But the map--that was something! He had gained this precious knowledge. Only to get away with it, unharmed, unchallenged, unmolested! This was the problem. This was worth coming for. "I'll give you some more active entertainment before long, my fine squires of dames," he apostrophized the strangers triumphantly. Then he experienced a species of rage that they should be so merry--and he, he must not see Leonora's face, must not touch her hand, must not tell her all he felt; this would have been dear to him even if she had not cared to listen. It would have been like the votive offering at a shrine, like a prayer from out the fulness of the heart. There was presently the tinkle of glasses and spoons, intimating the serving of refreshments. "I'd like to see old Uncle Ephraim playing butler. He must step about as gingerly as a gobbler on hot tin," Julius said to himself with a smile. "I'll bet a million of dollars he has saved me my share--on a high shelf in the pantry it is right now, in a covered dish; and if Leonora should come across it, she would think the old man was thieving on his own account. Such are the insincerities of circumstantial evidence!" The genial hubbub in the parlors below was resumed after the decorous service of salad and sherbet, and became even more animated when Colonel Ashley chanced to call to see Baynell on a matter affecting their respective commands. He had of course no idea that he would find Baynell engaged with the Sewing-Society, but he met Miss Fisher on her own ground, as it were, and there ensued an encounter of wits, a gay joust, neither being more sincere than the other, nor with any _arrière pensée_ of irritable feeling to treat a feint as a threat or to cause a thrust to rankle. Seymour did not welcome him. The prig, Baynell, as he regarded the captain, was so null, so stiffly inexpressive, that his presence had sunk out of account, and the young lieutenant felt that he could rely to a degree on the quiet kindness of the mature dames at work. They did not laugh at his sewing over much, although they noted with secret amusement that, being of the ambitious temper which cannot endure to be found lacking, he had bent his whole energies to the endeavor, and had sewed, indeed, as well as it was possible for a lieutenant of infantry to do on a first lesson. He had a sort of pride in his performance as he handed it up to Miss Fisher, and she showed it to Ashley with an air of pronounced amaze. "A well-conducted Rebel," she said at last, solemnly, "grounded in the proper conviction as to the ordinance of secession and the doctrine of States' Rights, would go into strong convulsions if he should have to bathe with that towel in a hospital. That wavering hem is an epitome of all the Yankee crooks, and quirks, and skips, and evasions, and concealments of the straight path that typifies right and justice, and Mason and Dixon's line! Therefore out it comes!"