Where Ferry\'s scouts camped that night I do not know, for we had gone only two or three miles beyond our first momentary halting-place when their leader left them to Quinn and sprang away southward over fence, hedge, road, ditch--whatever lay across his bee-line, and by his order I followed at his heels.

In a secluded north-and-south road he looked back and beckoned me to his side: "You saw Major Harper\'s brother land safe and sound, you say? He told you this morning he is acquainted with your mother, eh; but not how?"

"No, except that it was through--"

"Yes, I know. But you don\'t know even how your mother is acquainted with her."

"No, though of course if she lived in the city, common sympathies might easily bring them together."

"She did not live in the city; she lived across the river from the city. \'Tis but a year ago her father died. He was an owner of steamboats. She made many river trips with him, and I suppose that explains how she knows the country about Baton Rouge, Natchez, Grand Gulf, Rodney, better than she knows the city. But the boats are gone now; some turned into gunboats, one burnt when the city fell, another confiscated. I think they didn\'t manage her bringing-up very well."

"Maybe not," I replied, being nothing if not disputatious, "and she does strike me as one thrown upon her own intuitions for everything; but if she\'s the lady she is entirely by her own personal quality, Lieutenant, she\'s a wonder!"

"Ah, but she is a wonder. In a state of society more finished--"

"She would be incredible," I said for him, and he accepted the clause by a gesture, and after a meditative pause went on with her history. The subject of our conversation had first met Oliver, it seemed, when by reason of some daring performance in the military field--near Milliken\'s Bend, in the previous autumn--he was the hero of the moment. Even so it was strange enough that he should capture her; one would as soon look to see Vicksburg fall; but the world was upside down, everything was happening as if in a tornado, and he cast his net of lies; lies of his own, and lies of two or three match-making friends who chose to believe, at no cost to themselves, that war, with one puff of its breath, had cleansed him of his vices and that marriage would complete the happy change. This was in Natchez, Ferry went on to say. Most fortunately for the bride one of the bridegroom\'s wedding gifts was a certain young slave girl; before the wedding was an hour past--before the orange-blossoms were out of the bride\'s hair--this slave maid had told her what he was, "And you know what that is."

We rode in silence while I tried to think what it must be to a woman of her warmth--of her impulsive energies--to be, week in, week out, month after month, besieged by that man\'s law-protected blandishments and stratagems. "I wish you would use me in her service every time there is a chance," I said.

"The chances are few," he answered; "e............