iritually suffusive,
potent, revivifying, complete. "She is as good as the saints in the
Bible--an' plumb beautiful besides," he muttered beneath his fierce
mustachios.

Once more he gazed wonderingly at her.

"I expect to do some courtin' in this kentry when the war is over," the
guerilla said, soberly, reaching down to readjust the reins. "I haven't
got time now. Will _you_ be waiting fur me here in Tanglefoot Cove--if I
promise not to hang you fur your misdeeds right off now?" He glanced up
with a sudden arch jocularity.

She burst out laughing gleefuly in the tumult of her joyous reassurance,
as she laid her tremulous fingers in his big gauntlet when he insisted
that they should shake hands as on a solemn compact. Forthwith he
mounted again, and the great charger galloped back, carrying double, in
the red afterglow of the sunset, to the waiting group before the flaring
doors of the forge.

The fine flower of romance had blossomed incongruously in that eager
heart in those fierce moments of the bitterness of defeat. Life suddenly
had a new meaning, a fair and fragrant promise, and often and again he
looked over his shoulder at the receding scene when the trumpets sang
"to horse," and in the light of the moon the guerilla rode out of
Tanglefoot Cove.

But Ethelinda saw him never again. All the storms of fate overwhelmed
the Confederacy with many a rootless hope and many a plan and pride. In
lieu of the materialization of the stalwart ambition of distinction
that had come to dominate his life, responsive to the discovery of his
peculiar and inherent gifts, his destiny was chronicled in scarce a line
of the printed details of a day freighted with the monstrous disaster
of a great battle; in common with others of the "missing" his bones were
picked by the vultures till shoved into a trench, where a monument rises
to-day to commemorate an event and not a commander. Nevertheless, for
many years the flare of the first red leaves in the cleft among the
pines on the eastern slope of Tanglefoot Cove brought to Ethelinda's
mind the gay flutter of the guidon, and in certain sonorous blasts of
the mountain wind she could hear martial echoes of the trumpets of the
guerilla.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Raid Of The Guerilla, by
Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RAID OF THE GUERILLA ***

***** This file should be named 23548.txt or 2354