Good-by, Kincaid's Battery XXXI.

He sat next her at table, with Anna farthest away. Hardly fortunate was some one who, conversing with the new Miss Callender, said the charm of Kincaid's singing was that the song came from "the entire man."

The soldierso newly and poignantly hurt that twice when he took breath he failed to speakgazed on the disclaiming girl until for; very distress she broke the silence: "Iyouevery flag of our causewherever our brave soldiers" "Oh, but Kincaid's Battery!and that flag, Anna Callender!

Kincaid's Battery is not for him.

But what we can't get we don't grumble for in Kincaid's Battery!" He paused.

Kincaid's Bat?" "No-o, the Zouaves!

Anna, gazing back toward its townward edge, was shading her eyes from the burnished water, and Hilary was helping her make out the earthwork from behind which peered the tents of Kincaid's Battery while beyond both crouched low against the bright west the trees and roof of Callender Houseas straight in line from here, Flora took not

"At last," playfully sighed the Creole, "'tis good-by, Kincaid's Battery.

Yet nothing came to explain that Kincaid's detention up-town was his fond cousin's contriving, and Sumter's story was at its end when all started at once and then subsided with relief as first the drums and then the bugles soundedno alarm, but only, drowsily, "taps," as if to say to Callender House as well as to the camp, "Go to slee-eep ... Go to slee-eep ...

" [Illustration: "'Tis good-by, Kincaid's Battery"] XXIX A CASTAWAY ROSE Gone to sleep the camp except its sentinels, and all Callender House save one soul.

Canst Thou not so order all things that a day or two's delay of Kincaid's Battery need work no evil to the Cause nor any such rending to any heart as must be hers if Kincaid's Battery should go to-night?

the whole of Kincaid's Battery, in the saddle and on the chests, waiting for the word to march!

Here early in that part of the strugglesent for at last by Beauregard himself, they saycame Kincaid's Battery, whirling, shouting, whip-cracking, sweating, with Hilary well ahead of them and Mandeville at his side, to the ground behind the Henry house when it had been lost and retaken and all but lost again.

From Camp Lewis alone, in November, on that plain where Kincaid's Battery had drilled before it was Kincaid's, the Bienville, Crescent City and many similar "Guards," Miles' Artillery, the Orleans Light Horse, the Orleans Howitzers, the Orleans Guards, the Tirailleurs d'Orléans, etc., had passed in front of Governor Moore and half a dozen generals, twenty-four thousand strong.

Yet presently it became a proud thrill, as the poor boy glowed with delight while Hilary stood and talked with him of the fearful Virginia day on which that ruin had befallen him at Hilary's own side in Kincaid's Battery, and then brought him to converse with her.

"Well, what am I in Kincaid's Battery for?" he retorted, with a sweep of his arm that sent her staggering.

Back toward, and by and by, into the vast woe-stricken town they returned in the scented airs and athwart the long shadows of that same declining sun which fourteen years beforeor was it actually but fourteen months?had first gilded the splendid maneuverings of Kincaid's Battery.

"Why, Nan!" "They belong to Kincaid's Battery," said Anna, and Constance, Miranda, and the servants smiled a proud approval.

The women in that house, that nest of sedition, he had been told, at second-hand, had in the very dawn of secession completely armed the famous "Kincaid's Battery" which had early made it hot for him about Yorktown.

But never, moving or standing from aides or couriers spurring to front or flank, or from hobbling wounded men or unhurt stragglers footing to the rear, could they gather a word as to Brodnax's brigade or Kincaid's Battery.

" Not known of his keepers by that name, though as the famous Major Kincaid of Kincaid's Battery (the latter at Mobile with new guns), all July and August he had been of those who looked down from such windows; looked down often and long, yet never descried one rippling fold of one gossamer flounce of a single specimen of those far-compassionated "ladies of New Orleans," one of whom, all that same time, was Anna Callender.

In her heart's vision she saw within it her own Kincaid's Battery, his and hers.

and that Kincaid's Battery, without their field-pieces, are just here in Powell behind her heavy guns?...

They had fought fully aware that Richmond was already lost, and on the next day, a Sabbath, as Kincaid's Battery trundled through the town while forty thousand women and childrenwith the Callenders and little Stevewept, its boys knew their own going meant Mobile had fallen, though they knew not that in that very hour the obscure name of Appomattox was being made forever great in history.

" It was while they so waited that Kincaid's Battery learned of the destruction, by fire, of Callender House, but took comfort in agreeing that now, at last, come or fail what might, the three sweetest women that ever lived would live up-town.