This encampment was an outstretched finger of the encampment of a great force preparing to cross the Potomac. It appeared, too, that there had been recently an outcry as to grey spies. Stafford proffered his story—a Marylander who had been to the city and was quietly proceeding home. He had turned into the lane thinking it a short cut—the berries had tempted him, being hungry—he had simply stood where he had climbed, waiting until he could plunge into the lane again;—behold the whole affair! He might have won through, but in the guardhouse where he was searched they found a small, worn wallet whose contents damned him. Standing among the berry-bushes, his hand had gone to this with the thought that he had best throw it away before danger swooped—and then he had refrained, and immediately it was too late. The sergeant looked it through, shook his head, and called a lieutenant. The lieutenant took the papers in a bronzed hand, ran them over, and read a letter dated two years back, written from Greenwood in Virginia and signed Judith Cary. He folded it and returned it to the wallet which he kept. “Of course you know,” he said in an agreeable voice, “that this is your death-warrant. I wonder at you for such monumental carelessness! Or, perhaps, it wasn’t carelessness.” “No,” said Stafford, “it wasn’t carelessness. But I am not a spy. Yesterday I escaped from Prison X.” “Tell that,” said the lieutenant, “to the marines. Sergeant, we move before noon, and jobs of this sort must be put behind us! There’s a drumhead court sitting now. Bring him across.” The tree was an oak with one great bough stretching like a warped beam across a cart track. Stafford divined it when he and the blue squad were yet three hundred yards away. It topped a slight rise and it thrust that arm out so starkly against the sky. He knew it for what it was. The world and the freshness of the world were as vividly with him as during any hour of the preceding vivid twelve. Every sense was vigorously functioning; the whole range of perception was lit; length and breadth and depth, he felt an intimacy of knowledge, a sure interpenetration. He saw wholly every little dogwood tree, every stalk of the long grass by the roadside; the cadence of the earth was his, and the taste of existence was in his mouth. He had a steady sense of the deep that was flowing into the mould of life and then out of the mould of life. He felt eternal. The tree and that stark limb bred in him no fear. A party of cavalry came up behind the foot soldiers. “Where are you going?” asked the officer at the head. “To hang a spy,” answered the lieutenant. “On the tree yonder.” “Yes?” said the officer. “Not the pleasantest of work, but at times necessary.—It’s a lovely morning.” “Isn’t it? The heat’s broken at last.”