"Ah--one word--wait! Oh, Captain Kincaid, right is right! Not half those guns are mine. That flag is not mine." There was no quick reply. From her concealment Flora, sinking noiselessly again to the carpet, harkened without avail. The soldier--so newly and poignantly hurt that twice when he took breath he failed to speak--gazed on the disclaiming girl until for; very distress she broke the silence: "I--you--every flag of our cause--wherever our brave soldiers--" "Oh, but Kincaid's Battery!--and _that_ flag, Anna Callender! The flag you gave us! That sacred banner starts for Virginia to-morrow--goes into the war, it and your guns, with only this poor beggar and his boys to win it honor and glory. Will you deny us--who had it from your hands--your leave to call it yours? Oh, no, no! To me--to me you will not!" For reply there came a light in Anna's face that shone into his heart and was meant so to shine, yet her dissent was prompt: "I must. I must. Oh, Capt--Captain Kincaid, I love that flag too well to let it go misnamed. It's the flag of all of us who made it, us hundred girls--" "Hundred--yes, yes, true. But how? This very morning I chanced upon your secret--through little Victorine--that every stitch in all that flag's embroideries is yours." "Yet, Captain Kincaid, it is the flag of all those hundred girls; and if to any one marching under it it is to be the flag of any one of us singly, that one can only be--you know!" Majestically in her hiding-place the one implied lowered and lifted her head in frigid scorn and awaited the commander's answer. "True again," he said, "true. Let the flag of my hundred boys be to all and each the flag of a hundred girls. Yet will it be also the flag of his heart's one choice--sister, wife, or sweetheart--to every man marching, fighting, or dying under it--and more are going to die under it than are ever coming back. To me, oh, to me, let it be yours. My tasks have spared me no time to earn of you what would be dearer than life, and all one with duty and honor. May I touch your hand? Oh, just to say good-by. But if ever I return--no, have no fear, I'll not say it now. Only--only--" he lifted the hand to his lips--"good-by. God's smile be on you in all that is to come." "Good-by," came her answering murmur. "And the flag?" he exclaimed. "The flag?" By the clink of his sabre Flora knew he was backing away. "Tell me--me alone--the word to perish with me if I perish--that to me as if alone"--the clinking came nearer again--"to me and for me and with your blessing"--again the sound drew away--"the flag--the flag I must court death under--is yours."