heart athrob and aching at the duty he must perform.

"I'm sorry, dear," he sighed, removing her doll and dragging the table
across the floor to a point directly beneath the scuttle in the ceiling.

"What are you goin' to do?" she asked in terror, following as he moved.
"Oh, what are you goin' to do?"

He did not reply. He could not; but when he placed a chair upon the
table and prepared to mount, then Virgie understood.

"You shan't! You shan't!" she cried out shrilly. "He's my daddy--and you
shan't."

She pulled at the table, and when he would have put her aside, as gently
as he could, she attacked him fiercely, in a childish storm of passion,
sobbing, striking at him with her puny fists. The soldier bowed his head
and moved away.

"Oh, I can't! I can't!" he breathed, in conscience-stricken pain. "There
_must_ be some other way; and still--"

He stood irresolute, gazing through the open door, watching his men as
they hunted for a fellow man; listening to the sounds that floated
across the stricken fields--the calls of his troopers; the locusts in
the sun-parched woods chanting their shrill, harsh litany of drought;
but more insistent still came the muffled boom of the big black guns far
down the muddy James. They called to him, these guns, in the
hoarse-tongued majesty of war, bidding him forget himself, his love, his
pity--all else, but the grim command to a marching host--a host that