172 WHIP AND SPUR. 



learned to like him for his frank and generous 

 qualities, and to make full allowance for the de- 

 gree to which his rough, barbaric nature had 

 been outraged and inflamed by the wrongs in- 

 flicted on his family. 



A returning patrol one afternoon led to the 

 parade-ground a sorry horse drawing an open 

 wagon in which were a man and a woman. The 

 woman had a cold-blooded, stolid look, and her 

 eyes were filled with the overflowing hatred we 

 so often inspired among her sex at the South. 

 Her husband was dressed in black, and wore a 

 rather scrupulously brushed but over-old silk hat. 

 In his hand was a ponderous and bulging cotton 

 umbrella. 



They had been taken " under suspicious cir- 

 cumstances" at a house a few miles outside the 

 lines, — the suspicion attaching only to the fact 

 that they were not members of the family and 

 seemed to have no particular business in that 

 region. When asked for an explanation, the wo- 

 man said she had nothing to say but that her 



