ce, the new "Confederate
States," a bare fortnight old! Would Virginia come into them?
Eventually, yes.

"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" cried Constance, overhearing. (Whatever did not
begin with oh, those times, began with ah.)

"And _must_ war follow?" The question was Anna's again, and Hilary sat
down closer to answer confidentially:

"Yes, the war was already a fact."

"And might not the Abolitionists send their ships and soldiers against
New Orleans?"

"Yes, the case was supposable."

"And might not Jackson's battlefield of 1815, in close view from these
windows, become a new one?"

To avoid confessing that old battlefields have that tendency the Captain
rose and took up a guitar; but when he would have laid it on her knee
she pushed it away and asked the song of him; asked with something
intimate in her smiling undertone that thrilled him, yet on the next
instant seemed pure dream stuff. The others broke in and Constance
begged a song of the new patriotism; but Miranda, the pretty stepmother,
spoke rather for something a thousand miles and months away from the
troubles and heroics of the hour; and when Anna seconded this motion by
one fugitive glance worth all their beseechings Hilary, as he stood,
gayly threw open his smart jacket lest his brass buttons mar the
instrument, and sang with a sudden fervor that startled and delighted
all the group:

"Drink to me only with thine eyes."

In the midst of which Constance lifted a knowing look across to Miranda,
and Miranda sent it back.

There was never an evening that did not have to end, and at last the
gentlemen began to make a show of leaving. But then came a lively chat,
all standing in a bunch. To-morrow's procession, the visitors said,
would form in Canal Street, move up St. Charles, return down Camp Street
into Canal, pass through it into Rampart, take the Bayou Road and march
to a grand review away out in the new camp of instruction at the Creole
Race-Course. Intermediately, from a certain Canal Street balcony, Flora
would present the flag! the gorgeous golden, silken, satin battle
standard which the Callenders and others had helped her to make. So
--good-night--good-night.

The last parting was with Mandeville, at the levee-road gate, just below
which he lived in what, during the indigo-planter's life, had been the
overseer's cottage. At a fine stride our artillerist started townward,
his horse being stabled near by in that direction. But presently he
ha