Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/237

LUCAS MALLORY—AT LAST She repeats it and sighs like she don't know what it means. And I don't think she did. She looked it. Her light was always burning.

It was my watch that night, and I was further from home than usual. For I had seen some curious lights in the neighborhood of the Ferry Road. I was sitting, in the edge of Harg's woods, quiet, with my carbine ready, listening for a repetition of some sounds I had heard. A whistle and a cough, it seemed like, when I sees something more substantial than the shadows I had watched so often steal out of the woods into the road. In a moment I knew that it was a man. Then, though it was shadowy, I saw that it was a soldier, because of the faint gleam of his rifle.

"Halt!" I calls out. "Who is it? Don't move. If you do I'll fire."

If I'd fired without so much talk I'd have got him then and there. But he dodged back into the bushes. I started to run.

"I'm a Union officer," I yells, "and by the Lord, I'll do my duty if you don't stop. If you 221