d hide there?"

"Not yet," he said gently.

"Why?"

"Because your father is a Union man.... And you are Union, too, are you
not?"

"Yes," she said, smiling; "are you afraid of me?"

A slight flush stained his smooth, sunburnt skin; then he laughed.

"A little afraid," he admitted; "I find you dangerous, but not in the
way you mean. I--I do not mean to offend you----"

But she smiled audaciously at him, looking prettier than ever; and his
heart gave a surprised little jump at her unsuspected capabilities.

"Why are you afraid of me?" she asked, looking at him with her engaging
little smile. In her eyes a bewitching brightness sparkled, partly
veiled by the long lashes; and she laughed again, poised there in the
sunshine, hands on her hips, delicately provoking his reply.

And, crossing the chasm which her coquetry had already bridged, he paid
her the quick, reckless, boyish compliment she invited--a little
flowery, perhaps, possibly a trifle stilted, but very Southern; and she
shrugged like a spoiled court beauty, nose uptilted, and swept him with
a glance from half-closed lids, almost insolent.

The sentry in the holly and laurel thicket stared hard at them both. And
he saw his major break off a snowy Cherokee rose and, bending at his
slim, sashed waist, present the blossom with the courtly air inbred
through many generations; and he saw a ragged mountaineer girl accept it
with all the dainty and fastidious mockery of a coquette of the golden
age, and fasten it where her faded bodice edged the creamy skin of her
breast.

What the young major said to her after that, bending nearer and nearer,
the sentry could not hear, for the major's voice was very low, and the
slow, smiling reply was lower still.

But the major straightened as though he had been shot through and
through, and bowed and walked away among the weeds toward a group of
officers under the trees, who were steadily watching the pass through
their leveled field glasses.

Once the major turned around to look back: once she turned on the
threshold. Her cheeks were pinker; her eyes sparkled.

The emotions of the Special Messenger were very genuine and rather
easily excited.

But when she had closed the door, and leaned wearily against it, the
color soon faded from her face and the sparkle died out in her dark
eyes. Pale, alert, intelligent, she stood there minute after minute,
searching the single room with anxious, purposeless eyes; then, driven