"Here, Virgie! Here's your pass to Richmond—for you and your escort—through the Federal lines."
She came to him slowly, wondering; her tiny body quivering with suppressed excitement, her voice a whispering caress:
"Do you mean for—for Daddy, too?"
"Yes, you little rebel!" he answered, choking as he laughed; "but I'm terribly afraid you'll have to pay me—with a kiss."
She sprang into his waiting arms, and kissed him as he raised her up; but when he would have set her down, her little brown hands, with their berry-stained fingers, clung tightly about his neck.
"Wait! Wait!" she cried. "Here's another one—for Gertrude! Tell her it's from Virgie! An' tell her I sent it, 'cause her daddy is jus' the best damn Yankee that ever was!"
The trap above had opened, and the head and shoulders of the Southerner appeared; while Morrison looked up and spoke in parting:
"It's all right, Cary. I only ask a soldier's pledge that you take your little girl to Richmond—nothing more. In passing through our lines, whatever you see or hear—forget!"
A sacred trust it was, of man to man, one brother to another; and Morrison knew that Herbert Cary would pass through the very center of the Federal lines, as a father, not a spy.
The Southerner tried to speak his gratitude, but the words refused to come; so he stretched one trembling hand toward his enemy of war, and eased his heart in a sobbing, broken call: