She shook her head, holding tightly to the canvas flap; and the trooper, saluting easily, resumed his truss of hay, hitched his belt, cocked his forage cap, and went off whistling.

All that sunny afternoon she lay on the colonel's camp bed, hands tightly clenched on her breast, eyes closed sometimes, sometimes wide open, gazing at the sun spots crawling on the tent wall.

To her ears came bugle calls from distant hills; drums of marching columns. Sounds of the stirring of thousands made tremulous the dim silence of the tent.

Dreams long dead arose and possessed her--the confused dreams of a woman, still young, awakened from the passionless lethargy of the past.

Vaguely she felt around her the presence of an earth new born, of a new heaven created. She realized her own awakening; she strove to comprehend _his_ resurrection, and it frightened her; she could not understand that what was dead through all these years was now alive, that the ideal she had clung to, evoking it until it had become part of her, was real--an actual and splendid living power. In this vivid resurgence she seemed to lose her precise recollections of him now that he was alive.

While she had believed him dead, everything concerning his memory had been painfully real--his personal appearance, the way he moved, turned, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand as it tightened in hers when he lay there at sunset, while she and Death watched the color fading from his face.

But now--now that he was living--here in this same world with her again--strive as she would she could neither fix either his features nor the sound of his voice upon her memory. Only the stupefying wonder of it possessed her, dulling her senses so that even the happiness of it seemed unreal.

How would they meet?--they two, who had never met but thrice? How would they seem, each to the other, when first their eyes encountered?

In all their lives they had exchanged so little speech! Yet from the first--from the first moment, when she had raised her gaze to him as he entered in his long, blue cloak, her silence had held a deeper meaning than her speech. And on that blessed night instinct broke the silence; yet, with every formal word exchanged, consciousness of the occult bond between them grew.

But it was not until she thought him dead that she understood that it had been love--love unheralded, unexpected, incredible--love at the first confronting, the first encountering glance. And to the memory of that mystery she had been faithful from the night on which she believed he died.

How had it been with him throughout these years? _How had it been with him?_

The silvery trumpets of the cavalry were still sounding as she mounted her horse before the colonel's tent and rode out into the splendour of the setting sun.

On every side cavalrymen were setting toe to stirrup; troop after troop, forming by fours, trotted out to the crest of the hill where the Western light lay red across the furrowed grass.

A blaze of brilliant color filled the road where an incoming Zouave regiment had halted, unslinging knapsacks, preparing to encamp, and the setting sun played over them in waves of fire, striking fiercely across their crimson fezzes and trousers.

Through their gorgeous lines the cavalry rode, colonel and staff leading; and with them rode the Special Messenger, knee to knee with the chief trumpeter, who made his horse dance when he passed the gorgeous Zouave color guard, to show off the gridiron of yellow slashings across his corded and tasseled breast.

And now another infantry regiment blocked the way--a heavy, blue column tramping in with its field music playing and both flags flying in the sunset radiance--the Stars and Stripes, with the number of the regiment printed in gold across crimson; and the State flag--white, an Indian and an uplifted sword on the snowy field: Massachusetts infantry.

On they came, fifes skirling, drums crashing; the colonel of the Fourth Missouri gave them right of way, saluting their colors; the Special Messenger backed her horse and turned down along the column.

Under the shadow of her visor her dark eyes widened with excitement as she skirted the halted cavalry, searching the intervals where the troop captains sat their horses, naked sabres curving up over their shoulder straps.

"Not this one! Not _this_ one," her little heart beat hurriedly; and then, without warning, panic came, and she spurred up to the major of the first squadron.

"Where is Captain Stanley?" Her voice almost broke.

"With his troop, I suppose--'F,'" replied that officer calmly; and her heart leaped and the color flooded her face as she saluted, wheeled, and rode on in heavenly certainty.

A New York regiment, fresh from the North, was passing now, its magnificent band playing "Twinkling Stars"; and the horses of the cavalry began to dance and paw and toss their heads.

One splendid black animal reared suddenly and shook its mane out; and at the same moment she saw _him_--knew him--drew bridle, her heart in her mouth, her body all a-tremble.

He was mastering the black horse that had reared, sitting his saddle easily, almost carelessly, his long, yellow-striped legs loosely graceful, his straight, slim figure perfect in poise and balance.

And now the trumpets were sounding; captain after captain turned in his saddle, swung his sabre forward, repeating the order: "Forward--march!

Forward--march!"

The Special Messenger whirled her horse and sped to the head of the column.

"I was just beginning to wonder--" began the colonel, when she broke in, breathless:

"_May_ I ride with Captain Stanley of F, sir?"

"Certainly," he replied, surprised and a trifle amused. She hesitated, nervously picking at her bridle, then said: "When you once get me through their lines--I mean, after I am safely through and you are ready to turn around and leave me--I--I would like--to--to----"

"Yes?" inquired the colonel, gently, divining some "last message" to deliver. For they were desperate chances that she was taking, and those in the beleaguered city would show her no mercy if they ever caught her within its battered bastions.

But the Special Messenger only said: "Before your regiment goes back, may I tell Captain Stanley who I am?"

The colonel's face fell.

"Nobody is supposed to have any idea who you are----"

"I know it. But is there any harm if I only tell it to--to just this one, single man?" she asked, earnestly, not aware that her eyes as well as her voice were pleading--that her whole body, bent forward in the saddle, had become eloquent with a confession as winning as it was innocent.

The colonel looked curiously into the eager, flushed face, framed in its setting of dark, curly hair, then he lifted a gauntleted hand from his bridle and slowly stroked his crisp mustache upward to hide the smile he could not control.

"I did not know," he said gravely, "that Captain Stanley was the--ah--'one' and 'only' man."

She blushed furiously, the vivid color ran from throat to temple, burning her ears till they looked like rose petals caught in her dark hair.

"You may tell Captain Stanley--if you must," observed the colonel of the Fourth Missouri. He was gazing absently straight between his horse's ears when he spoke. After a few moments he looked at the sky where, overhead, the afterglow pulsated in bands of fire.

"I always thought," he murmured to himself, "that old Stanley was in love with that Southern girl he saw at Sandy River.... I had no idea he knew the Special Messenger. It appears that I am slightly in error."

And, very thoughtfully, he continued to twist his mustache skyward as he rode on.

When he ventured to glance around again the Special Messenger had disappeared.

"Fancy!" he muttered; "fancy old Stanley knowing the mystery of the three armies! And, by gad, gentlemen!" addressing, _sotto voce_, the entire regiment, as he turned in his stirrups and looked back at the darkening column behind him--"by gad! gentlemen of the Fourth Dragoons, no prettier woman ever sat a saddle than is riding this moment with the captain of Troop F!"

What Captain Stanley saw riding up to him through the dull afterglow was a slightly built youth in the uniform of the regular cavalry, yellow trimming on collar, yellow welts about the seams of the jacket, yellow stripes on the breeches; and, as the youth drew bridle, saluted, and turned to ride forward beside him, he caught sight of a lieutenant's shoulder straps on the sergeant's shell jacket.

"Well, youngster," he said, smiling, "don't they clothe you in the regulars? You're as eccentric as our butternut friends yonder."

"I couldn't buy a full uniform," she said truthfully. She did not add that she had left at a minute's notice for the most dangerous undertaking ever asked of her, borrowing discarded makeshifts anywhere at hazard.

"Are you a West Pointer?"

"No."

"Oh! You've their seat--and their shapely leanness. Are you going with us?"

"Where are _you_ going?"