l conscience.

LXII

FAREWELL, JANE!

"Happiest man in New Orleans!"

So called himself, to Colonel Greenleaf, the large, dingy-gray,
lively-eyed Major Kincaid, at the sentinelled door of the room where he
and his four wan fellows, snatched back from liberty on the eve of
release, were prisoners in plain view of the vessel on which they were
to have gone free.

With kind dignity Greenleaf predicted their undoubted return to the
craft next morning. Strange was the difference between this scene and
the one in which, eighteen months before, these two had last been
together in this room. The sentry there knew the story and enjoyed it.
In fact, most of the blue occupants of the despoiled place had a
romantic feeling, however restrained, for each actor in that earlier
episode. Yet there was resentment, too, against Greenleaf's clemencies.

"Wants?" said the bedless captive to his old chum, "no, thank you, not a
want!" implying, with his eyes, that the cloud overhanging Greenleaf for
favors shown to--hmm!--certain others was already dark enough, "We've
_parlor_ furniture galore," he laughed, pointing out a number of
discolored and broken articles that had been beautiful. One was the
screen behind which the crouching Flora had heard him tell the ruin of
her Mobile home and had sworn revenge on this home and on its fairest
inmate.

During the evening the prisoners grew a bit noisy, in song; yet even
when their ditties were helped out by a rhythmic clatter of boot-heels
and chair-legs the too indulgent Greenleaf did not stop them. The voices
were good and the lines amusing not merely to the guards here and there
but to most of their epauleted superiors who, with lights out for
coolness, sat in tilted chairs on a far corner of the front veranda to
catch the river breeze. One lay was so antique as to be as good as new:

"Our duck swallowed a snail,
And her eyes stood out with wonder.
Our duck swallowed a snail,
And her eyes stood out with wonder
Till the horns grew out of her tail, tail, tail,
Tail, Tail,
Tail, Tail,
Tail, Tail,
And tore it All asunder.
Farewell, Jane!

"Our old horse fell into the well
Around behind the stable.
Our old horse fell into the well
Around behind the stable.
He couldn't fall all the way but he fell,
Fell,
Fell,
Fell,
Fel