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"Yes, so called. He wa'n't a lieutenant then, he was a clerk, like you or me."

The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds. Then the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh while Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would be horn-swoggled!

I shot forward, but had hardly more than sent back my good-bye when around a bend of the road, in a wagon larger than Charlotte Oliver's, with the curtains rolled up, came the four Miss Harpers, unsooted and radiant. The aunt drove. We turned, all four, and rode with them, and while the seven chatted gaily I read to myself the Major's note. It bade me take these four ladies into my most jealous care and conduct them to a point about thirty miles west of where we then were. A dandy's task in a soldier's hour! I ground my teeth, but as I lifted my glance I found Camille's eyes resting on me and read anxiety in them before she could put on a smile of unemotional friendliness that faded rapidly into abstraction. She was as pretty as the bough of wild azaleas in her hand, yet moving forward I told her aunt the order's purport and that it implied the greatest despatch compatible with mortal endurance. The whole four seemed only delighted.

My eyes rested in Camille's and hers in mine. A musical license gave us the courage. At the last note our gaze did not sink but took on more glow, while out of the forest behind us a distant echo answered the last measure of the strain. Then our eyes slowly fell; and however it may have seemed to her, to me it was as if the vanished strains were not only or chiefly of bugle and echo, but as though our two hearts had called and answered in that melodious unison.

"Thank you, Major," the Federal affably replied, "that would be a great relief to this most extraordinary youngster that I've brought with me." He gave it and we turned into a lofty grove whitened with our headquarters tents.

"Yes, the new man is detailed in your place."

I almost leaped from the ground in consternation. My whole frame throbbed, my mouth fell open, my tongue was tied.

"Neither was Lieutenant Ferry," she dryly responded, "yet I have it from him."

I sat on the edge of the bed, in the moonlight, wishing I knew what their way was. I considered my small stock of facts. The one that appalled me most was the inward guilt which I brought with me to this ordeal. I wanted to say my childhood prayers and I could not. For I could not repent; at least the emotion of repentance would not come. Moreover, every now and then there leapt across this blackness of guilt a forked lightning of fright, as I realized that I could no more plan than I could pray. No doubt Coralie Rothvelt, by this time in Fayette, was telling some Federal commander that a certain Confederate courier, now asleep at the house of Lucius Oliver, had let slip to her the fact that his despatches were written to be captured, and that, read with that knowledge, they would be of guiding value. What mine host himself might have in view for me I could not guess, but most likely those three rapscallions down at the quarters were already plotting my murder. So now for a counterplot--alas! the counterplot would not unfold for me!

"Now it must be three." Miss Rothvelt's writing lay in my bosom beside my despatch. At each half-hour I re-read it. At three-and-a-half I happened to glance at the original superscription. A thought flashed upon me. I stared at her name, and began to mark off its letters one by one and to arrange them in a new order. I took C from Coralie and h from Rothvelt; after them I wrote a from Coralie and r from Rothvelt, l and o from Coralie and two t's and an e from Rothvelt, and behold, Charlotte! while the remaining letters gave me Oliver.

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