Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug 1911-Jan 1912)

46 THE MOTION PICTURE STORY MAGAZINE The signal event was the appearance of Hester on horseback, carrying a small reticule. She jogged along as complacently as if she was going to market, and she tried to disarm suspicion in a primitive way when Foster's men intercepted her. She claimed that her delicate mother had been prostrated by the rude intrusion and that she was going down "yon way" for an old family doctor. Foster smiled, in spite of himself, at the childishness of the ruse. Hester had pointed truthfully toward the house of a venerable physician, but a halfmile dash from that point would enable her to reach Stuart's videttes. Hester's guiles and wiles availed nothing with Lieutenant Foster — he seemed to have no illusions — for she was arrested and taken before a grim old artillery colonel, charged with attempting to carry important information to the enemy. The colonel was a man of science, inclined to treat all situations neutrally until the facts were set forth. Hester was sent to a tent for strict examination at the hands of a trained nurse, while Foster's men ripped up the saddle and bridle of her mount. Hester returned, crimson with indignation over the inspection to which she had been compelled to submit, and the enthusiasm of Foster's men cooled after they had wrecked the lady's handsome saddle. There was not a shred of evidence to be found that this -simple and unaffected young woman from an honest country house was on other errand bound than that of mercy. The artillery colonel instructed Foster to ride with the young lady to the doctor's house, and gave her a pass for herself and the physician to return thru the Federal lines. Lieutenant Foster was not satisfied, but obeyed orders, and conducted himself gallantly as an escort. It was an unusual and not altogether disagreeable situation that had been thrust upon him. In the midst of this storm of war he was engaged in riding by the side of a dainty Virginia beauty, whose cheeks were still the color of a passion rose because of the indignities of rigorous physical examination. Her modesty and sweetness were in perfect accord with the purity of the old home in which he had found her, but his keen scrutiny of her face indicated that he did not regard her as being above suspicion in this case. She had been simply reared, and, when the war was over, the small round of her life would soon reclaim her, but there are unexplored depths in the nature of woman harking back to generations of adroit selfdefense against man's innate brutality. The spotless purity of her soul was visible in her eyes ; the perfection of her breeding was manifest in her refined simplicity of manner. It was pitiful that man 's instruments of torture and death should be deluging with blood the land where our most beautiful flowers of womanhood grow. She rode with bowed head, helpless and humiliated, at his side, as tho overwhelmed by her first glimpse of war's horror. Lieutenant Foster sighed and set his face sternly toward their destination. They jogged along a drowsy country road and up a sheltered lane to a frame house, gray with age and surrounded with a wide spread of neglected undergrowth. "Oh, dear!" sighed Hester, "what if he should not be at home ! The closed shutters had an inhospitable aspect, but the physician might have fastened them as a precautionary measure in strenuous times. Foster dismounted, led his horse to the entrance and knocked. '' ' Thank you, ' ' Hester smiled ; then, by way of encouragement, " he is very deaf and sleeps hard." The lieutenant threw his reins over a post and knocked vigorously at the door. There was no response. "When he turned to announce this discouraging fact, he saw no one, but caught a glimpse of his own horse's tail as the animal disappeared in the brush. He drew swiftly and fired with accuracy on a line with the spot where her steed should have been, but