So he went, driving to the railroad in an ambulance, while Lillie looked after him with tearful eyes, and waved her handkerchief and kissed her hand till he was out of sight. At first she decided that she would remain at Thibodeaux and think of her husband in every room of the house, and every walk of the garden; but after two days she found herself so miserably lonesome that she shut up the cottage, went to New Orleans and threw herself upon her father for consolation. Having told so much in anticipation we will go back to the Colonel. The two hundred dollars which he left with his wife had been borrowed from the willing Colburne. Carter had no pay due him as he had hinted, but he hoped to obtain a month's advance from a paymaster, or, failing in that, to borrow from some one, say the commanding general. In fact, one hundred and fifty dollars, abstracted from Government funds, I fear, were furnished him by a neglected quartermaster, who likewise wanted promotion and was willing to run this risk for the sake of securing the benign influences of Carter's future star. With this friend in need the Colonel took the first glass of plain whiskey which he had swallowed in three months. To this followed other glasses, proffered by other friends, whose importunity he could not now resist, although yesterday he had repulsed them with ease. Every brother colonel, every appreciating brigadier, seemed possessed of Satan to lead him to a bar or to his own quarters and there to toast his health, or his luck, or his star. It was "Here's how!" and "Here's towards you!" from ten o'clock in the morning when he got his money, until four in the afternoon when he sprang on board the Creole just as she loosed her moorings from the shaky posts of the tattered wooden wharf. Being in that state of exhilaration which enabled Tam O'Shanter to gaze on the witches of Alloway kirk-yard without flinching, the Colonel was neither astonished nor alarmed at encountering on the quarter-deck the calm, beautiful, dangerous eyes of Madame Larue. The day before he would have been almost willing to lose the steamer rather than travel with her. Now, in the fearlessness of plain whiskey, he shook both her hands with impetuous warmth and said, "'Pon honor, Mrs. Larue, perfectly delighted to see you." "And so am I delighted," she answered with a flash of unfeigned pleasure in her eyes, which might have alarmed the Carter of yesterday but which gratified the Carter of to-day. "Now I shall have a cavalier," she continued, allowing him to pull her down on a seat by his side. "Now I shall have a protector and adviser. I have had such need of one. Did you know that I was going on this boat? I am so flattered if you meant to accompany me! I am going north to invest my little property. I still fear that it is not safe here. No one knows what may happen here. As soon as I could sell for a convenable sum, I resolved to go north. I shall expect you to be my counsellor how to invest."