"I am!" spouted the renegade, for renegade he was, "I'm from the very thick of the massacre! from day turned into night, night into day, and heaven and earth into--into--"
"Hell," placidly prompted Flora.
"Yes! nothing short of it! Our defenses become death-traps and slaughter-pens--oh, how foully, foully has Richmond betrayed her sister city!"
Flora felt a new tumult of joy. "That Yankee fleet--it has pazz' those fort'?" she cried.
"My dear young lady! By this time there ain't no forts for it to pass! When I left Fort St. Philip there wa'n't a spot over in Fort Jackson as wide as my blanket where a bumbshell hadn't buried itself and blown up, and every minute we were lookin' for the magazine to go! Those awful shells! they'd torn both levees, the forts were flooded, men who'd lost their grit were weeping like children--"
"Oh!" interrupted Constance, "why not leave the forts? We don't need them now; those old wooden ships can never withstand our terrible ironclads!"
"Well, they're mighty soon going to try it! Last night, right in the blaze of all our batteries, they cut the huge chain we had stretched across the river--"
"Ah, but when they see--oh, they'll never dare face even the Manassas--the 'little turtle,' ha-ha!--much less the great Louisiana!"
"Alas! madam, the Louisiana ain't ready for 'em. There she lies tied to the levee, with engines that can't turn a wheel, a mere floating battery, while our gunboats--" Eagerly the speaker broke off to receive upon one hand and arm the bounty of the larder and with a pomp of gratitude to extend his other hand to Anna; but she sadly shook her head and showed on her palms Hilary's shattered tokens: