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And then he told me about himself. He was a graduate of West Point, the only one on the brigade staff; was a widower, with a widowed brother, a maiden sister, two daughters, and a niece, all of one New Orleans household. The brothers and sister were Charlestonians, but the two men had married in New Orleans, twin sisters in a noted Creole family. The brother's daughter, I was told, spoke French better than English; the Major's elder daughter spoke English as perfectly as her father; and the younger, left in her aunt's care from infancy, knew no French at all. I wondered if they were as handsome as their white-haired father, and when I asked their names I learned that the niece, Cécile, was a year the junior of Estelle and as much the senior of Camille; but of the days of the years of the pilgrimage of any of the three "children" he gave me no slightest hint; they might be seven years older, or seven years younger, than his new clerk.

Once more we were in the by-road which had brought us westward parallel with the highway. The prisoner drove. Aunt Martha sat beside him, slim, dark, black-eyed, stately, her silver-gray hair rolled high à la Pompadour. With a magnanimity rare in those bitter days she incited him to talk, first of New Orleans, where he had spent a month in camp on one of the public squares, and then of his far northern home, and of loved ones there, mother, wife and child. The nieces, too, gave a generous attention. Only I, riding beside the hind wheels, held solemnly aloof.

"Right!" She laughed. "I wish a woman could choose that way. Oh! if you'll do that I'll go with you and stand guard over you!"

For a moment I quite forgot how evident it was that she had gathered earlier inklings of it from some one else. Suddenly my thought was of something far more startling. It stopped my breath; I halted; I held my temples; I stared. What would she do with a secret she had taken such hazards to extort? Ah! she'd carry it straight to market--why not? She would give it to the enemy! Before my closed eyes came a vision of the issue--disaster to our arms; bleeding, maiming, death, and widows' and orphans' tears.

The half-hour dragged round to four. My horse roused up but kept as quiet as a clever dog. I heard a light sound in the hall; first a step and then a slide, then a step again and then a slide; Lucius Oliver was coming toward my door. The cords gathered in my throat and my finger stole to the trigger; Heaven only knew what noiseless feet might be following behind that loathsome shuffle. It reached the door and was still. And now the door opened, softly, slowly, and the paralytic stood looking in. The moonlight had swung almost out of the room, but a band of it fell glittering upon the revolver lying in my lap with my fingers on it, each exactly in place. Also it lighted my other hand, on the window-sill, with the bridle in it. Old Lucius was alone. In the gloom I could not see his venom gathering, but I could almost smell it.

Rising to higher ground, we turned into the Natchez, and Port Gibson road where a farm-house and country "store" constituted Clifton. Still at a gallop we left these behind and entered a broad lane between fields of tasselling corn, where we saw a gallant sight. In the early sunlight and in the pink dust of their own feet, down the red clay road at an easy trot in column by fours, the blue-gray of their dress flashing with the glint of the carbines at their backs, came Ferry's scouts with Ned Ferry at their head. There was his beautiful brown horse under him, too. My captive and I dropped to a walk, the column did the same, and Ferry trotted forward, beckoning us to halt. His face showed triumph and commendation, but no joy. Oliver answered his scrutiny with a blaze of defiance.

"I saw them, Lieutenant, looking in at the door to see the despatch put back under my pillow. Yes, sir, by the same hand that had shown it to them."

"We have what we wanted," said Ferry, "only now we desire to cross the road."

Her rejoinder came in a low, grieved monotone: "Did you say had hoped?"

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