"I don't know why I should have," she replied, "until I know that you are not going to harm my people. But I have no very bad wishes." "Thank you for that," he said with a more serious air than usual. "I do sincerely desire that your feelings were such as that I could consider myself to be fighting your cause. Perhaps you will find before we get through that I am fighting it. If we should go to New Orleans--which is among the possibilities--it may be the means of restoring you to your home." "Oh! I should thank you for that--almost. I should be tempted to feel that the end justified the means." "Let me hope that I shall meet you there, or somewhere, soon," he added, rising. His manner was certainly more earnest and impressive than it had ever been before in addressing her. The tremor of her hand was perceptible to the strong steady hand which took it, and her eyes dropped under the firm gaze which met them, and which for the first time, she thought, had an expression deeply significant to her. "If she turns out to have any prospects"--thought the Colonel as he went down stairs. "If they ever get back their southern property"-- He left the sentence unfinished on the writing tablets of his soul, to light a segar. His impulses and passions were strong when once aroused, but on this subject they had only begun to awaken. CHAPTER IX. FROM NEW BOSTON TO NEW ORLEANS, VIA FORT JACKSON. "By" (this and that)! swore Colonel Carter to himself when, twenty-four hours out from Sandy Hook, he opened his sealed orders in the privacy of his state-room. "Butler has got an expedition to himself. We are in for a round of Big Bethels as sure as" (this and that and the other.) I wish it to be understood that I do not endorse the above criticism on the celebrated proconsul of Louisiana. I am not sketching the life of General Butler, but of Colonel Carter--I am not trying to show how things really were, but only how the Colonel looked at them. Carter opened the door and looked into the cabin. There stood a particularly clean soldier of the Tenth, his uniform carefully brushed, his shoes, belts, cartridge-box and cap-pouch blacked, his buttons and brasses shining like morning suns, white cotton gloves on his hands, and his bayonet in its scabbard, but without a musket. Being the neatest man of all those detailed for guard that morning, he had been selected by the Adjutant as the Colonel's orderly. He saluted his commander by carrying his right hand open to his fore-piece, then well out to the right, then dropping it with the little finger against the seam of his trousers, meanwhile standing bolt upright with his heels well together. The Colonel surveyed him from top to toe with a look of approbation. "Very well, orderly," said he. "Very clean and soldierly. Been in the old army, I see." Here he gratified himself with another full-length inspection of this statue of neatness and speechless respect.