And Lieutenant-Colonel Morrison sat his horse before his cheering line of men, silent, happy, while two tears rolled, unheeded, down his cheek—a soldier and a man!
His tenderness to a little child had torn him from his saddle and doomed him to disgrace and death; and then, one line from her baby lips had mounted him again and set him before his troopers on parade.
"It was when ... Daddy came through the woods ... and put my mamma ... in the ground."
Two lives she had held—in her little hands—and had saved them both with a dozen words of simple, unfaltering truth.
On the dusty pike which led to Virginia's capital another rider plodded through the heat and haze. His coat, once gray, now hung in mud-stained tatters about his form, but beneath his battered campaign hat his thin, pale features were smoothed by a smile of happiness.
Behind his saddle, one hand gripped tightly in a rent in the soiled gray coat, sat still another Rebel—the smallest of them all—her tiny legs stretched out almost straight on the horse's wide, fat back.
"Daddy—how far is it to Richmon' now?"
The rider turned his head and pointed north.
"It's close now, honey. See that line of hills? That's Richmond. A mile or two and we'll be at home."