A few indistinct
words, apparently addressed to a servant or orderly, followed. Then the
door of the apartment opposite the front window was thrown open, and a
man entered.
In the new-comer I recognized Mohun's adversary at Upperville--Colonel
Darke, of the United States Cavalry.
XXI.
FALLEN.
Darke entered the apartment abruptly, but his appearance seemed to
occasion no surprise. The spy retained his coolness. The lady went on
with her work. You would have said that they had expected the officer,
and recognized his step.
Their greeting was brief. Darke nodded in apparent approbation of the
task in which the man and woman were engaged, and folding his arms in
front of the marble mantel, looked on in silence.
I gazed at him with interest, and more carefully than I had been able
to do during the fight at Upperville, when the smoke soon concealed
him. Let me draw his outline. Of all the human beings whom I
encountered in the war, this one's character and career were perhaps
the most remarkable. Were I writing a romance, I should be tempted to
call him the real hero of this volume.
He was a man approaching middle age; low in stature, but broad,
muscular, and powerful. He was clad in the full-dress uniform of a
colonel of the United States Cavalry, wore boots reaching to the knee
and decorated with large spurs; and his arms were an immense sabre and
a brace of revolvers in black leather holsters attached to his belt.
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