“Why, ob co’se I ’spects ter go back wid you, Miss Lou.  You tink I gwine ter lebe you yere en dat ladder dar ter tell de hull business?  Come wid me.”

“Well, then, good-by, and God keep you, Lieutenant.  I shall hope to see you again.”

“To see you again will be my dearest hope.  Dear, dear little Lou! how brave you’ve been!  You’ve won a soldier’s whole heart forever.  How can I say good-by?  You can’t dream how dear you have become to me.  Please, one kiss before we separate.”

Yielding to an impulse then not understood, she put her arm swiftly about his neck, kissed him, and turned so rapidly toward her home that Chunk could scarcely keep pace with her.

They reached the ladder unobserved, and from the roof of the extension the way to Miss Lou’s room was easy.  Chunk went to a point from which he could watch the girl enter her apartment.  Putting the ladder back into the garden, he rejoined Scoville, and together they made their way in the direction of the retiring Union column.  Scoville never wearied in questioning his attendant about every detail of Miss Lou’s action, while conjectures as to her experiences often robbed him of sleep.  Never was a man more completely won and held in love’s sweet thraldom.

On regaining her room, Miss Lou hastily threw off her cousin’s clothes and resumed her own apparel.  Then she softly and cautiously opened her door.  With the exception of sounds in the lower hall, all was still, and she slipped out in her stocking-feet, replaced the uniform on the chairs, stole back and bolted her door.  For half an hour she sat panting on her chair, listening to every sound.  Only the groans of the wounded smote her ears.  “Oh, thank God!  I do not hear his voice among them,” she half sobbed, in pity for those who were suffering.  “Well, I can best forget my anxiety about him by doing something for these poor men.  Oh, how strange and true his words are!  He touched my heart at first by just being helpless when he fell by the run, and everything I do for him seems to make him dearer.  It cannot be that I shall never see him again.  Oh, when shall I forget the way he took me in his arms?  It seemed as if he gave me his whole heart then and couldn’t help himself.”

There was a near mutter of thunder.  In her deep preoccupation, she had not noticed the coming of another shower.  It proved a short but heavy one, and she exulted.  “The rain will obliterate all our tracks.”

Calmer thought led to the conclusion that the affair would be very serious for her if her part in it was discovered.  She had acted almost without thought, without realizing the risks she had incurred, and now the possible consequences so appalled her that she resolved to be on her guard in every possible way.  “He knew, he understood the risk I took better than I did then, better than I do now, perhaps,” she breathed softly.  “That’s so fine in him—­that way he has of making