"You mean by suicide?"
"Yes—if necessity compels." Stuart looked at the gentle girl, gazing into her fawn-like brown eyes as if trying to read her soul in their depths. Presently he said:
"God bless you and keep you, dear! I'm going to ride back to Fairfax Court-house with you. Make yourself as comfortable as you can here for half an hour, while I ride out to the pickets. I'll be with you soon, and then we'll have dinner, for you are my guest to-day."
When the dinner was served, it consisted of some ears of corn, plucked from a neighbouring field, and roasted with husks unremoved, among the live coals of the cavalier's camp-fire. Stuart made no apology for the lack of variety in the meal, for he sincerely accepted the doctrine which he often preached to his men, that "anything edible makes a good enough dinner if you are hungry, and the simpler it is, the better. There's nothing more troublesome in a campaign than cooking utensils and unnecessary things generally. If armies would move without them, there'd be more and better fighting done. The chief thing in war is to start at once and get there without delay."
The meal over, Stuart held out his hand as a step, from which Agatha lightly sprang into her saddle. Then he mounted the superb gray, which he always rode when battle was on, or when he had a gentlewoman under his charge. For there was a touch of the boyish dandy in Stuart, and a good deal more than a touch of that gallantry which prompts every true man of warm blood to honour womanhood with every possible attention.
The horse was fit for his rider, and that is saying quite all that can be said in praise of a horse. Mounted upon him, Stuart was the bodily presentment of all that painters and sculptors have imagined the typical cavalier to be or to seem. Stalwart of figure, erect in carriage, his muscles showing themselves in graceful strength with every movement of his body, his head carried like that of a boy or a young bull, his beard closely clipped, his moustache standing out straight at the ends, and resembling that of Virginia's earliest knight errant, Captain John Smith, of Jamestown, Stuart was a picture to look upon, which the onlooker did not soon forget. His many-gabled slouch hat was decorated with streaming plumes, that helped to make of him a target for the enemy's sharpest sharpshooters whenever battle was on. Full of vigour, full of health, and full to the very lips of a boyish enthusiasm of life, he seemed never to know what weariness might signify, and never for one moment to abate the intensity of his purpose. He did all things as if all had been part of a great game in which he was playing for a championship.
On this occasion, however, his manner was subdued, and his conversation serious in a degree unusual to one of his effervescent spirits. He was riding with Agatha Ronald for the very serious purpose of talking with her about details that must be carefully arranged with a view to her safety in the dangerous undertaking upon which she was about to enter. A word or two to Lieutenant Fauntleroy sent that officer with his escort squad to the front, while Stuart and his charge rode in rear.
"Now, one thing more is necessary, Miss Agatha," he said. "You ought to reënter our country far to the west, if you can, where there are no armies, and only small detachments. Still, I don't know so well about that. Here we keep the Yankees too busy at the front to attend to matters in the rear, while over in the valley they'll have nothing better to do than look out for wandering women like you. Anyhow, you may find it necessary or advisable to enter my lines. In that case, you must be arrested immediately and brought to my headquarters. That is necessary on all accounts—to prevent the nature of your mission from being discovered, and—well, to prevent you from having to report to anybody but me. I shall want to see you, and hear all about your results. So I'm going to give orders every day that will put every picket-officer on watch for you, and impress every one of them with the idea that you are a peculiarly dangerous person, in league with traitors on our side, and trying to put yourself into communication with such. I cannot give you any sort of paper, you see, for papers are always dangerous. But I'll give you six words that will answer the purpose. Whenever you speak the right one of these words with emphasis, the picket-officer will understand that you are the very dangerous spy whose entrance into our lines I anticipate, and whose arrest I particularly desire to secure. I'll give out one of the six words each day, particularly charging officers of the pickets that any woman entering our lines by any means, and using that word with emphasis, is the spy I want,—that her use of it will be intended for the purpose of finding traitorous friends, and that any such woman, no matter upon what pretext she enters the lines, is to be arrested as soon as she uses the word. Only one of these words will be given out each day, but you will know them all, and use them in succession until you use the right one and are arrested. The words will be such as you can embody in an ordinary sentence without exciting the suspicion of any of the men who may be standing by,—for, of course, only officers will be commissioned to arrest you. You can use the words in different sentences, until you use the right one. Then you will be arrested and brought to my headquarters, where I hope to have a better dinner than that of to-day to offer you."
Just at that moment, the road along which they were riding passed between two abandoned fields, each of which was skirted by woodlands on its farther side. Stuart raised his head like a startled deer, and said:
"We must quit the road here, and put ourselves behind that skirt of timber over on the left. Your horse will take the fence easily."