor to come near us, to make us rue the
+hour we let ourselves forget this wasn't our private war.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she
+looked at me with her eyes very blue and said &quot;You'll see him about it,
+won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do
+I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!&quot; Her
+eyes began forewith.</p>
+
+<p>A light footfall sounded behind us, and Camille gave both her hands to
+my companion. &quot;I was in the hall,&quot; she said, &quot;telling C&eacute;cile she was
+like a white star that had come out by day, when I saw you here looking
+like a great red one; and you're still more like a red, red rose, and
+I've come to get some of your fragrance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd exchange for yours any day, and thank you, dear,&quot; responded
+Charlotte; &quot;you're a bunch of sweet-peas. Isn't she, Mr. Smith?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The bunch beamed an ecstatic bliss. What was the explanation; had her
+father arrived, or--or somebody else? The question went through me like
+an arrow. Was the cause of this heavenly radiance somebody else?--that
+was the barb; or was it I?--that was the soothing feather.</p>
+
+<p>In gratitude for Charlotte's word she sank backward in a long obeisance.
+&quot;May it please your ladyship, dinner is served. Oh, Mr. Smith, I've been
+listening to Mr. Gholson talking with aunt Martha and Estelle; I don't
+wonder you and he are friends; I think his ideas of religion are
+perfectly beautiful!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At our two-o'clock dinner I found that our company had been reinforced.
+On one side of Camille sat I; but on the other side sat &quot;Harry.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII">XXXII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A MARTYR'S WRATH</strong></p>
+
+<p>Great news the aide-de-camp brought us; from Lee, from Longstreet, Bragg
+and Johnston. Johnston was about to fall upon Grant's rear. Across the
+Mississippi Dick Taylor was expected this very day to deal the same
+adversary a crippling blow, and it was partly to mask this movement that
+we had made our feint upon the Federals near Natchez. Now these had
+fallen back, and our force had cunningly slipped away southward. Only
+General Austin and his staff had not gone when Lieutenant Helm left the
+front, and they were about to go.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of the meal Mrs. Sessions, in her amiable plantation
+drawl, said she hoped the bearer of so much good tidings had not come to
+take away Lieutenant Ferry; and when Harry, flushing, asked what had
+given her such a thought, the simple soul replied that Mr. Gholson had
+told her he &quot;suspicioned as much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At once there arose the prettiest clamor all round the board, in which
+Charlotte and C&eacute;cile joined for the obvious purpose of making confusion.
+Gholson turned yellow and spoke things nobody heard, and Ferry tried to
+drown Harry's loud declarations that the word he had brought to Ferry
+was for him to stay, and that he had found him saddling up to go in
+search of his company. &quot;Isn't that so, Ned?--Now,--now,--isn't that so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We left the table all laughing but Gholson. He tried to say something to
+Harry, which the latter waved away with mock gaiety until on the side
+veranda we got beyond view of the ladies, when the aide-de-camp reddened
+angrily and turned his back. As the two lieutenants were lighting
+cigarettes together, Harry, thinking Gholson had left us, blurted out,
+&quot;Oh, that's all very well for you to say, Ned, but, damn him, he's not
+the sort of man that has the right to 'suspicion' me of anything;
+slang-whanging, backbiting sneak, I know what <em>he's</em> here for.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On that the blood surged to Ferry's brow, but he set his mouth firmly,
+locked arms with the speaker and led him down the veranda. Gholson took
+on an uglier pallor than before and went back into the house. I followed
+him. He moved slowly up the two flights of hall stairs and into a room
+close under the roof, called the &quot;soldiers' room&quot;. It had three double
+beds, one of them ours. Without a fault in the dreary rhythm of his
+motions he went to the bedpost where hung his revolver, and turning to
+me buckled the weapon at his waist with hands that kept the same
+unbroken measure though they trembled and were as pallid as his face. In
+the same slow beat he shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, I rejoice! O--oh! I rejoice and am glad when I'm reviled and
+persecuted by the hounds of hell, and spoken evil against falsely for my
+religion's sake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Gholson, that's nonsense!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O--oh! that's what it's for! that's what he meant by 'slang-whanging.'
+That's what it's for from first to last, no matter what it's for in
+between; and I know what it's for in between, too, and Ned Ferry knows.
+Did you see Ned Ferry take him under his protection? O--oh! they're two
+of one hell-scorched kind!&quot; My companion stood gripping the bedpost and
+fumbling at his holster. I sank to the bed, facing him, expecting his
+rage to burn itself out in words, but when he began again his teeth
+were clenched. &quot;You heard him tell Ned Ferry he knows why I'm here. It's
+true! he does know! he knows I'm here to protect a certain person from
+him and--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From whom? from Harry Helm? Oh, Gholson, that's too fantastical!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From him and the likes of him! Not that he loves her; that's the
+difference between them two cotton-mouth moccasins; Ned Ferry, hell
+grind him! does--or thinks he does; that other whelp <em>don't,</em> and knows
+he don't; he's only enam'--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;HUSH!&quot; He ceased. &quot;I swear, Scott Gholson, you must choose your words
+better when you allude--Lieutenant Helm is the last man in the brigade
+to be under <em>my</em> protection, but--oh, you're crazy, man, and blind
+besides. Harry Helm is not in love, but he thinks he is, though with
+quite another person!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O--oh! whether he loves or not, or whoever he loves, I know who he
+hates; he hates me and my religion; our religion, Smith, mine and yours;
+because it's put me between him and her. What was that the preacher said
+this morning? 'The carnal mind, being enmity against God, is enmity
+against them that serve God.' O--oh, I accept his enmity! it proves my
+religion isn't vain! I'm glad to get it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All this from his oscillating head, through his set teeth, in one malign
+monotone. As he quoted the preacher he mechanically drew his revolver.
+There was no bravado in this; he might lie, but he did not know how to
+sham; did not know, now, that his face was drawn with pain. Holding the
+weapon in one hand, under his absent gaze he turned it from side to side
+on the palm of the other. I put out my hand for it, but he dropped it
+into the holster and tried to return my smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you propose to call him out?&quot; I asked. &quot;You can't call out an
+officer; you'll be sent to the water-batteries at Mobile.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've thought of all that,&quot; he droned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why do you put that thing on?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why do I put it on? Why, I--you know what I told you about that
+Yankee--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson,&quot; I exclaimed, for I saw that murder, even double murder, was
+hatching in his heart, with Charlotte Oliver for its cause, and looked
+hard into his evil eyes until they overmatched mine; whereupon I made as
+if suddenly convinced. &quot;You're right!&quot; I turned, whipped on my own belt
+with its two &quot;persuaders,&quot; and blandly smoothing my ribs, added &quot;Now!
+here are two ready, Yankees or no Yankees.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I never saw a face so unconsciously marked with misery as Gholson's was
+when we started downstairs. I stopped him on a landing. &quot;Understand, you
+and I are friends,--hmm? I think Lieutenant Helm owes you an apology,
+and if you'll keep away from him I'll try to bring it to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The reply began with a vindictive gleam. &quot;You needn't; I ain't got any
+more use for it than for him. I never apologized to a man in my life,
+Smith, nor I never accepted an apology from one; that's not my way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Near the bottom of the second flight we met Charlotte, who, to make bad
+worse, would have passed with no more than a smile, but the look of
+Gholson startled her and she noticed our arms. With an arresting eye I
+offered a sprightly comment on the heat of the day, and while she was
+replying with the same gaiety I whispered &quot;Take him with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How nimbly her mind moved! &quot;Oh Mr. Gholson!&quot; she said, and laughed to
+gain an instant for invention.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Gholson, can <em>you</em> tell me the first line of the last hymn we sang
+this morning?&quot; Her beam was irresistible, and they went to the large
+parlor. I turned into the smaller one, opposite, where Squire Sessions
+started from a stolen doze and, having heard of my feeling for books,
+thrust into my hands, and left me with, the &quot;Bible Defense of Slavery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As I moved to a window which let out upon the side veranda the two
+lieutenants came around from the front and stood almost against it,
+outside; and as I intended to begin upon Harry as soon as Squire
+Sessions was safely upstairs, this suited me well enough. But the moment
+they came to the spot I heard Ned Ferry doing precisely what I had
+planned to do. At the same time, from across the hall came the sound of
+the piano and of Charlotte's voice, now a few bars, then an interval of
+lively speech, again a few bars, then more speech, and then a sustained
+melody as she lent herself to the kind flattery of Gholson's
+songless soul.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he is!&quot; I overheard the aide-de-camp say; &quot;he is a backbiting
+sneak, and I tell you again he's backbitten nobody more than he
+has you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I tell you again, Harry, that is my business.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If he wants to fight me he can; I'll waive my rank.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, you will not, you have no right; our poor little rank, it doesn't
+belong to us, Harry, 'tis we belong to it. 'If he wants to fight!'--Do
+you take him for a rabbit? He is a brave man, you know that, old fellow.
+Of course he wants to fight. But he cannot! For the court-martial he
+would not care so much; I would not, you would not; 'tis his religion
+forbids him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;O--oh!&quot; groaned Harry in Gholson's exact tone, &quot;'Hark from the tombs'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; said Ferry, &quot;he does not live up to it? Well, of course! who
+does? But we will pass that; the main question is, Will you express the
+regret, and so forth, as I have suggested, and do yourself credit,
+Harry, as an officer and a gentleman, or--will you fight?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you say his religion, so called, won't let him fight!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's what I think; but if it forbids him, and if consequently he will
+not, well,--Harry,--I will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will what!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will have to fight you in his place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Ned!--Ned!--you--you astound me! Wha'--what do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is what I mean, Harry. You know--many times you have heard me
+say--I don't believe in that kind of thing; I find that worse than the
+religion of Gholson; yet still,--what shall I say?--we are but soldiers
+anyhow--this time I make an exception in your favor. And of course this
+is confidential, on both sides; but you must make peace with Gholson, or
+you must fight with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, good Lord!--Ned!--Good Lord A'mighty! but this is too absurd. Why,
+Ned, don't you see that the bottom cause of this trouble isn't--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know what is the bottom cause of this trouble very well, Harry; you
+can hear her in yonder, now, singing. Wherever Gholson is he hears her,
+too, like-wise. Perchance 'tis to him she is singing. If she can sing to
+him, are you too good to apologise?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, Ned, damned if I don't!
+George! I'll apologize! Rather than lose your friendship I'd apologize
+to the devil!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry's thanks came eagerly. &quot;Well, anyhow, old boy,&quot; he added, &quot;in such
+a case to back down is braver than to fight; but to apologize to the
+devil--that is not hard; on the contrary, to keep <em>from</em> apologizing to
+the devil--ah! I wish I could always do that!--I wonder where is
+Dick Smith.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stealthily laid down the &quot;Bible Defense of Slavery&quot; and was going
+upstairs three steps at a stride, when I came upon Camille and Estelle.
+My aim was to get Harry's revolver to him before he should have the
+exasperating surprise of finding Gholson armed, and to contrive a
+pretext for so doing; and happily a word from the two sisters gave me my
+cue. With the fire-arms of both officers I came downstairs and out upon
+the veranda loud-footed, humming--</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;'To the lairds o' Convention 'twas Claverhouse spoke,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Ere the sun shall go down there are heads to be--'<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Gentlemen, I hope I'm not too officious; they say we're all going for a
+walk in the lily-pond woods, and I reckon you'd rather not leave these
+things behind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Both thanked me and buckled on their belongings, but Ferry's look was
+peculiarly intelligent; &quot;I was in the small parlor, looking for you,&quot; he
+said; &quot;I thought you would be near the music.&quot; And so he had seen
+Gholson with his revolver on him, and must have understood it!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; said Harry, &quot;will you be so kind as to say to Gholson--oh,
+Lord! Ned, this is heavy drags on a sandy road! I--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's all right, Harry, I withdraw the request.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you needn't; I was in the wrong. Smith, will you say to
+Gholson--&quot; His voice dropped to a strictly private rumble.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Lieutenant, I'll do so with pleasure, and I'm sure what you say
+will have the proper--here are the ladies.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII">XXXIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>TORCH AND SWORD</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now give me your hand, Miss Camille; now jump!&quot; So twice and once again
+the rivulet was passed which ran from the lily-pond, she and I leading
+all the others on the return from the woodland afternoon walk. We turned
+and faced away from the declining sun and across the clear pool to where
+its upper end, dotted with lily-pads, lay in a deep recess of the woods.
+There were green and purple garlands of wild passion-flower around her
+hat and about the white and blue fabrics at her waist. At the head of
+the pond, with Ferry beside her, stood black-haired C&eacute;cile canopied by
+overhanging boughs, her hat bedecked with the red spikes of the
+Indian-shot and wound with orange masses of love-vine. Nearer to us
+around the shore was Estelle of the red-brown hair and red-brown eyes
+and brows and lashes, whose cheek seemed always to glow with ever rising
+but never confessed emotion; and with her walked Gholson. Near the
+waterside also, but farthest up the path, came Miss Harper and
+Charlotte Oliver.</p>
+
+<p>Harry was not with us. The settlement of his trouble with Gholson
+awaited his return out of the region north of us, whither Ferry had
+suggested his riding on an easy reconnaissance. Camille and I were just
+turning again, when there came abruptly into our scene the last gallant
+show of martial finery any of us ever saw until the war was over and
+there was nothing for our side to make itself fine for. On the road from
+the house we heard a sound of galloping, and the next moment General
+Austin and his entire staff (less only Harry) reined up at the edge of
+the pond, ablaze with all the good clothes they could muster and
+betraying just enough hard usage to give a stirring show of the war's
+heroic reality. The General, on a beautiful cream-colored horse, wore
+long yellow gauntlets and a yellow sash; from throat to waist the
+sunlight glistened upon the over-abundant gold lace of his new uniform,
+his legs were knee-deep in shining boots, and his soft gray hat was
+looped up on one side and plumed according to Regulations with one
+drooping ostrich feather. Behind halted in pleasing confusion captains
+and captains, flashing with braids, bars, buckles, buttons, bands,
+sword-knots, swords and brave eyes, and gaily lifting hats and caps,
+twice, and twice again, and once more, to the ladies--God bless them!
+Major Harper, the oldest, most refined and most soldierly of them all,
+was also the handsomest. Old Dismukes was with them; burly, bushy,
+dingy, on a huge roan charger. Camille asked me who he was, and I was
+about to reply that he was a bloodthirsty brute without a redeeming
+trait, when he lifted his shaggy brows at me and smiled, and as I smiled
+back I told her he was our senior colonel, rough at times, but the
+bravest of the brave. Meantime the General rode forward over a stretch
+of shallow water, Ned Ferry ran back along the margin to meet him, and
+at the saddlebow they spoke a moment together privately, while at more
+distance but openly to us all Major Harper informed his sister that with
+one night's camp and another day's dust the brigade would be down in
+Louisiana. Camille turned upon me and hurrahed, the Arkansas colonel
+smiled upon her approvingly, the ladies all waved, the General lifted
+his plumed hat, faced about, passed through his turning cavalcade and
+drew it after him at a gallop.</p>
+
+<p>Our promenaders hurried into close order and with quick step and eager
+converse we moved toward the house. In raptures scintillant with their
+own beauty the three Harper girls inflated each item of the day's news
+and the morrow's outlook, and it was almost as pretty to see Miss
+Harper's keen black eyes and loving-tolerant smile go back and forth
+from Camille to Estelle, from Estelle to C&eacute;cile, and round again, as
+each maiden added some new extravagance to the glad vaunting of the
+last, and looked, for confirmation, to the gallant who toiled to keep
+her under her parasol. Suddenly the three girls broke into song with an
+adaptation of &quot;Oh, carry me back&quot; which substituted &quot;Louisiana&quot; for
+&quot;Virginia,&quot; but whose absurd quaverings I will not betray in words to a
+generation that never knew the frantic times to which they belonged. I
+felt a shamefacedness for them even then, yet when I glanced behind,
+Miss Harper was singing with us in the most exalted earnest. We had
+nearly reached the field-gate, the big white one on the highway, and
+were noting that the dust of the General and his retinue had barely
+vanished from the southern stretch of the road, when one feminine voice
+said &quot;What's that?&quot; another exclaimed &quot;See yonder!&quot; and Miss Harper
+cried &quot;Why, gentlemen, somebody's house is burning!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the grove and the fields north of it, and beyond their farther
+bound of trees, in the northwest, was rising and unfolding into the
+peaceful Sabbath heavens a massive black column of the peculiar heavy
+smoke made by the burning of baled and stored cotton. We ran, two and
+two, into the road and up toward the grove-gate. &quot;Don't stumble,&quot; I
+warned Camille as she looked back to see if any one besides me was
+holding his partner's hand. Inside the gate we paused, we two, still
+hand in hand. Her brown hair had shaken low upon her temples in two
+voluptuous masses between which she lifted her eyes to mine, my hand
+tightened on hers, and hers gave a little spasm of its own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Dick!&quot; she whispered; but before I could rally from the blissful
+shock of it to reply, her face changed distressfully, and pointing
+beyond me, she drank a great breath, and cried, &quot;Look!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, out there on the sky-line, in the north-east this time,
+another column of smoke was lifting its first billow over the tree-tops.
+&quot;Oh, Dick!&quot; she exclaimed, in beautiful alarm, &quot;what does it mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It means the Yankees,--love,&quot; I said, and when she gasped her dismay
+without letting on to have heard the last word, I felt that fires were
+cheap at any price.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are others there besides Yankees,&quot; said Gholson to the general
+company as they joined us; &quot;Yankees have got more sense than to start
+fires ahead of their march.&quot; On the same instant with Ned Ferry I sprang
+half-way to the top of the grove fence and peered out across road and
+fields upon the farthest point in line with the second fire. There we
+saw two horsemen reconnoitring, one a very commanding figure, the other
+mean enough. Ferry used his glass, but no glass was needed to tell
+either of us that Gholson's reckoning was true; those two were
+not Federals.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies flew to the house and the rest of us to the stable. In its
+door Ferry stopped to look back upon the road while Gholson and I darted
+in, but now he, too, sprang to his horse's side. &quot;How many, Lieutenant?&quot;
+I cried, as the three of us saddled up.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About a hundred; same we saw yesterday; captain at the rear; that means
+our fellows are close behind them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a moment more I could hear the thunder of their speeding column;
+then the grove seemed to swallow it up, and the stillness was grim.
+&quot;Come on!&quot; cried Ferry, swinging up, and after him we sprang. &quot;They've
+dismounted on the far edge of the grove,&quot; said Gholson to me as we rode
+abreast, with Ferry a length ahead; &quot;they'll form line on each side the
+road at right angles to it!&quot; and again he was right. Ferry led
+northeastward, but hardly had we made half a dozen leaps when he waved
+me to a near corner of the flower-garden palings and I saw Miss Harper
+beckoning and Charlotte holding up my carbine and his sword. Miss Harper
+was drawn up as straight as a dart, her black eyes flashing and her lips
+charged with practical information that began to flow the moment I was
+near enough to hear her guarded voice. &quot;They've all put their horses in
+the locks of the road fence, just beyond the big white gate--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We know,&quot; I interrupted, leaning and snatching the weapons from
+Charlotte's hands. She kissed them good-bye.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, yes, yes!&quot; she said, &quot;they know all we can tell them and all we
+can't!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The only response I could give was the shower of loose earth thrown upon
+both women by my horse's heels as I whirled and sped after my leader. He
+and Gholson were half a broad field ahead of me, but I followed only at
+their speed, designing to hand over the sword so nearly at the moment of
+going into action that I might stay by its owner's side unrebuked; and
+my plan was not in vain. Up the highway our Louisianians burst into view
+in column at full speed; I knew them by their captain, a man noted
+throughout the brigade for the showiness of his dress; and the next
+instant, away across the fields beyond the highroad, Quinn and his
+scouts broke out of the woods, heading for the gap in the woods-pasture
+fence. As each friendly column caught sight of the other, long cheers
+rang across the narrowing interval between them. Through that other gap
+which I had noted in my walk with Ferry he and Gholson reached the road,
+sped forward on it to a rise that overlooked the fields, and halted.
+Ferry rose on tiptoe in the stirrups, lifted his cap in air, pointed
+triumphantly backward to the grove, and was recognized by both columns
+at once. Again they cheered; at a full run I reached his side and threw
+his sword into his hand. Both columns saw him belt it on and flash it
+out, their cheers swelled again, the Louisianians hurtled down upon us,
+and we turned and were at the front of the onset.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV</h2>
+<p><strong>THE CHARGE IN THE LANE</strong></p>
+
+<p>The instant Ferry wheeled at the flaming captain's side you could see he
+was unwelcome. I heard him tell what we knew of the foe and the ground;
+I saw him glance back at the blown condition of the speeding column and
+then say &quot;You've got them anyhow, Captain; you'll get every man of them
+without a scratch, only if you will take your time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the Captain answered headily; &quot;No, sir! I've tried that twice
+already; this time I'll cut them in two and be in their rear at one
+dash! Bring in your company behind mine, if you choose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry drew back a few ranks but stayed with the column; Quinn had had
+the toil of the chase, he should have also the glory of the fight. So
+Ferry sent Gholson--whose horsemanship won a cheer from the passing
+Louisianians as he cleared the roadside fence--across to Quinn, bidding
+the Lieutenant slacken speed and count himself a reserve. And then into
+the broad lane between grove and woods-pasture, with the charging yell,
+the Louisianians thundered. Ah! but my Creole gentleman was a sight,
+with his straight blade lifted in air and his face turned back on us
+aglow with the joy of battle! I was huzzaing back at him and we were
+passing the front gate of the grove avenue, when down through it came
+from the house, with a tremor of echoes, the first shot; a shot and then
+a woman's scream, and his blazing eyes said to me, &quot;He is there! That
+was Oliver!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was no time for speech. The shot was not a signal, yet on the
+instant and in our very teeth, on our right and our left, the cross-fire
+of the hidden and waiting foe flashed and pealed, and left and right, a
+life for a life, our carbines answered from the saddle. For a moment the
+odds against us were awful. In an instant the road was so full of fallen
+horses and dismounted men that the jaded column faltered in confusion.
+Our cunning enemy, seeing us charge in column, had swung the two
+extremes of their line forward and inward. So, crouching and firing upon
+us mounted, each half could fire toward the other with impunity, and
+what bullets missed their mark buzzed and whined about our ears and
+pecked the top rails of either fence like hail on a window. A wounded
+horse drove mine back upon his haunches and caused him to plant a hoof
+full on the breast of one of our Louisianians stretched dead on his back
+as though he had lain there for an hour. Another man, pale, dazed,
+unhurt, stood on the ground, unaware that he was under point-blank fire,
+holding by the bits his beautiful horse, that pawed the earth
+majestically and at every second or third breath blew from his flapping
+nostrils a cloud of scarlet spray. They blocked up half the road. As we
+swerved round them the horse of the company's first lieutenant slid
+forward and downward with knees and nose in the dust, hurling his rider
+into a lock of the fence, and the rider rose and rushed to the road
+again barely in time to catch a glittering form that dropped rein and
+sword and reeled backward from the saddle. It was his captain, shot
+through the breast. An instant later our tangled column parted to right
+and left, dashed into the locks of the two fences, sprang to the ground,
+and began to repay the enemy in the coin of their own issue. Only a
+dozen or so did otherwise, and it was my luck to be one of these.
+Espying Ned Ferry at the very front, in the road, standing in his
+stirrups and shouting back for followers to carry the charge on through,
+we spurred toward him and he turned and led. Then what was my next
+fortune but to see, astride of my stolen horse, the towering leader of
+the foe, Captain Jewett.</p>
+
+<p>He came into the road a few rods ahead of us through a gap his men had
+earlier made opposite the big white gate. He answered our fierce halloo,
+as he crossed, by a pistol-shot at Ferry, but Ferry only glanced around
+at me and pointed after him with his sword. A number of blue-coats afoot
+followed him to the gap but at our onset scattered backward, sturdily
+returning our fire. Into the gap and into the enemy's left rear went
+Ferry and his horsemen, but I turned the other way and spurred through
+the woods-pasture gate after the Federal leader, he on my horse and I on
+his. Down the highway, on either side, stood his brave men's horses in
+the angles of the worm-fence, and two or three horse-holders took a shot
+at me as I sped in after the man who was bent on reaching the right of
+his divided force before Quinn should strike it, as I was bent on
+foiling him. Twice I fired at his shapely back, and twice, while he kept
+his speed among the tree-trunks, he looked back at me as coolly as at an
+odd passer-by and sent me a ball from his revolver. A few more bounds
+carried him near enough to his force to shout his commands, but half a
+hundred cheers suddenly resounded in the depth of the woods-pasture, and
+Quinn and his men charged upon the foe's right and rear. I joined the
+shout and the shouters; in a moment the enemy were throwing down their
+arms, and I turned to regain the road to the pond. For I had marked
+Jewett burst through Quinn's line and with a score of shots ringing
+after him make one last brave dash--for escape. Others, pursuing him,
+bent northward, but my instinct was right, his last hope was for his
+horse-holders, and at a sharp angle of the by-road, where it reached the
+pond, exactly where Camille and I had stood not an hour before, I came
+abruptly upon Cricket--riderless. I seized his rein, and as I bent and
+snapped the halter of one horse on the snaffle of the other I saw the
+missing horseman. Leaping from the saddle I ran to him. He was lying on
+his face in the shallow water where General Austin and his staff had so
+gaily halted a short while before, and as I caught sight of him he
+rolled upon his back and tried to lift his bemired head.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV">XXXV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>FALLEN HEROES</strong></p>
+
+<p>I dropped to my knee in the reddening pool and passed my arm under his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; he said, and repeated the word as I wet my handkerchief and
+wiped the mire from his face; &quot;thank you;--no, no,&quot;--I was opening his
+shirt--&quot;that's useless; get me where you can turn me over; you've hit me
+in the back, my lad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I?--I hit you? Oh, Captain Jewett, thank God, I didn't hit you at all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the difference, boy; you didn't aim to miss, did you? I didn't.
+It's not my only hurt; I think I broke something inside when I fell from
+the sad'--ah! that's <em>your</em> bugle, isn't it? It's my last fight--oh, the
+devil! my good boy, don't begin to cry again; war's war; give me some
+water.... Thank you! And now, if you don't want me to bleed to death get
+me out of this slop, and--yes,--easy!--that's it--easy--oh, God! oh, let
+me down, boy, let me <em>down, you're killing me!</em> Oh!--&quot; he fainted away.</p>
+
+<p>With his unconscious head still on my arm I faced toward the hundred
+after-sounds of the fray and hallooed for help. To my surprise it
+promptly came. Three blundering boys we were who lifted him into the
+saddle and bore him to the house reeling and moaning astride of Cricket,
+the poor beast half dead with hard going. The sinking sun was as red as
+October when we issued into the highroad and moved up it to the grove
+gate through the bloody wreckage of the fray. The Louisianians were
+camping in the woods-pasture, Ferry's scouts in the grove, and the
+captive Federals were in the road between, shut in by heavy guards. At
+our appearance they crowded around us, greeting their undone commander
+with proud words of sympathy and love, and he thanked them as proudly
+and lovingly, though he could scarcely speak, more than to ask every
+moment for water. A number of our Sessions house group crowded out to
+meet us at the veranda steps; Camille; Harry Helm with his right hand
+bandaged; C&eacute;cile, attended by two or three Sessions children; and behind
+all Miss Harper exclaiming &quot;Ah, my boy, you're a welcome sight--Oh! is
+that Captain Jewett!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Two or three bystanders helped us bear him upstairs, where, turning from
+the bedside, I pressed Camille with eager questions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant Ferry? he's unhurt--and so is Mr. Gholson! Mr. Gholson's
+gone to Franklin for doctors; Lieutenant Ferry sent him; he's been
+sending everybody everywhere faster than anybody else could think of
+anything!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I asked where Ferry was now. Her eyes refilled--they were red from
+earlier distresses--and she motioned across the hall: &quot;The captain of
+the Louisianians, you know, has sent for him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said, &quot;the Captain's hit hard. I saw him when he was struck.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Dick! then you were at the very front!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you think I was at the rear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked down. &quot;I couldn't help hoping it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you were thinking of me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I prayed for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such news seemed but ill-gotten gains, to come before I had gathered
+courage to inquire after Charlotte Oliver. &quot;Wh'--where is--where are
+the others?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They're all about the house, tending the wounded; Mrs. Sessions is with
+the Squire, of course,--dear, brave old gentleman! we thought he was
+killed, but Charlotte found the ball had glanced.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I asked if it was Oliver who shot him, and she nodded. &quot;It was down at
+the front door; the Squire said he'd shoot him if he shot Charlotte, and
+Charlotte declared she'd shoot him if he shot the Squire, and all at
+once he shot at her and struck him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who was it that screamed; was it she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My informant's head drooped low and she murmured, &quot;It was I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then <em>you</em> were at the front.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you think I was at the rear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I fear I answered evasively. I added that I must go to Lieutenant Ferry,
+and started toward the door, but she touched my arm. &quot;Oh, Dick, you
+should have heard him praise you to her!--and when he said you had
+chased Captain Jewett and was missing, she cried; but now I'll tell her
+you're here.&quot; She started away but returned. &quot;Oh, Dick, isn't it
+wonderful how we're always victorious! why don't those poor Yankees give
+up the struggle? they must see that God is on our side!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As she left me, Ned Ferry came out with a sad face, but smiled gladly on
+me and caught me fondly by the arm. On hearing my brief report he
+saddened more than ever, and when I said I had promised Jewett he should
+hand his sword to none but him, &quot;Oh!&quot;--he smiled tenderly--&quot;I don't want
+to refuse it; go in and hang it at the head of his bed as he would do in
+his own tent; I'll wait here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I pointed to the door he had softly closed behind him: &quot;How is it in
+there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Richard, in there the war is all over.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dead?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So called.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI">XXXVI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>&quot;SAYS QUINN, S'E&quot;</strong></p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Helm came out as I went in, and I paused an instant to ask
+him in fierce suspicion if he had bandaged his hand himself. &quot;No,&quot; he
+whispered, &quot;Miss Camille.&quot; It was a lie, but I did not learn that until
+months after. &quot;Come downstairs as soon as you can,&quot; he added, &quot;there's a
+hot supper down there; first come first served.&quot; We parted.</p>
+
+<p>I found Miss Harper fanning the wounded giant and bathing his brows,
+and my smiles were ample explanation of my act as I hung the sword up.
