If I thought to work upon her feelings by that, and to force her to think of my loneliness, I failed wofully. “Not for long,” she replied. “We are arranging to send you to Salisbury, sir. You will doubtless be sufficiently recovered to travel by to-morrow. You will be safer there than here, and will have better attendance in the hospital.” I was thunderstruck. “To-morrow!” I echoed. “Travel? But—but I could not!” I cried. “I could not, Miss Wilmer. The bones of my arm have not knit! You know what your roads are, and my shoulder is still painful, horribly painful.” “I am sorry, sir, that circumstances render it necessary.” “But, good heavens!” I cried, “You don’t, you cannot mean it!” “The man who put your arm in splints,” she replied, averting her eyes from me, “will see that you are taken in a litter as far as the cross-roads. I have arranged for a cart to meet you there—a pallet and a—” her voice tailed off, I could not catch the last word. “They will see you carefully as far as—” again she muttered a name so low that I did not catch it—“on the way to Salisbury. Or to Hillsborough if that be necessary.” “Hillsborough?” I cried, aghast. “But have you reflected? It is eighty or ninety miles to Hillsborough! Ninety miles of rough roads—where there are roads, Madam!” “It’s not a matter of choice,” she replied firmly—but I fancied that she turned a shade paler. “And it may not be necessary to go beyond Salisbury. At any rate the matter is settled, sir. Circumstances render it necessary.” “But it is impossible!” I urged. “It is out of the question!” The memory of my ride from King’s Mountain, of the stream I had had to cross, was too sharp, too recent to permit me to entertain delusions. “The pain I suffered coming here—” “Pain!” she cried, letting herself go at that. “What is a little pain, sir, in these days, when things so much worse, things unspeakable are being suffered—are being done and suffered every day? Our men whom you delivered to the Indians at Augusta, did they not suffer pain?” “It was an abominable thing!” I said, aghast at her attitude. “But I did not do it, God forbid! I detest the thought of it, Miss Wilmer! And you, you do not mean that you would be as cruel as those—” I stopped. I let her imagine the rest. I held her with indignant eyes. “I am doing the best I can,” she said sullenly. But I saw that she was ashamed of her proposal even while she persisted in it; and I grew stronger in my resolve. “I am helpless,” I said. “Your father can do what he pleases, I am in his hands. But even he is bound by the laws of humanity, which he obeyed when he spared me. I cannot think that he did that, I cannot think that he behaved to me as one soldier to another in order to put me to torture! If he tells me I must go, I must go, I have no remedy. But until he does, I will never believe that it is his wish!” “You will force yourself on us?” she cried, her voice quivering. “On us, two women as we are, and alone?”