What Captain Stanley saw riding up to him through the dull afterglow was a slightly built youth in the uniform of the regular cavalry, yellow trimming on collar, yellow welts about the seams of the jacket, yellow stripes on the breeches; and, as the youth drew bridle, saluted, and turned to ride forward beside him, he caught sight of a lieutenant’s shoulder straps on the sergeant’s shell jacket.

“Well, youngster,” he said, smiling, “don’t they clothe you in the regulars? You’re as eccentric as our butternut friends yonder.”

“I couldn’t buy a full uniform,” she said truthfully. She did not add that she had left at a minute’s notice for the most dangerous undertaking ever asked of her, borrowing discarded makeshifts anywhere at hazard.

“Are you a West Pointer?”

“No.”

“Oh! You’ve their seat—and their shapely leanness. Are you going with us?”

“Where are you going?”

Stanley laughed. “I’m sure I don’t know. It looks to me as though we were riding straight into rebeldom.”

“Don’t you know why?” she asked, looking at him from under the shadow of her visor.

“No. Do you?”

“Yes.”

After a pause: “Well,” he said, laughing, “are you going to tell me?”

“Yes—later.”

Neck and neck, knee and knee they rode forward at the head of the Black Horse troop, along a road which became dusky beyond the first patch of woods.

After the inner camp lines had been passed the regiment halted while a troop was detailed as flankers and an advanced guard galloped off ahead. Along the road behind, the guns of the Rhode Island Battery came thudding and bumping up, halting with a dull clash of chains.

Stanley said: “This is one of Baring’s pet raids; we’ve done it dozens of times. Once our entire division rode around Beauregard; but I didn’t see the old, blue star division flag this time, so I guess we’re going it alone. Hello! There’s infantry! We must be close to the extreme outposts.”

In the dusk they were passing a pasture where, guarded by sentinels, lay piled, in endless, straight rows, knapsacks, blankets, shelter tents, and long lines of stacked Springfield rifles. Soldiers with the white strings of canteens crossing their breasts were journeying to and from a stream that ran, darkling, out of the tangled woodland on their right.

On the opposite side of the road were the lines of the Seventieth Indiana, their colors, furled in oilcloth, lying horizontally across the forks of two stacks of rifles. Under them lay the color guard; the scabbarded swords of the colonel and his staff were stuck upright in the ground, and the blanket-swathed figures of the officers in poncho and havelock reposed close by.

The other regiment was the Eleventh Maine. Their colonel, strapped with his silver eagles, was watching the disposal of the colors by a sergeant wearing the broad stripe, blue diamond and triple underscoring on each sleeve. With the sergeant marched eight corporals, long-limbed, rugged giants of the color company, decorated with the narrow stripe and double chevron.

A few minutes later the cavalry moved out past the pickets, then swung due south.

Night had fallen—a clear, starlit, blossom-scented dimness freshening the air.

The Special Messenger, head bent, was still riding with Captain Stanley, evidently preferring his company so openly, so persistently, that the other officers, a little amused, looked sideways at the youngster from time to time.

After a while Stanley said pleasantly: “We haven’t exchanged names yet, and you haven’t told me why a regular is riding with us to-night.”

“On special service,” she said in a low voice.

“And your name and regiment?”

She did not appear to hear him; he glanced at her askance.

“You seem to be very young,” he said.

“The colonel of the Ninetieth Rhode Island fell at twenty-two.”

He nodded gravely. “It is a war of young men. I think Baring himself is only twenty-five. He’s breveted brigadier, too.”

“And you?” she asked timidly.

He laughed. “Thirty; and a thousand in experience.”

“I, too,” she said softly.

“You? Thirty?”

“No, only twenty-four; but your peer in experience.”

“Your voice sounds Southern,” he said in his pleasant voice, inviting confidence.

“Yes; my home was at Sandy River.”

Out of the corners of her eyes she saw him start and look around at her—felt his stern gaze questioning her; and rode straight on before her without response or apparent consciousness.

“Sandy River?” he repeated in a strained voice. “Did you say you lived there?”

“Yes,” indifferently.

The captain rode for a while in silence, then, carelessly: “There was, I believe, a family living there before the war—the Westcotes.”

“Yes.” She could scarcely utter a word for the suffocating throb of her heart.

“You knew them?”

“Yes.”

“Do—do they still live at Sandy River?”

“The house still stands. Major Westcote is dead.”

“Her—I mean their grandfather?”

She nodded, incapable of speech.

“And”—he hesitated—“and the boy? He used to ride a pony—the most fascinating little fellow–”

“He is at school in the North.”

There was a silence, then the captain turned in his saddle and looked straight at her.

“Does Miss Westcote live there still?”

“Do you mean Celia Westcote?” asked the Messenger calmly.

“Yes—Celia—” His voice fell softly, making of her name a caressing cadence. The Special Messenger bent her head lower over her bridle.

“Why do you ask? Did you know her?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

The captain lifted his grave eyes, but the Messenger was not looking at him.

“I knew her—in a way—better than I ever knew any woman, and I saw her only three times in all my life. That is your answer—and my excuse for asking. Does she still live at Sandy River?”

“No.”

“Do you know where she has gone?”

“She is somewhere in the South.”

“Is she—married?” he asked under his breath.

The Special Messenger looked up at him, smiling in the darkness.

“No,” she said. “I heard that she lost her—heart—to a bandmaster of some cavalry regiment who was killed in action at Sandy River—three years ago.”

The captain straightened in his saddle as though he had been shot; in the dim light his lean face turned darkly scarlet.

“I see her occasionally,” continued the Messenger faintly; “have you any message—perhaps–”

The captain turned slowly toward her. “Do you know where she is?”

“I expect that she will be within riding distance of me—very soon.”

“Is your mission a secret one?”

“Yes.”