The Callenders' carriage horses were greatly taxed in their nerves, yet they kept their discretion. Kept it even when now the battery flashed from column into line and bore down upon them, the 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 see these dear lads, with their romantically acquired battery, train for the holiday task of scaring the dastard foe back to their frozen homes! How we loved the moment's impulse those days! What a gay show! And among the very prettiest and most fetchingly arrayed newcomers you would quickly have noticed three with whom this carriage group exchanged signals. Kincaid spurred off to meet them while Greenleaf and Mandeville helped Anna and Miranda to the ground. "There's Constance," said the General. "Yes," Mrs. Callender replied, "and Flora and Charlie Valcour!" as if that were the gleefulest good luck of all. IV MANOEUVRES Captain Irby, strong, shapely, well clad, auburn-haired, left his halted command and came into the carriage group, while from the train approached his cousin and the lithe and picturesque Miss Valcour. The tallish girl always looked her best beside some manly form of unusual stature, and because that form now was Hilary's Irby was aggrieved. All their days his cousin had been getting into his light, and this realization still shaded his brow as Kincaid yielded Flora to him and returned to Anna to talk of things too light for record. Not so light were the thoughts Anna kept unuttered. Here again, she reflected, was he who (according to Greenleaf) had declined to command her guns in order to let Irby have them. Why? In kindness to his cousin, or in mild dislike of a woman's battery? If intuition was worth while, this man was soon to be a captain somewhere. Here was that rare find for which even maidens' eyes were alert those days--a born leader. No ladies' man this--"of all things on God's earth!" A men's man! And yet--nay, _therefore_--a man for some unparagoned woman some day to yield her heart and life to, and to have for her very own, herself his consummate adornment. She cast a glance at Flora. But her next was to him as they talked on. How nearly black was the waving abundance of his hair. How placid his brow, above eyes whose long lashes would have made them meltingly tender had they not been so large with mirth: "A boy's eyes," thought she while he remembered what he had just called hers. She noted his mouth, how gently firm: "A man's mouth!" Charlie Valcour broke in between them: "Is there not going to be any drill, after all?"