curiously, did not feel that she was contemplating a familiar scene. It
was no longer the home acres. The new blue, steel, and faded yellow
thoroughly dominated the old green and brown. She could hear the voices
of the men, and it seemed from their tone that they had camped there for
years. Everything with them was usual. They had taken possession of the
landscape in such a way that even the old marks appeared strange and
formidable to the girl.

Mary had intended to go and tell the commander in blue that her mother
did not wish his men to use the barn at all, but she paused when she
heard him speak to the sergeant. She thought she perceived then that it
mattered little to him what her mother wished, and that an objection by
her or by anybody would be futile. She saw the soldiers conduct the
prisoner in grey into the barn, and for a long time she watched the
three chatting guards and the pondering sentry. Upon her mind in
desolate weight was the recollection of the three men in the feed-box.

It seemed to her that in a case of this description it was her duty to
be a heroine. In all the stories she had read when at boarding-school in
Pennsylvania, the girl characters, confronted with such difficulties,
invariably did hair-breadth things. True, they were usually bent upon
rescuing and recovering their lovers, and neither the calm man in grey,
nor any of the three in the feed-box, was lover of hers, but then a real
heroine would not pause over this minor question. Plainly a heroine
would take measures to rescue the four men. If she did not at least make
the attempt, she would be false to those carefully constructed ideals
which were the accumulation of years of dreaming.

But the situation puzzled her. There was the barn with only one door,
and with four armed troopers in front of this door, one of them with his