Kincaid's Battery

irmish and while she yielded Greenleaf her

dreamy softness of sweeping lashes. As she laughed with the General her student noted further what seemed to him a rare silkiness in the tresses, a vapory lightness in the short

, and between upper and under lashes as he glimpsed them in profile while she turned to Mandeville. And now, unless his own insight misled him, he observed how unlike those eyes, and yet how subtly mated with the

h and a woman's

as the eyes, showed--showed him at least--steadfastness of purpose, while the eye

General and Mandeville entered

way and the common road still ran side by side, but the river veered a mile off. So Mandeville pointed out to the two ladies as they, he, and the General drove up to the spot with Kincaid and Greenleaf as outriders.

enever she smiled. It did so now, in the shelter of her diminutive sunshade opened flat against its jointed handle to fend off the strong afternoon beams, while she explained to Greenleaf--dismou

tedly at Greenleaf, "is Lieutenant Mandeville's cousin, you

closed to mere chinks. What had been told was t

have divulge' him that, and he seem' al

replied, while Greenleaf asked, "Does the Lieutenant's g

at concession," the lady said, turning her piquant wrinkles this time upon Mandeville. But just here the General engrossed attention. His voice had

s this the Lalla Rookh's land it is!" He smiled at himself and confessed that Carr

a bower of

, and a tender sight--Ocean silvering to brown-haired Cynthia--were the two, as he so innocently

roses and hear t

to make Hilary sing that

g it yet?" aske

und him addicted to comic s

self nonsensical from birth and destined to die so. It was a merry moment, so merry that Kincaid's bare mention of Mandeville as Mandy made even the General smile and every one else laugh. The Creole, to whom any mention of himself, (whether it called for gratitude or for pistols and coffee,) was always welcome, laughed longest. If he was Mandy, he hurried to rejoin, the absent Constance "muz be

ilary he would be Dandy, bic-au

nephew, but finding him engaged with Anna, faced round to

d his friend, "he's tagged it

, it serves you righ

to the skies, t

here he broke into lordly mirth: "Don't you believe that of him, ladies, at

glance cityward they espied a broad dust-cloud floating off toward the river. He

once the whole six-gun battery--six horses to each piece and six to each caisson--captain, buglers, guidon, lieutenants, sergeants and drivers in the saddle, cannoneers on the chests--swept at full trot, thumping, swaying, and rebound

he train meanwhile whooping on toward Carrollton. And what an elated flock of brightly dressed citizens and citizenesses had alighted from the cars--many of them on the moment's impulse--to

ave noticed three with whom this carriage group exchanged signals. Kincaid spurred off to meet them whi

lora and Charlie Valcour!" as if that