acco crop, ain't
it?"

"Well, rather; we've enough for ourselves, but none to offer our visitors."

"Look here, are all these things about you in the papers gospel truth?"

"Can't say. What things?"

"Do you always carry bowie knives into battle?"

"No, we use scissors--they're more convenient."

"When you catch a runaway nigger do you chop him up in little pieces and
throw him to the hogs?"

"Not exactly. We boil him down and grease our cartridges."

"After Bull Run did you set up all the live Zouaves you got hold of as
targets for rifle practice?"

"Can't remember about the Zouaves. Rather think we made them into flags."

"Well, you Rebels take the breath out of me," commented the picket across
the river; and then, as the relief came, Dan hurried back to look for the
mail bag and a letter from Betty. For Betty wrote often these days--letters
sometimes practical, sometimes impassioned, always filled with cheer, and
often with bright gossip. Of her own struggle at Uplands and the long days
crowded with work, she wrote no word; all her sympathy, all her large
passion, and all her wise advice in little matters were for Dan from the
beginning to the end. She made him promise to keep warm if it were
possible, to read his Bible when he had the time, and to think of her at
all hours in every season. In a neat little package there came one day a
gray knitted waistcoat which he was to wear when on picket duty beside the
river, "and be very sure to fasten it," she had written. "I have sewed the
buttons on so tight they can't come off. Oh, if I had only papa and
Virginia and you back again I could be happy in a hovel. Dear mamma says
so, too."

And after much calm advice there would come whole pages that warmed him
from head to foot. "Your kisses are still on my lips," she wrote one day.
"The Major said to me, 'Your mouth is very warm, my dear,' and I almost
answered, 'you feel Dan's kisses, sir.' What would he have said, do you
think? As it was I only smiled and turned away, and longed to run straight
to you to be caught up in your arms and held there forever. O my beloved,
when you need me only stretch out your hands and I will come."

VII

THE SILENT BATTLE

Despite the cheerfulness of Betty's letters, there were times during the
next dark years when it seemed to her that starvation must be the only end.
The negroes had been freed by the Governor's will, but the girl could not
turn them from their home