The prisoner, escorted by the young officer, and still riding her fine
horse, had already disappeared in the darkness.
V.
STUART.
An hour afterward, I had delivered my message to Mordaunt, and was
returning by the road over Fleetwood Hill, thinking of the singular
dialogue between Mohun and the gray woman.
What had these worthies meant by their mysterious allusions? How had
Mohun found himself face to face on this stormy night, with two human
beings whom he thought dead?
These questions puzzled me for half an hour; then I gave up the
mystery, laughing. An hour afterward I had passed through Culpeper
Court-House, crossed the fields, and had reached General Stuart's
headquarters.
Stuart's tent, or rather the strip of canvas which he called one, was
pitched beneath a great oak on a wooded knoll about a mile south of the
little village. Above it drooped the masses of fresh June foliage;
around, were grouped the white canvas "flies" of the staff; in a glade
close by gleamed the tents d'abri of the couriers. Horses, tethered to
the trees, champed their corn in the shadow; in the calm, summer night,
the battle-flag drooped and clung to its staff. Before the tent of
Stuart, a man on guard, with drawn sabre, paced to and fro with
measured steps.
A glance told me that Mohun's singular prisoner had arrived.
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