"I see. Sit down and don't move. Nobody is going to hurt you." She went to the door, leisurely uncocking her revolver and pushing it through her belt. "Oh, Connor," she called carelessly, "please mount my friend Mr. Snuyder on my horse, take him across the ford, and detain him as my guest at headquarters until I return. Wait a second; I'm going to keep my saddlebags with me." And a few minutes later, as the troopers rode away in the mist with their prisoner, her gentle voice followed them: "Don't be rough with him, Connor. Say to the colonel that there is no harm in him at all, but keep him in sight until I return; and _don't_ let him go fishing!" * * * * * She began housekeeping at sunrise by taking a daring bath in the stream, then, dressing, she made careful inventory of the contents of the house and a cautious survey of the immediate environment. The premises, so unexpectedly and unwillingly abandoned by its late obese tenant, harbored, besides herself, only one living creature--a fat kitten. The ferry house stood above the dangerous south bank of the river in a grove of oaks, surrounded for miles by open country. A flight of rickety, wooden stairs pitched downward from the edge of the grassy bank to a wharf at the water's edge--the mere skeleton of a wharf now, outlined only by decaying stringpieces. But here the patched-up punt was moored; and above it, nailed to a dead tree, the sign with its huge lettering still remained: RED FERRY HOLLER TWICE sufficiently distinct to be deciphered from the opposite shore. Sooner or later the fugitive would have to come to the river. Probably the cavalry would catch him at one of the fords, or some rifleman might shoot him swimming. But, if he did not know the fords, and could not swim, there was only one ferry for him; east, west, and north he had long since been walled in. The chances were that some night a cock-o'-the-pines would squeal from the woods across the river, and then she knew what to do. During those broiling days of waiting she had leisure enough. Seated outside her shanty, in the shade of the trees, where she was able to keep watch both ways--south for her own safety's sake, north for the doomed man--she occupied herself with mending stockings and underwear, raising her eyes at intervals to sweep the landscape.