en--charges to his
men--hopes for the cherished cause--words so natural and unadorned, so
practical and soldier-like, and yet so swift, that not a breath was
drawn till he had ended. But then what a shout!

It was over in a moment. The great black cloud that had been swelling
up from the south gave its first flash and crash, and everybody started
pell-mell for home. The speaker stood just long enough for a last bow to
Anna while the guard went before him with the colors. Then he hurried
below and had the whole battery trotting down Canal Street and rounding
back on its farther side, with the beautiful standard fluttering to the
storm, before the Callenders could leave the balcony.

Canal Street that evening was a veritable fairyland. When, growing tired
of their carriage, the Callenders and Mandeville walked, and Kincaid
unexpectedly joined them, fairyland was the only name he could find for
it, and Anna, in response, could find none at all. Mallard's,
Zimmerman's, Clark's, Levois's, Laroussini's, Moody's, Hyde &
Goodrich's, and even old Piffet's were all aglow. One cannot recount
half. Every hotel, every club-house, all the theatres, all the consul's
offices in Royal and Carondelet streets, the banks everywhere, Odd
Fellows' Hall--with the Continentals giving their annual ball in it--and
so forth and so on! How the heart was exalted!

But when the heart is that way it is easy to say things prematurely, and
right there in Canal Street Hilary spoke of love. Not personally, only
at large; although when Anna restively said no woman should ever give
her heart where she could not give a boundless and unshakable trust, his
eyes showed a noble misery while he exclaimed:

"Oh, but there are women of whom no man can ever deserve that!" There
his manner was all at once so personal that she dared not be silent,
but fell to generalizing, with many a stammer, that a woman ought to be
very slow to give her trust if, once giving it, she would not rather die
than doubt.

"Do you believe there are such women?" he asked.

"I know there are," she said, her eyes lifted to his, but the next
instant was so panic-smitten and shamed that she ran into a lamp post.
And when he called that his fault her denial was affirmative in its
feebleness, and with the others she presently resumed the carriage and
said good-night.

"Flippantly!" thought the one left alone on the crowded sidewalk.

Yet--"It is I who am going to have the hardest of it