ving Baltimore, where I was well known. I got
a brevet-step with almost every change of place or association;
disclaimers were never listened to.

Through the bars of a second story window that fronted each turn of my
tramp, I saw--this. A slight figure in the freshest summer toilette of
cool pink muslin; close braids of dark hair shading clear pale cheeks;
eyes that were made to sparkle, though the look in them then was very
sad, and the languid bowing down of the small head told of something
worse than weariness.

Truly, a pretty picture, though framed in such rude setting, but almost
as startling, at first, as the apparition of the fair witch in the
forest to Christabelle. Slightly in the background stood a mature
dame--the mother, evidently. No need to ask what their crime had been;
aid and abetment of the South suggested itself before you detected the
ensign of her faith that the demoiselle still wore undauntedly--a pearl
_solitaire_, fashioned as a single star. I may not deny that my gloomy
"constitutional" seemed, thenceforward, a shade or two less dreary; but,
though community of suffering does much abridge ceremony, it was some
days before I interchanged with the fair captives any sign beyond the
mechanical lifting of my cap when I entered and left their presence,
duly acknowledged from above. One evening I chanced to be loitering
almost under their window; a low, significant cough made me look up; I
saw the flash of a gold bracelet and the wave of a white hand, and there
fell at my feet a fragrant pearly rosebud nestling in fresh green
leaves. My thanks were, perforce, confined to a gesture and a dozen
hurried words, but I would the prison beauty could believe that fair
Jane Beaufort's rose was not more prized than hers, though the first was
a love token granted to a king, the last only a graceful gift to an
unlucky stranger. I suppose that most men, whose past is not utterly
barren of romance, are weak enough to keep some withered flowers till
they have lived memory down, and I pretend not to be wiser than my
fellows. Other fragrant messengers followed in their season, but, if
ever I "win hame to mine ain countrie," I make mine avow to enshrine
that first rosebud in my _reliquaire_, with all honor and solemnity,
there to abide till one of us shall be dust.

I heard from Lord Lyons about once a week. Though my letters were always
answered most promptly, the replies never reached me within eight days.
All co