ban as lightly as a hat. "Is
you got to go so soon?" he asked, and walked beside them. Swiftly, under
his voice, he directed them to Victorine and then spoke out again in
hearing of two or three blue troopers. "You mus' come ag'in, whensomeveh
you like."

They drew near a guard: "Dese is ole folks o' mine, Mr. Gyuard, ef you
please, suh, dess a-lookin' at de ole home, suh."

"We were admitted by Colonel Greenleaf," said Anna, with a soft
brightness that meant more than the soldier guessed, and he let them
out, feeling as sweet, himself, as he tried to look sour.

"Well, good-by, Miss Nannie," said the old man, "I mus' recapitulate
back to de house; dey needs me pow'ful all de time. Good luck to you!
Gawd bless you!... Dass ow ba-aby, Mr. Gyuard--Oh, Lawd, Lawd, de days
I's held dat chile out on one o' dese ole han's!" He had Flora's feeling
for stage effects.

Toiling or resting, the Southern slaves were singers. With the pail on
his head and with every wearer of shoulder-straps busy giving or obeying
some order, it was as normal as cock-crowing that he should raise yet
another line of his song and that from the house the diligent bricklayer
should reply.

Sang the water-carrier:

"I's natch-i-ully gallant wid de ladies,--"

and along with the trowel's tinkle came softly back,

"I uz bawn wid a talent fo' de ladies."

For a signal the indoor singer need not have gone beyond that line, but
the spirit that always grew merry as the peril grew, the spirit which
had made Kincaid's Battery the fearfulest its enemies ever faced,
insisted:

"You fine it on de map o' de contrac' plan,
I's boun' to be a ladies' man!"

LXV

FLORA'S LAST THROW

Normal as cock-crowing seemed the antiphony to the common ear, which
scarcely noticed the rareness of the indoor voice. But Greenleaf's was
not the common ear, nor was Flora Valcour's.

To her that closing strain made the torture of inaction finally
unbearable. Had Anna heard? Leaving Madame she moved to a hall door of
the room where they sat. Was Anna's blood surging like her own? It could
not! Under what a tempest of conjectures she looked down and across the
great hall to the closed and sentinelled door of that front drawing-room
so rife with poignant recollections. There, she thought, was Anna. From
within it, more faintly now, came those sounds of a mason at work which
had seemed to ring with the song. But the song had ceased. About the
hall highly