form moved from behind a bush a little in advance and started
ahead in the path, walking and beckoning. Presently they turned into a
clear, open forest, and followed the long, rapid, swinging stride of the
negro for nearly an hour. Then they halted on the bank of a deep, narrow
stream. The negro made a motion for them to keep well to the right when
they should enter the water. The white man softly lifted Alice to his
arms, directed and assisted Mary to kneel in her saddle, with her skirts
gathered carefully under her, and so they went down into the cold
stream, the negro first, with arms outstretched above the flood; then
Mary, and then the white man,--or, let us say plainly, the spy--with the
unawakened child on his breast. And so they rose out of it on the
farther side without a shoe or garment wet, save the rags of their dark
guide.

Again they followed him, along a line of stake-and-rider fence, with the
woods on one side and the bright moonlight flooding a field of young
cotton on the other. Now they heard the distant baying of house-dogs,
now the doleful call of the chuck-will's-widow, and once Mary's blood
turned, for an instant, almost to ice at the unearthly shriek of the
hoot owl just above her head. At length they found themselves in a dim,
narrow road, and the negro stopped.

"Dess keep dish yeh road fo' 'bout half mile, an' you strak 'pon de
broad, main road. Tek de left, an' you go whah yo' fancy tek you."

"Good-by," whispered Mary.

"Good-by, Miss," said the negro, in the same low voice; "good-by, boss;
don't you fo'git you promise tek me thoo to de Yankee' when you come
back. I 'feered you gwine fo'git it, boss."

The spy said he would not, and they left him. The half-mile was soon
passed, though it turned out to be a mile and a half, and at length
Mary's companion looked back as they rode single file with Mary in the
rear, and said softly:

"There's the road," pointing at its broad, pale line with his
six-shooter.

As they entered it and turned to the left, Mary, with Alice again in her
arms, moved somewhat ahead of her companion, her indifferent
horsemanship having compelled him to drop back to avoid a prickly bush.
His horse was just quickening his pace to regain the lost position, when
a man sprang up from the ground on the farther side of the highway,
snatched a carbine from the earth and cried: "Halt!"

The dark recumbent forms of six or eight others could be seen, enveloped
in their bl