“Oh—­that.”  He laughed like an amused child.  “That was rather odd.  You remember I told you that when they were chasing us I took shelter and shot the horses from under some of the Southerners.”

“I remember.”

“Well, the first man dismounted was Tom Ladd, the girl’s cousin, who’d been my classmate at the Point, and he recognized me.  He ran back and told them to make every effort to capture the party, as its leader was Captain Carruthers, of Stoneman’s staff, and undoubtedly carried despatches.”

“Oh!” I said.  “I see.  And where was Miss Ladd going, travelling your way all day?”

“To see her wounded father at Falmouth, don’t you understand?  She’d had word from him the day before.  She was escorted by a strong party of Confederates, including her brother and cousin.  She started out with just the old negro, and it was arranged that she should meet the party at the cabin where I found her writing.  They were to go with her to Kelly’s Ford, where she was to pass over to the Union post on the other bank—­she had a safe-conduct.”

“Oh!” I assimilated this.  “And she and her brother were Confederates, and the father was a Northern general—­how extraordinary!”

“Not in the least,” the General corrected me.  “It happened so in a number of cases.  She was a power in that campaign.  She did more work than either father or brother.  A Southern officer told me afterward that the men half believed what she said—­that she was a witch, and got news of our movements by magic.  Nothing escaped her—­she had a wonderful mind, and did not know what fear was.  A wonderful woman!”

He was smiling to himself again as he sat, with his great shoulders bent forward and his scarred hand on his knee, looking into the fire.

“General,” I said tentatively, “aren’t you going to tell me what she said when she saw you come into her father’s tent?”

“Said?” asked the General, looking up and frowning.  “What could she say?  Good-morning, I guess.”

I wasn’t afraid of his frown or of his hammer-and-tongs manner.  I’d got behind both before now.  I persisted.

“But I mean—­what did you say to each other, like the day before—­how did it all come out?”

“Oh, we couldn’t do any love-making, if that’s what you mean,” he explained in a business-like way, “because the old man was on deck.  And I had to leave in about ten minutes to ride back to join my command.  That was all there was to it.”

I sighed with disappointment.  Of course I knew it was just an idyll of youth, a day long, and that the book was closed forty years before.  But I could not bear to have it closed with a bang.  Somewhere in the narrative had come to me the impression that the heroine of it had died young in those exciting war-times of long ago.  I had a picture in my mind of the dancing eyes closed meekly in a last sleep; of the young officer’s hand laid sorrowing on the bright halo of hair.