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caused the Yankees untold trouble.
    In an age when young women of good birth were expected to be fragile, sheltered creatures, Belle received almost a unique upbringing. Born into a wealthy Southern family, she grew up with every advantage and luxury. However her father tended to be eccentric in some ways and made up for the disappointment of not having a son by teaching the girl to ride, handle a gun and other male accomplishments. A talented girl, Belle learned from her father without losing any of her femininity or forgetting to gain skill in female matters.
    When the Civil War first began to rear its head in the distance, Belle’s father stood out for the right of any sovereign state to secede from the Union if its interests clashed with the Federal Government; one of the main causes of the War, although the Yankees made much use of the slavery issue as being more likely to induce the masses to fight. Some weeks before the commencement of actual hostilities, a bunch of Union supporters attacked Belle’s home. They killed her mother and father, wounding the girl and might have done worse if the family’s ‘downtrodden and abused’ slaves had not arrived and driven off their ‘saviours’. By the time she recovered, the War had begun. Belle put her increased hatred of the Yankees to good use. Joining her cousin, Rose Greenhow, she became an agent for the Confederate Secret Service, often delivering the information gathered personally. Stonewall Jackson himself referred to Belle as his best courier, after she brought news to him which helped make possible the victory at the first battle of Bull Run.
    Since then Belle carried on the good work. While the Yankees knew her name, skilled use of disguises prevented her from being recognised. Pinkerton, soon to form his own detective agency, had his best operatives after Belle but without success.
    Using information she gathered, Belle had recently completed an assignment. With Dusty Fog’s aid, she captured a Yankee Army payroll and used the money to buy arms for the South.* Resting until orders arrived directing her to another assignment, she posed as one of General Ole Devil Hardin’s kin on a visit from Texas. As such she naturally received an invitation to the ball. On receiving Tolling’s message that Ludlow was not all he seemed, Belle forgot relaxation and went into action with all the deadly efficiency that gained her the name ‘the Rebel Spy’.
    “Absom said you had black hair,” Tolling remarked as they walked across to and looked down at the groaning, stirring man.
    “This is a wig,” Belle replied, touching her ‘hair’. “Your note didn’t say much about him. Who is he?”
    “His real name’s Byron and he’s a real talented Yankee gentleman.”
    “One of their spies?”
    “Paid by them for it, anyways.”
    “And his game?”
    “Afore the War he used to work the riverboats,” Tolling explained. “Making up to rich women, cheating at cards. Got him a way of becoming real friendly.”
    “And now?”
    “There you’ve got me. He’s one of a bunch who the Yankees sent out of New Orleans. Lucienne got on to them and sent me after him. Only he travelled faster’n me and I’ve only just caught up with him.”
    “We’ll have to see if we can make him talk,” the girl remarked. “Only we can’t do it here or now. Can you keep him hidden until I find help to take him away?”
    “I reckon so,” Tolling drawled. “Only he’ll likely make a fuss when he comes too. If he does, I’ll whomp him over the head.”
    “You might do it too hard,” the girl smiled. “They do say Yankees have soft skulls. I’ve a better way, if you fetch me some water.”
    Crossing the stable to a pump fitted on to a stone sink in one corner, Tolling took up the metal dipper which hung on its side. He worked the pump’s handle, filled the dipper with water and returned to the girl. In his absence she had taken a ring with a large, heavy stone set into it from