I started. The rush of joy was so over-powering, the shock of hearing her voice so unexpected, that it dazzled me as if a flame had passed before my eyes. On that instant of rapture followed another—of unreasoning and unreasonable shame. How long had she been there? What had she seen—she who had once called me a milksop? “I was tightening a girth,” I mumbled, keeping my head lowered. “Yes,” she said, “but it has slipped again, I think.” I groped for it—it was indeed hanging under the horse’s barrel. I murmured that the stable was so dark that it was almost impossible— “You must let me help you.” “You shall in a moment,” I answered. “I will just fix this.” And then—“I thought that you had gone,” I muttered. “Gone?” she cried. “With General Marion.” “Gone without thanking you?” she exclaimed. “Oh, impossible! You could not think that of me! Gone without—” “It was some mistake,” I said. “It was a very great mistake,” she answered. “Will you allow me to pass you?” I made way for her to pass to the horse’s head. The stable was dark, I have said, but as she went by, something prompted her to turn, and look me in the face. “The brute hit me on the chin,” I said hurriedly. She did not speak. I pulled down the gray’s head, and she thrust the bit between its teeth. Then she proceeded to fasten the cheekstrap, but she was so long about it that I saw that her fingers were trembling and that her breath came as short and quick as if she had been running. “My fingers are all thumbs this morning,” she said with a queer laugh. “With joy, I suppose. But there, it’s done, Major Craven. Now I must get my cloak,” she added, and she slipped quickly by me as if she were in a hurry. “I have it,” I said. “And my pistol?” “I have that too,” I said. “Then I suppose that we had better be going,” she answered. “But perhaps I ought to explain,” she continued, as she stood in the doorway with her back to the light. “General Marion could not take me with him. He is making for the Pee Dee and the great marshes, and hopes to be on the other side of Lynch’s creek by night. He took Tom but he said that I should embarrass him.” “I see.” “He thought that you would perhaps escort me as far as Camden,” she continued soberly. “I have friends there who will receive me for the night and send me home to-morrow by Rocky Mount and the fords of the Catawba. He fancied that I had better avoid Winnsboro’.” “I agree with him,” I said. “I might be arrested, he fancied?” “It is not impossible,” I assented dryly. I felt that something was closing in on me and stopping all the sources of speech. This ordered plan, this business-like arrangement—I was to be of use to the end it seemed. Just of use! I strove desperately to resist the thought and yet I could not. “Then if there is nothing else,” she said slowly, “we might—be going, I suppose?” “I suppose so,” I answered heavily. And I turned the horses round.