ady he would
return for her soon after ten, and the lady smilingly (Schmidt did not
say how smilingly,--how bewitchingly smilingly, but the major needed no
reminder) thanked him, and said, by that time she would be ready. In a
few minutes she came out, saying, (doubtless with the same bewitching
smile) she would have to run over home for something, and she was gone
nearly half an hour, and all that time the door was open, the prisoner
on the bed in his blankets, the lamp brightly burning. It was near
tattoo when she returned, with some things under her cloak, and she was
breathing quick and seemed hurried and shut the door after thanking him,
and he saw no more of her for fifteen minutes, when the door opened and
out she came, the same cloak around her, yet she looked different,
somehow, and must have tiptoed, for he didn't hear her heels as he had
before. She didn't seem quite so tall, either, and that was all, for he
never knew anything more about it till the steward came running to tell
of the escape.

So Schmidt could throw but little light upon the situation, save to
Flint himself, who did not then see fit to say to anyone that at no time
was it covenanted that Miss Flower should be allowed to go and come
unattended. In doing so she had deluded someone beside the sentry.

It was late in the night when Number Six regained his senses and could
tell _his_ tale, which was even more damaging. Quite early in the
evening, so he said,--as early as nine o'clock,--he was under the
hospital corner, listening to the music further up along the bluff. A
lady came from the south of the building as though she were going down
to Sudstown. Mrs. Foster had gone down not long before, and Hogan, with
a lantern, and two officers' ladies. But this one came all alone and
spoke to him pleasant-like and said she was so sorry he couldn't be at
the dance. She'd been seeing the sick and wounded in hospital, she said,
and was going to bring some wine and jellies. If he didn't mind, she'd
take the path around the quartermaster's storehouse outside, as she was
going to Mr. Hay's, and didn't care to go through by the guard-house. So
Six let her go, as he "had no orders agin it" (even though it dawned
upon him that this must be the young lady that had been carried off by
the Sioux). That made him think a bit, he said, and when she came back
with a basket nicely covered with a white napkin, she made him take a
big chicken sandwich. "Sure I didn't k