e forked black tail."

Flora replied from a mirror with her back turned: "I'll thing ab-out it.
And maybee--yes! Ezpecially if you would do uz that one favor, lazd
thing when you are going to bed the night we are married. Yez, if you
would--ahem!--juz' blow yo' gas without turning it?"

That evening, when the accepted Irby, more nearly happy than ever before
in his life, said good-night to his love they did not kiss. At the first
stir of proffer Flora drew back with a shudder that reddened his brow.
But when he demanded, "Why not?" her radiant shake of the head was
purely bewitching as she replied, "No, I haven' fall' that low yet."

When after a day or so he pressed for immediate marriage and was coyly
referred to Madame, the old lady affectionately--though
reluctantly--consented. With a condition: If the North should win the
war his inheritance would be "confiz-_cate_'" and there would be nothing
to begin life on but the poor child's burned down home behind Mobile,
unless, for mutual protection, nothing else,--except "one dollar and
other valuable considerations,"--he should preconvey the Brodnax estate
to the poor child, who, at least, had never been "foun' out" to have
done anything to subject property of hers to confiscation.

This transfer Irby, with silent reservations, quietly executed, and the
day, hour and place, the cathedral, were named. A keen social flutter
ensued and presently the wedding came off--stop! That is not all.
Instantly upon the close of the ceremony the bride had to be more lifted
than led to her carriage and so to her room and couch, whence she sent
loving messages to the bridegroom that she would surely be well enough
to see him next day. But he had no such fortune, and here claims record
a fact even more wonderful than Anna's presentiment as to Hilary that
morning in Mobile Bay. The day after his wedding Irby found his parole
revoked and himself, with others, back in prison and invited to take the
oath and go free--stand up in the war-worn gray and forswear it--or stay
where they were to the war's end. Every man of them took it--when the
war was over; but until then? not one. Not even the bridegroom robbed of
his bride. Every week or so she came and saw him, among his fellows, and
bade him hold out! stand fast! It roused their great admiration, but not
their wonder. The wonder was in a fact of which they knew nothing: That
the night before her marriage Flora had specifically, minutely
pr