CHAPTER VI

The head and shoulders disappeared.  A short pause followed, then the ladder came slowly down, and the Southerner descended, while Virgie crouched, a sobbing little heap, beside her doll.  But when he reached the bottom rung, she rose to her feet and ran to meet him, weeping bitterly.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy, I didn’t do it right!  I didn’t do it right!”

She buried her head in his tattered coat, while he slipped an arm about her and tried to soothe a sorrow too great for such a tiny heart to bear.

“But you did do it right,” he told her.  “It was my fault.  Mine!  My leg got cramped, and I had to move.”  He stooped and kissed her.  “It was my fault, honey; but you?—­you did it splendidly!” He patted her tear-stained cheek, then turned to his captor, with a grim, hard smile of resignation to his fate.

“Well, Colonel, you’ve had a long chase of it; but you’ve gotten my brush at last.”

The Union soldier faced him, speaking earnestly: 

“Captain Cary, you’re a brave man—­and one of the best scouts in the Confederate army.  I regret this happening—­more than I can say.”  The Southerner shrugged his shoulders.  His Northern captor asked:  “Are you carrying dispatches?”

“No.”

“Any other papers?—­of any kind?” No answer came, and he added sternly:  “It is quite useless to refuse.  Give them to me.”

He held out his hand, but his captive only looked him in the eyes; and the answer, though spoken in an undertone, held a world of quiet meaning: 

“You can take it—­afterwards.”

The Federal officer bit his lip; and yet he could not, would not, be denied.  His request became demand, backed by authority and the right of might, till Virgie broke in, in a piping voice of indignation: 

“You can’t have it!  It’s mine!  My pass to Richmon’—­from Gen’ral Lee.”

Morrison turned slowly from the little rebel to the man.

“Is this true?” he asked.

The Southerner flushed, and for reply produced the rumpled paper from his boot leg, and handed it over without a word.  The Northerner read it carefully.

    “Pass Virginia Cary and escort through all Confederate lines and
    give safe-conduct wherever possible.

    “R.E.  LEE, General.”

The reader crushed the paper in his fist, while his hand sank slowly to his side, then he raised his head and asked, in a voice which was strangely out of keeping with a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Union Cavalry: 

“And who was to be her escort?  You?”

The captive nodded, smiling his sad, grim smile; and the captor swallowed hard as he moved to the cabin door and stood listening to the muttered rumble of the river guns.

“I’m sorry, Cary,” he whispered brokenly; “more sorry than you can understand.”