What a night! Yet the great city slept. Like its soldiers at their bivouac fires it lay and slumbered¹ beside its burning harbor. Sleep was duty.

Callender House kept no vigil. Lighted by the far devastation², its roof shone gray, its cornice white, its tree-tops green above the darkness of grove³ and garden. From its upper windows you might have seen the townward bends of the river gleam red, yellow, and bronze, or the luminous⁴ smoke of destruction (slantingly over its flood and farther shore) roll, thin out, and vanish in a moonless sky. But from those windows no one looked forth⁵. After the long, strenuous⁶, open-air day, sleep, even to Anna, had come swiftly.

Waking late and springing to her elbow she presently knew that every one else was up and about. Her maid came and she hastened to dress. Were the hostile ships in sight? Not yet. Was the city still undestroyed? Yes, though the cotton brought out to the harbor-side was now fifteen thousand bales and with its blazing made a show as if all the town were afire. She was furiously hungry; was not breakfast ready? Yes, Constance and Miranda--"done had breakfuss and gone oveh to de cottage fo' to fix it up fo' de surgeon ... No, 'm, not dis house; he done change' his mine." Carriage horses--mules? "Yass, 'm, done gone. Mahs' Chahlie gone wid 'm. He gone to be boss o' de big gun what show' f'om dese windehs." Oh, but that was an awful risk, wounded as he was! "Yass, 'm, but he make his promise to Miss Flo'a he won't tech de gun hisseff." What! Miss Flora⁸--? "Oh, she be'n, but she gone ag'in. Law'! she a brave un! It e'en a'most make me brave, dess to see de high sperits she in!" The narrator departed.

How incredible was the hour. Looking out on the soft gray sky and river and down into the camp, that still kept such quiet show of routine, or passing down the broad hall stair, through the library and into the flowery breakfast room, how keenly real everything that met the eye, how unreal whatever was beyond sight. How

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