de to hear and asked to buy for the helpless ladies. Yet in this
gentlewomen's war every gentlewoman's wish was a military command, and
when at length one man did hear, to hear was to vanish in the turmoil on
their errand. Now he was back again, with the list, three copies! Oh,
thank you, thank you and thank you!

Away trotted the handsome span while five pairs of beautiful eyes
searched the three printed sheets, that bore--oh, marvellous
fortune!--not one of the four names writ largest in those five hearts.
Let joy be--ah, let joy be very meek while to so many there is
unutterable loss. Yet let it meekly abound for the great loved cause so
splendidly advanced. Miranda pointed Anna to a bit of editorial:

"Monday was a more glorious day than Sunday. We can scarcely forbear to
speculate upon the great results that are to flow from this decisive
victory. An instant pursuit of the flying enemy should--"

Why did the carriage halt at a Gravier Street crossing obliquely
opposite the upper front corner of the St. Charles Hotel? Why did all
the hotel's gold-braided guests and loungers so quietly press out
against its upper balustrades? Why, under its arches, and between
balcony posts along the curbstones clear down to Canal Street, was the
pathetically idle crowd lining up so silently? From that point why, now,
did the faint breeze begin to waft a low roar of drums of such grave
unmartial sort? And why, gradually up the sidewalks' edges in the hot
sun, did every one so solemnly uncover? Small Victorine stood up to see.

At first she made out only that most commonplace spectacle, home guards.
They came marching in platoons, a mere company or two. In the red and
blue of their dress was all the smartness yet of last year, but in their
tread was none of it and even the bristle of their steel had vanished.
Behind majestic brasses and muffled drums grieving out the funeral
march, they stepped with slow precision and with arms reversed. But now
in abrupt contrast there appeared, moving as slowly and precisely after
them, widely apart on either side of the stony way, two single
attenuated files of but four bronzed and shabby gray-jackets each, with
four others in one thin, open rank from file to file in their rear, and
in the midst a hearse and its palled burden. Rise, Anna, Constance,
Miranda--all. Ah, Albert Sidney Johnston! Weep, daughters of a
lion-hearted cause. The eyes of its sons are wet. Yet in your gentle
bosoms keep grea