Herbert Cary would pass through the very center of
the Federal lines, as a _father_, not a spy.

The Southerner tried to speak his gratitude, but the words refused to
come; so he stretched one trembling hand toward his enemy of war, and
eased his heart in a sobbing, broken call:

"_Morrison! Some day it will all--be over!_"

* * * * *

In the cabin's doorway stood Virgie and her father, hand in hand. They
watched a lonely swallow as it dipped across the desolate, unfurrowed
field. They listened to the distant beat of many hoofs on the river road
and the far, faint clink of sabers on the riders' thighs; and when the
sounds were lost to the listeners at last, the notes of a bugle came
whispering back to them, floating, dipping, even as the swallow dipped
across the unfurrowed fields.

But still the two stood lingering in the doorway, hand in hand. The
muddy James took up his murmuring song again; the locusts chanted in the
hot, brown woods to the basso growl of the big, black guns far down the
river.

A sad, sad song it was; yet on its echoes seemed to ride a haunting,
hopeful memory of the rebel's broken call, "Some day it will all be
over!"

And so the guns growled on, slow, sullen, thundering forth the
battle-call of a still unconquered enmity; but only that peace might
walk "some day" in the path of the shrieking shells.

CHAPTER VII

It was afternoon and over on the eastern side of the James where the old
Turnpike leads up over the rolling hills to Richmond the sun was pouring
down a flood of heat. The 'pike was ankle deep with dust and the fine,
white powder, churned into floury softness by artillery and the myriad
iron heels of war, had settled down on roadside bush and tree and vine
till all the sweet green of summer hung its head under the hot weight
and longed for a cooling shower which would wash it clean.

In fairer times the Pike had been an active thoroughfare for the
plantations and hundreds of smaller truck farms which fed the capitol,
but of late months nearly all this traffic had disappeared. For the days
of the Confederacy were drawing slowly but none the less surely to a
close.

Inside the breastworks and far flung fortifications which encompassed
Richmond the flower of the rebel arms, the Army of Northern Virginia,
lay like a rat caught in a trap. On three sides, north, east and south
the Army of the Potomac under Grant beleaguered the city while th