"And you kissed me on the lips.... In that moment of peril you waited to
do that. Your tears fell on my face. I felt them. And I tell you that,
even had I been lying there dead instead of partly stunned, I would have
known what you did to me after you struck me down."

Her head sank lower; the color ran riot from throat to brow.

He spoke again, quietly, yet a strange undertone of exaltation thrilled
his voice and transfigured the thin, war-worn features she had
forgotten, so that, as she lifted her eyes to him again, the same boy
looked back at her from the mist of the long dead years.

"Messenger," he said, "I have never forgotten. And now it is too late to
forget your tears on my face--the touch of your lips on mine. I would
not if I could.... It was worth living for--dying for.... Once--I
hoped--some day--after this--all this trouble ended--my romance might
come--true----"

The boy choked, then:

"I came here under orders to take a woman spy whose password was the key
to a Latin phrase. But until you stood straight in your rags and smiled
at me, I did not know it was you--I did not know I was to take the
Special Messenger! Do you believe me?"

"Yes."

The boy colored painfully. Then a queer, pallid change came over his
face; he rose, bent over her where she rested heavily on the table:

"Little Messenger," he said, "I am in your debt for two blows and a
kiss."

She lifted a dazed face to meet his gaze; he trembled, leaned down, and
kissed her on the mouth.

Then in one bound he was at the door, signaling his troopers with drawn
sabre--as once, long ago, she had seen him signal them in the Northern
woods.

And, through the window, she saw the scattered cavalry forming column at
a gallop, obeying every sabre signal, trotting forward, wheeling fours
right--and then--and then! the gray column swung into the western forest
at a canter, and was gone!

The boy leaning in the doorway looked back at her over his shoulder and
sheathed his sabre. There was not a vestige of color left in his face.

"Go!" he said hoarsely.

"What?" she faltered.

"Go--go, in God's name! There's a door there! Can't you see it?"

* * * * *

She had been gone for a full hour when at last he turned again. A bit of
faded ribbon from her hair lay on the table. It was tied in a true
lover's knot.

He walked over, looked at it, drew it through his buttonhole and went
slowly back to the