“You did not keep the money!” exclaimed the two girls in the same breath.

“I do not intend to keep it,” said the lady, quietly, “and shall hand it back to him with suitable acknowledgments.  I only mention the fact to convince Roberta that Captain Lane is not the typical Yankee, and we have much reason to be thankful that men of a different stamp were not quartered upon us.  And yet,” continued the matron, with a deep sigh, “you little know how sorely we need the money.  Your father’s and brothers’ pay is losing its purchasing power.  The people about here all profess to be very hot for the South, but when you come to buy anything from them what they call ’Linkum money’ goes ten times as far.  We have never known anything but profusion, but now we are on the verge of poverty.”

“Oh, well,” said Suwanee, recklessly, “starving isn’t the worst thing that could happen.”

“Alas! my child, you can’t realize what poverty means.  Your heart is as free from care as the birds around us, and, like them, you think you will be provided for.”

The girl sprung up with a ringing laugh, and kissed her mother as she exclaimed, “I’ll cut off my hair, put on one of brother Bob’s old suits, and enlist;” and then she left the room.

At supper there was a constraint on all except Suwanee.  Mrs. Barkdale and Roberta felt themselves to be in an embarrassing position.  The men at the table, who had been guests so long, would be marched away as prisoners from their door in the morning.  The usages of war could not satisfy their womanly and chivalric natures, or make them forget the courtesy and respect which, in spite of prejudices, had won so much good-will.  Lane scarcely sought to disguise his perplexity and distress.  Honest Surgeon McAllister, who knew that they all had been an awful burden, was as troubled as some men are pleased when they get much for nothing.  Suwanee appeared in a somewhat new role.  She was the personification of dignity and courtesy.  She acted as if she knew all and was aware that their guests did.  Therefore levity would be in bad taste, and their only resource was the good breeding which ignores the disagreeable and the inevitable.  Her mother looked on her with pride, and wondered at so fine an exibition of tact.  She did not know that the poor girl had a new teacher, and that she was like an inexorable general who, in a desperate fight, summons all his reserve and puts forth every effort of mind and body.

Lane had not found a chance to say one word to Suwanee in private during the day, but after supper she went to the piano and began to play some Southern airs with variations of her own improvising.  He immediately joined her and said, “We shall not attempt to escape; we are too closely watched.”

She did not reply.