Virgie’s sunny head nodded in emphatic asseveration.  “Yes, sir.  Often.”

“How often?” asked the bearded man.

Virgie’s fingers twisted themselves deep in her dress.

“I—­I don’t know, sir.  But heaps of times.”

“Good again,” and the questioner actually smiled.  “When your father came, did he ever wear clothes that—­that were not his own?”

Virgie turned a side-long look on her father but, as he could not help, her puzzled eyes went back to the General.

“Well—­well, lots of our men don’t have hardly any clo’s,” she said pathetically.

Another smile broke the sternness of the General’s face.

“That isn’t what I mean,” he explained gently.  “Did he ever wear a coat of blue—­a Yankee uniform?”

“General!” broke in Harris.

“Lieutenant!” Grant frowned.  He turned back to Virgie and coaxed her a little.

“Well?  Tell me!”

With one bare big toe twisted under her foot and fingers interlocked in agony the child turned a look of pure anguish on her silent, grave faced father.  This was torture—­and she could not escape.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy!” she burst forth with a wail of tragedy in her voice. “What must I tell him?”

The father’s lips, which had been closed against the pain that racked him, softened with the perfect trust which went into his gentle command.

“The truth, Virgie.  Whatever the General asks.”

The General’s observant eyes rested on the proud Southerner for an instant, noted that his face was quite without anxiety, then went back to the little child.

“Well, did he?” he asked.

“Y-y-y-es, sir,” answered Virgie with a gulp.

The General nodded and his face grew grave again.

“I wonder if you even know what it means.  A spy!”

“Yes, sir,” said the Littlest Rebel, and dropped her eyes.

“Hm.  And do you remember how many times he came that way?”

“Yes, sir,” came the instant answer, and she threw up her head. “Once.”

“Once?” echoed the General, surprised.  “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir,” she answered.  She drew herself up proudly, forgetting the poor, tattered dress, and her clear eyes rested fearlessly on two others that read through them down into the pure whiteness of her soul.

“Think!” said the quiet voice again, while the perspiration started out on the forehead of more than one listener.  “And remember what your father said just now.  When was it?”

Again the fearless eyes of the child, the Littlest Rebel of them all, rose to the gaze of the man whose iron heel was crushing them into the ground and she made her answer—­as crystal clear and truthful as if she stood before the Throne on the last great day.

“When—­when Daddy came through the woods an’—­an’ put my mamma in the ground.”