"Through my agents,—and Sam, his body-servant."
"O, I see. Your underground railroad is to have a passenger traffic. I'll find out what you wish to know. And if you'd like I'll have Sam passed through our lines, after which he can pretend to be a runaway."
"I thought of that," Agatha answered, "but it will not do. I must send him through my friends. You see in Maryland he'll require a slave's pass from a master, and my friends will be his masters, one after another. Besides, they will help me find out in what hospital Captain Pegram is. I've thought it all out. I must first prepare my friends for Sam's coming. With your permission I'll take him with me to Willoughby to-morrow."
"You are a wonderful woman!"
That is all that Stuart said, but it sufficiently suggested the admiration he felt for her courage, her resourcefulness, and her womanly devotion. Bidding her call upon him for any assistance she might need in carrying out her plans, he dismissed her for the night, ordering her to go to sleep precisely as he might have ordered a soldier to go to his tent. But Agatha did not obey as the soldier would have done. She went to bed, indeed, but she could not sleep. Her nerves were all a-quiver as the result of the trying experiences to which she had been subjected, until now her excited brain simply would not sink into quietude. She lay hour after hour staring into the darkness, thinking, thinking, thinking. She remembered the words that suffering on her account had wrung from Baillie Pegram that morning at the bivouac, and she bitterly reproached herself for having given him no worthier answer than a command to forget what he had said. She knew now with what measure of devotion this man loved her, and she knew something else, too, as she lay there in the darkness face to face with her own soul. She knew now that she loved Baillie Pegram with all that was best in her proud and passionate nature. That truth confronted her. It was "naked and not ashamed." Her conscience scourged her for what she regarded as her heartlessness and frivolity in putting aside his declaration of love with the false pretence that it found no response in her own soul.
"I might at least have thanked him," she thought. "I might at least have said to him 'there is no longer war between me and thee.' And now he lies dead perhaps, or on a bed of suffering,—a wounded prisoner in the hands of the enemy. All that I can now do is to search him out and send Sam to nurse and comfort him." Then a new thought came to her. "That is not all that I can do. Shame upon me for thinking so, even for a moment. I can go to him myself, and I will, if God lets him live long enough. I'll take Sam with me. He can be very helpful in the search, with his sharp wits and the freedom from suspicion which his black face will secure him."
The dawn was breaking now, and a score of bugles were musically sounding the reveille in the camps round about. Agatha rose quickly, and without summoning her weary maid, plunged her face into a basin of cold water half a dozen times. Then seeing in her little mirror how hollow-eyed and haggard she was, she wetted a towel and flagellated herself with it till the colour came back and her nerves lost their tremulousness.
So great a transformation did this treatment work, that Stuart complimented her upon her freshness of face when she appeared at the breakfast-table. He had meanwhile secured for her definite information as to the Federal command that had made Pegram prisoner. He had also managed in some way to secure a side-saddle for her to ride upon, and a squad of cavalrymen, under command of a sergeant, was waiting outside to be her escort on her journey.
"Thank you, General, for giving me so good a mount," she said, glancing with a practised eye at the lean but powerful animal provided for her use.
"You should have a better one, if a better were to be had. You deserve it. By the way, you need not send the horse back by the escort. He will not be needed here, for a time at least."