rise, Anna lifted a hand
and in a clear, firm tone inquired, "Is there any bad news for us five?"
The youth's tongue failed; he nodded.

"Brodnax's brigade?" she asked. "Our battery?"

"Yes, Monday, just at the last," he murmured.

"Not _taken?_"

"Not a gun!" replied the boy, with a flash. Anna reflected it, but her
tone did not change:

"There are four men, you know, whom we five--"

"Yes."

"Which of them is the bad news about?"

"All four," murmured the youth. His eyes swam. His hat went under the
stump of his lost arm and he proffered the bit of writing. Idlers were
staring. "Take that with you," he said. "They were all four together and
they're only--"

The carriage was turning, but the fair cluster bent keenly toward him.
"Only what?" they cried.

"Missing."

XLV

STEVE--MAXIME--CHARLIE--

There was no real choice. Nothing seemed quite rational but the heaviest
task of all--to wait, and to wait right here at home.

To this queenly city must come first and fullest all news of her own
sons, and here the "five" would not themselves be "missing" should
better tidings--or worse--come seeking them over the wires.

"At the front?" replied Doctor Sevier to Anna, "why, at the front you'll
be kept in the rear, lost in a storm of false rumors."

General Brodnax, in a letter rife with fatherly romantic tenderness and
with splendid praise of Hilary as foremost in the glorious feat which
had saved old "Roaring Betsy" but lost (or mislaid) him and his three
comrades, also bade her wait. Everything, he assured her, that human
sympathy or the art of war--or Beauregard's special orders--could effect
was being done to find the priceless heroes. In the retreat of a great
host--ah, me! retreat was his very word and the host was
Dixie's--retreating after its first battle, and that an awful one, in
deluging rains over frightful roads and brimming streams, unsheltered,
ill fed, with sick and wounded men and reeling vehicles hourly breaking
down, a hovering foe to be fended off, and every dwelling in the land a
hospitable refuge, even captains of artillery or staff might be most
honorably and alarmingly missing yet reappear safe and sound. So, for a
week and more it was sit and wait, pace the floor and wait, wake in the
night and wait; so for Flora as well as for Anna (with a difference),
both of them anxious for Charlie--and Steve--and Maxime, but in anguish
for another.

Then tidings, sure enough! glad t