to see you, my dear," said the lady, kissing Jeanne. "Any
friend of Bob's is welcome be she Yankee or Confederate. And this is your
brother? How pale he is! We must get him right to bed."

She bustled about Dick in a motherly fashion, her sympathies fully
enlisted on his behalf by his illness. Dick was in truth much exhausted by
his journey and sank into slumber as soon as his head touched the pillow.
Jeanne sat by him and told Bob and her aunt how Madame had tried to
make him sign the paper.

"Rest and quiet are what he needs," observed Mr. Huntsworth. "He will
come out of this all right, I think, now that he is removed from your
aunt's ministrations. What a creature she is! She reminds me of the middle
ages. Vindictive, passionate and cruel beyond measure as were the women
of those times!"

The slow shelling of Vicksburg went on. The people gradually became
indifferent and resumed their daily avocations. General Pemberton issued
an order for all non-combatants to leave the city, but Bob and her aunt
refused to pay any heed to it.

"Where could we go?" asked Bob when her father tried to combat her
decision to stay. "You say the country is overrun with soldiers, and
where is there a place safer than Vicksburg? The Yankees can never take
it!"

"No; they cannot," returned the Colonel. "I don't know but that you
are right, Bob. I will have a cave dug in the hill back of the house
to-morrow, and you can retire to it when the shelling becomes too bad."

And so it was arranged. Men began work the next day and soon dug a cave
in the hillside back of them. Cave residence had become quite the thing
since the shelling of the city had begun, and the hillsides were so
honey-combed with excavations that the streets looked like avenues in a
cemetery.

Bob and Jeanne settled themselves into a happy and quiet existence. They
sewed in the morning and sometimes took excursions to Sky Parlor Hill
to view the Federal fleet that lay on the river, and to look through a
glass at the Federal encampment near the head of the abandoned canal.
Rumors were rife in the city of the advance of the Federal troops. One
night heavy cannonading was heard for an hour or two, ceasing and then
commencing again early in the morning. All day the noise continued. That
night the sky in the South was crimsoned by the light of a large fire.

The lurid glare fell in red and amber light upon the houses, lighting up
the white magnolias, paling the pink crap