It was while they so waited that Kincaid’s Battery learned of the destruction, by fire, of Callender House, but took comfort in agreeing that now, at last, come or fail what might, the three sweetest women that ever lived would live up-town.

One lovely May morning a Federal despatch-boat—­yes, the one we know—­sped down Mobile Bay with many gray-uniformed men aboard, mostly of the ranks and unaccoutred, but some of them officers still belted for their unsurrendered swords.  Many lads showed the red artillery trim and wore jauntily on their battered caps K.B. separated by crossed cannon.  “Roaring Betsy” had howled her last forever.  Her sergeant, Valcour, was there, with his small fond bride, both equally unruffled by any misgiving that they would not pull through this still inviting world happily.

Mandeville was present, his gilt braid a trifle more gilt than any one else’s.  Constance and little Steve—­who later became president of the Cotton Exchange—­were with him.  Also Miranda.  Out forward yonder on the upper deck, beside tall Hilary Kincaid, stood Anna.  Greenleaf eyed them from the pilot-house, where he had retired to withhold the awkward reminder inseparable from his blue livery.  In Hilary’s fingers was a writing which he and Anna had just read together.  In reference to it he was saying that while the South had fallen to the bottom depths of poverty the North had been growing rich, and that New Orleans, for instance, was chock full of Yankees—­oh, yes, I’m afraid that’s what he called them—­Yankees, with greenbacks in every pocket, eager to set up any gray soldier who knew how to make, be or do anything mutually profitable.  Moved by Fred Greenleaf, who could furnish funds but preferred, himself, never to be anything but a soldier, the enterprising husband of the once deported but now ever so happily married schoolmistress who—­

“Yes, I know,” said Anna—­

Well, for a trifle, at its confiscation sale, this man had bought Kincaid’s Foundry, which now stood waiting for Hilary to manage, control and in the end recover to his exclusive ownership on the way to larger things.  What gave the subject an intense tenderness of unsordid interest was that it meant for the pair—­what so many thousands of paroled heroes and the women they loved and who loved them were hourly finding out —­that they were not such beggars, after all, but they might even there and then name their wedding day, which then and there they named.

“Let Adolphe and Flora keep the old estate and be as happy on it, and in it, as Heaven will let them; they’ve got each other to be happy with.  The world still wants cotton, and if they’ll stand for the old South’s cotton we’ll stand for a new South and iron; iron and a new South, Nan, my Nannie; a new and better South and even a new and better New Orl—­see where we are!  Right yonder the Tennessee—­”

“Yes,” interrupted Anna, “let’s put that behind us—­henceforth, as the boat is doing now.”