"Here, Virgie! Here's your pass to Richmond--for you and your
escort--through the Federal lines."

She came to him slowly, wondering; her tiny body quivering with
suppressed excitement, her voice a whispering caress:

"Do you mean for--for Daddy, too?"

"Yes, you little rebel!" he answered, choking as he laughed; "but I'm
terribly afraid you'll have to pay me--with a kiss."

She sprang into his waiting arms, and kissed him as he raised her up;
but when he would have set her down, her little brown hands, with their
berry-stained fingers, clung tightly about his neck.

"Wait! Wait!" she cried. "Here's another one--for Gertrude! Tell her
it's from Virgie! An' tell her I sent it, 'cause her daddy is jus' the
best damn Yankee that ever was!"

The trap above had opened, and the head and shoulders of the Southerner
appeared; while Morrison looked up and spoke in parting:

"It's all right, Cary. I only ask a soldier's pledge that you take your
little girl to Richmond--nothing more. In passing through our lines,
whatever you see or hear--_forget_!"

A sacred trust it was, of man to man, one brother to another; and
Morrison knew that Herbert Cary would pass through the very center of
the Federal lines, as a _father_, not a spy.