It began to rain, but Richling sought no shelter. The men he was in search of were not to be found. But the victorious ships, with bare black arms stretched wide, boarding nettings up, and the dark muzzles of their guns bristling from their sides, came, silently as a nightmare, slowly around the bend at Slaughterhouse Point and moved up the middle of the harbor. At the French market he found himself, without forewarning, witness of a sudden skirmish between some Gascon and Sicilian market-men, who had waved a welcome to the fleet, and some Texan soldiers who resented the treason. The report of a musket rang out, a second and third reechoed it, a pistol cracked, and another, and another; there was a rush for cover; another shot, and another, resounded in the market-house, and presently in the street beyond. Then, in a moment, all was silence and emptiness, into which there ventured but a single stooping, peeping Sicilian, glancing this way and that, with his finger on trigger, eager to kill, gliding from cover to cover, and presently gone again from view, leaving no human life visible nearer than the swarming mob that Richling, by mounting a pile of ship's ballast, could see still on the steam-boat landing, pillaging in the drenching rain, and the long fleet casting anchor before the town in line of battle. Late that afternoon Richling, still wet to the skin, amid pushing and yelling and the piping calls of distracted women and children, and scuffling and cramming in, got Kate Ristofalo, trunks, baskets, and babes, safely off on the cars. And when, one week from that day, the sound of drums, that had been hushed for a while, fell upon his ear again,--no longer the jaunty rataplan of Dixie's drums, but the heavy, monotonous roar of the conqueror's at the head of his dark-blue columns,--Richling could not leave his bed. Dr. Sevier sat by him and bore the sound in silence. As it died away and ceased, Richling said:-- "May I write to Mary?" Then the Doctor had a hard task. "I wrote for her yesterday," he said. "But, Richling, I--don't think she'll get the letter." "Do you think she has already started?" asked the sick man, with glad eagerness. "Richling, I did the best I knew how"-- "Whatever you did was all right, Doctor." "I wrote to her months ago, by the hand of Ristofalo. He knows she got the letter. I'm afraid she's somewhere in the Confederacy, trying to get through. I meant it for the best, my dear boy." "It's all right, Doctor," said the invalid; but the physician could see the cruel fact slowly grind him. "Doctor, may I ask one favor?" "One or a hundred, Richling." "I want you to let Madame Zenobie come and nurse me." "Why, Richling, can't I nurse you well enough?" The Doctor was jealous. "Yes," answered the sick man. "But I'll need a good deal of attention. She wants to do it. She was here yesterday, you knew. She wanted to ask you, but was afraid." His wish was granted. CHAPTER LVII. ALMOST IN SIGHT.