initial commit of ebook 6872HEADmain

1 files changed, 14493 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/6872.txt b/6872.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8784c20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/6872.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14493 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Battle Ground, by Ellen Glasgow
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Battle Ground
+
+Author: Ellen Glasgow
+
+
+Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6872]
+This file was first posted on February 5, 2003
+Last Updated: June 19, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BATTLE GROUND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Wendy Crockett, Tiffany Vergon, Juliet
+Sutherland, Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE GROUND
+
+By Ellen Glasgow
+
+
+To
+
+The Beloved Memory of My Mother
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+BOOK FIRST
+
+GOLDEN YEARS
+
+    I. "De Hine Foot er a He Frawg"
+   II. At the Full of the Moon
+  III. The Coming of the Boy
+   IV. A House with an Open Door
+    V. The School for Gentlemen
+   VI. College Days
+
+
+BOOK SECOND
+
+YOUNG BLOOD
+
+    I. The Major's Christmas
+   II. Betty dreams by the Fire
+  III. Dan and Betty
+   IV. Love in a Maze
+    V. The Major loses his Temper
+   VI. The Meeting in the Turnpike
+  VII. If this be Love
+ VIII. Betty's Unbelief
+   IX. The Montjoy Blood
+    X. The Road at Midnight
+   XI. At Merry Oaks Tavern
+  XII. The Night of Fear
+ XIII. Crabbed Age and Callow Youth
+  XIV. The Hush before the Storm
+
+
+BOOK THIRD
+
+THE SCHOOL OF WAR
+
+    I. How Merry Gentlemen went to War
+   II. The Day's March
+  III. The Reign of the Brute
+   IV. After the Battle
+    V. The Woman's Part
+   VI. On the Road to Romney
+  VII. "I wait my Time"
+ VIII. The Altar of the War God
+   IX. The Montjoy Blood again
+
+
+BOOK FOURTH
+
+THE RETURN OF THE VANQUISHED
+
+    I. The Ragged Army
+   II. A Straggler from the Ranks
+  III. The Cabin in the Woods
+   IV. In the Silence of the Guns
+    V. "The Place Thereof"
+   VI. The Peaceful Side of War.
+  VII. The Silent Battle
+ VIII. The Last Stand
+   IX. In the Hour of Defeat
+    X. On the March again
+   XI. The Return
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FIRST
+
+GOLDEN YEARS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"DE HINE FOOT ER A HE FRAWG"
+
+
+Toward the close of an early summer afternoon, a little girl came running
+along the turnpike to where a boy stood wriggling his feet in the dust.
+
+"Old Aunt Ailsey's done come back," she panted, "an' she's conjured the
+tails off Sambo's sheep. I saw 'em hanging on her door!"
+
+The boy received the news with an indifference from which it blankly
+rebounded. He buried one bare foot in the soft white sand and withdrew it
+with a jerk that powdered the blackberry vines beside the way.
+
+"Where's Virginia?" he asked shortly.
+
+The little girl sat down in the tall grass by the roadside and shook her
+red curls from her eyes. She gave a breathless gasp and began fanning
+herself with the flap of her white sunbonnet. A fine moisture shone on her
+bare neck and arms above her frock of sprigged chintz calico.
+
+"She can't run a bit," she declared warmly, peering into the distance of
+the long white turnpike. "I'm a long ways ahead of her, and I gave her the
+start. Zeke's with her."
+
+With a grunt the boy promptly descended from his heavy dignity.
+
+"You can't run," he retorted. "I'd like to see a girl run, anyway." He
+straightened his legs and thrust his hands into his breeches pockets. "You
+can't run," he repeated.
+
+The little girl flashed a clear defiance; from a pair of beaming hazel eyes
+she threw him a scornful challenge. "I bet I can beat you," she stoutly
+rejoined. Then as the boy's glance fell upon her hair, her defiance waned.
+She put on her sunbonnet and drew it down over her brow. "I reckon I can
+run some," she finished uneasily.
+
+The boy followed her movements with a candid stare. "You can't hide it," he
+taunted; "it shines right through everything. O Lord, ain't I glad my
+head's not red!"
+
+At this pharisaical thanksgiving the little girl flushed to the ruffled
+brim of her bonnet. Her sensitive lips twitched, and she sat meekly gazing
+past the boy at the wall of rough gray stones which skirted a field of
+ripening wheat. Over the wheat a light wind blew, fanning the even heads of
+the bearded grain and dropping suddenly against the sunny mountains in the
+distance. In the nearer pasture, where the long grass was strewn with wild
+flowers, red and white cattle were grazing beside a little stream, and the
+tinkle of the cow bells drifted faintly across the slanting sunrays. It was
+open country, with a peculiar quiet cleanliness about its long white roads
+and the genial blues and greens of its meadows.
+
+"Ain't I glad, O Lord!" chanted the boy again.
+
+The little girl stirred impatiently, her gaze fluttering from the
+landscape.
+
+"Old Aunt Ailsey's conjured all the tails off Sambo's sheep," she remarked,
+with feminine wile. "I saw 'em hanging on her door."
+
+"Oh, shucks! she can't conjure!" scoffed the boy. "She's nothing but a free
+nigger, anyway--and besides, she's plum crazy--"
+
+"I saw 'em hanging on her door," steadfastly repeated the little girl. "The
+wind blew 'em right out, an' there they were."
+
+"Well, they wan't Sambo's sheep tails," retorted the boy, conclusively,
+"'cause Sambo's sheep ain't got any tails."
+
+Brought to bay, the little girl looked doubtfully up and down the turnpike.
+"Maybe she conjured 'em _on_ first," she suggested at last.
+
+"Oh, you're a regular baby, Betty," exclaimed the boy, in disgust. "You'll
+be saying next that she can make rattlesnake's teeth sprout out of the
+ground."
+
+"She's got a mighty funny garden patch," admitted Betty, still credulous.
+Then she jumped up and ran along the road. "Here's Virginia!" she called
+sharply, "an' I beat her! I beat her fair!"
+
+A second little girl came panting through the dust, followed by a small
+negro boy with a shining black face. "There's a wagon comin' roun' the
+curve," she cried excitedly, "an' it's filled with old Mr. Willis's
+servants. He's dead, and they're sold--Dolly's sold, too."
+
+She was a fragile little creature, coloured like a flower, and her smooth
+brown hair hung in silken braids to her sash. The strings of her white
+pique bonnet lined with pink were daintily tied under her oval chin; there
+was no dust on her bare legs or short white socks.
+
+As she spoke there came the sound of voices singing, and a moment later the
+wagon jogged heavily round a tuft of stunted cedars which jutted into the
+long curve of the highway. The wheels crunched a loose stone in the road,
+and the driver drawled a patient "gee-up" to the horses, as he flicked at
+a horse-fly with the end of his long rawhide whip. There was about him an
+almost cosmic good nature; he regarded the landscape, the horses and the
+rocks in the road with imperturbable ease.
+
+Behind him, in the body of the wagon, the negro women stood chanting the
+slave's farewell; and as they neared the children, he looked back and spoke
+persuasively. "I'd set down if I was you all," he said. "You'd feel better.
+Thar, now, set down and jolt softly."
+
+But without turning the women kept up their tremulous chant, bending their
+turbaned heads to the imaginary faces upon the roadside. They had left
+their audience behind them on the great plantation, but they still sang to
+the empty road and courtesied to the cedars upon the way. Excitement
+gripped them like a frenzy--and a childish joy in a coming change blended
+with a mother's yearning over broken ties.
+
+A bright mulatto led, standing at full height, and her rich notes rolled
+like an organ beneath the shrill plaint of her companions. She was large,
+deep-bosomed, and comely after her kind, and in her careless gestures there
+was something of the fine fervour of the artist. She sang boldly, her full
+body rocking from side to side, her bared arms outstretched, her long
+throat swelling like a bird's above the gaudy handkerchief upon her breast.
+
+The others followed her, half artlessly, half in imitation, mingling with
+their words grunts of self-approval. A grin ran from face to face as if
+thrown by the grotesque flash of a lantern. Only a little black woman
+crouching in one corner bowed herself and wept.
+
+The children had fallen back against the stone wall, where they hung
+staring.
+
+"Good-by, Dolly!" they called cheerfully, and the woman answered with a
+long-drawn, hopeless whine:--
+
+  "Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we
+          Meet agin."
+
+Zeke broke from the group and ran a few steps beside the wagon, shaking the
+outstretched hands.
+
+The driver nodded peaceably to him, and cut with a single stroke of his
+whip an intricate figure in the sand of the road. "Git up an' come along
+with us, sonny," he said cordially; but Zeke only grinned in reply, and the
+children laughed and waved their handkerchiefs from the wall. "Good-by,
+Dolly, and Mirandy, and Sukey Sue!" they shouted, while the women, bowing
+over the rolling wheels, tossed back a fragment of the song:--
+
+  "We hope ter meet you in heaven, whar we'll
+          Part no mo',
+  Whar we'll part no mo';
+  Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we
+          Me--et a--gin."
+
+"Twel we meet agin," chirped the little girls, tripping into the chorus.
+
+Then, with a last rumble, the wagon went by, and Zeke came trotting back
+and straddled the stone wall, where he sat looking down upon the loose
+poppies that fringed the yellowed edge of the wheat.
+
+"Dey's gwine way-way f'om hyer, Marse Champe," he said dreamily. "Dey's
+gwine right spang over dar whar de sun done come f'om."
+
+"Colonel Minor bought 'em," Champe explained, sliding from the wall, "and
+he bought Dolly dirt cheap--I heard Uncle say so--" With a grin he looked
+up at the small black figure perched upon the crumbling stones. "You'd
+better look out how you steal any more of my fishing lines, or I'll sell
+you," he threatened.
+
+"Gawd er live! I ain' stole one on 'em sence las' mont'," protested Zeke,
+as he turned a somersault into the road, "en dat warn' stealin' 'case hit
+warn' wu'th it," he added, rising to his feet and staring wistfully after
+the wagon as it vanished in a sunny cloud of dust.
+
+Over the broad meadows, filled with scattered wild flowers, the sound of
+the chant still floated, with a shrill and troubled sweetness, upon the
+wind. As he listened the little negro broke into a jubilant refrain,
+beating his naked feet in the dust:--
+
+  "Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we
+          Me--et a--gin."
+
+Then he looked slyly up at his young master.
+
+"I 'low dar's one thing you cyarn do, Marse Champe."
+
+"I bet there isn't," retorted Champe.
+
+"You kin sell me ter Marse Minor--but Lawd, Lawd, you cyarn mek mammy leave
+off whuppin' me. You cyarn do dat widout you 'uz a real ole marster
+hese'f."
+
+"I reckon I can," said Champe, indignantly. "I'd just like to see her lay
+hands on you again. I can make mammy leave off whipping him, can't I,
+Betty?"
+
+But Betty, with a toss of her head, took her revenge.
+
+"'Tain't so long since yo' mammy whipped you," she rejoined. "An' I reckon
+'tain't so long since you needed it."
+
+As she stood there, a spirited little figure, in a patch of faint sunshine,
+her hair threw a halo of red gold about her head. When she smiled--and she
+smiled now, saucily enough--her eyes had a trick of narrowing until they
+became mere beams of light between her lashes. Her eyes would smile, though
+her lips were as prim as a preacher's.
+
+Virginia gave a timid pull at Betty's frock. "Champe's goin' home with us,"
+she said, "his uncle told him to--You're goin' home with us, ain't you,
+Champe?"
+
+"I ain't goin' home," responded Betty, jerking from Virginia's grasp. She
+stood warm yet resolute in the middle of the road, her bonnet swinging in
+her hands. "I ain't goin' home," she repeated.
+
+Turning his back squarely upon her, Champe broke into a whistle of
+unconcern. "You'd just better come along," he called over his shoulder as
+he started off. "You'd just better come along, or you'll catch it."
+
+"I ain't comin'," answered Betty, defiantly, and as they passed away
+kicking the dust before them, she swung her bonnet hard, and spoke aloud to
+herself. "I ain't comin'," she said stubbornly.
+
+The distance lengthened; the three small figures passed the wheat field,
+stopped for an instant to gather green apples that had fallen from a stray
+apple tree, and at last slowly dwindled into the white streak of the road.
+She was alone on the deserted turnpike.
+
+For a moment she hesitated, caught her breath, and even took three steps on
+the homeward way; then turning suddenly she ran rapidly in the opposite
+direction. Over the deepening shadows she sped as lightly as a hare.
+
+At the end of a half mile, when her breath came in little pants, she
+stopped with a nervous start and looked about her. The loneliness seemed
+drawing closer like a mist, and the cry of a whip-poor-will from the little
+stream in the meadow sent frightened thrills, like needles, through her
+limbs.
+
+Straight ahead the sun was setting in a pale red west, against which the
+mountains stood out as if sculptured in stone. On one side swept the
+pasture where a few sheep browsed; on the other, at the place where two
+roads met, there was a blasted tree that threw its naked shadow across the
+turnpike. Beyond the tree and its shadow a well-worn foot-path led to a
+small log cabin from which a streak of smoke was rising. Through the open
+door the single room within showed ruddy with the blaze of resinous pine.
+
+The little girl daintily picked her way along the foot-path and through a
+short garden patch planted in onions and black-eyed peas. Beside a bed of
+sweet sage she faltered an instant and hung back. "Aunt Ailsey," she called
+tremulously, "I want to speak to you, Aunt Ailsey." She stepped upon the
+smooth round stone which served for a doorstep and looked into the room.
+"It's me, Aunt Ailsey! It's Betty Ambler," she said.
+
+A slow shuffling began inside the cabin, and an old negro woman hobbled
+presently to the daylight and stood peering from under her hollowed palm.
+She was palsied with age and blear-eyed with trouble, and time had ironed
+all the kink out of the thin gray locks that straggled across her brow. She
+peered dimly at the child as one who looks from a great distance.
+
+"I lay dat's one er dese yer ole hoot owls," she muttered querulously, "en
+ef'n 'tis, he des es well be a-hootin' along home, caze I ain' gwine be
+pestered wid his pranks. Dar ain' but one kind er somebody es will sass you
+at yo' ve'y do,' en dat's a hoot owl es is done loss count er de time er
+day--"
+
+"I ain't an owl, Aunt Ailsey," meekly broke in Betty, "an' I ain't hootin'
+at you--"
+
+Aunt Ailsey reached out and touched her hair. "You ain' none er Marse
+Peyton's chile," she said. "I'se done knowed de Amblers sence de fu'st one
+er dem wuz riz, en dar ain' never been a'er Ambler wid a carrot haid--"
+
+The red ran from Betty's curls into her face, but she smiled politely as
+she followed Aunt Ailsey into the cabin and sat down in a split-bottomed
+chair upon the hearth. The walls were formed of rough, unpolished logs, and
+upon them, as against an unfinished background, the firelight threw reddish
+shadows of the old woman and the child. Overhead, from the uncovered
+rafters, hung several tattered sheepskins, and around the great fireplace
+there was a fringe of dead snakes and lizards, long since as dry as dust.
+Under the blazing logs, which filled the hut with an almost unbearable
+heat, an ashcake was buried beneath a little gravelike mound of ashes.
+
+Aunt Ailsey took up a corncob pipe from the stones and fell to smoking. She
+sank at once into a senile reverie, muttering beneath her breath with
+short, meaningless grunts. Warm as the summer evening was, she shivered
+before the glowing logs.
+
+For a time the child sat patiently watching the embers; then she leaned
+forward and touched the old woman's knee. "Aunt Ailsey, O Aunt Ailsey!"
+
+Aunt Ailsey stirred wearily and crossed her swollen feet upon the hearth.
+
+"Dar ain' nuttin' but a hoot owl dat'll sass you ter yo' face," she
+muttered, and, as she drew her pipe from her mouth, the gray smoke circled
+about her head.
+
+The child edged nearer. "I want to speak to you, Aunt Ailsey," she said.
+She seized the withered hand and held it close in her own rosy ones. "I
+want you--O Aunt Ailsey, listen! I want you to conjure my hair coal black."
+
+She finished with a gasp, and with parted lips sat waiting. "Coal black,
+Aunt Ailsey!" she cried again.
+
+A sudden excitement awoke in the old woman's face; her hands shook and she
+leaned nearer. "Hi! who dat done tole you I could conjure, honey?" she
+demanded.
+
+"Oh, you can, I know you can. You conjured back Sukey's lover from Eliza
+Lou, and you conjured all the pains out of Uncle Shadrach's leg." She fell
+on her knees and laid her head in the old woman's lap. "Conjure quick and I
+won't holler," she said.
+
+"Gawd in heaven!" exclaimed Aunt Ailsey. Her dim old eyes brightened as she
+gently stroked the child's brow with her palsied fingers. "Dis yer ain' no
+way ter conjure, honey," she whispered. "You des wait twel de full er de
+moon, w'en de devil walks de big road." She was wandering again after the
+fancies of dotage, but Betty threw herself upon her. "Oh, change it! change
+it!" cried the child. "Beg the devil to come and change it quick."
+
+Brought back to herself, Aunt Ailsey grunted and knocked the ashes from her
+pipe. "I ain' gwine ter ax no favors er de devil," she replied sternly.
+"You des let de devil alont en he'll let you alont. I'se done been young,
+en I'se now ole, en I ain' never seed de devil stick his mouf in anybody's
+bizness 'fo' he's axed."
+
+She bent over and raked the ashes from her cake with a lightwood splinter.
+"Dis yer's gwine tase moughty flat-footed," she grumbled as she did so.
+
+"O Aunt Ailsey," wailed Betty in despair. The tears shone in her eyes and
+rolled slowly down her cheeks.
+
+"Dar now," said Aunt Ailsey, soothingly, "you des set right still en wait
+twel ter-night at de full er de moon." She got up and took down one of the
+crumbling skins from the chimney-piece. "Ef'n de hine foot er a he frawg
+cyarn tu'n yo' hyar decent," she said, "dar ain' nuttin' de Lawd's done
+made es'll do hit. You des wrop er hank er yo' hyar roun' de hine foot,
+honey, en' w'en de night time done come, you teck'n hide it unner a rock in
+de big road. W'en de devil goes a-cotin' at de full er de moon--en he been
+cotin' right stiddy roun' dese yer parts--he gwine tase dat ar frawg foot a
+mile off."
+
+"A mile off?" repeated the child, stretching out her hands.
+
+"Yes, Lawd, he gwine tase dat ar frawg foot a mile off, en w'en he tase
+hit, he gwine begin ter sniff en ter snuff. He gwine sniff en he gwine
+snuff, en he gwine sniff en he gwine snuff twel he run right spang agin de
+rock in de middle er de road. Den he gwine paw en paw twel he root de rock
+clean up."
+
+The little girl looked up eagerly.
+
+"An' my hair, Aunt Ailsey?"
+
+"De devil he gwine teck cyar er yo' hyar, honey. W'en he come a-sniffin' en
+a-snuffin' roun' de rock in de big road, he gwine spit out flame en smoke
+en yo' hyar hit's gwine ter ketch en hit's gwine ter bu'n right black. Fo'
+de sun up yo' haid's gwine ter be es black es a crow's foot."
+
+The child dried her tears and sprang up. She tied the frog's skin tightly
+in her handkerchief and started toward the door; then she hesitated and
+looked back. "Were you alive at the flood, Aunt Ailsey?" she politely
+inquired.
+
+"Des es live es I is now, honey."
+
+"Then you must have seen Noah and the ark and all the animals?"
+
+"Des es plain es I see you. Marse Noah? Why, I'se done wash en i'on Marse
+Noah's shuts twel I 'uz right stiff in de j'ints. He ain' never let nobody
+flute his frills fur 'im 'cep'n' me. Lawd, Lawd, Marse Peyton's shuts warn'
+nuttin ter Marse Noah's!"
+
+Betty's eyes grew big. "I reckon you're mighty old, Aunt Ailsey--'most as
+old as God, ain't you?"
+
+Aunt Ailsey pondered the question. "I ain' sayin' dat, honey," she modestly
+replied.
+
+"Then you're certainly as old as the devil--you must be," hopefully
+suggested the little girl.
+
+The old woman wavered. "Well, de devil, he ain' never let on his age," she
+said at last; "but w'en I fust lay eyes on 'im, he warn' no mo'n a brat."
+
+Standing upon the threshold for an instant, the child reverently regarded
+her. Then, turning her back upon the fireplace and the bent old figure, she
+ran out into the twilight.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+AT THE FULL OF THE MOON
+
+
+By the light of the big moon hanging like a lantern in the topmost pine
+upon a distant mountain, the child sped swiftly along the turnpike.
+
+It was a still, clear evening, and on the summits of the eastern hills a
+fringe of ragged firs stood out illuminated against the sky. In the warm
+June weather the whole land was fragrant from the flower of the wild grape.
+
+When she had gone but a little way, the noise of wheels reached her
+suddenly, and she shrank into the shadow beside the wall. A cloud of dust
+chased toward her as the wheels came steadily on. They were evidently
+ancient, for they turned with a protesting creak which was heard long
+before the high, old-fashioned coach they carried swung into view--long
+indeed before the driver's whip cracked in the air.
+
+As the coach neared the child, she stepped boldly out into the road--it was
+only Major Lightfoot, the owner of the next plantation, returning, belated,
+from the town.
+
+"W'at you doin' dar, chile?" demanded a stern voice from the box, and, at
+the words, the Major's head was thrust through the open window, and his
+long white hair waved in the breeze.
