felt--"

"At least those minds were shrewd in choosing their agent," she
rejoined. "Yes; you are fanatic, that is plain. You will obey
orders. And you have not been much used to women. That makes it
harder for me. Or easier!" She smiled at him again, very blithe
for a prisoner.

"It ought to have been held down to that," he began disconsolately,
"I should have been all along professional only. It began well
when you gave me your parole, so that I need not sit nodding and
blinking, over against you also nodding and blinking all night
long. Had you been silly, as many women would have been, you could
not this morning be so fresh and brilliant--even though you tell me
you have not slept, which seems to me incredible. I myself slept
like a boy, confident in your word. Now, you have banished sleep!
Nodding and blinking, I must henceforth watch you, nodding--and
blinking, unhappy, uncomfortable; whereas, were it in my power, I
would never have you know the first atom of discomfort."

"There, there! I am but an amanuensis, my dear Captain Carlisle."

He colored almost painfully, but showed his own courage. "I only
admire the wisdom of the Vehmgerichte. They knew you were
dangerous, and I know it. I have no hope, should I become too much
oppressed by lack of sleep, except to follow instructions, and cast
you overboard somewhere below Kentucky!"

"You ask me not to attempt any escape?"

"Yes."

"Why, I would agree to as much as that. It is, as you say, a
matter of indifference to me whether I leave the boat at Cairo or
at some point farther westward. Of course I would return to
Washington as soon as I escaped from bondage."

"Excellent, Madam! Now, please add that you will not attempt to
communicate with any person on the boat or on shore."

"No; that I will not agree to as a condition."

"Then still you leave it very hard for me."

She only smiled at him again, her slow, deliberate smile; yet there
was in it no trace of hardness or sarcasm. Keen as her mind
assuredly was, as she smiled she seemed even younger, perhaps four
or five and twenty at most. With those little dimples now rippling
frankly into view at the corners of her mouth, she was almost
girlish in her expression, although the dark eyes above,
long-lashed, eloquent, able to speak a thousand tongues into shame,
showed better than the small curving lips the well-poised woman of
the world.

Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he wa