hile Mother Magwire rocked the babies, moaning
and weeping, Idyl, wiping her dishes in the little kitchen, would step
to the door and peer out at the levee where the guns were. Every distant
cannon's roar seemed to challenge her to the deed.

When finally her work was done, she slipped noiselessly out and started
towards the levee, pail in hand; but as she approached it she saw moving
shadows.

The Riffraffs were working at the guns. Seeing her project impossible,
she sat down in a dark shadow by the roadside--studied the moving
figures--listened to the guns which came nearer as the hours passed.

It was long after midnight; accelerated firing was proclaiming a crisis
in the battle, when, suddenly, there came the rattle of approaching
wheels accompanied by a noisy rabble. Then a woman screamed.

Captain Doc was coming with a wagon-load of ammunition. The guns were to
be loaded.

The moon, a faint waning crescent, faded to a filmy line as a pillar of
fire, rising against the sky northward towards the city, exceeded the
glare of the battle below.

The darkness was quite lifted now, up and down the levee, and Idyl,
standing in the shadow, could see groups of people weeping, wringing
their hands, as Captain Doc, pompon triumphant, came in sight galloping
down the road.

In a second more he would pass the spot where she stood--stood unseen,
seeing the sorrow of the people, heeding the challenge of the guns. The
wagon was at hand.

With a faint, childish scream, raising her thin arms heavenward, she
plunged forward and fell headlong in its path.

The victory was hers.

The tinselled captain was now tender surgeon, doctor, friend.

In his own arms he raised the limp little form from beneath the wheel,
while the shabby gray coats of a dozen "Riffraffs," laid over the
cannon-balls in the wagon, made her a hero's bed; and Captain Doc,
seizing the reins, turned the horses cautiously, and drove in haste back
to his drug-store.

Farragut's fleet and "the honor of the Riffraffs" were forgotten in the
presence of this frail embodiment of death.

Upon his own bed beside an open window he laid her, and while his eager
company became surgeon's assistants, he tenderly bound her wounds.

For several hours she lay in a stupor, and when she opened her eyes the
captain knelt beside her. Mrs. Magwire stood near, noisily weeping.

"Is it saved?" she asked, when at length she opened her eyes.

Captain Doc, thinking her mind w