Rosencrans.
While the Sergeant was inspecting it it occured to her that now was the
time to begin the role of a young woman with rebellious proclivities.

"Is this the last guard-line I will have to pass?" she asked.

"Yes'm," answered the Sergeant.

"You're quite sure?"

"Yes'm."

"Then I won't have any further use for this--thing?" indicating
the pass, which she received back with fine loathing, as if it were
something infectious.

"No'm."

"Quite sure?"

"Yes'm, quite sure."

She rode over to the fire around which part of the guard were sitting,
held the pass over it by the extremest tips of her dainty thumb and
forefinger, and then dropped it upon the coals, as if it were a rag from
a small-pox hospital. Glancing at her finger-tips an instant, as if they
had been permanently contaminated by the scrawl of the Yankee General,
she touched her nag, and was off like an arrow without so much as good
day to the guards.

"She-cesh--clean to her blessed little toe-nails," said the Sergeant,
gazing after her meditatively, as he fished around in his pouch for a
handful of Kinnikinnick, to replenish his pipe, "and she's purtier'n a
picture, too."

"Them's the kind that's always the wust Rebels," said the oracle of the
squad, from his seat by the fire. "I'll bet she's just loaded down with
information or ouinine. Mebbe both."

She was now fairly in the enemy's country, and her heart beat faster in
momentary expectation of encountering some form of the perils abounding
there. But she became calm, almost joyous, as she passed through mile
after mile of tranquil landscape. The war might as well have been on
the other side of the Atlantic for any hint she now saw of it in the
peaceful, sun-lit fields and woods, and streams of crystal spring-water.
She saw women busily engaged in their morning work about all the
cabins and houses. With bare and sinewy arms they beat up and down in
tiresomely monotonous stroke the long-handled dashers of cedar churns
standing in the wide, open "entries" of the "double-houses;" they
arrayed their well-scalded milk crocks and jars where the sun's rays
would still further sweeten them; they plied swift shuttles in the
weaving sheds; they toiled over great, hemispherical kettles of
dye-stuffs or soap, swinging from poles over open fires in the yard;
they spread out long webs of jeans and linen on the grass to dry
or bleach, and all the while they sang--sang the measured rhythm of
famili