often--he'd come toddlin' out--he was a handsome youngster--and he'd howl like tarnation if I didn't take him up in my arms. At first his mother--her name's Mary--would look black at me; but one day the little feller took my cap out of my hand, and tried to put it on his own head. 'No, sir,' says I. 'The lady yonder'll think you're poisoned if you put a blue cap on your head.' At that she laughed. I never seen her laugh before." Kaintuck had pressed his face close to the bars of the window to hear the sergeant's story by this time, and the sergeant had advanced a step or two so that they could talk in a low voice. "Go on," said Kaintuck. "How did you git the better of her at last?" "I don't know," answered the sergeant, pulling his cap down a little farther yet, and showing his white teeth in a smile. "First time I told her she was pretty--by George!" The sergeant stopped short, completely overcome by the recollection. "Kaintuck, she don't more'n come up to my shoulder, an' she weighs about a hundred pounds, but I thought she was going to whip me then and there. I've been scared nearly to death two or three times during this unpleasantness, but I swear, Kaintuck, if that little widder wasn't the first rebel that started me on the dead run, without makin' some sort of a show of fightin'. However, I felt so mean about showing the white feather that I just determined I wasn't going to be stampeded that way again. So I braced up, an' put on my best uniform, an' went to see her again. She says, 'I'm a rebel, and I'm bound to be one always.' 'That's all right,' says I, 'bein' you're nothin' but a woman, and a mighty little one at that, and ma'am,' says I, 'this thing's goin' to be decided without the slightest reference to which side you are on.' She laughed, and then, without any sort o' warning, she turned her pretty face to the wall and begun to cry. After a while I talked to her sensible like. I says, 'Here you are alone and unprotected. How are you going to bring up that boy? What'll you do when I go away?' She turned white, and held the child in her arms. I said, 'I'll not only do for you, but I'll do for the boy besides. I've got a little money saved up, and he'll have his share of it. He shan't never know what it is not to have a father if you'll marry me, Mary.' So after a while, between crying and kissing the baby, and looking mournfully at the fire, she agreed to marry me if I'd wait till the spring, and in May I'm going to get leave--my cap'n knows all about it--and there'll be one rebel less, I believe, before long, though she does swear she'll never be anything but a rebel." "Sergeant," said Kaintuck, "how did she take the partin'? Since you've been so free, you won't mind my askin' the question."