For a long time no one spoke, then the Southerner went to Virgie, dropping his hand in tenderness on her tumbled hair.

“Just go into your room, honey; I want to talk to Colonel Morrison.”  She looked up at him doubtfully; but he added, with a reassuring smile:  “It’s all right, darling.  I’ll call you in just a minute.”

Still Virgie seemed to hesitate.  She shifted her doubting eyes toward the Union officer, turned, and obeyed in silence, closing the door of the adjoining room behind her.  Then the two men faced each other, without the hampering presence of the child, each conscious of the coming tragedy that both, till now, had striven manfully to hide.  The one moved forward toward a seat, staggering as he walked, and catching himself on the table’s edge, while the other’s hand went out to lend him aid; but the Southerner waved him off.

“Thank you,” he said, as he sank into a chair.  “I don’t want help—­from you!”

“Why not?” asked Morrison.

“Because,” said Cary, in sullen anger, “I don’t ask quarter, nor aid, from a man who frightens children.”

The Northerner’s chin went up; and when he replied his voice was trembling; not in passion, but with a deeper, finer something which had gripped his admiration for the courage of a child: 

“And I wouldn’t hurt a hair of her splendid little head!” He paused, then spoke again, more calmly:  “You thought me a beast to frighten her; but don’t you know it was the only thing to do?  Otherwise my men might have had to shoot you—­before her eyes.”  Cary made no answer, though now he understood; and Morrison went on:  “It isn’t easy for me to track a fellow creature down; to take him when he’s wounded, practically unarmed, and turn him over to a firing squad.  But it’s war, my friend—­one of the merciless realities of war—­and you ought to know the meaning of its name.”

“Yes, I know,” returned the Southerner, with all the pent-up bitterness of a hopeless struggle and defeat; “it has taken three years to teach me—­and I know!  Look at me!” he cried, as he stood up in his rags and spread his arms.  “Look at my country, swept as bare as a stubble field!  You’ve whipped us, maybe, with your millions of money and your endless men, and now you are warring with the women and the children!” He turned his back and spoke in the deep intensity of scorn:  “A fine thing, Colonel!  And may you get your ... reward!”

The Northerner set his lips in a thin, cold line; but curbed his wrath and answered the accusation quietly: 

“There are two sides to the question, Cary; but there must be one flag!”

“Then fly your flag in justice!” the Southerner retorted hotly, wheeling on his enemy, with blazing eyes and with hands that shook in the stress of passion.  “A while ago you called me a brave man and a good scout; and, because I’m both, your people have set a price on me.  Five hundred dollars—­alive or dead!” He laughed; a hoarse, harsh travesty of mirth, and added, with a lip that curled in withering contempt:  “Alive or dead!  A gentleman and a scout!—­for just half the price of one good, sound nigger!  By Heaven, it makes me proud!”