+
+"Is that you, Betty?" he asked, in surprise. "Why, I thought it was the
+duty of that nephew of mine to see you home."
+
+"I wouldn't let him," replied the child. "I don't like boys, sir."
+
+"You don't, eh?" chuckled the Major. "Well, there's time enough for that, I
+suppose. You can make up to them ten years hence,--and you'll be glad
+enough to do it then, I warrant you,--but are you all alone, young lady?"
+As Betty nodded, he opened the door and stepped gingerly down. "I can't
+turn the horses' heads, poor things," he explained; "but if you will allow
+me, I shall have the pleasure of escorting you on foot."
+
+With his hat in his hand, he smiled down upon the little girl, his face
+shining warm and red above his pointed collar and broad black stock. He was
+very tall and spare, and his eyebrows, which hung thick and dark above his
+Roman nose, gave him an odd resemblance to a bird of prey. The smile
+flashed like an artificial light across his austere features.
+
+"Since my arm is too high for you," he said, "will you have my hand?--Yes,
+you may drive on, Big Abel," to the driver, "and remember to take out those
+bulbs of Spanish lilies for your mistress. You will find them under the
+seat."
+
+The whip cracked again above the fat old roans, and with a great creak the
+coach rolled on its way.
+
+"I--I--if you please, I'd rather you wouldn't," stammered the child.
+
+The Major chuckled again, still holding out his hand. Had she been eighty
+instead of eight, the gesture could not have expressed more deference. "So
+you don't like old men any better than boys!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, I do--heaps," said Betty. She transferred the frog's foot to
+her left hand, and gave him her right one. "When I marry, I'm going to
+marry a very old gentleman--as old as you," she added flatteringly.
+
+"You honour me," returned the Major, with a bow; "but there's nothing like
+youth, my dear, nothing like youth." He ended sadly, for he had been a gay
+young blood in his time, and the enchantment of his wild oats had increased
+as he passed further from the sowing of them. He had lived to regret both
+the loss of his gayety and the languor of his blood, and, as he drifted
+further from the middle years, he had at last yielded to tranquillity with
+a sigh. In his day he had matched any man in Virginia at cards or wine or
+women--to say nothing of horseflesh; now his white hairs had brought him
+but a fond, pale memory of his misdeeds and the boast that he knew his
+world--that he knew all his world, indeed, except his wife.
+
+"Ah, there's nothing like youth!" he sighed over to himself, and the child
+looked up and laughed.
+
+"Why do you say that?" she asked.
+
+"You will know some day," replied the Major. He drew himself erect in his
+tight black broadcloth, and thrust out his chin between the high points of
+his collar. His long white hair, falling beneath his hat, framed his ruddy
+face in silver. "There are the lights of Uplands," he said suddenly, with a
+wave of his hand.
+
+Betty quickened her pace to his, and they went on in silence. Through the
+thick grove that ended at the roadside she saw the windows of her home
+flaming amid the darkness. Farther away there were the small lights of the
+negro cabins in the "quarters," and a great one from the barn door where
+the field hands were strumming upon their banjos.
+
+"I reckon supper's ready," she remarked, walking faster. "Yonder comes
+Peter, from the kitchen with the waffles."
+
+They entered an iron gate that opened from the road, and went up a lane of
+lilac bushes to the long stuccoed house, set with detached wings in a grove
+of maples. "Why, there's papa looking for me," cried the child, as a man's
+figure darkened the square of light from the hall and came between the
+Doric columns of the portico down into the drive.
+
+"You won't have to search far, Governor," called the Major, in his ringing
+voice, and, as the other came up to him, he stopped to shake hands. "Miss
+Betty has given me the pleasure of a stroll with her."
+
+"Ah, it was like you, Major," returned the other, heartily. "I'm afraid it
+isn't good for your gout, though."
+
+He was a small, soldierly-looking man, with a clean-shaven, classic face,
+and thick, brown hair, slightly streaked with gray. Beside the Major's
+gaunt figure he appeared singularly boyish, though he held himself severely
+to the number of his inches, and even added, by means of a simplicity
+almost august, a full cubit to his stature. Ten years before he had been
+governor of his state, and to his friends and neighbours the empty honour,
+at least, was still his own.
+
+"Pooh! pooh!" the older man protested airily, "the gout's like a woman, my
+dear sir--if you begin to humour it, you'll get no rest. If you deny
+yourself a half bottle of port, the other half will soon follow. No, no, I
+say--put a bold foot on the matter. Don't give up a good thing for the sake
+of a bad one, sir. I remember my grandfather in England telling me that at
+his first twinge of gout he took a glass of sherry, and at the second he
+took two. 'What! would you have my toe become my master?' he roared to the
+doctor. 'I wouldn't give in if it were my whole confounded foot, sir!' Oh,
+those were ripe days, Governor!"
+
+"A little overripe for the toe, I fear, Major."
+
+"Well, well, we're sober enough now, sir, sober enough and to spare. Even
+the races are dull things. I've just been in to have a look at that new
+mare Tom Bickels is putting on the track, and bless my soul, she can't hold
+a candle to the Brown Bess I ran twenty years ago--you don't remember Brown
+Bess, eh, Governor?"
+
+"Why, to be sure," said the Governor. "I can see her as if it were
+yesterday,--and a beauty she was, too,--but come in to supper with us, my
+dear Major; we were just sitting down. No, I shan't take an excuse--come
+in, sir, come in."
+
+"No, no, thank you," returned the Major. "Molly's waiting, and Molly
+doesn't like to wait, you know. I got dinner at Merry Oaks tavern by the
+way, and a mighty bad one, too, but the worst thing about it was that they
+actually had the impudence to put me at the table with an abolitionist.
+Why, I'd as soon eat with a darkey, sir, and so I told him, so I told him!"
+
+The Governor laughed, his fine, brown eyes twinkling in the gloom. "You
+were always a man of your word," he said; "so I must tell Julia to mend her
+views before she asks you to dine. She has just had me draw up my will and
+free the servants. There's no withstanding Julia, you know, Major."
+
+"You have an angel," declared the other, "and she gets lovelier every day;
+my regards to her,--and to her aunts, sir. Ah, good night, good night," and
+with a last cordial gesture he started rapidly upon his homeward way.
+
+Betty caught the Governor's hand and went with him into the house. As they
+entered the hall, Uncle Shadrach, the head butler, looked out to reprimand
+her. "Ef'n anybody 'cep'n Marse Peyton had cotch you, you'd er des been
+lammed," he grumbled. "An' papa was real mad!" called Virginia from the
+table.
+
+"That's jest a story!" cried Betty. Still clinging to her father's hand,
+she entered the dining room; "that's jest a story, papa," she repeated.
+
+"No, I'm not angry," laughed the Governor. "There, my dear, for heaven's
+sake don't strangle me. Your mother's the one for you to hang on. Can't you
+see what a rage she's in?"
+
+"My dear Mr. Ambler," remonstrated his wife, looking over the high old
+silver service. She was very frail and gentle, and her voice was hardly
+more than a clear whisper. "No, no, Betty, you must go up and wash your
+face first," she added decisively.
+
+The Governor sat down and unfolded his napkin, beaming hospitality upon his
+food and his family. He surveyed his wife, her two maiden aunts and his own
+elder brother with the ineffable good humour he bestowed upon the majestic
+home-cured ham fresh from a bath of Madeira.
+
+"I am glad to see you looking so well, my dear," he remarked to his wife,
+with a courtliness in which there was less polish than personality. "Ah,
+Miss Lydia, I know whom to thank for this," he added, taking up a pale tea
+rosebud from his plate, and bowing to one of the two old ladies seated
+beside his wife. "Have you noticed, Julia, that even the roses have become
+more plentiful since your aunts did us the honour to come to us?"
+
+"I am sure the garden ought to be grateful to Aunt Lydia," said his wife,
+with a pleased smile, "and the quinces to Aunt Pussy," she added quickly,
+"for they were never preserved so well before."
+
+The two old ladies blushed and cast down their eyes, as they did every
+evening at the same kindly by-play. "You know I am very glad to be of use,
+my dear Julia," returned Miss Pussy, with conscious virtue. Miss Lydia, who
+was tall and delicate and bent with the weight of potential sanctity, shook
+her silvery head and folded her exquisite old hands beneath the ruffles of
+her muslin under-sleeves. She wore her hair in shining folds beneath her
+thread-lace cap, and her soft brown eyes still threw a youthful lustre over
+the faded pallor of her face.
+
+"Pussy has always had a wonderful talent for preserving," she murmured
+plaintively. "It makes me regret my own uselessness."
+
+"Uselessness!" warmly protested the Governor. "My dear Miss Lydia, your
+mere existence is a blessing to mankind. A lovely woman is never useless,
+eh, Brother Bill?"
+
+Mr. Bill, a stout and bashful gentleman, who never wasted words, merely
+bowed over his plate, and went on with his supper. There was a theory in
+the family--a theory romantic old Miss Lydia still hung hard by--that Mr.
+Bill's peculiar apathy was of a sentimental origin. Nearly thirty years
+before he had made a series of mild advances to his second cousin, Virginia
+Ambler--and her early death before their polite vows were plighted had, in
+the eyes of his friends, doomed the morose Mr. Bill to the position of a
+perpetual mourner.
+
+Now, as he shook his head and helped himself to chicken, Miss Lydia sighed
+in sympathy.
+
+"I am afraid Mr. Bill must find us very flippant," she offered as a gentle
+reproof to the Governor.
+
+Mr. Bill started and cast a frightened glance across the table. Thirty
+years are not as a day, and, after all, his emotion had been hardly more
+than he would have felt for a prize perch that had wriggled from his line
+into the stream. The perch, indeed, would have represented more
+appropriately the passion of his life--though a lukewarm lover, he was an
+ardent angler.
+
+"Ah, Brother Bill understands us," cheerfully interposed the Governor. His
+keen eyes had noted Mr. Bill's alarm as they noted the emptiness of Miss
+Pussy's cup. "By the way, Julia," he went on with a change of the subject,
+"Major Lightfoot found Betty in the road and brought her home. The little
+rogue had run away."
+
+Mrs. Ambler filled Miss Pussy's cup and pressed Mr. Bill to take a slice of
+Sally Lunn. "The Major is so broken that it saddens me," she said, when
+these offices of hostess were accomplished. "He has never been himself
+since his daughter ran away, and that was--dear me, why that was twelve
+years ago next Christmas. It was on Christmas Eve, you remember, he came to
+tell us. The house was dressed in evergreens, and Uncle Patrick was making
+punch."
+
+"Poor Patrick was a hard drinker," sighed Miss Lydia; "but he was a citizen
+of the world, my dear."
+
+"Yes, yes, I perfectly recall the evening," said the Governor,
+thoughtfully. "The young people were just forming for a reel and you and I
+were of them, my dear,--it was the year, I remember, that the mistletoe was
+brought home in a cart,--when the door opened and in came the Major. 'Jane
+has run away with that dirty scamp Montjoy,' he said, and was out again and
+on his horse before we caught the words. He rode like a madman that night.
+I can see him now, splashing through the mud with Big Abel after him."
+
+Betty came running in with smiling eyes, and fluttered into her seat. "I
+got here before the waffles," she cried. "Mammy said I wouldn't. Uncle
+Shadrach, I got here before you!"
+
+"Dat's so, honey," responded Uncle Shadrach from behind the Governor's
+chair. He was so like his master--commanding port, elaborate shirt-front,
+and high white stock--that the Major, in a moment of merry-making, had once
+dubbed him "the Governor's silhouette."
+
+"Say your grace, dear," remonstrated Miss Lydia, as the child shook out her
+napkin. "It's always proper to offer thanks standing, you know. I remember
+your great-grandmother telling me that once when she dined at the White
+House, when her father was in Congress, the President forgot to say grace,
+and made them all get up again after they were seated. Now, for what are we
+about--"
+
+"Oh, papa thanked for me," cried Betty. "Didn't you, papa?"
+
+The Governor smiled; but catching his wife's eyes, he quickly forced his
+benign features into a frowning mask.
+
+"Do as your aunt tells you, Betty," said Mrs. Ambler, and Betty got up and
+said grace, while Virginia took the brownest waffle. When the thanksgiving
+was ended, she turned indignantly upon her sister. "That was just a sly,
+mean trick!" she cried in a flash of temper. "You saw my eye on that
+waffle!"
+
+"My dear, my dear," murmured Miss Lydia.
+
+"She's des an out'n out fire bran', dat's w'at she is," said Uncle
+Shadrach.
+
+"Well, the Lord oughtn't to have let her take it just as I was thanking Him
+for it!" sobbed Betty, and she burst into tears and left the table,
+upsetting Mr. Bill's coffee cup as she went by.
+
+The Governor looked gravely after her. "I'm afraid the child is really
+getting spoiled, Julia," he mildly suggested.
+
+"She's getting a--a vixenish," declared Mr. Bill, mopping his expansive
+white waistcoat.
+
+"You des better lemme go atter a twig er willow, Marse Peyton," muttered
+Uncle Shadrach in the Governor's ear.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Shadrach," retorted the Governor, which was the harshest
+command he was ever known to give his servants.
+
+Virginia ate her waffle and said nothing. When she went upstairs a little
+later, she carried a pitcher of buttermilk for Betty's face.
+
+"It isn't usual for a young lady to have freckles, Aunt Lydia says," she
+remarked, "and you must rub this right on and not wash it off till
+morning--and, after you've rubbed it well in, you must get down on your
+knees and ask God to mend your temper."
+
+Betty was lying in her little trundle bed, while Petunia, her small black
+maid, pulled off her stockings, but she got up obediently and laved her
+face in buttermilk. "I don't reckon there's any use about the other," she
+said. "I believe the Lord's jest leavin' me in sin as a warnin' to you and
+Petunia," and she got into her trundle bed and waited for the lights to go
+out, and for the watchful Virginia to fall asleep.
+
+She was still waiting when the door softly opened and her mother came in, a
+lighted candle in her hand, the pale flame shining through her profile as
+through delicate porcelain, and illumining her worn and fragile figure. She
+moved with a slow step, as if her white limbs were a burden, and her head,
+with its smoothly parted bright brown hair, bent like a lily that has begun
+to fade.
+
+She sat down upon the bedside and laid her hand on the child's forehead.
+"Poor little firebrand," she said gently. "How the world will hurt you!"
+Then she knelt down and prayed beside her, and went out again with the
+white light streaming upon her bosom. An hour later Betty heard her soft,
+slow step on the gravelled drive and knew that she was starting on a
+ministering errand to the quarters. Of all the souls on the great
+plantation, the mistress alone had never rested from her labours.
+
+The child tossed restlessly, beat her pillow, and fell back to wait more
+patiently. At last the yellow strip under the door grew dark, and from the
+other trundle bed there came a muffled breathing. With a sigh, Betty sat up
+and listened; then she drew the frog's skin from beneath her pillow and
+crept on bare feet to the door. It was black there, and black all down the
+wide, old staircase. The great hall below was like a cavern underground.
+Trembling when a board creaked under her, she cautiously felt her way with
+her hands on the balustrade. The front door was fastened with an iron chain
+that rattled as she touched it, so she stole into the dining room, unbarred
+one of the long windows, and slipped noiselessly out. It was almost like
+sliding into sunshine, the moon was so large and bright.
+
+From the wide stone portico, the great white columns, looking grim and
+ghostly, went upward to the roof, and beyond the steps the gravelled drive
+shone hard as silver. As the child went between the lilac bushes, the
+moving shadows crawled under her bare feet like living things.
+
+At the foot of the drive ran the big road, and when she came out upon it
+her trailing gown caught in a fallen branch, and she fell on her face.
+Picking herself up again, she sat on a loosened rock and looked about her.
+
+The strong night wind blew on her flesh, and she shivered in the moonlight,
+which felt cold and brazen. Before her stretched the turnpike, darkened by
+shadows that bore no likeness to the objects from which they borrowed
+shape. Far as eye could see, they stirred ceaselessly back and forth like
+an encamped army of grotesques.
+
+She got up from the rock and slipped the frog's skin into the earth beneath
+it. As she settled it in place, her pulses gave a startled leap, and she
+stood terror-stricken beside the stone. A thud of footsteps was coming
+along the road.
+
+For an instant she trembled in silence; then her sturdy little heart took
+courage, and she held up her hand.
+
+"If you'll wait a minute, Mr. Devil, I'm goin' in," she cried.
+
+From the shadows a voice laughed at her, and a boy came forward into the
+light--a half-starved boy, with a white, pinched face and a dusty bundle
+swinging from the stick upon his shoulder.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he snapped out.
+
+Betty gave back a defiant stare. She might have been a tiny ghost in the
+moonlight, with her trailing gown and her flaming curls.
+
+"I live here," she answered simply. "Where do you live?"
+
+"Nowhere." He looked her over with a laugh.
+
+"Nowhere?"
+
+"I did live somewhere, but I ran away a week ago."
+
+"Did they beat you? Old Rainy-day Jones beat one of his servants and he ran
+away."
+
+"There wasn't anybody," said the boy. "My mother died, and my father went
+off--I hope he'll stay off. I hate him!"
+
+He sent the words out so sharply that Betty's lids flinched.
+
+"Why did you come by here?" she questioned. "Are you looking for the devil,
+too?"
+
+The boy laughed again. "I am looking for my grandfather. He lives somewhere
+on this road, at a place named Chericoke. It has a lot of elms in the yard;
+I'll know it by that."
+
+Betty caught his arm and drew him nearer. "Why, that's where Champe lives!"
+she cried. "I don't like Champe much, do you?"
+
+"I never saw him," replied the boy; "but I don't like him--"
+
+"He's mighty good," said Betty, honestly; then, as she looked at the boy
+again, she caught her breath quickly. "You do look terribly hungry," she
+added.
+
+"I haven't had anything since--since yesterday."
+
+The little girl thoughtfully tapped her toes on the road. "There's a
+currant pie in the safe," she said. "I saw Uncle Shadrach put it there. Are
+you fond of currant pie?--then you just wait!"
+
+She ran up the carriage way to the dining-room window, and the boy sat down
+on the rock and buried his face in his hands. His feet were set stubbornly
+in the road, and the bundle lay beside them. He was dumb, yet disdainful,
+like a high-bred dog that has been beaten and turned adrift.
+
+As the returning patter of Betty's feet sounded in the drive, he looked up
+and held out his hands. When she gave him the pie, he ate almost wolfishly,
+licking the crumbs from his fingers, and even picking up a bit of crust
+that had fallen to the ground.
+
+"I'm sorry there isn't any more," said the little girl. It had seemed a
+very large pie when she took it from the safe.
+
+The boy rose, shook himself, and swung his bundle across his arm.
+
+"Will you tell me the way?" he asked, and she gave him a few childish
+directions. "You go past the wheat field an' past the maple spring, an' at
+the dead tree by Aunt Ailsey's cabin you turn into the road with the
+chestnuts. Then you just keep on till you get there--an' if you don't ever
+get there, come back to breakfast."
+
+The boy had started off, but as she ended, he turned and lifted his hat.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," he said, with a quaint little bow; and
+Betty bobbed a courtesy in her nightgown before she fled back into the
+house.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE COMING OF THE BOY
+
+
+The boy trudged on bravely, his stick sounding the road. Sharp pains ran
+through his feet where his shoes had worn away, and his head was swimming
+like a top. The only pleasant fact of which he had consciousness was that
+the taste of the currants still lingered in his mouth.
+
+When he reached the maple spring, he swung himself over the stone wall and
+knelt down for a drink, dipping the water in his hand. The spring was low
+and damp and fragrant with the breath of mint which grew in patches in the
+little stream. Overhead a wild grapevine was festooned, and he plucked a
+leaf and bent it into a cup from which he drank. Then he climbed the wall
+again and went on his way.
+
+He was wondering if his mother had ever walked along this road on so
+brilliant a night. There was not a tree beside it of which she had not told
+him--not a shrub of sassafras or sumach that she had not carried in her
+thoughts. The clump of cedars, the wild cherry, flowering in the spring
+like snow, the blasted oak that stood where the branch roads met, the
+perfume of the grape blossoms on the wall--these were as familiar to him as
+the streets of the little crowded town in which he had lived. It was as if
+nature had stood still here for twelve long summers, or as if he were
+walking, ghostlike, amid the ever present memories of his mother's heart.
+
+His mother! He drew his sleeve across his eyes and went on more slowly. She
+was beside him on the road, and he saw her clearly, as he had seen her
+every day until last year--a bright, dark woman, with slender, blue-veined
+hands and merry eyes that all her tears had not saddened. He saw her in a
+long, black dress, with upraised arm, putting back a crepe veil from her
+merry eyes, and smiling as his father struck her. She had always smiled
+when she was hurt--even when the blow was heavier than usual, and the blood
+gushed from her temple, she had fallen with a smile. And when, at last, he
+had seen her lying in her coffin with her baby under her clasped hands,
+that same smile had been fixed upon her face, which had the brightness and
+the chill repose of marble.
+
+Of all that she had thrown away in her foolish marriage, she had retained
+one thing only--her pride. To the end she had faced her fate with all the
+insolence with which she faced her husband. And yet--"the Lightfoots were
+never proud, my son," she used to say; "they have no false pride, but they
+know their place, and in England, between you and me, they were more
+important than the Washingtons. Not that the General wasn't a great man,
+dear, he was a very great soldier, of course--and in his youth, you know,
+he was an admirer of your Great-great-aunt Emmeline. But she--why, she was
+the beauty and belle of two continents--there's an ottoman at home covered
+with a piece of her wedding dress."
