yet time--I had only got a certain word to--_him_--you know?
But, ah, me! I keep it idle yet; a secret, Victorine, a secret worth our
three lives! oh, three times three hundred lives! Even now--"

"Give it me, Anna! Give it! Give it me, that sick-rate! I'll take it
him!"

Anna shook her head: "Ah, if you could--in time! Or even--even without
him, letting him go, if just you and I--Come!" They walked to and fro in
embrace: "Dear, our front drawing-room, so ruined, you know, by that
shell, last year--"

"Ah, the front? no! The behine, yes, with those two hole' of the shell
and with thad _beegue_ hole in the floor where it cadge fiah."

"Victorine, I could go--with you--in that boat, if only I could be for
one minute in that old empty front room alone."

Victorine halted and sadly tossed a hand: "Ah! h-amptee, yes, both the
front and the back--till yes-the-day! This morning, the front, no! Juz'
sinze laz' week they 'ave brick' up bitwin them cloze by that burned
hole, to make of the front an office, and now the front 't is o'cupy!"

"Oh, not as an office, I hope?"

"Worse! The worse that can be! They 'ave stop' five prisoner' from the
boat and put them yondeh. Since an hour Col-on-el Grinleaf he tol' me
that--and she's ad the bottom, that Flora! Bicause--" The speaker
gazed. Anna was all joy.

"Because what?" demanded Anna, "because Hil--?"

"Yaas! bicause he's one of them! Ringgleadeh! I dunno, me, what is that,
but tha'z what he's accuse'--ringg-leadingg!"

Still the oblivious Anna was glad. "It is Flora's doing," she gratefully
cried. "She's done it! done it for us and our cause!"

"Ah-h! not if she know herseff!"

Anna laughed the discussion down: "Come, dear, come! the whole thing
opens to me clear and wide!"

Not so clear or wide as she thought. True, the suffering Flora was doing
this, in desperate haste; but not for Anna, if she knew herself. Yet
when Anna, in equal haste, made a certain minute, lengthy writing and,
assisted by that unshaken devotee, her maid, and by Victorine, baked
five small cakes most laughably alike (with the writing in ore) and laid
them beside some plainer food in a pretty basket, the way still seemed
wide enough for patriotism.

Now if some one would but grant Victorine leave to bestow this basket!
As she left Anna she gave her pledge to seek this favor of any one else
rather than of Greenleaf; which pledge she promptly broke, with a
success that fully reassured her cheerfu