“Help you?  Why should I?”

Aladdin groaned, and could have killed himself for groaning.

“If you don’t help me,” he said, and his voice broke, for he was suffering tortures, “I’ll die before long.”

A perfectly cool and cruel “Well?” came back to him.

“You won’t help me?”

“No.”

Anger surged in his heart, but he spoke with measured sarcasm.

“Then,” he said, “will you at least do me the favor of getting from between me and God’s light?  If I die, I may go to hell, but I prefer not to see devils this side of it, thank you.”

The girl went away, but presently came back.  She lowered something to him on a string.  “I got it out of one of your holsters,” she said.

Aladdin’s fingers closed on the butt of a revolver.

“It may save you a certain amount of hunger and pain,” she said.  “When you are dead, we will give it to one of our men, and your horse too.  He’s a beauty.”

“I hope to God he may—­” began Aladdin.

“Pretty!” said the girl.

She went away, and he heard her clucking to the chickens.  After a time she came back.  Aladdin was waiting with a plan.

“Don’t move,” he said, “or you’ll be shot.”

“Rubbish!” said the girl.  She leaned casually back from the hole, and he could hear her moving away and clucking to the chickens.  Again she returned.

“Thank you for not shooting,” she said.

There was no answer.

“Are you dead?” she said.

When he came to, there was a bright light in Aladdin’s eyes, for a lantern swung just to the left of his head.

“I thought you were dead,” said the girl, still from her point of advantage.  The lantern’s light was in her face, too, and Aladdin saw that it was beautiful.

“Won’t you help me?” he said plaintively.

“Were you ever told that you had nice eyes?” said the girl.

Aladdin groaned.

“It bores you to be told that?”

“My dear young lady,” said Aladdin, “if you were as kind as you are beautiful—­”

“How about your horse kicking me to a certain place?  That was what you started to say, you know.”

“Lady—­lady,” said Aladdin, “if you only knew how I’m suffering, and I’m just an ordinary young man with a sweetheart at home, and I don’t want to die in this hole.  And now that I look at you,” he said, “I see that you’re not so much a girl as an armful of roses.”

“Are you by any chance—­Irish?” said the girl, with a laugh.

“Faith and of ahm that,” said Aladdin, lapsing into full brogue; “oi’m a hireling sojer, mahm, and no inimy av yours, mahm.”

“What will you do for me if I help you?” said the girl.

“Anything,” said Aladdin.

“Will you say ’God save Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America,’ and sing ’Dixie’—­that is, if you can keep a tune.  ’Dixie’’s rather hard.”