genuine as only truth can make it in the common run of
us, "He di'n' mean! Oh, he di'n' mean! 'Twas all accident! He di'n'
mean!"

"Yes, Fred," said Hilary. "She--she--mere accident, old man. Keep it
mum." He turned a suffering brow to Flora: "You'll explain for
me--when"--he gathered his strength--"when the--boat's gone."

The room had filled with officers asking "who, how, what?" "Did it
himself, to cheat the gallows," Madame heard one answer another as by
some fortune she was let in. She found Greenleaf chief in a group busy
over the fallen man, who lay in Flora's arms, deadly pale, yet with a
strong man's will in every lineament.

"Listen, Fred," he was gasping. "It'll sound. It's got to! Oh, it will!
One minute, Doctor, please. My love and a city--Fred, can't some one
look and see if--?"

From a lifted window curtain the young aide who had brought Anna to the
house said, "Boat's off."

"Thank God!" panted Hilary. "Oh, Fred, Fred, my girl and _all_! Just a
minute, Doctor,--_there_!"

A soft, heavy boom had rolled over the land. The pain-racked listener
flamed for joy and half left the arms that held him: "Oh, Fred, wasn't
that heaven's own music?" He tried to finish his song:

"But whaheveh I is sent, dey mus' undehstan'--"

and swooned.

LXVII

MOBILE

About a green spot crowning one of the low fortified hills on a northern
edge of Mobile sat Bartleson, Mandeville, Irby, Villeneuve and two or
three lieutenants, on ammunition-boxes, fire-logs and the sod, giving
their whole minds to the retention of Anna and Miranda Callender, who
sat on camp-stools. The absent Constance was down in the town, just then
bestowing favors not possible for any one else to offer so acceptably
to a certain duplicate and very self-centered Steve aged eighty
days--sh-sh-sh!

The camp group's soft discourse was on the character of one whom this
earliest afternoon in August they had followed behind muffled drums to
his final rest. Beginning at Carrollton Gardens, they said, then in the
flowery precincts of Callender House, later in that death-swept garden
on Vicksburg's inland bluffs, and now in this one, of Flora's, a garden
yet, peaceful and fragrant, though no part of its burnt house save the
chimneys had stood in air these three years and a half, the old hero--

"Yes," chimed Miranda to whoever was saying it--

The old hero, despite the swarm of mortal perils and woes he and his
brigade and its battery had co