“Who is she?” asked his sister eagerly.  “Tell me:  you say there is something strange, dangerous about her, and I can see it.  Who is she?”

“Humph!” said her brother.  “She is a lady, and that is enough.  If she is dangerous, keep out of her way.”

This only deepened the mystery.  But she had no time to think.  Her brother left in the morning.  In the afternoon the colonel of her lover’s regiment came to see her with a very grave face.  The young man had been arrested for dealing with the enemy, harboring spies and furnishing information of the disposition and number of the Federal forces.  “If we could get at the true story of his connection with that woman,” said the colonel, “I am satisfied he has only been indiscreet, not treacherous.  He is one of my best, most trusted officers, and his arrest is a blot on the regiment.  If he will tell anybody, he will tell you.  Can you go to Louisville at once?”

Yes, at once.  The traveling-dress, made up for so different an occasion, was donned, and under escort she went, by a hundred miles of horseback ride, to the nearest railway station.  There was no tarrying by the way:  the colonel’s influence provided relays.  On the evening of the third day she was with her lover.

It was as the colonel had supposed:  the woman had got her lover in her toils, and he had been imprudent.  He had every reason for believing that her story of her husband’s remains was false.  She was a dealer in contraband goods:  this much he knew.  Other officers, of higher rank, knew as much, and corresponded with her.  If they chose to wink at it, was he, a subordinate, to interfere?  She had trusted him, depended on him, and he had a feeling that it would be disloyal to her confidence to betray her, to pry into what she concealed, and expose what his superiors seemed to know.  But after she was gone the story leaked out:  she was not only a smuggler, but a very dangerous spy.  Some one must be the scapegoat, and who so fit as the poor, friendless Tennesseean who had escorted her to head-quarters and acted for her in personal matters?

That was his story, but what a poor story to tell to a court-martial!  What was she to do?  Poor, simple child of the woods! what did she know of the wheels within wheels, and the rings of political influence by which a superior authority was to be invoked?  She knew nothing of these things, and there was no one to tell her.  She thought of but one plan:  her brother could find that woman.  She would seek her out—­she would appeal to her.

We need not follow her on that return journey and her visit to the Confederate camp.  Fortunately, the Confederates were nearer than she supposed.  She came upon their pickets, and was taken into the commanding officer’s presence.  Her brother was sent for, and when he came she told him she was looking for his friend, Mrs. G——.

“Looking for her!” said her brother.  “Why, that is what we moved out this way for!  She is in camp now.  We brought her and her luggage in last night.”