nto an
inner skirt pocket, flat against her right thigh; then, fastening on the
shabby skirt, she rolled up her riding habit, laid it with lantern,
revolver, saddle, bridle, boots, and bags, in the hollow and covered all
over with heaps of fragrant dead leaves and branches. It was the best
she could do, and the time was short.

Her horse raised his wise, gentle head, and looked across the stream at
her as she hastened past, then limped stiffly toward her.

"Oh, I can't stand it if you hobble after me!" she wailed under her
breath. "Dearest--dearest--I will surely come back to you.
Good-by--good-by!"

On the crest of the ridge she cast one swift, tearful glance behind.
The horse, evidently feeling better, was rolling in the grass, all four
hoofs waving at the sky. And she laughed through the tears, and drew
from her pockets a morsel of dry bread which she had saved from the
saddlebags. This she nibbled as she walked, taking her bearings from the
sun and the sweep of the southern mountain slopes; and listening, always
listening, for the jingle and clank of the Confederate flying battery
that was surely following along somewhere on that parallel road which
she had missed, hidden from her view only by a curtain of forest, the
width of which she had no time to investigate. Nor did she know for
certain that she had outstripped the Confederate column in the race for
the pass--a desperate race, although the men of that flying column,
which was hastening to turn the pass into a pitfall for the North, had
not the faintest suspicion that the famous Special Messenger was racing
with them to forestall them, or even that their secret was no longer a
secret.

In hot haste from the south hills she had come to warn Benton's division
of the ambuscade preparing for it, riding by highway and byway, her
heart in her mouth, taking every perilous chance. And now, at the last
moment, here in the West Virginian Mountains, almost within sight of the
pass itself, disaster threatened--the human machine was giving out.

There were just two chances that Benton might yet be saved--that his
leisurely advance had, by some miracle, already occupied the pass, or,
if not, that she could get through and meet Benton in time to stop him.

She had been told that there was a cabin at the pass, and that the
mountaineer who lived there was a Union man.

Thinking of these things as she crossed the ridge, she came suddenly
into full view of the pass. It la