Isabey left camp about seven o’clock in the morning, so that he might allow his horse a long rest before reaching Harrowby, for after that there might be hard riding. He had settled the details of how he should convey Angela to the Federal lines. So good a horse-woman as she could easily ride the twenty miles over the level road. It would be better, however, that the journey be made at night. The season was mild and the moon was at its full, so that there would be no hardship involved. But Isabey recognized that it would be just as well that they should not be seen together riding upon the highway a long distance from Harrowby. When he reached the Federal lines, he would, of course, be obliged to leave her. He apprehended no trouble for her; there were gentlemen among the Federal officers who would readily assume charge of a brother officer’s wife. It was all simple enough, only it broke Isabey’s heart. As he rode soberly along through the blue-and-gold October morning he kept a moderate pace and it was quite eleven o’clock before he reached the place where he meant to rest his horse. It was in the little glade in the woods where he remembered to have walked with Angela and Richard Tremaine and Lyddon the first spring afternoon he ever met Angela, almost a year and a half before. Then it had been springtime; now it was autumn, and the dead leaves were thick underfoot. Isabey dismounted, took the saddle off his horse, and sat down on the same fallen tree where he had sat with Angela. He was not equal to much exercise on foot, and sat quite still, living over the past with Angela and dreading the interview that lay before him. How would she take his message? Would she weep and wring her hands as women usually do in such emergencies? Would she turn upon him and visit him with her indignation. Or would she be angry with an icy anger? It might well seem to this unsophisticated girl a terrible thing to be thrust alone among soldiers, men whom she had never seen and whom she daily heard reviled, to depend upon them for her safe conduct to Neville. Isabey’s heart was so tortured with this thought that he got up and, in spite of his injured knee, walked up and down like a madman. The squirrels looked at him curiously, and a family of wood robins, which was preparing to fly southward, grew frightened, suddenly rose, and with a rush of wings cleft the blue air. Isabey glanced at his watch every few minutes and when it was half past one threw the saddle on his horse, mounted, and, picking his way through the underbrush, struck the cedar lane, down which he cantered rapidly. Time was when no guest could approach Harrowby without being heralded by a multitude of negroes, young and old, rushing in the house and announcing the coming guest as if it were the most stupendous and sensational event which had ever occurred. Not so now. There were only a few negroes left on the estate and they were not much in evidence.