"And you can give me the whole day?" "Every hour--the General is my friend." The moment was too sweet to allow any shadow to cloud it. The girl yielded to its spell without reserve. They mounted and rode side by side over the hills. And the man poured into her ears the unspoken things he had felt and longed to say in the lonely nights of camp and field. The girl confessed the pain and the longing of her waiting. They mounted the crest of a hill and the breeze from the southwest brought the sullen boom of a cannon. Instinctively they drew rein. "The battle has begun again," John said casually. "It stirs your blood, doesn't it?" she whispered. A frown darkened his brow: "Not to-day." The girl looked with quick surprise. "You don't mean it?" "Certainly. Why get excited when you know the end before it begins." "You know it?" "Yes." "Victory?" He laughed cynically: "Victory for a pompous braggart who could write that address to an army reflecting on the men who fought Lee and Jackson before Richmond with such desperate courage?" "You are sure of defeat then?" "Absolutely." Betty looked at him with a flush of angry excitement: "General McClellan is counting on Pope's defeat to-day?" "Yes." "Then it's true that he is not really trying to help him?" "Why should he wish to sacrifice his brave men under the leadership of a fool?" "He is, in fact, defying the orders of the President, isn't he?" "You might say that if you strain a point," John admitted. Again the long roar of guns boomed on the Western horizon, louder, clearer. The dull echoes became continuous now, and the quickening breeze brought the faint din from the vast field of death whose blazing smoke covered lines stretched over seven miles. "_Boom-boom-boom, boom!--boom! boom!_" Again they drew rein and listened. John's brow wrinkled and his right ear was thrown slightly forward. "Those are our big guns," he said with a smile. "The Confederate artillery can't compare with ours--their infantry is a terror--stark, dead game fighters----" "_Boom--Boom!----Boom! Boom! Boom!_" "How do you know those are our guns?" Betty asked with a shiver. "The rebels have none so large. They'll have some to-night." Again an angry flush mounted her cheeks: "You wish them to be captured?" "It will be a wholesome lesson." Betty leaned closer and grasped his hand with trembling eagerness. "O John--John, dear, this is madness! General McClellan has been accused of treason already--this surely is the basest betrayal of his country----" The man shook his head stubbornly: "No--it's the highest patriotism. My Commander is brave enough to dare the authorities at Washington for the good of his country. The sooner this farce under Pope ends the better--no man of second rate ability can win against the great Generals of the South." The girl's keen brown eyes looked steadily into his and her lips trembled.