"Please let us have no contentions whatever. I have often found that your Southern men out-matched me, and not for the world would I have a dispute with a woman of your mettle. I give you my parole to do all that you wish, as far as it is within my power, while I am helpless on your hands." "And when I have helped to make you well you will go and fight against the South again?" "Yes, Miss Barkdale," gravely, "and so would your officers against the North." "Oh, I know it. I sha'n't put any poison in your coffee." "Nor will you ever put poison in any man's life. The most delightful thing about you, Miss Barkdale," he continued, laughing, "is that you are so genuinely good and don't know it." "Whatever happens," she said, almost irritably, "you must be cured of that impression. I won't be considered 'good' when I'm not. Little you know about me, indeed! Good heavens, Captain Lane! what kind of women have you been accustomed to meet in the North? Would they put strychnine in a wounded Southerner's food, and give him heavy bread, more fatal than bullets, and read novels while dying men were at their very doors?" "Heaven help them! I fear there are many women the world over who virtually do just those things." "They are not in the South," she replied, hotly. "They are evidently not in this house," he replied, smiling. "You ask what kind of women I am accustomed to meet. I will show you the shadow of one of my friends;" and he took from under his pillow a photograph of Marian. "Oh, isn't she lovely!" exclaimed the girl. "Yes, she is as beautiful as you are; she is as brave as you are, and I've seen you cheering on your friends when even in the excitement of the fight my heart was filled with dread lest you or your mother or sister might be shot. She is just as ardent for the North as you are for the South, and her influence has had much place in the motives of many who are now in the Union army. If wounded Confederates were about her door you could only equal--you could not surpass--her in womanly kindness and sympathy. The same would be true of my mother and sisters, and millions of others. I know what you think of us at the North, but you will have to revise your opinions some day." Her face was flushed, a frown was upon her brow, a doubtful smile upon her lips, and her whole manner betokened her intense interest. "You evidently are seeking to revise them," she said, with a short laugh, "much as you charged our cavalry the other evening. I think you are a dangerous man to the South, Captain Lane, and I don't know whether I should let you get well or not." He reached out his hand and took hers, as he said, laughingly: "I should trust you just the same, even though Jeff Davis and the whole Confederate Congress ordered you to make away with me." "Don't you call our President 'Jeff,'" she snapped, but did not withdraw her hand. "I beg your pardon. That was just as rude in me as if you had called Mr. Lincoln 'Abe.'"