So ruled the god of warfare; still, did war prescribe disgrace and death for all?  If Cary had crept through the Union lines, to reach the side of a helpless little one—­yes, even in a coat of blue—­would the Great Tribunal count his deed accursed?  Should fearless human love reap no reward beyond the crashing epitaph of a firing squad, and the powder smoke that drifted with the passing of a soul?

“No!  No!” breathed Morrison.  “In God’s name, give the man his chance!”

He straightened his back and smiled.  He took from the table a rumpled paper and turned to the littlest factor in the great Rebellion.

“Here, Virgie!  Here’s your pass to Richmond—­for you and your escort—­through the Federal lines.”

She came to him slowly, wondering; her tiny body quivering with suppressed excitement, her voice a whispering caress: 

“Do you mean for—­for Daddy, too?”

“Yes, you little rebel!” he answered, choking as he laughed; “but I’m terribly afraid you’ll have to pay me—­with a kiss.”

She sprang into his waiting arms, and kissed him as he raised her up; but when he would have set her down, her little brown hands, with their berry-stained fingers, clung tightly about his neck.

“Wait!  Wait!” she cried.  “Here’s another one—­for Gertrude!  Tell her it’s from Virgie!  An’ tell her I sent it, ‘cause her daddy is jus’ the best damn Yankee that ever was!”

The trap above had opened, and the head and shoulders of the Southerner appeared; while Morrison looked up and spoke in parting: 

“It’s all right, Cary.  I only ask a soldier’s pledge that you take your little girl to Richmond—­nothing more.  In passing through our lines, whatever you see or hear—­forget!”

A sacred trust it was, of man to man, one brother to another; and Morrison knew that Herbert Cary would pass through the very center of the Federal lines, as a father, not a spy.

The Southerner tried to speak his gratitude, but the words refused to come; so he stretched one trembling hand toward his enemy of war, and eased his heart in a sobbing, broken call: 

“Morrison!  Some day it will all—­be over!”

* * * * *

In the cabin’s doorway stood Virgie and her father, hand in hand.  They watched a lonely swallow as it dipped across the desolate, unfurrowed field.  They listened to the distant beat of many hoofs on the river road and the far, faint clink of sabers on the riders’ thighs; and when the sounds were lost to the listeners at last, the notes of a bugle came whispering back to them, floating, dipping, even as the swallow dipped across the unfurrowed fields.

But still the two stood lingering in the doorway, hand in hand.  The muddy James took up his murmuring song again; the locusts chanted in the hot, brown woods to the basso growl of the big, black guns far down the river.