“We were hesitating whether to disturb you, general, but it may be an affair of some importance.  Under your orders a negro woman was just now challenged stealing out of the lines.  Attempting to escape, she was chased, there was a struggle and scramble over the wall, and she fell, striking her head.  She was brought into the guardhouse unconscious.”

“Very good.  I will see her,” said Brant, with a feeling of relief.

“One moment, general.  We thought you would perhaps prefer to see her alone,” said the surgeon, “for when I endeavored to bring her to, and was sponging her face and head to discover her injuries, her color came off!  She was a white woman—­stained and disguised as a mulatto.”

For an instant Brant’s heart sank.  It was Miss Faulkner.

“Did you recognize her?” he said, glancing from the one to the other.  “Have you seen her here before?”

“No, sir,” replied the aide-de-camp.  “But she seemed to be quite a superior woman—­a lady, I should say.”

Brant breathed more freely.

“Where is she now?” he asked.

“In the guardhouse.  We thought it better not to bring her into hospital, among the men, until we had your orders.”

“You have done well,” returned Brant gravely.  “And you will keep this to yourselves for the present; but see that she is brought here quietly and with as little publicity as possible.  Put her in my room above, which I give up to her and any necessary attendant.  But you will look carefully after her, doctor,”—­he turned to the surgeon,—­“and when she recovers consciousness let me know.”

He moved away.  Although attaching little importance to the mysterious message, whether sent by Miss Faulkner or emanating from the stranger herself, which, he reasoned, was based only upon a knowledge of the original plan of attack, he nevertheless quickly dispatched a small scouting party in the direction from which the attack might come, with orders to fall back and report at once.  With a certain half irony of recollection he had selected Jim Hooker to accompany the party as a volunteer.  This done, he returned to the gallery.  The surgeon met him at the door.

“The indications of concussion are passing away,” he said, “but she seems to be suffering from the exhaustion following some great nervous excitement.  You may go in—­she may rally from it at any moment.”

With the artificial step and mysterious hush of the ordinary visitor to a sick bed, Brant entered the room.  But some instinct greater than this common expression of humanity held him suddenly in awe.  The room seemed no longer his—­it had slipped back into that austere conventual privacy which had first impressed him.  Yet he hesitated; another strange suggestion—­it seemed almost a vague recollection—­overcame him like some lingering perfume, far off and pathetic, in its dying familiarity.  He turned his eyes almost timidly towards the bed.