+Then I brought in my leader. &quot;Captain Jewett,&quot; he said after a nearly
+silent exchange of greetings, &quot;I wish we had you uninjured.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no, Lieutenant, this is bad enough. Lieutenant, there is one
+matter--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain, what is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The villain who set those fires--you know who he is, I hope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain, I know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He didn't begin that until after he left me. I had some private reasons
+for not killing him when I might have done it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain, I know that, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet if I had caught him again I would have strung him up to the first
+limb.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have sent some picked men to catch him if they can,&quot; said Ferry, and
+the racked sufferer lifted a hand in approval. Camille came to her aunt
+and whispered &quot;Mr. Gholson with two doctors.&quot; The wounded captive
+heard her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant,&quot; he panted, &quot;I hope you'll--do me the favor--to let my turn
+with those gentlemen--come last,--after my boys,--will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Captain, even our boys wouldn't allow that; no, here's a doctor,
+now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I went down to the supper-table. Camille was there, dispensing its
+promiscuous hospitality to men who ate like pigs. I would as leave have
+found her behind a French-market coffee-stand. Harry Helm, nursing his
+bandaged hand, was lolling back from the board and quizzing her with
+compliments while she cut up his food. A fellow in the chair next mine
+said he had seen me with Ferry when we joined the Louisianians' charge.
+&quot;Your aide-de-camp friend over yonder's a-gitt'n' lots o' sweetenin'
+with his grub; well, he deserves it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I asked how he deserved it. &quot;Why, we wouldn't 'a' got here in time if he
+hadn't 'a' met-up with us. That man Gholson, he's another good one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The latter remark seemed to me a feeler, and I ignored it, and inquired
+how Lieutenant Helm had got that furlough. (Furlough was our slang for a
+light wound.) &quot;Oh, he got it mighty fair! Did you see that Yankee
+lieutenant with the big sabre-cut on his shoulder? Well, your friend
+yonder gave him that--and got the Yankee's pistol-shot in his hand. But
+that saved Gholson's life, for that shot was aimed to give Gholson a
+furlough to kingdom-come. Are they kinfolks?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I mumbled that they were not even friends. &quot;Well, now, I suspicioned
+that,--when I first see 'em meet at the head of our column! But the
+aide-de-camp he took it so good-natured that, thinks I,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Another of Ferry's men, seated opposite, swallowed hurriedly, and
+covertly put in--&quot;Y' ought to hear what Quinn said to Gholson just now
+as they met-up out here in the hall. Quinn thought they were alone. Says
+Quinn, as cold as a fish, s's'e 'Mr. Gholson,' s'e, 'you're not a
+coward, sir, and that's why I'm curious to ask you a question,' s'e. And
+says Gholson, just as cold, s'e 'I'm prepared, Lieutenant Quinn, to
+answer it.' And says Quinn, s'e 'Why was it, that when Harry Helm struck
+that blow which saved your life, and which you knew was meant to save
+it, and you seen his sword shot out of his hand and three or four
+Yankees makin' a dead set to kill him, and nothin' else in any
+particular danger at all, why was it, Mr. Gholson, that you never turned
+a hand nor an eye to save him?'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Great Scott! wha'd Gholson say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson, s'e, 'I done as I done, sir, from my highest sense o' duty.
+This ain't Lieutenant Helm's own little private war, Lieutenant Quinn,
+nor mine, nor yours.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jo'! that to Quinn! wha'd Quinn answer?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, with that Quinn popped them big glass eyes o' his'n till the
+whites showed clear round the blue, and s'e 'I know it better than you
+do; that's just what it suited you to forget. Oh! I'd already seen
+through you in one flash, you sneak. It's good for you you're not in my
+command; I'd lift you to a higher sense of whose war this is, damn you,
+if I had to hang you up by the thumbs.' With that he started right on
+by, Gholson a-keepin' his face to him as he passed, when Ned Ferry
+and--her--came out o' the parlor, and Ned turned out on the rear gallery
+with Quinn while she sort o' smiled at Gholson to come to her and sent
+him off on some business or other. George! I never seen her so
+beautiful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon occurred a brief exchange of comments which seemed to me to
+carry by implication as fine a praise as could possibly come from two
+rough fellows of the camp. Speaking the names of Ferry and Charlotte in
+undertone, of course, but with the unrestraint of soldiers, they said
+their say without a shadow of inuendo in word or smile. Her presence,
+they agreed, always made them feel as though something out of the common
+&quot;was bound to happen pretty quick,&quot; while his, they said, assured them
+that &quot;whatever did happen would happen right.&quot; I turned with a frown as
+Harry laughed irrelevantly, and saw Camille and him smiling at me with
+childish playfulness. Then suddenly their smile changed and went beyond
+me, two or three men softly said &quot;Smith!&quot; and I was out of my chair and
+standing when Charlotte Oliver, in a low voice, tenderly accosted me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Richard Thorndyke Smith!--alive and well! Lieutenant Ferry wants
+you; he has just gone to his camp-fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII">XXXVII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A HORSE! A HORSE!</strong></p>
+
+<p>Night had fully come. A few bivouac fires burned low in the grove, and
+at one of them near the grove gate I found our young commander. On a
+bench made of a fence-rail and two forked stakes he sat between Quinn
+and the first-lieutenant of the Louisianians. The doctor whom I had seen
+before sat humped on his horse, facing the three young men and making
+clumsy excuses to Ferry for leaving. The other physician would stay for
+some time yet, he said, and he, himself, was leaving his instruments,
+such as they were, and would return in the morning. &quot;Fact is, my son's a
+surgeon, and he taken all my best instruments with <em>him.</em>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When; where is he?&quot; eagerly asked Quinn, seeing Ferry was not going to
+ask.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My son? Oh, he's in Virginia, with General Lee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hell!&quot; grunted Quinn, but the doctor pretended to listen to Ferry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but we move south at day-light; the prisoners and wounded we send
+east, to Hazlehurst,&quot; said our leader, with a restraining hand on
+Quinn's knee. The other lieutenant made some inquiry of him, and the
+doctor was ignored, but stayed on, and as I stood waiting to be noticed
+I gathered a number of facts. The lightly injured would go in a
+plantation wagon; for the few gravely hurt there was the Harpers'
+ambulance, which had just arrived to take the ladies back to Squire
+Wall's, near Brookhaven, alas! instead of to Louisiana. For the ladies
+Charlotte's spring-wagon was to be appropriated, one of them riding
+beside it on horseback, and there was to be sent with them, besides
+Charlotte's old black driver, &quot;a reliable man well mounted.&quot; Whoever
+that was to be it was not Harry, for he was to go south with a small
+guard, bearing the body of the Louisiana captain to his home between the
+hostile lines behind Port Hudson.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-night, gentlemen,&quot; said the doctor at last. As he passed into the
+darkness Quinn bent a mock frown upon his young superior.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant Ferry, the next time I have to express my disgust please to
+keep your hand off my knee, will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry's response was to lay it back again and there ensued a puerile
+tussle that put me in a precious pout, that I should be kept waiting by
+such things. But presently the three parted to resume their several
+cares, and the moment Ferry touched my arm to turn me back toward the
+house I was once more his worshipper. &quot;Well!&quot; he began, &quot;you have now
+<em>two</em> fine horses, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, by Regulations, I suppose, I ought to turn one of them over to
+Major Harper. I wish it were to you, Lieutenant; I'd keep my own--he'll
+be all right in a day or two--and give you Captain Jewett's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,--just for a day or two,--do that, while I lend my horse to a
+friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had already asked myself what was to become of Charlotte Oliver while
+the Harpers were preempting her little wagon, and now I took keen alarm.
+&quot;Why, Lieutenant, I shall be glad! But why not lend Captain Jewett's
+horse and keep yours? Yours is right now the finest and freshest mount
+in the command.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, 'tis for that I lend him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We went on in silence. Startled and distressed, I pondered. What was her
+new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this
+from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would
+know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like
+smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry
+with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now,
+unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse
+to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing himself to speed
+Beauty--oh, how different! What was the all-subordinating need?</p>
+
+<p>As we entered the hall I came to a conviction which lightened my heart;
+the all-subordinating need was--Oliver. I thought I could see why. The
+spring of all his devilish behavior lay in those relations to her for
+which I knew she counted herself chargeable through her past mistakes.
+Unless I guessed wrong her motives had risen. I believed her aim was
+now, at whatever self-hazard, to stop this hideous one-woman's war, and
+to speed her unfinished story to the fairest possible outcome for all
+God's creatures, however splendidly or miserably the &quot;fool in it&quot; should
+win or lose. We stopped and waited for C&eacute;cile and the remaining doctor,
+she with a lighted candle, to come down the stairs. From two rooms
+below, where most of the wounded lay, there came women's voices softly
+singing, and Charlotte's was among them. Their song was one listening to
+which many a boy in blue, many a lad in gray, has died: &quot;Rock me to
+sleep, mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;cile and the doctor had come from the bedside of the Union captain,
+where Miss Harper remained. &quot;I've done all I can,&quot; he said to Ferry; &quot;we
+old chill-and-fever doctors wa'n't made for war-times; he may get well
+and he may not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; said Ferry, &quot;go up and stay with him till further orders.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXVIII" id="XXXVIII">XXXVIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>&quot;BEAR A MESSAGE AND A TOKEN&quot;</strong></p>
+
+<p>Late in the night Gholson came to the Union captain's bedside for Miss
+Harper. Charlotte had sent him; the doctor had left word what to do if a
+certain patient's wound should re-open, and this had happened. The three
+had succeeded in stanching it, but Charlotte had prevailed upon Miss
+Harper to lie down, and the weary lady had, against all her intentions,
+fallen asleep. I was alone with the wounded captain. He did not really
+sleep, but under the weight of his narcotics drowsed, muttered, stirred,
+moaned, and now and then spoke out.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting in the open window, I marked the few red points of dying
+firelight grow fewer in the bivouac under the grove. Out there by the
+gate Ned Ferry slept. Fireflies blinked, and beyond the hazy fields rose
+the wasted moon, by the regal slowness of whose march I measured the
+passage of time as I had done two nights before. My vigil was a sad one,
+but, in health, in love, in the last of my teens and in the silent
+company of such a moon, my straying thoughts lingered most about the
+maiden who had &quot;prayed for me.&quot; My hopes grew mightily. Yet with them
+grew my sense of need to redouble a lover's diligence. I resolved never
+again to leave great gaps in my line of circumvallation about the city
+of my siege, as I had done in the past--two days. I should move to the
+final assault, now, at the earliest favorable moment, and the next
+should see the rose-red flag of surrender rise on her temples; in war it
+is white, but in love it is red.</p>
+
+<p>First favorable moment; ah! but when would that be? Who was to convey
+the Harpers to Hazlehurst? Well, thank Heaven! not Harry. Scott Gholson?
+Gholson was due at headquarters. Poor Gholson! much rest for racked
+nerves had he found here; what with Ferry, and Harry, and the fight, and
+Quinn, I wondered he did not lie down and die under the pure suffocation
+of his &quot;tchagrin.&quot; Even a crocodile, I believed, could suffer from
+chagrin, give him as many good causes as Gholson had accumulated. But
+no, the heaven of &quot;Charlie Tolliver's&quot; presence and commands--she seemed
+to have taken entire possession of him--lifted and sustained him above
+the clouds of all unkinder things.</p>
+
+<p>A faint stir at the threshold caught my ear and I discerned in the hall
+a young negro woman. The light of an unseen candle made her known at a
+glance; she had been here since the previous evening, as I knew, though
+it chanced that I had not seen her; Oliver's best wedding-gift, the
+slave maid whom I had seen with Charlotte in the curtained wagon at
+Gallatin. I stole out to her; she courtesied. &quot;Miss Charlotte say ef you
+want he'p you fine me a-sett'n' on de step o' de stairs hafe-ways down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I inquired if she was leaving us. &quot;She a-gitt'n' ready, suh; Misteh
+Goshen done gone to de sta-able to git de hosses.&quot; The girl suddenly
+seemed pleased with herself. &quot;Mis' Charlotte would 'a' been done gone
+when de yethehs went--dem-ah two scouts what was sent ayfteh <em>him</em>--ef I
+hadn' spoke' up when I did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed! how was that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I says, s' I, 'Mis' Charlotte, how we know he ain' gwine fo' to
+double on his huntehs? Betteh wait a spell, and den ef no word come back
+dat he a-doublin', you kin be sho' he done lit out fo' to jine de
+Yankees roun' Pote Hudsom.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did you tell her that? You want him caught; so do I; but you know
+she doesn't want to catch him, and you don't want her to. Neither do I.
+Nor neither do we want Lieutenant Ferry to catch him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, suh, dass so. But same time, while she no notion o' gitt'n' him
+cotch, she believe she dess djuty-bound to head-off his devilment. 'Tis
+dess like I heah' Mr. Goshen say to Miss Hahpeh, 'Dis ain't ow own
+li'l pri'--'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I waved her away and went back into the room; the Captain had called. He
+asked the time of night; I said it was well after two; he murmured, was
+quiet, and after a moment spoke my name. I answered, and he whispered
+&quot;Coralie Rothvelt--she's here; I--recognized her voice--when they were
+singing. Did you know I knew her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Daring game that was you fellows let her put up on us night before
+last, my boy,--and it hung by a thread. If our officers had only asked
+the old man his name--it would have been--a flash of light. If I had
+dreamed, when I saw--you and Ned Ferry--yesterday,--that Coralie
+Rothvelt was--Charlotte Oliver,--and could have known her then--as
+I've--learned to know her--to-day--from her--worst enemy,--you know,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should--have turned back, my boy.&quot; After a silence the hero said more
+to himself than to me &quot;Ah, if my brother were here to-night--I
+might live!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Many days afterward I thought myself dull not to have guessed what that
+speech meant, but now I was too distressed by the change I saw coming
+over him to do any surmising. He began to say things entirely to
+himself. &quot;Home!&quot; he murmured; &quot;sweet, sweet home!--my home! my
+country!--My God, my country, my home!--Smith,--you know what that is
+you're--wiping off my brow,--don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I--I didn't want you to be--taken too unpleasantly by surprise--just at
+the--end. You know what's--happening,--don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Captain.&quot; As I wiped the brow again I heard the tread of two
+horses down in front of the house; they were Gholson's, and Ned Ferry's
+for Charlotte. &quot;Captain, may I go and bring her--tell her what you say,
+and bring her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think she'd come? She'd have gone to Ship Island if I had caught
+her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know she'll come.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish she would; she could 'bear a message and a token,' as the song
+says.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She came. I met her outside the door, and for a moment I feared she
+would come no farther. &quot;How can I, Richard! Oh, how can I?&quot; she
+whispered; &quot;this is my doing!&quot; But presently she stood at the bedside
+calm and compassionate, in the dark dress and limp hat of two nights
+before. The dying man's eyes were lustrous with gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have one or two things,&quot; he said, after a few words of greeting,
+&quot;that I'd like to send home--to my mother--and my wife; some
+trifles--and a message or two; if I--if--if I--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will you let me take them?&quot; Charlotte asked. I did not see or hear what
+they were; Gholson beckoned me into the hall. He did not whisper; there
+are some people, you know, who can never exercise enough
+self-suppression to whisper; he mumbled. He admitted the dying had some
+rights, but--he feared the delay might result unfortunately; wanted me
+to tell Charlotte so, and was sure I was ever so wrong to ask to have
+Ned Ferry awakened for the common incident of a prisoner's death; he
+would let him know the moment he awoke.</p>
+
+<p>When I came back into the room the captive had asked Charlotte to pray.
+&quot;Tisn't that I'm--the least bit afraid,&quot; he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no,&quot; she responded, wiping his brow, &quot;why should you be? Dying
+isn't nearly so fearful a thing as living. I'd rather, now, you'd pray
+for me; I'm such an unbeliever--in the beliefs, I mean, the beliefs the
+church people think we can't get on without. My religion is scarcely
+anything but longings and strivings&quot;--she sadly smiled--&quot;longings and
+strivings and hopes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet you wouldn't--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Part with it? Oh, not for the world beside!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Neither would I--with mine.&quot; The soldier folded his hands in
+supplication. &quot;Neither would I--though mine, O Lord--is only
+the--old-fashioned sort--for whose beliefs our fathers--used to kill one
+another; God have mercy--on them--and us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a great stillness. Against the bedside Charlotte had sunk to
+her knees, and under the broad brim of her Leghorn hat leaned her brow
+upon her folded hands. Thus, presently, she spoke again.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XXXIX" id="XXXIX">XXXIX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>CHARLOTTE SINGS</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know, Captain,&quot; she said, &quot;that we can't have longings, strivings, or
+hopes, without beliefs; beliefs are what they live on. I believe in
+being strong and sweet and true for the pure sake of being so; and yet
+more for the world's sake; and as much more again for God's sake as God
+is greater than his works. I believe in beauty and in joy. I believe
+they are the goal of all goodness and of all God's work and wish. As to
+resurrection, punishment, and reward, I can't see what my noblest choice
+has to do with them; they seem to me to be God's part of the matter;
+mine is to love perfect beauty and perfect joy, both in and infinitely
+beyond myself, with the desiring love with which I rejoice to believe
+God loves them, and to pity the lack of them with the loving pity with
+which God pities it. And above all I believe that no beauty and no joy
+can be perfect apart from a love that loves the whole world's joy better
+than any separate joy of any separate soul.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; was murmured from the pillow. Then, as Charlotte once more
+wiped the damp brow, the captive said, with much labor, &quot;After that--war
+seems--an awful thing. I suppose it isn't half so much a crime--as it is
+a--penalty--for the crimes that bring it on. But anyhow--you
+know--being--&quot; The bugle rang out the reveill&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Being a soldier,&quot; said Charlotte, &quot;you want to die like one?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, oh, yes!--the best I can. I'd like to sit half up--and hold my
+sword--if there's--no objection. I've loved it so! It would almost be
+like holding--the hand that's far away. Of course, it isn't really
+necessary, but--it would be more like--dying--for my country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his
+hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing
+from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts
+had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled
+close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of
+Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly:
+&quot;Dying--really?&quot; He turned to his fellows--&quot;Boys, Captain's dying.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Every Northern eye was lifted to the window and I turned away.
+&quot;Richard!&quot; gently called Charlotte, and I saw the end was at hand; a new
+anguish was on the brow; yet the soldier was asking for a song; &quot;a
+soldier's song, will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Captain,&quot; she replied, &quot;you know, we don't sing the same words to
+our soldier-songs that you do--except in the hymns. Shall I sing 'Am I a
+soldier of the cross?'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer promptly; but when he did he said &quot;Yes--sing that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She sang it. As the second stanza was begun we heard a responsive swell
+grow softly to fuller and fuller volume beneath the windows; the
+prisoners were singing. I heard an austere voice forbid it, but it rose
+straight on from strength to strength:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure I must fight if I would win,
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Increase my courage, Lord.<br />
+I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Supported by thy word.&quot;<br />
+
+</p><p>The dying man lifted a hand and Charlotte ceased. He had not heard the
+muffled chorus of his followers below; or it may be that he had, and
+that the degree of liberty they seemed to be enjoying prompted him to
+seek the new favor he now asked. I did not catch his words, but
+Charlotte heard, and answered tenderly, yet with a thrill of pain so
+keen she could not conceal it even from him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! you wouldn't ask a rebel to sing that,&quot; she sighed, &quot;would you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He made no rejoinder except that his eyes were insistent. She wiped his
+temples. &quot;I hate to refuse you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His gaze was grateful. She spoke again: &quot;I suppose I oughtn't to mind
+it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Miss Harper came in, and Charlotte, taking her hand without a glance,
+told the Captain's hard request under her voice. Miss Harper, too, in
+her turn, gave a start of pain, but when the dying eyes and smile turned
+pleadingly to her she said, &quot;Why, if you can, Charlotte, dear, but oh!
+how can you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte addressed the wounded man: &quot;Just a little bit of it, will that
+do?&quot; and as he eagerly assented she added, to Miss Harper, &quot;You know,
+dear, in its history it's no more theirs than ours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not so much,&quot; said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and
+thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing:</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?&quot;<br />
+
+<p>But guardedly as she began, the effect on the huddled crowd below was
+instant and electrical. They heard almost the first note; looking down
+anxiously, I saw the wonder and enthusiasm pass from man to man. They
+heard the first two lines in awed, ecstatic silence; but at the third,
+warily, first one, then three, then a dozen, then a score, bereft of
+arms, standard, and leader, little counting ever again to see freedom,
+flag, or home, they raised their voices, by the dawn's early light, in
+their song of songs.</p>
+
+<p>Our main body were out in the highway, just facing into column, and the
+effect on them I could not see. The prisoners' guards, though instantly
+ablaze with indignation, were so taken by surprise that for two or three
+seconds, with carbines at a ready, they--and even their sergeant in
+command--only darted fierce looks here and there and up at me. The
+prisoners must have been used to singing in ordered chorus, for one of
+them strode into their middle, and smiling sturdily at the maddened
+guard and me, led the song evenly. &quot;No, sir!&quot; he cried, as I made an
+angry sign for them to desist, &quot;one verse through, if every damned fool
+of us dies for it--let the Captain hear it boys--sing!</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;'The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air--'&quot;<br />
+
+<p>Charlotte had ceased, in consternation not for the conditions without
+more than for those within. With the first strong swell of the song from
+below, the dying leader strove to sit upright and to lift his blade, but
+failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss
+Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching
+his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face
+untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into and over
+the strain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Club that man over the head!&quot; cried the sergeant of the guard, and one
+of his men swung a gun; but the Yankee sprang inside of its sweep,
+crying, &quot;Sing her through, boys!&quot; grappled his opponent, and hurled him
+back. In the same instant the sergeant called steadily, &quot;Guard,
+ready--aim--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There sounded a clean slap of levelled carbines, yet from the prisoners
+came the continued song in its closing couplet:</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;The star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave!--&quot;<br />
+
+<p>and out of the midst of its swell the oaths and curses and defiant
+laughter of a dozen men crying, with tears in their eyes, &quot;Shoot! shoot!
+why don't you shoot?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the command to fire did not come; suddenly there was a drumming of
+hoofs, then their abrupt stoppage, and the voice of a vigilant commander
+called, &quot;Attention!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With a few words to the sergeant, more brief than harsh, and while the
+indomitable singers pressed on to the very close of the stanza without a
+sign from him to desist, Ferry bade the subaltern resume his command,
+and turned toward me at the window. He lifted his sword and spoke in a
+lowered tone, the sullen guard stood to their arms, and every captive
+looked up for my reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shall I come?&quot; he inquired; but I shook my head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!--gone?&quot; he asked again, and I nodded. He turned and trotted
+lightly after the departing column. I remember his pensive mien as he
+moved down the grove, and how a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above
+his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender
+mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and
+let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his
+place under the window and was beckoning for my attention.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she coming?&quot; he called up, and Charlotte, at my side, spoke
+downward:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall be with you in a moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>While he waited the second lieutenant of the Louisianians came, and as
+guard and prisoners started away she came out upon the veranda steps.
+Across her knee, as she and Gholson galloped off by a road across
+fields, lay in a wrapping of corn-husks the huge sabre of the dead
+northerner.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XL" id="XL">XL</a></h2>
+<p><strong>HARRY LAUGHS</strong></p>
+
+<p>The first hush of the deserted camp-ground was lost in the songs of
+returning birds. Captain Jewett, his majestic length blanket-bound from
+brow to heel as trimly as a bale, had been laid under ground, and the
+Harpers stood in prayer at the grave's head and foot with hats on for
+their journey. The burial squad, turned guard of honor to the dead
+captain of the Louisianians, were riding away on either side of a light
+wagon that bore his mortal part. I, after all, was to be the Harpers'
+guardian on their way.</p>
+
+<p>Day widened into its first perfection as we moved down the highroad
+toward a near fork whose right was to lead Harry and his solemn cort&eacute;ge
+southward, while the left should be our eastward course. Camille and I
+rode horseback, side by side, with no one near enough to smile at my
+sentimental laudations of the morning's splendors, or at her for
+repaying my eloquence with looks so full of tender worship, personal
+acceptance and self-bestowal, that to tell of them here would make as
+poor a show as to lift a sea-flower out of the sea; they call for
+piccolo notes and I am no musician.</p>
+
+<p>The familiar little leather-curtained wagon was just ahead of us,
+bearing the other three Harpers, the old negro driver and--to complete
+its overloading--his daughter, Charlotte's dark maid. Beside the wheels
+ambled and babbled Harry Helm. At the bridge he fell back to us and
+found us talking of Charlotte. Camille was telling me how well Charlotte
+knew the region south of us, and how her plan was to dine at mid-day
+with such a friend and to pass the night with such another; but the
+moment Harry came up she began to upbraid him in her mellowest
+flute-notes for not telling us that he had got his wound in saving--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, you ladies--&quot; cried the teased aide-de-camp, &quot;I--I didn't save
+Gholson's life! I didn't try to save it! I only tried to split a
+Yankee's head and didn't even do that! Dick Smith, if you tell anybody
+else that I saved--Well, who did, then? Good Lordy! if I'd known that to
+save a man's life would make all this fuss I wouldn't 'a' done it! Why,
+Quinn and I had to sit and listen to Ned Ferry a solid half-hour last
+night, telling us the decent things he'd known Gholson to do, and the
+allowances we'd ought to make for a man with Gholson's sort of a
+conscience! And then, to cap--to clap--to clap the ki'--to cap--the
+<em>climax</em>--consound that word, I never did know what it meant--to clap
+the climax, Ned sends for Gholson and gets Quinn to speak to him
+civilly--aw, haw, haw!--Quinn showing all the time how he hated the job,
+like a cat when you make him jump over a stick! And then he led us on,
+with just a word here and there, until we all agreed as smooth as glass,
+that all Quinn had said was my fault, and all I had done was Gholson's
+fault, and all Gholson had said or done or left undone was our fault,
+and the rest was partly Ned's fault, but mostly accident.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Camille declared she did not and would not believe there had been any
+fault with any one, anywhere, and especially with Mr. Gholson, and I
+liked Lieutenant Helm less than ever, noticing anew the unaccountable
+freedom with which Camille seemed to think herself entitled to rebuke
+him. &quot;Oh, I'm in your power,&quot; he cried to her, &quot;and I'll call him a
+spotless giraffe if you want me to! that's what he is; I've always
+thought so!&quot; The spring-wagon was taking the left fork and he cantered
+ahead to begin his good-byes there and save her for the last. When he
+made his adieu to her he said, &quot;Won't you let Mr. Smith halt here with
+me a few moments? I want to speak of one or two matters that--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She resigned me almost with scorn; which privately amused me, and, I
+felt sure, hoodwinked the aide-de-camp.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, Dick!&quot; he began, as she moved away, &quot;look here, I'm going to tell
+you something; Ned Ferry's in love with Charlotte Oliver!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't mean it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I do, mean it! Smith, Ned's a grand fellow. I'm glad I came here
+yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you've secured a furlough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, this thing, yes; don't you wish you had it! No, I'm glad I came,
+for what I've learned. I'm glad for what Ned Ferry has taught me a man
+can do, and keep from doing, when he's got the upper hold of himself.
