But this was no place for parleying.  So while the man next the hack-driver, ordered by Mandeville and laden with travelling-bags, climbed to a seat by the Callenders’ coachman the aide-de-camp crowded in between Constance and Victorine, the equipage turned from the remaining soldiers, and off the ladies spun for home, Anna and Miranda riding backward to have the returned warrior next his doting wife.  Victorine was dropped on the way at the gate of her cottage.  When the others reached the wide outer stair of their own veranda, and the coachman’s companion had sprung down and opened the carriage, Mandeville was still telling of Mandeville, and no gentle hearer had found any chance to ask further about that missing one of whom the silentest was famishing to know whatever—­good or evil—­there was to tell.  Was Steve avoiding their inquiries? wondered Anna.

Up the steps went first the married pair, the wife lost in the hero, the hero in himself.  Was he, truly? thought Anna, or was he only trying, kindly, to appear so?  The ever-smiling Miranda followed.  A step within the house Mandeville, with eyes absurdly aflame, startled first his wife by clutching her arm, and then Miranda by beckoning them into a door at their right, past unheeded treasures of the Bazaar, and to a front window.  Yet through its blinds they could discover only what they had just left; the carriage, with Anna still in it, the garden, the grove, an armed soldier on guard at the river gate, another at the foot of the steps, a third here at the top.

It was good to Anna to rest her head an instant on the cushioning behind it and close her eyes.  With his rag of a hat on the ground and his head tightly wrapped in the familiar Madras kerchief of the slave deck-hand, the attendant at the carriage side reverently awaited the relifting of her lids.  The old coachman glanced back on her.

“Missy?” he tenderly ventured.  But the lids still drooped, though she rose.

“Watch out fo’ de step,” said the nearer man.  His tone was even more musically gentle than the other’s, yet her eyes instantly opened into his and she started so visibly that her foot half missed and she had to catch his saving hand.

“Stiddy! stiddy!” He slowly let the cold, slim fingers out of his as she started on, but she swayed again and he sprang and retook them.  For half a breath she stared at him like a wild bird shot, glanced at the sentinels, below, above, and then pressed up the stair.

Constance, behind the shutters, wept.  “Go away,” she pleaded to her husband, “oh, go away!” but pushed him without effect and peered down again.  “He’s won!” she exclaimed in soft ecstasy, “he’s won at last!”

“Yes, he’s win!” hoarsely whispered the aide-de-camp.  “He’s win the bet!”

Constance flashed indignantly:  “What has he bet?”

“Bet.  ‘He has bet three-ee general’ he’ll pazz down Canal Street and through the middl’ of the city, unreco’nize!  And now he’s done it, they’ll let him do the rest!” From his Creole eyes the enthusiast blazed a complete argument, that an educated commander, so disguised and traversing an enemy’s camp, can be worth a hundred of the common run who go by the hard name of spy, and may decide the fortunes of a whole campaign:  “They’ll let him! and he’ll get the prom-otion!”