all, was
enhancing his.

"One more word," he said. "You're sick of the drill-ground. Well, the
man that's spoiling for a fight and yet has no belly for drill--he--oh,
he belongs to the cavalry by birth! We _love_ these guns. We're mighty
dogg--we're extremely proud of them. Through thick and thin, through
fire and carnage and agony, remembering where we got them, we propose to
_keep_ them; and some proud day, when the trouble's all over, say two
years hence, and those of us who are spared come home, we propose to
come with these same guns unstained by the touch of a foe's hand, a
virgin battery still. Well, only two things can win that: infernal
fighting and perpetual toil. So, as you love honor and your country's
cause, wait. Wait in self-respectful patience. Wait and work, and you
shall be at the front--the foremost front!--the very first day and hour
my best licks can get you there. That's all."

Bartleson advanced from the line: "By section!" he called, "right
wheel--"

"Section," repeated each chief of section, "right wheel--"

"March!" commanded Bartleson.

"March," echoed the chiefs, and the battery broke into column. "Forward!
Guide right!" chanted Bartleson, and all moved off save Kincaid.

He turned his horse, and lo! on the grassy crest of the earthwork,
pictured out against the eastern pink and blue, their summer gauzes
filled with the light of the declining sun, were half a dozen smiling
ladies attended by two or three officers of cavalry, and among them
Flora, Constance, and Miranda.

Anna? Only when he had dismounted did his eager eye find her, where she
had climbed and seated herself on a siege gun and was letting a cavalier
show her how hard it would be for a hostile ship, even a swift steamer,
to pass, up-stream, this crater of destruction, and _ergo_ how
impossible for a fleet--every ship a terror to its fellows the moment it
was hurt--to run the gauntlet of Forts Jackson and St. Philip on a far
worse stretch of raging current some eighty miles farther down the
river.

Not for disbelief of the demonstration, but because of a general laugh
around a tilt of words between Kincaid and the cavalry fellows, Anna
lighted down and faced about, to find him, for the third time in five
days, at close range. With much form he drew nearer, a bright assurance
in his eyes, a sort of boyish yes, for a moment, but the next moment
gone as it met in hers a womanly no.

"You little artist," thought Flora.