ried boys and men selling
miniature flags, red-white-and-blue rosettes, and tricoloured
cockades; and everybody was purchasing the national colours--the
passing crowd had already become bright with badges; the Union
colours floated in streamers from the throats or sleeves of pretty
girls, glinted in the lapels of dignified old gentlemen, decorated
the hats of the stage-drivers and the blinders of their horses.

"Certainly," said Berkley, buying a badge and pinning it in his
button-hole. "Being a hero, I require the trade-mark. Kindly
permit that I offer a suggestion--" a number of people waiting to
buy badges; were now listening to him--"those gentlemen gathered
there in front of the New York Hotel seem to be without these marks
which distinguish heroes from citizens. No doubt they'll be
delighted to avail themselves of your offered cockades."

A quick laugh broke out from those around, but there was an
undertone of menace in it, because the undecorated gentlemen in
front of the New York Hotel were probably Southerners, and
Secessionists in principles; that hostelry being the rendezvous in
New York of everything Southern.

So, having bestowed his mischievous advice, Berkley strolled on
down Broadway, his destination being the offices of Craig and Son,
City and Country Real Estate, where he had a desk to himself, a
client or two in prospect, and considerable leisure to study the
street, gas, and sewer maps of New York City.

Tiring of this distraction, he was always at liberty to twiddle his
thumbs, twirl his pencil, yawn, blink, and look out of the window
at the City Park across the way, where excited citizens maintained
a steady yelling monotone before the neighbouring newspaper offices
all day long.

He was also free to reflect upon his own personal shortcomings, a
speculation perhaps less damaging than the recent one he had
indulged in; and he thought about it sometimes; and sometimes about
Ailsa Paige, whom he had not again seen since the unaccountable
madness had driven him to trample and destroy the first real
inclination he had ever had for a woman.

This inclination he occasionally found leisure to analyse, but, not
understanding it, never got very far, except that, superficially,
it had been more or less physical. From the moment he saw her he
was conscious that she was different; insensibly the exquisitely
volatile charm of her enveloped him, and he betrayed it, awaking
her, first, to uneasy self-