+
+And the house? Was the house still as she had left it on that Christmas
+Eve? "A simple gentleman's home, my child--not so imposing as Uplands, with
+its pillars reaching to the roof, but older, oh, much older, and built of
+brick that was brought all the way from England, and over the fireplace in
+the panelled parlour you will find the Lightfoot arms.
+
+"It was in that parlour, dear, that grandmamma danced a minuet with General
+Lafayette; it looks out, you know, upon a white thorn planted by the
+General himself, and one of the windows has not been opened for fifty
+years, because the spray of English ivy your Great-aunt Emmeline set out
+with her own hands has grown across the sash. Now the window is quite dark
+with leaves, though you can still read the words Aunt Emmeline cut with her
+diamond ring in one of the tiny panes, when young Harry Fitzhugh came in
+upon her just as she had written a refusal to an English earl. She was
+sitting in the window seat with the letter in her hand, and, when your
+Great-uncle Harry--she afterwards married him, you know--fell on his knees
+and cried out that others might offer her fame and wealth, but that he had
+nothing except love, she turned, with a smile, and wrote upon the pane
+'Love is best.' You can still see the words, very faint against the ivy
+that she planted on her wedding day--"
+
+Oh, yes, he knew it all--Great-aunt Emmeline was but the abiding presence
+of the place. He knew the lawn with its grove of elms that overtopped the
+peaked roof, the hall, with its shining floor and detached staircase that
+crooked itself in the centre where the tall clock stood, and, best of all,
+the white panels of the parlour where hung the portrait of that same
+fascinating great-aunt, painted, in amber brocade, as Venus with the apple
+in her hand.
+
+And his grandmother, herself, in her stiff black silk, with a square of
+lace turned back from her thin throat and a fluted cap above her corkscrew
+curls--her daguerreotype, taken in all her pride and her precision, was
+tied up in the bundle swinging on his arm.
+
+He passed Aunt Ailsey's cabin, and turned into the road with the chestnuts.
+A mile farther he came suddenly upon the house, standing amid the grove of
+elms, dwarfed by the giant trees that arched above it. A dog's bark sounded
+snappily from a kennel, but he paid no heed. He went up the broad white
+walk, climbed the steps to the square front porch, and lifted the great
+brass knocker. When he let it fall, the sound echoed through the shuttered
+house.
+
+The Major, who was sitting in his library with a volume of Mr. Addison open
+before him and a decanter of Burgundy at his right hand, heard the knock,
+and started to his feet. "Something's gone wrong at Uplands," he said
+aloud; "there's an illness--or the brandy is out." He closed the book,
+pushed aside the bedroom candle which he had been about to light, and went
+out into the hall. As he unbarred the door and flung it open, he began at
+once:--
+
+"I hope there's no ill news," he exclaimed.
+
+The boy came into the hall, where he stood blinking from the glare of the
+lamplight. His head whirled, and he reached out to steady himself against
+the door. Then he carefully laid down his bundle and looked up with his
+mother's smile.
+
+"You're my grandfather, and I'm very hungry," he said.
+
+The Major caught the child's shoulders and drew him, almost roughly, under
+the light. As he towered there above him, he gulped down something in his
+throat, and his wide nostrils twitched.
+
+"So you're poor Jane's boy?" he said at last.
+
+The boy nodded. He felt suddenly afraid of the spare old man with his long
+Roman nose and his fierce black eyebrows. A mist gathered before his eyes
+and the lamp shone like a great moon in a cloudy circle.
+
+The Major looked at the bundle on the floor, and again he swallowed. Then
+he stooped and picked up the thing and turned away.
+
+"Come in, sir, come in," he said in a knotty voice. "You are at home."
+
+The boy followed him, and they passed the panelled parlour, from which he
+caught a glimpse of the painting of Great-aunt Emmeline, and went into the
+dining room, where his grandfather pulled out a chair and bade him to be
+seated. As the old man opened the huge mahogany sideboard and brought out a
+shoulder of cold lamb and a plate of bread and butter, he questioned him
+with a quaint courtesy about his life in town and the details of his
+journey. "Why, bless my soul, you've walked two hundred miles," he cried,
+stopping on his way from the pantry, with the ham held out. "And no money!
+Why, bless my soul!"
+
+"I had fifty cents," said the boy, "that was left from my steamboat fare,
+you know."
+
+The Major put the ham on the table and attacked it grimly with the
+carving-knife.
+
+"Fifty cents," he whistled, and then, "you begged, I reckon?"
+
+The boy flushed. "I asked for bread," he replied, stung to the defensive.
+"They always gave me bread and sometimes meat, and they let me sleep in the
+barns where the straw was, and once a woman took me into her house and
+offered me money, but I would not take it. I--I think I'd like to send her
+a present, if you please, sir."
+
+"She shall have a dozen bottles of my best Madeira," cried the Major. The
+word recalled him to himself, and he got up and raised the lid of the
+cellaret, lovingly running his hand over the rows of bottles.
+
+"A pig would be better, I think," said the boy, doubtfully, "or a cow, if
+you could afford it. She is a poor woman, you know."
+
+"Afford it!" chuckled the Major. "Why, I'll sell your grandmother's silver,
+but I'll afford it, sir."
+
+He took out a bottle, held it against the light, and filled a wine glass.
+"This is the finest port in Virginia," he declared; "there is life in every
+drop of it. Drink it down," and, when the boy had taken it, he filled his
+own glass and tossed it off, not lingering, as usual, for the priceless
+flavour. "Two hundred miles!" he gasped, as he looked at the child with
+moist eyes over which his red lids half closed. "Ah, you're a Lightfoot,"
+he said slowly. "I should know you were a Lightfoot if I passed you in the
+road." He carved a slice of ham and held it out on the end of the knife.
+"It's long since you've tasted a ham like this--browned in bread crumbs,"
+he added temptingly, but the boy gravely shook his head.
+
+"I've had quite enough, thank you, sir," he answered with a quaint dignity,
+not unlike his grandfather's and as the Major rose, he stood up also,
+lifting his black head to look in the old man's face with his keen gray
+eyes.
+
+The Major took up the bundle and moved toward the door. "You must see your
+grandmother," he said as they went out, and he led the way up the crooked
+stair past the old clock in the bend. On the first landing he opened a door
+and stopped upon the threshold. "Molly, here is poor Jane's boy," he said.
+
+In the centre of a big four-post bed, curtained in white dimity, a little
+old lady was lying between lavender-scented sheets. On her breast stood a
+tall silver candlestick which supported a well-worn volume of "The
+Mysteries of Udolpho," held open by a pair of silver snuffers. The old
+lady's face was sharp and wizened, and beneath her starched white nightcap
+rose the knots of her red flannel curlers. Her eyes, which were very small
+and black, held a flickering brightness like that in live embers.
+
+"Whose boy, Mr. Lightfoot?" she asked sharply.
+
+Holding the child by the hand, the Major went into the room.
+
+"It's poor Jane's boy, Molly," he repeated huskily.
+
+The old lady raised her head upon her high pillows, and looked at him by
+the light of the candle on her breast. "Are you Jane's boy?" she questioned
+in suspicion, and at the child's "Yes, ma'am," she said, "Come nearer.
+There, stand between the curtains. Yes, you are Jane's boy, I see." She
+gave the decision flatly, as if his parentage were a matter of her
+pleasure. "And what is your name?" she added, as she snuffed the candle.
+
+The boy looked from her stiff white nightcap to the "log-cabin" quilt on
+the bed, and then at her steel hoops which were hanging from a chair back.
+He had always thought of her as in her rich black silk, with the tight gray
+curls about her ears, and at this revelation of her inner mysteries, his
+fancy received a checkmate.
+
+But he met her eyes again and answered simply, "Dandridge--they call me
+Dan--Dan Montjoy."
+
+"And he has walked two hundred miles, Molly," gasped the Major.
+
+"Then he must be tired," was the old lady's rejoinder, and she added with
+spirit: "Mr. Lightfoot, will you show Dan to Jane's old room, and see that
+he has a blanket on his bed. He should have been asleep hours ago--good
+night, child, be sure and say your prayers," and as they crossed the
+threshold, she laid aside her book and blew out her light.
+
+The Major led the way to "Jane's old room" at the end of the hall, and
+fetched a candle from somewhere outside. "I think you'll find everything
+you need," he said, stooping to feel the covering on the bed. "Your
+grandmother always keeps the rooms ready. God bless you, my son," and he
+went out, softly closing the door after him.
+
+The boy sat down on the steps of the tester bed, and looked anxiously round
+the three-cornered room, with its sloping windows filled with small, square
+panes of glass. By the candlelight, flickering on the plain, white walls
+and simple furniture, he tried to conjure back the figure of his
+mother,--handsome Jane Lightfoot. Over the mantel hung two crude drawings
+from her hand, and on the table at the bedside there were several books
+with her name written in pale ink on the fly leaves. The mirror to the high
+old bureau seemed still to hold the outlines of her figure, very shadowy
+against the greenish glass. He saw her in her full white skirts--she had
+worn nine petticoats, he knew, on grand occasions--fastening her coral
+necklace about her stately throat, the bands of her black hair drawn like a
+veil above her merry eyes. Had she lingered on that last Christmas Eve, he
+wondered, when her candlestick held its sprig of mistletoe and her room was
+dressed in holly? Did she look back at the cheerful walls and the stately
+furniture before she blew out her light and went downstairs to ride madly
+off, wrapped in his father's coat? And the old people drank their eggnog
+and watched the Virginia reel, and, when they found her gone, shut her out
+forever.
+
+Now, as he sat on the bed-steps, it seemed to him that he had come home for
+the first time in his life. All this was his own by right,--the queer old
+house, his mother's room, and beyond the sloping windows, the meadows with
+their annual yield of grain. He felt the pride of it swelling within him;
+he waited breathlessly for the daybreak when he might go out and lord it
+over the fields and the cattle and the servants that were his also. And at
+last--his head big with his first day's vanity--he climbed between the
+dimity curtains and fell asleep.
+
+When he awaked next morning, the sun was shining through the small square
+panes, and outside were the waving elm boughs and a clear sky. He was
+aroused by a knock on his door, and, as he jumped out of bed, Big Abel, the
+Major's driver and confidential servant, came in with the warm water. He
+was a strong, finely-formed negro, black as the ace of spades (so the Major
+put it), and of a singularly open countenance.
+
+"Hi! ain't you up yit, young Marster?" he exclaimed. "Sis Rhody, she sez
+she done save you de bes' puffovers you ever tase, en ef'n you don' come
+'long down, dey'll fall right flat."
+
+"Who is Sis Rhody?" inquired the boy, as he splashed the water on his face.
+
+"Who she? Why, she de cook."
+
+"All right, tell her I'm coming," and he dressed hurriedly and ran down
+into the hall where he found Champe Lightfoot, the Major's great-nephew,
+who lived at Chericoke.
+
+"Hello!" called Champe at once, plunging his hands into his pockets and
+presenting an expression of eager interest. "When did you get here?"
+
+"Last night," Dan replied, and they stood staring at each other with two
+pairs of the Lightfoot gray eyes.
+
+"How'd you come?"
+
+"I walked some and I came part the way on a steamboat. Did you ever see a
+steamboat?"
+
+"Oh, shucks! A steamboat ain't anything. I've seen George Washington's
+sword. Do you like to fish?"
+
+"I never fished. I lived in a city."
+
+Zeke came in with a can of worms, and Champe gave them the greater share of
+his attention. "I tell you what, you'd better learn," he said at last,
+returning the can to Zeke and taking up his fishing-rod. "There're a lot of
+perch down yonder in the river," and he strode out, followed by the small
+negro.
+
+Dan looked after him a moment, and then went into the dining room, where
+his grandmother was sitting at the head of her table, washing her pink
+teaset in a basin of soapsuds. She wore her stiff, black silk this morning
+with its dainty undersleeves of muslin, and her gray curls fell beneath her
+cap of delicate yellowed lace. "Come and kiss me, child," she said as he
+entered. "Did you sleep well?"
+
+"I didn't wake once," answered the boy, kissing her wrinkled cheek.
+
+"Then you must eat a good breakfast and go to your grandfather in the
+library. Your grandfather is a very learned man, Dan, he reads Latin every
+morning in the library.--Cupid, has Rhody a freshly broiled chicken for
+your young master?"
+
+She got up and rustled about the room, arranging the pink teaset behind the
+glass doors of the corner press. Then she slipped her key basket over her
+arm and fluttered in and out of the storeroom, stopping at intervals to
+scold the stream of servants that poured in at the dining-room door. "Ef'n
+you don' min', Ole Miss, Paisley, she done got de colick f'om a hull pa'cel
+er green apples," and "Abram he's des a-shakin' wid a chill en he say he
+cyarn go ter de co'n field."
+
+"Wait a minute and be quiet," the old lady responded briskly, for, as the
+boy soon learned, she prided herself upon her healing powers, and suffered
+no outsider to doctor her husband or her slaves. "Hush, Silas, don't say a
+word until I tell you. Cupid--you are the only one with any sense--measure
+Paisley a dose of Jamaica ginger from the bottle on the desk in the office,
+and send Abram a drink of the bitters in the brown jug--why, Car'line, what
+do you mean by coming into the house with a slit in your apron?"
+
+"Fo' de Lawd, Ole Miss, hit's des done cotch on de fence. All de ducks Aun'
+Meeley been fattenin' up fur you done got loose en gone ter water."
+
+"Well, you go, too, every one of you!" and she dismissed them with waves of
+her withered, little hands. "Send them out, Cupid. No, Car'line, not a
+word. Don't 'Ole Miss' me, I tell you!" and the servants streamed out again
+as they had come.
+
+When he had finished his breakfast the boy went back into the hall where
+Big Abel was taking down the Major's guns from the rack, and, as he caught
+sight of the strapping figure and kindly black face, he smiled for the
+first time since his home-coming. With a lordly manner, he went over and
+held out his hand.
+
+"I like _you_, Big Abel," he said gravely, and he followed him out into the
+yard.
+
+For the next few weeks he did not let Big Abel out of his sight. He rode
+with him to the pasture, he sat with him on his doorstep of a fine evening,
+and he drove beside him on the box when the old coach went out. "Big Abel
+says a gentleman doesn't go barefooted," he said to Champe when he found
+him without his shoes in the meadow, "and I'm a gentleman."
+
+"I'd like to know what Big Abel knows about it," promptly retorted Champe,
+and Dan grew white with rage and proceeded to roll up his sleeves. "I'll
+whip any man who says Big Abel doesn't know a gentleman!" he cried, making
+a lunge at his cousin. In point of truth, it was Champe who did the
+whipping in such free fights; but bruises and a bleeding nose had never
+scared the savage out of Dan. He would spring up from his last tumble as
+from his first, and let fly at his opponent until Big Abel rushed, in
+tears, between them.
+
+From the garrulous negro, the boy soon learned the history of his
+family--learned, indeed, much about his grandfather of which the Major
+himself was quite unconscious. He heard of that kindly, rollicking early
+life, half wild and wholly good-humoured, in which the eldest male
+Lightfoot had squandered his time and his fortune. Why, was not the old
+coach itself but an existing proof of Big Abel's stories? "'Twan' mo'n
+twenty years back dat Ole Miss had de fines' car'ige in de county," he
+began one evening on the doorstep, and the boy drove away a brood of
+half-fledged chickens and settled himself to listen. "Hadn't you better
+light your pipe, Big Abel?" he inquired courteously.
+
+Big Abel shuffled into the cabin and came back with his corncob pipe and a
+lighted taper. "We all ain' rid in de ole coach den," he said with a sigh,
+as he sucked at the long stem, and threw the taper at the chickens. "De ole
+coach hit uz th'owed away in de out'ouse, en I 'uz des stiddyin' 'bout
+splittin' it up fer kindlin' wood--en de new car'ige hit cos' mos' a mint
+er money. Ole Miss she uz dat sot up dat she ain' let de hosses git no
+sleep--nor me nurr. Ef'n she spy out a speck er dus' on dem ar wheels,
+somebody gwine year f'om it, sho's you bo'n--en dat somebody wuz me. Yes,
+Lawd, Ole Miss she 'low dat dey ain' never been nuttin' like dat ar car'ige
+in Varginny sence befo' de flood."
+
+"But where is it, Big Abel?"
+
+"You des wait, young Marster, you des wait twel I git dar. I'se gwine git
+dar w'en I come ter de day me an Ole Marster rid in ter git his gol' f'om
+Mars Tom Braxton. De car'ige hit sutney did look spick en span dat day, en
+I done shine up my hosses twel you could 'mos' see yo' face in dey sides.
+Well, we rid inter town en we got de gol' f'om Marse Braxton,--all tied up
+in a bag wid a string roun' de neck er it,--en we start out agin (en Ole
+Miss she settin' up at home en plannin' w'at she gwine buy), w'en we come
+ter de tave'n whar we all use ter git our supper, en meet Marse Plaintain
+Dudley right face to face. Lawd! Lawd! I'se done knowed Marse Plaintain
+Dudley afo' den, so I des tech up my hosses en wuz a-sailin' 'long by, w'en
+he shake his han' en holler out, 'Is yer wife done tied you ter 'er ap'on,
+Maje?' (He knowed Ole Miss don' w'ar no ap'on des es well es I knowed
+hit--dat's Marse Plaintain all over agin); but w'en he holler out dat, Ole
+Marster sez, 'Stop, Abel,' en I 'bleeged ter stop, you know, I wuz w'en Ole
+Marster tell me ter.
+
+"'I ain' tied, Plaintain, I'm tired,' sez Ole Marster, 'I'm tired losin'
+money.' Den Marse Plaintain he laugh like a devil. 'Oh, come in, suh, come
+in en win, den,' he sez, en Ole Marster step out en walk right in wid Marse
+Plaintain behint 'im--en I set dar all night,--yes, suh, I set dar all
+night a-hol'n' de hosses' haids.
+
+"Den w'en de sun up out come Ole Marster, white es a sheet, with his han's
+a-trem'lin', en de bag er gol' gone. I look at 'im fur a minute, en den I
+let right out, 'Ole Marster, whar de gol'?' en he stan' still en ketch his
+breff befo' he say, 'Hit's all gone, Abel, en de car'ige en de hosses dey's
+gone, too." En w'en I bust out cryin' en ax 'im, 'My hosses gone, Ole
+Marster?' he kinder sob en beckon me fer ter git down f'om my box, en den
+we put out ter walk all de way home.
+
+"W'en we git yer 'bout'n dinner time, dar wuz Ole Miss at de do' wid de sun
+in her eyes, en soon es she ketch sight er Ole Marster, she put up her han'
+en holler out, 'Marse Lightfoot, whar de car'ige?' But Ole Marster, he des
+hang down his haid, same es a dawg dat's done been whupped fur rabbit
+runnin', en he sob, 'Hit's gone, Molly en de bag er gol' en de hosses,
+dey's gone, too, I done loss 'em all cep'n Abel--en I'm a bad man, Molly.'
+Dat's w'at Ole Marster say, 'I'm a bad man, Molly,' en I stiddy 'bout my
+hosses en Ole Miss' car'ige en shet my mouf right tight."
+
+"And Grandma? Did she cry?" asked the boy, breathlessly.
+
+"Who cry? Ole Miss? Huh! She des th'ow up her haid en low, 'Well, Marse
+Lightfoot, I'm glad you kep' Abel--en we'll use de ole coach agin',' sez
+she--en den she tu'n en strut right in ter dinner."
+
+"Was that all she ever said about it, Big Abel?"
+
+"Dat's all I ever hyern, honey, en I b'lieve hit's all Ole Marster ever
+hyern eeder, case w'en I tuck his gun out er de rack de nex' day, he was
+settin' up des es prim in de parlour a-sippin' a julep wid Marse Peyton
+Ambler, en I hyern 'im kinder whisper, 'Molly, she's en angel, Peyton--' en
+he ain' never call Ole Miss en angel twel he loss 'er car'ige."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+A HOUSE WITH AN OPEN DOOR
+
+
+The master of Uplands was standing upon his portico behind the Doric
+columns, looking complacently over the fat lands upon which his fathers had
+sown and harvested for generations. Beyond the lane of lilacs and the two
+silver poplars at the gate, his eyes wandered leisurely across the blue
+green strip of grass-land to the tawny wheat field, where the slaves were
+singing as they swung their cradles. The day was fine, and the outlying
+meadows seemed to reflect his gaze with a smile as beneficent as his own.
+He had cast his bread upon the soil, and it had returned to him threefold.
+
+As he stood there, a small, yet imposing figure, in his white duck suit,
+holding his broad slouch hat in his hand, he presented something of the
+genial aspect of the country--as if the light that touched the pleasant
+hills and valleys was aglow in his clear brown eyes and comely features.
+Even the smooth white hand in which he held his hat and riding-whip had
+about it a certain plump kindliness which would best become a careless
+gesture of concession. And, after all, he looked but what he was--a bland
+and generous gentleman, whose heart was as open as his wine cellar.
+
+A catbird was singing in one of the silver poplars, and he waited, with
+upraised head, for the song to end. Then he stooped beside a column and
+carefully examined a newly planted coral honeysuckle before he went into
+the wide hall, where his wife was seated at her work-table.