+And I'm glad for what she--you know who--by George! any man would know
+who ever saw her, for she draws every man who comes within her range, as
+naturally as a rose draws a bee. I'm glad for what she has taught me a
+woman can <em>be</em>, and can keep from being, so long as she knows there's
+one real man to live up to! just <em>up to</em>, mind you, I don't even say to
+live <em>for</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stared with surprise. Was this the trivial Harry talking? Fact is, the
+pair we were talking about had by some psychical magic rarified the
+atmosphere for all of us until half our notes were above our
+normal pitch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mean she loves him; what sign of such a thing did she show
+yesterday or last evening?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a sign of a sign! And yet I'll swear it! Do you know where she's
+gone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-day? I think I do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Lieutenant, if I were she, <em>I</em> should go straight into the Yankee
+lines behind Port Hudson. She's got Jewett's messages and his sword, and
+the Yank's won't know her as a Confederate any better than they ever
+did; for it's only these men whom we've captured who have found out
+she's Charlotte Oliver, or that she had any knowing part in General
+Austin's ruse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If Oliver doesn't tell,&quot; said Harry, lifting his bad hand in pain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He will not dare! If she can only get her word in first and tell them,
+herself, that he's Charlotte Oliver's husband and has just led the
+finest company of Federal scouts in the two States to destruction--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hi! that ought to cook his dough!--with her face--and her voice!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I responded, &quot;--and his breath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And why do you think she wants to do this?&quot; asked Harry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She doesn't want to do it; but she feels she must, knowing that every
+blow he strikes from now on is struck on her account. I believe she's
+gone to warn the Yankees that his whole animus is personal revenge and
+that he will sacrifice anything or anybody, any principle or pledge or
+cause, at any moment, to wreak that private vengeance, in whole or
+in part.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick Smith, yes! But don't you see, besides, what she <em>does</em> want? Why,
+she wants to keep Oliver and Ferry apart until somebody else for whom
+she doesn't care as she cares for Ned, say you, or I, or--or--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson, no! she can't trust Gholson, Gholson's conscience is too
+vindictive; that's why she's keeping him with her as long as she can.
+No, but until some of us, I say, can give Oliver a thousand times better
+than he ought ever to get--except for her sake--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you mean a soldier's clean death; and what you want of me is for
+me to say that I, for one, will lose no honest chance to give it to him,
+isn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I want of you, Smith, is to tell you that <em>I</em> shall lose no such
+chance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, neither shall I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bully for you, Dick; bully boy with the glass eye! You see, you're one
+of only half a dozen or so that know Oliver when they see him; so Ned
+will soon be sending you after him. Ned's got a conscience, too, you
+know, as squirmy as Gholson's. Oh, Lord! yes, you don't often <em>see</em> it,
+but it's as big and hard as a conscript's ague-cake.&quot; The Lieutenant
+gathered his rein; &quot;Smith, I want Ned and her to get one another;
+that's me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was tempted to say it was me, too, but I forbore and only said it was
+I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All the same,&quot; said Harry, &quot;I'm sorry for the little girl!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Little girl?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, come, now, you know!&quot; He leaned to me and whispered, &quot;Miss C&eacute;cile!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant,&quot; I replied, with a flush, realizing what I owed to the
+family as a prospective member of it, &quot;you're mistaking a little
+patriotic ardor--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pat who--oh? I tell you, my covey,--and of course, you understand, I
+wouldn't breathe it any further--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd rather you would not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Phew-ew! I don't know why in the devil <em>you'd</em> rather I would not,
+but--Smith,--she's so dead-gone in love with Ned Ferry, that if she
+doesn't get him--I George! it'll e'en a'most kill her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I guffawed in derision. &quot;And she didn't even have to tell you so! She
+can't even hide its deadly intensity from the casual bystander! haw!
+haw! haw! And it's all the outcome of a <em>three-days acquaintance</em>! It
+beats Doctor Swiftgrow's Mustache Invigor'--aw, haw! haw!&quot; &quot;Oh, you
+think so? Pity you couldn't get a few barrels of it--aw, haw! haw!&quot; said
+Harry, and my laughter left off where his began. But, some way hurting
+his hand, he, too, stopped short. I drew my horse back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that all you've noticed?&quot; I smilingly inquired. &quot;Isn't anybody else
+mortally in love with anybody else? You can't make me believe that's all
+you know!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, then, I sha'n't try. I do know one thing more; heard it
+yesterday. Like to hear it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Like! Why, I'm just that dead-gone with curiosity that if I don't hear
+it it'll e'en a'most kill me--aw, haw! haw! haw!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'm tired saving people's lives, but we won't count this one; you
+say you want to hear it--I can't give you all of it but it begins:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Turn away thine eyes, maiden passing fair!
+&nbsp;&nbsp;O maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes!'--<br />
+
+</p><p>&quot;Haw! haw! haw! Good-bye, Smith,--aw, haw! haw! haw!--and it's all the
+outcome of a three-days acquaintance!--haw! haw! haw!--Oh,
+say!--Smith!&quot;--I was leaving him--&quot;that's right, go back and begin
+over!--'Return! return!'--aw, haw! haw! haw!&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLI" id="XLI">XLI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>UNIMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIAL</strong></p>
+
+<p>On the second night after that morning of frantic mortification I was
+riding at Ned Ferry's side, in Louisiana. The camp of the brigade was a
+few miles behind us. Somewhere in front of us, fireless and close hid,
+lay our company of scouts, ahead of whose march he had pushed the day
+before to confer with the General, and we were now on our way to rejoin
+them. Under our horses' feet was that old Plank-road which every
+&quot;buttermilk ranger&quot; must remember--whether dead or not, I am tempted to
+say,--who rode under either flag in the Felicianas in '63 and '64.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the evening of the day on which I had conducted the Harpers to
+Squire Wall's I had received a despatch ordering me to board the next
+morning's train at Brookhaven with my horse. On it I should find a
+number of cases of those shoes I had seen at Hazlehurst. At Tangipahoa I
+was to transfer them to one or two army-wagons which would by that time
+have reached there, and bring them across to Clinton, where a guard
+would meet and join me to conduct the wagons to camp. And thus I had
+done, bearing with me a sad vision of dear dark Miss Harper fluttering
+her handkerchief above her three nieces' heads, one of whom refrained
+until the opportunity had all but gone, to wave good-bye to the visibly
+wretched author of &quot;Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes.&quot; My
+lucky Cricket had gone three nights and two whole days with no harness
+but his halter, and to-night, beside the Yankee's horse, that still bore
+Ned Ferry, he was as good as new. My leader and I talked of Charlotte.
+In the middle of this day's forenoon Gholson had come into camp
+reporting at the General's tent the long ride she had made on Monday; as
+good a fifty miles as Ferry's own. We called it, now, Ferry and I, a
+most clever achievement for a woman. &quot;Many women,&quot; he said, &quot;know how to
+ride, but she knows how to march.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you must have taught her,&quot; I responded, and he enjoyed his
+inability to deny it. So I ventured farther and said she seemed to me
+actually to have reached, in the few days since I had first seen her, a
+finer spiritual stature.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She?&quot; he asked; &quot;ah! she is of the kind that must grow or die. Yes, you
+may be right; but in that time she has kept me so occupied growing,
+myself, that I did not notice she was doing the same. But also, I think,
+the eyes with which we look at her have grown.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has outgrown this work,&quot; I insisted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Those letters--to the newspapers?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, this other; this work which she has to do by craft and wiles and
+disguises. Lieutenant, I don't believe she can go on doing that now with
+her past skill, since life has become to her a nobler story than it
+promised to be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My companion lifted higher in the saddle with delight. Then soberly he
+said, &quot;We have got to lose her.&quot; I turned inquiringly and he continued:
+&quot;She has done me the honor to tell me--Miss Harper and me--that if she
+succeeds in what she is now trying to do--you know?--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I do. It's to prevent Oliver from making himself useful to the
+enemy, isn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well--like that; and she says if she comes out all right she will leave
+us; yes, for the hospital service.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hosp'--Oh--oh! gangrene, typhoid, lock-jaw, itch, small-pox! Isn't she
+deep enough in the hospital service already, with her quinine dolls?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! but she cannot continue to play dolls that way; she must find
+something else. I see you have my temptation; yes, the desire to see her
+always doing something splendid. That is not 'real life,' as you call
+it. And besides, was not that you said one time to me 'No splendor
+shines at last so far as a hidden splendor'?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir! I suppose it's true, but I never want to see her splendor
+shining through pock-marks.&quot; The reply won from him a gesture of
+approval, and this gave me a reckless tongue. &quot;Why, if I were you,
+Lieutenant, she simply shouldn't go! Good Heaven! isn't she far enough
+away at the nearest? How can you tamely--no, I don't mean tamely,
+but--how can you <em>endure</em> to let this matter drift--how can you
+endure it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of my question he straightened exactly as I had seen
+him do in the middle of the lane when our recoiled column was
+staggering; but as my extravagance flamed up he quieted rebukingly, and
+with a quieter smile than ever asked &quot;Is that a soldier's question?
+Smith, is there not something wrong with you to-night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There always is,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, but to-night I think you are taking that 'lower fork' you talk
+sometimes about. Of course, if you don't want to tell--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>May</em> I tell you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, certainly! Is it that little Harper girl?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I nodded, all choked up. When I could speak I had to drop the words by
+ones and twos, and did not so much as say them as let them bleed from my
+lips; and never while I live shall I forget the sweet, grave, perfect
+sympathy with which my friend listened and led me on, and listened and
+led me on. I said I had never believed in love at first sight until now
+when it had come upon me to darken and embitter my life henceforth.</p>
+
+<p>He replied that certainly love sometimes <em>germinated</em> at first sight,
+and I interrupted greedily that that was all I claimed--except that love
+could also, at times, <em>grow to maturity</em> with amazing speed, a speed I
+never could have credited previous to these last four days. And he
+admitted as much, but thought time only could prove such love; whereto I
+rejoined that that was what she had answered.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at me suddenly, then smoothed his horse's mane, and said,
+gently, &quot;That means you have declared yourself to her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I confessed I had, and told him how, on our journey to Squire Wall's,
+being stung to desperation by the infantile way in which she had drooled
+out to others what my love had sacredly confided to her alone, I had
+abruptly confronted her with the fact, and in the ensuing debate,
+carried away by the torrent of my emotions, had offered her my love, for
+life and all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And she--ah, yes. I see; and I see, too, that in all she ever said or
+did or seemed, before, she never made herself such a treasure to be
+longed for and fought and lived for as in the way in which she--&quot;
+He paused.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Refused me! Oh, it's so; it's so! Ah! if you could have witnessed her
+dignity, her wisdom, her grace, her compassionate immovableness, you'd
+never think of her as the little Harper girl again. She said that if the
+unpremeditated, headlong way in which I had told my passion were my only
+mistake, and if it were only for my sake, she would not, if she could,
+answer favorably, and that I, myself, at last, would not have a girl who
+would have a man who would offer his love in that way, and that she
+would not have a man who would have a girl who would have a man who
+should offer his love in that way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I call it one of the sweetest kindnesses ever done me, that Ned Ferry
+heard me to the end of that speech and did not smile. Instead he asked
+&quot;Did she say that as if a'--as if--amused?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Lieutenant, she nearly cried. Oh, I wish we were on some dangerous
+errand to-night, instead of just camp and bed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, that's all right, Richard; we are.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLII" id="XLII">XLII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>&quot;CAN I GET THERE BY CANDLE-LIGHT?&quot;</strong></p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes we quitted the public way by an obscure path in the
+woods on our right. When we had followed this for two or three miles we
+turned to the left again and pressed as softly as we could into a low
+tangled ground where the air seemed stagnant and mosquitoes stung
+savagely. We wiped away the perspiration in streams. I pushed forward to
+Ferry's side and whispered my belief that at last we were to see rain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;and with thunder and lightning; just what we want
+to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I asked why. &quot;Oh, they hate our thunder-storms, those Yankee patrols.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Presently we were in a very dark road, and at a point where it dropped
+suddenly between steep sides we halted in black shadow. A gleam of pale
+sand, a whisper of deep flowing waters, and a farther glimmer of more
+sands beyond them challenged our advance. We had come to a &quot;grapevine
+ferry.&quot; The scow was on the other side, the water too shoal for the
+horses to swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the
+blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering,
+long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little
+sinner the screech-owl. Ferry murmured to me to answer it and I sent the
+same faint horror-stricken tremolo back. Again it came to us, from not
+farther than one might toss his cap, and I followed Ferry down to the
+water's edge. The grapevine guy swayed at our side, we heard the scow
+slide from the sands, and in a few moments, moved by two videttes, it
+touched our shore. Soon we were across, the two videttes riding with us,
+and beyond a sharp rise, in an old opening made by the swoop of a
+hurricane, we entered the silent unlighted bivouac of Ferry's scouts.
+Ferry got down and sat on the earth talking with Quinn, while the
+sergeants quietly roused the sleepers to horse.</p>
+
+<p>Now we marched, and when we had gone a mile or so Ned Ferry turned
+aside, taking with him only Sergeant Jim, Kendall, another private, and
+me. We went at an alert walk single-file for the better part of an hour
+and stopped at length in a narrow untilled &quot;deadening.&quot; Beyond it at our
+left a faint redness shone just above the tree-tops. At our right, in
+the northwest, a similar glow was ruddier, the heavens being darker
+there except when once or twice they paled with silent lightnings.
+Sergeant Jim went forward alone and on foot, and presently was back
+again, whispering to Ferry and remounting.</p>
+
+<p>Ferry led Kendall and me into the woods, the other two remaining. We
+found rising ground, and had ridden but a few minutes when from its
+crest we looked upon a startling sight. In front of us was a stretch of
+specially well farmed land. Our woods swept round it on both sides,
+crossed a highway, and gradually closed in again so as to terminate the
+opening about half a mile away. Always the same crops, bottom cause of
+the war: from us to the road an admirable planting of cotton, and from
+there to the farther woods as goodly a show of thick corn. The whole
+acreage swept downward to that terminus, at the same time sinking inward
+from the two sides. On the highway shone the lighted rear window of a
+roadside &quot;store,&quot; and down the two sides of the whole tract stretched
+the hundred tent-fires of two brigade camps of the enemy's cavalry.
+Their new, white canvases were pitched in long, even alleys following
+the borders of the wood, from which the brush had been cut away far
+enough for half of them to stand under the trees. The men had quieted
+down to sleep, but at one tent very near us a group of regimental
+officers sat in the light of a torch-basket, and by them were planted
+their colors. A quartet of capital voices were singing, and one who
+joined the chorus, standing by the flag, absently yet caressingly spread
+it at such breadth that we easily read on it the name of the command.
+Let me leave that out.</p>
+
+<p>As they sang, and as we sat in our saddles behind the low fence that ran
+quite round the opening, Ferry turned from looking across into the
+lighted window on the road and handed me his field-glass. &quot;How many
+candles do you see in there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw two. &quot;Yes,&quot; he said, dismounting and motioning me to do the same.
+Kendall took our bridles. Leaving him with the animals we went over the
+fence, through the cotton, across the road at a point terribly near the
+lighted and guarded shop, and on down the field of corn, to and over its
+farthest fence; stooping, gliding, halting, crouching, in the
+cotton-rows and corn-rows; taking every posture two upright gentlemen
+would rather not take; while nevertheless I swelled with pride, to be
+alone at the side--or even at the heels--of one who, for all this
+apparent skulking and grovelling, and in despite of all the hidden
+drawings of his passion for a fair woman at this hour somewhere in
+peril, kept his straight course in lion-hearted pursuit of his duty (as
+he saw it) to a whole world of loves and lovers, martyrs and fighters,
+hosts of whom had as good a right to their heart's desire as I to mine
+or he to his; and I remembered Charlotte Oliver saying, on her knees, &quot;I
+believe no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart from a love that loves
+the whole world's joy better than any separate joy of any
+separate soul.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLIII" id="XLIII">XLIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>&quot;YES, AND BACK AGAIN&quot;</strong></p>
+
+<p>One matter of surprise to me was that this whole property had escaped
+molestation. I wondered who could be so favored by the enemy and yet be
+so devoted to our cause as to signal us from his window with their
+sentinels at his doors; and as we passed beyond the cornfield's farther
+fence I ventured to ask Ferry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aaron Goldschmidt,&quot; he whispered, as we descended into a dry, tangled
+swamp. In the depths of this wild, beside a roofed pen of logs stored
+with half a dozen bales of cotton, we were presently in the company of a
+very small man who tossed a hand in token of great amusement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, Ned!&quot; he whispered in antic irony; &quot;what an accident is dat,
+meeding so! Whoever is expecting someding like dis!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I hope nobody, Isidore; I hardly expected it myself, your father
+set those candles so close the one behind the other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Isidore doubled with mirth and as suddenly straightened. &quot;Your horse is
+here since yesterday. <em>She</em> left him--by my father. She didn't t'ink t'e
+Yankees is going to push away out here to-night. But he is a pusher,
+t'at Grierson! You want him to-night, t'at horse? He is here by me, but
+I t'ink you best not take him, hmm? To cross t'e creek and go round t'e
+ot'er way take you more as all night; and to go back t'is same way you
+come, even if I wrap him up in piece paper you haven't got a lawch
+insite pocket you can carry him?&quot; He laughed silently and the next
+instant was more in earnest than ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>She</em> is in a tight place! She hires my mother's pony to ride in to
+headquarters.&quot; He called them hatekvartuss, but we need not. &quot;I t'ink
+she is not a prisoner--<em>unless</em>--she wants to come back.&quot; He doubled
+again. &quot;Anyhow, I wish you can see her to-night; she got another
+doll-baby for t'e gildren, and she give you waluable informations by de
+hatfull.... Find her? I tell you how you find her in finfty-nine
+minutes--vedder permitting, t'at is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The last phrase was fitted to a listening pose, and the first mutter of
+the pending thunder-storm came out of the northwest. Then Isidore
+hastened through the practical details of his proposition. Ferry drew a
+breath of enthusiasm. &quot;Can I have my horse, bridled and saddled, in
+three minutes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I pring um in two!&quot; said Isidore, and vanished. Ferry turned with an
+overmastering joy in every note of his whispered utterance. &quot;After all!&quot;
+he said, and I could have thrown my arms around him in pure delight to
+hear duty and heart's desire striking twelve together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; he asked, &quot;can you start back without me? Then go at once; I
+shall overtake you on my horse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stole through the cornfield safely; the frequent lightnings were still
+so well below the zenith as to hide me in a broad confusion of monstrous
+shadows. But when I came to cross the road no crouching or gliding would
+do. I must go erect and only at the speed of some ordinary official
+errand. So I did, at a point between two opposite fence-gaps, closely
+after an electric gleam, and I was rejoicing in the thick darkness that
+followed, when all at once the whole landscape shone like day and I
+stood in the middle of the road, in point-blank view of a small squad, a
+&quot;visiting patrol&quot;. They were trotting toward me in the highway, hardly a
+hundred yards off. As the darkness came again and the thunder crashed
+like falling timbers, I started into the cotton-field at an easy
+double-quick. The hoofs of one horse quickened to a gallop. A strong
+wind swept over, big rain-drops tapped me on the shoulder and pattered
+on the cotton-plants, the sound of the horse's galloping ceased as he
+turned after me in the soft field, and presently came the quiet call
+&quot;Halt, there, you on foot.&quot; I went faster. I knew by my pursuer's
+coming alone that he did not take me for a Confederate, and that the
+worst I should get, to begin with, would be the flat of his sabre.
+Shrewdly loading my tongue with that hard northern <em>r</em> which I hated
+more than all unrighteousness, I called back &quot;Oh, I'm under orders! go
+halt some fool who's got time to halt!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I obliqued as if bound for the headquarters fire where we had seen the
+singers, the lightning branched over the black sky like tree-roots, the
+thunder crashed and pounded again, the wind stopped in mid-career, and
+the rain came straight down in sheets. &quot;Halt!&quot; yelled the horseman. He
+lifted his blade, but I darted aside and doubled, and as he whirled
+around after me, another rider, meeting him and reining in at such close
+quarters that the mud flew over all three of us, lifted his hand
+and said--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is right, sergeant, he is carrying out my orders.&quot; Ferry's black
+silk handkerchief about his neck covered his Confederate bars of rank,
+and the Federal may or may not have noted the absence of
+shoulder-straps; our arms remained undrawn; and so the sergeant,
+catching a breath or two of disconcertion, caught nothing else. While
+Ferry spoke on for another instant I showed my heels; then he left the
+dripping Yankee mouthing an angry question and loped after me, and over
+the low fence went the two of us almost together.</p>
+
+<p>Kendall was not there, the Federal camp-makers had tardily repaired
+their blunder by posting guards; but these were not looking for their
+enemies from the side of their own camp, and as we cleared the fence in
+the full blaze of a lightning flash, only two or three wild shots sang
+after us. In the black downpour Ferry reached me an invisible hand. I
+leapt astride his horse's croup, and trusting the good beast to pick his
+way among the trees himself, we sped away. Soon we came upon our three
+men waiting with the horses, and no great while afterward the five of us
+rejoined our command. The storm lulled to mild glimmerings and a gentle
+shower, and the whole company, in one long single file, began to sweep
+hurriedly, stealthily, and on a wide circuit of obscurest byways, deeper
+than ever into the enemy's lines.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLIV" id="XLIV">XLIV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>CHARLOTTE IN THE TENTS OF THE FOE</strong></p>
+
+<p>From certain rank signs of bad management in the Federal camp one could
+easily guess that our circuit was designed to bring us around to its
+rear. That a colonel's tent--the one where the singers were--was not
+where the colonel's tent belonged was a trifle, but the slovenliness
+with which the forest borders of the camp were guarded was a graver
+matter. Evidently those troops were at least momentarily in unworthy
+hands, and I was so remarking to Kendall when a murmured command came
+back from Ferry, to tell Dick Smith to stop that whispering. I was
+sorry, for I wanted to add that I knew we were not going to attack the
+camp itself. That was on Wednesday night. Charlotte and Gholson had
+made their ride of fifty miles on Monday. The friends with whom she
+stopped at nightfall contrived to cram him into their crowded soldiers'
+room, and he had given the whole company of his room-mates, as they sat
+up in their beds, a full account of the fight at Sessions's, Charlotte's
+care of the sick and dying, and the singing, by her and the blue-coats,
+of their battle-song. Next morning Charlotte, without Gholson--who
+turned off to camp--rode on to Goldschmidt's store, just beyond which
+there was then still a Confederate picket. Here she hired Mrs.
+Goldschmidt's pony, rode to the picket, and presented the Coralie
+Rothvelt pass.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Coralie Rothvelt; yes, all right,&quot; said the officer, &quot;the men that
+rode with you this morning told me all about you.&quot; He went with her as
+far as his videttes, and thence she rode alone to a picket of the
+Federal army and by her request was conducted under guard to the
+headquarters of a corps commander. To him and his chief-of-staff she
+told the fate of Jewett's scouts and delivered the messages of their
+dying leader; and then she tendered the hero's sword.</p>
+
+<p>The staff-officer cut away its cornhusk wrapping and read aloud the
+owner's name on the hilt. The General laid the mighty weapon across his
+palm and sternly shut his lips. &quot;How did you get through the enemy's
+pickets with this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I had a Confederate general's pass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Is the Confederate general as nameless as yourself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not nameless; I only ask leave to withhold my name until I have
+told one or two other things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you don't mind confessing you're an out-and-out rebel sympathizer?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Under the broad-brimmed hat her smile grew to a sparkle. &quot;No, I enjoy
+it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The chief-of-staff smiled, but the General darkened and pressed his
+questions. At length he summed up. &quot;So, then, you wish me to believe
+that you did all you did, and now have come into our lines at a most
+extraordinary and exhausting speed and running the ugliest kinds of
+risks, in mere human sympathy for a dying stranger, he being a Union
+officer and you a secessionist of&quot;--a courtly bow--&quot;the very elect;
+that's your meaning, is it not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, General; in the first place, I am not one of any elect.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A flattering glimmer of amusement came into the two men's faces, but
+some change in Charlotte's manner arrested it and brought an enhanced
+deference.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the second place, I am not here merely on this errand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, General. And in the last place, my motive in this errand is no mere
+sympathy for any one person; I am here from a sense of public duty--&quot;
+The speaker seemed suddenly overtaken by emotions, dropped her words
+with pained evenness, and fingered the lace handkerchief in her lap.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardon,&quot; interrupted the General, &quot;the sunlight annoys you. Major, will
+you drop that curtain?&quot; &quot;Thank you. One thing I am here for, General,
+is to tell you something, and I have to begin by asking that neither of
+you will ever say how you learned it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The two men bowed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you. Please understand, also, I have never uttered this but to
+one friend, a lady. There was no need; I have not wanted aid or counsel,
+even from friends. But I feel duty bound to tell it to you, now,
+because, for one thing, the brave soldier who wore that sword--&quot; Her
+eyes rose to the weapon and fell again; she bit her lip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes--well--what of him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was lured to disaster and death by a man whose supreme purpose was,
+and is to-day, revenge upon me. That man drew him to his ruin purely in
+search of my life.&quot; Charlotte sat with her strange in-looking,
+out-looking gaze holding the gaze of her questioner until for relief
+he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, young lady, it's hard to doubt anything you say, but really that
+sounds rather fanciful. Why should you think it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not think it, I know it. He sends me his own assurance of it by
+his own father, so that his revenge may be fuller by my knowing daily
+and hourly that he is on my trail.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you appeal to me for protection?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled. &quot;No. I am not seeking to divert his fury from myself, but to
+confine it to myself. Fancy yourself a human-hearted woman, General, and
+murder being done day by day because you are alive.&quot; &quot;Oh, this is
+incredible! What is its occasion, its origin? How are you in any way
+responsible?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, largely I am not. Yet in degree I am, General, because of
+shortcomings of mine--faults--errors--that--oh--that have their bearing
+in the case, don't you see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I don't; pray don't ask me to draw inferences; I might infer too
+much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you might, easily,&quot; said Charlotte; &quot;for I only mean shortcomings
+of the kind we readily excuse in others though we never can or should
+pardon them in ourselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The General turned an arch smile of perplexity upon his chief-of-staff.
+&quot;I don't think we're quite up to that line of perpetual snow,
+Walter, are we?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The chief-of-staff &quot;guessed they were not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte resumed. &quot;I have come to you in the common interest, to warn
+you against that man. I believe he is on his way here to offer his
+services as a guide. He is fearless, untiring, and knows all this region
+by heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Union man, I take it, is he not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he's Federal, Confederate or guerilla as it may suit his bloody
+ends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you want me not to make use of him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, more than that; I want him stopped!--stopped from killing and
+burning on his and my private account. But I want much more than that,
+too. I know how you commonly stop such men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We hang them to the first tree.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, our side does the same. If I wanted such a fate to overtake him I
+should only have to let him alone. At risks too hideous to name I have
+saved him from it twice. I am here to-day chiefly to circumvent his
+purposes; but if I may do so in the way I wish to propose to you, I
+shall also save him once more. I am willing to save him--in that
+way--although by so doing I shall lose--fearfully.&quot; She dropped her
+glance and turned aside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do you propose to circumvent and yet save him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By getting you to send him so far to your own army's rear that he
+cannot get back; to compel him to leave the country; to go into your
+country, where law and order reign as they cannot here between
+the lines.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you consider that a reasonable request?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sir, I must make it! I can ask no less!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you say if this scheme works you lose by it. What will you lose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I may lose track of him! If I lose track of him I may have to go
+through a long life not knowing whether he is dead or alive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And suppose--why,--young lady, I thought you were unmarried. I--oh,
+what do you mean; is he--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte's head drooped and her hands trembled. &quot;Yes, by law and church
+decree he is my husband.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good Heaven!&quot; murmured the General, drew a breath, and folded his arms.
+&quot;But, madam! if a man <em>abandons</em> his wife--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I abandoned him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good for you!&quot; &quot;It was vital for me. But I did it on evidence which
+our laws ignore, the testimony of slaves. Oh, General, don't try to
+untangle me; only stop him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! madam, I'll do the little I can. How am I to know him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By a pistol-wound in his right hand, got last week. He would have got
+it in his brain but for my pleading. His name is Oliver.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oliver; hmm! any relation to Charlotte Oliver, your so called newspaper
+correspondent? I'd like to stop her.--How?--I don't quite hear you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am Charlotte Oliver.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The two officers glanced sharply at each other. When the General turned
+again he flushed resentfully. &quot;Have you never resumed your maiden name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, madam, tell me this! With a whole world of other people's names
+to choose from, why <em>have</em> you borrowed Charlotte Oliver's? Have you
+come here determined to be sent to prison, Miss Coralie Rothvelt?&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLV" id="XLV">XLV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>STAY TILL TO-MORROW</strong></p>
+
+<p>Charlotte did not move an eyelash. Gradually a happy confidence lighted
+her face. &quot;Freedom or prison is to me a secondary question. I came here
+determined to use only the truth. No wild creature loves to be free more
+than I do. I want to go back into our lines, and to go at once; but--I
+am Charlotte Oliver.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young lady, listen to me. I know your story is nearly all true. I know
+some good things about you which you have modestly left out; one of the
+rebels who stopped where you did last night and rode with you this
+morning was brought to me a prisoner half an hour ago. But he said your
+name was Rothvelt. How's that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unfortunately, General, my name is Charlotte Oliver. Two or three times
+I have had use for so much concealment as there was in the childish
+prank of turning my name wrong side out.&quot; The speaker made a sign to the
+chief-of-staff: &quot;Write the two names side by side and see if they
+are not one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was already doing so, and nodded laughingly to his superior.
+Charlotte spoke on. &quot;I tell you the truth only, gentlemen, though I tell
+you no more of it than I must. I have run many a risk to get the truth,
+and to get it early. If it is your suspicion that by so doing, or in any
+other way, I have forfeited a lady's liberty, let me hear and answer.
+If not--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I'll have to send you to the provost-martial at Baton Rouge and let
+you settle that with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no, General! By the name of the lady you love best, I beg you to
+see my need and let me go. I promise you never henceforth to offend your
+cause except in that mere woman's sympathy with what you call rebellion,
+for which women are not so much as banished by you--or if they are, then
+banish me! Treat me no better, and no worse, than a 'registered enemy'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The General shook his head. &quot;Your registration has been in the open
+field of military action; sometimes, I fear, between the lines. At least
+it has been with your pen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;General, I have laid down the pen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed! to take up what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The spoon!&quot; said Charlotte, with that smile which no man ever wholly
+resisted. &quot;I leave the sword and its questions to my brother man, in the
+blue and in the gray--God save it!--and have pledged myself to the gray,
+to work from now on only under the yellow flag of mercy and healing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, of course; mercy--and comfort--and every sort of unarmed aid--to
+rebels.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To the men you call so, yes. Yet I pledge you, General, to deal as
+tenderly with every man in blue who comes within range of my care as I
+did with Captain Jewett.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I know you did even better than you've told me, but I'd be a fool
+to send you back on the instant, so. Stay till to-morrow or next day.&quot;
+The captor smiled. &quot;Major, I think we owe the lady that much
+hospitality.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Major thought so, and that she must need a day's rest, more than she
+realized. She could be made in every way comfortable--under guard at
+&quot;Mr. Gilmer's.&quot; The Gilmers were Unionists, whose fine character had
+been their only protection through two years of ostracism, yet he
+believed they would treat her well. &quot;Oh! not there, please,&quot; said
+Charlotte; &quot;I hear they are to give some of your officers a dance
+to-morrow evening!&quot; and there followed a parley that called forth all
+her playfullest tact. &quot;Oh, no,&quot; she said, at one critical point, &quot;I'm
+not so narrow or sour but I could dance with a blue uniform; but
+suppose--why, suppose one's friends in gray should catch one dancing
+with one's enemies in blue. Such things have happened, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It sha'n't happen to-morrow night,&quot; laughed the General.</p>
+
+<p>She offered to nurse the Federal sick, instead, in the command's
+field-hospital, but no, the General rose to end the interview. &quot;My dear
+young lady, the saintliest thing we can let you do is to dance at that
+merrymaking.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She rose. &quot;As a prisoner under guard, General, I can nurse the sick, but
+I will not dance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The General smiled. &quot;I'll take your parole.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! exact a parole from a woman?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good gracious, why shouldn't I! As for you,--ha!--I'd as soon turn a
+commissioned rebel officer loose in my camp unparoled as you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then take my parole! I give it! you have it! I'll take the chances.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the dances?&quot; asked the Major.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very good,&quot; said the General, &quot;you are now on parole. See the lady
+conducted to Squire Gilmer's, Major. And now, Miss--eh,--day after
+to-morrow morning I shall either pass you beyond my lines or else send
+you to Baton Rouge. Good-day.&quot; When Charlotte found herself alone in a
+room of the Gilmer house she lay down upon the bed staring and sighing
+with dismay; she was bound by a parole! If within its limit of time
+Oliver should appear, &quot;It will mean Baton Rouge for me!&quot; she cried under
+her breath, starting up and falling back again; &quot;Baton Rouge, New
+Orleans, Ship Island!&quot; She was in as feminine a fright as though she had
+never braved a danger. Suddenly a new distress overwhelmed her:
+if--if--someone to deliver her should come--&quot;Oh Heaven! I am
+paroled!--bound hand and foot by my insane parole!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Softly she sprang from the bed, paced the floor, went to the window,
+seemed to look out upon the landscape; but in truth she was looking in
+upon herself. There she saw a most unaccountable tendency for her
+judgment--after some long overstrain--momentarily, but all at once, to
+swoon, collapse, turn upside down like a boy's kite and dart to earth;
+an impulse--while fancying she was playing the supremely courageous or
+generous or clever part--suddenly to surrender the key of the situation,
+the vital point in whatever she might be striving for. &quot;Ah me, ah me!
+why did I give my parole?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the close of the next day--&quot;Walter,&quot; said the General as the
+chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--&quot;oh, thud
+devil!--you going to that dance?&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLVI" id="XLVI">XLVI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE DANCE AT GILMER'S</strong></p>
+
+<p>All the while that I recount these scenes there come to me soft
+orchestrations of the old tunes that belonged with them. I am thinking
+of one just now; a mere potsherd of plantation-fiddler's folk-music
+which I heard first--and last--in the dance at Gilmer's. Indeed no other
+so widely recalls to me those whole years of disaster and chaos; the
+daily shock of their news, crashing in upon the brain like a shell into
+a roof; wail and huzza, camp-fire, litter and grave; battlefield stench;
+fiddle and flame; and ever in the midst these impromptu merrymakings to
+keep us from going stark mad, one and all,--as so many literally did.</p>
+
+<p>The Gilmer daughters were fair, but they were only three, and the
+Gilmers were the sole Unionists in their neighborhood. &quot;Still, a few
+girls will come,&quot; said Charlotte, sparkling first blue and then black at
+a sparkling captain who said that, after all, the chief-of-staff had
+decided he couldn't attend. I know she sparkled first blue and then
+black, for she always did so when she told of it in later days.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They say,&quot; responded the captain, &quot;that in this handy little world
+there are always a few to whom policy is the best honesty; is that the
+few who will come?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are cynical,&quot; said Charlotte, &quot;this is only their unarmed way of
+saving house and home for the brothers to come back to when you are
+purged out of the land.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the time came there were partners for eight gallants, and the
+gallants numbered sixteen. They counted off by twos; the evens waited
+while the odds danced the half of each set, and then the odds waited and
+cooled, tried to cool, out on the veranda. But when a reel was called
+the whole twenty-four danced together, while the fiddler (from the
+contraband camp) improvised exultant words to his electrifying tunes.</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &quot;O <em>ladies</em> ramble in,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whilst de <em>beaux</em> ramble out,<br />
+For to guile<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> dat golden <em>cha--ain.</em>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My <em>Lawdy!</em> it's a sin<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Fo' a <em>fiddleh</em> not to shout!<br />
+Miss <em>Charlotte's</em> a-comin' down de <em>la--ane</em>!&quot;
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> Coil.</p>
+
+<p>Now the dance is off, but now it is on again, and again. The fiddler
+toils to finer and finer heights of enthusiasm; slippers twinkle,
+top-boots flash, the evens come in (to the waltz) and the odds, out on
+the veranda, tell one another confidentially how damp they are. Was ever
+an evening so smotheringly hot! Through the house-grove, where the
+darkness grows blacker and blacker and the tepid air more and more
+breathless, they peer toward the hitching-rail crowded with their
+horses. Shall they take their saddles in, or shall they let them get wet
+for fear the rebels may come with the shower, as toads do? [Laughter.]
+One or two, who grope out to the animals, report only a lovely picture:
+the glowing windows; the waltzers circling by them; in the dining-room,
+and across the yard in the kitchen, the house-servants darting to and
+fro as busy as cannoneers; on their elbows at every windowsill, and on
+their haunches at every door, the squalid field-hands making grotesque
+silhouettes against the yellow glow that streamed out into the trees.</p>
+
+<p>Now the lightning seems nearer. Hark, that was thunder; soft, but real.
+At last the air moves; there is a breeze, and the girls come out on the
+gallants' arms to drink it in. As they lift their brows and sigh their
+comfort the lightning grows brighter, the thunder comes more promptly
+and louder, and the maidens flinch and half scream, yet linger for one
+more draft of the blessed coolness. Suddenly an inverted tree of
+blinding light branches down the sky, and the thunder crashes in one's
+very ears; the couples recoil into a group at the door, the lightning
+again fills heaven and earth, it shows the bending trees far afield, and
+the thunders peal at each other as if here were all Vicksburg and Port
+Hudson, with Porter and Farragut going by. So for a space; then the wind
+drops to a zephyr, and though the sky still blazes and crashes, and
+flames and roars, the house purrs with content under the sweet strokings
+of the rain.</p>
+
+<p>Let it pour! the dining-room is the centre of all things; the ladies sip
+the custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the
+punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs
+on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat;
+and the couples are again on the floor. The departing thunders grumble
+as they go, the rain falls more and more sparingly, and now it is a
+waltz, and now a quadrille, and now it's a reel again, with Miss Sallie
+or Louise or Laura or Lucille or Miss Flora &quot;a-comin' down de lane!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So come the stars again, one by one. In a pause between dances Charlotte
+and the staff captain go to the veranda's far end and stand against the
+rail. The night is still very dark, the air motionless. Charlotte is
+remarking how far they can hear the dripping of the grove, when she
+gives a start and the captain an amused grunt; a soft, heart-broken,
+ear-searching quaver comes from just over yonder by the horses. &quot;One of
+those pesky little screech-owls,&quot; he says. &quot;Don't know as I ever heard
+one before under just these condi'--humph! there's another, around on
+this side.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I will go in,&quot; says Charlotte, with a pretence of languor. As
+they do so the same note sounds a third time; her pace quickens, and in
+passing a bright window, with a woman's protecting impulse she changes
+from his left arm to his right so as to be on the side next the owls. A
+moment later she is alone in the middle of her room, a lighted candle in
+one hand, a regally dressed doll in the other, and in her heart the cry,
+&quot;Oh, Edgard, Edgard, my parole, my parole!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Once more she is downstairs, in the lane which the dancers are making
+for their last reel. Two of the gallants have gone out to see the
+horses, and something keeps them, but there is no need to wait. The
+fiddle rings a chord! the merry double line straightens down the hall
+from front door to rear, bang! says the fiddler's foot--&quot;hands
+round!&quot;--and hands round it is! In the first of the evening they had
+been obliged to tell the fiddler the names of the dancers, but now he
+knows them all and throws off his flattering personalities and his
+overworked rhymes with an impartial rotation and unflagging ardor. Once
+in a while some one privately gives him a new nickname for the next man
+&quot;a-comin' down de lane,&quot; and as he yawps it out the whole dance gathers
+new mirth and speed.</p>
+
+<p>Now the third couple clasp hands, arch arms, and let the whole
+countermarching train sweep through; and a beautiful arch they make, for
+they are the aforesaid captain and Charlotte Oliver. &quot;Hands
+round!&quot;--hurrah for the whirling ellipse; and now it's &quot;right and left&quot;
+and two ellipses glide opposite ways, &quot;to quile dat golden chain.&quot; In
+the midst of the whirl, when every hand is in some other and men and
+girls are tossing their heads to get their locks out of their eyes, at
+the windows come unnoticed changes and two men loiter in by the front
+hall door, close to the fiddler. One has his sword on, and each his
+pistols, and their boots and mud-splashed uniforms of dubious blue are
+wet and steamy. The one without the sword gives the fiddler a fresh name
+to sing out when the spinning ring shall straighten into its two gay
+ranks again, and bids him--commandingly--to yell it; and with never a
+suspicion of what it stands for, the stamping and scraping fiddler
+shouts the name of a man who &quot;loves a good story with a
+positive passion.&quot;</p>
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &quot;Come <em>a-left</em>, come a-right,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Come yo' <em>lily</em>-white hand,<br />
+Fo' to <em>quile</em> dat <em>golden cha--ain</em>.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; O <em>ladies</em> caper light--<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sweetest <em>ladies</em> in de land--<br />
+NED FERRY's a-comin' down de la--ane!&quot;<p></p>
+<img src="007.jpg" alt="Musical Notation" />
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLVII" id="XLVII">XLVII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>HE'S DEAD.--IS SHE ALIVE?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Cries of masculine anger and feminine affright filled the hall, but one
+ringing order for silence hushed all, and the dance stood still with Ned
+Ferry in its centre. In his right hand, shoulder high, he held not his
+sword, but Charlotte's fingers lightly poised for the turn in the
+arrested dance. &quot;Stand, gentlemen, every man is covered by two; look at
+the doors; look at the windows.&quot; The staff captain daringly sprang for
+the front door, but Ferry's quick boot caught his instep and he struck
+the floor full length. Like lightning Ferry's sword was out, but he only
+gave it a deferential sweep. &quot;Sir! better luck next time!--Lieutenant
+Quinn, put the Captain in your front rank.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Quinn hustled the captives &quot;down a lane,&quot; as the fiddler might have
+said, of Ferry's scouts, mounted them on their own horses at the door,
+and hurried them away. Charlotte had vanished but was back again in hat
+and riding-skirt. Ferry caught her hand and they ran to the front
+veranda steps just as the prisoners and guard rode swiftly from them.
+Kendall and I had the stirrup ready for her; the saddle was a man's, but
+she made a horn of its pommel, and in a flash the four of us were
+mounted. Nevertheless before we could move the grove resounded with
+shots, and Ferry, bidding us ride on after the fleeing guard, wheeled
+and galloped to where half our troop were holding back their assailants
+in the dark. But then, to our distraction, Charlotte would not fly.
+&quot;Richard, I'm paroled!&quot;--&quot;Charlotte Oliver, you're my prisoner!&quot; I
+reached for her bridle, but she avoided me and with a cry of
+recollection wheeled and was on her way back. &quot;I forgot something! I can
+get it, I left the room lighted!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I remember vividly yet the high purpose and girlish propitiation that
+rang together in her voice. Kendall dashed after her while I went
+against a wet bough that all but threw me; but before he could reach her
+she flew up the steps, crying &quot;Hold my horse!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mine, too!&quot; I cried, springing up after her. How queerly the inner
+house stood alight and silent, its guests and inmates hidden, while
+outside pistols and carbines flashed and cracked. I came upon Charlotte,
+just recrossing her chamber to leave it, with her doll in her arms.
+&quot;Come!&quot; I cried, &quot;our line is falling back behind the house!&quot; Her head
+flinched aside, a bit of her hat flew from it, and a pistol-ball buried
+itself in the ceiling straight over my head. We ran downstairs together,
+pulling, pushing and imploring each other in the name of honor, duty and
+heaven to let him--let her--go out first through the bright hall door.
+Kendall was not in sight, but in a dim half-light a few yards off we saw
+Oliver. He was afoot, bending low, and gliding toward us with his
+revolver in his left hand. He fired as I did; her clutch spoiled my aim;
+with eager eyes she straightened to her finest height, cried &quot;Richard!
+tell Lieutenant Ferry he--&quot; and with a long sigh sank into my arms. A
+rush of hoofs sounded behind Oliver, he glanced up, and Ferry's blade
+fell across his brow and launched him face upward to the ground. I saw
+a bunch of horses, with mine, at the foot of the steps, and a bunch of
+men at the top; Ferry snatched Charlotte's limp form from me and said
+over his shoulder as he went down the steps, &quot;Go get him and bring him
+along, dead or alive!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I called a man to my aid and was unlucky in not getting the cool-headed
+Kendall, for my own wits were gone. The next moment all had left us and
+I was down on the ground toiling frantically, with no help but one hand
+of my mounted companion, to heave the stalwart frame of Oliver up to
+my saddle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, he's dead!&quot; cried the lad, letting him slide half-way down when we
+had all but got him up; &quot;don't you see he's dead? His head's laid wide
+open! He's as dead as a mackerel! I'll <em>swear</em> we ain't got any right to
+get captured trying to save a dead Yankee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was in despair; our horses had caught our frenzy and were plunging to
+be after their fellows, and a fresh body of the enemy were hurtling into
+the grove. Dropping my burden I vaulted up, and we scurried away, saved
+only by the enemy's healthy fear of an ambush. The first man we came up
+with was Quinn, with the rear-guard. &quot;Is he dead?&quot; he growled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dead as Adam!&quot; said I, and my comrade put in &quot;Head laid wide open!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Drop back into the ranks,&quot; said Quinn to him. &quot;Smith, ride on to
+Lieutenant Ferry. Corporal,&quot;--to a man near him--&quot;you know the way so
+well, go with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The two of us sprang forward. How long or what way we went I have now
+no clear idea, but at length we neared again the grapevine ferry. The
+stream was swollen, we swam our horses, and on the farther side we found
+Kendall waiting. To the corporal's inquiry he replied that Ferry had
+just passed on. &quot;You know Roy's; two miles off the Plank Road by the
+first right? He expects to stop there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she alive, Kendall?&quot; I interrupted. &quot;Is she alive?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said he, to some further question of the corporal; &quot;I'm to wait
+here for the command.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she alive, Kendall?&quot; I asked again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, Smith.&quot; He scanned my dripping horse. &quot;Your saddle's slipped,
+Smith. Yes, she's alive.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLVIII" id="XLVIII">XLVIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS RIGHT ARM</strong></p>
+
+<p>&quot;There they are!&quot; said the corporal and I at the same moment, when we
+had been but a few minutes on the Plank-road. Two men were ahead of us
+riding abreast, and a few rods in front of them was a third horseman,
+apparently alone. Two others had pushed on, one to the house, the other
+for surgical aid. The two in the rear knew us and let us come up
+unchallenged; the corporal stayed with them, and I rode on to my
+leader's side.</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte lay in his double clasp balanced so lightly on the horse's
+crest as hardly to feel the jar of his motion, though her head lay as
+nearly level with it as Ferry's bending shoulders and the hollow of his
+lowered right arm would allow; from under his other arm her relaxed
+figure, in its long riding-skirt, trailed down over his knee and
+stirrup; her broad limp hat, as if it had been so placed in sport, hung
+at his back with its tie-ribbons round his throat, while the black
+masses of her hair spread in ravishing desolation over and under his
+supporting arm. Her face was fearfully pale, the brows glistened with
+the damp of nervous shock, and every few moments she feebly brought a
+handkerchief to her lips to wipe away the blood that rose to them with
+every sigh. Steadfastly, except when her eyes closed now and then in
+deathly exhaustion, her gaze melted into his like a suffering babe's
+into its mother's. From time to time a brief word passed between them,
+and with joy I noticed that it was always in French; I hoped with my
+whole heart and soul that they had already said things, and were saying
+things yet, which no one else ought to hear. I waited some time for his
+notice, and when he gave it it was only by saying to her in a full voice
+and in English &quot;Dick Smith is here, alongside of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her response was a question, which he repeated: &quot;Is he hurt? no, Richard
+never gets hurt. Shall he tell us whatever he knows?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He bent low for the faint reply, and when it came he sparkled with
+pride. &quot;'It matters little,' she says, 'to either of us, now.' Give your
+report; but <em>I</em> tell you&quot;--there came a tiger look in his eyes--&quot;there
+is now no turning back; we shall go on.&quot; I answered with soft elation:
+&quot;My news needn't turn you back: Oliver is dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He drew a long breath, murmured &quot;My God!&quot; and then suddenly asked &quot;You
+found him so, or--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We found him so; had to leave him so; head laid wide open; we were
+about to be captured--thought the news would be better than nothing--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly, yes, certainly. Now I want you to ride to the brigade camp
+and telegraph Miss Harper this: 'She needs you. Come instantly.
+Durand.'&quot;--I repeated it to him.--&quot;Right,&quot; he said. &quot;Send that first;
+and after that--here is a military secret for you to tell to General
+Austin; I think you like that kind, eh? Tell him I would not send it
+verbally if I had my hands free. You know that regiment at whose
+headquarters we saw them singing; well, tell him they are to make a move
+to-day, a bad mistake, and I think if he will stay right there where he
+is till they make it, we can catch the whole lot of them. As soon as
+they move I shall report to him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Two gasping words from Charlotte brought his ear down, and with a
+worshipping light in his eyes he said to her &quot;Yes,--yes!&quot; and then to
+me, &quot;Yes, I shall report to him <em>in person</em>. Now, Smith, the top of
+your speed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Reveill&eacute; was sounding as I entered the camp. In the middle of my story
+to the General--&quot;Saddle my horse,&quot; he said to an attendant, &quot;and send
+Mr. Gholson to me. Yes, Smith, well, what then?&quot;--I resumed, but in a
+minute--&quot;Mr. Gholson, good-morning. My compliments to Major Harper, Mr.
+Gholson, and ask him if he wouldn't like to take a ride with me; and
+let me have about four couriers; and send word to Colonel Dismukes that
+I shall call at his headquarters to see him a moment, on my way out of
+camp. Now, Smith, you've given me the gist of the matter, haven't you?
+Oh, I think you have; good-morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson had helped me get the despatch off to Miss Harper, whose coming
+no one could be more eager to hasten. Before leaving camp I saw him
+again. He was strangely reticent; my news seemed to benumb and sicken
+him. But as I remounted he began without connection--&quot;You see, she'll be
+absolutely alone until Miss Harper gets there; not a friend within call!
+<em>He</em> won't be there, she won't let him stay; she dislikes him too much;
+I <em>know</em> that, Smith. Why, Smith, she wouldn't ever 'a' let him carry
+her off the field if she'd been conscious; she'd sooner 'a' gone to Ship
+Island, or to death!&quot; He looked as though he would rather she had. His
+tongue, now it had started, could not stop. &quot;Ned Ferry can't stay by
+her; he mustn't! he hadn't ought to use around anywheres near her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I gave a sort of assent--attended with nausea--and turned to my saddle,
+but he clung. &quot;Why, how can he hang around that way, Smith, and he a
+suitor who's just killed her husband? Of course, now, he'd ought to know
+he can't ever be one henceforth. I'm sorry for him, but--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning,&quot; I interrupted, quite in the General's manner, and made a
+spirited exit, but it proved a false one; one thing had to be said, and
+I returned. &quot;Gholson, if she should be worse hurt than--&quot; &quot;Ah! you're
+thinking of the chaplain; I've already sent him. Yonder he goes, now;
+you can show him the way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Understand,&quot; I said as I wheeled, &quot;I fully expect her to recover.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, oh, yes!&quot; replied my co-religionist, with feverish zest; &quot;we must
+have faith--for her sake! But o--oh! Smith, what a chastening judgment
+this is against dancing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I moved away, looking back at him, and seeing by his starved look how he
+was racking his jaded brain for some excuse to go with me, I honestly
+believe I was sorry for him. The chaplain was a thick-set, clean-shaven,
+politic little fellow whose &quot;Good-mawning, brothah?&quot; had the heavy
+sweetness of perfumed lard. We conversed fluently on spiritual matters
+and also on Ned Ferry. He asked me if the Lieutenant was &quot;a believer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why,&quot; said I, &quot;as to that, Lieutenant Ferry believes there's something
+right about everything that's beautiful, and something wrong about
+everything that isn't. Now, of course that's a very dangerous idea, and
+yet--&quot; So I went on; ah me! the nightmare of it hangs over me yet,
+&quot;religionist&quot; though I am, after a fashion, unto this day. In Ferry's
+defence I maintained that only so much of any man's religion as fitted
+him, and fitted him not as his saddle or his clothes, but as his nervous
+system fitted him, was really his, or was really religion. I said I knew
+a man whose ready-made religion, small as it was, bagged all over him
+and made him as grotesque as a child in his father's trousers. The
+chaplain tittered so approvingly that I straightened to spout again, but
+just then we saw three distant figures that I knew at a glance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There he is, now!--Excuse me, sir--&quot; I clapped in the spurs, but the
+chaplain clattered stoutly after me. The two horsemen moving from us
+were the General and Major Harper, and the one meeting them was Ned
+Ferry. Between the three and us rose out of a hollow the squad of
+couriers. And yonder came the sun.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="XLIX" id="XLIX">XLIX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A CRUEL BOOK AND A FOOL OR TWO</strong></p>
+
+<p>I could see by Ferry's face that there was no worse news. He met me
+aside, and privately bade me go to Roy's (where Charlotte was). &quot;Kendall
+is there,&quot; he said; &quot;I leave you and him in charge. That will rest your
+horses. Kendall has your Yankee horse, his own is sick. You and Kendall
+get all the sleep you can, you may get none to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant,&quot; I began eagerly as he was drawing away, &quot;is--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes! oh, yes, yes!&quot; His eyes danced, and a soft laugh came, as happy as
+a child's. &quot;The surgeon is yonder, he will tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This person Kendall and I had the luck to meet at the Roy's
+breakfast-table. &quot;Yes, left lung,&quot; he said. &quot;No, hardly 'perforated,'
+but the top deeply grazed.&quot; The ball, he said, had passed on and out,
+and he went into particulars with me, while I wondered if Kendall knew,
+as I did, what parts of the body the pleura, the thorax, the clavicle
+and the pyemia were.</p>
+
+<p>We lay down to sleep on some fodder in the Widow Roy's stable, while
+around three sides of the place, in a deep wooded hollow, Quinn and the
+company, well guarded by hidden videttes, drowsed in secret bivouac. I
+dreamed. I had feared I should, and it would have been a sort of bitter
+heart's-ease to tell Kendall of my own particular haunting trouble. For
+now, peril and darkness, storm, hard riding, the uproar and rage of
+man-killing, all past and gone, my special private wretchedness came
+back to me bigger than ever, like a neglected wound stiffened and
+swollen as it has grown cold. But Kendall would not talk, and when I
+dreamed, my dream was not of Camille. It seemed to me there was a hot
+fight on at the front, and that I, in a sweat of terror, was at the
+rear, hiding among the wagons and telling Gholson pale-faced lies as to
+why I was there. All at once Gholson became Oliver, alive,
+bloody-handed, glaring on me spectrally, cursing, threatening, and
+demanding his wife. His head seemed not &quot;laid wide open,&quot; but to have
+only a streak of the skull bared by Ferry's glancing left-cut and a
+strip of the scalp turned inside out. C&eacute;cile drew his head down and
+showed it to me, in a transport of reproaches, as though my false report
+had wronged no one else so ruinously as her.</p>
+
+<p>I awoke aghast. If Kendall had still been with me I might, in the first
+flush of my distress, have told my vision; but in the place where
+Kendall had lain lay Harry Helm. Kendall was gone; a long beam of
+afternoon sunlight shone across my lair through a chink in the log
+stable. I sprang half up with an exclamation, and Harry awoke with a
+luxurious yawn and smile. Kendall, he said, had left with the company,
+which had marched. Quinn was in command and had told Harry that he was
+only going to show the enemy that there was no other hostile force in
+their front, and get himself chased away southeastward.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know whether he was telling me the truth or not,&quot; said Helm, as
+we led our saddled horses toward the house; &quot;I reckon he didn't want me
+alongside of him with this arm in a sling.&quot; The hand was bad; lines of
+pain were on the aide's face. He had taken the dead Louisianian home,
+got back to camp, and ridden down here to get the latest news concerning
+Charlotte. Kendall had already given him our story of the night; I had
+to answer only one inquiry. &quot;Oh, yes,&quot; was my reply, &quot;head laid wide
+open!&quot; But to think of my next meeting with Ned Ferry almost made
+me sick.</p>
+
+<p>Harry was delighted. &quot;That lays their way wide open--Ned's and hers!
+Smith, some God-forsaken fool brought a chaplain here to talk religion
+to her! He hasn't seen her--Doctor wouldn't let him; but he's here yet,
+and--George! if I was them I'd put him to a better use than what he came
+here for, and I'd do it so quick it would make his head swim!&quot; He went
+on into all the arguments for it; the awkwardnesses of Charlotte's new
+situation, her lack of means for even a hand-to-mouth daily existence,
+and so on. Seeing an ambulance coming in through the front gate, and in
+order not to lose the chance for my rejoinder, I interrupted.
+&quot;Lieutenant, she will not allow it! She will make him wait a proper time
+before he may as much as begin a courtship, and then he will have to
+begin at the beginning. She's not going to let Ned Ferry narrow or lower
+her life or his--no, neither of them is going to let the other do
+it--because a piece of luck has laid the way wide open!&quot; I ended with a
+pomp of prophecy, yet I could hear Ned Ferry saying again, with
+Charlotte's assenting eyes in his, &quot;There is no turning back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The driver of the ambulance did not know why he had been ordered to
+report here, but when the Widow Roy came to the door she brought
+explanation enough. A courier had come to her and gone again, and the
+chaplain and the surgeon and every one else of any &quot;army sort&quot; except us
+two had &quot;put out,&quot; and she was in a sad flurry. &quot;The Lieutenant,&quot; she
+said, &quot;writes in this-yeh note that this-yeh place won't be safe f'om
+the Yankees much longer'n to-day, and fo' us to send the wounded lady in
+the avalanch. Which she says, her own self, it'd go rough with her to
+fall into they hands again. My married daughter she's a-goin' with her,
+and the'd ought to be a Mr. Sm'--oh, my Lawdy! you ain't reg-lahly in
+the ahmy, air you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With some slave men to help us, Harry and I bore Charlotte out and laid
+her in the ambulance, mattress and all, on an under bedding of fodder.
