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Old Antoine had never gone into the grand market that is fashioned after the Madeleine of Paris, and where in the cool, wet, sweet-smelling halls, all the flowers of Brabant are spread in bouquets fit for the bridal of Una, and large as the shield of the Red-Cross Knight. Antoine could not compete with all those treasures of greenhouse and stove.

And here, the eleventh of December, you finished the Fairy Queen; and ever since, I suppose, you have been imagining yourself the 'faire Una, with Hugh standing for Prince Arthur or the Red-cross knight, haven't you?" "No sir. I didn't imagine anything about it." "Don't tell me! What did you read it for?" "Only because I liked it, sir. I liked it better than any other book I read last year."

I would fain have loitered an hour more in this enchanted bower, had not the gardener, whose patience was quite exhausted, and who had never heard of the Red-Cross Knight and his achievements, dragged me away to a sunburnt, contemptible hillock, commanding the view of a serpentine ditch, and decorated with the title of Jardin Anglois.

Thence we sailed for Salee, to compel the corsairs of that State to restore their Christian captives to freedom. At the appearance of our red-cross banner the Moorish chief sent an envoy on board, promising to comply with all the admiral's demands. In one week every Christian captive in the country was on board our ships.

From afar one catches a glimpse of the castle, perched, like that of Edinburgh, on a mighty rock, rising almost sheer from a delightfully diversified plain. It is a many-towered structure, piercing the blue sky and surrounded by an air of sullen inaccessibility, while the red-cross flag flying above it proclaims it a station of the king's army.

Grant had sent forward, in haste, two army corps to defend the city, and Early was compelled to retreat across the Potomac to the Shenandoah Valley, with the sole satisfaction of reflecting that he had given the enemy a great "scare," and had flaunted the red-cross flag in front of the ramparts of Washington. I have not space to describe the cavalry movements of the summer.

While our soldiers scrupulously avoided firing anywhere near the farmstead that bore that emblem of neutrality, they saw herds of cattle and horses being driven off, and these were followed presently by a trek waggon on which also the red-cross flag waved conspicuously.

We were still at sea, keeping a look-out for the fleet of the royal corsairs, when a shout from the mast-head announced the approach of several ships from the northward, and as they got nearer the white flag with the red-cross flying from their peaks told us that they were friends.

The dry, humorous smile curved the reddish-brown moustache again. The pleasant little whistle stirred the short-clipped hairs of it as the two men turned in the direction of the Women's Laager, over which the Red-cross flag was fluttering, and where the spider with the little Boer mare, picking at the scanty grass, waited outside the earthworks. Saxham's eyes did not travel so far.

The dark and rugged Canadian shore was full in view on the other side of the river, with the Clifton House and the Museum glimmering brightly in the morning sunlight, and the red-cross flag waving sluggishly from both as if in defiance of the great nation that lay so near and yet could not possess the little patch of land over which it floated.