not to me--she unlocked and opened the door to
the wine vault, and in a trice we two and the luckless horses were
safely jailed in pitchy darkness, with the stout oaken door slammed
behind us, the bolt shot in the lock, and the key withdrawn, as we could
see by the spot of light which came through the keyhole.

Richard was the first to break the grave-like silence of our dungeon.

"Lord!" said he; "did ever you see such sharp-wit work in all your
adventures? What a soldier's wife she'd make!"

I smiled at that, being safe to smile in the darkness. For was she not a
soldier's wife? I hugged that saying as we cling to the thing that is
slipping from us. True, I was here to give her freely over to another
and a better soldier; but while she was mine I would claim her, in my
heart, at least.

The excitement of the narrow escape somewhat overpast, we sat long on
the edge of a wine-bin, speculating in whispers as to what would befall,
and listening vainly for the footsteps which would forecast our release
or our capture by the enemy. But when no sounds, threatening or
encouraging, came from the upper world, we groped about till we found
the cellar candle, lighted it with flint and steel and tinder-box, and
took a survey of our jail.

'Twas the same old cavernous wine vault of my youthful remembrance, such
an one as has not its mate in all Carolina to this good day, as I firmly
believe. My father's hobby was to build for all eternity; and this
stone-arched cellarage was more like a cathedral crypt than a store-room
for a country gentleman's table-stock of wines.

Dick held the candle aloft and scanned the bottle racks, none so greatly
depleted as they might have been, had any hand but that close-fisted one
of Gilbert Stair's taken the key in charge after my father.

"There is no lack of potables," says my candle-bearer; "but, unhappily,
there is never so much as a dry crust to soak in them. And as for the
horses, I'll venture they'd give it all, pint for pint, for a good
feeding of oats."

"Truly," said I; and then we fell to stripping the straw casings from
the bottles of madeira to give the poor beasts a feed of rye-stalks
which had grown and ripened their grain many a year before either the
sorrel or the gray was foaled.

Having no time-measure save our own impatience, it seemed a weary while
before we heard the key rasping in the lock of our prison door.

"'Tis Madge," said Dick, with a true lover's gift of sec