And plainly, she was content to go with me and to use me still. I might fancy if I chose, that she forgave me, but I did not dare to think so. There was a hardness in her eyes, a challenge in her voice, a reserve in her bearing as she walked beside me, silent and proud, that I misdoubted. And how could she forgive me? To her I was her father’s murderer, a monster of ingratitude, a portent of falseness. She could not forgive. Enough that she did not flinch from me, that she was ready to bear with me, that she was willing to use me a little longer. We found the horses standing before the door at Paton’s quarters, and Tom with them. She bade the black farewell, after a few words aside with him, and ten minutes later we took the road on what I, for my part, knew to be a hopeless mission. Still it would serve, for it would help to pass these fatal hours; and afterwards she might comfort herself with the remembrance that she had done all in her power, that she had spent herself without stint or mercy in her father’s service. My latest impression of Winsboro’, as I looked back before I settled myself in the saddle, was of Paton engaged in a last desperate argument with the Provost-Marshal. Only then did it occur to me that the unfortunate Marshal had had orders to place me under arrest and had been all day held at bay by my friend’s good offices. CHAPTER XI THE MAN’S PART _The High Hills of Santee are a long irregular chain of Sandhills on the left bank of the Wateree. Though directly above the noxious river the air on them is healthy and the water pure, making an oasis in the wide tract of miasma and fever in which the army had been operating._ LIFE OF GREENE. It was not until we had left the camp a considerable distance behind us, and were clear of the neighboring roads with their stragglers and wagons and forage-parties that a word was spoken between us. Even that word turned only on the condition of the horses, the bay and grey that Paton had borrowed from the lines of the Fourteenth Dragoons. Let it be said of the British that, whatever their faults, they are magnanimous. The life of an enemy might depend—though I did not think, and hardly hoped that it would depend—on the speed of our horses. Yet the dragoons had lent us the best that they had, nor did I doubt that when the officer appeared on parade on the morrow, he would turn a blind eye on the gap in his ranks. It was I who broke the silence. “They should carry us to the High Hills in six hours,” I said. The girl assented by a single word, uttered with an indifference which surprised me. And that was all.