ant him badly, but I dare not invite trouble by placing vedettes across
the stream.... There's a ferryman over there I'm worried about, too.
He'd probably come across if Allen hailed him from the woods.... And
Allen was thick with him. They used to fish together. Nobody knows what
they hatched out between them. It worries me, I can tell you--that
ferry."

The Messenger walked to the tent door and looked thoughtfully at the
woods around her. The colonel rose from his camp stool and followed her,
muttering:

"I might as well try to catch a weasel in a wall, or a red horse in the
mud; and how to go about it I don't know." With set jaws and an angry
spot glowing in his gaunt cheeks, he stared wickedly around him and then
at the Messenger. "_You_ do miracles, they say. Can't you do one now?"

"I don't know, sir. Who is this deserter?"

"Roy Allen--a sullen, unwilling dog--always malingering. He's spent half
the time in the guardhouse, half in the hospital, since he arrived with
the recruits. Somebody got an idea that he'd been hit by the sun, but
it's all bosh. He's a bad one--that's all. Can you help me out?"

The Messenger nodded.

"You say he's fond of fishing?"

"Crazy about it. He was often detailed to keep us in food when rations
ran low. Then the catfish made us sick, so I stopped his fishing. Then
he took French leave."

"I want two troopers this evening, Colonel. May I have them?" she asked
thoughtfully. "I'm going to keep house at Red Ferry for a while."

"All right, ma'am. Look out for him; he's a bad one."

But the Messenger shook her head, smiling.

At ten o'clock that night the Special Messenger, mounted astride and
followed by two cavalrymen with carbines, rode down through the river
mist to Bushy Ford.

Daintily her handsome horse set foot in the water, hesitated, bent his
long, velvety neck, sniffed, and finally drank; then, satisfied, stepped
quietly forward, hock-deep, in the swirling, yellow flood.

"Foller them stakes, Miss," cautioned the older trooper; "I sot 'em
m'self, I did."

"Thank you. Keep close to me, Connor. I've crossed here before it was
staked."

"Sho!" exclaimed Connor under his breath; "she do beat 'em all!"

Twice, having no light but the foggy stars, they missed the stakes and
her horse had to swim, but they managed to flounder safely back to the
ford each time; and after a little while her mount rose, straining
through the red mud of the shore, struggled, scrambled