more fear than
had I been a private and you my commanding officer."

"Fear wins nothing."

"Precisely. Then let us not fear what the future may have for us.
I have no directions beyond this point,--Pittsburg. I was to take
boat here, that was all. I was to convey you out into the West,
somewhere, anywhere, no one was to know where. And someway,
anyway, my instructions were, I was to lose you--to lose you.
Madam, in plain point of fact. And now, at the very time I am
indiscreet enough to tell you this much, you make my cheerful task
the more difficult by saying that you must be regarded only as a
prisoner of war!"

Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever
showing in her dark eyes. The clear light of the bright autumn
morning had no terrors for youth and health like hers. She put
back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to
the world, and looked him full in the face now, drawing a deep
breath which caused the round of her bosom to lift the lace at her
throat. Then, woman-like, she did the unlocked for, and laughed at
him, a low, full ripple of wholesome laughter, which evoked again a
wave of color to his sensitive face. Josephine St. Auban was a
prisoner,--a prisoner of state, in fact, and such by orders not
understood by herself, although, as she knew very well, a prisoner
without due process of law. Save for this tearful maid who stood
yonder, she was alone, friendless. Her escape, her safety even,
lay in her own hands. Yet, even now, learning for the first time
this much definitely regarding the mysterious journey into which
she had been entrapped--even now, a prisoner held fast in some
stern and mysterious grasp whose reason and whose nature she could
not know--she laughed, when she should have wept!

"My instructions were to take you out beyond this point," went on
Carlisle; "and then I was to lose you, as I have said. I have had
no definite instructions as to how that should be done, my dear
Countess." His eyes twinkled as he stiffened to his full height
and almost met the level of her own glance.

"The agent who conveyed my orders to me--he comes from Kentucky,
you see--said to me that while I could not bow-string you, it would
be quite proper to put you in a sack and throw you overboard.
'Only,' said he to me, 'be careful that this sack be tightly tied;
and be sure to drop her only where the water is deepest. And for
God's sake, my dear young man