"Oh, I see you done heard the story!" said the spy, and left it untold; but whether he was making game of his auditor or not she did not know, and never found out. But on they went, by many a home; through miles of growing crops, and now through miles of lofty pine forests, and by log-cabins and unpainted cottages, from within whose open doors came often the loud feline growl of the spinning-wheel. So on and on, Mary spending the first night in a lone forest cabin of pine poles, whose master, a Confederate deserter, fed his ague-shaken wife and cotton-headed children oftener with the spoils of his rifle than with the products of the field. The spy and the deserter lay down together, and together rose again with the dawn, in a deep thicket, a few hundred yards away. The travellers had almost reached the end of this toilsome horseback journey, when rains set in, and, for forty-eight hours more, swollen floods and broken bridges held them back, though within hearing of the locomotive's whistle. But at length, one morning, Mary stepped aboard the train that had not long before started south from the town of Holly Springs, Mississippi, assisted with decorous alacrity by the conductor, and followed by the station-agent with Alice in his arms, and by the telegraph-operator with a home-made satchel or two of luggage and luncheon. It was disgusting,--to two thin, tough-necked women, who climbed aboard, unassisted, at the other end of the same coach. "You kin just bet she's a widder, and them fellers knows it," said one to the other, taking a seat and spitting expertly through the window. "If she aint," responded the other, putting a peeled snuff-stick into her cheek, "then her husband's got the brass buttons, and they knows that. Look at 'er a-smi-i-ilin'!" "What you reckon makes her look so wore out?" asked the first. And the other replied promptly, with unbounded loathing, "Dayncin'," and sent her emphasis out of the window in liquid form without disturbing her intervening companion. During the delay caused by the rain Mary had found time to refit her borrowed costume. Her dress was a stout, close-fitting homespun of mixed cotton and wool, woven in a neat plaid of walnut-brown, oak-red, and the pale olive dye of the hickory. Her hat was a simple round thing of woven pine straw, with a slightly drooping brim, its native brown gloss undisturbed, and the low crown wrapped about with a wreath of wild grasses plaited together with a bit of yellow cord. Alice wore a much-washed pink calico frock and a hood of the same stuff. "Some officer's wife," said two very sweet and lady-like persons, of unequal age and equal good taste in dress, as their eyes took an inventory of her apparel. They wore bonnets that were quite handsome, and had real false flowers and silk ribbons on them. "Yes, she's been to camp somewhere to see him."