"Yes--if they get me." His voice quivered, but he added boastingly: "No fear of that! I'm too many for old Kay!"

"But--but why did you desert?"

"Why?" he repeated. Then his face turned red and he burst out violently: "I'll tell you why. I lived in New York, but I thought the South was in the right. Then they drafted me; and I tried to tell them it was an outrage, but they gave me the choice between Fort Lafayette and Kay's Cavalry.... And I took the Cavalry and waited.... I wouldn't have gone as far as to fight against the flag--if they had let me alone.... I only had my private opinion that the South was more in the right than we--the North--was.... I'm old enough to have an opinion about niggers, and I'm no coward either.... They drove me to this; I didn't want to kill people who were more in the right than we were.... But they made me enlist--and I couldn't stand it.... And now, if I've got to fight, I'll fight bullies and brutes who----"

He ended with a gesture--an angry, foolish boast, shaking his weapon toward the north. Then, hot, panting, sullenly sensible of his fatigue, he laid the pistol on the table and glowered at the floor.

She could have taken him, unarmed, at any moment, now.

"Soldier," she said gently, "listen to me."

He looked up with heavy-lidded eyes.

"I am trying to help you to safety," she said.

A hot flush of mortification mantled his face:

"Thank you.... I ought to have known; I--I am ashamed of what I said--what I did."

"You were only a little frightened; I am not angry."

"You understand, don't you?"

"A--little."

"You are Southern, then?" he said; and in spite of himself his heavy lids began to droop again.

"No; Northern," she replied.

His eyes flew wide open at that, and he straightened up in his chair.

"Are you afraid of me, Soldier?"

"No," he said, ashamed again. "But--you're going to tell on me after I am gone."

"No."

"Why not?" he demanded suspiciously.

She leaned both elbows on the table, and resting her chin on both palms, smiled at him.

"Because," she said, "you are going to tell on yourself, Roy."

"What!" he blurted out in angry astonishment.

"You are going to tell on yourself.... You are going back to your regiment.... It will be your own idea, too; it _has_ been your own idea all the while--your secret desire every moment since you deserted----"

"Are you crazy!" he cried, aghast; "or do you think I am?"

"--ever since you deserted," she went on, dark eyes looking deep into his, "it has been your desire to go back.... Fear held you; rage hardened your heart; dread of death as your punishment; angry brooding on what you believed was a terrible injustice done you--all these drove you to panic.... Don't scowl at me: don't say what is on your lips to say. You are only a tired, frightened boy--scarcely eighteen, are you?

And at eighteen no heart can really be a traitor."

"Traitor!" he repeated, losing all his angry color.

"It is a bad word, isn't it, Roy? Lying hidden and starving in the forest through the black nights you had to fight that word away from you--drive it out of your half-crazed senses--often--didn't you? Don't you think I know, my boy, what a dreadful future you faced, lying there through the stifling nights while they hunted you to hang you?

"I know, also, that what you did you did in a moment of insane rage. I know that the moment it was done you would, in your secret soul, have given the world to have undone it."

"No!" he cried. "I was right!"

She rose, walked to the door, and seated herself on the sill, looking up at the stars.

For an hour she sat there, silent. Behind her, leaning heavily on the table, he crouched, hot eyes wide, pulse heavy in throat and body. And at last, without turning, she called to him--three times, very gently, speaking his name; and at the third call he rose and came stumbling toward her.

"Sit here."

He sank down beside her on the sill.

"Are you very tired?"

"Yes."

She placed one arm around him, drawing his hot head down on her shoulder.

"How foolish you have been," she whispered. "But, of course, your mother must not know it.... There is no reason to tell her--ever.... Because you went quite mad for a little while--and nobody is blamed for mental sickness.... How bright the stars are.... What a heavenly coolness after that dreadful work.... How feverish you are! I think that your regiment believes you roamed away while suffering from sunstroke.... Their Colonel is a good friend of mine. Tell him you're sorry."

His head lay heavily on her shoulder; she laid a fresh hand over his eyes.

"If the South is right, if we of the North are right, God knows better than you or I, Roy.... And if you are so bewildered that you have no deep conviction either way I think you may trust Him who set you among Kay's Cavalry.... God never betrayed a human soul in honest doubt."

"It--it was the flag!--that was the hardest to get over--" he began, and choked, smothering the dry sob against her breast.

"I know, dear.... The old flag means so much--it means all that our fathers have been, all that we ought to be for the world's sake. Anger, private resentment, bitterness under tyranny--these are little things; for, after all, the flag still stands for what we ought to be--you and I and those who misuse us, wittingly or otherwise.... Where are the papers you took?"

He pressed his feverish face closer to her shoulder and fumbled at the buttons of his jacket.

"Here?" she asked softly, aiding him with deft fingers; and in a moment she had secured them.

For a while she held him there, cradling him; and his dry, burning face seemed to scorch her shoulder.

Dawn was in the sky when she unclosed her eyes--a cool, gray dawn, hinting of rain.

She looked down at the boy. His head lay across her lap; he slept, motionless as the dead.

The sun rose, a pale spot on the gray horizon.

"Come," she said gently. And again, "Come; I want you to take me across the ferry."