he might have gone on
for months in Richmond without knowing that she cared any more for him
than for a dozen other boys who were as attentive. In this hour of
parting it had come in a blinding flash as he bent over her hand to say
good-by. It made no difference when he should speak. Love had come into
her own heart full, wonderful, joyous, maddening in its glory. She could
wait in silence until in the fullness of time he must speak. It was
enough to know that she loved.

"May I write to you occasionally, Miss Jennie?" he asked with a timid,
hesitating look.

She laughed.

"Of course, you must write and tell me everything that happens here."

Socola wondered why she laughed. It was disconcerting. He hadn't faced
the question of loving Jennie. She was just a charming, beautiful child
whose acquaintance he could use for great ends. His depression came from
the tremendous nerve strain of his work. The early movement of
McClellan's army had kept him in that darkened attic on Church Hill
continuously every hour of the past night. He was feeling the strain. He
would throw it off when he got a good night's rest.

It was not until twenty-four hours after Jennie's departure that he
waked with a dull ache in his heart that refused to go. And so while he
dragged himself about his task with a sense of sickening loneliness, a
girl was softly singing in the far South.

CHAPTER XXV

THE BOMBARDMENT

Baton Rouge seethed with excitement on the day of Jennie's arrival.
Every wagon and dray was pressed into service. The people were hauling
their cotton to be burned on the commons. Negroes swarmed over the
bales, cutting them open, piling high the fleecy lint and then applying
the torch. The flames leaped upward with a roar and dropped as suddenly
into a smoldering and smoking mass.

A crowd rushed to the wharf to see them fire an enormous flat-boat piled
mountain-high with cotton. A dozen bales had been broken open and the
whole floating funeral pyre stood shrouded in spotless white which
leaped into flames as it was pushed into the stream.

Along the levee as far as the eye could reach negroes crawled like black
ants rolling the cotton into the river. The ties were smashed, and the
white bundle of cotton tumbled into the water and was set on fire. Each
bale sent up its cloud of smoke until the surface of the whole river
seemed alive with a fleet of war crowding its steam to run fresh
batteries. Another flat-boat was