of their soft hats,
the sun a bar of gold across each sunburned face.

There were only a hundred of them--probably some of Ashby's old riders,
for they seemed strangely familiar--but it was not long before they had
passed on their gay course, and the last tremor in the forest soil--the
last distant rattle of sabre and carbine--died away in the forest
silence.

What were they doing here? She did not know. There seemed no logical
reason for the presence of Stuart's troopers.

For a while, awaiting their possible collision with the Union outposts,
she listened, expecting the far rattle of rifles. No sound came. They
must have sheered off east. So, very calmly she addressed herself to the
task in hand.

This must be the burned clearing; her map and the cabin corroborated
her belief. Then it was here that she was to meet this unknown man in
Confederate uniform and Union pay--a spy like herself--and give him
certain information and receive certain information in return.

Her instructions had been unusually rigid; she was to take every
precaution; use native disguise whether or not it might appear
necessary, carry no papers, and let any man she might encounter make the
advances until she was absolutely certain of him. For there was an ugly
rumor afloat that the man she expected had been caught and hanged, and
that a Confederate might attempt to impersonate him. So she looked very
carefully at her map, then out of the thicket at the burned clearing.
There was the wretched cabin named as rendezvous, the little garden
patch with standing corn and beans, and here and there a yellowing
squash.

_Why had the passing rebel cavalry left all that good food undisturbed?_

Fear, which within her was always latent, always too ready to influence
her by masquerading as caution, stirred now. For almost an hour she
stood, balancing her field glasses across her saddle, eyes focused on
the open cabin door. Nothing stirred there.

At last, with a slight shiver, she opened her saddle bags and drew out
the dress she meant to wear--a dingy, earth-colored thing of gingham.

Deep in the thicket she undressed, folded her fine linen and silken
stockings, laid them away in the saddle bags together with waist and
skirt, field glasses, gauntlets, and whip, and the map and papers, which
latter, while affording no information to the enemy, would certainly
serve to convict her.

Dressed now in the scanty, colorless clothing of a "poor white" of