+She had begged off from opiates, and was as full of the old starlight as
+if the day, still strong, were gone. I helped the married daughter up
+beside the driver, Harry and I mounted, and we set forth for the
+brigade camp. Mrs. Roy's daughter had with her a new romance, which she
+had been reading to Charlotte. Now she was eager to resume it, and
+Charlotte consented. It was a work of some merit; I have the volume yet,
+inscribed to me on the fly-leaf &quot;from C.O.,&quot; as I have once already
+stated, in my account of my friend &quot;The Solitary.&quot; At the end of a mile
+we made a change; Harry rode a few yards ahead with an officer who
+happened to overtake us, I took the reins from the ambulance driver, and
+he followed on my horse; I thought I could drive more smoothly than he.</p>
+
+<p>And so I began to hear the tale. I was startled by its strong reminder
+of Charlotte's own life; but Charlotte answered my anxious glance with a
+brow so unfretted that I let the reading go on, and so made a cruel
+mistake. At every turning-point in the story its reader would have
+paused to talk it over, but Charlotte, with a steadily darkling brow,
+murmured each time &quot;Go on,&quot; and I was silent, hoping that farther along
+there would be a better place to stop for good. Not so; the story's
+whirling flood swept us forward to a juncture ever drawing nearer and
+clearer, clearer and crueler, where a certain man would have to choose
+between the woman he loved and that breadth and fruitfulness of life to
+which his splendid gifts imperiously pointed him. Oh, you story-tellers!
+Every next page put the question plainer, drove the iron deeper: must a
+man, or even may a man, wed his love, when she stands between him and
+his truest career, a drawback and drag upon his finest service to his
+race and day? And, oh, me! who let my eye quail when Charlotte searched
+it, as though her own case had brought that question to me before ever
+we had seen this book. And, oh, that impenetrable woman reading! Her
+husband was in Lee's army, out of which, she boasted, she would steal
+him in a minute if she could. She was with us, now, only because, at
+whatever cost to others, she was going where no advancement of the
+enemy's lines could shut her off from him; and so stop reading a moment
+she must, to declare her choice for Love as against all the careers on
+earth, and to put that choice fairly to shame by the unworthiness of her
+pleadings in its defence. I intervened; I put her grovelling arguments
+aside and thrust better ones in, for the same choice, and then, in the
+fear that they were not enough, stumbled into special pleading and
+protested that the book itself had put the question unfairly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shut it,&quot; said Charlotte, with a sigh like that which had risen when
+the lead first struck her. &quot;If I could be moved ever so little,--&quot;
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>I had the driver tie my horse behind the vehicle and resume the lines.
+Then the soldier's wife and I moved Charlotte, and when the reader began
+to handle the book again wishfully our patient said, with the kindest
+voice, &quot;Read the rest of it to yourself; I know how it will end; it will
+end to please you, not as it ought; not as it ought.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a while we went in silence, and she must have seen that my heart was
+in a rage, for with suffering on her brow, amusement on her lips, and a
+sweet desperation in her eyes, she murmured my name. &quot;Richard:--what
+fun it must have been to live in those old Dark Ages--when all you had
+to do--was to turn any one passion into--one splendid virtue--at the
+expense--of all the rest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could answer pleadingly that it were far better not to talk now. But
+she would go on, until in my helplessness I remarked how beautiful the
+day had been. Her eyes changed; she looked into mine with her calm
+inward-outward ken, and once more with smiling lips and suffering brow
+murmured, &quot;Yes.&quot; I marvelled she should betray such wealth of meaning to
+such as I; yet it was like her splendid bravery to do it.</p>
+
+<p>At the brigade's picket, where I was angry that Ferry did not meet us,
+and had resumed the saddle and stretched all the curtains of the
+ambulance, who should appear but Scott Gholson. Harry and I were riding
+abreast in advance of the ambulance. Gholson and he barely said
+good-evening. I asked him where was Lieutenant Ferry, and scarcely noted
+his words, so promptly convinced was I by their mere tone that he had
+somehow contrived to get Ferry sent on a distant errand. &quot;Is she
+better?&quot; he inquired; &quot;has the hemorrhage stopped?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's begun again,&quot; growled Harry, who wanted both of us to suffer all
+we could. Gholson led us through the camp. A large proportion of the men
+were sleeping when as yet it was hardly night.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has the brigade got marching orders?&quot; I asked, and he said the three
+regiments had, though not the battery. He passed over to me two pint
+bottles filled, corked, and dangling from his fingers by a stout double
+twine on the neck of each. &quot;Every man has them,&quot; he said; &quot;hang one on
+each side of your belt in front of your pistol.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I held them up and scowled from them to Harry, and we both laughed, so
+transparent was Gholson's purpose to get every one away from our patient
+who yearned to be near her. &quot;One in front of each pistol,&quot; I said, so
+tying them; &quot;but use the pistols first, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; replied Gholson, &quot;pistols first, and then the turpentine.&quot;
+Whereat Harry and I exchanged glances again, it came so pat that Scott
+Gholson should be a dispenser of inflammables. At a house a mile behind
+the camp the surgeon stood waiting for us. He frowned at me the instant
+he saw Charlotte, and I heard him swear. As we bore her in with Gholson
+and me next her head she murmured to him:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Gholson, when does the command move?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At twelve,&quot; he replied, and I bent and softly added &quot;That's why--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she said, with a quick, understanding look, and wiped her lips as
+daintily as if it were with wine they were crimsoned.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="L" id="L">L</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE BOTTOM OF THE WHIRLWIND</strong></p>
+
+<p>On my way back through camp with Gholson I saw old Dismukes. He called
+me to him, quit his cards, and led me into his tent. There, very
+beguilingly, he questioned me at much length, evidently seeking to draw
+from the web of my replies the thread of Ferry's and Charlotte's story;
+and as I saw that he believed in both of them with all his brutal might,
+I let him win a certain success. &quot;Head laid wide open!&quot; he said
+gleefully, and boiled over with happy blasphemings.</p>
+
+<p>I left him, found supper, and had been long asleep tinder a tree, when I
+grabbed savagely at some one for silently shaking me, and found it was
+Ned Ferry. His horse's bridle was in his hand; his face was more filled
+with the old pain than I had ever seen it; he spoke low and hurriedly.
+&quot;Come, tell me what this means.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In an envelope addressed to him in the handwriting I had first seen at
+Lucius Oliver's I found a scripture-text, a heading torn from a tract
+which the chaplain may have sent in to Charlotte in the morning. I
+turned it to the light of my fire. Under this printed line she had
+pencilled her name.</p>
+
+<p>I asked if he had seen her. &quot;Ah, no! the Doctor has drugged her to
+sleep; but that woman who came with you was still in the parlor, reading
+a book, and she gave me this. What does it mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant,&quot; I replied, choking with dismay, &quot;why mind her meanings
+now? Ought you not rather to ignore them? She is fevered, dejected,
+overwrought. Why, sir, she is the very woman to say and mean things now
+which she would never say or mean at any other time!&quot; But my tone must
+have shown that I was only groping in desperation after anything
+plausible, and he waved my suggestions away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Doctor says that woman has been reading her an exciting story.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, and that helps to account--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Richard, it helps the wrong way; <em>I know that story</em>. After hearing
+that story she is, yes! the one woman of all women to send me <em>this</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took it again. The signature was extended in full, with the surname
+blackly underlined. The first clause of the print, too, was so treated.
+&quot;<em>Keep thy heart</em>,&quot; it read; &quot;<em>Keep thy heart</em> with all diligence; for
+out of it are the issues of life.--Charlotte <em>Oliver</em>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Lieutenant, that is just what you have done--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You think so? But I <em>have done</em>. I will keep it no longer! Ah, I never
+kept it; 'twas she! Without taking it from me she kept it--'with all
+diligence'; otherwise I should have lost it--and her, too--and all that
+is finest and hardest to keep--long ago. Give me that paper; come;
+saddle up; you may go with me if you want, as my courier.&quot; No bugle had
+sounded, yet the whole camp was softly and diligently astir. We rode
+toward the staff tents; the pulse of enterprise enlivened him once more,
+though he clung to the same theme. &quot;I have <em>her</em> heart now, Smith, and I
+will keep <em>that</em> with all diligence, for out of <em>that</em> are the issues
+of <em>my</em> life--if I live. And if I do live I will have her if I have to
+steal her even from herself, as last night from the Yankees.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Three hours later the stars still gleamed down through the balmy night
+above the long westward-galloping column of our brigade, that for those
+three hours had not slackened from the one unmitigated speed. The
+Federal regiment of whose plans Charlotte had apprised Ferry had been
+camped well to southward of this course, but in the day just past they
+had marched to the north, intending a raid around our right and into our
+rear. To-night they were resting in a wide natural meadow through the
+middle of which ran this road we were on. Around the southern edge of
+this inviting camp-ground by a considerable stream of water; the
+northern side was on rising ground and skirted by woods, and in these
+woods as day began to break stood our brigade, its presence utterly
+unsuspected in all that beautiful meadow whitened over with lane upon
+lane of the tents of the regiment of Federal cavalry, whose pickets we
+had already silently surprised and captured. Now, as warily as quails,
+we moved along an unused, woodcutters' road and began to trot up a
+gentle slope beyond whose crest the forest sank to the meadow. We were
+within a few yards of this crest, when a small mounted patrol came up
+from the other side, stood an instant profiled against the sky, bent
+low, gazed, wheeled and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Over the crest we swept after them at a gallop and saw them half-way
+down an even incline, going at a mad run and yelling &quot;Saddle up! saddle
+up! the rebels are coming! saddle up!&quot; The bugles had begun the
+reveill&eacute;; it ceased, and the next instant they were sounding the call To
+Arms. It was only a call to death; already we were half across the short
+decline and coming like a tornado; in the white camp the bluecoats were
+running hither and yon deaf to the brave shoutings of their captains;
+above the swelling thunder of our hoofs rose the mad yell of the onset;
+and now carbines peal and pistols crack, and here are the tents so close
+you may touch them, and yonder is one already in a light blaze, and at
+every hand and under every horse's foot is the crouching, quailing,
+falling foe, the air is one crash of huzzas and groans, screams, shots
+and commands, horses with riders and horses without plunge through the
+flames and smoke of the burning tents, and again and again I see Ned
+Ferry with the flat of his unstained sword strike pistol or carbine from
+hands too brave to cast them tamely down, and hear him cry &quot;Throw down
+your arms! For God's sake throw down your arms and run to the road! run
+to the public road!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And still every moment men fell, and what could we do but smite while
+the foe's bugles still rang out from beside his unfurled standard.
+Thitherward sprang a swarm of us and found a brave group massed on foot
+around the colors, men and officers shoulder to shoulder in sudden
+equality. I saw Ned Ferry make straight for their commander, who alone
+had out his sabre; the rest stood with cocked revolvers, and at twenty
+yards fired low. Ferry's horse was hit; he reared, but the spur carried
+him on; his rider's sword flashed up and then down, the Federal's sabre
+turned it, the pistols cracked in our very faces, and down went my
+leader and his horse into the bottom of the whirlwind, right under the
+standard. I saw the standard-bearer bring down one of our men on top of
+Ferry, and as Ferry half regained his feet the Federal aimed point-blank
+against his breast. But it was I who fired and the Federal who fell. As
+he reeled I stretched out for the standard, and exactly together Ned
+Ferry and I seized it--the same standard we had seen the night before.
+But instantly, graciously, he thrust it from him. &quot;Tis yours!&quot; he cried
+in the midst of a general huzza, smiling up at it and me as I swung the
+trophy over my head. Then he turned ghastly pale, his smile faded to an
+unmeaning stare, two or three men leaped to his side, and he sank
+lifelessly into their arms beside his dying horse.</p>
+
+<p>I was swinging from the saddle to my leader's relief, when a familiar
+voice forbade it, and old Dismukes came by at a long trot, pointing
+forward with the reddest sabre I ever saw, and bellowing to right and
+left with oaths and curses &quot;Fall in, every man, on yon line! Ride to yon
+line and fall in, there's more Yankees coming! Ride down yonder and
+fa'--<em>here</em>, you, Legs, there! follow me, and shoot down every man that
+stops to plunder!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now I saw the new firing-line, out on our left, and as the rattle of it
+quickened, the Colonel galloped, still roaring out his rallying-cries
+and wiping his reeking blade across his charger's mane. Throngs gathered
+after him; the high-road swarmed with prisoners double-quicking to the
+rear under mounted guards; here, thinly stretched across the road at
+right-angles, were our horse-holders, steadily, coolly falling back;
+farther forward, yet vividly near, was our skirmish-line, crackling and
+smoking, and beyond it the enemy's, in the edge of a wood, not yet quite
+venturing to fling itself upon us. We passed General Austin standing,
+mounted, at the top of the rise, with a number of his staff about him.
+Minie balls had begun to sing about them and us, and some officer was
+telling me rudely I had no business bringing that standard--when
+something struck like a sledge high up on my side, almost in the
+arm-pit; I told one of our men I was wounded and gave him the trophy,
+our horse-holders suddenly came forward, every man afoot rose into his
+saddle, and my horse wheeled and hurried rearward at a speed I strove in
+vain to check. Then the old messmate to whom I had said good-bye at this
+very hour just a week before, came and held me by the right arm, while I
+begged him like a drunk-and-disorderly to let me go and find Ned Ferry.</p>
+
+<p>But he said Lieutenant Ferry was in a captured ambulance ahead of us and
+of our hundreds of prisoners, that a full creek and a burning bridge
+were between us and the foe, and that the fight was over.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LI" id="LI">LI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>UNDER THE ROOM WHERE CHARLOTTE LAY</strong></p>
+
+<p>The fight was over only in degree. Our brigade was drawing away into the
+north and the enemy were pressing revengefully after them. Our hundreds
+of prisoners and our few wounded were being taken back eastward over the
+road by which we had come in the night, and even after we had turned
+into it I saw a Yankee shell kill a wounded man and his horse not thirty
+yards from me.</p>
+
+<p>Before we had gone another mile I met Harry Helm. The General had left
+him in camp with flat orders to remain, but at daylight he had ridden
+out to find us. He was in two tremendous moods at once; lifted to heaven
+on the glory of our deeds, yet heart-broken over the fate of Ned Ferry.
+&quot;Surgeon's told him he can't live, Dick! And all the effect that's
+had--'No opiates, then, Doctor,' s'e, 'till I get off these two or three
+despatches.' So there he lies in that ambulance cross-questioning
+prisoners and making everybody bring him every scrap of information, as
+if he were General Austin and Major Harper rolled into one and they were
+wounded instead of him--By George! Dick, he knows you're hit and just
+how you're hit, and has sent me to find you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said I thought I could gallop if Harry could, and in a few minutes we
+were up with the ambulance. It had stopped. There were several men about
+it, including Sergeant Jim and Kendall, which two had come from Quinn,
+and having just been in the ambulance, at Ferry's side, were now
+remounting, both of them openly in tears. &quot;Hello, Kendall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, Smith.&quot; He turned sharply from me, horse and all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-morning, sergeant, is Lieutenant Ferry--worse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant only jabbed in the spurs, and leapt away with Kendall,
+bearing despatches to the brigade. Harry, looking back to me from the
+ambulance, called softly, &quot;All right again; it was only a bad swoon!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, Smith,&quot; said some one whom I was too sick and dizzy to
+recognize, &quot;one of those prisoners says he saw Oliver dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They say two or three men sprang to catch me, but the first thing I knew
+was that the ambulance was under way and I in it on my back within
+elbow-touch of Ferry, looking up into a surgeon's face. &quot;How's the
+Lieutenant?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh--getting on, getting on,&quot; he replied. Doctors think patients are
+fools.</p>
+
+<p>In a parlor under the room where Charlotte lay they made a bed for Ferry
+and one for me, and here, lapped in luxury and distinction, I promptly
+fell asleep, and when I reopened my eyes it was again afternoon. In the
+other bed Ferry was slumbering, and quite across the room, beside a
+closed door, sat C&eacute;cile and Camille. The latter tiptoed to me. Her
+whispers were as soft as breathing, and when I answered or questioned,
+her ear sank as near as you would put a rose to smell it. &quot;The
+Lieutenant, sleeping? yes, this hour past; surgeons surprised and more
+hopeful. Miss Estelle? in another room with other wounded. Her aunt?
+upstairs with Charlotte, who was--oh--getting on, getting on.&quot; That made
+me anxious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does Charlotte,&quot; I asked, &quot;know--everything?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Camille allowed herself all the motions of a laugh, and said &quot;No, not
+quite everything;&quot; and then with solemn tenderness she added that
+Charlotte knew about Ferry. &quot;And she knows about <em>you,&quot;</em> the whisperer
+went on; &quot;they all know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thought she was alluding to the verses, and had an instant of terror
+and rage before I saw what she meant. She glided back to the door and
+the two opened it an inch or so to answer some inquirer without. I saw
+her no more until bedtime, when she stood at her aunt's elbow to hand
+and hold things, while Miss Harper, to my all but screaming
+embarrassment, bared the whole upper half of one side of me and washed
+and dressed my wound anew. Ferry it was imperative to let alone, but
+when I awoke the next morning there was a radiance of joy throughout all
+the house; for he had slept and improved. The next morning again he was
+ever so much stronger, and Harry Helm rode off in simulated disgust, not
+seeing &quot;any fun in hanging round girls who were hanging round
+other fellows.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Another day arose. A courier brought passes for our three or four other
+wounded to go home as soon as they were fit to travel, and by night they
+were all gone. At early bedtime came two surgeons of high rank all the
+way from Johnston's army up in Mississippi. General Austin had asked
+this favor by telegraph. Harry had been gone thirty-six hours, and Ferry
+was just asking if he had not yet got back, when the surgeons came in to
+the room. A pleasantry or two consumed a few moments. Then the surgeon
+in charge of us told of a symptom or two, to which they responded only
+&quot;hmm,&quot; and began the examination. Miss Harper sent her three nieces
+away. I lay and listened in the busy stillness. Presently one of the
+examiners murmured with a certain positiveness to the other, who after a
+moment's silence replied with conviction; Miss Harper touched our
+surgeon's arm inquiringly and he looked back in a glad way and nodded.
+Miss Harper nodded to me; they had located the ball! Now the
+conversation turned upon men and events of the day, while one of the
+visitors, with his back to the patient, opened a case of glittering
+knives. Presently the professional heads came so close together as quite
+to hide the patient; they spoke once or twice in a manly soothing tone.
+Miss Harper stroked my temples to keep me down, one of the busy ones
+spoke again, and lo! the thing was done, there was the ball in the
+basin. As the men of blood sped through their kind after-work the news
+flew to and fro; Camille wept,--since she could not hurrah,--C&eacute;cile told
+Charlotte, the heavenly-minded Estelle was confirmed in her faith, Miss
+Harper's black eyes, after a brief overflow, were keener and kindlier
+than ever, and as the surgeons spoke the word &quot;done,&quot; Ferry asked again
+if Harry had not got back yet. Pretty soon Harry did arrive, with news
+of great feats by our cavalry against our old enemy Grierson, in which
+Austin's brigade had covered themselves with glory, and in which he had
+had his own share; his hand was swelled as big as his heart. In all the
+Confederacy no houseful went to sleep that night in sweeter content. I
+sank into perfect bliss planning a double wedding.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LII" id="LII">LII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>SAME BOOK AND LIGHT-HEAD HARRY</strong></p>
+
+<p>The next day found me so robustly happy that I was allowed to dress and
+walk out to the front door. Three days later the surgeons were gone, all
+three, and at the approach of dew-fall C&eacute;cile and Harry, Camille and I,
+walked in a field-path, gathered hedge roses, and debated the problem of
+Mrs. Roy's daughter's book, which all of us were reading and none
+had finished.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A woman,&quot; I remarked, &quot;who, for very love of a man, can say to him, 'Go
+on up the hill without me, I have a ball and chain on my foot and you
+shall not carry them and me, you have a race to run,'--a woman so
+wonderfully good as to say that--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no!&quot; interrupted C&eacute;cile, with her killing Creole accent, &quot;not a
+woman so <em>good</em> to say that, only with the so-good <em>sanse</em> to say it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Harry was openly vexed. &quot;Well, either way! would any true man leave
+<em>that</em> woman behind?&quot; and I tried to put in that that was what I had
+been leading up to; but it makes me smile yet, to recall how jauntily
+she discomfited us both. She triumphed with the airy ease of a king-bird
+routing a crow in the upper blue. Camille had more than once told me
+that C&eacute;cile was wise beyond the hope of her two cousins to emulate her;
+which had only increased my admiration for Camille; yet now I began to
+see how the sisters came by their belief. In the present discussion she
+was easily first among the four of us. At the same time her sensuous
+graces also took unquestionable pre&euml;minence; city-bred though she was,
+she had the guise of belonging to the landscape, or, rather, of the
+landscape's belonging, by some fairy prerogative, to her. She seemed
+just let loose into the world, yet as ready and swift to make right use
+of it as any humming-bird let into a garden; as untimorous as any such,
+and as elusive. In this sultry June air she had all the animation both
+of mind and of frame that might have been expected of her on a keen,
+clear winter day. Her face never bore the same expression at the
+beginning and middle, or at either of these and the close, of any of her
+speeches, yet every change was lovely, the sign of a happy play of
+feeling, and proof of a mercurial intelligence. No report of them by
+this untrained pen would fully bear me out, and the best tribute I can
+offer is to avoid the task.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sweet mercy in her to change the subject, and tactful to change
+it to Charlotte, as if Charlotte were quite an unrelated theme. The
+cousins vied with each other ever so prettily in telling how beautiful
+the patient was on her couch of enfeeblement and pain, how her former
+loveliness had increased, and what new nobility it had taken on. That
+any such problem overhung her life as that which we had just been
+weighing, seemed never to have entered their thought, and if they had
+ever conceived of a passion already conscious between Charlotte and
+Ferry, they veiled the fact with charming feminine art.</p>
+
+<p>When we got back to the house Harry detained me on the veranda alone.
+Camille told me how long I might tarry. It was heaven to have her bit in
+my mouth, and I found it hard to be grum even when Harry beat with his
+good hand the rhythm of &quot;Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick,&quot; he said, suddenly grave as he walked me down the veranda, &quot;her
+cousin C&eacute;cile! isn't it awful? Now that poor girl's gone back to Ned's
+bedside; back to her torture! Why <em>do</em> they let her? My George! it's
+merciless! Has her aunt no eyes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Lieutenant, you don't know she loves him; there are signs, I
+admit; but proofs, no. She's lost color, and her curves are more
+slender, but, my goodness! a dozen things might account for that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick Smith,&quot;--my questioner worked himself up over the rail and sat out
+on the shelf that held the bucket of drinking-water and its gourd--&quot;do
+you imagine she didn't know, when we were talking about that book, that
+she was arguing against the union of Ned Ferry and Charlotte Oliver?
+<em>Didn't</em> she do it bravely! Richard, my friend, she couldn't have done
+it if she had suspected us of suspecting her. It's a bleeding pity! And
+yet you can't side with her, for I just swear Ned's got to have
+Charlotte Ol'--what? No, he won't overhear a blank word; here's his
+window shut, right here. He's got to have her, I say, and he's got to
+have her just as soon as the two of 'em can stand up together to be
+sworn in! Don't you say so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I replied that I was not aware of any one who did not say so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I can name several! I don't call Scott Gholson anybody, but
+there's Major Harper--No, I'm not talking too loud, Ned isn't hearing a
+word. Major Harper's so hot against this thing that he brought it up,
+with me, yesterday on the battlefield.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Major Harper doesn't really know her,&quot; I softly remarked.</p>
+
+<p>Harry swore with military energy. &quot;I told him he didn't, and he fairly
+snorted. <em>We</em> don't know her, he says; you nor I nor his sister nor his
+niece nor his daughters, oh, we don't know her at all; and neither do we
+know Ned; Ned has graceful manners, and she's a born actress, and we're
+simply infatuated by their romantic situation. Good Lordy! he got up on
+his Charleston pride-of-family like a circus-girl on stilts, and 'Edgard
+Ferry-Durand has got a great public career before him,' s's he, 'and no
+true friend will let him think of taking a wife who is all history and
+no antecedents, a blockade-runner, a spy, and the brand-new widow of a
+blackguard and a jayhawker she had run away from practically on her
+wedding-night.' Hy Jo'! the way he went on, you'd 'a' thought he was
+already Ned's uncle-in-l'--&quot; The speaker's face took a sudden
+distress--&quot;Great Caesar!&quot; He pointed up to the second-story front room
+and slipped down from the shelf just as Estelle came out to us with her
+aunt's message for me to come in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How's the fair patient?&quot; I hurried to ask as the three of us went.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Mr. Smith, she's actually been sitting up--in the twilight--at
+the open window--while Aunt Martha and I smoothed up her bed.&quot;
+Harry groaned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's still very weak,&quot; said Aunt Martha when we came to her; &quot;the
+moment her bed was made up she asked to lie down again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; softly exclaimed Camille, &quot;but, oh, aunt Martha, with such
+courage in those eyes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; privately asked the agonized Harry, &quot;what would you do if you
+were in my place; go and cut your throat from ear to ear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I said, as black as an executioner, &quot;but I wish you'd done it
+yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LIII" id="LIII">LIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>&quot;CAPTAIN, THEY'VE GOT US&quot;</strong></p>
+
+<p>More days slipped by. Neighbors pressed sweet favors upon us; calls,
+joyful rumors, delicacies, flowers. One day Major Harper paid us a
+flying visit, got kisses galore, and had his coat sponged and his
+buttons reanimated. In the small town some three miles northwest of us
+he was accumulating a great lot of captured stuff. On another day came
+General Austin and stayed a whole hour. Ferry took healing delight in
+these visits, asking no end of questions about the movements afield,
+and about the personal fortunes of everyone he knew. When the General
+told him Ferry's scouts were doing better without him than with him--&quot;I
+thought he would smile himself into three pieces,&quot; said the General at
+the supper-table.</p>
+
+<p>On a second call from Major Harper, when handed a document to open and
+read, he went through it carefully twice, and then dropping it on the
+coverlet asked--&quot;and Quinn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Quinn's turn will come.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Major, that is not fair to Quinn!&quot; said Ferry. Yet when he took up
+the paper again he gazed on it with a happy gravity; it made him a
+captain. &quot;By the by,&quot; he said, &quot;that Yankee horse that Dick Smith
+captured at Sessions's; I'd like to buy that horse from you, Major.&quot;
+They made the sale. &quot;And there's that captured ambulance still here,
+Major, with its team eating their heads off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I'm going to take that away with me to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This meant that Charlotte's negro man and his daughter, her maid, had
+come with her spring-wagon, and Harry and I would have liked the Major
+better if he had smiled at this point, as he did not. Yet he was most
+lovable; sent so kind a message up to Charlotte that Harry and I
+wondered; and received back from her a reply so gracious that--since we
+could not wonder--we worshipped. In the evening of that day Ferry and
+Charlotte were transferred, she into the room behind her, and he
+upstairs into the one out of which she was taken. That night a slave and
+his wife, belonging to the place, ran away to the enemy. If they should
+tell the Yankees Ned Ferry was here--! &quot;By Jo'!&quot; said Harry Helm, &quot;I'm
+glad I didn't cut my throat; I told that darkey, yesterday, Ned's name
+was O'Brien!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Toward the close of that day came tidings of the brigade's splendid work
+at a steamboat-landing on the Mississippi River, how they had stolen in
+by night between two great bodies of the enemy, burned a vast store of
+military supplies, and then brilliantly cut their way out; yet we were
+told to be ready to withdraw into Mississippi again as soon as our newly
+made captain could safely be moved. Pooh! what of that? Lee was on his
+way into Pennsylvania; the war was nearly over, sang the Harper girls,
+and we were the winners! They cheerily saw Helm and me, next morning,
+ride southward in search of further good news. At a cross-roads I
+proposed that we separate, and meet there again near the end of the day.
+He turned west; I went an hour's ride farther south and then turned
+west myself.</p>
+
+<p>When we met again I knew that he--while he did not know that I--had been
+to Gilmer's plantation. We wanted to see if the Federals had left a
+grave there. They had left three, and a young girl who had been one of
+the dancers told me she had seen Oliver's body carried off by two blue
+troopers who growled and cursed because they had been sent back to bury
+it. Neither Harry nor I mentioned the subject when we met at the
+cross-roads again, for we came on our horses' necks at a stretched out
+run; the Federals were rolling up from the south battalion after
+battalion, hoping to find Major Harper's store of supplies feebly
+guarded and even up with us for that steamboat-landing raid. Presently
+as we hurried northward we began to hear, off ahead of us on our left,
+the faint hot give-and-take of two skirmish lines. We came into the
+homestead grove at a constrained trot and found the ladies out on the
+veranda in liveliest suspense between scepticism and alarm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, they're fighting, now, on the edge of town,&quot; we said, &quot;but our
+boys will keep them there.&quot; Our host and hostess moaned their unbelief.
