"I don't know who you are," he went on, "but I guess you're not fixed for shooting at me, as every living thing seems to have done for the last fortnight. Maybe you're in Yankee pay, maybe in Confederate; I can't help it. I suppose you'll tell I've been here after I'm gone.... But they'll never get me now!" he bragged, like a truant schoolboy recounting his misdemeanor to an awed companion. "Who are you?" she asked very gently. He looked at her defiantly. "I'm Roy Allen," he said, "of Kay's Cavalry.... If you're fixing to tell the Union people you might as well tell them who fooled 'em!" "What have you done?" She inquired so innocently that a hint of shame for his suspicion and brutality toward her reddened his hollow cheeks. "I'll tell you what I've done," he said. "I've taken to the woods, headed for Dixie, with a shirtful of headquarter papers. That's what I've done.... And perhaps you don't know what that means if they catch me. It means hanging." "Hanging!" she faltered. "Yes--if they get me." His voice quivered, but he added boastingly: "No fear of that! I'm too many for old Kay!" "But--but why did you desert?" "Why?" he repeated. Then his face turned red and he burst out violently: "I'll tell you why. I lived in New York, but I thought the South was in the right. Then they drafted me; and I tried to tell them it was an outrage, but they gave me the choice between Fort Lafayette and Kay's Cavalry.... And I took the Cavalry and waited.... I wouldn't have gone as far as to fight against the flag--if they had let me alone.... I only had my private opinion that the South was more in the right than we--the North--was.... I'm old enough to have an opinion about niggers, and I'm no coward either.... They drove me to this; I didn't want to kill people who were more in the right than we were.... But they made me enlist--and I couldn't stand it.... And now, if I've got to fight, I'll fight bullies and brutes who----" He ended with a gesture--an angry, foolish boast, shaking his weapon toward the north. Then, hot, panting, sullenly sensible of his fatigue, he laid the pistol on the table and glowered at the floor. She could have taken him, unarmed, at any moment, now. "Soldier," she said gently, "listen to me." He looked up with heavy-lidded eyes. "I am trying to help you to safety," she said. A hot flush of mortification mantled his face: "Thank you.... I ought to have known; I--I am ashamed of what I said--what I did." "You were only a little frightened; I am not angry." "You understand, don't you?" "A--little." "You are Southern, then?" he said; and in spite of himself his heavy lids began to droop again. "No; Northern," she replied. His eyes flew wide open at that, and he straightened up in his chair. "Are you afraid of me, Soldier?" "No," he said, ashamed again. "But--you're going to tell on me after I am gone." "No." "Why not?" he demanded suspiciously.