He and the surgeon walked out again, and saw that they were watched.  He found that his men had become aware of the truth and had submitted to the inevitable.  They were far from the Union lines, and not strong enough to attempt an escape through a hostile country.  Lane virtually gave up, and began to feel that the best course would be to submit quietly and look forward to a speedy exchange.  He longed for a few more hours with Suwanee, but imagined that she avoided him.  There was no abatement of her cordiality, but she appeared preoccupied.

After dinner a Confederate officer called and asked for Miss Roberta, who, after the interview, returned to her mother’s room with a troubled expression.  Suwanee was there, calmly plying her needle.  She knew what the call meant.

“I suppose it’s all right, and that we can’t help ourselves,” Roberta began, “but it annoys me nevertheless.  Lieutenant Macklin, who has just left, has said that our own men and the Union soldiers are now well enough to be taken to Richmond, and that he will start with them to-morrow morning.  Of course I have no regrets respecting the enlisted men, and am glad they are going, for they are proving a heavy burden to us; but my feelings revolt at the thought that Captain Lane and the surgeon should be taken to prison from our home.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Suwanee, indignantly; “but then what’s the use? we can’t help ourselves.  I suppose it is the law of war.”

“Well, I’m glad you are so sensible about it.  I feared you would feel a hundred-fold worse than I, you and the captain have become such good friends.  Indeed, I have even imagined that he was in danger of becoming something more.  I caught him looking at you at dinner as if you were a saint ‘whom infidels might adore.’  His homage to our flirtatious little Suwanee has been a rich joke from the first.  I suppose, however, there may have been a vein of calculation in it all, for I don’t think any Yankee—­”

“Hush,” said Suwanee, hotly; “Captain Lane is still our guest, and he is above calculation.  I shall not permit him to be insulted because he has over-estimated me.”

“Why, Suwanee, I did not mean to insult him.  You have transfixed him with a dozen shafts of satire to-day, and as for poor Surgeon McAllister—­”

“That was to their faces,” interrupted Suwanee, hastily.

“Suwanee is right,” said Mrs. Barkdale, smiling.  “Captain Lane has had the sense to see that my little girl is good-hearted in spite of her nonsense.”

The girl’s lip was quivering but she concealed the fact by savagely biting off her thread, and then was impassive again.

“I sincerely regret with you both,” resumed their mother, “that these two gentlemen must go from our home to prison, especially so since receiving a letter from Captain Lane, couched in terms of the strongest respect and courtesy, and enclosing a hundred dollars in Northern money as a slight compensation—­so he phrased it—­for what had been done for his men.  Of course he meant to include himself and the surgeon, but had too much delicacy to mention the fact.  He also stated that he would have sent more, but that it was nearly all they had.”