"Your pardon, sir," he ejaculated at last. "I mistook you for some runaway soldier. But I failed to catch your words; how did you name yourself?"

"Colonel Curran, of Major-General Halleck's staff."

"The hell you are! Curran had a full gray beard a month ago."

He took a step forward, and before I could recover from the first numbing shock of surprise was peering intently into my face.

"Damn it!" he cried, tugging viciously at a revolver in his belt, "I know that face! You are the measly Johnny Reb I brought in day before yesterday."

I could mark the flash of the stars on the blue steel of his pistol barrel, and knew from the eager ring of his voice he exulted in the hope that I would give him excuse to fire. Yet I thought in that moment of but one thing--the woman who had compromised her name to help me to attain freedom. I would have died a thousand deaths if it might only be with my hands at his throat, her story unknown. Yet even as I braced my body for the leap, gazing straight into that deadly barrel, there came a quick flutter of drapery at my side, and she, pressing me firmly backward, faced him without a word.