xiously pressed
the others, yet not close enough. At the open door, smiling back in
rejection of their aid, she tripped, and before they could save her,
tumbled headlong within. From up-stairs, from downstairs came servants
running, and by the front door entered a stranger, a private soldier in
swamp boots and bespattered with the mire of the river road from his
spurs to his ragged hat.

"No, bring her out," he said to a slave woman who bore Anna in her
arms, "out to the air!" But the burden slipped free and with a cleared
mind stood facing him.

"Ladies," he exclaimed, his look wandering, his uncovered hair matted,
"if a half-starved soldier can have a morsel of food just to take in his
hands and ride on with--" and before he could finish servants had sprung
to supply him.

"Are you from down the river?" asked Anna, quietly putting away her
sister's pleading touch and Flora's offer of support.

"I am!" spouted the renegade, for renegade he was, "I'm from the very
thick of the massacre! from day turned into night, night into day, and
heaven and earth into--into--"

"Hell," placidly prompted Flora.

"Yes! nothing short of it! Our defenses become death-traps and
slaughter-pens--oh, how foully, foully has Richmond betrayed her sister
city!"

Flora felt a new tumult of joy. "That Yankee fleet--it has pazz' those
fort'?" she cried.

"My dear young lady! By this time there ain't no forts for it to pass!
When I left Fort St. Philip there wa'n't a spot over in Fort Jackson as
wide as my blanket where a bumbshell hadn't buried itself and blown up,
and every minute we were lookin' for the magazine to go! Those _awful_
shells! they'd torn both levees, the forts were flooded, men who'd lost
their grit were weeping like children--"

"Oh!" interrupted Constance, "why not leave the forts? We don't need
them now; those old wooden ships can never withstand our terrible
ironclads!"

[Illustration: "No! not under this roof--nor in sight of _those
things_"]

"Well, they're mighty soon going to try it! Last night, right in the
blaze of all our batteries, they cut the huge chain we had stretched
across the river--"

"Ah, but when they see--oh, they'll never dare face even the
_Manassas_--the 'little turtle,' ha-ha!--much less the great
_Louisiana!_"

"Alas! madam, the _Louisiana_ ain't ready for 'em. There she lies tied
to the levee, with engines that can't turn a wheel, a mere floating
battery, while our gunboats--" Eage