laughed with
tears and told the coachman and said it over and over.

In Canal Street lo! it was true. Across the Neutral Ground they saw a
strange sight; General Brodnax bareheaded! bareheaded yet in splendid
uniform, riding quietly through the crowd in a brilliantly mounted group
that included Irby and Kincaid, while everybody told everybody, with
admiring laughter, how the old Virginian, dining at the St. Charles
Hotel, had sallied into the street cheering, whooping, and weeping,
thrown his beautiful cap into the air, jumped on it as it fell, and
kicked it before him up to one corner and down again to the other. Now
he and his cavalcade came round the Clay statue and passed the carriage
saluting. What glory was in their eyes! How could our trio help but wave
or the crowd hold back its cheers!

Up at Odd Fellows' Hall a large company was organizing a great military
fair. There the Callenders were awaited by Flora and Madame, thither
they came, and there reappeared the General and his train. There, too,
things had been so admirably cut and dried that in a few minutes the
workers were sorted and busy all over the hall like classes in a
Sunday-school.

The Callenders, Valcours, and Victorine were a committee by themselves
and could meet at Callender House. So when Kincaid and Irby introduced a
naval lieutenant whose amazingly swift despatch-boat was bound on a
short errand a bend or so below English Turn, it was agreed with him in
a twinkling--a few twinklings, mainly Miranda's--to dismiss horses, take
the trip, and on the return be set ashore at Camp Callender by early
moonlight.

They went aboard at the head of Canal Street. The river was at a fair
stage, yet how few craft were at either long landing, "upper" or
"lower," where so lately there had been scant room for their crowding
prows. How few drays and floats came and went on the white, shell-paved
levees! How little freight was to be seen except what lay vainly begging
for export--sugar, molasses, rice; not even much cotton; it had gone to
the yards and presses. That natty regiment, the Orleans Guards, was
drilling (in French, superbly) on the smooth, empty ground where both to
Anna's and to Flora's silent notice all the up-river foodstuffs--corn,
bacon, pork, meal, flour--were so staringly absent, while down in yonder
streets their lack was beginning to be felt by a hundred and twenty-five
thousand consumers.

Backing out into mid-stream brought them near an