Her eyes darkened with sudden emotion.

"Do not deem me wholly ungrateful," she said quickly and in a low tone.
"The conditions are such that I am utterly helpless now to aid you.
Major Brennan is a man not to be lightly disobeyed, but I shall tell my
story to General Sheridan so soon as we reach his camp."

I would have spoken again, but at this moment Brennan came striding
toward us.

"Come, Edith," he cried, almost roughly, "this foolishness has surely
gone far enough. Peters, what are you waiting here for? I told you to
take your prisoner down the road."

A few moments later, the centre of a little squad of heavily armed men,
I was tramping along the rocky pathway, and when once I attempted to
glance back to discover if the others followed us, the sergeant advised
me, with an oath, to keep my eyes to the front. I obeyed him.

It was a most tiresome march in the hot sun over the rough mountain
roads. There were times when we left these altogether, and crept along
half-obliterated trails leading through the dense woods and among the
rocks. I learned from scraps of conversation floating about me as we
struggled onward, that these precautions were not taken out of any fear
of meeting with Confederate troops, whose nearest commands were
supposed to be considerably to the westward of where we were, but
because of a desire to avoid all possibility of conflict with those
armed and irresponsible bands that ranged at will between the lines of
the two great armies. Already they had become sufficiently strong to