Anna trembled. She could lovingly call the fond schemer, over and over, a brave, rash, generous little heroine and lay caresses on her twice and again, but to know whether this was Heaven's leading was beyond her. She paced the room. She clasped her brow. A full half of her own great purpose (great to her at least) seemed all at once as good as achieved, yet it was but the second half, as useless without the first as half a bridge on the far side of the flood. "I cannot go!" she moaned. For the first half was Hilary, and he--she saw it without asking--was on this cartel of exchange. Gently she came and took her rescuer's hands: "Dear child! If--if while there was yet time--I had only got a certain word to--_him_--you know? But, ah, me! I keep it idle yet; a secret, Victorine, a secret worth our three lives! oh, three times three hundred lives! Even now--" "Give it me, Anna! Give it! Give it me, that sick-rate! I'll take it him!" Anna shook her head: "Ah, if you could--in time! Or even--even without him, letting him go, if just you and I--Come!" They walked to and fro in embrace: "Dear, our front drawing-room, so ruined, you know, by that shell, last year--" "Ah, the front? no! The behine, yes, with those two hole' of the shell and with thad _beegue_ hole in the floor where it cadge fiah." "Victorine, I could go--with you--in that boat, if only I could be for one minute in that old empty front room alone." Victorine halted and sadly tossed a hand: "Ah! h-amptee, yes, both the front and the back--till yes-the-day! This morning, the front, no! Juz' sinze laz' week they 'ave brick' up bitwin them cloze by that burned hole, to make of the front an office, and now the front 't is o'cupy!" "Oh, not as an office, I hope?" "Worse! The worse that can be! They 'ave stop' five prisoner' from the boat and put them yondeh. Since an hour Col-on-el Grinleaf he tol' me that--and she's ad the bottom, that Flora! Bicause--" The speaker gazed. Anna was all joy. "Because what?" demanded Anna, "because Hil--?" "Yaas! bicause he's one of them! Ringgleadeh! I dunno, me, what is that, but tha'z what he's accuse'--ringg-leadingg!" Still the oblivious Anna was glad. "It is Flora's doing," she gratefully cried. "She's done it! done it for us and our cause!" "Ah-h! not if she know herseff!" Anna laughed the discussion down: "Come, dear, come! the whole thing opens to me clear and wide!" Not so clear or wide as she thought. True, the suffering Flora was doing this, in desperate haste; but not for Anna, if she knew herself. Yet when Anna, in equal haste, made a certain minute, lengthy writing and, assisted by that unshaken devotee, her maid, and by Victorine, baked five small cakes most laughably alike (with the writing in ore) and laid them beside some plainer food in a pretty basket, the way still seemed wide enough for patriotism.