CHAPTER III.
Called to a general council of officers at divisional headquarters the next day, Brant had little time for further speculation regarding his strange guest, but a remark from the division commander, that he preferred to commit the general plan of a movement then under discussion to their memories rather than to written orders in the ordinary routine, seemed to show that his chief still suspected the existence of a spy.
He, therefore, told him of his late interview with Miss Faulkner, and her probable withdrawal in favor of a mulatto neighbor.

The division commander received the information with indifference.
"They're much too clever to employ a hussy like that, who shows her hand at every turn, either as a spy or a messenger of spies,--and the mulattoes are too stupid, to say nothing of their probable fidelity to us.

No, General, if we are watched, it is by an eagle, and not a mocking-bird.

Miss Faulkner has nothing worse about her than her tongue; and there isn't the nigger blood in the whole South that would risk a noose for her, or for any of their masters or mistresses!" It was, therefore, perhaps, with some mitigation of his usual critical severity that he saw her walking before him alone in the lane as he rode home to quarters.

She was apparently lost in a half-impatient, half-moody reverie, which even the trotting hoof-beats of his own and his orderly's horse had not disturbed.