“Yes, six years at Edgewood,” she said in a low voice.
“What?” he exclaimed, repeating the name of the most fashionable Southern institute for young ladies. “Why, I had a sister there—Margaret Kent. Were you there? And did you ever—er—see my sister?”
“I knew her,” said the Special Messenger absently.
He was very silent for a while, thinking to himself.
“It must have been her mother; that measly old man we caught in the creek is ‘poor white’ all through.” And, munching thoughtfully again on his soggy corncake, he pondered over the strange fate of this fascinating young girl, fashioned to slay the hearts of Southern chivalry—so young, so sweet, so soft of voice and manner, condemned to live life through alone in this shaggy solitude—fated, doubtless, to mate with some loose, lank, shambling, hawk-eyed rustic of the peaks—doomed to bear sickly children, and to fade and dry and wither in the full springtide of her youth and loveliness.
“It’s too bad,” he said fretfully, unconscious that he spoke aloud, unaware, too, that she had risen and was moving idly, with bent head, among the weeds of the truck garden—edging nearer, nearer, to a dark, round object about the size of a small apple, which had rolled into a furrow where the ground was all cut up by the wheel tracks of artillery and hoofs of heavy horses.
There was scarcely a chance that she could pick it up unobserved; her ragged skirts covered it; she bent forward as though to tie her shoe, but a sentinel was watching her, so she straightened up carelessly and stood, hands on her hips, dragging one foot idly to and fro, until she had covered the small, round object with sand and gravel.
That object was a loaded French hand grenade, fitted with percussion primer; and it lay last at the end of a long row of similar grenades along the shaded side of the house.
The sentry in the bushes had been watching her; and now he came out along the edge of the laurel tangle, apparently to warn her away, but seeing a staff officer so near her he halted, satisfied that authority had been responsible for her movements. Besides, he had not noticed that a grenade was missing; neither had the major, who now rose and sauntered toward her, balancing his field glasses in one hand.
“There’s ammunition under these bushes,” he said pleasantly; “don’t go any nearer, please. Those grenades might explode if anyone stumbled over them. They’re bad things to handle.”