“All right,” the child agreed pathetically, and she sank wearily down against her father’s knee.  “I’ll just pray for it to hurry up.”

The two men exchanged quiet smiles and Cary murmured something in his daughter’s ear.

“Oh, no, I won’t,” she answered, and then looked up at Morrison with a roguish light in her dark eyes.  “He’s only afraid I’ll pray so terribly hard that the old coffee pot will boil over an’ put out the fire.”

Morrison, chuckling, now began to drag something out of a rear pocket.  Presently, he uncorked it and held it up—­a flask!

“Here, Cary,” he said, holding out a cup.  “Join me, won’t you?  Of course, you understand—­in case a snake should bite us.”

“Colonel Morrison,” responded the Southerner, “you are certainly a man of ideas.”

He waited for his foe to fill his own cup, then raised his in a toast: 

“I drink to the health, sir, of you and yours.  Here’s hoping that some day I may take you prisoner!”

At the quizzical look of surprise in the other’s face Cary’s voice almost broke.

“I mean, sir, it’s the only way I could ever hope to show you how much I appreciate—­”

He stopped and covered his face with his hands, not a little to his daughter’s alarm.

“Come, come, old chap,” the Northerner said bluffly, tapping him on the shoulder.  “Brace up.  It’s the fortunes of war, you know.  One side or the other is bound to win.  Perhaps—­who knows—­it may be your turn to-morrow.  Well, sir—­here goes.  May it soon be over—­in the way that’s best and wisest for us all.

“Now, Virgie,” he went on, when the toast had been drunk, “while I wash these cups suppose you go on another voyage of discovery through the magic knapsack for some sugar for the coffee.”

He watched her fling herself impetuously on the knapsack.  “If you find any Yankee spoons—­put them under arrest.  They haven’t any pass like yours.”

Then he turned to Cary:  “Have any trouble on the road as you came along?”

The other man shook his head.

“None to speak of.  We were stopped several times of course, but each time your pass let us through without delay—­until we met Dudley.  And now I’m worried, Colonel,” he said frankly, while his eyes tried to tell the other all that he feared without putting it in words, “worried on your account.  It’s easy to see that the man has a grudge against you—­”

“Yes, I’m afraid he has,” was the thoughtful reply.  “But really, Cary, you mustn’t try to carry any more burdens than your own, just now.  I know what you mean and what, I daresay, you’d be only too willing to do, but I can’t permit it.”

They were interrupted by the spectacle of Virgie standing before them with anxiously furrowed brow, a paper bag in one hand and three spoons clutched in the other.

“But Colonel Morrison,” she was saying in tragic tones, “there isn’t a drop of milk.”