He had heard nothing of Agatha's mission to the north, of course. He now knew only that she had been hiding within the enemy's lines, and only one interpretation of that fact seemed possible. Agatha Ronald--the woman he loved, the woman upon whose integrity and Virginianism he would have staked his life without a second thought--had turned traitor! He did not pause to ask himself how, in such a case, she had come to be in the thicket among the sharpshooters. He was too greatly stunned to think of that, or otherwise to reason clearly. Nor did he question her, except to ask if she or her maid had been wounded, and when she assured him of their safety, he said: "I don't know whether to thank God for that or not. It might have been better, perhaps, if both had fallen." Agatha heard the remark, and understood in part at least the thought that lay behind it. But she did not reply. She only said, feebly: "We are starving." "Bring two horses, quickly," Baillie commanded. "Lieutenant Mills, take the guns back to the bivouac. Our work here is done." Then turning to Agatha, he explained: "We have no rations here; can you manage to ride as far as our bivouac? It is only half a mile away, and we'll find something to eat there." Agatha's exhaustion was so great that she could scarcely sit up, but she summoned all her resolution and managed to hold herself in place on the McClellan saddle which alone was available for her use. Martha was carried by the men on an improvised litter. At the bivouac, no food was found except a pone or two of coarse corn bread and a few slices of uncooked bacon. But the delicate girl and her maid devoured these almost greedily, eating the bacon raw in soldier fashion, for, of course, no fires were allowed upon the picket-line. Food and rest quickly revived Agatha, and Baillie remembered certain very peremptory orders he had received as to his course of procedure should "any woman whatever" come into his lines. "I must escort you presently to a safer place than this," he said. "Am I to go under _compulsion_, Captain Pegram," the girl asked, "or of my own _accord_?" "With that," he answered, "I am afraid I have nothing to do. My sole concern is to take you out of danger. It is not my business to ask you questions as to how you have come into danger in a way so peculiar." "And yet," she replied, "that is a matter that I suppose requires _inquiry_, and I am ready for the _ordeal_." The moment she spoke that word, which was the fourth in the series that Stuart had given her, and the one he had selected as a test for this day, Baillie Pegram flinched as if he had been struck, while his face turned white. Hoping that her use of the word had been accidental, or that the emphasis she had placed upon it had been unintended, he asked: "What did you say?" "I said," she responded, very deliberately, "that I am ready for the _ordeal_."