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By and by we breakfasted. After which, my precious horse not having finished his corn, I spread my blanket and let myself doze, but was soon awakened by the shouts of my companions laughing at me for laughing so piteously in my sleep.

"I've been awake for forty-eight hours, Major. But--oh, I'm not sleepy."

"Wait a moment," she murmured, and watched the promenading pair turn back. Then she asked if I had read my mother's letter. I said I had. And then, very pensively, with head bent and eyes once more down, she inquired if I liked to get letters. Which led, quite accidentally, to my asking leave to write to her.

We came where a line of dense woods on our left marked the bottom-lands of Morgan's Creek. With her two earlier companions my fellow-traveller had crossed a ford here shortly after sunset, seeing no one; but a guard might easily have been put here since, by the Federals in Fayette. Pretty soon the road, bending toward it, led us down between two fenced fields and we stealthily walked our horses. Close to a way-side tree I murmured that if she would keep my horse I would steal nearer on foot and reconnoitre, and I had partly risen from the saddle, when I was thrilled by the pressure of her hand upon mine on the saddle-bow. "Don't commit the soldier's deadliest sin, my dear Mr. Smith," she said under her breath, and smiled at my agitation; "I mean, don't lose time."

She laughed under her breath as if at hide-and-seek. Then we galloped, then trotted again, galloped, walked and trotted again. Two miles, three, four, we reckoned off, and slowed to a walk to come out cautiously upon the union Church and Fayette road. A sound brought us to a halt. From the right, out on the main road, it came; it was made by the wheels of a loaded wagon. I leaned sidewise until her hat-brim was over me and whispered "Yankee foragers;" but as I drew my revolver we heard voices, I breathed a sigh of relief, and with her locks touching mine we chuckled to each other in the dark. The passers were slaves escaping to the Federal camp.

IT was well that I was on the Federal captain's horse. He knew this sort of work and could do it quicker and more quietly than mine. Mine would have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it. Another advantage was the moon, and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins. Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw--for the excited dogs had pushed the door open--that two of the men were white, though but one wore shoes. On him the light fell revealingly as he and the yellow girl before him passed each other in the dance and faced again. He was decidedly blond. The other man, though silhouetted against the glare of burning pine-knots, I knew to be white by the flapping of his lank locks about his cheeks as he lent his eyes to the improvisation of his steps. His partner was a young black girl. I burned with scorn, and doubtless showed it, although I only asked whose plantation this was.

"Yaas; well, that's all right, too, suh; I uz on'y a-givin' you a frien'ly aynsweh. I hope you like it."

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