nife: "Go, dress! We'll save the kitten--if only for Charlie! Go!
_she must leave town at once_. Go! But, ah, grannie dear,"--she turned
to a window--"for Anna, spite of all we can do, I am af-raid--Ship
Island! Poor _Anna!_" At the name her beautiful arm, in one swift
motion, soared, swung, drove the bright steel deep into the window-frame
and left it quivering.

"Really," said a courteous staff-officer as he and Doctor Sevier
alighted at the garden stair of Callender House and helped Anna and her
maid from a public carriage, "only two or three of us will know
you're"--His smile was awkward. The pale doctor set his jaw. Anna
musingly supplied the term:

"A prisoner." She looked fondly over the house's hard-used front as they
mounted the steps. "If they'd keep me here, Doctor," she said at the
top, "I'd be almost happy. But"--she faced the aide-de-camp--"they
won't, you know. By this time to-morrow I shall be"--she waved
playfully--"far away."

"Mainland, or island?" grimly asked the Doctor.

She did not know. "But I know, now, how a rabbit feels with the hounds
after her. Honestly," she said again to the officer, "I wish I might
have her cunning." And the soldier murmured, "Amen."

LXIII

THE IRON-CLAD OATH

Under Anna's passive air lay a vivid alertness to every fact in range of
eye or ear.

Any least thing now might tip the scale for life or death, and while at
the head of the veranda steps she spoke of happiness her distressed
thought was of Hilary's madcap audacity, how near at hand he might be
even then, under what fearful risk of recognition and capture. She was
keenly glad to hear two men complain that the guard about the house and
grounds was to-day a new one awkward to the task. Of less weight now it
seemed that out on the river the despatch-boat had shifted her berth
down-stream and with steam up lay where the first few wheel turns would
put her out of sight. Indoors, where there was much official activity,
it relieved her to see that neither Hilary's absence nor her coming
counted large in the common regard. The brace of big generals were in
the library across the hall, busy on some affair much larger than this
of "ourn."

The word was the old coachman Israel's. What a tender joy it was to find
him in the wretched drawing-room trying to make it decent for her and
dropping his tears as openly as the maid. With what a grace, yet how
boldly, he shut the door between them and blue authority.