I lost it." "Oh," she said, with a quaver of disappointment, which she vainly strove to hide.

"How did you do it ?" For a moment the man leaned limply against a chair-back, hiding his eyes with one trembling hand; then he spoke in shamed apology: "I--I couldn't help it, darling; because, you see, I hadn't any powder left; and I was coming through the woods--just as I told you--when the Yanks got sight of me." He smiled down at her bravely, striving to add a dash of comedy to his tragic plight.

"And I tell you, Virgie, your old dad had to run like a turkey--wishing to the Lord he had wings, too." Virgie did not smile in turn, and her father dropped back into his former tone, his pale lips setting in a straight, hard line.
"And then--the blue boy I was telling you about--when he shot at me, I must have stumbled, because, when I scrambled up, I--I couldn't see just right; so I ran and ran, thinking of you, darling, and wanting to get to you before--well, before it was breakfast time.

I had your bundle in my pocket; but when I fell--why, Virgie, don't you see ?--I--I couldn't go back and find it." He paused to choke, then spoke between his teeth, in fury at a strength which had failed to breast a barrier of fate: "But I _would_ have gone back, if I'd had any powder left.

I _would_ have! I would!" A pitiful apology it was, from a man to a little child; a story told only in its hundredth part, for why should he give its untold horrors to a baby's ears?
How could she understand that man-hunt in the early dawn?
The fugitive--with an empty pistol on his hip--wading swamps and plunging through the tangled underbrush; alert and listening, darting from tree to tree where the woods were thin; crouching behind some fallen log to catch his laboring breath, then rising again to creep along his way.