"How, then, did she know?" "Lieutenant, she guessed! She must have just put two and two together and guessed! Or else, Lieutenant,--" "She must have pumped others before she pumped you, eh?" There was confession in his good humor. "But tell me; did she not see also this other trap, for this man and his father, and try to save them out of it?--oh, if you don't want--never mind." He laid a leg over the front of his saddle and sat thinking. So I see him to-day: his chestnut locks, his goodly limbs and shoulders, the graceful boots, cut-away jacket, faded sash, straight sword, and that look of care on his features which intensified the charm of their spiritual cleanness; behind him his band of picked heroes, and for background the June sky. Whenever I smell dewy corn-fields smitten with the sun that picture comes back to me. "No," he said again, "you need not tell me." By a placid light in his face I saw he understood. He drew his watch, put it back, thought on, and smiled at my uniform. "It has not the blue of the others," he said, "but indeed they are not all alike, and it will match the most of them--after a rain or two--and some dust. You have been trading horses?" I explained. While doing so I saw one of the guard reaching the prisoner's bridle to the other. Hah! Oliver had slapped the bridle free. In went his spurs! By a great buffet on the horse's neck he wheeled him, and with the rein dangling under the bits went over the fence like a deer. "Bang! bang! bang!" It was idle; a magic seems to shield a captive's leap for life. Away across the corn he went to the edge of a tangled wood, over the fence there again, and into the brush. "Halt! bang!" and "Halt! bang!" it was, at every bound, but now the pursuers came back empty-handed, some contemptuously silent, some laughing. Ferry glanced again at the time, and I was having within me a quarrel with him for his indifference at the prisoner's escape, when with cold severity he asked-- "Why did you not fire?" I flushed with indignation, and my eye retorted to his that I had only followed his example. His answer was a smile. "You, also, have been guessing, eh?" he said, and when I glowed with gratitude he added, "Never mind, we must have a long talk. At present there is a verbal message for me; what is it?" "Verbal message? No, Lieutenant, she didn't--oh!--from the General! Yes! the General says--'Rodney.'"