+&quot;However,&quot; added Harry, &quot;I'll go tell the old man to hitch up the little
+mules and--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You dawn't need,&quot; said C&eacute;cile, &quot;'tis done!&quot; and Camille confirmed her
+word, while the planter and his wife returned to the kitchen yard, where
+the servants were loading the smokehouse meat into a wagon to hide it in
+the woods; Miss Harper and Estelle went into the house, summoned by
+Charlotte's maid. On Ferry's chamber floor sounded three measured thumps
+of his scabbarded sword.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dick, you answer that,&quot; exclaimed Harry, reining in half wheeled; &quot;but
+keep him on his back, if you have to hold him down!&quot; He spurred away to
+learn whether we had better stay or fly. I threw my rein to Camille and
+flew up the hall stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Ferry lay in bed with three pillows behind him and his sheathed sword
+across his lap. &quot;Good-evening, Richard,&quot; he said, &quot;you are returned just
+in time; will you please hand me my two pistol' from yonder?--thank
+you.&quot; He laid one beside each thigh. &quot;Now please turn the head of my
+bed a little bit, to face the door--thank you; and now, good-bye. You
+hear those footstep' there in the room behind? she is dressing to go;
+the other ladies they are helping her. Richard, I place them in your
+charge; have them all ready to get into her wagon at a moment's notice,
+with you on your horse--and you better take that Jewett horse, too; he
+came to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated, but a single flash of authority from his eye was enough and
+I had passed half-way to the door, when, through the window over the
+front veranda, I saw a small body of horsemen trotting up through the
+grove. The dusk of the room hid me, but there was no mistaking them.
+&quot;Too late, Captain,&quot; I said, &quot;they've got us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How many do you see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About sixteen. Our two horses will be Yankees again to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! not certainly. Where is your carbine?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just outside this door. They know you're here, Captain, they're
+surrounding the house.&quot; As I reached toward the door I heard his sword
+crawl out, the doorknob clicked without my touching it, the door swung
+and closed again, and Charlotte Oliver was with us. The light of the
+western window shone full upon her; she was in the same dress, hat and
+all, in which I had seen her the night we rode together alone. Though
+wasted and pale, she betrayed a flush on either cheek and a smile that
+mated with the sweet earnest of her eyes. She tendered me my carbine,
+patted my hand caressingly, and glided onward to Ferry's bedside. With
+my back to them and my ear to the door I hearkened outward. In the front
+doorway below sounded the jingling tread of cavalry-boots and a clank
+of sabres.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LIV" id="LIV">LIV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE FIGHT IN THE DOORWAY</strong></p>
+
+<p>Charlotte's whisper came to me: &quot;Richard!&quot; Standing by Ferry's pillow
+she spoke for him. &quot;If they start upstairs come and stand like me, on
+the other side.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I nodded and slyly opened the door enough to pass half-way out. Some man
+was parleying with Miss Harper. &quot;Now, madam, you know you haven't locked
+up your parlor to maintain an abstract right; you've locked it up
+because you've got the man in there that I've come for.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whom have you come for, sir?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lieutenant O'Brien, of the rebel army. Shall I order this man to kick
+that door in? Answer quickly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir, there is no Lieutenant O'Brien in there, nor elsewhere in this
+house; there never has been.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stand aside, madam.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop, sir! I command you! There is no Lieutenant of any name on this
+place!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes there is; he goes by various names, but one of them is Ned
+Ferry. Sergeant, we'll kick together; now!&quot;--Bang!</p>
+
+<p>I leaned back into the room to say &quot;It's all right! Oh, but that sweet
+woman's a 'coon! Let them batter!&quot; As I thrust my head out again Miss
+Harper was exclaiming &quot;Oh, sirs, don't do that!&quot;--Bang!--&quot;For the honor
+of your calling and your flag--&quot; Bang!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's no Lieutenant in there.&quot; Bang!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Corporal, go find an axe or something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you need not, sirs, I'll unlock the door.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, be quick about it, and then stand clear; we don't want any woman
+hurt.&quot; The key rattled at the keyhole and then dropped to the floor.
+&quot;You did that by intention! Give me that key!&quot; He tried the lock. &quot;We've
+jammed it, corporal, but another good kick will fetch it;
+now!&quot;--Bang!--crash!--open flew the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I will be damned!&quot; said the officer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir,&quot; said Miss Harper, &quot;you give me no occasion to doubt it.&quot; She
+followed the men upstairs. &quot;Estelle, go back to your sister and cousin;
+and if you, my dear,&quot;--to our hostess--&quot;will kindly go also, and stay
+with them--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I closed the door. It had no key, but there was a small catch to the
+knob and I turned it on while the men were looking into the adjacent
+rooms. When they reached ours Miss Harper was again at their front.
+Inside, the three of us silently noted our strategic advantages: we were
+in the darkest part of the room, the bed's covering was a dull red,
+Ferry had on his shirt of black silk, the white pillows were hidden at
+his back, Charlotte and I were darkly clad, the light from our west
+window would be in our assailants' faces as they entered, and they would
+be silhouetted against a similar light from the hall's front. We
+noiselessly cocked our weapons and Charlotte and I each sank to one
+knee. &quot;The door is very thin,&quot; murmured Ferry, &quot;we can fire before they
+enter; they will get, anyhow, our smoke, and if they fire as they rush
+in we can aim under their flash.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was only then that I observed that Charlotte was armed. But the fact
+made her seem only the more a true woman, since I knew that only for her
+honor or his life would she ever take deadly aim. Her weapon was the
+slender revolver she had carried ever since the day which had made her
+Charlotte Oliver, the thing without which she never could have reached
+this hour of blissful extremity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In here there is a lady, ill,&quot; we heard Miss Harper say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she alone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry prompted in a whisper, the three of us cried &quot;Yes!&quot; and he added
+&quot;Pass one side from the door, Miss Harper, we are going to shoot
+through it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hello, in there! Lieutenant Ferry, of Ferry's scouts,&quot;--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>Captain</em> Ferry,&quot; retorted Miss Harper, and I echoed the amendment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damn the difference; I give you one half-minute, Captain Ferry, to say
+you surrender! If you weren't wounded I wouldn't give you that.
+Corporal, go get a log out of that fireplace downstairs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, shame!&quot; wailed Miss Harper, half-way down the hall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain,&quot; called Ferry, &quot;I give you one quarter-minute to get away from
+that door.&quot; He whispered to Charlotte, pointing to a panel of it higher
+than any one's head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sirs,&quot; we again heard Miss Harper cry, &quot;withhold! Captain Ferry,
+they have called in four more men!&quot; We heard the four downstairs coming
+at a run. &quot;Oh, sir--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go away, madam!&quot; bellowed the officer as his men thundered into the
+upper hall. &quot;Now, Captain Ferry, there are six of us here and three
+under each of your windows. Do you--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sir, the lady! the sick lady!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's his look-out, madam. If the sick lady isn't Charlotte Oli'--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if she is?&quot; called Ferry, depressing Charlotte's weapon to an aim
+barely breast high.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then throwing away your life won't save hers! Do you surren'--?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry made a quick gesture for her to shoot low, but she solemnly shook
+her head and fired through the top of the uppermost panel, and the
+assault came.</p>
+
+<p>The log burst the door in at a blow, Ferry and I fired, and our foes
+sprang in. Certainly they were brave; the doorway let them in only by
+twos, and the fire-log, falling under foot, became a stumbling-block;
+yet in an instant the room was ringing and roaring with the fray and
+benighted with its smoke. Their first ball bit the top of my shoulder
+and buried itself in the wall--no, not their first, but the first save
+one; for the bureau mirror stood in dim shade, and the Federal leader
+made the easy mistake of firing right into it. The error sealed his
+fate; Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of
+his followers. They replied hotly but blindly, and in a moment the room
+was void of assailants. Ferry started to spring from the bed, but
+Charlotte threw her arms about him, and as she pressed her head hard
+down on his breast I could not help but hear &quot;No, my treasure, my
+heart's whole treasure, no!&quot;</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LV" id="LV">LV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>RESCUE AND RETREAT</strong></p>
+
+<p>I sprang for the door, but the fire-log sent me sprawling with my
+shoulder on the threshold. As I went down I heard in the same breath the
+wounded officer wailing &quot;Go back! go in! there are only four of them!
+don't leave one alive!&quot; and Miss Harper all but screaming &quot;Our men! our
+men! God be praised, our men are coming, they are here! Fly spoilers,
+for your lives, fly!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And it was true. Their hoofs rumbled, their carbines banged, and their
+charge struck three sides of the house at once. Rising only to my
+elbows,--and how I did that much, stiffened with my wound, the doctors
+will have to explain,--I laid my cheek to my rifle, and the light of two
+windows fell upon my gunsights. Every blue-coat in the hall was between
+me and its rear window, but one besides the officer was wounded, and
+with these two three others were busy; only the one remaining man saw
+me. Twice he levelled his revolver, and twice I had almost lined my
+sights on him, but twice Miss Harper unaware came between us. A third
+time he aimed, fired and missed. I am glad he fired first, for our two
+shots almost made one report, and-he plunged forward exactly as I had
+done over the fire-log, except that he reached the floor dead.</p>
+<a name="imgseven" id="imgseven"></a><img src="008.jpg" alt="Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the arms of his followers." align="left" />
+
+<p>Thereupon came more things at once than can be told: Miss Harper's
+outcry of horror and pity; Charlotte's cry from the bedside--&quot;Richard!
+Richard!&quot; a rush of feet and shouts of rage in the hall below; and my
+leap to the head of the stairs, shouting to half a dozen gray-jackets
+&quot;Two men, no more! two men to guard prisoners, no more! go back, all but
+you two! go back!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A sabreless officer with a bandaged hand flew up the stair and into my
+face. It was Helm. &quot;The ladies! Smith, good God! Smith, where are
+the girls?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the smokehouse,&quot; cried Miss Harper from her knees beside the
+prostrate Federal officer; &quot;go bring them!--Richard, Charlotte is
+calling you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I ran to Ferry's door; Charlotte was leaning busily over his bared
+chest, while he, still holding a revolver in his right hand, caressed
+her arm with his left. &quot;Dick, his wound has opened again, but we must
+get him away at once anyhow. Isn't my wagon still here?--oh, thank God!
+there it comes now, I hear it in the back yard!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A Confederate waiting on Miss Harper with basin and towels barely dodged
+me as I sprang to the far end of the hall and shouted down into the yard
+for Harry. The little mules, true enough, were just rattling round a
+half turn at the lower hall's back door, having been in hiding behind
+the stables. A score or so of cavalry were boisterously hurrying off
+across the yard with a few captured horses and prisoners, and I had to
+call the Lieutenant angrily a second time, to make him hear me amid
+their din and a happy confusion which he was helping to keep up in a
+fairer group. For here were all the missing feminine members of the
+household, white and colored, and Harry was clamorous with joy,
+compassion and applause, while Camille and C&eacute;cile, pink with weeping,
+stepped out across the high doorsill of the smokehouse, leading Ned
+Ferry's horse and mine.</p>
+
+<p>However, there was not the urgency for instant flight that Charlotte had
+thought there was; night fell; a whole regiment of our mounted infantry
+came silently up from the rear of the plantation and bivouacked without
+lights behind a quarter of a mile of worm-fence; our two wounded and
+three unharmed prisoners, or Miss Harper's, I should say, for it was in
+response to her entreaties that the latter had thrown down their arms,
+were taken away; the dead man was borne out; lights glowed in every
+room, the servants returned to their tasks, a maddening fragrance came
+from the kitchen, and the three nieces flitted everywhere in their
+benign activities, never discovering the hurt on my shoulder until
+everything else on earth had been discovered, and then--&quot;Oh, Richard,
+Richard!&quot; from Estelle, with &quot;Reach-hard, Reach-hard!&quot; from C&eacute;cile, and
+&quot;Mr. Smith!&quot; from Camille, as they bathed and bound it. At length a
+surgeon arrived, gave a cheering opinion of Ferry and of Charlotte, and
+scolded Harry savagely for the really bad condition of his hand. Then
+sounds grew few and faint, our lights went out, we lay down fully
+dressed, and nearly all of us, for a while, slept.</p>
+
+<p>But about two in the morning Harry awakened me, murmuring &quot;Reach-hard!
+Reach-hard! come! our sick-train's moving. Ssh! General Austin's asleep
+in the next room!&quot; I asked where Ferry was. &quot;Already started,&quot; he
+whispered, &quot;--in the General's own ambulance, with Charlotte Oliver in
+hers, on a mattress, like Ned, and the four Harpers in theirs.&quot; While we
+stole downstairs he murmured on &quot;Our brigade's come up and General
+Austin will attack at daylight with this house as his headquarters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As we mounted I asked whither we were bound. &quot;Tangipahoa,&quot; he said;
+&quot;then by railroad to Brookhaven, and then out to Squire Wall's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the first streak of dawn our slow caravan caught the distant notes of
+the battle opening behind us. &quot;That's Fisher's battery!&quot; joyously cried
+the aide-de-camp as we paused and hearkened back. &quot;Well, thank the Lord,
+this time nobody's got to go back for her doll; she's got it with her; I
+saw her, just now, combing its hair.&quot; We descended into a woody hollow,
+the sounds of human strife died away, and field and forest offered us
+only beauty, fragrance, peace, and the love-songs of birds.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LVI" id="LVI">LVI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>H&Ocirc;TEL DES INVALIDES</strong></p>
+
+<p>A shattered crew we were when in the forenoon of the third day we
+reached our goal. Harry's hand was giving him less trouble, but both my
+small wounds were misbehaving as stoutly as their limitations would
+allow; my aches were cruel and incessant, my side was swollen and my
+shoulder hot. Miss Harper was &quot;really ill,&quot; said the surgeon, but for
+whose coming with us we should hardly have brought our whole number
+through alive. Both Ferry and Charlotte were in a critical condition.
+&quot;Take you in!&quot; said our tearfully smiling Mrs. Wall; &quot;why, we'd take yo'
+whole crowd in ef we had to go out and bunk undeh the trees owse'v's!...
+Oh, Mr. Smith, you po' <em>chi--ild!</em>... Oh, my Lawd! is this Lieutenant
+Do-wrong! Good Lawd, good Lawd! I think this waugh's gone on now jess
+long enough!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the house she gave the younger Harpers a second kiss all round. &quot;You
+po' dears, yo're hero-ines, now, and hencefo'th fo'evehmo'!&quot; Harry and I
+agreed they were; it was one of the few points on which we thought
+alike. We even agreed that Estelle's grasp of earthly realities was not
+so feeble as we had thought it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fact is,&quot; I said to him, on our first day at the Walls', as he was
+leaving the soldiers' room, where I sat under the surgeon's inspection,
+&quot;you were totally mistaken about her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I was,&quot; he replied; &quot;she's got more sense in a minute than
+Camille's got in a week,&quot; and shut the door between us.</p>
+
+<p>My blood leaped with rage, yet I sat perfectly calm, while the surgeon
+laughed like a hyena. &quot;As soon as you can let me go, Doctor,&quot; I frigidly
+said, &quot;I shall look up the Lieutenant. I consider that remark
+ungentlemanly, and his method of making it as worthy only of a coward.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The surgeon cackled again. &quot;If that man,&quot; I dispassionately resumed,
+&quot;was not perfectly sure that I am too honorable a gentleman to give Miss
+Camille the faintest hint of what he has said, sooner than say it he
+would go out and cut his throat from ear to ear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well! you oughtn't to get mad at him for thinking you a gentleman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He sha'n't take a low advantage of my being one. You think he's open
+and blunt--he's as sly as a mink. He praises the older sister at the
+younger's expense, when it's the younger one that he's so everlastingly
+stuck on that he can't behave <em>like</em> a gentleman to any man to whom she
+shows the slightest preference.&quot; We heard a coming step, but I talked
+on: &quot;Sense! poor simpleton! he knows he hasn't got&quot;--the door opened and
+Harry stepped partly in, but I only raised my voice,--&quot;hasn't got as
+much brains in his whole head as there is in one of her tracks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With something between a sob, a sputter and a shriek he shut himself out
+again. Harry was never deep but in a shallow way, and never shallow
+without a certain treacherous depth. When Ned Ferry the next day
+summoned me to his bedside I went with a choking throat, not doubting I
+was to give account of this matter,--until I saw the kindness of his
+pallid face. Then my silly heart rose as much too high as it had just
+been too low and I thought &quot;Charlotte has surrendered!&quot; All he wanted
+was to make me his scribe. But when we were done he softly asked, &quot;That
+business of yours we talked about on the Plank-road--it looks
+any better?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bit my lip, turned away and shook my head. &quot;Well, anyhow,&quot; he said,
+&quot;I am told there is nobody in your way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I faced him sharply--&quot;Who told you that?&quot; and felt sure he would name
+the tricky aide-de-camp. But he pointed to the room overhead, which
+again, as in the other house, was Charlotte's. I blushed consciously
+with gratitude. &quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;it makes me happy to see you beginning
+again to get well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Within the same hour I met unexpectedly two other persons. First, Harry
+Helm; who, before I could speak, was deluging me with words, telling me
+for the twentieth time how, on that evening of the indoor fight, coming
+with a platoon of Mississippians which he had procured merely as a
+guard, he was within a hundred yards of the house before our shots in
+the bedroom told him he was riding to a rescue. Then suddenly he began
+to assure me that in what he had said about the two sisters he had
+sought only to mislead the surgeon, who, he declared, was more utterly
+dead-gone on Camille than both of us put together. We parted, and
+within the next five minutes I confronted the maiden herself.</p>
+
+<p>She came from upstairs with a mixed armful of papers, books and sewing,
+said she had been with Charlotte, and said no more, only made a
+mysterious mouth. I inquired how Charlotte was. She shrugged, sank into
+a seat on the gallery, let her arm-load into her lap, and replied, &quot;Ah!
+she lies up there and smiles and smiles, and calls us pet names, and
+says she's perfectly contented, and then cannot drop half asleep without
+looking as though she were pressing a knife into her own heart. Oh,
+Dick, what is the matter with her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you think,--Camille?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh--I--I'm afraid to say it--even to Estelle, or aunt Martha, or--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say it to me,&quot; I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, if I could only trust you!&quot; she said, shaking her head sadly and
+trying to lift her arm's burden again without taking her eyes from mine.
+It went to her feet in a landslide, and out of one of the books
+fluttered three stems of sweet-pea each bearing two mated blossoms. I
+knew them in an instant, and in the next I had them. She would not let
+me pile the fallen freight anywhere but into her arm again, nor recover
+her eye before she was fully re-laden. Then she set her lips freezingly
+and said &quot;Now give me back my flowers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I meekly gave them and she turned to go into the house; her head
+gradually sank forward as she went, and her unparagoned ear and neck
+flushed to a burning red. On the threshold, by some miscalculation, her
+burdened arm struck the jamb, and the whole load fell again. I sprang
+and began to gather the stuff into a chair, but she walked straight on
+as though nothing had occurred, and shut the nearest door behind her.</p>
+
+<p>In those days used to come out to see us Gregory, in his long-skirted
+black coat and full civilian dress; of whom I have told a separate
+history elsewhere. Very pointed was Camille's neglect of both Harry and
+me, to make herself lovely to the dark and diffident new-comer, while
+Estelle positively pursued me with compensatory sweetness; and Gregory,
+whenever he and I were alone together, labored to reassure me of his
+harmlessness by expatiating exclusively upon the charms of C&eacute;cile. She
+seemed to him like a guardian angel of Ferry and Charlotte, while yet
+everything she said or did was wholly free from that quality of
+other-worldliness which was beautiful in Estelle, but which would not
+have endured repetition in the sister or the cousin. There Harry and I,
+also, once more agreed. C&eacute;cile never allowed herself to reflect a spirit
+of saintliness, or even of sacrifice, but only of maidenly wisdom and
+sweet philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it weren't for Charlotte,&quot; whispered the Lieutenant, &quot;I could swear
+she was created for Ned Ferry!&quot; and when I shook my head he, too,
+declared &quot;No, no! if ever a match was made on high Charlotte was made
+for him and he for Charlotte; but, oh, Lord, Lord! Reach-hard Thorndyke
+Smith, how is this thing going to end?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That was the problem in the mind of every looker on, and the lookers-on
+were legion; the whole wide neighborhood came to see us. Gregory and
+others outstayed their furloughs; the surgeon lingered shamelessly. Of
+course, there were three girls besides Charlotte, and it was pure
+lying--as I told Helm--for some of those fellows to pretend that Captain
+Ferry's problem was all they stayed for; and yet it was the one
+heart-problem which was everybody's, and we were all in one fever to see
+forthwith a conclusion which &quot;a decent respect to the opinions of
+mankind&quot; required should not come for months.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pooh!&quot; said Harry, &quot;'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind'
+requires just the reverse!&quot; and the surgeon avowed that it was required
+by a decent respect to her powers of endurance; he was every day afraid
+her slow improvement would stop and she would begin to sink. He admitted
+the event could wait, but he wished to gracious we could have
+her decision.</p>
+
+<p>I said suppose it should be negative. &quot;Oh, it won't!&quot; exclaimed both he
+and Harry. &quot;When it comes to the very point--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gregory's approach interrupted us, but I remembered a trait in Charlotte
+of which I have spoken, and gave myself the hope that their prediction
+might prove well founded.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LVII" id="LVII">LVII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A YES AND A NO</strong></p>
+
+<p>But now Charlotte's recovery took on new speed. Maybe her new brightness
+meant only that her heart was learning to bear its load; but we hoped
+that was just what it was unlearning, as she and Ferry sat at chess on
+the gallery in the afternoons.</p>
+
+<p>One night the fellows gave a dance in Brookhaven. We went in two wagons
+and by the light of mounted torch-bearers, and Charlotte and Ferry stood
+at the dooryard gate and sent after us their mirthful warnings and
+good-byes. It set some of us a-hoping--to see them there--a dooryard
+gate means so much. We fairly prayed he might compel her decision before
+she should turn to re-enter the house. But the following morning it was
+evident we had prayed in vain.</p>
+
+<p>On the next afternoon but one we heard that a great column of our
+soldiers was approaching on the nearest highway, bound up the railroad
+to Joe Johnston's army from the region about Port Hudson, and Charlotte
+instantly proposed that our ladies deal out food and drink from some
+shady spot on the roadside. It was one of those southern summer days
+when it verily seems hotter in the shade than in the sun--unless you are
+in the sun. The force was wholly artillery and infantry, the last
+Confederate infantry that region ever saw in column under arms; poor,
+limping, brown-faced, bloody-footed boys! their weapons were the only
+clean things, the only whole things, about them except their unbroken
+spirit; and when the very foremost command chanced to be one which the
+Harpers had seen in New Orleans the day it left there marching in
+faultless platoons and spotless equipments through the crowds that
+roared acclaim and farewell, our dear ladies, for one weak moment, wept.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here come the real heroes, Harry,&quot; said my crippled leader; &quot;we are
+dandies and toy-soldiers, by the side of those infantry boys, Doctor, we
+cavalry fellows;&quot; and we cavalry fellows would have hid if we honorably
+could. Yet hardly had he spoken when he and a passing field-officer
+cried out in mutual recognition, and from that time until the rear-guard
+was clear gone by we received what the newspapers call &quot;a continuous
+ovation.&quot; A group of brigade officers went back with us to Squire
+Wall's, to supper, and you could see by the worship they paid Charlotte
+that they knew her story. Her strength was far overtaxed, and the moment
+the last fond straggler had gone we came in out of the splendid
+moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Charlotte, my dear,&quot; began Miss Harper, &quot;you are too terribly
+tired to--why, where is Charlotte; did she not come in with us from
+the--gate?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry, too, was missing. Mrs. Wall made eyes at the inquirer, Estelle
+and C&eacute;cile began to speak but deferred to each other, and Camille,
+putting on a deadly exhaustion, whined as she tottered to her smiling
+guardian, &quot;Kiss your sweet baby good-night, auntie dear, and&quot;--with a
+hand reached out to Estelle--&quot;make Naughty come, too.&quot; She turned to say
+good-night to C&eacute;cile but spoiled her kiss with an unintended laugh. The
+surgeon, Harry and I bowed from the room and stepped out to the
+water-bucket and gourd. From there we could see the missing two,
+lingering at the dooryard gate, in the bright moonlight. As we finished
+drinking, &quot;Gentlemen,&quot; murmured Harry, &quot;I fear our position is too
+exposed to be tenable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The surgeon started upstairs. &quot;I'll join you directly, Doctor,&quot; Harry
+said, and in a lower voice added &quot;Smith and I will just lounge in and
+out of the hall here to sort o' show nobody needn't be in any hurry,
+don't you see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the other jerked his thumb toward the half-closed parlor, where
+Miss Harper and C&eacute;cile sat close, to each other absorbed in some matter
+of the tenderest privacy. &quot;They'll attend to that,&quot; he muttered; &quot;come
+on to bed and mind your own business.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Harry huffed absurdly. &quot;You go mind yours,&quot; he retorted, and then more
+generously added, &quot;we'll be with you in a minute.&quot; The surgeon went, and
+the aide-de-camp, as we began to pace the hall, fairly took my breath by
+remarking without a hint of self-censure, &quot;Damn a frivolous man!&quot; Then
+irrelatively he added, &quot;Those two out at that gate--this is a matter of
+life and death with them;&quot; and when I would have qualified the
+declaration, he broke in upon me--&quot;Right, Dick, you're right, it <em>is</em>
+worse; it's a choice between true life and death-in-life; whether
+they'll make life's long march in sunshine together or in
+darkness apart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Well, of course, it was no such simple question, and never could be
+while life held so many values more splendid than any wilfulness could
+win. There lay the whole of Charlotte's real difficulty--for she had
+made it all hers. But when I tried in some awkward way to say this Harry
+cut me short. &quot;Oh, Dick, I--eh--you bother me! I want to tell you
+something and if I don't hurry I can't. Something's happened to me, old
+fellow, something that's sobered me more than I ever would 'a' thought
+anything could. I want to tell you because I can trust you with a
+secr'--wh'--what's the matter, did I hurt your wound? Honestly, I want
+to tell you because--well--because I've been deceiving you all along:
+I've deceived you shamefully, letting on to like this girl more than
+that, and so on and so on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you thought you were deceiving me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well, maybe I wasn't, but I want to tell you to-night because I'm
+going to camp in the morning. Oh, yes,&quot;--he named the deepest place
+known--&quot;the sight of those webfoot boys to-day was too much for me; I'm
+going; and Dick, when I told her I was going--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<em>Told whom</em>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aw, come, now, Dick, you know every bit as well as I know. Well, when I
+told her I was going I didn't dream I was going to tell her anything
+else; I give you my word! Where in the&quot;--same place again--&quot;I ever got
+the courage I'll never tell you, but all of a sudden thinks I, 'I'm
+never going to get anything but no, anyhow, and so, Dick, I've been and
+gone and done it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I leaned on the stair-newel, sorry for the poor fool, but glad of this
+chance. &quot;Why, Lieutenant, not many men would have done as well. You felt
+honor-bound not to slip away uncommitted, so you took your dose like a
+hero and licked the spoon.&quot; I felt that I was salting his wound, but we
+were soldiers and--I had the salt.</p>
+
+<p>He drew a sigh. &quot;Yes, I took my dose--of astonishment. Dick, she said
+yes! Oh, good Lord, Dick, do you reckon they'll ever be such full-blown
+idiots as to let me have her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sank upon the steps; every pore in my body was a fountain of cold
+sweat: &quot;Have whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;C&eacute;cile.&quot; He was going on to declare himself no more fit for her than
+for the presidency of the Confederate States, which was perfectly true;
+but I sprang up, caught him (on my well side) by one good hand, and had
+begun my enthusiastic congratulations, when Charlotte appeared and we
+swerved against the rail to let her pass upstairs. In some way as she
+went by it was made plain to us that she had said no. &quot;Good-night,&quot;
+ventured both of us, timorously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-night,&quot; she responded, very musically, but as if from a great
+distance.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LVIII" id="LVIII">LVIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>THE UPPER FORK OF THE ROAD</strong></p>
+
+<p>Ferry, as he passed us, called my name, and I started after him. At
+Charlotte's door we heard the greeting of her black maid. The maid's
+father, who of late had been nightly dressing Ferry's wound and mine,
+came to us in Ferry's room; and there my Captain turned to greet me, his
+face white with calamity. He took me caressingly by a button of my
+jacket. &quot;Can you have your wound washed to-night before mine?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, certainly, if it's the least--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, thank you. And down here in this room instead of upstairs?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Ferry! if you knew how horribly it smells, you--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! don't I know?&quot; he said, and as I sat naked from throat to waist
+with the old negro laving the sores, Ferry scanned them narrowly. &quot;They
+are not so bad, Dick; you think a few hours in the saddle will not make
+them worse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not if they're spent for you, Captain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, for me; also for much better. We shall ride for--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ride? Oh, Captain, you are in no condition--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tst!&quot; he laid a finger on my lips; &quot;'twill not be hard; we are not
+going on a scout--to jump fences.&quot; He began to make actual preparations,
+and presently helped me draw my shirt into place again over the clean
+bandages, while the old man went out after fresh water. &quot;I am a hundred
+times more fit to go than to stay,&quot; he suddenly resumed. &quot;I must go. Ah,
+idleness, there is nothing like idleness to drive a man mad; I must have
+something to do--to-night--at once.&quot; I wish I knew how to give the words
+with his quiet intensity.</p>
+
+<p>I began to unclothe his wound. &quot;May I ask one thing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! I know you; you want to ask am I taking that upper fork of the
+road. I am; 'tis for that I want you; so go you now to the stable,
+saddle our horses and bring them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When I reached the front steps with them Ferry was at the gallery's
+edge, Miss Harper, C&eacute;cile and Harry were on three sides of him, and he
+was explaining away our astonishing departure. We were going to
+Hazlehurst, to issue clothing and shoes to those ragged and barefoot
+fellows we had seen that afternoon, and the light of whose tentless camp
+was yonder in the sky, now, toward Brookhaven. We were to go that way,
+confer with their officers, telegraph from town for authorizations to be
+sent to us at Hazlehurst, and then to push on to that place and be ready
+to issue the stuff when the trains should come up from Brookhaven
+bringing the brigade. While he spoke Camille and Estelle joined us.
