' love' wine, ole mis' love' silk--"

Generally she could stop it there, but at times it contrived to steal
unobserved through the second line and then no power could keep it from
marching on to the citadel, the end of the refrain. Base, antic awakener
of her heart's dumb cry of infinite loss! For every time the tormenting
inanity won its way, that other note, that unvoiced agony, hurled itself
against the bars of its throbbing prison.

"Ole mahs' love' wine, ole mis' love'--"

"Oh, Hilary, my Hilary!"

From the Creole Quarter both carriage and wagon turned to the water
front. Charlie's warning that even more trying scenes would be found
there was in vain. Anna insisted, the fevered youth's own evident wish
was to see the worst, and Constance and Miranda, dutifully mirthful,
reminded him that through Anna they also had now tasted blood. As the
equipage came out upon the Levee and paused to choose a way, the sisters
sprang up and gazed abroad, sustaining each other by their twined arms.

To right, to left, near and far--only not just here where the Coast
steamboats landed--the panorama was appalling. All day Anna had hungered
for some incident or spectacle whose majesty or terror would suffice to
distract her from her own desolation; but here it was made plain to her
that a distress before which hand and speech are helpless only drives
the soul in upon its own supreme devotion and woe. One wide look over
those far flat expanses of smoke and flame answered the wonder of many
hours, as to where all the drays and floats of the town had gone and
what they could be doing. Along the entire sinuous riverside the whole
great blockaded seaport's choked-in stores of tobacco and cotton,
thousands of hogsheads, ten thousands of bales--lest they enrich the
enemy--were being hauled to the wharves and landings and were just now
beginning to receive the torch, the wharves also burning, and boats and
ships on either side of the river being fired and turned adrift.

Yet all the more because of the scene, a scene that quelled even the
haunting strain of song, that other note, that wail which, the long day
through, had writhed unreleased in her bosom, rose, silent still, yet
only the stronger and more importunate--

"Oh, Hilary, my soldier, my flag's, my country's defender, come back to
me--here!--now!--my yet living hero, my Hilary Kincaid!"

Reluctantly, she let Constance draw her down, and presently, in a voice
rich with loyal