VII. The Hour and the Man 115 VIII. Death out of the Deep 125 IX. Miserable Pair and Miserable Night 141 X. A Stubborn Proposition 157 XI. The Confession that Cleared 171 XII. The Culprit is Arrested 185 XIII. Companions in Misery 199 XIV. The Woman Explains 223 XV. The General's Little Comedy 241 ILLUSTRATIONS "Miss Fanny Glen detested a masterful man" _Frontispiece_ PAGE "'Ah, Sempland, have you told your little tale?'" 43 "The door was suddenly flung open" 95 "Poor little Fanny Glen ... she had lost on every hand" 153 "'You were a traitor to the South!' said General Beauregard, coldly" 191 "'Would they shoot me?' she inquired" 219 A Little Traitor to the South CHAPTER I HERO VERSUS GENTLEMAN Miss Fanny Glen's especial detestation was an assumption of authority on the part of the other sex. If there was a being on earth to whom she would not submit, it was to a masterful man; such a man as, if appearances were a criterion, Rhett Sempland at that moment assumed to be. The contrast between the two was amusing, or would have been had not the atmosphere been so surcharged with passionate feeling, for Rhett Sempland was six feet high if he was an inch, while Fanny Glen by a Procrustean extension of herself could just manage to cover the five-foot mark; yet such was the spirit permeating the smaller figure that there seemed to be no great disparity, from the standpoint of combatants, between them after all. Rhett Sempland was deeply in love with Miss Fanny Glen. His full consciousness of that fact shaded his attempted mastery by ever so little. He was sure of the state of his affections and by that knowledge the weaker, for Fanny Glen was not at all sure that she was in love with Rhett Sempland. That is to say, she had not yet realized it; perhaps better, she had not yet admitted the existence of a reciprocal passion in her own breast to that she had long since learned had sprung up in his. By just that lack of admission she was stronger than he for the moment. When she discovered the undoubted fact that she did love Rhett Sempland her views on the mastery of man would probably alter--at least for a time! Love, in its freshness, would make her a willing slave; for how long, events only could determine. For some women a lifetime, for others but an hour, can elapse before the chains turn from adornments to shackles.