XVI
_CANISTER_
It was a little after midnight when Agatha and her maid, stripped of allbelongings that could impede them on their way, set out on foot upontheir perilous journey. Agatha was deliberately exposing herself to farworse dangers than any that the soldier is called upon to brave in thework of war. She could carry little in the way of food, and of coursecould not replenish her supplies until she should succeed in enteringthe Confederate lines, if indeed that purpose were not hopeless ofaccomplishment at all. But the danger of starvation which theseconditions involved, was the very least of the perils she mustencounter. At any moment of her stealthy progress she might be shot by asentinel. Far worse than that, she might be seized with her tell-talemedicines upon her person, while hiding within the forbidden lines ofthe enemy. In that case, there would be no question whatever as to herstatus in military law, or as to her fate. If she should fall into theenemy's hands under such circumstances, by forcible capture or even byvoluntary surrender, she must certainly be hanged as a spy. She wasarmed against that danger only by the possession of the means of instantself-destruction,--her little six-shooter.
It was comparatively easy for her to find her way during the firstnight, through the slender interior picket-line, and into the forbiddenregion that lay between that and the outposts in front. Every roadwayleading toward the Confederate positions was, of course, securelyguarded, and all of them were thus completely closed to Agatha's use.She must steal through the thickets of underbrush that lay between theroads, making such progress as she could without at any time placingherself within sight or hearing of a sentinel. Sometimes this involvedprolonged waiting in constrained positions, and several times shenarrowly missed discovery.
When morning came, the pair of women hid themselves between two logsthat lay in a dense thicket, and there they remained throughout thedaylight hours. There, too, before noon, they consumed the lastfragments of their food.
During the next night they made small progress. They succeeded, indeed,in crossing a deep and muddy creek that lay in front of them, but it wasonly to find themselves confronted by a roadway, which ran athwart theirline of march, and which, on this night, at least, was heavily picketedand constantly patrolled by scouting squads of cavalry.
Agatha crept on her hands and knees, and quite noiselessly, to a pointfrom which she could make out the situation, and there the pair remainedin hiding among the weeds and bushes that skirted an old and partiallydestroyed fence, until daylight came again.
With the daylight came a considerable thinning of the line of videttesin front, and toward nightfall, after a day of toilsome crawling backand forth in search of a way of escape, the two women succeeded incrossing the road unobserved. After crawling for a hundred yards or sobeyond the road, they hid themselves as securely as they could, andwaited for night to come again.
They were suffering the pangs of excessive hunger and thirst now, andgnawing roots and twigs by way of appeasing the terrible craving. It wasobvious to Agatha that this night must make an end of her attempt in oneway or another. She must reach the Confederate lines before the comingof another day, or both she and her companion must perish of hunger, orsurrender themselves and be hanged. She suggested this thought toMartha, whose only answer was:
"Anyhow, you'se got your pistol, Miss Agatha."
There were still two miles or more to go before reaching the littlepatch of briars and young chestnut-trees just in front of the FairfaxCourt-house village, which was Agatha's objective. During her peddlingtrips, Martha had learned that Federal sharpshooters were thrown intothis thicket every night, usually between midnight and morning, for thepurpose of annoying the Confederate pickets, stationed not fifty yardsaway. She had learned, too, that nearly every morning, about daylight,the Confederates were accustomed to rid themselves of the annoyance bysending out a cavalry force to charge the thicket and clear it of itsoccupants. It was Agatha's plan to hide herself and her maid there, andbe captured by Stuart's men when they should come.
But she could not enter the bushes until the sharpshooters should be inposition. Otherwise they would be sure to discover her while placingthemselves. As soon as the riflemen had crept to their posts, Agatha,favoured by the unusual darkness of a thickly clouded night, crept to ahiding-place just in rear of the men. There she and Martha lay upon theground during long hours, well-nigh famished, and suffering severelyfrom cold, for the autumn was now well advanced.
Unfortunately for Agatha's plan, the Confederates had adopted newmethods for this night. Instead of ordering cavalry to clear thethicket, they had decided to clear it with canister. Accordingly, abattery of artillery had been ordered to the front, and bivouacked halfa mile in rear of Fairfax Court-house. Thence just before daylight twoguns had been dragged forward by prolonge ropes, and stationed under thetrees of a little grove about fifty yards in front of the cover fromwhich the Federal sharpshooters were occasionally firing.
Just at dawn, these two guns suddenly and furiously opened upon thebushes with canister in double charges.
