would be possible to get them to let us
take that Arkansan into our house?"

"Why, honey, I'll ask Brinsmade if you like," said the Colonel. "Here he
comes now, and Anne."

It was Virginia who put the question to him.

"My dear," replied that gentleman, patting her, "I would do anything in
the world for you. I'll see General Fremont this very afternoon.
Virginia," he added, soberly, "it is such acts as yours to-day that give
us courage to live in these times."

Anne kissed her friend.

"Oh, Jinny, I saw what you were doing for one of our men. What am I
saying?" she cried. "They are your men, too. This horrible war cannot
last. It cannot last. It was well that Virginia did not see the smile on
the face of the commanding general when Mr. Brinsmade at length got to
him with her request. This was before the days when the wounded arrived
by the thousands, when the zeal of the Southern ladies threatened to
throw out of gear the workings of a great system. But the General, had
had his eye on Mr. Carvel from the first. Therefore he smiled.

"Colonel Carvel," said Mr. Brinsmade, with dignity, "is a gentleman. When
he gives his word, it is sacred, sir."

"Even to an enemy," the General put in, "By George, Brinsmade, unless I
knew you, I should think that you were half rebel yourself. Well, well,
he may have his Arkansan."

Mr. Brinsmade, when he conveyed the news to the Carvel house, did not say
that he had wasted a precious afternoon in the attempt to interview his
Excellency, the Commander in-chief. It was like obtaining an audience
with the Sultan or the Czar. Citizens who had been prominent in affairs
for twenty years, philanthropists and patriotic-spirited men like Mr.
Brinsmade, the mayor, and all the ex-mayors mopped their brows in one of
the general's anterooms of the big mansion, and wrangled with beardless
youths in bright uniforms who were part of the chain. The General might
have been a Richelieu, a Marlborough. His European notions of uniformed
inaccessibility he carried out to the letter. He was a royal personage,
seldom seen, who went abroad in the midst of a glittering guard. It did
not seem to weigh with his Excellency that these simple and democratic
gentlemen would not put up with this sort of thing. That they who had
saved the city to the Union were more or less in communication with a
simple and democratic President; that in all their lives they had never
been in the habit of sitting idly for two ho