so steadily that she dropped a stitch, recovered it, and
presently he saw her lips resuming the silent count. He reseated himself
on the grass, laying his field glass beside him.

"I reckon your folk are all Yankee," he ventured softly.

She nodded.

"Are you afraid of us? Do you hate us, ma'am?"

She shook her head, stealing a glance at him from her lovely eyes. If
that was part of her profession, she had learned it well; for he laughed
and stretched out, resting easily on one elbow, looking up at her
admiringly under her faded sunbonnet.

"Are you ever lonely here?" he inquired gravely.

Again her dark eyes rested on him shyly, but she shook her head in
silence.

"Never lonely without anybody to talk to?" he persisted, removing his
slouched army hat and passing his hands over his forehead.

"What have I to say to anybody?" she asked coquettishly.

A little breeze sprang up, stirring his curly hair and fluttering the
dangling strings of her sunbonnet. He lay at full length there, a
slender, athletic figure in his faded gray uniform, idly pulling the
grass up to twist and braid into a thin green rope.

The strange exhilaration that danger had brought had now subsided; she
glanced at him indifferently, noting the well-shaped head, the boyish
outlines of face and figure. He was no older than she--and not very wise
for his years.

Presently, very far away, the dulled report of a carbine sounded,
stirring a deadened echo among the hills.

"What's that?" she exclaimed.

"Yank, I reckon," he drawled, rising to his feet and fixing his field
glass steadily on the hills beyond.

"Are you going to have a battle here?" she asked.

He laughed. "Oh, no, Miss Cynthia. That's only bushwhacking."

"But--but where are they shooting?"

He pointed to the west. "There's Yankee cavalry loafing in the hills. I
reckon we'll gobble 'em, too. But don't _you_ worry, Miss Cynthia," he
added gallantly. "_I_ shall be here to-night, and by sunrise there won't
be a soldier within ten miles of you."

"Within ten miles," she murmured; "ten miles is too near. I--I think I
will go back to the house."

He looked down at her; she raised her dark eyes to him; then he bowed
and gallantly held out both hands, and she laid her hands in his,
suffering him to lift her to her feet.

The brief contact set the color mounting to his sunburnt temples; it had
been a long while since he had touched a young girl's hand.

"I wonder," she said,