You understand that, of course, don't you, darling ?" "I hadn't thought about it," said Celia musingly.
Ailsa added vaguely: "There's always a government detective hanging around the hospital." Celia nodded and gazed out of the open window.

Very far away the purple top of a hill peeped above the forest.

Ailsa had told her that a Confederate battery was there.

And now she looked at it in silence, her blue eyes very soft, her lips resting upon one another in tender, troubled curves.
Somewhere on that hazy hill-top a new flag was flying; soldiers of a new nation were guarding it, unseen by her.

It was the first outpost of her own people that she had ever seen; and she looked at it wistfully, proudly, her soul in her eyes.