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FACING THE FLAG.




CHAPTER I.

HEALTHFUL HOUSE.


The _carte de visite_ received that day, June 15, 189-, by the
director of the establishment of Healthful House was a very neat one,
and simply bore, without escutcheon or coronet, the name:

COUNT D'ARTIGAS.

Below this name, in a corner of the card, the following address was
written in lead pencil:

"On board the schooner _Ebba_, anchored off New-Berne, Pamlico Sound."

The capital of North Carolina--one of the forty-four states of the
Union at this epoch--is the rather important town of Raleigh, which is
about one hundred and fifty miles in the interior of the province. It
is owing to its central position that this city has become the seat
of the State legislature, for there are others that equal and