"And they came out all safe in Greenbrier?" He winced. How the lost opportunity hurt him! "Yessir. In Greenbrier Cove." "Did he pay you in gold?" sneered Ackert. "Or in greenbacks? Or mebbe in Cornfed money?" "I wouldn't hev his gold." She drew herself up proudly, though the tears were still coursing down her cheeks. "So he gin me a present--a whole passel o' coffee in my milk-piggin." Then to complete a candid confession she detailed the disposition she had made of this rare and precious luxury at the rebel smallpox camp. His eyes seemed to dilate as they gazed up at her. "Jesus Gawd!" he exclaimed, with uncouth profanity. But the phrase was unfamiliar to her, and she caught at it with a meaning all her own. "That's jes' it! Folks in gineral don't think o' _them_,'cept ter git out o' thar way; an' nobody keers fur _them_, but kase Jesus _is_ Gawd He makes _somebody_ remember them wunst in a while! An' they did seem passable glad." A vague sweet fragrance was on the vesperal air; some subtle distillation of asters or jewel-weed or "mountain-snow," and the leafage of crimson sumac and purple sweet-gum and yellow hickory and the late ripening frost-grapes--all in the culmination of autumnal perfection; more than one star gleamed whitely palpitant in a sky that was yet blue and roseate with a reminiscence of sunset; a restful sentiment, a brief truce stilled the guerilla's tempestuous pulse as he continued to stand beside his horse's head while the girl waited, seated on the saddle blanket. Suddenly he spoke to an unexpected intent. "Ye took a power o' risk in goin' nigh that Confederate pest-camp--an' yit ye're fur the Union an' saved a squadron from capture!" he upbraided the inconsistency in a soft incidental drawl. "Yes, I be fur the Union," she trembled forth the dread avowal. "But somehows I can't keep from holpin' any I kin. They war rebs--an' it war Yankee coffee--an' I dun'no'--I jes' dun'no'----" As she hesitated he looked long at her with that untranslated gaze. Then he fell ponderingly silent. Perhaps the revelation of the sanctities of a sweet humanity for a holy sake, blessing and blessed, had illumined his path, had lifted his eyes, had wrought a change in his moral atmosphere spiritually suffusive, potent, revivifying, complete. "She is as good as the saints in the Bible--an' plumb beautiful besides," he muttered beneath his fierce mustachios. Once more he gazed wonderingly at her. "I expect to do some courtin' in this kentry when the war is over," the guerilla said, soberly, reaching down to readjust the reins. "I haven't got time now. Will _you_ be waiting fur me here in Tanglefoot Cove--if I promise not to hang you fur your misdeeds right off now?" He glanced up with a sudden arch jocularity.