ly striped clinging gown and turbaned head. And then a strange
revulsion of feeling, quite characteristic of the emotional side of his
singular temperament, overcame him. He was taking leave of his wife--the
dream of his youth--perhaps forever! It should be no parting in anger as
at Robles; it should be with a tenderness that would blot out their past
in their separate memories--God knows! it might even be that a parting
at that moment was a joining of them in eternity. In his momentary
exaltation it even struck him that it was a duty, no less sacred, no
less unselfish than the one to which he had devoted his life. The light
was growing stronger; he could hear voices in the nearest picket line,
and the sound of a cough in the invading mist. He made a hurried sign to
the on-coming figure to follow him, ran ahead, and halted at last in
the cover of a hackmatack bush. Still gazing forward over the marsh,
he stealthily held out his hand behind him as the rustling skirt came
nearer. At last his hand was touched--but even at that touch he started
and turned quickly.

It was not his wife, but Rose!--her mulatto double! Her face was rigid
with fright, her beady eyes staring in their china sockets, her white
teeth chattering. Yet she would have spoken.

"Hush!" he said, clutching her hand, in a fierce whisper. "Not a word!"

She was holding something white in her fingers; he snatched it quickly.
It was a note from his wife--not in the disguised hand of her first
warning, but in one that he remembered as if it were a voice from their
past.

"Forgive me for disobeying you to save you from capture, disgrace, or
death--which would have come to you where you were going! I have taken
Rose's pass. You need not fear that your honor will suffer by it, for if
I am stopped I shall confess that I took it from her. Think no more of
me, Clarence, but only of yourself. You are in danger."

He crushed the letter in his hand.

"Tell me," he said in a fierce whisper, seizing her arm, "and speak low.
When did you leave her?"

"Sho'ly just now!" gasped the frightened woman.

He flung her aside. There might be still time to overtake and save her
before she reached the picket lines. He ran up the gully, and out on to
the slope towards the first guard-post. But a familiar challenge reached
his ear, and his heart stopped beating.

"Who goes there?"

There was a pause, a rattle of arms voices--another pause--and Brant
stood breathlessly list