ed. "'My day's
work's done,' sezee; 'I done hoed my row.'" A responsive neigh came out
of the darkness ahead. "That's the trick!" said the man. "Thanks, as the
felleh says." He looked to Mary for her appreciation of his humor.

"I suppose that means a good deal; does it?" asked she, with a smile.

"Jess so! It means, first of all, fresh hosses. And then it means a
house what aint been burnt by jayhawkers yit, and a man and woman
a-waitin' in it, and some bacon and cornpone, and maybe a little coffee;
and milk, anyhow, till you can't rest, and buttermilk to fare-you-well.
Now, have you ever learned the trick o' jess sort o' qui'lin'[2] up,
cloze an' all, dry so, and puttin' half a night's rest into an hour's
sleep? 'Caze why, in one hour we must be in the saddle. No mo' buggy,
and powerful few roads. Comes as nigh coonin' it as I reckon you ever
'lowed you'd like to do, don't it?"

[2] Coiling.

He smiled, pretending to hold back much laughter, and Mary smiled too.
At mention of a woman she had removed her bonnet and was smoothing her
hair with her hand.

"I don't care," she said, "if only you'll bring us through."

The man made a ludicrous gesture of self-abasement.

"Not knowin', can't say, as the felleh says; but what I can tell you--I
always start out to make a spoon or spoil a horn, and which one I'll do
I seldom ever promise till it's done. But I have a sneakin' notion, as
it were, that I'm the clean sand, and no discount, as Mr. Lincoln says,
and I do my best. Angels can do no more, as the felleh says."

He drew rein. "Whoa!" Mary saw a small log cabin, and a fire-light
shining under the bottom of the door.

"The woods seem to be on fire just over there in three or four places,
are they not?" she asked, as she passed the sleeping Alice down to the
man, who had got out of the buggy.

"Them's the camps," said another man, who had come out of the house and
was letting the horse out of the shafts.

"If we was on the rise o' the hill yonder we could see the Confedick
camps, couldn't we, Isaiah?" asked Mary's guide.

"Easy," said that prophet. "I heer 'em to-day two, three times, plain,
cheerin' at somethin'."

* * *

About the middle of that night Mary Richling was sitting very still and
upright on a large dark horse that stood champing his Mexican bit in the
black shadow of a great oak. Alice rested before her, fast asleep
against her bosom. Mary held by the bridle another horse,