+
+From the rear door, which stood open until frost, a glow of sunshine
+entered, brightening the white walls with their rows of antlers and
+gunracks, and rippling over the well-waxed floor upon which no drop of
+water had ever fallen. A faint sweetness was in the air from the
+honeysuckle arbour outside, which led into the box-bordered walks of the
+garden.
+
+As the Governor hung up his hat, he begun at once with his daily news of
+the farm. "I hope they'll get that wheat field done to-day," he said: "but
+it doesn't look much like it--they've been dawdling over it for the last
+three days. I am afraid Wilson isn't much of a manager, after all; if I
+take my eyes off him, he seems to lose his head."
+
+"I think everything is that way," returned his wife, looking up from one of
+the elaborately tucked and hemstitched shirt fronts which served to gratify
+the Governor's single vanity. "I'm sure Aunt Pussy says she can't trust
+Judy for three days in the dairy without finding that the cream has stood
+too long for butter--and Judy has been churning for twenty years." She cut
+off her thread and held the linen out for the Governor's inspection. "I
+really believe that is the prettiest one I've made. How do you like this
+new stitch?"
+
+"Exquisite!" exclaimed her husband, as he took the shirt front in his hand.
+"Simply exquisite, my love. There isn't a woman in Virginia who can do such
+needlework; but it should go upon a younger and handsomer man, Julia."
+
+His wife blushed and looked up at him, the colour rising to her beautiful
+brow and giving a youthful radiance to her nunlike face. "It could
+certainly go upon a younger man, Mr. Ambler," she rejoined, with a touch of
+the coquetry for which she had once been noted; "but I should like to know
+where I'd find a handsomer one."
+
+A pleased smile broadened the Governor's face, and he settled his waistcoat
+with an approving pat. "Ah, you're a partial witness, my dear," he said;
+"but I've an error to confess, so I mustn't forego your favour--I--I bought
+several of Mr. Willis's servants, my love."
+
+"Why, Mr. Ambler!" remonstrated his wife, reproach softening her voice
+until it fell like a caress. "Why, Mr. Ambler, you bought six of Colonel
+Blake's last year, you know and one of the house servants has been nursing
+them ever since. The quarters are filled with infirm darkies."
+
+"But I couldn't help it, Julia, I really couldn't," pleaded the Governor.
+"You'd have done it yourself, my dear. They were sold to a dealer going
+south, and one of them wants to marry that Mandy of yours."
+
+"Oh, if it's Mandy's lover," broke in Mrs. Ambler, with rising interest,
+"of course you had to buy him, and you did right about the others--you
+always do right." She put out her delicate blue-veined hand and touched his
+arm. "I shall see them to-day," she added, "and Mandy may as well be making
+her wedding dress."
+
+"What an eye to things you have," said the Governor, proudly. "You might
+have been President, had you been a man, my dear."
+
+His wife rose and took up her work-box with a laugh of protest. "I am quite
+content with the mission of my sex, sir," she returned, half in jest, half
+in wifely humility. "I'm sure I'd much rather make shirt fronts for you
+than wear them myself." Then she nodded to him and went, with her stately
+step, up the broad staircase, her white hand flitting over the mahogany
+balustrade.
+
+As he looked after her, the Governor's face clouded, and he sighed beneath
+his breath. The cares she met with such serenity had been too heavy for her
+strength; they had driven the bloom from her cheeks and the lustre from her
+eyes; and, though she had not faltered at her task, she had drooped daily
+and grown older than her years. The master might live with a lavish
+disregard of the morrow, not the master's wife. For him were the open
+house, the shining table, the well-stocked wine cellar and the morning
+rides over the dewy fields; for her the cares of her home and children, and
+of the souls and bodies of the black people that had been given into her
+hands. In her gentle heart it seemed to her that she had a charge to keep
+before her God; and she went her way humbly, her thoughts filled with
+things so vital as the uses of her medicine chest and the unexpounded
+mysteries of salvation.
+
+Now, as she reached the upper landing, she met Betty running to look for
+her.
+
+"O, mamma, may I go to fish with Champe and the new boy and Big Abel? And
+Virginia wants to go, too, she says."
+
+"Wait a moment, child," said Mrs. Ambler. "You have torn the trimming on
+your frock. Stand still and I'll mend it for you," and she got out her
+needle and sewed up the rent, while Betty hopped impatiently from foot to
+foot.
+
+"I think the new boy's a heap nicer than Champe, mamma," she remarked as
+she waited.
+
+"Do you, dear?"
+
+"An' he says I'm nicer than Champe, too. He fought Champe 'cause he said I
+didn't have as much sense as he had--an' I have, haven't I, mamma?"
+
+"Women do not need as much sense as men, my dear," replied Mrs. Ambler,
+taking a dainty stitch.
+
+"Well, anyway, Dan fought Champe about it," said Betty, with pride. "He'll
+fight about 'most anything, he says, if he jest gets roused--an' that
+cert'n'y did rouse him. His nose bled a long time, too, and Champe whipped
+him, you know. But, when it was over, I asked him if I had as much sense as
+he had, and he said, 'Psha! you're just a girl.' Wasn't that funny, mamma?"
+
+"There, there, Betty," was Mrs. Ambler's rejoinder. "I'm afraid he's a
+wicked boy, and you mustn't get such foolish thoughts into your head. If
+the Lord had wanted you to be clever, He would have made you a man. Now,
+run away, and don't get your feet wet; and if you see Aunt Lydia in the
+garden, you may tell her that the bonnet has come for her to look at."
+
+Betty bounded away and gave the message to Aunt Lydia over the whitewashed
+fence of the garden. "They've sent a bonnet from New York for you to look
+at, Aunt Lydia," she cried. "It came all wrapped up in tissue paper, with
+mamma's gray silk, and it's got flowers on it--a lot of them!" with which
+parting shot, she turned her back upon the startled old lady and dashed off
+to join the boys and Big Abel, who, with their fishing-poles, had gathered
+in the cattle pasture.
+
+Miss Lydia, who was lovingly bending over a bed of thyme, raised her eyes
+and looked after the child, all in a gentle wonder. Then she went slowly up
+and down the box-bordered walks, the full skirt of her "old lady's gown"
+trailing stiffly over the white gravel, her delicate face rising against
+the blossomless shrubs of snowball and bridal-wreath, like a faintly tinted
+flower that had been blighted before it fully bloomed. Around her the
+garden was fragrant as a rose-jar with the lid left off, and the very paths
+beneath were red and white with fallen petals. Hardy cabbage roses, single
+pink and white dailies, yellow-centred damask, and the last splendours of
+the giant of battle, all dipped their colours to her as she passed, while
+the little rustic summer-house where the walks branched off was but a
+flowering bank of maiden's blush and microphylla.
+
+Amid them all, Miss Lydia wandered in her full black gown, putting aside
+her filmy ruffles as she tied back a hanging spray or pruned a broken
+stalk, sometimes even lowering her thread lace cap as she weeded the tangle
+of sweet Williams and touch-me-not. Since her gentle girlhood she had
+tended bountiful gardens, and dreamed her virgin dreams in the purity of
+their box-trimmed walks. In a kind of worldly piety she had bound her
+prayer book in satin and offered to her Maker the incense of flowers. She
+regarded heaven with something of the respectful fervour with which she
+regarded the world--that great world she had never seen; for "the proper
+place for a spinster is her father's house," she would say with her
+conventional primness, and send, despite herself, a mild imagination in
+pursuit of the follies from which she so earnestly prayed to be
+delivered--she, to whom New York was as the terror of a modern Babylon, and
+a Jezebel but a woman with paint upon her cheeks. "They tell me that other
+women have painted since," she had once said, with a wistful curiosity.
+"Your grandmamma, my dear Julia, had even seen one with an artificial
+colour. She would not have mentioned it to me, of course,--an unmarried
+lady,--but I was in the next room when she spoke of it to old Mrs.
+Fitzhugh. She was a woman of the world, was your grandmamma, my dear, and
+the most finished dancer of her day." The last was said with a timid pride,
+though to Miss Lydia herself the dance was the devil's own device, and the
+teaching of the catechism to small black slaves the chief end of existence.
+But the blood of the "most finished dancer of her day" still circulated
+beneath the old lady's gown and the religious life, and in her attenuated
+romances she forever held the sinner above the saint, unless, indeed, the
+sinner chanced to be of her own sex, when, probably, the book would never
+have reached her hands. For the purely masculine improprieties, her charity
+was as boundless as her innocence. She had even dipped into Shakespeare and
+brought away the memory of Mercutio; she had read Scott, and enshrined in
+her pious heart the bold Rob Roy. "Men are very wicked, I fear," she would
+gently offer, "but they are very a--a--engaging, too."
+
+To-day, when Betty came with the message, she lingered a moment to convince
+herself that the bonnet was not in her thoughts, and then swept her
+trailing bombazine into the house. "I have come to tell you that you may as
+well send the bonnet back, Julia," she began at once. "Flowers are much too
+fine for me, my dear. I need only a plain black poke."
+
+"Come up and try it on," was Mrs. Ambler's cheerful response. "You have no
+idea how lovely it will look on you."
+
+Miss Lydia went up and took the bonnet out of its wrapping of tissue paper.
+"No, you must send it back, my love," she said in a resigned voice. "It
+does not become me to dress as a married woman. It may as well go back,
+Julia."
+
+"But do look in the glass, Aunt Lydia--there, let me put it straight for
+you. Why, it suits you perfectly. It makes you look at least ten years
+younger."
+
+"A plain black poke, my dear," insisted Aunt Lydia, as she carefully
+swathed the flowers in the tissue paper. "And, besides, I have my old one,
+which is quite good enough for me, my love. It was very sweet of you to
+think of it, but it may as well go back." She pensively gazed at the mirror
+for a moment, and then went to her chamber and took out her Bible to read
+Saint Paul on Woman.
+
+When she came down a few hours later, her face wore an angelic meekness. "I
+have been thinking of that poor Mrs. Brown who was here last week," she
+said softly, "and I remember her telling me that she had no bonnet to wear
+to church. What a loss it must be to her not to attend divine service."
+
+Mrs. Ambler quickly looked up from her needlework. "Why, Aunt Lydia, it
+would be really a charity to give her your old one!" she exclaimed. "It
+does seem a shame that she should be kept away from church because of a
+bonnet. And, then, you might as well keep the new one, you know, since it
+is in the house; I hate the trouble of sending it back."
+
+"It would be a charity," murmured Miss Lydia, and the bonnet was brought
+down and tried on again. They were still looking at it when Betty rushed in
+and threw herself upon her mother. "O, mamma, I can't help it!" she cried
+in tears, "an' I wish I hadn't done it! Oh, I wish I hadn't; but I set fire
+to the Major's woodpile, and he's whippin' Dan!"
+
+"Betty!" exclaimed Mrs. Ambler. She took the child by her shoulders and
+drew her toward her. "Betty, did you set fire to the Major's woodpile?" she
+questioned sternly.
+
+Betty was sobbing aloud, but she stopped long enough to gasp out an answer.
+
+"We were playin' Injuns, mamma, an' we couldn't make believe 'twas real,"
+she said, "an' it isn't any fun unless you can make believe, so I lit the
+woodpile and pretended it was a fort, an' Big Abel, he was an Injun with
+the axe for a tomahawk; but the woodpile blazed right up, an' the Major
+came runnin' out. He asked Dan who did it, an' Dan wouldn't say 'twas
+me,--an' I wouldn't say, either,--so he took Dan in to whip him. Oh, I wish
+I'd told! I wish I'd told!"
+
+"Hush, Betty," said Mrs. Ambler, and she called to the Governor in the
+hall, "Mr. Ambler, Betty has set fire to the Major's woodpile!" Her voice
+was hopeless, and she looked up blankly at her husband as he entered.
+
+"Set fire to the woodpile!" whistled the Governor. "Why, bless my soul, we
+aren't safe in our beds!"
+
+"He whipped Dan," wailed Betty.
+
+"We aren't safe in our beds," repeated the Governor, indignantly. "Julia,
+this is really too much."
+
+"Well, you will have to ride right over there," said his wife, decisively.
+"Petunia, run down and tell Hosea to saddle his master's horse. Betty, I
+hope this will be a lesson to you. You shan't have any preserves for supper
+for a week."
+
+"I don't want any preserves," sobbed Betty, her apron to her eyes.
+
+"Then you mustn't go fishing for two weeks. Mr. Ambler, you'd better be
+starting at once, and don't forget to tell the Major that Betty is in great
+distress--you are, aren't you, Betty?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," wept Betty.
+
+The Governor went out into the hall and took down his hat and riding-whip.
+
+"The sins of the children are visited upon the fathers," he remarked
+gloomily as he mounted his horse and rode away from his supper.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE SCHOOL FOR GENTLEMEN
+
+
+The Governor rode up too late to avert the punishment. Dan had taken his
+whipping and was sitting on a footstool in the library, facing the Major
+and a couple of the Major's cronies. His face wore an expression in which
+there was more resentment than resignation; for, though he took blows
+doggedly, he bore the memory of them long after the smart had ceased--long,
+indeed, after light-handed justice, in the Major's person, had forgotten
+alike the sin and the expiation. For the Major's hand was not steady at the
+rod, and he had often regretted a weakness of heart which interfered with
+a physical interpretation of the wisdom of Solomon. "If you get your
+deserts, you'd get fifty lashes," was his habitual reproof to his servants,
+though, as a matter of fact, he had never been known to order one. His
+anger was sometimes of the kind that appalls, but it usually vented itself
+in a heightened redness of face or a single thundering oath; and a woman's
+sob would melt his stoniest mood. It was only because his daughter had kept
+out of his sight that he had never forgiven her, people said; but there
+was, perhaps, something characteristic in the proof that he was most
+relentless where he had most loved.
+
+As for Dan's chastisement, he had struck him twice across the shoulders,
+and when the boy had turned to him with the bitter smile which was Jane
+Lightfoot's own, the Major had choked in his wrath, and, a moment later,
+flung the whip aside. "I'll be damned,--I beg your pardon, sir,--I'll be
+ashamed of myself if I give you another lick," he said. "You are a
+gentleman, and I shall trust you."
+
+He held out his hand, but he had not counted on the Montjoy blood. The boy
+looked at him and stubbornly shook his head. "I can't shake hands yet
+because I am hating you just now," he answered. "Will you wait awhile,
+sir?" and the Major choked again, half in awe, half in amusement.
+
+"You don't bear malice, I reckon?" he ventured cautiously.
+
+"I am not sure," replied the boy, "I rather think I do."
+
+Then he put on his coat, and they went out to meet Mr. Blake and Dr. Crump,
+two hale and jolly gentlemen who rode over every Thursday to spend the
+night.
+
+As the visitors came panting up the steps, the Major stood in the doorway
+with outstretched hands.
+
+"You are late, gentlemen, you are late," was his weekly greeting, to which
+they as regularly responded, "We could never come too early for our
+pleasure, my dear Major; but there are professional duties, you know,
+professional duties."
+
+After this interchange of courtesies, they would enter the house and settle
+themselves, winter or summer, in their favourite chairs upon the
+hearth-rug, when it was the custom of Mrs. Lightfoot to send in a
+fluttering maid to ask if Mrs. Blake had done her the honour to accompany
+her husband. As Mrs. Blake was never known to leave her children and her
+pet poultry, this was merely a conventionalism by which the elder lady
+meant to imply a standing welcome for the younger.
+
+On this evening, Mr. Blake--the rector of the largest church in
+Leicesterburg--straightened his fat legs and folded his hands as he did at
+the ending of his sermons, and the others sat before him with the strained
+and reverential faces which they put on like a veil in church and took off
+when the service was over. That it was not a prayer, but a pleasantry of
+which he was about to deliver himself, they quite understood; but he had a
+habit of speaking on week days in his Sunday tones, which gave, as it were,
+an official weight to his remarks. He was a fleshy wide-girthed gentleman,
+with a bald head, and a face as radiant as the full moon.
+
+"I was just asking the doctor when I was to have the honour of making the
+little widow Mrs. Crump?" he threw out at last, with a laugh that shook him
+from head to foot. "It is not good for man to live alone, eh, Major?"
+
+"That sentence is sufficient to prove the divine inspiration of the
+Scriptures," returned the Major, warmly, while the doctor blushed and
+stammered, as he always did, at the rector's mild matrimonial jokes. It
+was twenty years since Mr. Blake began teasing Dr. Crump about his
+bachelorship, and to them both the subject was as fresh as in its
+beginning.
+
+"I--I declare I haven't seen the lady for a week," protested the doctor,
+"and then she sent for me."
+
+"Sent for you?" roared Mr. Blake. "Ah, doctor, doctor!"
+
+"She sent for me because she had heart trouble," returned the doctor,
+indignantly. The lady's name was never mentioned between them.
+
+The rector laughed until the tears started.
+
+"Ah, you're a success with the ladies," he exclaimed, as he drew out a
+neatly ironed handkerchief and shook it free from its folds, "and no
+wonder--no wonder! We'll be having an epidemic of heart trouble next."
+Then, as he saw the doctor wince beneath his jest, his kindly heart
+reproached him, and he gravely turned to politics and the dignity of
+nations.
+
+The two friends were faithful Democrats, though the rector always began his
+very forcible remarks with: "A minister knows nothing of politics, and I am
+but a minister of the Gospel. If you care, however, for the opinion of an
+outsider--"
+
+As for the Major, he had other leanings which were a source of unending
+interest to them all. "I am a Whig, not from principle, but from prejudice,
+sir," he declared. "The Whig is the gentleman's party. I never saw a Whig
+that didn't wear broadcloth."
+
+"And some Democrats," politely protested the doctor, with a glance at his
+coat.
+
+The Major bowed.
+
+"And many Democrats, sir; but the Whig party, if I may say so, is the
+broadcloth party--the cloth stamps it; and besides this, sir, I think its
+'parts are solid and will wear well.'"
+
+Now when the Major began to quote Mr. Addison, even the rector was silent,
+save for an occasional prompting, as, "I was reading the _Spectator_ until
+eleven last night, sir," or "I have been trying to recall the lines in _The
+Campaign_ before. 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved."
+
+This was the best of the day to Dan, and, as he turned on his footstool, he
+did not even glare at Champe, who, from the window seat, was regarding him
+with the triumphant eye with which the young behold the downfall of a
+brother. For a moment he had forgotten the whipping, but Champe had not; he
+was thinking of it in the window seat.
+
+But the Major was standing on the hearth-rug, and the boy's gaze went to
+him. Tossing back his long white hair, and fixing his eagle glance on his
+friends, the old gentleman, with a free sweep of his arm, thundered his
+favourite lines:--
+
+  "So, when an angel by divine command
+  With rising tempests shakes a guilty land
+  (Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed),
+  Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
+  And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
+  Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm."
+
+He had got so far when the door opened and the Governor entered--a little
+hurriedly, for he was thinking of his supper.
+
+"I am the bearer of an apology, my dear Major," he said, when he had
+heartily shaken hands all round. "It seems that Betty--I assure you she is
+in great distress--set fire to your woodpile this afternoon, and that your
+grandson was punished for her mischief. My dear boy," he laid his hand on
+Dan's shoulder and looked into his face with the winning smile which had
+made him the most popular man in his State, "my dear boy, you are young to
+be such a gentleman."
+
+A hot flush overspread Dan's face; he forgot the smart and the wounded
+pride--he forgot even Champe staring from the window seat. The Governor's
+voice was like salve to his hurt; the upright little man with the warm
+brown eyes seemed to lift him at once to the plane of his own chivalry.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't tell on a girl, sir," he answered, and then his smothered
+injury burst forth; "but she ought to be ashamed of herself," he added
+bluntly.
+
+"She is," said the Governor with a smile; then he turned to the others.
+"Major, the boy is a Lightfoot!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Ah, so I said, so I said!" cried the Major, clapping his hand on Dan's
+head in a racial benediction. "'I'd know you were a Lightfoot if I met you
+in the road' was what I said the first evening."
+
+"And a Virginian," added Mr. Blake, folding his hands on his stomach and
+smiling upon the group. "My daughter in New York wrote to me last week for
+advice about the education of her son. 'Shall I send him to the school of
+learning at Cambridge, papa?' she asked; and I answered, 'Send him there,
+if you will, but, when he has finished with his books, by all means let him
+come to Virginia--the school for gentlemen.'"
+
+"The school for gentlemen!" cried the doctor, delightedly. "It is a prouder
+title than the 'Mother of Presidents.'"
+
+"And as honourably earned," added the rector. "If you want polish, come to
+Virginia; if you want chivalry, come to Virginia. When I see these two
+things combined, I say to myself, 'The blood of the Mother of Presidents is
+here.'"
+
+"You are right, sir, you are right!" cried the Major, shaking back his
+hair, as he did when he was about to begin the lines from _The Campaign_.
+"Nothing gives so fine a finish to a man as a few years spent with the
+influences that moulded Washington. Why, some foreigners are perfected by
+them, sir. When I met General Lafayette in Richmond upon his second visit,
+I remember being agreeably impressed with his dignity and ease, which, I
+have no doubt, sir, he acquired by his association, in early years, with
+the Virginia gentlemen."
+
+The Governor looked at them with a twinkle in his eye. He was aware of the
+humorous traits of his friends, but, in the peculiar sweetness of his
+temper, he loved them not the less because he laughed at them--perhaps the
+more. In the rector's fat body and the Major's lean one, he knew that there
+beat hearts as chivalrous as their words. He had seen the Major doff his
+hat to a beggar in the road, and the rector ride forty miles in a snowstorm
+to read a prayer at the burial of a slave. So he said with a pleasant
+laugh, "We are surely the best judges, my dear sirs," and then, as Mrs.
