n
a string of lies to trade upon his tenderness of heart; then he spoke,
in a voice of mingled pity and reproach:

"And so you told me a story. And all the rest--is a story, too. Oh,
Virgie! Virgie!"

"I didn't!" she cried, the big tears breaking, out at last. "I didn't
tell you stories'. Only jus' a _little_ one--for Daddy--an' Gen'ral
Lee."

She was sobbing now, and the man looked down upon her in genuine
compassion, his own eyes swimming at her childish grief, his soldier
heart athrob and aching at the duty he must perform.

"I'm sorry, dear," he sighed, removing her doll and dragging the table
across the floor to a point directly beneath the scuttle in the ceiling.

"What are you goin' to do?" she asked in terror, following as he moved.
"Oh, what are you goin' to do?"

He did not reply. He could not; but when he placed a chair upon the
table and prepared to mount, then Virgie understood.

"You shan't! You shan't!" she cried out shrilly. "He's my daddy--and you
shan't."

She pulled at the table, and when he would have put her aside, as gently
as he could, she attacked him fiercely, in a childish storm of passion,
sobbing, striking at him with her puny fists. The soldier bowed his head
and moved away.

"Oh, I can't! I can't!" he breathed, in conscience-stricken pain. "There
_must_ be some other way; and still--"

He stood irresolute, gazing through the open door, watching his men as
they hunted for a fellow man; listening to the sounds that floated
across the stricken fields--the calls of his troopers; the locusts in
the sun-parched woods chanting their shrill, harsh litany of drought;
but more insistent still came the muffled boom of the big black guns far
down the muddy James. They called to him, these guns, in the
hoarse-tongued majesty of war, bidding him forget himself, his love, his
pity--all else, but the grim command to a marching host--a host that
must reach its goal, though it marched on a road of human hearts.

The soldier set his teeth and turned to the little rebel, deciding on
his course of action; best for her, best for the man who lay in the
loft above, though now it must seem a brutal cruelty to both.

"Well, Virgie," he said, "since you haven't told me what I want to know,
I'll have to take you--and give you to the Yankees."

He stepped toward her swiftly and caught her by the wrist. She screamed
in terror, fighting to break his hold, while the trap above them opened,
and the head an