Barbara esteemed it a very charming symptom; and as the Captain, with his one unwounded arm, tried rather awkwardly to put the flower in the buttonhole of his waistcoat, she stepped up with a "Let me aid you"; and, taking from her own dress a pin, fastened the rose nicely as near as she could to the beating heart of the imperilled soldier. Alas! if his thoughts had been put into words, he would have soliloquized, "Look here, Captain, I'm afraid you are deporting yourself very much like a simpleton. Pluck up a spirit, man!" "There! I'm sure 't is very becoming," quoth Barbara, mischievously. "You see how convenient it is to have two hands," returned the Captain. "And your having two hands, Miss Dinwiddie, reminds me that your piano stands open, showing its teeth, as if it, smiling, wanted to say, 'Come, play on me.'" "What a lucky idea!" thought Barbara. "Now I have him, and will hold him. He shall get enough of it. When will pa come, I wonder?--Are you fond of music, Captain Penrose?" "Yes; I used to be a performer before I was disabled." "But your voice is not disabled. You sing?" "A little; but I'm out of practice." "No matter. Come! Here's a martial piece, suitable for the times: 'To Greece we give our shining blades.'" It was one of the Captain's favorites; and as the two voices, resonant and penetrating, rose on the chorus in perfect accord, the singers thought they had never sung so well before, and each attributed it to the excellent time of the other. Nero and another person listened at the aperture of the folding-doors: Nero, who was musical, going through a show of vehement applause, and throwing himself about in a manner that would have made his fortune as an Ethiopian minstrel. Other songs followed in rapid succession; and when the Captain sang "Annie Lawrie," _con espressione_, accompanying himself on the piano with one hand, Barbara exclaimed, with a frank burst of genuine admiration,-- "Oh, but you sang that superbly!" She had quite forgotten her anxiety about her father's return. Then they talked of the popular composers; and from music their conversation glanced on literature; and from literature the Captain ventured on the dangerous ground of politics. "Are you incorrigibly a Rebel?" he asked. Barbara looked down. She feared that any confession of change in her notions would seem too much like insincerity. "Now I'm going to lecture you," he continued. "Are you not rejoiced that Maryland is a Free State? that no longer on this soil a man has power to rob a fellow-man of his labor, and to shoot him down, if he lifts a hand in opposition to brutal oppression? Does not your generous heart tell you that the system under which such injustice is organized is wrong, unchristian, devilish? Are we not well rid of the curse?" Barbara looked up, and responded in a hearty, emphatic _Yes_. "But," she added, "my conversion is recent. And who do you suppose converted me?" "I cannot imagine."