every man
we've got, and every gun, counts bigger than to knock out any two of the
enemy's. You know Fred's over yonder, don't you? and that Kincaid's
Battery, without their field-pieces, are just here in Powell behind her
heavy guns?... Yes, Victorine said you did; I saw her this morning, with
Constance." He paused, and then spoke lower:

"Beloved?"

She smiled up to him.

"Our love's not through all the fire, yet," he said, but her smile only
showed more glow.

"My soul's-mate, war-mate soldier-girl," he murmured on.

"Well?"

"If you stand true in what's before us now, before just you and me, now
and for weeks to come, I want your word for it right here that your
standing true shall not be for the sake of any vow you've ever made to
me, or for me, or with me, in the past, the blessed, blessed past. You
promise?"

"I promise," she breathed. "What is it?"

"A thing that takes more courage than I've got."

"Then how will you do it?" she lightly asked.

"By borrowing all yours. May I?"

"You may. Is it to save--our battery?"

"Our battery, yes, against their will, with others, if I can persuade
the fort's commander. At low tide to-night when the shoals can be forded
to Cedar Point, I shall be"--his words grew hurried--the steamer was
touching the fort's pier--the sail-boat, which was to take Anna and
Miranda to where the ambulance and their own horses awaited them had
cast off her painter--"I shall be the last man out of Powell and shall
blow it up. Come, it may be we sha'n't meet again until I've"--he
smiled--"been court-martialed and degraded. If I am, we--"

"If you are," she murmured, "you may take me to the nearest church--or
the biggest--that day."

"No, no!" he called as she moved away, and again, with a darkening brow,
"no, no!"

But, "Yes, yes," she brightly insisted as she rejoined Miranda. "Yes!"

For the horses' sake the ladies went that afternoon only to "Frascati,"
lower limit of the Shell Road, where, in a small hour of the night Anna
heard the sudden boom and long rumble that told the end of Fort Powell
and salvation of its garrison.

That Gaines held out a few days, Morgan a few weeks, are heroic facts of
history, which, with a much too academic shrug, it calls "magnifique,
mais--!" Their splendid armament and all their priceless men fell into
their besiegers' hands. Irby, haughtily declining the strictly formal
courtesies of Fred Greenleaf, went to prison in New Orleans. What a N