aying for. Then we
crossed the market to a deserted stall, whose owner had probably sold
out her small stock at an early hour and gone home. We sat down, and she
began: "You have told me your name. Mine is Gardine--Vera Gardine. I
have a brother named Clement Gardine."

"C. G.!" cried Lilly.

"C. G.," said she with a sigh. "You have perhaps heard of the Gardine
family? The old name is well known in ze city."

We confessed with some shame that it was unknown to us.

She sighed again: "Ah! it is a sad story: I will tell it to you in ze
way ze most quickest. We are French, but born in zis country--creoles,
you know. I was but a leetle girl when ze war began, and my brother had
scarcely twenty years. But he was so brave, so reckless: go to ze war he
would, almost breaking ze heart of his--his--fiancee--what you call it
in English: his engaged girl--ze gentle, lovely Florine. When ze
Northern army came to New Orleans, Florine's father and mother ran away
with her to Texas--made of themselves refugees. Soon after both parents
died, and Florine was left so all alone that my brother determined to
marry her at once. He got a furlough from his general, and came home in
disguise. It was joy all mixed with fear to see him. Blockade-steamers
were running all ze time from New Orleans to Galveston, and he took
passage in one of them. He had no baggages, but one small trunk that I
packed for him--his dress-suit, some shirts that I had made, some lace
handkerchiefs that I was sending to Florine. In this trunk too were ze
star buttons, heirlooms in ze famille Gardine. He was to spend his
honeymoon in Texas until his furlough had expired: then he was to bring
Florine to me, and he was to go back to his regiment. He left me, brave,
strong, full of hope, and from zat time till one long year afterward I
neither saw nor heard from mon frere.

"I was distracted. I wrote letters here, there, everywhere. It was no
use. The city was besieged: I could not get out of it. Oh, what
suffering to remember!

"One day, in my heart-sickness, longing to do something with my life, I
went with one of ze good Sisters of our Church into ze city hospital.
And there I found my brother, his head shaved, raving with fever! He had
been fighting, they told me, with one of ze guerilla-bands around ze
city--had been captured and brought there wounded dangerously. I took
him home, nursed him night and day, and at last had my reward. He knew
me--ze consciousness