+Lightfoot rustled in, they rose and fell back until she had taken her seat,
+and found her knitting.
+
+"I am so sorry not to see Mrs. Blake," she said to the rector. "I have a
+new recipe for yellow pickle which I must write out and send to her." And,
+as the Governor rose to go, she stood up and begged him to stay to supper.
+"Mr. Lightfoot, can't you persuade him to sit down with us?" she asked.
+
+"Where you have failed, Molly, it is useless for me to try," gallantly
+responded the Major, picking up her ball of yarn.
+
+"But I must bear your pardon to my little girl, I really must," insisted
+the Governor. "By the way, Major," he added, turning at the door, "what do
+you think of the scheme to let the Government buy the slaves and ship them
+back to Africa? I was talking to a Congressman about it last week."
+
+"Sell the servants to the Government!" cried the Major, hotly. "Nonsense!
+nonsense! Why, you are striking at the very foundation of our society!
+Without slavery, where is our aristocracy, sir?"
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon," said the Governor lightly. "Well, we shall keep
+them a while longer, I expect. Good night, madam, good night, gentlemen,"
+and he went out to where his horse was standing.
+
+The Major looked after him with a sigh. "When I hear a man talking about
+the abolition of slavery," he remarked gloomily, "I always expect him to
+want to do away with marriage next--" he checked himself and coloured, as
+if an improper speech had slipped out in the presence of Mrs. Lightfoot.
+The old lady rose primly and, taking the rector's arm, led the way to
+supper.
+
+Dan was not noticed at the table,--it was a part of his grandmother's
+social training to ignore children before visitors,--but when he went
+upstairs that night, the Major came to the boy's room and took him in his
+arms.
+
+"I am proud of you, my child," he said. "You are my grandson, every inch of
+you, and you shall have the finest riding horse in the stables on your
+birthday."
+
+"I'd rather have Big Abel, if you please, sir," returned Dan. "I think Big
+Abel would like to belong to me, grandpa."
+
+"Bless my soul!" cried the Major. "Why, you shall have Big Abel and his
+whole family, if you like. I'll give you every darky on the place, if you
+want them--and the horses to boot," for the old gentleman was as unwise in
+his generosity as in his wrath.
+
+"Big Abel will do, thank you," responded the boy; "and I'd like to shake
+hands now, grandpa," he added gravely; but before the Major left that night
+he had won not only the child's hand, but his heart. It was the beginning
+of the great love between them.
+
+For from that day Dan was as the light of his grandfather's eyes. As the
+boy strode manfully across the farm, his head thrown back, his hands
+clasped behind him, the old man followed, in wondering pride, on his
+footsteps. To see him stand amid the swinging cradles in the wheat field,
+ordering the slaves and arguing with the overseer, was sufficient delight
+unto the Major's day. "Nonsense, Molly," he would reply half angrily to his
+wife's remonstrances. "The child can't be spoiled. I tell you he's too fine
+a boy. I couldn't spoil him if I tried," and once out of his grandmother's
+sight, Dan's arrogance was laughed at, and his recklessness was worshipped.
+"Ah, you will make a man, you will make a man!" the Major had exclaimed
+when he found him swearing at the overseer, "but you mustn't curse, you
+really mustn't, you know. Why, your grandmother won't let me do it."
+
+"But I told him to leave that haystack for me to slide on," complained the
+boy, "and he said he wouldn't, and began to pull it down. I wish you'd send
+him away, grandpa."
+
+"Send Harris away!" whistled the Major. "Why, where could I get another,
+Dan? He has been with me for twenty years."
+
+"Hi, young Marster, who gwine min' de han's?" cried Big Abel, from behind.
+
+"Do you like him, Big Abel?" asked the child, for the opinion of Big Abel
+was the only one for which he ever showed respect. "It's because he's not
+free, grandpa," he had once explained at the Major's jealous questioning.
+"I wouldn't hurt his feelings because he's not free, you know, and he
+couldn't answer back," and the Major had said nothing more.
+
+Now "Do you like him, Big Abel?" he inquired; and to the negro's "He's done
+use me moughty well, suh," he said gravely, "Then he shall stay,
+grandpa--and I'm sorry I cursed you, Harris," he added before he left the
+field. He would always own that he was wrong, if he could once be made to
+see it, which rarely happened.
+
+"The boy's kind heart will save him, or he is lost," said the Governor,
+sadly, as Dan tore by on his little pony, his black hair blown from his
+face, his gray eyes shining.
+
+"He has a kind heart, I know," returned Mrs. Ambler, gently; "the servants
+and the animals adore him--but--but do you think it well for Betty to be
+thrown so much with him? He is very wild, and they deny him nothing. I wish
+she went with Champe instead--but what do you think?"
+
+"I don't know, I don't know," answered the Governor, uneasily. "He told the
+doctor to mind his own business, yesterday--and that is not unlike Betty,
+herself, I am sorry to say--but this morning I saw him give his month's
+pocket money to that poor free negro, Levi. I can't say, I really do not
+know," his eyes followed Betty as she flew out to climb behind Dan on the
+pony's back. "I wish it were Champe, myself," he added doubtfully.
+
+For Betty--independent Betty--had become Dan's slave. Ever since the
+afternoon of the burning woodpile, she had bent her stubborn little knees
+to him in hero-worship. She followed closer than a shadow on his footsteps;
+no tortures could wring his secrets from her lips. Once, when he hid
+himself in the mountains for a day and night and played Indian, she kept
+silence, though she knew his hiding-place, and a search party was out with
+lanterns until dawn.
+
+"I didn't tell," she said triumphantly, when he came down again.
+
+"No, you didn't tell," he frankly acknowledged.
+
+"So I can keep a secret," she declared at last.
+
+"Oh, yes, you can keep a secret--for a girl," he returned, and added, "I
+tell you what, I like you better than anybody about here, except grandpa
+and Big Abel."
+
+She shone upon him, her eyes narrowing; then her face darkened. "Not better
+than Big Abel?" she questioned plaintively.
+
+"Why, I have to like Big Abel best," he replied, "because he belongs to me,
+you know--you ought to love the thing that belongs to you."
+
+"But I might belong to you," suggested Betty. She smiled again, and,
+smiling or grave, she always looked as if she were standing in a patch of
+sunshine, her hair made such a brightness about her.
+
+"Oh, you couldn't, you're white," said Dan; "and, besides, I reckon Big
+Abel and the pony are as much as I can manage. It's a dreadful weight,
+having people belong to you."
+
+Then he loaded his gun, and Betty ran away with her fingers in her ears,
+because she couldn't bear to have things killed.
+
+A month later Dan and Champe settled down to study. The new tutor came--a
+serious young man from the North, who wore spectacles, and read the Bible
+to the slaves on the half-holidays. He was kindly and conscientious, and,
+though the boys found him unduly weighed down by responsibility for the
+souls of his fellows, they soon loved him in a light-hearted fashion. In a
+society where even the rector harvested alike the true grain and the tares,
+and left the Almighty to do His own winnowing, Mr. Bennett's free-handed
+fight with the flesh and the devil was looked upon with smiling tolerance,
+as if he were charging a windmill with a wooden sword.
+
+On Saturdays he would ride over to Uplands, and discuss his schemes for the
+uplifting of the negroes with the Governor and Mrs. Ambler; and once he
+even went so far as to knock at Rainy-day Jones's door and hand him a
+pamphlet entitled "The Duties of the Slaveholder." Old Rainy-day, who was
+the biggest bully in the county, set the dogs on him, and lit his pipe with
+the pamphlet; but the Major, when he heard the story, laughed, and called
+the young man "a second David."
+
+Mr. Bennett looked at him seriously through his glasses, and then his eyes
+wandered to the small slave, Mitty, whose chief end in life was the finding
+of Mrs. Lightfoot's spectacles. He was an earnest young man, but he could
+not keep his eyes away from Mitty when she was in the room; and at the old
+lady's, "Mitty, my girl, find me my glasses," he felt like jumping from his
+seat and calling upon her to halt. It seemed a survival of the dark ages
+that one immortal soul should spend her life hunting for the spectacles of
+another. To Mr. Bennett, a soul was a soul in any colour; to the Major the
+sons of Ham were under a curse which the Lord would lighten in His own good
+time.
+
+But before many months, the young man had won the affection of the boys and
+the respect of their grandfather, whose candid lack of logic was
+overpowered by the reasons which Mr. Bennett carried at every finger tip.
+He not only believed things, he knew why he believed them; and to the
+Major, with whom feelings were convictions, this was more remarkable than
+the courage with which he had handed his tract to old Rainy-day Jones.
+
+As for Mr. Bennett, he found the Major a riddle that he could not read; but
+the Governor's first smile had melted his reserve, and he declared Mrs.
+Ambler to be "a Madonna by Perugino."
+
+Mrs. Ambler had never heard of Perugino, and the word "Madonna" suggested
+to her vague Romanist snares, but her heart went out to the stranger when
+she found that he was in mourning for his mother. She was not a clever
+woman in a worldly sense, yet her sympathy, from the hourly appeals to it,
+had grown as fine as intellect. She was hopelessly ignorant of ancient
+history and the Italian Renaissance; but she had a genius for the
+affections, and where a greater mind would have blundered over a wound, her
+soft hand went by intuition to the spot. It was very pleasant to sit in a
+rosewood chair in her parlour, to hear her gray silk rustle as she crossed
+her feet, and to watch her long white fingers interlace.
+
+So she talked to the young man of his mother, and he showed her the
+daguerrotype of the girl he loved; and at last she confided to him her
+anxieties for Betty's manners and the Governor's health, and her timid
+wonder that the Bible "countenanced" slavery. She was rare and elegant like
+a piece of fine point lace; her hands had known no harder work than the
+delicate hemstitching, and her mind had never wandered over the nearer
+hills.
+
+As time went on, Betty was given over to the care of her governess, and she
+was allowed to run wild no more in the meadows. Virginia, a pretty prim
+little girl, already carried her prayer book in her hands when she drove to
+church, and wore Swiss muslin frocks in the evenings; but Betty when she
+was made to hem tablecloths on sunny mornings, would weep until her needle
+rusted.
+
+On cloudy days she would sometimes have her ambitions to be ladylike, and
+once, when she had gone to a party in town and seen Virginia dancing while
+she sat against the wall, she had come home to throw herself upon the
+floor.
+
+"It's not that I care for boys, mamma," she wailed, "for I despise them;
+but they oughtn't to have let me sit against the wall. And none of them
+asked me to dance--not even Dan."
+
+"Why, you are nothing but a child, Betty," said Mrs. Ambler, in dismay.
+"What on earth does it matter to you whether the boys notice you or not?"
+
+"It doesn't," sobbed Betty; "but you wouldn't like to sit against the wall,
+mamma."
+
+"You can make them suffer for it six years hence, daughter," suggested the
+Governor, revengefully.
+
+"But suppose they don't have anything to do with me then," cried Betty, and
+wept afresh.
+
+In the end, it was Uncle Bill who brought her to her feet, and, in doing
+so, he proved himself to be the philosopher that he was.
+
+"I tell you what, Betty," he exclaimed, "if you get up and stop crying,
+I'll give you fifty cents. I reckon fifty cents will make up for any boy,
+eh?"
+
+Betty lay still and looked up from the floor.
+
+"I--I reckon a dol-lar m-i-g-h-t," she gasped, and caught a sob before it
+burst out.
+
+"Well, you get up and I'll give you a dollar. There ain't many boys worth
+a dollar, I can tell you."
+
+Betty got up and held out one hand as she wiped her eyes with the other.
+
+"I shall never speak to a boy again," she declared, as she took the money.
+
+That was when she was thirteen, and a year later Dan went away to college.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+COLLEGE DAYS
+
+
+"My dear grandpa," wrote Dan during his first weeks at college, "I think I
+am going to like it pretty well here after I get used to the professors.
+The professors are a great nuisance. They seem to forget that a fellow of
+seventeen isn't a baby any longer.
+
+"The Arcades are very nice, and the maples on the lawn remind me of those
+at Uplands, only they aren't nearly so fine. My room is rather small, but
+Big Abel keeps everything put away, so I manage to get along. Champe sleeps
+next to me, and we are always shouting through the wall for Big Abel. I
+tell you, he has to step lively now.
+
+"The night after we came, we went to supper at Professor Ball's. There was
+a Miss Ball there who had a pair of big eyes, but girls are so silly.
+Champe talked to her all the evening and walked out to the graveyard with
+her the next afternoon. I don't see why he wants to spend so much of his
+time with young ladies. It's because they think him good-looking, I reckon.
+
+"We are the only men who have horses here, so I am glad you made me bring
+Prince Rupert, after all. When I ride him into town, everybody turns to
+look at him, and Batt Horsford, the stableman, says his trot is as clean as
+a razor. At first I wished I'd brought my hunter instead, they made such a
+fuss over Champe's, and I tell you he's a regular timber-topper.
+
+"A week ago I rode to the grave of Mr. Jefferson, as I promised you, but I
+couldn't carry the wreath for grandma because it would have looked
+silly--Champe said so. However, I made Big Abel get down and pull a few
+flowers on the way.
+
+"You know, I had always thought that only gentlemen came to the University,
+but whom do you think I met the first evening?--why, the son of old
+Rainy-day Jones. What do you think of that? He actually had the impudence
+to pass himself off as one of the real Joneses, and he was going with all
+the men. Of course, I refused to shake hands with him--so did Champe--and,
+when he wanted to fight me, I said I fought only gentlemen. I wish you
+could have seen his face. He looked as old Rainy-day did when he hit the
+free negro Levi, and I knocked him down.
+
+"By the way, I wish you would please send me my half-year's pocket money in
+a lump, if you can conveniently do so. There is a man here who is working
+his way through Law, and his mother has just lost all her money, so, unless
+some one helps him, he'll have to go out and work before he takes his
+degree. I've promised to lend him my half-year's allowance--I said 'lend'
+because it might hurt his feelings; but, of course, I don't want him to pay
+it back. He's a great fellow, but I can't tell you his name--I shouldn't
+like it in his place, you know.
+
+"The worst thing about college life is having to go to classes. If it
+wasn't for that I should be all right, and, anyway, I am solid on my Greek
+and Latin--but I can't get on with the higher mathematics. Mr. Bennett
+couldn't drive them into my head as he did into Champe's.
+
+"I hope grandma has entirely recovered from her lumbago. Tell her Mrs. Ball
+says she was cured by using red pepper plasters.
+
+"Do you know, by the way, that I left my half-dozen best waistcoats--the
+embroidered ones--in the bottom drawer of my bureau, at least Big Abel
+swears that's where he put them. I should be very much obliged if grandma
+would have them fixed up and sent to me--I can't do without them. A great
+many gentlemen here are wearing coloured cravats, and Charlie Morson's
+brother, who came up from Richmond for a week, has a pair of side whiskers.
+He says they are fashionable down there, but I don't like them.
+
+"With affectionate greeting to grandma and yourself,
+
+"Your dutiful grandson,
+
+"DANDRIDGE MONTJOY."
+
+"P.S. I am using my full name now--it will look better if I am ever
+President. I wonder if Mr. Jefferson was ever called plain Tom.
+
+"DAN."
+
+"N.B. Give my love to the little girls at Uplands.
+
+"D."
+
+The Major read the letter aloud to his wife while she sat knitting by the
+fireside, with Mitty holding the ball of yarn on a footstool at her feet.
+
+"What do you think of that, Molly?" he asked when he had finished, his
+voice quivering with excitement.
+
+"Red pepper plasters!" returned the old lady, contemptuously. "As if I
+hadn't been making them for Cupid for the last twenty years. Red pepper
+plasters, indeed! Why, they're no better than mustard ones. I reckon I've
+made enough of them to know."
+
+"I don't mean that, Molly," explained the Major, a little crestfallen. "I
+was speaking of the letter. That's a fine letter, now, isn't it?"
+
+"It might be worse," admitted Mrs. Lightfoot, coolly; "but for my part, I
+don't care to have my grandson upon terms of equality with any of that
+rascal Jones's blood. Why, the man whips his servants."
+
+"But he isn't upon any terms, my dear. He refused to shake hands with him,
+didn't you hear that? Perhaps I'd better read the letter again."
+
+"That is all very well, Mr. Lightfoot," said his wife, clicking her
+needles, "but it can't prevent his being in classes with him, all the same.
+And I am sure, if I had known the University was so little select, I should
+have insisted upon sending him to Oxford, where his great-grandfather went
+before him."
+
+"Good gracious, Molly! You don't wish the lad was across the ocean, do
+you?"
+
+"It matters very little where he is so long as he is a gentleman," returned
+the old lady, so sharply that Mitty began to unwind the worsted rapidly.
+
+"Nonsense, Molly," protested the Major, irritably, for he could not stand
+opposition upon his own hearth-rug. "The boy couldn't be hurt by sitting in
+the same class with the devil himself--nor could Champe, for that matter.
+They are too good Lightfoots."
+
+"I am not uneasy about Champe," rejoined his wife. "Champe has never been
+humoured as Dan has been, I'm glad to say."
+
+The Major started up as red as a beet.
+
+"Do you mean that I humour him, madam?" he demanded in a terrible voice.
+
+"Do pray, Mr. Lightfoot, you will frighten Mitty to death," said his wife,
+reprovingly, "and it is really very dangerous for you to excite yourself
+so--you remember the doctor cautioned you against it." And, by the time the
+Major was thoroughly depressed, she skilfully brought out her point. "Of
+course you spoil the child to death. You know it as well as I do."
+
+The Major, with the fear of apoplexy in his mind, had no answer on his
+tongue, though a few minutes later he showed his displeasure by ordering
+his horse and riding to Uplands to talk things over with the Governor.
+
+"I am afraid Molly is breaking," he thought gloomily, as he rode along.
+"She isn't what she was when I married her fifty years ago."
+
+But at Uplands his ill humour was dispelled. The Governor read the letter
+and declared that Dan was a fine lad, "and I'm glad you haven't spoiled
+him, Major," he said heartily. "Yes, they're both fine lads and do you
+honour."
+
+"So they do! so they do!" exclaimed the Major, delightedly. "That's just
+what I said to Molly, sir. And Dan sends his love to the little girls," he
+added, smiling upon Betty and Virginia, who stood by.
+
+"Thank you, sir," responded Virginia, prettily, looking at the old man with
+her dovelike eyes; but Betty tossed her head--she had an imperative little
+toss which she used when she was angry. "I am only three years younger than
+he is," she said, "and I'm not a little girl any longer--Mammy has had to
+let down all my dresses. I am fourteen years old, sir."
+
+"And quite a young lady," replied the Major, with a bow. "There are not two
+handsomer girls in the state, Governor, which means, of course, that there
+are not two handsomer girls in the world, sir. Why, Virginia's eyes are
+almost a match for my Aunt Emmeline's, and poets have immortalized hers. Do
+you recall the verses by the English officer she visited in prison?--
+
+  "'The stars in Rebel skies that shine
+  Are the bright orbs of Emmeline.'"
+
+"Yes, I remember," said the Governor. "Emmeline Lightfoot is as famous as
+Diana," then his quick eyes caught Betty's drooping head, "and what of this
+little lady?" he asked, patting her shoulder. "There's not a brighter smile
+in Virginia than hers, eh, Major?"
+
+But the Major was not to be outdone when there were compliments to be
+exchanged.
+
+"Her hair is like the sunshine," he began, and checked himself, for at the
+first mention of her hair Betty had fled.
+
+It was on this afternoon that she brewed a dye of walnut juice and carried
+it in secret to her room. She had loosened her braids and was about to
+plunge her head into the basin when Mrs. Ambler came in upon her. "Why,
+Betty! Betty!" she cried in horror.
+
+Betty turned with a start, wrapped in her shining hair. "It is the only
+thing left to do, mamma," she said desperately. "I am going to dye it. It
+isn't ladylike, I know, but red hair isn't ladylike either. I have tried
+conjuring, and it won't conjure, so I'm going to dye it."
+
+"Betty! Betty!" was all Mrs. Ambler could say, though she seized the basin
+and threw it from the window as if it held poison. "If you ever let that
+stuff touch your hair, I--I'll shave your head for you," she declared as
+she left the room; but a moment afterward she looked in again to add, "Your
+grandmamma had red hair, and she was the beauty of her day--there, now, you
+ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
+
+So Betty smiled again, and when Virginia came in to dress for supper, she
+found her parading about in Aunt Lydia's best bombazine gown.
+
+"This is how I'll look when I'm grown up," she said, the corner of her eye
+on her sister.
+
+"You'll look just lovely," returned Virginia, promptly, for she always said
+the sweetest thing at the sweetest time.
+
+"And I'm going to look like this when Dan comes home next summer," resumed
+Betty, sedately.
+
+"Not in Aunt Lydia's dress?"
+
+"You goose! Of course not. I'm going to get Mammy to make me a Swiss muslin
+down to the ground, and I'm going to wear six starched petticoats because I
+haven't any hoops. I'm just wild to wear hoops, aren't you, Virginia?"
+
+"I reckon so," responded Virginia, doubtfully; "but it will be hard to sit
+down, don't you think?"
+
+"Oh, but I know how," said Betty. "Aunt Lydia showed me how to do it
+gracefully. You give a little kick--ever so little and nobody sees it--and
+then you just sink into your seat. I can do it well."
