“Orders is formuel, ma’am. I dassent——”

She pronounced a word under her breath.

“Hey?”

She nodded.

“Tain’t her?” demanded the corporal incredulously.

She nodded again. The corporal’s lantern and jaw dropped in unison.

“Speak low,” she said, smiling.

He leaned toward her; she drew nearer, inclining her pretty, disheveled head with its disordered braids curling into witchlocks on her shoulders.

“’Tain’t the Special Messenger, ma’am, is it?” he inquired hoarsely. “The boys is tellin’ how you was ketched down to——”

She made him a sign for silence as the officer of the guard came up—an ill-tempered, heavily-bandaged young man.