"Hurrah! Hurrah!" shouted a mounted officer, spurring past us up the hill; "Butler's dead, and Cornwallis is taken!"
"Taken?" I repeated incredulously.
The booming guns were my answer. High against the blue a jeweled ensign fluttered, silver, azure and blood red, its staff and halyards wrapped in writhing jets of snow-white smoke flying upward from the guns.
I rode toward it, cap in hand, head raised, awed in the presence of God's own victory! The shouting streets echoed and reechoed as we passed between packed ranks of townspeople; cheers, the pealing music of the bells, the thunderous shock of the guns grew to a swimming, dreamy sound, through which the flag fluttered on high, crowned with the golden nimbus of the sun!
"Carus!"
"Ah, sweetheart, did they wake you? Sleep on; the war is over!" I whispered, bending low above her. "Now indeed is all well with the world, and fit once more for you to live in."
And, as we moved forward, I saw her blue eyes lifted dreamily, watching the flag which she had served so well.
CHAPTER XVI
THE END