+
+"You were always clever," exclaimed Virginia, as sweetly as before. She was
+parting her satiny hair over her forehead, and the glass gave back a
+youthful likeness of Mrs. Ambler. She was the beauty of the family, and she
+knew it, which made her all the lovelier to Betty.
+
+"I declare, your freckles are all gone," she said, as her sister's head
+looked over her shoulder. "I wonder if it is the buttermilk that has made
+you so white?"
+
+"It must be that," admitted Betty, who had used it faithfully for the sixty
+nights. "Aunt Lydia says it works wonders." Then, as she looked at herself,
+her eyes narrowed and she laughed aloud. "Why, Dan won't know me," she
+cried merrily.
+
+But whatever hopes she had of Dan withered in the summer. When he came home
+for the holidays, he brought with him an unmistakable swagger and a supply
+of coloured neckerchiefs. On his first visit to Uplands he called Virginia
+"my pretty child," and said "Good day, little lady," to Betty. He carried
+himself like an Indian, as the Governor put it, and he was very lithe and
+muscular, though he did not measure up to Champe by half a head. It was the
+Montjoy blood in him, people thought, for the Lightfoots were all of great
+height, and he had, too, a shock of his father's coarse black hair, which
+flared stiffly above the brilliant Lightfoot eyes. As he galloped along the
+turnpike on Prince Rupert, the travelling countrymen turned to look after
+him, and muttered that "dare-devil Jack Montjoy had risen from his
+grave--if he had a grave."
+
+Once he met Betty at the gate, and catching her up before him, dashed with
+her as far as Aunt Ailsey's cabin and back again. "You are as light as a
+fly," he said with a laugh, "and not much bigger. There, take your hair out
+of my eyes, or I'll ride amuck."
+
+Betty caught her hair in one hand and drew it across her breast. "This is
+like--" she began gayly, and checked herself. She was thinking of "that
+devil Jack Montjoy and Jane Lightfoot."
+
+"I must take my chance now," said Dan, in his easy, masterful way. "You
+will be too old for this by next year. Why, you will be in long dresses
+then, and Virginia--have you noticed, by the way, what a beauty Virginia is
+going to be?"
+
+"She is just lovely," heartily agreed Betty. "She's prettier than your
+Great-aunt Emmeline, isn't she?"
+
+"By George, she is. And I've been in love with Great-aunt Emmeline for ten
+years because I couldn't find her match. I say, don't let anybody go off
+with Virginia while I'm at college, will you?"
+
+"All right," said Betty, and though she smiled at him through her hair, her
+smile was not so bright as it had been. It was all very well to hear
+Virginia praised, she told herself, but she should have liked it better had
+Dan been a little less emphatic. "I don't think any one is going to run off
+with her," she added gravely, and let the subject of her sister's beauty
+pass.
+
+But at the end of the week, when Dan went back to college, her loyal heart
+reproached her, and she confided to Virginia that "he thought her a great
+deal lovelier than Great-aunt Emmeline."
+
+"Really?" asked Virginia, and determined to be very nice to him when he
+came home for the holidays.
+
+"But what does he say about you?" she inquired after a moment.
+
+"About me?" returned Betty. "Oh, he doesn't say anything about me, except
+that I am kind."
+
+Virginia stooped and kissed her. "You are kind, dear," she said in her
+sweetest voice.
+
+And "kind," after all, was the word for Betty, unless Big Abel had found
+one when he said, "She is des all heart." It was Betty who had tramped
+three miles through the snow last Christmas to carry her gifts to the free
+negro Levi, who was "laid up" and could not come to claim his share; and it
+was Betty who had asked as a present for herself the lame boy Micah, that
+belonged to old Rainy-day Jones. She had met Micah in the road, and from
+that day the Governor's life was a burden until he sent the negro up to her
+door on Christmas morning. There was never a sick slave or a homeless dog
+that she would not fly out to welcome, bareheaded and a little breathless,
+with the kindness brimming over from her eyes. "She has her father's head
+and her mother's heart," said the Major to his wife, when he saw the girl
+going by with the dogs leaping round her and a young fox in her arms. "What
+a wife she would make for Dan when she grows up! I wish he'd fancy her.
+They'd be well suited, eh, Molly?"
+
+"If he fancies the thing that is suited to him, he is less of a man than I
+take him to be," retorted Mrs. Lightfoot, with a cynicism which confounded
+the Major. "He will lose his head over her doll baby of a sister, I
+suppose--not that she isn't a good girl," she added briskly. "Julia Ambler
+couldn't have had a bad child if she had tried, though I confess I am
+surprised that she could have helped having a silly one; but Betty, why,
+there hasn't been a girl since I grew up with so much sense in her head as
+Betty Ambler has in her little finger."
+
+"When I think of you fifty years ago, I must admit that you put a high
+standard, Molly," interposed the Major, who was always polite when he was
+not angry.
+
+"She spent a week with me while you were away," Mrs. Lightfoot went on in
+an unchanged voice, though with a softened face, "and, I declare, she kept
+house as well as I could have done it myself, and Cupid says she washed the
+pink teaset every morning with her own hands, and she actually cured
+Rhody's lameness with a liniment she made out of Jimson weed. I tell you
+now, Mr. Lightfoot, that, if I get sick, Betty Ambler is the only girl I'm
+going to have inside the house."
+
+"Very well, my dear," said the Major, meekly, "I'll try to remember; and,
+in that case, I reckon we'd as well drop a hint to Dan, eh, Molly?"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot looked at him a moment in silence. Then she said "Humph!"
+beneath her breath, and took up her knitting from the little table at her
+side.
+
+But Dan was living fast at college, and the Major's hints were thrown away.
+He read of "the Ambler girls who are growing into real beauties," and he
+skipped the part that said, "Your grandmother has taken a great fancy to
+Betty and enjoys having her about."
+
+"Here's something for you, Champe," he remarked with a laugh, as he tossed
+the letter upon the table. "Gather your beauties while you may, for I
+prefer bull pups. Did Batt Horsford tell you I'd offered him twenty-five
+dollars for that one of his?"
+
+Champe picked up the letter and unfolded it slowly. He was a tall, slender
+young fellow, with curling pale brown hair and fine straight features. His
+face, in the strong light of the window by which he stood, showed a tracery
+of blue veins across the high forehead.
+
+"Oh, shut up about bull pups," he said irritably. "You are as bad as a
+breeder, and yet you couldn't tell that thoroughbred of John Morson's from
+a cross with a terrier."
+
+"You bet I couldn't," cried Dan, firing up; but Champe was reading the
+letter, and a faint flush had risen to his face. "The girl is like a spray
+of golden-rod in the sunshine," wrote the Major, with his old-fashioned
+rhetoric.
+
+"What is it he says, eh?" asked Dan, noting the flush and drawing his
+conclusions.
+
+"He says that Aunt Molly and himself will meet us at the White Sulphur next
+summer."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that. What is it he says about the girls; they are real
+beauties aren't they? By the way, Champe, why don't you marry one of them
+and settle down?"
+
+"Why don't you?" retorted Champe, as Dan got up and called to Big Abel to
+bring his riding clothes. "Oh, I'm not a lady's man," he said lightly.
+"I've too moody a face for them," and he began to dress himself with the
+elaborate care which had won for him the title of "Beau" Montjoy.
+
+By the next summer, Betty and Virginia had shot up as if in a night, but
+neither Champe nor Dan came home. After weeks of excited preparation, the
+Major and Mrs. Lightfoot started, with Congo and Mitty, for the White
+Sulphur, where the boys were awaiting them. As the months went on, vague
+rumours reached the Governor's ears--rumours which the Major did not quite
+disprove when he came back in the autumn. "Yes, the boy is sowing his wild
+oats," he said; "but what can you expect, Governor? Why, he is not yet
+twenty, and young blood is hot blood, sir."
+
+"I am sorry to hear that he has been losing at cards," returned the
+Governor; "but take my advice, and let him pick himself up when he falls to
+hurt. Don't back him up, Major."
+
+"Pooh! pooh!" exclaimed the Major, testily. "You're like Molly, Governor,
+and, bless my soul, one old woman is as much as I can manage. Why, she
+wants me to let the boy starve."
+
+The Governor sighed, but he did not protest. He liked Dan, with all his
+youthful errors, and he wanted to put out a hand to hold him back from
+destruction; but he feared to bring the terrible flush to the Major's face.
+It was better to leave things alone, he thought, and so sighed and said
+nothing.
+
+That was an autumn of burning political conditions, and the excited slavery
+debates in the North were reechoing through the Virginia mountains. The
+Major, like the old war horse that he was, had already pricked up his ears,
+and determined to lend his tongue or his sword, as his state might require.
+That a fight could go on in the Union so long as Virginia or himself kept
+out of it, seemed to him a possibility little less than preposterous.
+
+"Didn't we fight the Revolution, sir? and didn't we fight the War of 1812?
+and didn't we fight the Mexican War to boot?" he would demand. "And, bless
+my soul, aren't we ready to fight all the Yankees in the universe, and to
+whip them clean out of the Union, too? Why, it wouldn't take us ten days to
+have them on their knees, sir."
+
+The Governor did not laugh now; the times were too grave for that. His
+clear eyes had seen whither they were drifting, and he had thrown his
+influence against the tide, which, he knew, would but sweep over him in the
+end. "You are out of place in Virginia, Major," he said seriously.
+"Virginia wants peace, and she wants the Union. Go south, my dear sir, go
+south."
+
+During the spring before he had gone south himself to a convention at
+Montgomery, and he had spoken there against one of the greatest of the
+Southern orators. His state had upheld him, but the Major had not. He came
+home to find his old neighbour red with resentment, and refusing for the
+first few days to shake the hand of "a man who would tamper with the honour
+of Virginia." At the end of the week the Major's hand was held out, but his
+heart still bore his grievance, and he began quoting William L. Yancey, as
+he had once quoted Mr. Addison. In the little meetings at Uplands or at
+Chericoke, he would now declaim the words of the impassioned agitator as
+vigorously as in the old days he had recited those of the polished
+gentleman of letters. The rector and the doctor would sit silent and
+abashed, and only the Governor would break in now and then with: "You go
+too far, Major. There is a step from which there is no drawing back, and
+that step means ruin to your state, sir."
+
+"Ruin, sir? Nonsense! nonsense! We made the Union, and we'll unmake it when
+we please. We didn't make slavery; but, if Virginia wants slaves, by God,
+sir, she shall have slaves!"
+
+It was after such a discussion in the Governor's library that the old
+gentleman rose one evening to depart in his wrath. "The man who sits up in
+my presence and questions my right to own my slaves is a damned black
+abolitionist, sir," he thundered as he went, and by the time he reached his
+coach he was so blinded by his rage that Congo, the driver, was obliged to
+lift him bodily into his seat. "Dis yer ain' no way ter do, Ole Marster,"
+said the negro, reproachfully. "How I gwine teck cyar you like Ole Miss
+done tole me, w'en you let yo' bile git ter yo' haid like dis? 'Tain' no
+way ter do, suh."
+
+The Major was too full for silence; and, ignoring the Governor, who had
+hurried out to beseech him to return, he let his rage burst forth.
+
+"I can't help it, Congo, I can't help it!" he said. "They want to take you
+from me, do you hear? and that black Republican party up north wants to
+take you, too. They say I've no right to you, Congo,--bless my soul, and
+you were born on my own land!"
+
+"Go 'way, Ole Marster, who gwine min' w'at dey say?" returned Congo,
+soothingly. "You des better wrop dat ar neck'chif roun' yo' thoat er Ole
+Miss'll git atter you sho' es you live!"
+
+The Major wiped his eyes on the end of the neckerchief as he tied it about
+his throat. "But, if they elect their President, he may send down an army
+to free you," he went on, with something like a sob of anger, "and I'd like
+to know what we'd do then, Congo."
+
+"Lawd, Lawd, suh," said Congo, as he wrapped the robe about his master's
+knees. "Did you ever heah tell er sech doin's!" then, as he mounted the
+box, he leaned down and called out reassuringly, "Don' you min', Ole
+Marster, we'll des loose de dawgs on 'em, dat's w'at we'll do," and they
+rolled off indignantly, leaving the Governor half angry and half apologetic
+upon his portico.
+
+It was on the way home that evening that Congo spied in the sassafras
+bushes beside the road a runaway slave of old Rainy-day Jones's, and
+descended, with a shout, to deliver his brother into bondage.
+
+"Hi, Ole Marster, w'at I gwine tie him wid?" he demanded gleefully.
+
+The Major looked out of the window, and his face went white.
+
+"What's that on his cheek, Congo?" he asked in a whisper.
+
+"Dat's des whar dey done hit 'im, Ole Marster. How I gwine tie 'im?"
+
+But the Major had looked again, and the awful redness rose to his brow.
+
+"Shut up, you fool!" he said with a roar, as he dived under his seat and
+brought out his brandy flask. "Give him a swallow of that--be quick, do you
+hear? Pour it into your cup, sir, and give him that corn pone in your
+pocket. I see it sticking out. There, now hoist him up beside you, and, if
+I meet that rascal Jones, I'll blow his damn brains out!"
+
+The Major doubtless would have fulfilled his oath as surely as his twelve
+peers would have shaken his hand afterwards; but, by the time they came up
+with Rainy-day a mile ahead, his wrath had settled and he had decided that
+"he didn't want such dirty blood upon his hands."
+
+So he took a different course, and merely swore a little as he threw a roll
+of banknotes into the road. "Don't open your mouth to me, you hell hound,"
+he cried, "or I'll have you whipped clean out of this county, sir, and
+there's not a gentleman in Virginia that wouldn't lend a hand. Don't open
+your mouth to me, I tell you; here's the price of your property, and you
+can stoop in the dirt to pick it up. There's no man alive that shall
+question the divine right of slavery in my presence; but--but it is an
+institution for gentlemen, and you, sir, are a damned scoundrel!"
+
+With which the Major and old Rainy-day rode on in opposite ways.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SECOND
+
+YOUNG BLOOD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE MAJOR'S CHRISTMAS
+
+
+On Christmas Eve the great logs blazed at Chericoke. From the open door the
+red light of the fire streamed through the falling snow upon the broad
+drive where the wheel ruts had frozen into ribbons of ice. The naked boughs
+of the old elms on the lawn tapped the peaked roof with twigs as cold and
+bright as steel, and the two high urns beside the steps had an iridescent
+fringe around their marble basins.
+
+In the hall, beneath swinging sprays of mistletoe and holly, the Major and
+his hearty cronies were dipping apple toddy from the silver punch bowl half
+hidden in its wreath of evergreens. Behind them the panelled parlour was
+aglow with warmth, and on its shining wainscoting Great-aunt Emmeline,
+under her Christmas garland, held her red apple stiffly away from the skirt
+of her amber brocade.
+
+The Major, who had just filled the rector's glass, let the ladle fall with
+a splash, and hurried to the open door.
+
+"They're coming, Molly!" he called excitedly, "I hear their horses in the
+drive. No, bless my soul, it's wheels! The Governor's here, Molly! Fill
+their glasses at once--they'll be frozen through!"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot, who had been watching from the ivied panes of the parlour,
+rustled, with sharp exclamation, into the hall, and began hastily dipping
+from the silver punch bowl. "I really think, Mr. Lightfoot, that the house
+would be more comfortable if you'd be content to keep the front door
+closed," she found time to remark. "Do take your glass by the fire, Mr.
+Blake; I declare, I positively feel the sleet in my face. Don't you think
+it would be just as hospitable, Mr. Lightfoot, to open to them when they
+knock?"
+
+"What, keep the door shut on Christmas Eve, Molly!" exclaimed the Major
+from the front steps, where the snow was falling on his bare head. "Why,
+you're no better than a heathen. It's time you were learning your catechism
+over again. Ah, here they are, here they are! Come in, ladies, come in. The
+night is cold, but the welcome's warm.--Cupid, you fool, bring an umbrella,
+and don't stand grinning there.--Here, my dear Miss Lydia, take my arm, and
+never mind the weather; we've the best apple toddy in Virginia to warm you
+with, and the biggest log in the woods for you to look at. Ah, come in,
+come in," and he led Miss Lydia, in her white wool "fascinator," into the
+house where Mrs. Lightfoot stood waiting with open arms and the apple
+toddy. The Governor had insisted upon carrying his wife, lest she chill her
+feet, and Betty and Virginia, in their long cloaks, fluttered across the
+snow and up the steps. As they reached the hall, the Major caught them in
+his arms and soundly kissed them. "It isn't Christmas every day, you know,"
+he lamented ruefully, "and even our friend Mr. Addison wasn't steeled
+against rosy cheeks, though he was but a poor creature who hadn't been to
+Virginia. But come to the fire, come to the fire. There's eggnog to your
+liking, Mr. Bill, and just a sip of this, Miss Lydia, to warm you up. You
+may defy the wind, ma'am, with a single sip of my apple toddy." He seized
+the poker and, while Congo brought the glasses, prodded the giant log until
+the flames leaped, roaring, up the chimney and the wainscoting glowed deep
+red.
+
+"What, not a drop, Miss Lydia?" he cried, in aggrieved tones, when he
+turned his back upon the fire.
+
+Miss Lydia shook her head, blushing as she untied her "fascinator." She was
+fond of apple toddy, but she regarded the taste as an indelicate one, and
+would as soon have admitted, before gentlemen, a liking for cabbage.
+
+"Don't drink it, dear," she whispered to Betty, as the girl took her glass;
+"it will give you a vulgar colour."
+
+Betty turned upon her the smile of beaming affection with which she always
+regarded her family. She was standing under the mistletoe in her light blue
+cloak and hood bordered with swan's-down, and her eyes shone like lamps in
+the bright pallor of her face.
+
+"Why, it is delicious!" she said, with the pretty effusion the old man
+loved. "It is better than my eggnog, isn't it, papa?"
+
+"If anything can be better than your eggnog, my dear," replied the
+Governor, courteously, "it is the Major's apple toddy." The Major bowed,
+and Betty gave a merry little nod. "If you hadn't put it so nicely, I
+should never have forgiven you," she laughed; "but he always puts it
+nicely, Major, doesn't he? I made him the other day a plum pudding of my
+very own,--I wouldn't even let Aunt Floretta seed the raisins,--and when it
+came on burnt, what do you think he said? Why, I asked him how he liked it,
+and he thought for a minute and replied, 'My dear, it's the very best burnt
+plum pudding I ever ate.' Now wasn't that dear of him?"
+
+"Ah, but you should have heard how he put things when he was in politics,"
+said the Major, refilling his glass. "On my word, he could make the truth
+sound sweeter than most men could make a lie."
+
+"Come, come, Major," protested the Governor. "Julia, can't you induce our
+good friend to forbear?"
+
+"He knows I like to hear it," said Mrs. Ambler, turning from a discussion
+of her Christmas dinner with Mrs. Lightfoot.
+
+"Then you shall hear it, madam," declared the Major, "and I may as well say
+at once that if the Governor hasn't told you about the reply he made to
+Plaintain Dudley when he asked him for his political influence, you haven't
+the kind of husband, ma'am, that Molly Lightfoot has got. Keep a secret
+from Molly! Why, I'd as soon try to keep a keg full of brandy from
+following an auger."
+
+"Auger, indeed!" exclaimed the little old lady, to whom the Major's
+facetiousness was the only serious thing about him. "Your secrets are like
+apples, sir, that hang to every passer-by, until I store them away. Auger,
+indeed!"
+
+"No offence, my dear," was the Major's meek apology. "An auger is a very
+useful implement, eh, Governor; and it's Plaintain Dudley, after all, that
+we're concerned with. Do you remember Plaintain, Mrs. Ambler, a big ruddy
+fellow, with ruffled shirts? Oh, he prided himself on his shirts, did
+Plaintain!"
+
+"A very becoming weakness," said Mrs. Ambler, smiling at the Governor, who
+was blushing above his tucks.
+
+"Becoming? Well, well, I dare say," admitted the Major. "Plaintain thought
+so, at any rate. Why, I can see him now, on the day he came to the
+Governor, puffing out his front, and twirling his white silk handkerchief.
+'May I ask your opinion of me, sir?' he had the audacity to begin, and the
+Governor! Bless my soul, ma'am, the Governor bowed his politest bow, and
+replied with his pleasantest smile, 'My opinion of you, sir, is that were
+you as great a gentleman as you are a scoundrel, you would be a greater
+gentleman than my Lord Chesterfield.' Those were his words, ma'am, on my
+oath, those were his words!"
+
+"But he was a scoundrel!" exclaimed the Governor. "Why, he swindled women,
+Major. It was always a mystery to me how you tolerated him."
+
+"And a mystery to Mrs. Lightfoot," responded the Major, in a half whisper;
+"but as I tell her, sir, you mustn't judge a man by his company, or a
+'possum by his grin." Then he raised a well-filled glass and gave a toast
+that brought even Mr. Bill upon his feet, "To Virginia, the home of brave
+men and," he straightened himself, tossed back his hair, and bowed to the
+ladies, "and of angels."
+
+The Governor raised his glass with a smile, "To the angels who take pity
+upon the men," he said.
+
+"That more angels may take pity upon men," added the rector, rising from
+his seat by the fireside, with a wink at the doctor.
+
+And the toast was drunk, standing, while the girls ran up the crooked stair
+to lay aside their wraps in a three-cornered bedroom.
