On the opposite side of the road were the lines of the Seventieth Indiana, their colors, furled in oilcloth, lying horizontally across the forks of two stacks of rifles. Under them lay the color guard; the scabbarded swords of the colonel and his staff were stuck upright in the ground, and the blanket-swathed figures of the officers in poncho and havelock reposed close by. The other regiment was the Eleventh Maine. Their colonel, strapped with his silver eagles, was watching the disposal of the colors by a sergeant wearing the broad stripe, blue diamond and triple underscoring on each sleeve. With the sergeant marched eight corporals, long-limbed, rugged giants of the color company, decorated with the narrow stripe and double chevron. A few minutes later the cavalry moved out past the pickets, then swung due south. Night had fallen--a clear, starlit, blossom-scented dimness freshening the air. The Special Messenger, head bent, was still riding with Captain Stanley, evidently preferring his company so openly, so persistently, that the other officers, a little amused, looked sideways at the youngster from time to time. After a while Stanley said pleasantly: "We haven't exchanged names yet, and you haven't told me why a regular is riding with us to-night." "On special service," she said in a low voice. "And your name and regiment?" She did not appear to hear him; he glanced at her askance. "You seem to be very young," he said. "The colonel of the Ninetieth Rhode Island fell at twenty-two." He nodded gravely. "It is a war of young men. I think Baring himself is only twenty-five. He's breveted brigadier, too." "And you?" she asked timidly. He laughed. "Thirty; and a thousand in experience." "I, too," she said softly. "You? Thirty?" "No, only twenty-four; but your peer in experience." "Your voice sounds Southern," he said in his pleasant voice, inviting confidence. "Yes; my home was at Sandy River." Out of the corners of her eyes she saw him start and look around at her--felt his stern gaze questioning her; and rode straight on before her without response or apparent consciousness. "Sandy River?" he repeated in a strained voice. "Did you say you lived there?" "Yes," indifferently. The captain rode for a while in silence, then, carelessly: "There was, I believe, a family living there before the war--the Westcotes." "Yes." She could scarcely utter a word for the suffocating throb of her heart. "You knew them?" "Yes." "Do--do they still live at Sandy River?" "The house still stands. Major Westcote is dead." "Her--I mean their grandfather?" She nodded, incapable of speech. "And"--he hesitated--"and the boy? He used to ride a pony--the most fascinating little fellow----" "He is at school in the North." There was a silence, then the captain turned in his saddle and looked straight at her. "Does Miss Westcote live there still?" "Do you mean Celia Westcote?" asked the Messenger calmly.