It was not sunset when Col. Montjoy left home. Mary went to her room and threw herself upon her bed, sick at heart and anxious beyond the power of weeping. Unadvised, ignorant of the full significance of the information that had been conveyed to them, she conjured up a world of danger for her father and for Edward. Tragedy was in the air she breathed. At supper she was laboring under ill-concealed excitement. Fortunately for her, the little mother was not present. Sitting in her room, with the green glasses to which she had been reduced by the progress of her disease, she did not notice the expression of the daughter's face when she came as usual to look after the final arrangement of her mother's comfort. By 8 o'clock the house was quiet. Throwing a light wrap over her shoulders and concealing in its folds her father's army pistol, Mary slipped into the outer darkness and whistled softly. A great shaggy dog came bounding around from the rear and leaped upon her. She rested her hand on his collar, and together they passed into the avenue. Old Isam stood there and by him the pony phaeton and mare. "Stay up until I return, please, Uncle Isam, and be sure to meet me here!" The old man bowed. "I'll be hyar, missy," he said. "Don't you want me to go, too?" "No, thank you; I am going to Gen. Evan's and you must stay and look after things. Nero will go with me." The dog had already leaped into the vehicle. She sprang in also, and almost noiselessly they rolled away over the pine straw. The old man listened; first he heard the dogs bark at Rich's then at Manuel's and then at black Henry's, nearly a mile away. He shook his head. "Missy got somep'n on her mind! She don't make no hoss move in de night dat way for nothin'! Too fast! Too fast!" He went off to his cabin and sat outside to smoke. And in the night the little mare sped away. On the public roads the gait was comparatively safe, and she responded to every call nobly. The unbroken shadows of the roadside glided like walls of gloom! The little vehicle rocked and swayed, and, underneath, the wheels sang a monotonous warning rhyme. Now and then the little vehicle fairly leaped from the ground, for when Norton, a year previous, had bid in that animal at a blooded-stock sale in Kentucky, she was in her third summer and carried the blood of Wilkes and Rysdyk's Hambletonian, and was proud of it, as her every motion showed. The little mare had the long route that night, but at last she stood before the doorway of the Cedars. The general was descending the steps as Mary gave Nero the lines. "What! Mary--" He feared to ask the question on his lips. She was full of excitement, and her first effort to speak was a dismal failure.