his morning. When I hear the
parting gun of that boat down yonder I want to know by it that Victorine
is safely on her way to Mobile, as she would be had she not been my
messenger yesterday."

"She carried nothing but a message?"

"Nothing but a piece of writing--mine! Colonel, I tell you faithfully,
whatever Major Kincaid broke prison with was not brought here yesterday
by any one and was never in Victorine's hands."

"Nor in yours, either?" kindly asked Greenleaf.

Anna caught her breath and went redder than ever. Doctor Sevier stirred
to speak, but Anna's maid gave her a soft thrust, pointed behind the
screen, and covered a bashful smile with her apron. Anna's blush became
one of mirth. Her eyes went now to the Doctor and again to the broken
wall.

"Israel!" she laughed, "why do you enter--?"

"On'y fitten' way, missie. House so full o' comin' and goin', and me
havin' dis cullud man wid me."

Out on the basement ladder, at the ragged gap of Israel's "on'y fittin'
way," was visible, to prove his word, another man's head, white-turbaned
like his own, and two dark limy hands passing in a pail of mortar.
Welcome distraction. True, Greenleaf's luckless question still stood
unanswered, but just then an orderly summoned him to the busy generals
and spoke aside to Doctor Sevier.

"Miss Valcour," explained the Doctor to Anna.

"Oh, Doctor," she pleaded, "I want to see her! Beg them, won't you, to
let her in?"

LXIV

"NOW, MR. BRICK-MASON,--"

Amid the much coming and going that troubled Israel--tramp of spurred
boots, clank of sabres, seeking, meeting and parting of couriers and
aides--Madame Valcour, outwardly placid, inwardly terrified, found
opportunity to warn her granddaughter, softly, that unless she, the
granddaughter, could get that look of done-for agony out of her eyes,
the sooner and farther they fled this whole issue, this fearful
entanglement, the better for them.

But brave Flora, knowing the look was no longer in the eyes alone but
had for days eaten into her visage as age had for decades into the
grandam's, made no vain effort to paint it out with smiles but accepted
and wore it in show of a desperate solicitude for Anna. Yet this, too,
was futile, and before Doctor Sevier had exchanged five words with her
she saw that to him the make-up was palpable and would be so to
Greenleaf. Poor Flora! She had wrestled her victims to the edge of a
precipice, yet it was she who at this moment, th