his
fascinating young girl, fashioned to slay the hearts of Southern
chivalry--so young, so sweet, so soft of voice and manner, condemned to
live life through alone in this shaggy solitude--fated, doubtless, to
mate with some loose, lank, shambling, hawk-eyed rustic of the
peaks--doomed to bear sickly children, and to fade and dry and wither in
the full springtide of her youth and loveliness.

"It's too bad," he said fretfully, unconscious that he spoke aloud,
unaware, too, that she had risen and was moving idly, with bent head,
among the weeds of the truck garden--edging nearer, nearer, to a dark,
round object about the size of a small apple, which had rolled into a
furrow where the ground was all cut up by the wheel tracks of artillery
and hoofs of heavy horses.

There was scarcely a chance that she could pick it up unobserved; her
ragged skirts covered it; she bent forward as though to tie her shoe,
but a sentinel was watching her, so she straightened up carelessly and
stood, hands on her hips, dragging one foot idly to and fro, until she
had covered the small, round object with sand and gravel.

That object was a loaded French hand grenade, fitted with percussion
primer; and it lay last at the end of a long row of similar grenades
along the shaded side of the house.

The sentry in the bushes had been watching her; and now he came out
along the edge of the laurel tangle, apparently to warn her away, but
seeing a staff officer so near her he halted, satisfied that authority
had been responsible for her movements. Besides, he had not noticed that
a grenade was missing; neither had the major, who now rose and sauntered
toward her, balancing his field glasses in one hand.

"There's ammunition under these bushes," he said pleasantly; "don't go
any nearer, please. Those grenades _might_ explode if anyone stumbled
over them. They're bad things to handle."

"Will there be a battle here?" she asked, recoiling from the deadly
little bombs.

The Major said, stroking the down on his short upper lip:

"There will probably be a skirmish. I do not dare let you leave this
spot till the first shot is fired. But as soon as you hear it you had
better run as fast as you can"--he pointed with his field glasses--"to
that little ridge over there, and lie down behind the rocks on the other
side. Do you understand?"

"Yes--I think so."

"And you'll lie there very still until it is--over?"

"I understand. May I go immediately an