The Hidden Children

"Indeed you have!" I replied, with such a warmth of feeling that it surprised myself.

"Then why may I not understand this thing that I have done—for my country?"

"I wish I might tell you."

"May you not?"

"No, I dare not."

She bit her lip, gazing at nothing over the ragged collar of her cape, and stood so, musing. And after a while she seemed to come to herself, wearily, and she cast a tragic upward glance at me. Then, dropping her eyes, and with the slightest inclination of her head, not looking at me at all, she started across the trampled grass.

"Wait–" I was by her side again in the same breath.

"Well, sir?" And she confronted me with cool mien and lifted brows. Under them her grey eyes hinted of a disdain which I had seen in them more than once.

"May I not suitably express my gratitude to you?" I said.

"You have already done so."

"I have tried to do so properly, but it is not easy for me to say how grateful to you we men of the Northland are—how deeply we must ever remain in your debt. Yet—I will attempt to express our thanks—if you care to listen."

After a pause: "Then—if there is nothing more to say—"

"There is, I tell you. Will you not listen?"

"I have been thanked—suitably.... I will say adieu, sir."

"Would you—would you so far favour me as to make known to me your name?" I said, stammering a little.

"Lois is my name," she said indifferently.

"No more than that?"

"No more than that."

How it was now going with me I did not clearly understand, but it appeared to be my instinct not to let her slip away into the world without something more friendly said—some truer gratitude expressed—some warmth.

"Lois," I said very gravely, "what we Americans give to our country demands no ignoble reward. Therefore, I offer none of any sort. Yet, because you have been a good comrade to me—and because now we are about to go our different ways into the world before us—I ask of you two things. May I do so?"

After a moment, looking away from me across the meadow:

"Ask," she said.

"Then the first is—will you take my hand in adieu—and let us part as good soldiers part?"

Still gazing absently across the meadow, she extended her hand. I retained it for a moment, then released it. Her arm fell inert by her side, but mine tingled to the shoulder.

"And one more thing," I said, while this strange and curious reluctance to let her go was now steadily invading me.

"Yes?"

"Will you wear a comrade's token—in memory of an hour or two with him?"

"What!"

She spoke with a quick intake of breath and her grey eyes were on me now, piercing me to the roots of speech and motive.

I wore a heavy ring beaten out of gold; Guy Johnson gave it. This I took from my trembling finger, scarce knowing why I was doing it at all, and stooping and lifting her little, wind-roughened hand, put it on the first finger I encountered—blindly, now, and clumsily past all belief, my hand was shaking so absurdly.

If my face were now as red as it was hot, hers, on the contrary, had become very strange and still and white. For a moment I seemed to read distrust, scorn, even hatred, in her level stare, and something of fear, too, in every quickening breath that moved the scarlet mantle on her breast. Then, in a flash, she had turned her back on me and was standing there in the grey dawn, with both hands over her face, straight and still as a young pine. But my ring was shining on her finger.

Emotion of a nature to which I was an utter stranger was meddling with my breath and pulses, now checking, now speeding both so that I stood with mind disconcerted in a silly sort of daze.

At length I gathered sufficient composure to step to her side again.

"Once more, little comrade, good-bye," I said. "This ends it all."

Again she turned her shoulder to me, but I heard her low reply:

"Good-bye—Mr. Loskiel."

And so it ended.

A moment later I found myself walking aimlessly across the grass in no particular direction. Three times I turned in my tracks to watch her. Then she disappeared beyond the brookside willows.

I remember now that I had turned and was walking slowly back to where our horses stood, moving listlessly through the freshly mowed meadow between drenched haystacks—the first I had seen that year—and God alone knows where were my thoughts a-gypsying, when, very far away, I heard a gun-shot.

At first I could perceive nothing, then on the distant Bedford road I saw one of our dragoons running his horse and bending low in his saddle.

Another dragoon appeared, riding a diable—and a dozen more behind these; and on their heels a-galloping, a great body of red-jacketed horsemen—hundreds of them—the foremost shooting from their saddles, the great mass of them swinging their heavy cutlasses and spurring furiously after our flying men.

I had seen far more than was necessary, and I ran for my horse. Other officers came running, too—Sheldon, Thomas, Lockwood, and my Lieutenant Boyd.

As we clutched bridle and stirrup and popped upward into out saddles, it seemed that the red-coats must cut us off, but we spurred out of the meadow into the Meeting House road, and Boyd cried furiously in my ear:

"See what this damned Sheldon has done for us now! God! What disgrace is ours!"

I saw Colonel Sheldon presently, pale as death, and heard him exclaim:

"Oh, Christ! I shall be broke for this! I shall be broke!"

I made out to say to Boyd:

"The enemy are coming in hundreds, sir, and we have scarce four score men mounted by the Meeting House."

"They'll never stand, either," he panted. "But if they do we'll see this matter to an end."

"Our orders?" I asked.