shoulder, as he walked beside her. The child was so utterly alone, you know.
The road was lonely,—a mere mountain-path striking obliquely through the hills to the highway: darkening hills and sky and valleys strangely sinking into that desolate homesick mood of winter twilight. The sun was gone; one or two sad red shadows lay across the gray. Night would soon be here, and he lay stiff-cold beneath the snow. Not dead: her heart told her that imperiously from the first. But there was not one instant to lose.
"I cannot wait for you, Uncle Bone. I must go alone."
"Debbil de step! I'll take yer 'cross fields ter Gentry's, an' ride on myself."
"You could not find him. No one could find him but me."
Something possessed the girl, other than her common self. She pushed his hand gently from the reins, and left him. Bone wrung his hands.
"'N' de guerrillas,—'n' de rest o' de incarnate debbils!"
She knew that. Dode was no heroine,—a miserable coward. There was not a black stump of a tree by the road-side, nor the rustle of a squirrel in the trees, that did not make her heart jump and throb against her bodice. Her horse climbed the rocky path slowly. I told you the girl thought her Helper was alive, and very near. She did to-night. She thought He was beside her in this lonesome road, and knew she would be safe. She felt as if she could take hold of His very hand. It grew darker: the mountains of snow glowered wan like the dead kings in Hades; the sweeps of dark forests whispered some broken mysterious word, as she passed; sometimes, in a sudden opening, she could see on a far hill-side the red fires of a camp. She could not help the sick feeling in her throat, nor make her hand steady; but the more alone she was, the nearer He came,—the pale face of the Nazarene, who loved His mother and Mary, who took the little children in His arms before He blessed them. Nearer than ever before; so she was not afraid to tell Him, as she went, how she had suffered that day, and that she loved this man who lay dying under the snow: to ask that she might find him. A great gulf lay between them. Would He go with her, if she crossed it? She knew He would.
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