"You're the meanest old thing I ever saw.

_Give me back my baby!_" Back in the trees a little way a man was watching with a heavy heart.

He knew only too well what was to come.

No matter what the final outcome might be when he showed his safe-guard to his own army's lines there would be a delay and searching questions and more of the old insults which always made his blood boil--which always made the increasing burden of despair still harder to bear.

But there was no use in putting off the trial--Virgie had slipped away in spite of every whispered remonstrance and now that she was there in the center of that group of guffawing Yankees, there, too, was the only place for him.