m, and--ah, after all!" The thing had been
done without their seeing it, and there stood the whole magnificent
double line. Captain Kincaid dismounted and had just turned from his
horse when there galloped up Royal Street from the vanished
procession--Mandeville. Slipping and clattering, he reined up and
saluted: "How soon can Kincaid's Battery be completely ready to go into
camp?"

"Now, if necessary."

"It will receive orders to move at seven to-morrow morning!" The
Creole's fervor amuses the rabble, and when Hilary smiles his
earnestness waxes to a frown. Kincaid replies lightly and the rider
bends the rein to wheel away, but the slippery stones have their victim
at last. The horse's feet spread and scrabble, his haunches go low.
Constance snatches both Anna's hands. Ah! by good luck the beast is up
again! Yet again the hoofs slip, the rider reels, and Charlie and a
comrade dart out to catch him, but he recovers. Then the horse makes
another plunge and goes clear down with a slam and a slide that hurl his
master to the very sidewalk and make a hundred pale women cry out.

Constance and her two companions bend wildly from the balustrade, a
sight for a painter. Across the way Flora, holding back her grandmother,
silently leans out, another picture. In the ranks near Charlie a
disarray continues even after Kincaid has got the battered Mandeville
again into the saddle, and while Mandeville is rejecting sympathy with a
begrimed yet haughty smile.

"Keep back, ladies!" pleads Madame's late informant, holding off two or
three bodily. "Ladies, sit down! Will you please to keep back!" Flora
still leans out. Some one is melodiously calling:

"Captain Kincaid!" It is Mrs. Callender. "Captain!" she repeats.

He smiles up and at last meets Anna's eyes. Flora sees their
glances--angels ascending and descending--and a wee loop of ribbon that
peeps from his tightly buttoned breast. Otherwise another sight,
elsewhere, could not have escaped her, though it still escapes many.

"Poor boy!" it causes two women behind her to exclaim, "poor boy!" but
Flora pays no heed, for Hilary is speaking to the Callenders.

"Nothing broken but his watch," he gayly comforts them as to Mandeville.

"He's bleeding!" moans Constance, very white. But Kincaid softly
explains in his hollowed hands:

"Only his nose!"

The nose's owner casts no upward look. Not his to accept pity, even from
a fiancee. His handkerchief dampened "to wibe the faze,"