The young man took her hand and drew her to him. “Well,” he said, looking down into her eyes, and drawing a long breath. Nancy Pansy’s sister put her face on his shoulder and began to cry, and Nancy Pansy rushed into her mother’s arms and cried too. Ten minutes later soldiers came in both at the front and back doors. Mrs. Seddon met her visitors in the hall. Nancy Pansy’s sister was on one side, and Nancy Pansy on the other. Tom Adams was in command. He removed his hat, but said, gravely: “I must arrest the young rebel officer who is here.” Nancy Pansy made a movement; but her mother tightened her clasp of her hand. “Yes,” she said, bowing. That was all. Guards were left at the doors, and soldiers went through the house. The search was thorough, but the game had escaped. They were coming down the steps when some one said: “We must search the shrubbery; he will be there.” “No; he is at his father’s--the old doctor’s,” said Adams. It was said in an undertone, but Mrs. Seddon’s face whitened; Nancy Pansy caught it, too. She clutched her mother’s gown. “Oh, mamma! you hear what he says?” Her mother stooped and whispered to her. “Yes, yes,” nodded Nancy Pansy. She ran to the door, and poking her little head out, looked up and down the portico, calling, “Kitty, kitty!” The sentry who was standing there holding his gun moved a little, and, leaning out, peered into the dusk. “’Tain’t out here,” he said, in a friendly tone. Nancy Pansy slipped past him, and went down the steps and around the portico, still calling, “Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!” “Who goes there?” called a soldier, as he saw something move over near the old doctor’s fence; but when he heard a childish voice call, “Kitty! Kitty!” he dropped his gun again with a laugh. “’Tain’t nobody but that little gal, Nancy Pansy; blest if I wa’n’t about to shoot her!” The next instant Nancy Pansy had slipped through her little hole in the fence, through which she had so often gone, and was in the old doctor’s yard; and when, five minutes afterward, Tom Adams marched his men up the walk and surrounded and entered the house, Nancy Pansy, her broken doll in her arms, was sitting demurely on the edge of a large chair, looking at him with great, wide-open, dancing eyes. A little princess could not have been grander, and if she had hidden Harry Hunter behind her chair, she could not have shown more plainly that she had given him warning. VII.