ho I mean--Miss
Sally."

He looked at her wonderingly for a moment, but quickly bent his
head again in the direction of the road. "They are coming," he said,
starting. "YOU must go. This is no place for you. Stop! it's too
late; you cannot go now until they have passed. Come here--crouch down
here--over this grave--so."

He almost forced her--kneeling down--upon the mound below the level of
the shrubs, and then ran quickly himself a few paces lower down the
hill to a more exposed position. She understood it. He wished to attract
attention to himself. He was successful--a few hurried shots followed
from the road, but struck above him.

He clambered back quickly to where she was still crouching.

"They were the vedettes," he said, "but they have fallen back on the
main skirmish line and will be here in force in a moment. Go--while you
can." She had not moved. He tried to raise her--her hat fell off---he
saw blood oozing from where the vedette's bullet that had missed him had
pierced her brain.

And yet he saw in that pale dead face only the other face which he
remembered now had been turned like this towards his own. It was very
strange. And this was the end, and this was his expiation! He raised his
own face humbly, blindly, despairingly to the inscrutable sky; it looked
back upon him from above as coldly as the dead face had from below.

Yet out of this he struck a faint idea that he voiced aloud in nearly
the same words which he had used to Colonel Starbottle only three years
ago. "It was with his own pistol too," he said, and took up his musket.

He walked deliberately down the hill, occasionally trying the stock of
his musket in the loose earth, and at last suddenly remained motionless,
in the attitude of leaning over it. At the same moment there was a
distant shout; two thin parallel streams of blue and steel came issuing
through the woods like a river, appeared to join tumultuously in the
open before the hill, and out of the tumult a mounted officer called
upon him to surrender.

He did not reply.

"Come down from there, Johnny Reb, I want to speak to you," called a
young corporal.

He did not move.

"It's time to go home, Johnny."

No response.

The officer, who had been holding down his men with an unsworded but
masterful hand, raised it suddenly. A dozen shots followed. The men
leaped forward, and dashing Corbin contemptuously aside streamed up the
hill past him.

But he had neither heard nor