father loved.  Mrs. Colfax chose to keep her room, for which the two were silently thankful.  Jackson announced supper.  The Colonel was humming a tune as he went down the stairs, but Virginia was not deceived.  He would not see the yearning in her eyes as he took his chair; he would not glance at Captain Lige’s empty seat.  It was because he did not dare.  She caught her breath when she saw that the food on his plate lay untouched.

“Pa, are you ill?” she faltered.

He pushed his chair away, such suffering in his look as she had never seen.

“Jinny,” he said, “I reckon Lige is for the Yankees.”

“I have known it all along,” she said, but faintly.

“Did he tell you?” her father demanded.  “No.”

“My God,” cried the Colonel, in agony, “to think that he kept it from me I to think that Lige kept it from me!”

“It is because he loves you, Pa,” answered the girl, gently, “it is because he loves us.”

He said nothing to that.  Virginia got up, and went softly around the table.  She leaned over his shoulder.  “Pa!”

“Yes,” he said, his voice lifeless.

But her courage was not to be lightly shaken.  “Pa, will you forbid him to come here—­now?”

A long while she waited for his answer, while the big clock ticked out the slow seconds in the hall, and her heart beat wildly.

“No,” said the Colonel.  “As long as I have a roof, Lige may come under it.”

He rose abruptly and seized his bat.  She did not ask him where he was going, but ordered Jackson to keep the supper warm, and went into the drawing-room.  The lights were out, then, but the great piano that was her mother’s lay open.  Her fingers fell upon the keys.  That wondrous hymn which Judge Whipple loved, which for years has been the comfort of those in distress, floated softly with the night air out of the open window.  It was “Lead, Kindly Light.”  Colonel Carvel heard it, and paused.

Shall we follow him?

He did not stop again until he reached the narrow street at the top of the levee bank, where the quaint stone houses of the old French residents were being loaded with wares.  He took a few steps back-up the hill.  Then he wheeled about, walked swiftly down the levee, and on to the landing-stage beside which the big ‘Juanita’ loomed in the night.  On her bows was set, fantastically, a yellow street-car.

The Colonel stopped mechanically.  Its unexpected appearance there had served to break the current of his meditations.  He stood staring at it, while the roustabouts passed and repassed, noisily carrying great logs of wood on shoulders padded by their woollen caps.

“That’ll be the first street-car used in the city of New Orleans, if it ever gets there, Colonel.”

The Colonel jumped.  Captain Lige was standing beside him.

“Lige, is that you?  We waited supper for you.”

“Reckon I’ll have to stay here and boss the cargo all night.  Want to get in as many trips as I can before—­navigation closes,” the Captain concluded significantly.