+
+As Virginia threw off her pink cloak and twirled round in her flaring
+skirts, Betty gave a little gasp of admiration and stood holding the
+lighted candle, with its sprig of holly, above her head. The tall girlish
+figure, in its flounces of organdy muslin, with the smooth parting of
+bright brown hair and the dovelike eyes, had flowered suddenly into a
+beauty that took her breath away.
+
+"Why, you are a vision--a vision!" she cried delightedly.
+
+Virginia stopped short in her twirling and settled the illusion ruche over
+her slim white shoulders. "It's the first time I've dressed like this, you
+know," she said, glancing at herself in the dim old mirror.
+
+"Ah, I'm not half so pretty," sighed Betty, hopelessly, "Is the rose in
+place, do you think?" She had fastened a white rose in the thick coil on
+her neck, where it lay half hidden by her hair.
+
+"It looks just lovely," replied Virginia, heartily. "Do you hear some one
+in the drive?" She went to the window, and looked out into the falling
+snow, her bare shoulders shrinking from the frosted pane. "What a long ride
+the boys have had, and how cold they'll be. Why, the ground is quite
+covered with snow." Betty, with the candle still in her hand, turned from
+the mirror, and gave a quick glance through the sloping window, to the
+naked elms outside. "Ah, poor things, poor things!" she cried.
+
+"But they have their riding cloaks," said Virginia, in her placid voice.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean Dan and Champe and Big Abel," answered Betty, "I mean the
+elms, the poor naked elms that wear their clothes all summer, and are
+stripped bare for the cold. How I should like to warm you, you dear
+things," she added, going to the window. Against the tossing branches her
+hair made a glow of colour, and her vivid face was warm with tenderness.
+"And Jane Lightfoot rode away on a night like this!" she whispered after a
+pause.
+
+"She wore a muslin dress and a coral necklace, you know," said Virginia, in
+the same low tone, "and she had only a knitted shawl over her head when she
+met Jack Montjoy at the end of the drive. He wrapped her in his cape, and
+they rode like mad to the town--and she was laughing! Uncle Shadrach met
+them in the road, and he says he heard her laughing in the wind. She must
+have been very wicked, mustn't she, Betty?"
+
+But Betty was looking into the storm, and did not answer. "I wonder if he
+were in the least like Dan," she murmured a moment later.
+
+"Well, he had black hair, and Dan has that," responded Virginia, lightly;
+"and he had a square chin, and Dan has that, too. Oh, every one says that
+Dan's the image of his father, except for the Lightfoot eyes. I'm glad he
+has the Lightfoot eyes, anyway. Are you ready to go down?"
+
+Betty was ready, though her face had grown a little grave, and with a last
+look at the glass, they caught hands and went sedately down the winding
+stair.
+
+In the hall below they met Mrs. Lightfoot, who sent Virginia into the
+panelled parlour, and bore Betty off to the kitchen to taste the sauce for
+the plum pudding. "I can't do a thing on earth with Rhody," she remarked
+uneasily, throwing a knitted scarf over her head as they went from the back
+porch along the covered way that led to the brick kitchen. "She insists
+that yours is the only palate in all the country she will permit to pass
+judgment upon her sauce. I made the Major try it, and he thinks it needs a
+dash more of rum, but Rhody says she shan't be induced to change it until
+she has had your advice. Here, Rhody, open the door; I've brought your
+young lady."
+
+The door swung back with a jerk upon the big kitchen, where before the
+Christmas turkeys toasting on the spit, Aunt Rhody was striding to and fro
+like an Amazon in charcoal. From the beginning of the covered way they had
+been guided by the tones of penetrant contempt, with which she lashed the
+circle of house servants who had gathered to her assistance. "You des lemme
+alont now," was the advice she royally offered. "Ef you gwine ax me w'at
+you'd better do, I des tell you right now, you'd better lemme alont.
+Ca'line, you teck yo' eyes off dat ar roas' pig, er I'll fling dis yer
+b'ilin' lard right spang on you. I ain' gwine hev none er my cookin'
+conjured fo' my ve'y face. Congo, you shet dat mouf er yourn, er I'll shet
+hit wid er flat-iron, en den hit'll be shet ter stay."
+
+Then, as Mrs. Lightfoot and Betty came in, she broke off, and wiped her
+large black hands on her apron, before she waved with pride to the shelves
+and tables bending beneath her various creations. "I'se done stuff dat ar
+pig so full er chestnuts dat he's fitten ter bus'," she exclaimed proudly.
+"Lawd, Lawd, hit's a pity he ain' 'live agin des ter tase hese'f!"
+
+"Poor little pig," said Betty, "he looks so small and pink, Aunt Rhody, I
+don't see how you have the heart to roast him."
+
+"I'se done stuff 'im full," returned Aunt Rhody, in justification.
+
+"I hope he's well done, Rhody," briskly broke in Mrs. Lightfoot; "and be
+sure to bake the hams until the juice runs through the bread crumbs. Is
+everything ready for to-morrow?"
+
+"Des es ready es ef 'twuz fer Kingdom Come, Ole Miss, en dar ain' gwine be
+no better dinner on Jedgment Day nurr, I don' cyar who gwine cook hit. You
+des tase dis yer sass--dat's all I ax, you des tase dis yer sass."
+
+"You taste it, Betty," begged Mrs. Lightfoot, shrinking from the
+approaching spoon; and Betty tasted and pronounced it excellent, "and there
+never was an Ambler who wasn't a judge of 'sass," she added.
+
+Moved by the compliment, Aunt Rhody fell back and regarded the girl, with
+her arms akimbo. "I d'clar, her eyes do des shoot fire," she exclaimed
+admiringly. "I dunno whar de beaux done hid deyse'ves dese days; hit's a
+wonner dey ain' des a-busin' dey sides ter git yer. Marse Dan, now, whynt
+he come a-prancin' roun' dese yer parts?"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot looked at Betty and saw her colour rise. "That will do,
+Rhody," she cautioned; "you will let the turkeys burn," but as they moved
+toward the door, Betty herself paused and looked back.
+
+"I gave your Christmas gift to Uncle Cupid, Aunt Rhody," she said; "he put
+it under the joists in your cabin, so you mustn't look at it till morning."
+
+"Lawd, chile, I'se done got Christmas gifts afo' now," replied Aunt Rhody,
+ungratefully, "en I'se done got a pa'cel er no count ones, too. Folks dey
+give Christmas gifts same es de Lawd he give chillun--dey des han's out
+w'at dey's got on dey han's, wid no stiddyin' 'bout de tase. Sakes er live!
+Ef'n de Lawd hadn't hed a plum sight ter git rid er, he 'ouldn't er sont
+Ca'line all dose driblets, fo' he'd done sont 'er a husban'."
+
+"Husban', huh!" exclaimed Ca'line, with a snort from the fireplace.
+"Husban' yo'se'f! No mo' niggerisms fer me, ma'am!"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Ca'line," said Mrs. Lightfoot, sternly; "and, Rhody, you
+ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk so before your Miss Betty."
+
+"Husban', huh!" repeated the indignant Ca'line, under her breath.
+
+"Hold your tongues, both of you," cried the old lady, as she lifted her
+silk skirt in both hands and swept from the kitchen.
+
+When they reached the house again, they heard the Major's voice, on its
+highest key, demanding: "Molly! Why, bless my soul, what's become of
+Molly?" He was calling from the front steps, and the sound of tramping feet
+rang in the drive below. Against the whiteness of the storm Big Abel's face
+shone in the light from the open door, and about him, as he held the
+horses, Dan and Champe and a guest or two were dismounting upon the steps.
+
+As the old lady went forward, Champe rushed into the hall, and caught her
+in his arms.
+
+"On my word, you're so young I didn't know you," he cried gayly. "If you
+keep this up, Aunt Molly, there'll be a second Lightfoot beauty yet. You
+grow prettier every day--I declare you do!"
+
+"Hold your tongue, you scamp," said the old lady, flushing with pleasure,
+"or there'll be a second Ananias as well. Here, Betty, come and wish this
+bad boy a Merry Christmas."
+
+Betty looked round with a smile, but as she did so, her eyes went beyond
+Champe, and saw Dan standing in the doorway, his soft slouch hat in his
+hand, and a powdering of snow on his dark hair. He had grown bigger and
+older in the last few months, and the Lightfoot eyes, with the Lightfoot
+twinkle in their pupils, gave an expression of careless humour to his pale,
+strongly moulded face. The same humour was in his voice even as he held his
+grandfather's hand.
+
+"By George, we're glad to get here," was his greeting. "Morson's been
+cursing our hospitality for the last three miles. Grandpa, this is my
+friend Morson--Jack Morson, you've heard me speak of him; and this is Bland
+Diggs, you know of him, too."
+
+"Why, to be sure, to be sure," cried the Major, heartily, as he held out
+both hands. "You're welcome, gentlemen, as welcome as Christmas--what more
+can I say? But come in, come in to the fire. Cupid, the glasses!"
+
+"Ah, the ladies first," suggested Dan, lightly; "grace before meat, you
+know. So here you are, grandma, cap and all. And Virginia;--ye gods!--is
+this little Virginia?"
+
+His laughing eyes were on her as she stood, tall and lovely, beneath a
+Christmas garland, and with the laughter still in them, they blazed with
+approval of her beauty. "Oh, but do you know, how did you do it?" he
+demanded with his blithe confidence, as if it mattered very little how his
+words were met.
+
+"It wasn't any trouble, believe me," responded Virginia, blushing, "not
+half so much trouble as you took to tie your neckerchief."
+
+Dan's hand went to his throat. "Then I may presume that it is mere natural
+genius," he exclaimed.
+
+"Genius, to grow tall?"
+
+"Well, yes, just that--to grow tall," then he caught sight of Betty, and
+held out his hand again. "And you, little comrade, you haven't grown up to
+the world, I see."
+
+Betty laughed and looked him over with the smile the Major loved. "I
+content myself with merely growing up to you," she returned.
+
+"Up to me? Why, you barely reach my shoulder."
+
+"Well, up to the greater part of you, at least."
+
+"Ah, up to my heart," said Dan, and Betty coloured beneath the twinkle in
+his eyes.
+
+The colour was still in her face when the Major came out, with Mrs. Ambler
+on his arm, and led the way to supper.
+
+"All of us are hungry, and some of us have a day's ride behind us," he
+remarked, as, after the rector's grace, he stood waving the carving-knife
+above the roasted turkey. "I'd like to know how often during the last hour
+you've thought of this turkey, Mr. Morson?"
+
+"It has had a fair share of my thoughts, I'm forced to admit, Major,"
+responded Jack Morson, readily. He was a hearty, light-haired young fellow,
+with a girlish complexion and pale blue eyes, as round as marbles. "As fair
+a share as the apple toddy has had of Diggs's, I'll be bound."
+
+"Apple toddy!" protested Diggs, turning his serious face, flushed from the
+long ride, upon the Major. "I was too busy thinking we should never get
+here; and we were lost once, weren't we, Beau?" he asked of Dan.
+
+"Well, I for one am safely housed for the night, doctor," declared the
+rector, with an uneasy glance through the window, "and I trust that Mrs.
+Blake's reproach will melt before the snow does. But what's that about
+being lost, Dan?"
+
+"Oh, we got off the road," replied Dan; "but I gave Prince Rupert the rein
+and he brought us in. The sense that horse has got makes me fairly ashamed
+of going to college in his place; and I may as well warn you, Mr. Blake,
+that when I get ready to go to Heaven, I shan't seek your guidance at
+all--I'll merely nose Prince Rupert at the Bible and give him his head."
+
+"It's a comfort to know, at least, that you won't be trusting to your own
+deserts, my boy," responded the rector, who dearly loved his joke, as he
+helped himself to yellow pickle.
+
+"Let us hope that the straight and narrow way is a little clearer than the
+tavern road to-night," said Champe. "I'm afraid you'll have trouble getting
+back, Governor."
+
+"Afraid!" took up the Major, before the Governor could reply. "Why, where
+are your manners, my lad? It will be no ill wind that keeps them beneath
+our roof. We'll make room for you, ladies, never fear; the house will
+stretch itself to fit the welcome, eh, Molly?"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot, looking a little anxious, put forward a hearty assent; but
+the Governor laughed and threw back the Major's hospitality as easily as it
+was proffered.
+
+"I know that your welcome's big enough to hold us, my dear Major," he said;
+"but Hosea's driving us, you see, and he could take us along the turnpike
+blindfold. Why, he actually discovered in passing just before the storm
+that somebody had dug up a sugar berry bush from the corner of your old
+rail fence."
+
+"And we really must get back," insisted Mrs. Ambler, "we haven't even fixed
+the servants' Christmas, and Betty has to fill the stockings for the
+children in the quarters."
+
+"Then if you will go, go you shall," cried the Major, as heartily as he had
+pressed his invitation. "You shall get back, ma'am, if I have to go before
+you with a shovel and clear the snow away. So just a bit more of this roast
+pig, just a bit, Governor. My dear Miss Lydia, I beg you to try that spiced
+beef--and you, Mr. Bill?--Cupid, Mr. Bill will have a piece of roast pig."
+
+By the time the Tokay was opened, the Major had grown very jolly, and he
+began to exchange jokes with the Governor and the rector. Mr. Bill and the
+doctor, neither of whom could have told a story for his life, listened with
+a kind of heavy gravity; and the young men, as they rattled off a college
+tale or two, kept their eyes on Betty and Virginia.
+
+Betty, leaning back in her high mahogany chair, and now and then putting in
+a word with the bright effusion which belonged to her, gave ear half to the
+Major's anecdotes, and half to a jest of Jack Morson's. Before her branched
+a silver candelabrum, and beyond it, with the light in his face, Dan was
+sitting. She watched him with a frank curiosity from eyes, where the smile,
+with which she had answered the Major, still lingered in a gleam of
+merriment. There was a puzzled wonder in her mind that Dan--the Dan of her
+childhood--should have become for her, of a sudden, but a strong,
+black-haired stranger from whom she shrank with a swift timidity. She
+looked at Champe's high blue-veined forehead and curling brown hair; he was
+still the big boy she had played with; but when she went back to Dan, the
+wonder returned with a kind of irritation, and she felt that she should
+like to shake him and have it out between them as she used to do before he
+went away. What was the meaning of it? Where the difference? As he sat
+across from her, with his head thrown back and his eyes dark with laughter,
+her look questioned him half humorously, half in alarm. From his broad brow
+to his strong hand, playing idly with a little heap of bread crumbs, she
+knew that she was conscious of his presence--with a consciousness that had
+quickened into a living thing.
+
+To Dan, himself, her gaze brought but the knowledge that her smile was upon
+him, and he met her question with lifted eyebrows and perplexed amusement.
+What he had once called "the Betty look" was in her face,--so kind a look,
+so earnest yet so humorous, with a sweet sane humour at her own
+bewilderment, that it held his eyes an instant before they plunged back to
+Virginia--an instant only, but long enough for him to feel the thrill of an
+impulse which he did not understand. Dear little Betty, he thought,
+tenderly, and went back to her sister.
+
+The next moment he was telling himself that "the girl was a tearing
+beauty." He liked that modest droop of her head and those bashful soft
+eyes, as if, by George, as if she were really afraid of him. Or was it
+Champe or Jack Morson that she bent her bewitching glance upon? Well,
+Champe, or Morson, or himself, in a week they would all be over head and
+ears in love with her, and let him win who might. It was mere folly, of
+course, to break one's heart over a girl, and there was no chance of that
+so long as he had his horses and the bull pups to fall back upon; but she
+was deucedly pretty, and if he ever came to the old house to live it would
+be rather jolly to have her about. He would be twenty-one by this time next
+year, and a man of twenty-one was old enough to settle down a bit. In the
+meantime he laughed and met Virginia's eye, and they both blushed and
+looked away quickly.
+
+But when they left the dining room an hour later, it was not Virginia that
+Dan sought. He had learned the duties of hospitality in the Major's school,
+and so he sat down beside Miss Lydia and asked her about her window garden,
+while Jack Morson made desperate love to his beautiful neighbour. Once,
+indeed, he drew Betty aside for an instant, but it was only to whisper:
+"Look here, you'll be real nice to Diggs, won't you? He's bashful, you
+know, and besides he's awfully poor, and works like the devil. You make him
+enjoy his holidays, and I--well, yes, I'll let that fox get away next week,
+I declare I will."
+
+"All right," agreed Betty, "it's a bargain. Mr. Diggs shall have a merry
+Christmas, and the fox shall have his life. You'll keep faith with me?"
+
+"Sworn," said Dan, and he went back to Miss Lydia, while Betty danced a
+reel with young Diggs, who fell in love with her before he was an hour
+older. The terms cost him his heart, perhaps, but there was a life at
+stake, and Betty, who had not a touch of the coquette in her nature, would
+have flirted open-eyed with the rector could she have saved a robin from
+the shot. As for Diggs, he might have been a family portrait or a Christmas
+garland for all the sentiment she gave him.
+
+When she went upstairs some hours later to put on her wraps, she had
+forgotten, indeed, that Diggs or his emotion was in existence. She tied on
+her blue hood with the swan's-down, and noticed, as she did so, that the
+white rose was gone from her hair. "I hope I lost it after supper," she
+thought rather wistfully, for it was becoming; and then she slipped into
+her long cloak and started down again. It was not until she reached the
+bend in the staircase, where the tall clock stood, that she looked over the
+balustrade and saw Dan in the hall below with the white rose in his hand.
+
+She had come so softly that he had not heard her step. The light from the
+candelabra was full upon him, and she saw the half-tender, half-quizzical
+look in his face. For an instant he held the white rose beneath his eyes,
+then he carefully folded it in his handkerchief and hid it in the pocket of
+his coat. As he did so, he gave a queer little laugh and went quickly back
+into the panelled parlour, while Betty glowed like a flower in the darkened
+bend of the staircase.
+
+When they called her and she came down the bright colour was still in her
+face, and her eyes were shining happily under the swan's-down border of her
+hood. "This little lady isn't afraid of the cold," said the Major, as he
+pinched her cheeks. "Why, she's as warm as a toast, and, bless my soul, if
+I were thirty years younger, I'd ride twenty miles tonight to catch a
+glimpse of her in that bonny blue hood. Ah, in my day, men were men, sir."
+
+Dan, who had come back from escorting Miss Lydia to the carriage, laughed
+and held out his arms.
+
+"Let me carry you, Betty; I'll show grandpa that there's still a man
+alive."
+
+"No, sir, no," said Betty, as she stood on tiptoe and held her cheek to the
+Major. "You haven't a chance when your grandfather's by. There, I'll let
+you carry the sleeping draught for Aunt Pussy; but my flounces, no, never!"
+and she ran past him and slipped into the carriage beside Mrs. Ambler and
+Miss Lydia.
+
+In a moment Virginia came out under an umbrella that was held by Jack
+Morson, and the carriage rolled slowly along the drive, while the young men
+stood, bareheaded, in the falling snow.
+
+"Keep a brave heart, Morson," said Champe, with a laugh, as he ran back
+into the house, where the Major waited to bar the door, "remember, you've
+known her but three hours, and stand it like a man. Well I'm off to bed,"
+and he lighted his candle and, with a gay "good night," went whistling up
+the stair.
+
+In Dan's bedroom, where he had crowded for the holidays, he found his
+cousin, upon the hearth-rug, looking abstractedly into the flames.
+
+As Champe entered he turned, with the poker in his hand, and spoke out of
+the fulness of his heart:--
+
+"She's a beauty, I declare she is."
+
+Champe broke short his whistling, and threw off his coat.
+
+"Well, I dare say she was fifty years ago," he rejoined gravely.
+
+"Oh, don't be an utter ass; you know I mean Virginia."
+
+"My dear boy, I had supposed Miss Lydia to be the object of your
+attentions. You mustn't be a Don Juan, you know, you really mustn't. Spare
+the sex, I entreat."
+
+Dan aimed a blow at him with a boot that was lying on the rug. "Shut up,
+won't you," he growled.
+
+"Well, Virginia is a beauty," was Champe's amiable response. "Jack Morson
+swears Aunt Emmeline's picture can't touch her. He's writing to his father
+now, I don't doubt, to say he can't live without her. Go down, and he'll
+read you the letter."
+
+Dan's face grew black. "I'll thank him to mind his own business," he
+grumbled.
+
+"Oh, he thinks he's doing it."
+
+"Well, his business isn't either of the Ambler girls, and I'll have him to
+know it. What right has he got, I'd like to know, to come up here and fall
+in love with our neighbours."
+
+"Oh, Beau, Beau! Why, it was only last week you ran him away from Batt
+Horsford's daughter. Are you going in for a general championship?"
+
+"The devil! Sally Horsford's a handsome girl, and a good girl, too; and
+I'll fight any man who says she isn't. By George, a woman's a woman, if she
+is a stableman's daughter!"
+
+"Bravo!" cried Champe, with a whistle, "there spoke the Lightfoot."
+
+"She's a good girl," repeated Dan, furiously, as he flung the other boot at
+his cousin. Champe caught the boot, and carefully set it beside the door.
+"Well, she's welcome to be, as far as I'm concerned," he replied calmly.
+"Turn not your speaking eye upon me. I harbour no dark intent, Sir
+Galahad."
+
+"Damn Sir Galahad!" said Dan, and blew out the light.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+BETTY DREAMS BY THE FIRE
+
+
+Betty, lying back in the deep old carriage as it rolled through the storm,
+felt a glow at her heart as if a lamp were burning there, shut in from the
+night. Above the wind and the groaning of the wheels, she heard Hosea
+calling to the horses, but the sound reached her through muffled ears.