The effect was terrific. The bushes were mown down as with a scythe, andit seemed impossible to the two women that any human being shouldsurvive the iron hailstorm for a single minute. The sharpshootersscurried away precipitately, one of them actually stumbling overAgatha's prostrate form, which he probably took to be that of somecomrade slain. But Agatha and her maid remained, and the fearful firecontinued. They remained because there was nothing else for them to do.They could not retreat. They could not surrender. They were starving.They must go forward or die.
Then the courage and daring of her race came to Agatha's soul, and sheresolved to make a last desperate attempt to save herself, not byrunning away from the fire,--which would be worse than useless,--but byrunning into it. The danger in doing this was scarcely greater, in fact,though it seemed so, than that involved in lying still, but it requiresan extraordinary courage for one unarmed and not inspired by thedesperate all-daring spirit of battle, to rush upon guns that arebelching canister in half-gallon charges, at the rate of three or fourtimes a minute.
The sharpshooters were completely gone now, and nothing lay between theyoung woman and her friends except a canister-swept open space fiftyyards in width. This the heroic girl--baffled of all otherresource--determined to dare. Directing Martha to follow her closely,she rose and in the gray of the dawn ran like a deer toward thebellowing guns. Fortunately, some one at the guns caught sight of thefleet-footed pair when they had covered about half the distance, and, inthe increasing light, saw them to be women. Instantly the order, "Ceasefiring!" was given, and the clamorous cannon were hushed, but a heavymusketry fire from the enemy broke forth just as Agatha and her maidfell exhausted between the guns. A voice of command rang out:
"Pick up those women, quick, and carry them out of the fire!" Half adozen of the men responded, and strong arms carried the nearly lifelesswomen to a small depression just in rear, where they were screened fromthe now slowly slackening shower of bullets.
When the fire had completely ceased, Captain Baillie Pegram ordered hisguns, "By hand to the rear," and rode back to inquire concerning hiscaptives. It was then that he discovered for the first time who thefugitives were, and the horror with which he realised what he supposedto be the situation, set him reeling in his saddle.
He had heard nothing of Agatha's mission to the north, of course. He nowknew only that she had been hiding within the enemy's lines, and onlyone interpretation of that fact seemed possible. Agatha Ronald--thewoman he loved, the woman upon whose integrity and Virginianism he wouldhave staked his life without a second thought--had turned traitor! Hedid not pause to ask himself how, in such a case, she had come to be inthe thicket among the sharpshooters. He was too greatly stunned to thinkof that, or otherwise to reason clearly.
Nor did he question her, except to ask if she or her maid had beenwounded, and when she assured him of their safety, he said:
"I don't know whether to thank God for that or not
. It might have beenbetter, perhaps, if both had fallen."
Agatha heard the remark, and understood in part at least the thoughtthat lay behind it. But she did not reply. She only said, feebly:
"We are starving."
"Bring two horses, quickly," Baillie commanded. "Lieutenant Mills, takethe guns back to the bivouac. Our work here is done."
Then turning to Agatha, he explained:
"We have no rations here; can you manage to ride as far as our bivouac?It is only half a mile away, and we'll find something to eat there."
Agatha's exhaustion was so great that she could scarcely sit up, but shesummoned all her resolution and managed to hold herself in place on theMcClellan saddle which alone was available for her use. Martha wascarried by the men on an improvised litter.
At the bivouac, no food was found except a pone or two of coarse cornbread and a few slices of uncooked bacon. But the delicate girl and hermaid devoured these almost greedily, eating the bacon raw in soldierfashion, for, of course, no fires were allowed upon the picket-line.
Food and rest quickly revived Agatha, and Baillie remembered certainvery peremptory orders he had received as to his course of procedureshould "any woman whatever" come into his lines.
"I must escort you presently to a safer place than this," he said.
"Am I to go under _compulsion_, Captain Pegram," the girl asked, "or ofmy own _accord_?"
"With that," he answered, "I am afraid I have nothing to do. My soleconcern is to take you out of danger. It is not my business to ask youquestions as to how you have come into danger in a way so peculiar."
"And yet," she replied, "that is a matter that I suppose requires_inquiry_, and I am ready for the _ordeal_."
The moment she spoke that word, which was the fourth in the series thatStuart had given her, and the one he had selected as a test for thisday, Baillie Pegram flinched as if he had been struck, while his faceturned white. Hoping that her use of the word had been accidental, orthat the emphasis she had placed upon it had been unintended, he asked:
"What did you say?"
