oads leading to the big river around
the fork and quite away from the district. Whilst they were still
talking, more riders came around the curve, and the next instant Vashti
was in the midst of a column of cavalry, and she knew that they were the
Federals. She had one moment of terror for herself as the restive horses
trampled around her, and the calls and noises of a body of cavalry
moving dinned in her ears; but the next moment, when the others gave way
and a man whom she knew to be the commander pressed forward and began to
question her, she forgot her own terror in fear for her cause. She had
all her wits about her instantly; and under a pretence of repeating
what she had already told the first men, she gave them such a mixture
of descriptions that the negro was called up to unravel it. She made
out that they were trying to reach the big river by a certain road, and
marched in the night as well as in the day. She admitted that she had
never been on that road but once. And when she was taken along with them
a mile or two to the place where they went into bivouac until the moon
should rise, she soon gave such an impression of her denseness and
ignorance that, after a little more questioning, she was told that she
might go home if she could find her way, and was sent by the commander
out of the camp. She was no sooner out of hearing of her captors than
she began to run with all her speed. Her chief thought was of Darby.
Deserter as he was, and dead to her, he was a man, and could advise
her, help her. She tore through the woods the nearest way, unheeding the
branches which caught and tore her clothes; the stream, even where she
struck it, was out of its banks; but she did not heed it--she waded
through, it reaching about to her waist, and struck out again at the top
of her speed.

It must have been a little before midnight when she emerged from the
pines in front of the Stanley cabin. The latch-string was out, and she
knocked and pushed open the door almost simultaneously. All she could
make out to say was, "Darby." The old woman was on her feet, and the
young man was sitting up in the bed, by the time she entered.

Darby was the first to speak.

"What do you want here?" he asked, sternly.

"Darby--the Yankees--all around," she gasped--"out on the road yonder."

"What!"

A minute later the young man, white as a ghost, was getting on his
jacket while she told her story, beginning with what the woman she had
met