or two hundred thousand. Leaving his superior officer in a state of spasmodic and short-lived courage, he spread his rubber blanket in a shady corner, rolled up his coat for a pillow, laid himself down, and slept till nearly noon. When he awoke, the Doctor was holding an umbrella over him. "I am ever so much obliged to you," said Colburne, sitting up. "Not at all. I was afraid you might get the fever. Our Louisiana sun, you know, doesn't dispense beneficence alone. I saw that it had found you out, and I rushed to the rescue." "Is Mrs. Carter sheltered?" asked the Captain. "She is very comfortably off, considering the circumstances." He was twiddling and twirling his umbrella, as though he had something on his mind. "I want you to do me a favor," he said, after a moment. "I should really like a gun, if it is not too much trouble." The idea of the Doctor, with his fifty-five years, his peaceful habits, and his spectacles, rushing to battle made Colburne smile. Another imaginary picture, the image of Lillie weeping over her father's body, restored his seriousness. "What would Mrs. Carter say to it?" he asked. "I should be obliged if you would not mention it to her," answered the Doctor. "I think the matter can be managed without her knowledge." Accordingly Colburne fitted out this unexpected recruit with a rifle-musket, and showed him how to load it, and how to put on his accoutrements. This done, he reverted to the subject which most interested his mind just at present. "Mrs. Carter must be better sheltered than she is," he said. "In case of an assault, she would be in the way where she is, and, moreover, she might get hit by a chance bullet. I will tell the Major that his Colonel's wife is here, and that he must turn out for her." "Do you think it best?" questioned the Doctor. "Really, I hate to disturb the commandant of the fort." But Colburne did think it best, and Gazaway was not hard to convince. He hated to lose his shelter, poor as it was, but he had a salutary dread of his absent Colonel, and remembering how dubious had been his own record in field service, he thought it wise to secure the favor of Mrs. Carter. Accordingly Lillie, accompanied by Black Julia, moved into the brick building, notwithstanding her late declarations that she liked nothing so well as sleeping in the open air. "Premature old age," laughed Colburne. "Sixty already." "It is the African Dahomey, and not the American, which produces the Amazons," observed the Doctor. "If you don't stop I shall be severe," threatened Lillie. "I have a door now to turn people out of." "Just as though that was a punishment," said Colburne. "I thought out-of-doors was the place to live."