"I said," she responded, very deliberately, "that I am ready for the_ordeal_."
The look of consternation on Baillie's face deepened. Without replying,he walked away in an agitation of mind which he felt must be hidden fromothers at all costs. Pacing back and forth under screen of some bushes,he tried to think the matter out. Under his orders, he must arrestAgatha and take her to Stuart, who had been more than usually anxious,as Baillie knew, to capture this particular prisoner. But to do that, hefelt, must mean Agatha's disgrace and shameful death, and the stainingof an ancient and honoured name. Yet what else could he do?
"Would to God!" he exclaimed, under his breath, "that my canister haddone its work better!"
Then he fell into silence again, questioning himself in the vain hope offinding a way through the blind wall of circumstances.
"Agatha," he thought, "has been with the enemy, and has been trying toget back again in order to render them some further traitorous service.Stuart has obviously learned all about the conspiracy in which she hadbeen engaged. That is why he has been so eager for her arrest. That ishow he knew what signal-words she would use in her endeavour to findsome fellow conspirator among us. But why did she use the word to me.Surely the conspiracy cannot have become so wide-spread among us thatshe deemed _me_ a person likely to be engaged in it. Perhaps she spokefor other ears than mine, hoping to find a traitor among those who stoodby.
"And the worst of it is that I still love her. Knowing her treachery andher shame, I still cannot change my attitude of mind. What shall I do? Icould turn traitor for her sake. I could manage to secure her escape,and then give myself up, confess my crime, and accept the shameful deaththat it would merit."
For the space of a minute he lingered over this idea of supremeself-sacrifice with which the devil seemed to be luring him todestruction. Then he cast it aside, and reproached himself for havinglet it enter his mind.
"No love is worth a man's honour," he thought. "A better way would be tokill her myself, and then commit suicide. No, not that. Suicide isthe coward's way out; and killing her would only reveal and emphasiseher crime."
Just then one of his men approached him, and announced that orders hadcome for the battery's return to its camp. Baillie walked back to thebivouac, and said to his lieutenant:
"Take command and march to the camp at once. I have some personal ordersto execute."
With that promptitude which all men serving under Stuart learned toregard as one of the cardinal virtues, the lieutenant had the batterymounted and in motion within a few minutes. Not until it had made theturn in the road did Baillie approach Agatha. Then he faced her, andstaring with strained and bloodshot eyes into her face, he abruptlysaid:
"I love you, Agatha Ronald. In spite of what you have done, that factremains. I love you!"
"'_I love you, Agatha Ronald_'"]
"This is neither the time nor place in which to tell me so," sheinterrupted. Then, after a brief moment of hesitation, she broke downand burst into tears. It was only a very few moments before shecontrolled herself, and forced herself to speak clearly, though she didso with manifest difficulty.
"Please forget what you have just said," she began. "I realise yourposition. I understand. I think I know what you have been thinking. Youhave contemplated a crime for my sake,--the highest crime of all. For mysake you have been tempted to sacrifice not only your life--which to abrave man means little--but your honour, which is more precious to abrave man than all else in the world. Tell me, please, and tell mequickly, that you have put that temptation aside--that you have utterlyrepudiated the horrible thought."
"I have done so certainly," he replied, in a hard voice. "But why do youcare so much for that?"
"Why? Because your honour--all honour--is precious to me, and I couldnot respect you if you had consented to the thought of dishonour even inyour mind. I should loathe and detest your soul if for my sake or anysake you could have done that. No, don't interrupt me, please," seeingthat he was trying to speak, "let me finish. I, too, am under orders,one of which is to keep my lips sealed. But under such circumstances asthese I may disobey my orders without dishonour. I am not a soldier.Let me tell you a little, then, so that you may not suffer on myaccount. No harm will come to me when you take me, as you must, toGeneral Stuart. I am here by his own orders, and I was over there,"motioning toward the enemy's lines, "with his full knowledge andconsent. There. That is all I may tell you."
The strong man turned deathly pale under the shock of the relief thatthe young woman's words brought to his mind. For a moment Agatha thoughtthat he would fall, but recovering himself, he ejaculated, "Thank God!"and those were the only words he spoke for a space.
He presently ordered the horses brought, and helped Agatha to mount.
"Can you manage to ride a McClellan saddle?" he asked. "There is noother to be had."
"I suppose not," Agatha answered, with returning spirits. "I suppose thequartermaster's department does not issue side-saddles to the mountedartillery for the use of errant damsels whom they capture. But I can dovery well on a cavalry saddle."