lay in her pretty hand.

"Deztitution!" she joyfully confessed to be the plea on which it had been
procured--by Doctor Sevier through Colonel--guess!--"Grinleaf!--juz'
riturn'" from service in the field.

And how were the destitute pair to go?

Ah! did Anna "rim-emb'r" a despatch-boat of unrivalled speed whose
engines Hilary Kin--?

Yes, ah, yes!

On which she and others had once--?

Yes, yes!

And which had been captured when the city fell? That boat was now lying
off Callender House! Did Anna _not_ know that her shattered home, so
long merely the headquarters of a blue brigade, had lately become of
large, though very quiet, importance as a rendezvous of big generals who
by starlight paced its overgrown garden alleys debating and planning
something of great moment? Doctor Sevier had found that out and had
charged Victorine to tell it with all secrecy to the biggest general in
Mobile the instant she should reach there. For she was to go by that
despatch-boat.

"Aw-dinner-illy," she said, a flag-of-truce craft might be any old tub
and would go the short way, from behind the city and across the lakes,
not all round by the river and the Chandeleur Islands. But this
time--that very morning--a score or so of Confederate prisoners
(officers, for exchange) had been put aboard that boat, bound for
Mobile. Plainly the whole affair was but a mask for reconnaissance, the
boat, swiftest in all the Gulf, to report back at top speed by way of
the lakes. But!--the aunt would not go at all! Never having been a mile
from her door, she was begging off in a palsy of fright, and here was
the niece with a deep plot--ample source of her ecstasy--a plot for
Anna, duly disguised, to go in the aunt's place, back to freedom, Dixie,
and the arms of Constance and Miranda.

Anna trembled. She could lovingly call the fond schemer, over and over,
a brave, rash, generous little heroine and lay caresses on her twice and
again, but to know whether this was Heaven's leading was beyond her.
She paced the room. She clasped her brow. A full half of her own great
purpose (great to her at least) seemed all at once as good as achieved,
yet it was but the second half, as useless without the first as half a
bridge on the far side of the flood. "I cannot go!" she moaned. For the
first half was Hilary, and he--she saw it without asking--was on this
cartel of exchange.

Gently she came and took her rescuer's hands: "Dear child! If--if while
there was