She ordered iced lemonade at once, lunch was hastened, and then she permitted him to depart, with the promise that he would write a line that very night.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

A little rebel.

The next day Marian received a note from Strahan saying that some bad symptoms had developed in connection with his wound, but that his physician had assured him that if he would keep absolutely quiet in body and mind for a week or two they would pass away, concluding with the words:  “I have promised mother to obey orders, and she has said that she would write you from time to time about me.  I do not think I shall be very ill.”

“O dear!” exclaimed Marian to her father at dinner, “what times these are!  You barely escape one cause of deep anxiety before there is another.  Now what is troubling you, that your brow also is clouded?”

“Is it not enough that your troubles trouble me?”

“There’s something else, papa.”

“Well, nothing definite.  The draft, you know, begins on Saturday of this week.  I shall not have any rest of mind till this ordeal is over.  Outwardly all is comparatively quiet.  So is a powder magazine till a spark ignites it.  This unpopular measure of the draft is to be enforced while all our militia regiments are away.  I know enough about what is said and thought by thousands to fear the consequences.  I wish you would spend a couple of weeks with your mother in that quiet New-England village.”

“No, papa, not till you tell me that all danger is past.  How much I should have missed during the past few days if I had been away!  But for my feeling that my first duty is to you, I should have entreated for your permission to become a hospital nurse.  Papa, women should make sacrifices and take risks in these times as well as men.”

“Well, a few more days will tell the story.  If the draft passes off quietly and our regiments return, I shall breathe freely once more.”

A letter was brought in, and she exclaimed, “Captain Lane’s handwriting!” She tore open the envelope and learned little more at that time than that he had escaped, reached our lines, and gone to Washington, where he was under the care of a skilful surgeon.  “In escaping, my wound broke out again, but I shall soon be able to travel, and therefore to see you.”

In order to account for Lane’s absence and silence we must take up the thread of his story where Zeb had dropped it.  The cavalry force of which Captain Lane formed a part retired, taking with it the prisoners and such of the wounded as could bear transportation; also the captured thief.  Lane was prevented by his wound from carrying out his threat, which his position as chief officer of an independent command would have entitled him to do.  The tides of war swept away to the north, and he was left with the more seriously wounded of both parties in charge of the