roked the glossy mane with a sort of mechanical pride.

"And so he went plumb through the cave?"

"An' all the troop--they kindled pine-knots fur torches."

He glanced about him at the convenient growths.

"And they came out all safe in Greenbrier!" He winced. How the lost
opportunity hurt him!

"Yessir. In Greenbrier Cove."

"Did he pay you in gold?" sneered Ackert. "Or in greenbacks? Or mebbe in
Cornfed money?"

"I wouldn't hev his gold." She drew herself up proudly, though the tears
were still coursing down her cheeks. "So he gin me a present--a
whole passel o' coffee in my milk-piggin." Then to complete a candid
confession she detailed the disposition she had made of this rare and
precious luxury at the rebel smallpox camp.

His eyes seemed to dilate as they gazed up at her. "Jesus Gawd!" he
exclaimed, with uncouth profanity. But the phrase was unfamiliar to her,
and she caught at it with a meaning all her own.

"That's jes' it! Folks in gineral don't think o' _them_, 'cept ter git
out o' thar way; an' nobody keers fur _them_, but kase Jesus is Gawd
He makes _somebody_ remember them wunst in a while! An' they did seem
passable glad."

A vague sweet fragrance was on the vesperal air; some subtle
distillation of asters or jewel-weed or "mountain-snow," and the leafage
of crimson sumac and purple sweet-gum and yellow hickory and the late
ripening frost-grapes--all in the culmination of autumnal perfection;
more than one star gleamed whitely palpitant in a sky that was yet blue
and roseate with a reminiscence of sunset; a restful sentiment, a brief
truce stilled the guerilla's tempestuous pulse as he continued to stand
beside his horse's head while the girl waited, seated on the saddle
blanket.

Suddenly he spoke to an unexpected intent. "Ye took a power o' risk in
goin' nigh that Confederate pest-camp--an' yit ye're fur the Union an'
saved a squadron from capture!" he upbraided the inconsistency in a soft
incidental drawl.

"Yes, I be fur the Union," she trembled forth the dread avowal. "But
somehows I can't keep from holpin' any I kin. They war rebs--an' it war
Yankee coffee--an' I dun'no'--I jes' dun'no'----"

As she hesitated he looked long at her with that untranslated gaze. Then
he fell ponderingly silent.

Perhaps the revelation of the sanctities of a sweet humanity for a holy
sake, blessing and blessed, had illumined his path, had lifted his eyes,
had wrought a change in his moral atmosphere sp