his tongue.

"Bah, man!" said Prescott, "you cannot drink at all. You do not get the
real taste of it with one little sip like that on such a cold night as
this. Here, drink it down a real drink, this time. Are you a girl to
refuse such liquor?"

The last taunt struck home, and Mr. Gardner of Wellsville, making a
mighty suspiration, drank so long and deep that the world wavered when
he handed the flask back to Prescott, and a most generous fire leaped
up and sparkled in his veins. But when he undertook to step forward the
treacherous earth slid from under his feet, and it was only the arm of
the friendly officer that kept him from falling. He tried to reach his
wagon, but it unkindly moved off into space.

Prescott helped him to the wagon and then into it. "How my head goes
round!" murmured the poor farmer.

"Another taste of this will put you all right," said Prescott, and he
forced the neck of his flask into Elias Gardner's mouth. Elias drank
deeply, either because he wanted to or because he could not help
himself, and closing his eyes dropped off to slumber as peacefully as a
tired child.

Prescott laid Mr. Gardner down in the bed of his own wagon, and then
this chivalrous Confederate officer picked a man's pocket--deliberately
and with malice aforethought. But he did not take much--only a piece of
paper with a little writing on it, which he put in the pocket of his
waistcoat. Moreover, as a sort of compensation he pulled off the man's
overcoat--which was a poor one--and putting it on his own shoulders,
wrapped his heavy military cloak around the prostrate farmer. Then he
stretched him out in a comfortable place in the wagon bed and heaped
empty sacks above him until Elias was as cozy as if he had been in his
own bed at home.

Having placed empty chicken crates on either side of Elias and others
across the top, to form a sort of roof beneath which the man still slept
sweetly, though invisibly, Prescott contemplated his work for a moment
with deep satisfaction. Then he summoned the girl, and the two, mounting
the seat, drove the impatient horses along the well-defined road through
the snow towards the interval between the earthworks.

"It is necessary for me to inform you, Miss Catherwood, that you're not
Miss Catherwood at all," said Prescott.

A faint gleam of humour flickered in her eye.

"And who am I, pray?" she asked.

"You are a much more respectable young woman than that noted Yankee
spy," replie