“You would come in,” said Hilary, with a playful wave of the trowel, and turned to his work, singing: 

  “When I hands in my checks—­”

Flora ran and clung tenderly to his arm, but with a distressed smile he clasped her wrists in one hand and gently forced her back again while she asked in burning undertone, “And you ’ave run that h-awful risk for me? for me?  But, why? why? why?”

“Oh!” he laughingly said, and at the wall once more waved the ringing trowel, “instinct, I reckon; ordinary manhood—­to womanhood.  If you had recognized me in that rig—­”

“And I would!  In any rigue thiz heart would reco’nize you!”

“Then you would have had to betray me or else go, yourself, to Ship Island”

“H-o-oh!  I would have gone!”

“That’s what I feared,” said Hilary, though while he spoke she fiercely felt that she certainly would have betrayed him; not for horror of Ship Island but because now, after this, no Anna Callender nor all the world conspired should have him from her alive.

He lifted his tool for silence, and fresh anger wrung her soul to see joy mount in his eyes as from somewhere below the old coachman sang: 

  “When I hands in my checks, O, my ladies!”

Yet she showed elation:  “That means Anna and Victorine they have pazz’ to the boat?”

With merry nods and airy wavings of affirmation he sang back, rang back: 

  “Mighty little I espec’s, O, my ladies! 
    But whaheveh—­”

Suddenly he darkened imperiously and motioned Flora away.  “Now! now’s your time! go! now! this instant go!” he exclaimed, and sang on: 

  “—­I is sent—­”

“Ah!” she cried, “they’ll h-ask me about her!”

“I don’t believe it!” cried he, and sang again: 

  “—­dey mus’ un-deh-stan’—­”

“Yes,” she insisted, “—­muz’ undehstan’, and they will surely h-ask me!”

“Well, let them ask their heads off!  Go! at once! before you’re further implicated!”

“And leave you to—?”

“Oh, doggon me.  The moment that boat’s gun sounds—­if only you’re out o’ the way—­I’ll make a try.  Go! for Heaven’s sake, go!”

Instead, with an agony of fondness, she glided to him.  Distress held him as fast and mute as at the flag presentation.  But when she would have knelt he caught her elbows and held her up by force.

“No,” he moaned, “you shan’t do that.”

She crimsoned and dropped her face between their contending arms while for pure anguish he impetuously added, “Maybe in God’s eyes a woman has this right, I’m not big enough to know; but as I’m made it can’t be done.  I’m a man, no more, no less!”

Her eyes flashed into his:  “You are Hilary Kincaid.  I will stan’!”

“No,”—­he loosed his hold,—­“I’m only Hilary Kincaid and you’ll go—­in mercy to both of us—­in simple good faith to every one we love—­Oh, leave me!” He swung his head in torture:  “I’d sooner be shot for a spy or a coward than be the imbecile this makes me.”  Then all at once he was fierce:  “Go!”