" The jest of that afternoon was turned into
bloody earnest before three weeks had passed.
Not long after this I had a pleasanter incident to chronicle. As I
entered the yard one day, my guard remarked with a broad grin:
"Somethin' new up there, Colonel."
The indiscriminate appropriation of military titles here, is, of course,
proverbial, though common prudence made me very careful not to claim a
fictitious rank, after leaving Baltimore, where I was well known. I got
a brevet-step with almost every change of place or association;
disclaimers were never listened to.
Through the bars of a second story window that fronted each turn of my
tramp, I saw--this. A slight figure in the freshest summer toilette of
cool pink muslin; close braids of dark hair shading clear pale cheeks;
eyes that were made to sparkle, though the look in them then was very
sad, and the languid bowing down of the small head told of something
worse than weariness.
Truly, a pretty picture, though framed in such rude setting, but almost
as startling, at first, as the apparition of the fair witch in the
forest to Christabelle. Slightly in the background stood a mature
dame--the mother, evidently. No need to ask what their crime had been;
aid and abetment of the South suggested itself before you detected the
ensign of her faith that the demoiselle still wore undauntedly--a pearl
_solitaire_, fashioned as a single star.
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