hysician, the ladies saw why this
great Memphis-Chattanooga fighting line was, not alone pictorially, but
practically, right at hand! barely beyond sight and hearing or the feel
of its tremor; a veritable back garden wall to them and their beloved
city; as close as forts Jackson and St. Philip, her front gate. Yes,
and--Anna ventured to point out and the Doctor grudgingly admitted--if
the brave gray hosts along that back wall should ever--could ever--be
borne back so far southward, westward, the last line would have to run
from one to another of the Crescent City's back doorsteps and doors;
from Vicksburg, that is, eastward through Jackson, Mississippi's
capital, cross the state's two north-and-south railways, and swing down
through Alabama to Mobile on the Gulf. This, she silently perceived, was
why the letter and the Doctor quite agreed that Connie, Miranda, and she
ought to find their haven somewhere within the dim region between New
Orleans and those three small satellite cities; not near any two
railways, yet close enough to a single one for them to get news, public
or personal, in time to act on it.

At leave-taking came the guest's general summing up of fears and faiths.
All his hope for New Orleans, he said, was in the forts down at the
Passes. Should they fall the city could not stand. But amid their
illimitable sea marshes and their impenetrable swamp forests, chin-deep
in the floods of broken levees, he truly believed, they would hold out.
Let them do so only till the first hot breath of real Delta summer
should bring typhoid, breakbone, yellow, and swamp fevers, the last by
all odds the worst, and Butler's unacclimated troops would have to
reembark for home pell-mell or die on Ship Island like poisoned fish. So
much for the front gate. For the back gate, Corinth, which just now
seemed--the speaker harkened.

"Seemed," he resumed, "so much more like the front--listen!" There came
a far, childish call.

"An extra," laughed Constance. "Steve says we issue one every time he
brushes his uniform."

"But, Con," argued Anna, "an extra on Sunday evening, brought away down
here--" The call piped nearer.

"Victory!" echoed Constance. "I heard it as pl'--"

"Beauregard! Tennessee!" exclaimed both sisters. They flew to the
veranda, the other two following. Down in the gate could be seen the old
coachman, already waiting to buy the paper. Constance called to him
their warm approval. "I thought," murmured Miranda, "