Once more the Carrollton Gardens.

Again the afternoon hour, the white shell-paved court, its two playing fountains, the roses, lilies, jasmines and violets, their perfume spicing all the air, and the oriole and mocking-bird enrapturing¹ it with their songs, although it was that same dire² twenty-fourth of April of which we have been telling. Townward across the wide plain the distant smoke of suicidal conflagration³ studded the whole great double crescent of the harbor. Again the slim railway, its frequent small trains from the city clanging round the flowery miles of its half-circle, again the highway on either side the track, and again on the highway, just reaching the gardens, whose dashing coach and span, but the Callenders'?

Dashing was the look of it, not its speed. Sedately⁴ it came. Behind it followed a team of four giant mules⁵, a joy to any quartermaster's vision, drawing a plantation⁷ wagon⁸ filled with luggage. On the old coachman's box sat beside him a slave maid, and in the carriage the three Callenders and Charlie. Anna and Miranda were on the rear seat and for the wounded boy's better ease his six-shooter lay in Anna's lap. A brave animation⁹ in the ladies was only the more prettily¹⁰ set off by a pinkness of earlier dejection about their eyes. Abreast¹¹ the gate they halted to ask an armed sentry¹² whether the open way up the river coast was through the gardens or--

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