“A traitor then as well as an enemy.”

Dick flushed deeply, and again there was angry blood in his veins, but he restrained his temper.

“You must at least allow to a man the liberty of choice,” he said.

“Provided he has the intelligence and honesty to choose right.”

Dick flushed again and bit his lip.  And yet he felt that a woman who had lost two sons before Northern bullets might well be unforgiving.  There was nothing more for him to say, and while he turned back to the window the knitting needles resumed their click, click.

He waited a full ten minutes and he knew that the sergeant and his men were searching the house thoroughly.  Nothing could escape the notice of Whitley, and he would surely find the sharpshooter.  Then he heard their footsteps on a stairway and in another minute they entered the great room.  The face of the sergeant clearly showed disappointment.

“There’s nobody in the house,” he said, “or, if he is he’s so cleverly hidden, that we haven’t been able to find him—­that is so far.  Perhaps Madame here can tell us something.”

“I know nothing,” she said, “but if I knew anything I would not tell it to you.”

The sergeant smiled sourly, but Dick said: 

“We must look again.  The man could not have escaped with the guard that we’ve set around the house.”

The sergeant and his men made another search.  They penetrated every place in which a human being could possibly hide.  They thrust their rifle barrels up the chimneys, and they turned down the bed covers, but again they found nothing.  Dick meanwhile remained as before in the large room, covertly watching the woman, lest she give a signal to the rifleman who must be somewhere.

All the while the perfume of the roses was growing stronger and more penetrating, a light wind that had sprung up bringing it through the open window.  It thrilled Dick in some singular manner, and the strangeness of the scene heightened its effect.  It was like standing in a room in a dim old castle to which he had been brought as a prisoner, while the terrible old woman was his jailer.  Then the click of the knitting needles brought him back to the present and reality, but reality itself, despite the sunshine and the perfume of the roses, was heavy and oppressive.

Dick apparently was looking from the window at the garden, brilliant with flowers, but in fact he was closely watching the woman out of the corner of his eye.  He had learned to read people by their own eyes, and he had seen how hers burned when she looked at them.  Strength of will and intent lie in the human eye.  Unless it is purposely veiled it tells the mind and power that are in the brain back of it.

A fear of her crept slowly over him.  Perhaps the fear came because, obviously, she had no fear at all of him, or of Whitley or of the soldiers.  After their short dialogue she had returned to her old immobility.  Neither her body nor her head moved, only her hands, and the motion was wholly from the wrists.  She was one of the three Fates, knitting steadily and knitting up the destiny of men.