"Well, hang me if it isn't the little girl we saw this morning," shouted Dudley, without, however, stopping the torture of the defenseless Susan Jemima. "Where did you drop from?"
"Ne'm min' where I dropped from," commanded the wrathful Virgie with her dark eyes like twin stars of hate. "You're the meanest old thing I ever saw. Give me back my baby!"
Back in the trees a little way a man was watching with a heavy heart. He knew only too well what was to come. No matter what the final outcome might be when he showed his safe-guard to his own army's lines there would be a delay and searching questions and more of the old insults which always made his blood boil—which always made the increasing burden of despair still harder to bear. But there was no use in putting off the trial—Virgie had slipped away in spite of every whispered remonstrance and now that she was there in the center of that group of guffawing Yankees, there, too, was the only place for him. And so, he stepped out swiftly and faced the enemy.
"Hah!" shouted Dudley, looking up at the sound of branches crackling underfoot. "A Johnnie Reb, eh—walking right into camp! That's right, Harry, keep him covered."
He looked Cary over from head to foot with a sneer at his tattered uniform.
"Well, sir," he asked, "who are you?"
"A Confederate officer," was the quiet reply, "acting as escort for this child. We are on our way to Richmond."
Cary's hand went into the breast of his coat and he drew out a folded paper.
"Here is my authority for entering your lines—a pass signed by Lieutenant-Colonel Morrison."
At the sound of the name Corporal Dudley started and quickly took the paper. But before he opened it he gave Cary a keen look which, to the Confederate officer, did not bode well for the prospect of immediate release. It seemed as if the man's sharp wits had suddenly seized on something which he could profitably turn to his own account.