"You had better stop pushing me to the wall," he said, and this was literal, for he gave back step by step at each feint of the needle; "you had better be looking out for Captain Baynell. He might have an attack of conscience at any moment, and have all the fruits of your industry seized and confiscated as contraband of war. You must remember he had Mrs. Gwynn's horse impressed." Baynell was rigid with an intense displeasure. Twice he was about to speak--twice, mindful of the presence of ladies, he hesitated. Then he said, quite casually, though visibly with a heedful self-control:-- "That was because of an order, calling for all citizens' horses in this district for cavalry." "With which _you_ had as much to do as last year's snow. Just see, Miss Fisher,"--Seymour waved his hand toward the piles of clothing,--"'all the coats and garments that Dorcas made'; for Captain Baynell might report that they are intended to give aid and comfort to the enemy!--to be smuggled out of the lines! He has a dangerous conscience!" There was a sudden agitated flutter in the coterie. The beautiful aged countenance of Mrs. Clinton was overcast with a sort of tremor of fright. A sense of discovery, as of a moral paralysis, pervaded the atmosphere. A long significant pause ensued. Then with the intimations of a stanch reserve of resolution,--a sort of "die in the last ditch" spirit,--those more efficient members of the association, middle-aged, competent, experienced matrons, recovered their dignified equanimity and went on with the examining and counting of the results of the day's work and the contributions from without,--Mrs. Fisher, the acting secretary, receiving the reports of the conferring squads and jotting the enumeration down during the sorting and folding of the completed product. Baynell, apparently losing self-control, had started angrily forward. Ashley, grave, perturbed, had changed color--even he was at a loss. One might not say what a moment so charged with angry potentialities might bring forth. But nothing, no collocation of invented circumstances seemed capable of baffling Miss Fisher. She was equal to any emergency. She had snatched the towel from the lieutenant's hand, and, flying to meet Baynell, her smiling face incongruous with a serious, steady light in her eyes, she stopped him midway the room. "Now do me the favor to look at that," she cried gayly, presenting the hem for inspection; "wouldn't you despise an enemy who could take aid and comfort from such a hem as that?" "A good soldier should never despise the enemy," replied Baynell, seeking to adopt her mood and repeating the truism with an air of banter. "Well, then, to fit the phrase to your precision, such an enemy would deserve to be despised! What--going--Mrs. Clinton? It _is_ getting late."