"Dick Smith,"--my questioner worked himself up over the rail and sat out on the shelf that held the bucket of drinking-water and its gourd--"do you imagine she didn't know, when we were talking about that book, that she was arguing against the union of Ned Ferry and Charlotte Oliver? _Didn't_ she do it bravely! Richard, my friend, she couldn't have done it if she had suspected us of suspecting her. It's a bleeding pity! And yet you can't side with her, for I just swear Ned's got to have Charlotte Ol'--what? No, he won't overhear a blank word; here's his window shut, right here. He's got to have her, I say, and he's got to have her just as soon as the two of 'em can stand up together to be sworn in! Don't you say so?" I replied that I was not aware of any one who did not say so. "Well, I can name several! I don't call Scott Gholson anybody, but there's Major Harper--No, I'm not talking too loud, Ned isn't hearing a word. Major Harper's so hot against this thing that he brought it up, with me, yesterday on the battlefield." "Major Harper doesn't really know her," I softly remarked. Harry swore with military energy. "I told him he didn't, and he fairly snorted. _We_ don't know her, he says; you nor I nor his sister nor his niece nor his daughters, oh, we don't know her at all; and neither do we know Ned; Ned has graceful manners, and she's a born actress, and we're simply infatuated by their romantic situation. Good Lordy! he got up on his Charleston pride-of-family like a circus-girl on stilts, and 'Edgard Ferry-Durand has got a great public career before him,' s's he, 'and no true friend will let him think of taking a wife who is all history and no antecedents, a blockade-runner, a spy, and the brand-new widow of a blackguard and a jayhawker she had run away from practically on her wedding-night.' Hy Jo'! the way he went on, you'd 'a' thought he was already Ned's uncle-in-l'--" The speaker's face took a sudden distress--"Great Caesar!" He pointed up to the second-story front room and slipped down from the shelf just as Estelle came out to us with her aunt's message for me to come in. "How's the fair patient?" I hurried to ask as the three of us went. "Why, Mr. Smith, she's actually been sitting up--in the twilight--at the open window--while Aunt Martha and I smoothed up her bed." Harry groaned. "She's still very weak," said Aunt Martha when we came to her; "the moment her bed was made up she asked to lie down again." "Yes," softly exclaimed Camille, "but, oh, aunt Martha, with such courage in those eyes!" "Smith," privately asked the agonized Harry, "what would you do if you were in my place; go and cut your throat from ear to ear?" "No," I said, as black as an executioner, "but I wish you'd done it yesterday." LIII. "CAPTAIN, THEY'VE GOT US"