I waited, expecting, with each moment that passed, to hear the movements of her mare on the path. How would she look? What countenance would she put on? What would she, what could she have to say to me? I lost myself in a fever of anticipation. Ten minutes passed, twenty minutes, at last the full half hour! And still she did not come. Still there was no sign of her, no sound of her approach. At length the heat of expectancy began to give place to the chill of doubt. Had I mistaken, could I have mistaken the place? Or was there another path up the Knob and could she be waiting for me at the foot of the farther side. I hurried across the top, I descended some distance, I called, I whistled. I strove to pierce the thickets with my eyes. Then, harassed by the thought that while I lingered, she might be mounting by the proper track, I toiled again to the summit and looked abroad. She had not appeared, and my heart sank. Doubt in its turn began to give place to suspicion. Had I been tricked? And if so, to what end? Desperately I searched the trees with my eyes. She might still come, but the hour I had been told to wait was nearly up. Indeed in no long time the sun would set, and twilight in Carolina is brief. If I remained on the Knob until it was dark, I should have small chance of returning through the woods without a fall that in my crippled condition might be serious. I was now angry as well as suspicious. I had been duped—for some reason; duped by a trick too transparent to deceive a child. I had been sent out of the way; I had not a doubt of it now. I only wondered that I had been so easily gulled. Still I would not act in a hurry. They should not say that I had left the rendez-vous before the time. They should not have that excuse. So I waited fuming and fretting until the hour expired, and then reckoning that I should have no more daylight than would suffice for my return, I scrambled down the rocky slope, and in a state of cold anger very different from the heat of anticipation in which I had come, I made the best of my way towards home. A man, and a soldier, does not like to be tricked. He does not choose to be treated as a child even for his own good. And in this case the lure which they had used, the bait which I had swallowed so greedily, seemed to imply a knowledge of my feelings that made me hot only to think of it. Had the girl been amusing herself with me? Had she, cold and distant as she seemed, been laughing at me? Worst of all, had she taken that d—d grinning black woman into her confidence? No wonder that as I labored on I cursed the boggy piece that delayed me, the roots over which I stumbled, the thorns that snatched at my clothes?