her heart; and the colonel of the Fourth
Missouri waited.

"I am the Special Messenger," she said faintly.

For a moment he scarcely understood that this slender young fellow, with
dark hair as closely clipped and as curly as his own, could be a woman.
Stern surprise hardened his narrowing gaze; he stood silent, handsome
head high, looking down at her; then slowly the latent humor flickered
along the edges of lip and lid, curbed instantly as he bowed, faultless,
handsome--only the persistently upturned mustache impairing the
perfectly detached and impersonal decorum with a warning of the _beau
sabreur_ behind it all.

"Will you be seated, madam?"

"Thank you."

She sat down; the wet poncho was hot and she shifted it, throwing one
end across her shoulder. In her uniform she appeared willowy and slim,
built like a boy, and with nothing of that graceful awkwardness which
almost inevitably betrays such masqueraders. For her limbs were straight
at the knees and faultlessly coupled, and there seemed to be the
adolescent's smooth lack of development in the scarcely accented
hips--only a straightly flowing harmony of proportion--a lad's grace
muscularly undeveloped.

Two leather straps crossed her breast, one weighted with field glasses,
the other with a pouch. From the latter she drew her credentials and
would have risen to present them, but the colonel of the Fourth Missouri
detained her with a gesture, himself rose, and took the papers from her
hand.

While he sat reading, she, hands clasped in her lap, gazed at his
well-remembered uniform, busy with her memories once more, and the
sweetness of them--and the pain.

They were three years old, these memories, now glimmering alive again
amid the whitening ashes of the past; only three years--and centuries
seemed to dim the landmarks and bar the backward path that she was
following to her girlhood!

She thought of the white-pillared house as it stood at the beginning of
the war; the severing of old ties, the averted faces of old friends and
neighbors; the mortal apprehension, endless suspense; the insurgent
flags fluttering from porch and portico along the still, tree-shaded
street; her own heart-breaking isolation in the community when Sumter
fell--she an orphan, alone there with her brother and bedridden
grandfather.

And she remembered the agony that followed the news from Bull Run, the
stupor that fell upon her; the awful heat of that battle summer; her
evenin