Afterwards I learned that the horse which Wilmer had seized was a sorry beast incapable of a gallop and well known in the troop. Viewed before he had gone a mile, and aware that he was out-paced, the fugitive had turned off the road, hoping to hide in the woods. But to do this he had had to face his horse at a ditch, and the brute instead of leaping it, had bundled into it. Before Wilmer could free himself or rise from the ground his pursuers had come up with him. I have said that I went into the house and hid myself. Poor Con! The girl’s face rose before me, and dragged at my heartstrings. I saw her, as I had seen her many times, bending her dark head over the spinning-wheel, while the pigeons pecked about her feet, and the cattle came lowing through the ford, and round the home pastures and the quiet homestead stretched the encircling woods, and the misty hills; and I turned my face to the wall and I wished that I had never been born! My poor Con! * * * * * Owing to my lord’s absence from the camp during the greater part of the day a court for the trial of the prisoner could not be assembled until four in the afternoon. I dare not describe what those intervening hours were to me, how long, how miserable, how cruelly armed with remorse and upbraidings! Nor will I say much of the trial. The result from the first was certain; there was no defence and there was other evidence than mine. Since his disguise had been taken from him two men in the camp, one a Tory from the Waxhaws, the other a deserter, had recognized the prisoner; and for a time I hoped that the Court, having a complete case, would dispense with my presence. My position, and the fact that he had spared my life and sheltered me in his house had become generally known, and many felt for me. But the laws of discipline are strict, and duty, when the lives of men hang upon its performance, is harshly interpreted. The Court saw no reason why I should be spared. At any rate they did not spare me. When the time to enter came I was possessed by a sharp fear of one moment—the moment when I should meet Wilmer’s eyes. They had taken his stuffed clothes from him and brushed the powder from his hair, and when I entered he stood between his guards, a lean, straight sinewy Southerner, very like the man who had stood over me with a Deckhard in the little clearing. The light fell on his face, and he was smiling. Whatever of inward quailing, whatever of the natural human shrinking from the approach of death he felt, he masked to perfection. As for the moment I had so much feared, it was over before I was aware. “Hello, Major!” he said, and he nodded to me pleasantly. I don’t know what my face showed, but he nodded again, as if he would have me know that all was well with him and that he bore me no malice. “You want another sup of whisky, Major,” he cried genially.