ELLEN. [As they part hands.] Good-by!
[The Figure has remounted the embankment, where—in the distincter glow of the red dawn—the gray folds of his cloak, hanging from his shoulders, resemble the half-closed wings of an eagle, the beaked cowl falling, as a kind of visor, before his face, concealing it.
THE FIGURE. Come, little gal.
[Ellen goes to him, and hides her face in the great cloak. As she does so, he draws from it a paper, writes on it, and hands it to Andrew, with the powder-horn.
THE FIGURE. By the by, Andy, here's that s'curity. Them here's my initials; they're all what's needful. Jest file this in the right pigeonhole, and you'll draw your pay. Keep your upper lip, boy. I'll meet ye later, mebbe, at Lundy's Lane.
ANDREW. [Wistfully.] You'll take her home?
THE FIGURE. Yes; reckon she'll housekeep for your uncle till you get back; won't ye, Nellie? Come, don't cry, little gal. We'll soon git 'quainted. 'Tain't the fust time sweethearts has called me Uncle.
[Flinging back his great cloak, he throws one wing of it, with his arm, about her shoulders, thus with half its reverse side draping her with shining stripes and stars. By the same action his own figure is made partly visible—the legs clad in the tight, instep-strapped trousers (blue and white) of the Napoleonic era. Holding the girl gently to him—while her face turns back toward Andrew—he leads her, silhouetted against the sunrise, along the embankment, and disappears.
[Meantime, the thrumming twang of the jew's-harp grows sweeter, mellower, modulated with harmonies that, filling now the air with elusive strains of the American war-hymn, mingle with the faint dawn-twitterings of birds.
[Andrew stares silently after the departed forms; then, slowly coming down into the intrenchment, lifts from the ground his gun and ramrod, leans on the gun, and—reading the paper in his hand by the growing light—mutters it aloud: