r, the glow from the fire falling across
her hair and tinting it with deep gleams of reddish gold. Whether she
was surprised to see him he could not judge, her face remaining calm and
no movement that would betray emotion escaping her.

"Miss Catherwood," he said, "I have come to bid you farewell. I rejoin
the army to-morrow and I am glad to go."

"I, too, am glad that you are going," she said, shading her eyes with
her hands as if to protect them from the glow of the fire.

"There is one thing that I would ask of you," he said, "and it is that
you remember me as I was last winter, and not as I have appeared to you
since I returned from the South. That was real; this is false."

His voice trembled, and she did not speak, fearing that her own would do
the same.

"I have made mistakes," he said. "I have yielded to rash impulses, and
have put myself in a false position before the world; but I have not
been criminal in anything, either in deed or intent. Even now what I
remember best, the memory that I value most, is when you and I fled
together from Richmond in the cold and the snow, when you trusted me and
I trusted you."

She wished to speak to him then, remembering the man, stained with his
own blood, whom she had carried in her strong young arms off the
battlefield. With a true woman's heart she liked him better when she was
acting for him than when he was acting for her; but something held her
back--the shadow of a fair woman with lurking green depths in her blue
eyes.

"Lucia!" exclaimed Prescott passionately, "have you nothing to say to
me? Can't you forget my follies and remember at least the few good
things that I have done?"

"I wish you well. I cannot forget the great service that you did me,
and I hope that you will return safely from a war soon to end."

"You might wish anybody that, even those whom you have never seen," he
said.

Then with a few formal words he went away, and long after he was gone
she still sat there staring into the fire, the gleams of reddish gold in
her hair becoming fainter and fainter.

Prescott left Richmond the next morning.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE FALL OF RICHMOND

Two long lines of earthworks faced each other across a sodden field;
overhead a chilly sky let fall a chilly rain; behind the low ridges of
earth two armies faced each other, and whether in rain or in sunshine,
no head rose above either wall without becoming an instant mark for a
rifle that never miss