“Hello!” said the man, softly; for a tear shone through her smile. Whereat she laughed.
“I ought to be ashamed to be so unreasonable,” she said.
“Well, now, I’d like to contradict you for once,” responds the spy; “but the fact is, how kin I, when Noo Orleens is jest about south-west frum here, anyhow?”
“Yes,” said Mary, pleasantly, “it’s between south and south-west.”
The spy made a gesture of mock amazement.
“Well, you air partickly what you say. I never hear o’ but one party that was more partickly than you. I reckon you never hear’ tell o’ him, did you?”
“Who was he?” asked Mary.
“Well, I never got his name, nor his habitation, as the felleh says; but he was so conscientious that when a highwayman attackted him onct, he wouldn’t holla murder nor he wouldn’t holla thief, ’cause he wasn’t certain whether the highwayman wanted to kill him or rob him. He was something like George Washington, who couldn’t tell a lie. Did you ever hear that story about George Washington?”
“About his chopping the cherry-tree with his hatchet?” asked Mary.
“Oh, I see you done heard the story!” said the spy, and left it untold; but whether he was making game of his auditor or not she did not know, and never found out. But on they went, by many a home; through miles of growing crops, and now through miles of lofty pine forests, and by log-cabins and unpainted cottages, from within whose open doors came often the loud feline growl of the spinning-wheel. So on and on, Mary spending the first night in a lone forest cabin of pine poles, whose master, a Confederate deserter, fed his ague-shaken wife and cotton-headed children oftener with the spoils of his rifle than with the products of the field. The spy and the deserter lay down together, and together rose again with the dawn, in a deep thicket, a few hundred yards away.