He had risen amazed.  Whence such sudden horror, in this fair girl, of a thing known by her already before he came?  And what was this beside?  Horror in the voice yet love beaming from the eyes?  He was torn with perplexity.  “I’ll go, of course,” he said as if in a dream.  “Of course I’ll go at once, but—­why—­if Miss Flora already—?” Then suddenly he recovered himself in the way Anna knew so well.  “Miss Anna”—­he gestured with his cap, his eyes kindling with a strange mixture of worship and drollery though his brow grew darker—­“I’m gone now!”

“In mercy, please go!”

“I’m gone, Miss Anna, I’m truly gone.  I always am when I’m with you.  Fred said it would be so.  You scare the nonsense out of me, and when that goes I go—­the bubble bursts!  Miss Anna—­oh, hear me—­it’s my last chance—­I’ll vanish in a moment.  The fellows tell me I always know just what to say to any lady or to anything a lady says; but, on my soul, I don’t think I’ve ever once known what to say to you or to anything you’ve ever said to me, and I don’t know now, except that I must and will tell you—­”

“That you did not order the torch set!  Oh, say that!”

“No one ordered it.  It was a senseless mistake.  Some private soldiers who knew that my lines of survey passed through the house—­”

“Ah-h! ah-h!”

“Miss Anna, what would you have?  Such is war!  Many’s the Southern home must go down under the fire of—­of Kincaid’s Battery, Miss Anna, before this war is over, else we might as well bring you back your flag and guns.  Shall we?  We can’t now, they’re ordered to the front.  There!  I’ve got it out!  That’s my good news.  Bad enough for mothers and sisters.  Bad for the sister of Charlie Valcour.  Good for you.  So good and bad in one for me, and so hard to tell and say no more!  Don’t you know why?”

“Oh, I’ve no right to know—­and you’ve no right—­oh, indeed, you mustn’t.  It would be so unfair—­to you.  I can’t tell you why, but it—­it would be!”

“And it wouldn’t be of—?”

“Any use?  No, no!”

Torturing mystery! that with such words of doom she should yet blush piteously, beam passionately.

“Good-by, then.  I go.  But I go—­under your flag, don’t I?  Under your flag! captain of your guns!”

“Ah—­one word—­wait!  Oh, Captain Kincaid, right is right!  Not half those guns are mine.  That flag is not mine.”

There was no quick reply.  From her concealment Flora, sinking noiselessly again to the carpet, harkened without avail.  The soldier—­so newly and poignantly hurt that twice when he took breath he failed to speak—­gazed on the disclaiming girl until for; very distress she broke the silence:  “I—­you—­every flag of our cause—­wherever our brave soldiers—­”

“Oh, but Kincaid’s Battery!—­and that flag, Anna Callender!  The flag you gave us!  That sacred banner starts for Virginia to-morrow—­goes into the war, it and your guns, with only this poor beggar and his boys to win it honor and glory.  Will you deny us—­who had it from your hands—­your leave to call it yours?  Oh, no, no!  To me—­to me you will not!”