"I may be all wrong," he admitted with a considerable effusion of swearing. "If the war spins out it may prove me all wrong. A downright slaughtering match of three or four years will force one party or other to call in the nigger. But I can't come to it yet. I despise the low brute. I hate to see him in uniform. And then he never will be used for the higher military operations. If you take a command of niggers, you will find yourself put into Fort Pike or some such place, among the mosquitoes and fever and ague, where white men can't live. Or your regiment will be made road-builders, and scavengers, and baggage guards, to do the dirty work of white regiments. You never will form a line of battle, nor head a storming column, nor get any credit if you do. And finally, just look at the military position of these Louisiana black regiments. They are not acknowledged by the government yet; they are not a part of the army. They are only Louisiana militia, called out by General Butler on his own responsibility. Suppose the War Department shouldn't approve his policy;--then down goes your house. You have resigned your captaincy to get a sham colonelcy; and there you are, out of the service, with a bran-new uniform. Stay in the regiment. You shall have, by" (this and that!) "the first vacancy in the field positions." In fact it was an _esprit du corps_ which more than anything else induced Colburne to cling to the Tenth Barataria. A volunteer, a citizen soldier, new to the ways of armies, he longed to do his fighting under his own State flag, and at the head of the men whom he had himself raised and drilled for the battle-field. About these times Colonel Carter broke up that more than questionable domestic establishment which Lieutenant Van Zandt had alluded to under the humorous misnomer of "a little French _boudoir_." Whether this step was taken by the advice of Mrs. Larue, or solely because the Colonel had found some source of truer enjoyment, I am unable to say; but it is certain, and it is also a very natural human circumstance, that from this day his admiration for Miss Ravenel burgeoned rapidly into the condition of a passion. CHAPTER XIV. LILLIE CHOOSES FOR HERSELF.