He could not; but when he placed a chair upon the table and prepared to mount, then Virgie understood.
"You shan't! You shan't!" she cried out shrilly.

"He's my daddy--and you shan't." She pulled at the table, and when he would have put her aside, as gently as he could, she attacked him fiercely, in a childish storm of passion, sobbing, striking at him with her puny fists.

The soldier bowed his head and moved away.
"Oh, I can't! I can't!" he breathed, in conscience-stricken pain.

"There _must_ be some other way; and still--" He stood irresolute, gazing through the open door, watching his men as they hunted for a fellow man; listening to the sounds that floated across the stricken fields--the calls of his troopers; the locusts in the sun-parched woods chanting their shrill, harsh litany of drought; but more insistent still came the muffled boom of the big black guns far down the muddy James.

They called to him, these guns, in the hoarse-tongued majesty of war, bidding him forget himself, his love, his pity--all else, but the grim command to a marching host--a host that must reach its goal, though it marched on a road of human hearts.
The soldier set his teeth and turned to the little rebel, deciding on his course of action; best for her, best for the man who lay in the loft above, though now it must seem a brutal cruelty to both.
"Well, Virgie," he said, "since you haven't told me what I want to know, I'll have to take you--and give you to the Yankees." He stepped toward her swiftly and caught her by the wrist.