“Excuse me, Daddy.  I guess I wasn’t very polite.”

“Apology accepted.  What were you going to say?”

The child looked up with a sweetly serious look in her eyes that the two men recognized as the forerunner of true womanly thought for others.

“I was only goin’ to ask the Colonel if he didn’t think his men out there would like some of these heavingly things to eat?” she said plaintively.  “It must be terrible—­jus’ to look on!”

“Well, bless your little heart,” the Northerner cried.  “But don’t you worry about the boys.  They’ll have theirs when they get back to camp.  Go on and eat, Virgie.  Stuff in another biscuit.  And, look!  By Jupiter. Butter!”

Evidently Trooper O’Connell during the past twenty-four hours had foraged or blarneyed most successfully for out of the knapsack which he had left behind Morrison suddenly produced a small earthenware jam jar in which was something now indubitably liquid in form but none the less sweet, yellow, appetizing butter.  Pouring a little on a biscuit he held it out to her, speculating on what she would say.

The tot took it hungrily and raised it to her lips, her eyes shining and her face glowing with anticipation.  Then she paused and, with a little cry of vexation over her selfishness, held out the biscuit to her father.

“Here, Daddy,” she said.  “You take this—­because you tried to bring me somethin’ good to eat yesterday.”

The father threw a look at Morrison and caught Virgie to him in a swift embrace.

“No, dear,” he said.  “Eat your nice buttered biscuit and thank the good Lord for it.  Your father will get more fun out of seeing you eat that little bit than he would out of owning a whole cellar of big stone crocks jam full.  Do you know—­I think when we get up to Richmond you’ll have to write a letter to the Colonel—­a nice long letter, thanking him for all he’s done.  Won’t you?”

There was a pause for a moment as the child looked over at Morrison, revolving the thought in her mind.

The Union officer had passed into a sudden reverie, the hand holding his coffee cup hanging listlessly over his knee.  He was thinking of another little girl, and one as dear to him as this man’s child was to her father.  He was wondering if the fortunes of war would ever let him see her face again or hear her voice—­or feel her chubby arms around his neck.  She was very, very far away—­well cared for, it was true, but he knew only too well that it would need but one malignant leaden missile to make her future life as full of hardships as those which the little tot beside him was passing through to-day.  So much, at least, for the ordinary chances of war—­he was beginning to wonder how much had been added to these perils by the matter of the pass and whether his superiors would see the situation as it had appeared to his eyes.

Into this sad reverie Virgie’s soft voice entered with a gentleness which roused but did not startle him.  When she spoke, it seemed as if some subtle thought-current between their minds had put the subject of his dreams into the child’s mind.