“Listen!” she stammered.  “I desire to tell you everything!  I will tell you all, Euan!  I ran back along the trail, meeting the boat-guard, batt-men, and the sick horses all along the way to Tioga, where they took me over on a raft of logs....  I paid them three hard shillings.  Then Colonel Shreve heard of what I had been about, and sent a soldier after me, but I avoided the fort, Euan, and went boldly up through the deserted camps until I came to where the army had crossed.  Some teamsters mending transport wagons gave me bread and meat enough to fill my pouch; and one of them, a kindly giant, took me over the Chemung dry shod, I clinging to his broad back like a very cat—­ and all o’ them a-laughing fit to burst!...  Are you displeased, dear lad?...  Then, just at night, I came up with the rear-guard, where they were searching for strayed cattle; and I stowed myself away in a broken-down wagon, full of powder—­ quietly, like a mouse, no one dreaming that I was not the slender youth I looked.  So none molested me where I lay amid the powder casks and sacking.”

She smiled wistfully, and stood caressing my arms with her eager little hands, as though to calm the wrath to come.

“I heard your regiment’s pretty conch-horn in the morning,” she said, “and slipped out of my wagon and edged forward amid all that swearing, sweating confusion, noticed not at all by anybody, save when a red-head Jersey sergeant bawled at me to man a rope and haul at the mired cannon with the others.  But I was deaf just then, Euan, and got free o’ them with nothing worse than a sound cursing from the sergeant; and away across the creek I legged it, where I hid in the bush until the firing began and the horrid shouting on the ridge.  Then it was that, badly scared, I crept through the Indian grass like a hunted hare, and saw Lieutenant Boyd there, and his men, halted across the trail.  And very soon our cannon began, and then it was that I saw you and your Indians filing out to the right.  So I followed you.  Oh, Euan, are you very angry?  Because, dear lad, I have had so lonely a trail, what with keeping clear of your party so that you might not catch me and send me back, and what with losing you after you had left the main, trodden trail!  Save for the marks you left on trees, I had been utterly lost—­ and must have perished, no doubt——­” She looked at me with melting eyes.

“Think on that, Euan, ere you grow too angry and are cruel with me.”

“Cruel?  Lois, you have been more heartless than I ever——­”

“There!  I knew it!  Your anger is about to burst its dreadful bounds——­”

“Child!  What is there to say or do now?  What is there left for me, save to offer you what scant protection I may—­ good God!—­ and take you forward with us in the morning?  This is a cruel, unmerited perplexity you have caused me, Lois.  What unkind inspiration prompted you to do this rash, mad, foolish thing!  How could you so conduct?  What can you hope to accomplish in all this wicked and bloody business that now confronts us?  How can I do my duty—­ how perform it to the letter—­ with you beside me—­ with my very heart chilling to water at thought of your peril—­ —­”