+&quot;No,&quot; he said, &quot;to start any later, 'twould be too late.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To Harry's imploring protest that he, Ferry, was not fit to go to
+Hazlehurst horseback, he replied &quot;Well! what we going to do? Those boys
+can't go to Big Black swamp bare-foot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Our dear friends were too well aware of the untold trouble to say a word
+about his coming back, but Miss Harper's parting injunction to me was to
+write them.</p>
+
+<p>The whole night and the following day were a toilsome time for us, but
+by fall of the next night the brigade had come in rags and passed newly
+clothed and shod, and in a room of the town tavern we dressed each
+other's hurts and sank to sleep on one bed. The night was hot, the pain
+of my wounds was like a great stone lying on them, and at the tragic
+moment of a frightful dream I awoke. &quot;Captain,&quot; I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did she give no reason?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot; A silence followed; then he said, &quot;You know the reason, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I think I do; I think--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well? don't be afraid to say it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I got the words out in some form, that I believed Charlotte loved him
+deeply, as deeply, passionately, exaltedly, as ever a true woman loved
+a man--</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, me!&quot; he lifted his arms wide and knitted his fingers on his brow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And there is the whole trouble,&quot; I added. &quot;She will not let you marry
+the woman whose--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whose husband I have killed.... Ah, God!... Ah, my God! why was I
+chosen to do that?... And you think, Dick, it was not a question of
+time; that I did not ask, maybe a little too soon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not as between sooner and later; and yet, in another way, possibly,
+yes.&quot; Without either of us stirring from the pillow I tried to explain.
+I pointed out that trait in Charlotte which I called an impulse suddenly
+to surrender the key of her situation, the vital point in her
+fortunes and fate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.... Yes,&quot; Ferry kept putting in.</p>
+
+<p>I went on to say that she seemed now to have learned, herself, that it
+was on this shoal she grounded at every low water of her physical and
+mental powers; as when over-fatigued, for instance; and that I should
+not wonder if she had bound herself never again at such a time to let
+her judgment follow her impulses. He laid his hand on me: &quot;Stop; stop;
+you stab too deep. I thought to take her by surprise at that very point,
+and right there she has countermined. My God! can it be that I am served
+only right?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I replied, although it was a thing I would have said Ned Ferry
+would not do, &quot;no, no, it is she who has served both you and herself
+cruelly wrong. Captain, I believe that when Miss Harper has talked it
+over with her she will see her mistake as we all see it, and will call
+you back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, me! Ah, me! Do you believe that, Dick?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do, Captain; but at the same time--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What, what? Speak out, Dick. You blame me some other way?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, indeed! I am the one to blame, the only one. If you had not,
+both of you, been so blameless--so splendidly blameless--I should hardly
+have let myself sink so deep into blame; but I knew you would never take
+the last glad step until you had seen the last sad proof that you might
+take it. Oh, Captain, to-night is the third time that in my dreams I
+have seen <em>that man</em> alive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how long after that we lay silent, but it seemed an
+endless time before he exclaimed at last &quot;My God! Dick, you should
+have told me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know it; I know I should! But it was only a dream, and--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! 'twas your doubt first and the dream after! But let us think no
+more of blame, we must settle the doubt. We shall begin that to-morrow.&quot;
+On my venturing to say more he interrupted. &quot;Well, we can do nothing
+now; at the present, sleep is our first business.&quot; However, after a
+little, he spoke again, and, I believe, purely in order to soothe me to
+slumber, speculated and counselled with me for the better part of an
+hour concerning my own poor little love affair.</p>
+
+<p>At breakfast he told me the first step in his further plans would be for
+us to take the train for Tangipahoa, with our horses, on our way to our
+own camp; but just before the train came the telegraph brought General
+Austin's request--which, of course, carried all the weight of an
+order--for Ferry to remain here and make ready for further issues of
+quartermaster's stores. He turned on his heel and twisted his small
+mustache: &quot;That means we are kept here to be kept here, Richard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a mistaken kindness, from our point of view, but it had the merit
+that it kept us busy. In two days the post-quartermaster's affairs and
+supplies were reduced to perfect order for the first time in their
+history. For two days more we ran a construction train and with a swarm
+of conscripts repaired two or three miles of road-bed and some
+trestle-work in a swamp; and at every respite in our strenuous
+activities we discoursed of the girls we'd left behind us; their minds,
+their manners, their features, figures, tastes and talents, and their
+walk and talk. So came the end of the week, and while the sun was still
+above the trees we went on down, inspecting the road beyond our repairs,
+on our own hand-car to Brookhaven. With heads bare, jackets in our laps,
+and muddy boots dangling over the car's front edge, and with six big
+negroes at the levers behind us, we watched the miles glide under our
+wheels and grow fewer and fewer between us and the shrine of our hearts.
+&quot;Sing, Dick,&quot; said Ferry, and we chanted together, as we had done at
+every sunset these three days, &quot;O my love is like a red, red rose.&quot; We
+could not have done it had we known that yonder glorious sun was setting
+forever upon the fortunes of our Southern Confederacy. It was the fourth
+of July; Lee was in full retreat from Gettysburg, Vicksburg was gone,
+Port Hudson was doomed, and all that was left for us now was to
+die hard.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LIX" id="LIX">LIX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>UNDER CHARLOTTE'S WINDOW</strong></p>
+
+<p>At the tavern, where we went to smarten up and to eat, we chanced upon
+Gregory. He was very shy of Ferry, because Ferry was a captain, but told
+me the latest news from the Wall place, where he had spent the previous
+evening. Harry and the surgeon were gone to camp, the Harpers were well,
+Charlotte was--better, after a bad turn of several days. We felt in duty
+bound to stay within hail of the telegraph office until it should close
+for the night; and when the operator was detained in it much beyond the
+usual time, Ferry, as we hovered near, said at length, &quot;Well, I'm sorry
+for you, Dick; 'tis now too late for you to go yonder--this evening.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Didn't you intend to call, too?&quot; &quot;No,&quot; he said; yet the moment the
+operator turned the key in his door we sauntered away from the station,
+tavern, town, and out into the rain-famished country. We chose a road on
+high ground, under pines; the fact that a few miles of it would bring us
+to Squire Wall's was not sufficient reason for us to shun it, and we
+loitered on and on, discoursing philosophically on man and woman and the
+duties of each to other. Through habit we went softly, and so, in time,
+came up past a small garden under the house's southern side. Here
+silence was only decorum, for every window in the dark upper rooms was
+thrown open to the sultry air. The house's front was away from the
+direction of the town, and at a corner of this garden, where the road
+entered the open grove, the garden fence turned north at a right angle,
+while the road went on through the grove into wide cornfields beyond.</p>
+
+<p>We kept to the garden fence till it brought us along the dooryard front,
+facing the house. Thus far the whole place seemed fast asleep. Along the
+farthest, the northern, side a line of planted trees ran close to a
+narrow wing of but one room on each of its two stories, and the upper of
+these two rooms was Charlotte's. Where we paused, at the dooryard gate,
+we could not see this wing, but we knew its exterior perfectly; it had a
+narrow window in front, looking into the grove, and a broader one at the
+rear, that overlooked an open stretch of the Wall plantation. The place
+seemed fast asleep, I say, but we had not a doubt we were being
+watched--by the two terrible dogs that guarded the house but never
+barked. By this time they should have recognized us and ought to be
+coming forward and wagging faintly, as who should say &quot;Yes, that's all
+right, but we have our orders.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot;--Ferry guardedly pointed to the ground at the corner of the house
+nearest Charlotte's room; there were both the dogs, dim as phantoms and
+as silent, standing and peering not toward us but around to the wing
+side in a way to make one's blood stop. We drew deeper into the grove
+and made a short circuit that brought us in line with Charlotte's two
+windows, and there, at the farther one, with her back to us, sat
+Charlotte, looking toward Hazlehurst. The bloodthirsty beasts at the
+corner of the house were so intently waiting to spring upon something,
+somebody, between them and the nearer window, that we were secure from
+their notice. We had hardly more than become aware of these things when,
+in the line of planted trees, out of the depths of the one nearest the
+nearer window, sounded a note that brought Charlotte instantly to her
+feet; the same feeble, smothered cry she had heard the night she was
+wounded. She crossed to the front window and listened, first standing
+erect, and then stooping and leaning out. When we saw her do that we
+knew how little she cared for her life; Ferry beckoned me up from behind
+him; neither of us needed to say he feared the signal was from Oliver.
+&quot;Watch here,&quot; he whispered, and keeping the deepest shade, started
+eagerly, with drawn revolver, toward the particular tree. I saw the dogs
+discover and recognize him and welcome his aid, yet I kept my closest
+watch on that tree's boughs and on Charlotte. She was wondering, I
+guessed, whether the call was from some messenger of Ferry, or was only
+a bird's cry. As if she decided it was the latter, she moved away, and
+had nearly re-crossed the room, when the same sad tremolo came searching
+the air again. Nevertheless she went on to the farther window and stood
+gazing out for the better part of a minute, while in my heart I besought
+her not to look behind. For Ferry and the dogs had vanished in shadow,
+and outside her nearer window, wavering now above and now below the
+sill, I could just descry a small pale object that reminded me of that
+missive Coralie Rothvelt had passed up to me outside the window-sill at
+old Lucius Oliver's house exactly a month before. From the upper depths
+of the nearest tree this small thing was being proffered on the end of a
+fishing-rod. Presently the rod must have tapped the sill, with such a
+start did she face about. Silently she ran, snatched the dumb messenger,
+and drew down the window-shade. A moment later the room glowed with a
+candle, while her shadow, falling upon the shade, revealed her scanning
+a letter, lifting her arms with emotion, and so passing out of the
+line of view.</p>
+
+<p>I waited on. So absorbed was I that I did not hear the coming of a
+horseman in the fields beyond the grove, nor the click of a field gate;
+but when the strange quietude of Ferry and the dogs had begun to
+reassure me I became aware of this new-comer approaching the dooryard.
+There he reined in and hallooed. I knew the voice. An answer came from
+an upper window. &quot;Is this Squire Wall's?&quot; asked the traveller. &quot;Well,
+Squire, I'm from General Austin's headquarters, with orders to
+Captain Ferry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Ferry ain't stopping with us now, sir, he's 'way up at
+Hazlehurst.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir. I didn't know but he might 'a' come down to spend to-morrow
+with you, it being the Sabbath. My name's Gholson, sir; I've got letters
+for the Miss Harpers; yes, sir; and one for Private Smith, from his
+mother, in New Orleans.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My sakes! yo' pow'ful welcome, Mr. Wholesome; just wait till I call off
+my dogs, sir, and I'll let you in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the dogs came at the Squire's call I breathed relief. Ferry
+appeared behind me and beckoned me deeper into the grove. He sank upon a
+stump, whispering &quot;That was worse than ten fights.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who was it?&quot; I asked. &quot;Where is he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to the field gate through which Gholson had come. In the
+field a small man was re-closing it cautiously, and now he mounted and
+rode away; it was Isidore Goldschmidt, of the Plank-road swamp. I was
+wondering why he had behaved in this skulking way, when Ferry, as if
+reading my thought, said, &quot;Isidore can't afford to be found seventy-five
+miles inside our lines with no papers except a letter from a Yankee
+officer--and not knowing, himself, what's in it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! why should he risk his life to bring such a thing to her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because three months ago she risked her life to save the life of his
+father, and now, since only last week, that Yankee has saved the life of
+his mother.&quot; I asked who this Yankee might be. &quot;Well, that is yet more
+strange; he is the brother of Captain Jewett.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were moving to the house; at the steps we halted; the place was all
+alight and the ladies were arriving in the parlor. A beam of light
+touching Ferry's face made his smile haggard. I asked if this Jewett was
+another leader of scouts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he is a high-rank surgeon. Yet I think he must have heard all about
+her; he wouldn't send that letter, that way, just for gratitude.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I responded, pondering, &quot;he may easily have learned about her,&quot;
+and I called to mind that chief-of-staff of whom Charlotte had told us.
+Then, remembering her emotional shadow-play on the window-shade, I
+added, &quot;He knew at least what would be important news to her--Captain,
+I have it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He made a motion of pain--&quot;Don't say it!&quot; and we read in each other's
+eyes the one conviction that from a surgeon's personal knowledge this
+man had written to warn Charlotte that Oliver was alive.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LX" id="LX">LX</a></h2>
+<p><strong>TIDINGS</strong></p>
+
+<p>All the glad difference between hope stark drowned and hope sighing back
+into life lightened Ferry's heart; he gripped my shoulder--the sound
+one, by good luck,--and drew me into the dining-room, where the whole
+company were gathered to see Gholson eat. Our entry was a fresh
+surprise. As we drank the flatteries of seven lovely welcomes, from
+behind Gholson I reconnoitred Charlotte, and the fullest confirmation of
+our guess was in the peaceful resolve of her eyes. I noted the Harpers,
+all, and dear Mrs. Wall's sweet freckled face, take new gladness of the
+happy change, while unable to define its cause.</p>
+
+<p>But now came raptures and rhapsodies over the opened letters. Ferry's
+orders had not been expected to reach him to-night, Gholson said, and so
+we insisted they and my letter should remain in the saddle-pockets while
+Gholson ate, and while the good news, public and personal, of the
+Harpers' letters went round.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I thought the' was fi-ive letters,&quot; said the Squire as we were
+about to leave the board; at which Mrs. Wall mumbled to him to &quot;hush
+up;&quot; for the fifth was to C&eacute;cile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; guilefully said Charlotte, &quot;Richard's letter!&quot; and we all
+followed Gholson to where his saddle lay on the gallery. There he handed
+out Ferry's document and went on rummaging for mine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The two were right here together,&quot; he said, &quot;and Mr. Smith's was marked
+'valuable' and had something hard in one corner of it.&quot; Camille brought a
+candle, Estelle another; Gholson rose from his knee: &quot;Smith, it's gone!
+I've lost it! And yet&quot;--he slapped his breast-pockets--&quot;no, it's
+somewhere in the grove; it's between here and that cornfield gate! I
+counted all the papers just this side of that gate, and I must 'a'
+dropped yours then!&quot; C&eacute;cile brought a third light and we sallied forth
+into the motionless air, Estelle with a candle and Gholson, Camille
+with a candle and me, C&eacute;cile with a candle and Mrs. Wall, Miss Harper
+and the Squire, and Charlotte and Ferry. In the heart of the grove
+Estelle gave a soft cry, sprang, stooped, straightened, and handed me
+the letter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; exclaimed Camille as the three candle-bearers gathered close,
+&quot;that's your mother's writing,&quot; and as we fell into marching order
+again, with the lights still in the front files, I opened it. It was
+thick and soft with sheet after sheet of thinnest paper. With these was
+a sealed letter, unaddressed, containing in one corner what seemed to be
+a ring. Around all was a sheet of writing of later date than any other.
+Wonderful, my mother's lines declared, was the Providence that had
+brought her wounded boy among such priceless friends; and wonderful that
+same Providence that now gave her the chance to send three weeks' daily
+letters in one, and to send them by a hand so sure that she ventured to
+add this other note, a matter so secret that it must be delivered only
+by my own hands, or hands which I could trust as my own, to Charlotte
+Oliver. We glanced back in search of Charlotte. She and Ferry were well
+in the rear of the procession, moving with laggard steps, she lighting
+his page with a borrowed candle, and he evidently reading not his
+orders, but the Federal surgeon's letter. &quot;Oh, don't speak yet,&quot;
+murmured Camille, &quot;let them alone!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the garden gate the most of the company passed on into the house,
+Gholson among them. His face, as for an instant he turned aside to me,
+betrayed a frozen rage; for Ferry and Charlotte tarried just at our
+backs, she seated on the &quot;horse-block&quot; and he leaning against it. A stir
+of air brought by the rising moon had blown out their light. Gholson
+left me, and Camille waited at my side while I tried to read by the
+flare of her guttering candle. &quot;Come, my dear,&quot; said Miss Harper from
+half-way up the walk, but Charlotte called Miss Harper.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd better go in, Camille,&quot; insisted the aunt as she passed us, but
+Charlotte had just asked for our candle to relight her own, and she said
+to Miss Harper, &quot;Let them stay, won't you?&quot; and then to Ferry, &quot;They
+might as well, mightn't they? Oh, now,&quot;--as Camille handed her my
+mother's letter--&quot;they must!&quot; She toyed with the envelope's thinner edge
+without noticing the ring in the corner. &quot;My dears,&quot; she said, looking
+frail and distressed, yet resolute, &quot;I have positive intelligence--not
+through Captain, nor Richard, nor Mr. Gholson,--I'll tell you how some
+day--positive intelligence that--the dead--is not dead; the blow,
+Richard, glanced. I was foolish never to think of that possibility, it
+occurs so often. He was profoundly stunned, so that he didn't come-to
+until he was brought to a surgeon. It's from that surgeon I have the
+news; here's his letter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Charlotte, my dear,&quot; interrupted Miss Harper, &quot;tell us the remainder
+to-morrow, but now--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sweetest friend, there will never be another chance like this;
+Captain Ferry's orders carry him to Jackson at daylight to-morrow,
+and--and we may not meet again for years; let me go on. When the gash
+was sewed up, the hand was really the worse hurt of the two, and after
+a few days he was sent down on a steamer to New Orleans with a great lot
+of other sick and wounded, and with the commanding general's warning not
+to come back on peril of his life. 'Tisn't easy to tell this, but you
+four have a particular right to know it from me and at once. So let me
+say&quot;--she handed Ferry my mother's letter as if it were a burdensome
+distraction--&quot;I'm not sorry for the mistake, Richard, which we all so
+innocently made; and you mustn't be sorry for me and be saying to
+yourselves that my captivity is on me again; for I'm happier tonight
+than I've been since the night the mistake was made.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She dropped a hand to Ferry's to receive again the neglected letter, and
+chanced to take it by the corner that held the ring. With that she
+stared at us, fingered it, rended the envelope, gave one glance to her
+own name engraved inside a plain gold ring of the sort New Orleans girls
+bestow upon those to whom they are betrothed, and springing to the
+ground between our two candles, bent over the open page and cried
+through a flood of tears, &quot;Oh, God, have mercy on him, he is gone! He is
+gone, Edgard! Oh, Edgard, he is gone at last; gone beyond all doubt, and
+our hands--our hands and our hearts are clean!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ferry tossed away his candle and turned upon her, but she retreated into
+Miss Harper's arms laughing through her tears. &quot;Oh, no, no! we've never
+hurried yet, never yet, my master in patience, and we'll not hurry now!
+Go and come again. Go, wait, hide your eyes till I cry 'whoop,' and
+come again and find me, and, I pledge you before these dear witnesses,
+I'll be 'it' for the rest of my life!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With the letter again held open, and bidding Miss Harper and Camille
+read with her, she swept a fleet glance along the close lines that told
+how Oliver, half cured of his wounds, had died in a congestive chill, of
+swamp-fever, the day he landed in New Orleans. &quot;See, see, Richard, here
+your mother has copied the hospital's certificate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She read on aloud how two private Federal soldiers, hospital
+convalescents, had come to my mother telling her of his death, and how
+he had named my mother over and over in his delirium, desiring that she
+should be given charge of the small effects on his person and that she
+would return them to his father in the Confederacy. My mother wrote how
+she had been obliged secretly to buy back from the hospital steward a
+carte-de-visite photograph of Charlotte, and this ring; how, Oliver not
+being a Federal soldier, she had been allowed to assume the expense and
+task of his burial; how she had found the body already wrapped and
+bound, in the military way, when she first saw it, but heard the two
+convalescents praising to each other the strong, hard-used beauty of the
+hidden face, and was shown the suit of brown plantation jeans we all
+knew so well; and how, lastly, when her overbearing conscience compelled
+her to tell them she might find it easier to send the relics to the wife
+rather than the father, they had furtively advised her to do as
+she pleased.</p>
+<a name="imgeight" id="imgeight"></a><img src="009.jpg" alt="Springing to the ground between our two candles, she bent over the open page" align="left" />
+
+<p>&quot;Charlotte,&quot; said Miss Harper, &quot;the thing is an absolute certainty!
+Even without your likeness or--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no, no, not without this! the ring, the ring! But with it, yes!
+This is the crowning proof! my ring to him! Oh, see my name inside it,
+Camille; this little signet is Heaven's own testimony and acquittal!
+Look, Richard, look at it now, for no living soul, no light of day,
+shall ever see it again--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sweet heart,&quot; replied Miss Harper, &quot;very good! very good! but now say
+no more of that sort. God bless you, dear, just let yourself be happy.
+Good-night--no, no, sit still; stay where you are, love, while Camille
+and I go in and Richard steps around to the stable and puts our team
+into the road-wagon; for, Captain Ferry, neither you nor he is fit to
+walk into Brookhaven; we can bring the rig back when we come from church
+to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Richard,&quot; said Charlotte, &quot;get my wagon and the little Mexicans.&quot;
+Then to Miss Harper and Camille, &quot;Good-night, dears; I'll wait here that
+long, if Captain Ferry will allow me.&quot; She turned to him with the
+moonlight in her eyes, that danced riotously as she said in her softest,
+deepest note, &quot;You're afraid!&quot; and I thanked Heaven that Coralie
+Rothvelt was still a pulsing reality in the bosom of Charlotte
+Oliver.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LXI" id="LXI">LXI</a></h2>
+<p><strong>WHILE DESTINY MOVED ON</strong></p>
+
+<p>Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the
+next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and
+Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited
+Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther
+to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him
+and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if
+our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was
+not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in
+practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh,
+the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the
+scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the
+groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood
+and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from
+sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long
+dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our
+brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring,
+with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the
+Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was
+kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried
+swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade
+going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge
+might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its
+captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be,
+in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called
+back to his commander, &quot;Ferry's scouts!&quot; the whole column cheered us. I
+feel the thrill of it to this hour.</p>
+
+<p>How busy we were kept, and how much oftener I wrote to Ferry, and to
+Camille, than to my mother. And how much closer I watched the trend of
+things that belonged only to this small story than I did that great
+theatre of a whole world's fortunes, whose arches spread and resounded
+from the city of Washington to the city of Mexico. In mid-August one of
+Camille's heartlessly infrequent letters brought me a mint of blithe
+news. Harry and C&eacute;cile were really engaged; Major Harper, aunt Martha,
+General Austin, Captain Ferry and Charlotte had all written the distant
+father in his behalf, and the distant father had capitulated.
+Furthermore, Captain Ferry's latest letter to Charlotte had brought word
+that in spite of all backsets he was promised by his physician that in
+ten days more he could safely take the field again. But, best of all,
+Major Harper, having spent a week with his family--not on leave, but on
+some mysterious business that somehow included a great train of pontoon
+bridges--had been so completely won over to Charlotte by her own sweet
+ways that, on his own suggestion to his sister, and their joint
+proposition, by correspondence, to Ferry, another group of letters,
+from Miss Harper, the Major and the General, had been sent to the
+Durands in New Orleans--father, mother, and grandmother--telling them
+all about Charlotte; her story, her beauty, her charms of manner, mind,
+and heart. And so, wrote my correspondent, the Wall household were
+living in confident hope and yet in unbearable suspense; for these
+things were now full two weeks old, and would have been told me sooner
+only that she, Camille, had promised never to tell them to any one
+whomsoever.</p>
+
+<p>A week later came another of these heartlessly infrequent letters. Mr.
+Gregory, it said,--oh, <em>hang</em> Mr. Gregory!--had called the previous
+evening. Then followed the information that poor Mr. Gholson--oh, dear!
+the poor we have always with us!--had arrived again from camp so wasted
+with ague as to be a sight for tears. He had come consigned to &quot;our
+hospital,&quot; an establishment which the Harpers, Charlotte and the Walls
+had set up in the old &quot;summer-hotel&quot; at Panacea Springs, and had
+contrived to get the medical authorities to adopt, officer and--in a
+manner--equip. They were giving dances there, to keep the soldiers
+cheerful, said the letter, in which its writer took her usual patriotic
+part, and Mr. Gregory--oh, save us alive! And now I was to prepare
+myself: the Durands had got the bunch of letters and had written a
+lovely reply to Captain Ferry, who had sent it to Charlotte, claiming
+her hand, and Charlotte had answered yes. If I thought I had ever seen
+her beautiful or blithe, or sweet, or happy, I ought to see her now;
+while as for the writer herself, nothing in all her life had ever so
+filled her with bliss, or ever could again.</p>
+
+<p>Ferry did not arrive, but day by day, night by night, we stalked the
+enemy, longing for our Captain to return to us. Quinn was fearless,
+daring, indefatigable; but Quinn was not Ferry. Often we talked it over
+by twos or fours; the swiftness of Ferry's divinations, the brilliant
+celerity with which he followed them out, the kindness of his care;
+Quinn's care of us was paternal, Ferry's was brotherly and motherly. We
+loved Quinn for the hate and scorn that overflowed from his very gaze
+upon everything false or base. But we loved Ferry for loving each and
+every one of us beyond his desert, and for a love which went farther
+yet, we fancied, when it lived and kept its health in every insalubrious
+atmosphere, from the sulphurous breath of old Dismukes to the
+carbonic-acid gas of Gholson's cant. We made great parade of recognizing
+his defects; it had all the fine show of a motion to reconsider. For
+example, we said, his serene obstinacy in small matters was equally
+exasperating and ridiculous; or, for another instance,--so and so; but
+in summing up we always lumped such failings as &quot;the faults of his
+virtues,&quot; and neglected to catalogue them. Thinking it all over a
+thousand times since, I have concluded that the main source of his
+charm, what won our approval for whatever he did, however he did it, was
+that he seemed never to regard any one as the mere means to an
+end--except himself.</p>
+
+<p>If this history were more of war than of love--and really at times I
+fear it is--we might fill pages telling of the brigade's September and
+early October operations in that long tongue of devastated country which
+narrowed from northeast to southwest between Big Black on our front and
+the Tallahala and Bayou Pierre behind us. At Baker's Creek it had a
+bloody all-day fight, in which we took part after having been driven in
+upon the brigade. It was there that at dusk, to the uproarious delight
+of half the big camp, and with our Captain once more at our head, for he
+had rejoined us that very morning, we came last off the field, singing
+&quot;Ned Ferry's a-comin' down de lane.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On a day late in October our company were in bivouac after some hard
+night-riding. Some twenty-five miles west of us the brigade had been
+resting for several days on the old camp-ground at Gallatin, but now
+they were gone to Union Springs. Ferry, with a few men, was scouting
+eastward. Quinn awaited only his return in order to take half a dozen or
+so of picked fellows down southward and westward about Fayette. Between
+ten and eleven that night a corporal of the guard woke me, and as I
+flirted on my boots and jacket and saddled up, said Ferry was back and
+Quinn gone. I reported to Ferry, who handed me a despatch: &quot;Give that to
+General Austin; he has gone back to Gallatin--without the brigade--to
+wait--with the others&quot;--his smile broadened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain,&quot;--I swallowed a lump--&quot;what others?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,--all the others; Major Harper, Colonel Dismukes, Harry Helm,
+Squire Wall, Mrs. Wall, the four Harper ladies, and--eh,--let me see, is
+that all?--ah, no, the old black man and his daughter, and--eh,--the
+two little mule'! that's all--stop! I was forgetting! What is that
+fellow's name we used to know? ah, yes; Charlie Toliver!&quot; In a moment he
+sobered: &quot;Yes, all will be yonder, and I wait only for Quinn to get back
+in the morning, to come myself.&quot; In the fulness of his joy he had to
+give my horse a parting slap. &quot;Good-night! good-bye--till to-morrow!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I galloped away filled with an absurd foreboding that he was too sure,
+which may have come wholly from my bad temper at being started too late
+to see our ladies before morning. However, at two that night, my saddle
+laid under my head, and haversack under the saddle, I fell asleep with
+all Gallatin for my bedchamber, the courthouse square for my bed, the
+sky for my tester, the pole-star for my taper, hogs for mosquitoes and a
+club for a fan.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LXII" id="LXII">LXII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>A TARRYING BRIDEGROOM</strong></p>
+
+<p>Joyous was the dawn. With their places in the hospital filled for the
+brief time by Brookhaven friends, here were all our fairs, not to speak
+of the General, the Colonel, the Major, idlers of the town and region,
+and hospital bummers who had followed up unbidden and glaringly without
+wedding-garments. C&eacute;cile, Harry, Camille &quot;and others&quot; prepared the
+church. The General kept his tent, the Major rode to Hazlehurst, and the
+Colonel, bruised and stiffened by a late fall from his horse, lounged
+amiably just beyond talking range of the ladies and grumbled jokes to
+Chaplain Roly-poly, whose giggling enjoyment of them made us hope they
+were tempered to that clean-shaven lamb.</p>
+
+<p>However, there came a change. By mid-forenoon our gaiety ran on only by
+its momentum. The wedding was to be at eleven. At ten the Colonel,
+aside, told me, with a ferocious scowl, that my Captain ought to have
+arrived. At half-past he told me again, but Major Harper, returning from
+Hazlehurst, said, &quot;Oh, any of a hundred trifles might have delayed him a
+short time; he would be along.&quot; The wedding-hour passed, the
+wedding-feast filled the air with good smells. Horsemen ambled a few
+miles up the road and came back without tidings. Then a courier, one of
+Ferry's scouts, galloped up to the General's tent, and presently the
+Major walked from it to the tavern and up to Charlotte's room, to say
+that Ferry was only detained by Quinn's non-arrival. &quot;It's all right,&quot;
+said everyone.</p>
+
+<p>Another hour wore on, another followed. The General and old Dismukes
+played cards and the latter began to smell of his drams, Harry and
+C&eacute;cile walked and talked apart, Camille kept me in leash with three
+other men, and about two o'clock came another courier with another bit
+of Ferry's writing; Quinn had returned. He had had a brush with
+jayhawkers in the night, had captured all but their leader, and had sent
+his prisoners in to brigade headquarters at Union Church, while he
+returned to Ferry's camp bringing with him, mortally wounded--&quot;O--oh!
