“I am sick and tired of this superiority, Jinny.”  And in the same breath.  “What would you do with it?”

Virginia lowered her voice.  “Hodges goes through the lines to-morrow night.  I should send it to Clarence.”  “But you have no idea where Clarence is.”

“Hodges can find him.”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed her aunt, “I would not trust him.  How do you know that he will get through the Dutch pickets to Price’s army?  Wasn’t Souther captured last week, and that rash letter of Puss Russell’s to Jack Brinsmade published in the Democrat?” She laughed at the recollection, and Virginia was fain to laugh too.  “Puss hasn’t been around much since.  I hope that will cure her of saying what she thinks of people.”

“It won’t,” said Virginia.

“I’ll save my money until Price drives the Yankees from the state, and Clarence marches into the city at the head of a regiment,” Mrs. Colfax went on, “It won’t be long now.”

Virginia’s eyes flashed.

“Oh, you can’t have read the papers.  And don’t you remember the letter Maude had from George?  They need the bare necessities of life, Aunt Lillian.  And half of Price’s men have no arms at all.”

“Jackson,” said Mrs. Colfax, “bring me a newspaper.  Is there any news to-day?”

“No,” answered Virginia, quickly.  “All we know is that Lyon has left Springfield to meet our troops, and that a great battle is coming, Perhaps—­perhaps it is being fought to-day.”

Mrs. Colfax burst into tears, “Oh, Jinny,” she cried, “how can you be so cruel!”

That very evening a man, tall and lean, but with the shrewd and kindly eye of a scout, came into the sitting-room with the Colonel and handed a letter to Mrs. Colfax.  In the hall he slipped into Virginia’s hand another, in a “Jefferson Davis” envelope, and she thrust it in her gown —­the girl was on fire as he whispered in her ear that he had seen Clarence, and that he was well.  In two days an answer might be left at Mr. Russell’s house.  But she must be careful what she wrote, as the Yankee scouts were active.

Clarence, indeed, had proven himself a man.  Glory and uniform became him well, but danger and deprivation better.  The words he had written, careless and frank and boyish, made Virginia’s heart leap with pride.  Mrs. Colfax’s letter began with the adventure below the Arsenal, when the frail skiff had sunk near the island, He told how he had heard the captain of his escort sing out to him in the darkness, and how he had floated down the current instead, until, chilled and weary, he had contrived to seize the branches of a huge tree floating by.  And how by a miracle the moon had risen.  When the great Memphis packet bore down upon him, he had, been seen from her guards, and rescued and made much of; and set ashore at the next landing, for fear her captain would get into trouble.  In the morning he had walked into the country, first providing himself with butternuts and rawhide boots and a bowie-knife.  Virginia would never have recognized her dashing captain of dragoons in this guise.