At her question the man cried out as if in pain, then reached for her in a wave of yearning tenderness.

“Listen, dear; I—­I had a little bundle for you—­of—­of things to eat.”  He took her by the arms, and looked into her quaint, wise face, “And I was so glad I had it, darling, for you are thinner than you were.”  He paused to bite his lip, and continued haltingly, “There was bread in that bundle—­and meat—­real meat—­and sugar—­and tea.”

Virgie released herself and clapped her hands.

“Oh, Daddy, where is it?” she asked him happily, once more reaching for the pocket. “‘Cause I’m so hungry for somethin’ good.”

“Don’t!  Don’t!” he cried, as he drew his coat away, roughly, fiercely, in the pain of unselfish suffering.  “For Daddy’s sake, don’t!”

“Why, what is it, Daddy,” she asked, in her shrillness of a child’s alarm, her eyes on the widening stain of red above his waist.  “Is—­is it hurtin’ you again?  What is it, Daddy-man?”

“Your bundle,” he answered, in the flat, dull tone of utter hopelessness.  “I lost it, Virgie.  I lost it.”

“Oh,” she said, with a quaver of disappointment, which she vainly strove to hide.  “How did you do it?”

For a moment the man leaned limply against a chair-back, hiding his eyes with one trembling hand; then he spoke in shamed apology: 

“I—­I couldn’t help it, darling; because, you see, I hadn’t any powder left; and I was coming through the woods—­just as I told you—­when the Yanks got sight of me.”  He smiled down at her bravely, striving to add a dash of comedy to his tragic plight.  “And I tell you, Virgie, your old dad had to run like a turkey—­wishing to the Lord he had wings, too.”

Virgie did not smile in turn, and her father dropped back into his former tone, his pale lips setting in a straight, hard line.

“And then—­the blue boy I was telling you about—­when he shot at me, I must have stumbled, because, when I scrambled up, I—­I couldn’t see just right; so I ran and ran, thinking of you, darling, and wanting to get to you before—­well, before it was breakfast time.  I had your bundle in my pocket; but when I fell—­why, Virgie, don’t you see?—­I—­I couldn’t go back and find it.”  He paused to choke, then spoke between his teeth, in fury at a strength which had failed to breast a barrier of fate:  “But I would have gone back, if I’d had any powder left.  I would have!  I would!”

A pitiful apology it was, from a man to a little child; a story told only in its hundredth part, for why should he give its untold horrors to a baby’s ears?  How could she understand that man-hunt in the early dawn?  The fugitive—­with an empty pistol on his hip—­wading swamps and plunging through the tangled underbrush; alert and listening, darting from tree to tree where the woods were thin; crouching behind some fallen log to catch his laboring breath, then rising again to creep along his way.  He