-"

She pronounced a word under her breath.

"Hey?"

She nodded.

"Tain't _her_?" demanded the corporal incredulously.

She nodded again. The corporal's lantern and jaw dropped in unison.

"Speak low," she said, smiling.

He leaned toward her; she drew nearer, inclining her pretty, disheveled
head with its disordered braids curling into witchlocks on her
shoulders.

"'Tain't _the_ Special Messenger, ma'am, is it?" he inquired hoarsely.
"The boys is tellin' how you was ketched down to----"

She made him a sign for silence as the officer of the guard came up--an
ill-tempered, heavily-bandaged young man.

"What the ----" he began, but, seeing a woman's muddy skirt in the
lantern light, checked his speech.

The corporal whispered in his ear; both stared. "I guess it's all
right," said the officer. "Won't you come in? The general is asleep;
he's got half an hour more, but I'll wake him if you say so."

"I can wait half an hour."

"Take her horse," said the officer briefly, then led the way up the
steps of a white porch buried under trumpet vines in heavy bloom.

The door stood open, so did every window on the ground floor, for the
July night was hot. A sentry stood inside the wide hall, resting on his
rifle, sleeves rolled to his elbows, cap pushed back on his flushed
young forehead.

There was a candle burning in the room on the right; an old artillery
officer leaned over the center table, asleep, round, red face buried in
his arms, sabre tucked snugly between his legs, like the tail of a
sleeping dog; an aide-de-camp slept heavily on a mahogany sofa, jacket
unbuttoned, showing the white, powerful muscles of his chest, all
glistening with perspiration. Beside the open window sat a thin figure
in the uniform of a signal officer, and at first when the Special
Messenger looked at him she thought he also was asleep.

Then, as though her entrance had awakened him, he straightened up,
passed one long hand over his face, looked at her through the
candlelight, and rose with a grace too unconscious not to have been
inherited.

The bandaged officer of the guard made a slovenly gesture, half salute,
half indicative: "The Messenger," he announced, and, half turning on his
heel as he left the room, "our signal officer, Captain West," in
deference to a convention almost forgotten.

Captain West drew forward an armchair; the Special Messenger sank into
its tufted depths and stripped the gauntlets from her sun-tanne