A New York regiment, fresh from the North, was passing now, its magnificent band playing "Twinkling Stars"; and the horses of the cavalry began to dance and paw and toss their heads. One splendid black animal reared suddenly and shook its mane out; and at the same moment she saw _him_--knew him--drew bridle, her heart in her mouth, her body all a-tremble. He was mastering the black horse that had reared, sitting his saddle easily, almost carelessly, his long, yellow-striped legs loosely graceful, his straight, slim figure perfect in poise and balance. And now the trumpets were sounding; captain after captain turned in his saddle, swung his sabre forward, repeating the order: "Forward--march! Forward--march!" The Special Messenger whirled her horse and sped to the head of the column. "I was just beginning to wonder--" began the colonel, when she broke in, breathless: "_May_ I ride with Captain Stanley of F, sir?" "Certainly," he replied, surprised and a trifle amused. She hesitated, nervously picking at her bridle, then said: "When you once get me through their lines--I mean, after I am safely through and you are ready to turn around and leave me--I--I would like--to--to----" "Yes?" inquired the colonel, gently, divining some "last message" to deliver. For they were desperate chances that she was taking, and those in the beleaguered city would show her no mercy if they ever caught her within its battered bastions. But the Special Messenger only said: "Before your regiment goes back, may I tell Captain Stanley who I am?" The colonel's face fell. "Nobody is supposed to have any idea who you are----" "I know it. But is there any harm if I only tell it to--to just this one, single man?" she asked, earnestly, not aware that her eyes as well as her voice were pleading--that her whole body, bent forward in the saddle, had become eloquent with a confession as winning as it was innocent. The colonel looked curiously into the eager, flushed face, framed in its setting of dark, curly hair, then he lifted a gauntleted hand from his bridle and slowly stroked his crisp mustache upward to hide the smile he could not control. "I did not know," he said gravely, "that Captain Stanley was the--ah--'one' and 'only' man." She blushed furiously, the vivid color ran from throat to temple, burning her ears till they looked like rose petals caught in her dark hair. "You may tell Captain Stanley--if you must," observed the colonel of the Fourth Missouri. He was gazing absently straight between his horse's ears when he spoke. After a few moments he looked at the sky where, overhead, the afterglow pulsated in bands of fire. "I always thought," he murmured to himself, "that old Stanley was in love with that Southern girl he saw at Sandy River.... I had no idea he knew the Special Messenger. It appears that I am slightly in error." And, very thoughtfully, he continued to twist his mustache skyward as he rode on.