+Oh--oh!&quot; exclaimed Charlotte, gazing at the missive,--&quot;Sergeant
+Jim Langley!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does Ned say when he will start?&quot; asked the Colonel, and Charlotte,
+reading again, said the sergeant, at the time of the writing, was not
+expected to live an hour. Whereupon the word went through town that
+Ferry was on his way to us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith,&quot; said the Colonel, just not too full to keep up a majestic
+frown, &quot;want to saddle my horse and yours?&quot; and very soon we were off to
+meet the tardy bridegroom. The October sunshine was fiery, but the road
+led us through our old camp-ground for two or three shady miles before
+it forked to the right to cross the Natchez Trace, and to the left on
+its way to Union Springs, and at the fork we halted. &quot;Smith, I reckon
+we'd best go back.&quot; I mentioned his bruises and the torrid sun-glare
+before us, but he cursed both with equal contempt; &quot;No, but I must go
+back; I--I've left a--oh, I must go back to wet my whistle!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We had retraced our way but a few steps, when, looking behind me as a
+scout's habit is, I saw a horseman coming swiftly on the Union Church
+road. &quot;Colonel,&quot; I said, &quot;here comes Scott Gholson.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Without pausing or turning an eye my hearer poured out a slow flood of
+curses. &quot;If that whelp has come here of his own accord he's come for no
+good! Has he seen us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson had not seen us; we had been in deep shade when he came into
+sight, and happened at that moment to turn an angle that took us out of
+his line of view. In a minute or so we were again at the small bridge
+over the embowered creek which ran through the camping-ground. The water
+was low and clear, and the Colonel turned from the bridge as if to cross
+beneath it and let his beast drink, yet motioned back for me to go upon
+it. As I reached its middle he came under it in the stream and halted.
+Guessing his wish I turned my horse across the bridge and waited.
+Gholson was almost within hail before he knew me. He was a heaving lump
+of dust, sweat and pain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has Ned Ferry come?&quot; was his first call. I shook my head. &quot;Oh, thank
+God!&quot; he cried with a wild gesture and sank low in the saddle; but
+instantly he roused again: &quot;Oh, don't stop me, Smith; if I once stop I'm
+afraid I'll never get to her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stopped him. &quot;Why, Gholson, you're burning up with fever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I started with a shaking chill. I'm afraid, every minute, I'll go
+out of my head. Oh, Smith, Oliver's alive! He's alive, he's alive, and
+I've come to save his poor wife from a fate worse than death!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson, you are out of your head.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, yes, yes! and yet I know what I'm saying, I know what I'm
+saying!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not! Gholson, Oliver's been food for worms these four months. I
+know he wasn't dead at Gilmer's; but he died--now, let me tell
+you--he--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Smith, I know the whole story and you know only half!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no! I know all and you know only half; I have seen the absolute--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Proofs? no! you saw things taken from the body of another man in
+Oliver's clothes! Oliver swapped places with him on the boat going down
+to the city so's he could come back to these parts without being hung by
+the Yankees; swapped with a sick soldier, one of a pair that wanted to
+desert; swapped names, clothes, bandages, letters, everything. It was
+that soldier that died of the congestive chill and was buried by your
+mother with his face in a blanket--as, like enough, mine will be before
+another day is done--Oh, Lord, Lord! my head will burst!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gholson, you're mistaken yet! That soldier came to my mother--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he never! the other one went to her, in cahoots with Oliver, and
+worked the thing all through so's to have the news of Oliver's death, so
+called, come back here to the Yankees and us; and to his wife, so's she
+<em>would</em> marry Ned Ferry to her everlasting shame, and people would say
+they was served right when he killed 'em at last! O--oh! Smith,--&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Listen to me!&quot; I had tried twice to interrupt and now I yelled; &quot;was it
+Oliver, and a new gang, that Quinn fought last night, and have you got
+him at Union Church?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quinn didn't know it, for Oliver got away, but they got the Yankee
+deserter, and brought him in when everybody was asleep but me, and I
+cross-examined him. Oh, my friend, God's arm is not shortened that he
+cannot save! He maketh the wrath of the wicked to praise him! The man
+was dying then, but thank God, I choked the whole truth out of him with
+a halter over a limb, and then for three mortal hours I couldn't start
+because the squad that took him out to--Who--who is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel moved from under the bridge, spurred up the bank, and turned
+to us with a murderous smile. &quot;Howdy, Gholson.&quot; The smile grew. &quot;Had to
+stay with the hanging-squad to keep his mouth shut, you was going to
+say, wa'n't you? But you knew Captain Ferry would be delayed waiting for
+Quinn, too; yes. Does any one know this now besides us three; no! Good,
+we're well met! Smith and me are going to Union Church, and you'd better
+go with us; I've got a job that God A'mighty just built you two saints
+and me for; come, never mind Gallatin, Ferry's not there, and when he
+gets there Heaven ain't a-going to stop that wedding, and hell sha'n't.&quot;
+Gholson had barely caught his breath to demur when old Dismukes, roaring
+and snarling like a huge dog, whipped out his revolver, clutched the
+sick man's bosom, and hanging over him and bellowing blasphemies, yelled
+into his very teeth &quot;Come!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We galloped. A courier from the brigade-camp met us, and the Colonel
+scribbled a purely false explanation of our absence, begging that no
+delay be made because of it. As the man left us, who should come up from
+behind us but Harry, asking what was the matter. &quot;Matter enough for you
+to come along,&quot; said the Arkansan, and we went two and two, he and
+Gholson, Harry and I. We reached camp at sundown, and stopped to feed
+and rest our horses and to catch an hour's sleep. Gholson's fatigue was
+pitiful, but he ate like a wolf, slept, and awoke with but little fever.
+The Colonel kept him under his eye, forcing on him the honors of his
+own board, bed and bottle, and at nine we galloped again.</p>
+
+<p>Between eleven and twelve the Colonel, Harry and I were in a dense wood,
+moving noiselessly toward a clearing brilliantly lighted by the moon. I
+was guide. A few rods back in the woods Gholson was holding our horses
+and with cocked revolver detaining a young mulatto woman from whom the
+Colonel had extorted the knowledge which had brought us to this spot.
+The clearing was fenced, but was full of autumn weeds. Near the two
+sides next us, tilted awry on its high basement pillars, loomed an old
+cotton-gin house, its dark shadows falling toward us. A few yards beyond
+towered and gleamed a white-boled sycamore, and between the two the
+titanic arms of the horse-power press widened broadly downward out of
+the still night sky. The tree was the one which old Lucius Oliver had
+once pointed out to me at dawn.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LXIII" id="LXIII">LXIII</a></h2>
+<p><strong>SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER TOLD TILL NOW</strong></p>
+
+<p>At the fence I ceased to lead, and we crept near the gin-house from
+three sides, warily, though all the chances were that wherever Oliver
+lay he was heavy with drink. The Colonel stole in alone. He was lost to
+us for, I should say, five minutes; they seemed thirty; then there
+pealed upon the stillness an uproarious laugh mingled with oaths and
+curses, sounds of a plunge, a struggle, a groan, and old Dismukes
+calling &quot;Come, boys, I've got him! Take it easy, take it easy, I've got
+him on the floor by the hair of his head; call Gholson!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson brought the mulatress. In the feeble rays of an old tin lantern,
+on some gunny-sacking that lay about the gin-room floor, sat old
+Dismukes cross-legged and smiling, with arms folded and revolver
+dangling from his right hand, at full cock. On one side crouched Harry
+and I, on the other side Gholson and the slave woman. Facing him, half
+sat, half knelt Oliver, bound hand and foot, and gagged with his own
+knotted handkerchief. The lantern hung from a low beam just above his
+face; his eyes blazed across the short interval with the splendor of a
+hawk's. The dread issue of the hour seemed all at once to have taken
+from his outward aspect the baser signs of his habits and crimes, and I
+saw large extenuation for Charlotte's great mistake. From the big
+Colonel's face, too, the heaviness of drink was gone, and its smile grew
+almost fine as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ten minutes for prayer is a good while to allow you, my amiable friend;
+we ain't heard for our much speaking, are we, Brother Gholson? Still,
+we've given you that, and it's half gone. If you don't want the other
+half we won't force it on you; we've got that wedding to go to, and I'm
+afraid we'll be late.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The bound man sat like a statue. The slave girl went upon her knees and
+began to pray for her master,--with whom she had remained after every
+other servant on the place had run off to the Federals, supplicating
+with a piteous fervor that drew tears down Harry's cheeks. &quot;Humph!&quot; said
+the Arkansan, still smiling straight into Oliver's eyes, &quot;she'd better
+be thanking God for her freedom, for that's what we're going to give her
+to-night; we're going to take her and your poor old crippled father to
+the outposts and turn 'em loose, and if either of 'em ever shows up
+inside our lines after to-night, we'll hang 'em. You fixed the date of
+your death last June, and we're not going to let it be changed; that's
+when you died. Ain't it, Gholson? Whoever says it ain't fixes the date
+of his own funeral, eh, boys? I take pleasure in telling you we're not
+going to hang your father, because I believe in my bones you'd rather
+we'd hang him than not. Mr. Gholson, you're our most pious believer in
+obedience to orders; well, I'm going to give you one, and if you don't
+make a botch of it I sha'n't have to make a botch of you; understand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson's lips moved inaudibly, his jaws set hard, and he blanched; but
+the Colonel smiled once more: &quot;I've heard that at one time you said, or
+implied, that Captain Ferry had betrayed his office, because when he had
+a fair chance to shoot this varmint he omitted, for private reasons, to
+do it. And I've heard you say, myself, that this isn't your own little
+private war. So,--just change seats with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They exchanged. The slave girl sank forward upon her face moaning and
+sobbing. Harry silently wept. &quot;Now, Gholson, you know me; draw--pistol.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gholson drew; I grew sick. &quot;Ready,&quot;--Gholson came to a ready and so did
+the Colonel; &quot;aim,&quot; Gholson slowly aimed, the Colonel kept a ready, and
+Oliver, for the first time took his eyes from him and gazed at Gholson.
+&quot;Fire!&quot; Gholson fired; Oliver silently fell forward; with a stifled cry
+the girl sprang to him and drew his head into her lap, and he softly
+straightened out and was still. &quot;Oh, sweet Jesus!&quot; she cried, &quot;Oh,
+sweet Jesus!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The amused Colonel held the lantern close down. &quot;He's all right, Brother
+Gholson,&quot; was his verdict; the ball had gone to the heart. &quot;Still, just
+to clinch the thing, we'll calcine him, gin-house and all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gin-house and all, we burned him up. On our horses out in the open road
+to the house, we sat, the girl perched behind the Colonel, and watched
+the fire mount and whirl and crackle behind the awful black arms of the
+cotton-press. The Arkansan shook his head: &quot;It's too fine; 'tain't a
+dog's death, after all. Lord! why didn't I think of it in time? we'd
+ought to 'a' just dropped him alive into that lint-box and turned the
+press down onto him with our horses!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the pile was in one great flame we rode to the dwelling, and the
+girl was sent in to bid old Lucius begone. The doors stood open, a soft
+firelight shone from his room. We saw her form darken his chamber
+threshold and halt, and then she wailed: &quot;Oh, Lawd God A'mighty! Oh,
+Lawd God A'mighty!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop that noise! Gholson, hold the horses. Come. Lieutenant, come
+Smith, maybe he's killed himself, but it seems too good to be true.
+Here, girl, go cram what you can get into a pillow-case, and mount
+behind my saddle again; be quick, we're going to burn this hornet's
+nest too.&quot; Harry and I had already run to the old man's room, and, sure
+enough, there lay the aged assassin hideous in his fallen bulk, with his
+own bullet in his brain.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the Arkansan shook his head at the leaping flames. &quot;Too good,
+too good for either of 'em, entirely; we've let 'em settle at five cents
+on the dollar. Here girl,&quot;--he reached back and handed her a wad of
+greenbacks,--&quot;here's your dividend; you're a preferred creditor.&quot; He had
+rifled the pockets of both the dead men, and this was their contents.
+&quot;Now, boys, we'll dust, or we'll be getting shot at by some fool or
+other. We're leaving a fine horse hid away somewhere hereabouts, but we
+can't help that; come on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In due time the Colonel, with the slave girl, and Harry with her
+pillow-case of duds, turned toward Fayette, and Gholson and I toward the
+brigade, at Union Church. Then, at last, my old friend and
+co-religionist let his wrath loose. He began with a flood of curses,
+lifting high a loaded carbine which we had found with Oliver and which
+he was ordered to turn in. As he gave his ecstasy utterance it grew; he
+brandished the weapon like a Bedouin, dug the rowels into his overspent
+beast and curbed him back to his haunches, fisted him about the ears,
+gnashed with the pain of his own blows, and howled, and stood up in the
+stirrups and cursed again. I had heard church-members curse, but they
+were new church-members, camp converts, and their curses were an
+infant's cooing, to this. Unwittingly he caused his horse to stumble,
+and the torrent of his passion gathered force like rain after a peal of
+thunder; he clubbed the gun to bring it down upon the beautiful
+creature's head, and when I caught it on the rise he wrenched it from me
+as if I were a girl, threw it fifty feet away, sprang to the ground and
+caught it up, fired it in the air, and with one blow against a tree sent
+the stock flying, threw the barrel underfoot, leapt upon it, tore his
+hair and his hat, and cursed and champed and howled. I sat holding his
+horse and feeling my satisfaction rise like the mercury in a warmed
+thermometer. Contrasting this mood with the cold malignancy and resolve
+of his temper in the soldiers' room at Sessions's, I saw, to my delight,
+that our secret was forever imprisoned in his breast, gagged and chained
+down by the iron of his own inextricable infamy. At dawn he awakened me
+that he might persuade me to reject the evidences brought against his
+character by his doings and endurings of the night, and that he might
+rebuild the old house of words in which habitually he found shelter, too
+abysmally self-conceited ever to see his own hypocrisy. We breakfasted
+with the &quot;attatchays&quot;; after which he had barely secured my final
+assurance that our friendship remained unmarred, when old Dismukes and
+Harry mounted at the Colonel's tent, and the old brute, as they trotted
+out into the Gallatin road, beckoned me to join them.</p>
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 35%;" /><br /><br />
+
+<h2><a name="LXIV" id="LXIV">LXIV</a></h2>
+<p><strong>BY TWOS. MARCH</strong></p>
+
+<p>The Arkansan was happy. &quot;Come up, Legs,&quot; he bawled to me as soon as we
+were beyond the pickets, &quot;come up from behind there; this ain't no
+dress parade.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are they married?&quot; I softly asked Harry at the first opportunity, but
+he could not tell me. He knew only that Ferry had been expected to
+arrive about an hour before midnight; if he arrived later the wedding
+would be deferred until to-day. On our whole ride we met no one from
+Gallatin until near the edge of the town we passed a smiling rider who
+called after us, &quot;You-all a-hurryin' for nothin'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We dropped to a more dignified gait and moved gayly in among our
+gathering friends, asking if we were in time. &quot;No--o! you're too
+late!--but still we've waited for you; couldn't help ourselves; she
+wouldn't stir without you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The happy hubbub was bewildering. &quot;Where's this one?&quot; &quot;Where's that
+one?&quot; &quot;See here, I'm looking for you!&quot; &quot;Now, you and I go together--&quot;
+&quot;Dick Smith! where's Dick Sm'--Miss Harper wants you, Smith, up at the
+bride's door.&quot; But Miss Harper only sent me in to Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Richard, tell me,&quot; the fair vision began to say, but there the cloud
+left her brow. &quot;No,&quot; she added, &quot;you couldn't look so happy if there
+were the least thing wrong, could you?&quot; Her fathoming eyes filled while
+her smile brightened, and meeting them squarely I replied &quot;There's
+a-many a thing wrong, but not one for which this wedding need wait
+another minute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God bless you, Richard!&quot; she said; &quot;and now <em>you</em> may go tell Edgard I
+am coming.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Old Gallatin is no more. I would not mention without reverence the
+perishing of a town however small, though no charm of antiquity, of art
+or of nature were lost in its dissolution. Yet it suits my fancy that
+old Gallatin has perished. Neither war nor famine, flood nor fever were
+the death of it; the railroad and Hazlehurst sapped its life. Some years
+ago, on a business trip for our company--not cavalry, insurance,--I went
+several miles out of my way to see the spot. Not a timber, not a brick,
+of the old county-seat remained. Where the court-house had stood on its
+square, the early summer sun drew tonic odor from a field of corn. In
+place of the tavern a cotton-field was ablush with blossoms. Shops and
+houses had utterly vanished; a solitary &quot;store,&quot; as transient as a
+toadstool, stood at the cross-roads peddling calico and molasses, shoes
+and snuff. But that was the only discord, and by turning my back on it I
+easily called up the long past scene: the wedding, the feast, the fiery
+punch, the General's toast to the bridal pair, and the heavy-eyed
+Colonel's bumper to their posterity! It was hardly drunk when a courier
+brought word that the enemy were across Big Black, and the brigade
+pressing north to meet them. Charlotte glided away to her room to be
+&quot;back in a moment&quot;; into their saddles went the General, the Colonel,
+the Major and the aide-de-camp, and thundered off across the bridge in
+the woods; Charlotte came back in riding-habit, and here was my horse
+with her saddle on him, and the Harpers and Mrs. Wall clasping and
+kissing her; and now her foot was in Ferry's hand and up she sprang to
+her seat, he vaulted to his, and away they galloped side by side, he for
+the uttermost front of reconnoissance and assault, she for the slow but
+successful uplifting of Sergeant Jim back to health and into his place
+in the train of our hero and hers. In the little leather-curtained
+wagon, with the old black man and his daughter, and all her mistress's
+small belongings, and with my saddle and bridle, I followed on to the
+house where lay the sergeant, and where my horse would be waiting to
+bear me on to Ferry's scouts.</p>
+
+<p>I saw the Harpers only twice again before the war was over. Nearly all
+winter our soldiering was down in the Felicianas, but by February we
+were once more at Big Black when Sherman with ten thousand of his
+destroyers swarmed out of Vicksburg on his great raid to Meridian. Three
+or four mounted brigades were all that we could gather, and when we had
+fought our fiercest we had only fought the tide with a broom; it went
+back when it was ready, a month later, leaving what a wake! The Harpers
+set up a pretty home in Jackson, where both Harry and Gholson were
+occasional visitors, on errands more or less real to department
+headquarters in that State capital; yet Harry and C&eacute;cile did not wed
+until after the surrender. Gholson's passion far Charlotte really did
+half destroy him, while it lasted; nevertheless, one day about a year
+after her marriage, when I had the joy of visiting the Harpers, I saw
+that Gholson's heart was healed of that wound and had opened in a new
+place. That is why Estelle, with that danger-glow of emotion ever
+impending on her beautiful cheek, never married. She was of that kind
+whose love, once placed, can never remove itself, and she loved Gholson.
+Both C&eacute;cile and Camille had some gift to discern character, and some
+notion of their own value, and therefore are less to be excused for not
+choosing better husbands than they did; but Estelle could never see
+beyond the outer label of man, woman or child, and Gholson's label was
+his piety. She believed in it as implicitly, as consumingly, as he
+believed in it himself; and when her whole kindred spoke as one and said
+no, and she sent him away, <em>she</em> knew she was a lifelong widow from that
+hour. Gholson found a wife, a rich widow ten years his senior, and so
+first of all, since we have reached the page for partings, good-bye
+Gholson. &quot;Whom the gods love die young&quot;--you must be sixty years old
+now, for they say you're still alive. And good-bye, old Dismukes; the
+Colonel made a fortune after the war, as a penitentiary lessee, but they
+say he has--how shall we phrase it?--gone to his reward? Let us
+hope not.</p>
+
+<p>But what is this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks?
+Our rocket has scaled the sky, poised, curved, burst, spread out all its
+stars, and dropped its stick. All is done unless we desire to watch the
+fading sparks slowly sink and melt into darkness. The General, the
+Major, his brother, their sister, my mother, Quinn, Kendall, Sergeant
+Jim, the Sessionses, the Walls--do not inquire too closely; some have
+vanished already, and soon all will be gone; then--another rocket; it is
+the only way, and why is it not a good one? Harry and C&eacute;cile--yes, they
+still shine, in &quot;dear old New Orleans.&quot; Camille kept me on the
+tenter-hooks while she &quot;turned away her eyes&quot; for years; but one evening
+when we were reading an ancient book together out dropped those same old
+sweet-pea blossoms; whereupon I took her hand and--I have it yet. There,
+we have counted the last spark--stop, no! two lights beam out again;
+Edgard and Charlotte, our neighbors and dearest friends through all our
+life; they glow with nobility and loveliness yet, as they did in those
+young days when his sword led our dying fortunes, and she, in her gypsy
+wagon, followed them, binding the torn wound, and bathing the aching
+bruise and fevered head. Oh, Ned Ferry, my long-loved partner, as dear a
+leader still as ever you were in the days of bloody death, life's
+choicest gifts be yours, and be hers whose sons and daughters are yours,
+and the eldest and tallest of whom is the one you and she have
+named Richard.</p>
+
+<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
+
+<p>OTHER BOOKS BY MR. CABLE</p>
+
+<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
+
+<p>There are few living American writers who can reproduce for us more
+perfectly than MR. CABLE does, in his best moments, the speech, the
+manners, the whole social atmosphere of a remote time and peculiar
+people. A delicious flavor of humor permeates his stories.--<em>The New
+York Tribune</em>.</p>
+
+<p>STRONG HEARTS</p>
+
+<p>12mo, $1.25</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Under the title &quot;<em>Strong Hearts</em>,&quot; MR. CABLE has grouped three stories
+of varying length, which we think must stand as among the most charming
+things he has written. Not even in &quot;<em>Old Creole Days</em>,&quot; is there found
+more delicate work, and yet underneath it there is felt the strong grasp
+of the master. There is so much delicacy, such a fine touch that one is
+wholly captivated by the handiwork until it is realized how much this is
+part and parcel of this picture.&quot;--<em>Brooklyn Eagle</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p><em>A New Edition of Mr. Cable's Romances comprising the following 5 vols.,
+printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt top and bound in sateen with full
+gilt design. Each 12mo, $1.50. The set, 5 volumes, in a box, $7.50</em>.</p>
+
+<p>JOHN MARCH SOUTHERNER</p>
+
+<p>12mo, $1.50</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The most careful and thorough going study of the reconstruction period
+in the South which has yet been offered in the world of
+fiction.--<em>The Outlook</em>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In many respects MR. CABLE'S finest work.&quot;--<em>Boston Advertiser</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>THE GRANDISSIMES</p>
+
+<p>A STORY OF CREOLE LIFE</p>
+
+<p>12mo, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such a book goes far towards establishing an epoch in fiction, and it
+places it beyond a doubt that we have in MR. CABLE a novelist of
+positive originality, and of the very first quality.&quot;--<em>The
+Boston Journal</em>.</p>
+
+<p><strong>The Grandissimes</strong>. with 12 full-page illustrations and 8 head and tail
+pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an
+original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.</p>
+
+<p>A Special limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net, $12.00.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>OLD CREOLE DAYS</p>
+
+<p>12mo, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>Cameo Edition with an etching by Percy Moran, $1.25</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These charming stories attract attention and commendation by their
+quaint delicacy of style, their faithful delineation of Creole
+character, and a marked originality.&quot;--<em>The New Orleans Picayune</em>.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Old Creole Days</strong>. <em>With 8 full-page illustrations and 14 head and tail pieces by Albert Herter, all reproduced in photogravure, and with an original cover design by the same artist. 8vo, $6.00.</em></p>
+
+<p><em>A Special Limited Edition of 204 numbered copies printed on Japan paper,
+net $12.00</em>.</p>
+
+<p>BONAVENTURE</p>
+
+<p>A PROSE PASTORAL OF ACADIAN LOUISIANA 12mo, $1.50</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A noble, tender, beautiful tale.&quot;--MRS. L. C. MOULTON in <em>Boston
+Herald</em>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;MR. CABLE has never produced anything so delightful and so artistic as
+&quot;Bonaventure.&quot; The charm of the pastoral life of these unlearned,
+unsuspicious people in rude homes far away from the stir of modern life
+is as novel as it is indescribable.&quot;--<em>North American Review</em>.</p>
+
+<p>DR. SEVIER 12mo, $1.50</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The story contains a most attractive blending of vivid descriptions of
+local scenery, with admirable delineations of personal character.&quot;--<em>The
+Congregationalist</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA</p>
+
+<p>Illustrated. 12mo, $2.00</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a field of romance, of color, of incident, of delicate feeling,
+and unique social conditions these stories show!&quot;--<em>Hartford Courant</em>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are tales whose interest and variety seem inexhaustible.--MR.
+CABLE has done lasting service to literature in giving us this
+remarkable and delightful collection. In themselves they are memorably
+charming.&quot;--<em>Boston Transcript</em>.</p>
+
+<p>MADAME DELPHINE</p>
+
+<p>16mo, 75 cents</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is one of the gems of a collection of exquisite stories of the old
+Creole days in Louisiana.&quot;--<em>Boston Advertiser</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Ivory series edition, 16mo, 75c.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA</p>
+
+<p>ILLUSTRATED FROM DRAWINGS BY FENNEL</p>
+
+<p>Square 12mo, $2.50</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As a history of the Louisiana Creoles, it occupies a field in which it
+will not find a competitor. Mr. Cable has given us an exceedingly
+attractive piece of work.&quot;--<em>The Nation</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>THE SILENT SOUTH</p>
+
+<p>Together with the Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease
+System. <em>Revised and Enlarged Edition</em>. With portrait.</p>
+
+<p>12mo, $1.00</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whatever other literature on these themes may arise Mr. Cable's book
+must be a permanent influence impossible for writers on either side to
+ignore.&quot;--<em>The Critic</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>THE NEGRO QUESTION</p>
+
+<p>12mo, 75c</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Cable has the Puritan conscience, the agitator's courage, and the
+Anglo-Saxon's fearless adhesion to what he deems right.&quot;--<em>The
+Churchman</em>.</p>
+
+<p>-------------------------</p>
+
+<p>THE CABLE STORY BOOK</p>
+
+<p>Selections for School Reading. Edited by Mary E. Burt and Lucy L. Cable.
+[<em>The Scribner Series of School Reading</em>]. Illustrated. 12mo, <em>net</em> 60c.</p>
+<br />
+</td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cavalier, by George Washington Cable
+
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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