I'm a widder," she answered, taking her pipe from her mouth and
giving him what she intended for a languishing smile, but which Shorty
afterward said reminded him of a sun-crack in a mud fence. "Yes, I'm
a widder. Bin so for gwine on six months. Sakes alive, but ye do
talk nice. You air the best-lookin' Yankee I've ever seed." "Nothin'
painfully bashful about her," thought Shorty. "But I must be careful not
to let her get me near a Justice of the Peace. She'd marry me before I
could ketch my breath. Madam," he continued aloud.

"Yo' may call me Sophrony," she said, with another cavernous smile.

"Well, Sophrony, let me present you with half o' this plug o' famous
terbacker." He drew his jackknife and sliced the plug in two. "Take it,
with my warmest respects. Here comes my partner with some coffee I've
sent him for, and which I want you to have. It is not as much as I'd
like to give you, but it's all that I have. Some other day you shall
have much more."

"Law's sakes." she bubbled, as the fragrant odor{187} of the coffee
reached her nose, and she hefted the package. "Yo' air jest the nicest
man I ever did see in all my born days. I didn't s'pose thar wuz so nice
a man, or sich a good-lookin' one, in the hull Yankee army, or in
the oonfederit either, fur that matter. But, then, yo' ain't no real
blue-bellied Yankee."

"No, indeed, Sophrony. I never saw New England in all my life, nor did
any o' my people. They wuz from Virginny (about 500 miles, as near as I
kin calculate)" he added to himself as a mental poultice.

"Say, Mister, why don't you leave the Yankee army?"

"Can't," said Shorty, despairingly. "If I tried to git back home the
Provos 'll ketch me. If I go the other way the rebel's ketch me. I'm
betwixt the devil and the deep sea."

She sat and smoked for several minutes in semblance of deep thought,
and spat with careful aim at one after another of the prominent weeds
around. Then she said:

"If yo' want t' splice with me, I kin take keer o' yo'. I've helped run
off several o' the boys who wuz sick o' this Abolition war. Thar's
two o' them now with Bill Phillips's gang makin' it hot for the Yankee
trains and camps. They're makin' more'n they ever did soljerin', an'
havin' a much better time, for they take whatever they want, no matter
who it belongs to. D' yo' know Groundhog, a teamster? He's in cahoots
with us."

"Oh!" said Shorty to himself. "Here's another lay altogether. Guess it's
my duty to wor