“Isn’t it lovely?  We shall have a nobler capital city than Washington, with its horrid red streets, its wilderness of bare squares, its interminable distances—­”

“Carcassonne,” Jack murmured.

“Carcassonne—­what’s that?”

“An exquisite bit of verse and a touching story.  I——­”

“There, there—­stop.  You are talking again.  You shall read the poem to me—­that is, if it isn’t a glorification of the North.”

“No; Carcassonne was a city of the South.”

“Really—­you must not talk.  I’m not going to open my lips again until we get to the boat.”

She settled back in her place and took out a book, looking over the top at him from time to time.  The motion of the vehicle, the warmth of the day, and the odorous breath of flowers and shrubs gradually dulled his mischievous spirits, and he slept tranquilly until the carriage drew up at the wharf at Harrison’s Landing, whence, taken on a primitive ferry, they in an hour or more arrived at a long wooden pier extending into the river.  It was nearly six o’clock when the carriage entered a solemn aisle of pines ending in a labyrinth of oleanders and the tropic-like plants of the South.  Then an old-fashioned porticoed mansion came into view, and on signal from the driver a posse of colored servants came trooping out noisily to carry the invalid in.  Mrs. Atterbury was on the veranda, and stepped down to the carriage to welcome the guest.  She greeted him with the affectionate cordiality of a mother, and asked: 

“How have you borne the fatigue?  I hope Rosa hasn’t let you talk?”

“If I may speak now it will be to bear testimony that I have been made a mummy since noon.  I haven’t been permitted to ask the local habitation or name of the scenic delights that have made the journey a panorama of beauty and my guide a tyrant, to whom, by comparison, Caligula was a tender master!”

“Since you slept most of the way you must have dreamed the beauty, as you certainly have invented the tyrant,” Rosa retorted, as the brawny servants lifted Jack bodily and carried him up the three steps and into the sitting-room.

“Your quarters are next to my son’s, if you think you can endure the constant outbreaks of that locality.  We are with him in all but his sleeping hours, so you will do well to reflect before you decide.”

“Oh, I shall insist on being near Vincent.  He’s too badly hurt to overcome me in case we are tempted to fight our battles over again.”

“But he has allies here, sir, and you must remember that you are a prisoner of war,” Rosa cried from the landing above, en route to minister to her hero before the Yankee invaded him.  Vincent was propped up in the bed with a mass of pillows, and the two friends embraced in college-boy fashion, too much moved for a moment to begin the flood of questions each was eager to ask and answer.

“Before I say a word of anything else, Vint, I want you to do me a great service.  It is two weeks since the battle.  I am sure my mother can not have any certain information about me.  Can you manage any way to get a letter or telegram sent her?”