The worthy Elias Gardner, slumbering so peacefully under his crates, was completely forgotten, and they two were alone with the universe. The clouds by and by passed away and the heavens shone blue and cold; a good moon came out, and the white hills and forests, touched by it, flashed now and then with the gleam of silver. All the world was at peace; there was no sign of war in the night nor in those snowy solitudes. Before them stretched the road, indicated by a long line of wheel tracks in the snow, and behind them was nothing. Prescott, by and by, let the lines drop on the edge of the wagon-bed, and the horses chose their own way, following with mere instinct the better path.
He began now to see himself as he was, to understand the impulse that had driven him on. Here by his side, her warm breath almost on his face, was the girl he had saved, but he took no advantage of time and place, infringing in no degree upon the respect due to every woman. He had come even this night believing her a spy, but now he held her as something holy.
She spoke by and by of the gratitude she owed him, not in many words, but strong ones, showing how deeply she felt all she said, and he did not seek to silence her, knowing the relief it would give her to speak.
Presently she told him of herself. She came from that borderland between North and South which is of both though not wholly of either, but her sympathies from the first had turned to the North, not so much through personal feeling, but because of a belief that it would be better for the North to triumph. The armies had come, her uncle with whom she had lived had fallen in battle, and their home was destroyed, by which army she did not know. Then she turned involuntarily to her nearest relative, Miss Grayson, in whose home she knew she would receive protection, and who, she knew, too, would share her sympathies. So she had come to Richmond.
She said nothing of the accusation, the affair of the papers, and Prescott longed to ask her again if she were guilty, and to hear her say that she was not. He was not willing to believe her a spy, that she could ever stoop to such an act; and here in the darkness with her by his side, with only purity and truth in her eyes, he could not believe her one. But when she was away he knew that his doubts would return. Then he would ask himself if he had not been tricked and used by a woman as beautiful and clever as she was ruthless. Now he saw only her beauty and what seemed to him the truth of her eyes, and he swore again silently and for the twentieth time that he would not leave her until he saw her safe within the Northern lines. So little thought he then of his own risks, and so willing a traitor was he, for a moment, and for the sake of one woman's eyes, to the cause that he served. But a traitor only in seeming, and not in reality, he would have said of himself with truth.
"What do you intend to do now?" asked Prescott at last.
"There is much in the trail of our army that I can do," she said. "There will be many wounded soon."
"Yes, when the snow goes," said Prescott. "Doesn't it seem strange that the dead cold of winter alone should mean peace nowadays?"
Both spoke solemnly. For the time the thought of war inspired Prescott with the most poignant repulsion, since he was taking this girl to the army which he expected to fight.
"There is one question which I should like to ask you," he said after awhile.