"Captain Cary practically admits his guilt! You were aware of it! And yet you send him through the very center of our lines! A pass! Carte blanche to learn the disposition of our forces—our weakness and our strength—and to make his report in Richmond. He was an enemy—with a price on his head! And you trusted him! A spy!"
As the General had been speaking the first few words of his contemptuous summing up Morrison saw where they would lead and his manhood instantly leaped up in reply.
"I trusted, not the spy, but Herbert Cary," he said with honest courage. Then, as the General turned his back on him with a contemptuous snap of his fingers—
"General! I have offered no defense. If the justice of court-martial law prescribes a firing squad—I find no fault. I failed. I pay."
With a gesture which indicated Gary the disgraced officer of the Army of the Potomac shot out his one and only defense of his action—at an unyielding back.
"I took this man—hunted—wounded—fighting to reach the side of a hungry child. I captured him and, by the rules of war, I was about to have him shot. Then he asked me to get his little girl safely to Richmond, and not to let her know—about him."
"And she believed in me. Trusted me—even as I trusted Herbert Cary to pierce the very center of your lines—as a father—not a spy!"
From behind the unyielding back came a statement of fact, firm and pitiless.
"And it cost you your sword—your life."
Morrison centered his eyes on the back of the General's head and sent his answer home with all the power of his voice and spirit.