l; on their left not a second too many was there for the
people to crowd the doorsteps, fill windows and garden gates, line the
banquettes and silently gather breath and ardor while the escort moved
by, before the moment was come in which to cheer and cheer and cheer, as
with a hundred flashing sabres at shoulder the dismounted,
heavy-knapsacked, camp-worn battery, Kincaid's Battery--you could read
the name on the flag--Kincaid's Battery! came and came and passed. In
Canal street and in St. Charles there showed a fierceness of pain in the
cheers, and the march was by platoons. At the hotel General Brodnax and
staff joined and led it--up St. Charles, around Tivoli Circle, and so at
last into Calliope street.

Meantime far away and sadly belated, with the Valcours cunningly to
blame and their confiding hostesses generously making light of it, up
Love street hurried the Callenders' carriage. Up the way of Love and
athwart the oddest tangle of streets in New Orleans,--Frenchmen and
Casacalvo, Greatmen, History, Victory, Peace, Arts, Poet, Music,
Bagatelle, Craps, and Mysterious--across Elysian Fields not too Elysian,
past the green, high-fenced gardens of Esplanade and Rampart flecked
red-white-and-red with the oleander, the magnolia, and the rose, spun
the wheels, spanked the high-trotters. The sun was high and hot, shadows
were scant and sharp, here a fence and there a wall were as blinding
white as the towering fair-weather clouds, gowns were gauze and the
parasols were six, for up beside the old coachman sat Victorine. She it
was who first saw that Congo Square was empty and then that the crowds
were gone from Canal street. It was she who first suggested Dryads
street for a short cut and at Triton Walk was first to hear, on before,
the music,--ah, those horn-bursting Dutchmen! could they never, never
hit it right?--

"When other lips and other hearts
Their tale of love shall tell--"

and it was she who, as they crossed Calliope street, first espied the
rear of the procession, in column of fours again, it was she who flashed
tears of joy as they whirled into Erato street to overtake the van and
she was first to alight at the station.

The General and his staff were just reaching it. Far down behind them
shone the armed host. The march ceased, the music--"then you'll
rememb'"--broke off short. The column rested. "Mon Dieu!" said even the
Orleans Guards, "quel chaleur! Is it not a terrib', thad sun!" Hundreds
of