+
+"Git along dar!" cried Hosea, with sudden spirit, "dar ain' no oats dis
+side er home, en dar ain' no co'n, nurr. Git along dar! 'Tain' no use
+a-mincin'. Git along dar!"
+
+The snow beat softly on the windows, and the Governor's profile was
+relieved, fine and straight, against the frosted glass. "Are you asleep,
+daughter?" he asked, turning to where the girl lay in her dark corner.
+
+"Asleep!" She came back with a start, and caught his hand above the robe in
+her demonstrative way. "Why, who can sleep on Christmas Eve? there's too
+much to do, isn't there, mamma? Twenty stockings to fill and I don't know
+how many bundles to tie up. Oh, no, I shan't sleep tonight."
+
+"We might get up early to-morrow and do them," suggested Virginia, nodding
+in her pink hood.
+
+"You, at least, must go to bed, dear," insisted Mrs. Ambler. "Betty and I
+will fix the things."
+
+"Indeed, you shall go to bed, mamma," said Betty, sternly. "Papa and I
+shall make Christmas this year. You'll help me, won't you, papa?"
+
+"Well, my dear, I don't see how I can help myself," returned the Governor;
+"I wasn't born to be the father of a Betty for nothing."
+
+"Get along dar!" sang out Hosea again. "'Tain' no use a-mincin', gemmun.
+Dar ain' no fiddlin' roun'. Git along dar!"
+
+Miss Lydia had fallen asleep, with her head on her breast, but the sound
+aroused her, and she opened her eyes and sat up very straight.
+
+"Why, I declare I'd almost dropped off," she said. "Are we nearly there,
+Peyton?"
+
+"I think so," replied the Governor, "but the snow's so thick I can't see;"
+he opened the window and put out his head. "Are we nearly there, Hosea?"
+
+"We des done pas' de clump er cedars, suh," yelled Hosea through the storm.
+"I'ud a knowd 'em ef dey'd come a-struttin' down de road--dey cyarn fool
+me. Den we got ter pas' de wil' cher'y and de gap in de fence, en dar we
+are."
+
+"Yes, we're nearly there," said the Governor, as he drew in his head, and
+Miss Lydia slept again until the carriage turned into the drive and stopped
+before the portico.
+
+Uncle Shadrach, in the open doorway, was grinning with delight. "Ef'n de
+snow had er kep' you, dar 'ouldn't a been no Christmas for de res' er us,"
+he declared.
+
+"Oh, the snow couldn't keep us, Shadrach," returned the Governor, as he
+gave him his overcoat, and set himself to unfastening his wife's wraps. "We
+were too anxious to get home. There, Julia, you go to bed, and leave Betty
+and myself to manage things. Don't say I can't do it. I tell you I've been
+Governor of Virginia, and I'll not be daunted by an empty stocking. Now go
+away, and you, too, Virginia--you're as sleepy as a kitten. Miss Lydia,
+shall I take Mrs. Lightfoot's mixture to Miss Pussy, or will you?"
+
+Miss Lydia took the pitcher, and Betty put her arm about her mother and led
+her upstairs, holding her hand and kissing it as she went. She was always
+lavish with little ways of love, but to-night she felt tenderer than
+ever--she felt that she should like to take the world in her arms and hold
+it to her bosom. "Dearest, sweetest," she said, and her voice was full and
+tremulous, though still with its crisp brightness of tone. It was as if she
+caressed with her whole being, with those hidden possibilities of passion
+which troubled her yet, only as the vibration of strong music, making her
+joy pensive and her sadness sweet. She felt that she was walking in a
+pleasant and vivid dream; she was happy, she could not tell why; nor could
+she tell why she was sorrowful.
+
+In Mrs. Ambler's room they found Mammy Riah, awaiting her mistress's
+return.
+
+"Put her to bed, Mammy," she said; "she is all chilled by the drive," and
+she gave her mother over to the old negress, and ran down again to the
+dining room, where the Governor was standing surrounded by the Christmas
+litter.
+
+"Do you expect to straighten out all these things, daughter?" he asked
+hopelessly.
+
+"Why, there's hardly anything left to do," was Betty's cheerful assurance.
+"You just sit down at the table and put the nuts into the toes of those
+stockings, and I'll count out these print frocks."
+
+The Governor obediently sat down and went to work. "I am moved to offer
+thanks that we are not as the beasts that have four legs," he remarked
+thoughtfully. "I shouldn't care to fill stockings for quadrupeds, Betty."
+
+"Why, you goose, there's only one stocking for each child."
+
+"Ah, but with four feet our expectations might be doubled," suggested the
+Governor. "You can't convince me that it isn't a merciful providence, my
+dear."
+
+When the stockings were filled and the packages neatly tied up and
+separated, Uncle Shadrach came with a hamper, and Betty went out to the
+kitchen to prepare for the morning gathering of the field hands and their
+families. Returning after the work was over, she lingered a moment in the
+path to the house, looking far across the white country. The snow had
+ceased, and a single star was shining, through a rift in the scudding
+clouds, straight overhead. From the northwest the wind blew hard, and the
+fleecy covering on the ground was fast freezing a foot deep in ice. With a
+shiver she drew her cloak about her and ran indoors and upstairs to where
+Virginia lay asleep in the high, white bed.
+
+In the great brick fireplace the logs had fallen apart, and she softly
+pushed them together again as she threw on a knot of resinous pine. The
+blaze shot up quickly, and blowing out the candle upon the bureau, she
+undressed by the firelight, crooning gently as she did so in a voice that
+was lower than the singing flames. With the glow on her bared arms and her
+hair unbound upon her shoulders, she sat close against the chimney; and
+while Virginia slept in the tester bed, went dreaming out into the night.
+
+At first her dreams went back into her childhood, and somehow, she knew not
+why, she could not bring back her childhood but Dan came with it. She
+fancied herself in all kinds of impossible places, but she had no sooner
+got safely into them than she looked up and Dan was there before her,
+standing very still and laughing at her with his eyes. It was the same
+thing even when she was a baby. Her earliest memory was of a May morning
+when they took her out into a field of buttercups, and told her that she
+might pluck her arms full if she could, and then, as she stretched out her
+little hands and began to gather very fast, she looked across to where the
+waving yellow buttercups stood up against the blue spring sky. That memory
+had always been her own before; but now, when she went back to it, she knew
+that all the time she had been gathering buttercups for Dan. And she had
+plucked faster and faster only that she might have a bigger bunch for him
+when the gathering was done. She saw herself working bonnetless in the
+sunshine, her baby face red, her lips breathless, working so hard, she did
+not know for whom. Oh, how funny that he should have been somewhere all the
+time!
+
+And again on the day when they gave her her first doll, and she let it fall
+and cried her heart out over its broken pink face. She knew, at last, that
+somewhere in that ugly town Dan had dropped his toy; and it was for that
+she was crying, not for her own poor doll. Yes, all her life she had had
+two griefs to weep for, and two joys to be glad over. She had been really a
+double self from her babyhood up--from her babyhood up! It had been always
+up, up, up--like a lark that rises to the sun. She had all her life been
+rising to the sun, and she was warmed at last.
+
+Then she asked herself if it were happiness, after all, this new
+restlessness of hers. The melancholy of the early spring was there--the
+roving impulse that comes on April afternoons when the first buds are on
+the trees and the air is keen with the smell of the newly turned earth. She
+felt that it was time for the spring to come again; she wanted to walk
+alone in the woods and to watch the swallows flying from the north. And
+again she wanted only to lie close upon the hearth and to hear the flames
+leap up the chimney. One of her selves cried to be up and roaming; the
+other to turn over on the rug and sleep again.
+
+But gradually her thoughts returned to him, and she went over, bit by bit,
+what he had said last evening, asking herself if he had meant much at this
+time, or little at another. It seemed to her that she found new meanings
+now in things that she had once overlooked. She read words in his eyes
+which he had never spoken; and, one by one, she brought back each sentence,
+each look, each gesture, holding it up to her remembrance, and laying it
+aside to give place to the next. Oh, there were so many, so many!
+
+And then from the past her dreams went groping out into the future,
+becoming dimmer, and shaping themselves into unreal forms. Scattered
+visions came drifting through her mind,--of herself in romantic adventures,
+and of Dan--always of Dan--appearing like the prince in the fairy tale, at
+the perilous moment. She saw herself on the breast of a great river, borne,
+while she stretched her hands at a white rose-bush blooming in the clouds,
+to a cataract which she could not see, though she heard its thunder far
+ahead. She tried to call, but no sound came, for the water filled her
+mouth. The river went on and on, and the falling of the cataract was in her
+ears, when she felt Dan's arm about her, and saw his eyes laughing at her
+above the waters.
+
+"Betty!" called Virginia, suddenly, rising on her elbow and rubbing her
+eyes. "Betty, is it morning?"
+
+Betty awoke with a cry, and stood up in the firelight.
+
+"Oh, no, not yet," she answered.
+
+"What are you doing? Aren't you coming to bed?"
+
+"I--I was just thinking," stammered Betty, twisting her hair into a rope;
+"yes, I'm coming now," and she crossed the room and climbed into the bed
+beside her sister.
+
+"I believe I fell asleep by the fire," she said, as she turned over.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+DAN AND BETTY
+
+
+On the last day of the year the young men from Chericoke, as they rode down
+the turnpike, came upon Betty bringing holly berries from the wood. She was
+followed by two small negroes laden with branches, and beside her ran her
+young setters, Peyton and Bill.
+
+As Dan came up with her, he checked his horse and swung himself to the
+ground. "Thank God I've passed the boundary!" he exclaimed over his
+shoulder to the others. "Ride on, my lads, ride on! Don't prate of the
+claims of hospitality to me. My foot is on my neighbours' heath; I'm host
+to no man."
+
+"Come, now, Beau," remonstrated Jack Morson, looking down from his saddle;
+"I see in Miss Betty's eyes that she wants me to carry that holly--I swear
+I do."
+
+"Then you see more than is written," declared Champe, from the other side,
+"for it's as plain as day that one eye says Diggs and one Lightfoot--isn't
+it, Betty?"
+
+Betty looked up, laughing. "If you are so skilled in foreign tongues, what
+can I answer?" she asked. "Only that I've been a mile after this holly for
+the party to-night, and I wouldn't trust it to all of you together--for
+worlds."
+
+"Oh, go on, go on," said Dan, impatiently, "doesn't that mean that she'll
+trust it to me alone? Good morning, my boys, God be with you," and he led
+Prince Rupert aside while the rest rode by.
+
+When they were out of sight he turned to one of the small negroes, his hand
+on the bridle. "Shall we exchange burdens, O eater of 'possums?" he asked
+blandly. "Will you permit me to tote your load, while you lead my horse to
+the house? You aren't afraid of him, are you?"
+
+The little negro grinned. "He do look moughty glum, suh," he replied, half
+fearfully.
+
+"Glum! Why, the amiability in that horse's face is enough to draw tears.
+Come up, Prince Rupert, your highness is to go ahead of me; it's to oblige
+a lady, you know."
+
+Then, as Prince Rupert was led away, Dan looked at Betty.
+
+"Shall it be the turnpike or the meadow path?" he inquired, with the gay
+deference he used toward women, as if a word might turn it to a jest or a
+look might make it earnest.
+
+"The meadow, but not the path," replied the girl; "the path is asleep under
+the snow." She cast a happy glance over the white landscape, down the long
+turnpike, and across the broad meadow where a cedar tree waved like a snowy
+plume. "Jake, we must climb the wall," she added to the negro boy, "be
+careful about the berries."
+
+Dan threw his holly into the meadow and lifted Betty upon the stone wall.
+"Now wait a moment," he cautioned, as he went over. "Don't move till I tell
+you. I'm managing this job--there, now jump!"
+
+He caught her hands and set her on her feet beside him. "Take your fence,
+my beauties," he called gayly to the dogs, as they came bounding across the
+turnpike.
+
+Betty straightened her cap and took up her berries.
+
+"Your tender mercies are rather cruel," she complained, as she did so.
+"Even my hair is undone."
+
+"Oh, it's all the better," returned Dan, without looking at her. "I don't
+see why girls make themselves so smooth, anyway. That's what I like about
+you, you know--you've always got a screw loose somewhere."
+
+"But I haven't," cried Betty, stopping in the snow.
+
+"What! if I find a curl where it oughtn't to be, may I have it?"
+
+"Of course not," she answered indignantly.
+
+"Well, there's one hanging over your ear now. Shall I put it straight with
+this piece of holly? My hands are full, but I think I might manage it."
+
+"Don't touch me with your holly!" exclaimed Betty, walking faster; then in
+a moment she turned and stood calling to the dogs. "Have you noticed what
+beauties Bill and Peyton have grown to be?" she questioned pleasantly.
+"There weren't any boys to be named after papa and Uncle Bill, so I called
+the dogs after them, you know. Papa says he would rather have had a son
+named Peyton; but I tell him the son might have been wicked and brought his
+hairs in sorrow to the grave."
+
+"Well, I dare say, you're right," he stopped with a sweep of his hand, and
+stood looking to where a flock of crows were flying over the dried spectres
+of carrot flowers that stood up above the snow; "That's fine, now, isn't
+it?" he asked seriously.
+
+Betty followed his gesture, then she gave a little cry and threw her arms
+round the dogs. "The poor crows are so hungry," she said. "No, no, you
+mustn't chase them, Bill and Peyton, it isn't right, you see. Here, Jake,
+come and hold the dogs, while I feed the crows." She drew a handful of corn
+from the pocket of her cloak, and flung it out into the meadow.
+
+"I always bring corn for them," she explained; "they get so hungry, and
+sometimes they starve to death right out here. Papa says they are
+pernicious birds; but I don't care--do you mind their being pernicious?"
+
+"I? Not in the least. I assure you I trouble myself very little about the
+morals of my associates. I'm not fond of crows; but it is their voices
+rather than their habits I object to. I can't stand their eternal
+'cawing!'--it drives me mad."
+
+"I suppose foxes are pernicious beasts, also," said Betty, as she walked
+on; "but there's an old red fox in the woods that I've been feeding for
+years. I don't know anything that foxes like to eat except chickens, but I
+carry him a basket of potatoes and turnips and bread, and pile them up
+under a pine tree; it's just as well for him to acquire the taste for them,
+isn't it?"
+
+She smiled at Dan above her fur tippet, and he forgot her words in watching
+the animation come and go in her face. He fell to musing over her decisive
+little chin, the sensitive curves of her nostrils and sweet wide mouth, and
+above all over her kind yet ardent look, which gave the peculiar beauty to
+her eyes.
+
+"Ah, is there anything in heaven or earth that you don't like?" he asked,
+as he gazed at her.
+
+"That I don't like? Shall I really tell you?"
+
+He bent toward her over his armful of holly.
+
+"I have a capacious breast for secrets," he assured her.
+
+"Then you will never breathe it?"
+
+"Will you have me swear?" he glanced about him.
+
+"Not by the inconstant moon," she entreated merrily.
+
+"Well, by my 'gracious self'; what's the rest of it?"
+
+She coloured and drew away from him. His eyes made her self-conscious, ill
+at ease; the very carelessness of his look disconcerted her.
+
+"No, do not swear," she begged. "I shall trust you with even so weighty a
+confidence. I do not like--"
+
+"Oh, come, why torture me?" he demanded.
+
+She made a little gesture of alarm. "From fear of the wrath to come," she
+admitted.
+
+"Of my wrath?" he regarded her with amazement. "Oh, don't you like
+_me_?" he exclaimed.
+
+"You! Yes, yes--but--have mercy upon your petitioner. I do not like your
+cravats."
+
+She shut her eyes and stood before him with lowered head.
+
+"My cravats!" cried Dan, in dismay, as his hand went to his throat, "but my
+cravats are from Paris--Charlie Morson brought them over. What is the
+matter with them?"
+
+"They--they're too fancy," confessed Betty. "Papa wears only white, or
+black ones you know."
+
+"Too fancy! Nonsense! do you want to send me back to grandfather's stocks,
+I wonder? It's just pure envy--that's what it is. Never mind, I'll give you
+the very best one I've got."
+
+Betty shook her head. "And what should I do with it, pray?" she asked.
+"Uncle Shadrach wouldn't wear it for worlds--he wears only papa's clothes,
+you see. Oh, I might give it to Hosea; but I don't think he'd like it."
+
+"Hosea! Well, I declare," exclaimed Dan, and was silent.
+
+When he spoke a little later it was somewhat awkwardly.
+
+"I say, did Virginia ever tell you she didn't like my cravats?" he
+inquired.
+
+"Virginia!" her voice was a little startled. "Oh, Virginia thinks they're
+lovely."
+
+"And you don't?"
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Well, you are a case," he said, and walked on slowly.
+
+They were already in sight of the house, and he did not speak again until
+they had passed the portico and entered the hall. There they found Virginia
+and the young men, who had ridden over ahead of them, hanging evergreens
+for the approaching party. Jack Morson, from the top of the step-ladder,
+was suspending a holly wreath above the door, while Champe was entwining
+the mahogany balustrade in running cedar.
+
+"Oh, Betty, would it be disrespectful to put mistletoe above General
+Washington's portrait?" called Virginia, as they went into the hall.
+
+"I don't think he'd mind--the old dear," answered Betty, throwing her
+armful of holly upon the floor. "There, Dan, the burden of the day is
+over."
+
+"And none too soon," said Dan, as he tossed the holly from him. "Diggs, you
+sluggard, what are you sitting there in idleness for? Miss Pussy, can't you
+set him to work?"
+
+Miss Pussy, who was bustling in and out with a troop of servants at her
+heels, found time to reply seriously that she really didn't think there was
+anything she could trust him with. "Of course, I don't mind your amusing
+yourselves with the decorations," she added briskly, "but the cooking is
+quite a different thing, you know."
+
+"Amusing myself!" protested Dan, in astonishment. "My dear lady, do you
+call carrying a wagon load of brushwood amusement? Now, I'll grant, if you
+please, that Morson is amusing himself on the step-ladder."
+
+"Keep off," implored Morson, in terror; "if you shake the thing, I'm gone,
+I declare I am."
+
+He nailed the garland in place and came down cautiously. "Now, that's what
+I call an artistic job," he complacently remarked.
+
+"Why, it's lovely," said Virginia, smiling, as he turned to her. "It's
+lovely, isn't it, Betty?"
+
+"As lovely as a crooked thing can be," laughed Betty. She was looking
+earnestly at Virginia, and wondering if she really liked Jack Morson so
+very much. The girl was so bewitching in her red dress, with the flush of
+a sudden emotion in her face, and the shyness in her downcast eyes.
+
+"Oh, that isn't fair, Virginia," called Champe from the steps. "Save your
+favour for the man that deserves it--and look at me." Virginia did look at
+him, sending him the same radiant glance.
+
+"But I've many 'lovelies' left," she said quickly; "it's my favourite
+word."
+
+"A most appropriate taste," faltered Diggs, from his chair beneath the hall
+clock.
+
+Champe descended the staircase with a bound.
+
+"What do I hear?" he exclaimed. "Has the oyster opened his mouth and
+brought forth a compliment?"
+
+"Oh, be quiet," commanded Dan, "I shan't hear Diggs made fun of, and it's
+time to get back, anyway. Well, loveliest of lovely ladies, you must put on
+your prettiest frock to-night."
+
+Virginia's blush deepened. Did she like Dan so very much? thought Betty.
+
+"But you mustn't notice me, please," she begged, "all the neighbours are
+coming, and there are so many girls,--the Powells and the Harrisons and the
+Dulaneys. I am going to wear pink, but you mustn't notice it, you know."
+
+"That's right," said Jack Morson, "make him do his duty by the County, and
+keep your dances for Diggs and me."
+
+"I've done my duty by you, sir," was Dan's prompt retort, "so I'll begin to
+do my pleasure by myself. Now I give you fair warning, Virginia, if you
+don't save the first reel for me, I'll dance all the rest with Betty."
+
+"Then it will be a Betty of your own making," declared Betty over her
+shoulder, "for this Betty doesn't dance a single step with you to-night, so
+there, sir."
+
+"Your punishment be on your own head, rash woman," said Dan, sternly, as he
+took up his riding-whip. "I'll dance with Peggy Harrison," and he went out
+to Prince Rupert, lifting his hat, as he mounted, to Miss Lydia, who stood
+at her window above. A moment later they heard his horse's hoofs ringing in
+the drive, and his voice gayly whistling:--
+
+  "They tell me thou'rt the favor'd guest."
+
+When the others joined him in the turnpike, the four voices took up the
+air, and sent the pathetic melody fairly dancing across the snow.
+
+  "Do I thus haste to hall and bower
+    Among the proud and gay to shine?
+  Or deck my hair with gem and flower
+    To flatter other eyes than thine?
+  Ah, no, with me love's smiles are past;
+  Thou hadst the first, thou hadst the last."
+
+The song ended in a burst of laughter, and up the white turnpike, beneath
+the melting snow that rained down from the trees, they rode merrily back to
+Chericoke.
+
+In the carriage way they found the Major, wrapped in his broadcloth cape,
+taking what he called a "breath of air."
+
+"Well, gentlemen, I hope you had a pleasant ride," he remarked, following
+them into the house. "You didn't see your way to stop by Uplands, I
+reckon?"
+
+"That we did, sir," said Diggs, who was never bashful with the Major. "In
+fact, we made ourselves rather useful, I believe."
+
+"They're charming young ladies over there, eh?" inquired the Major,
+genially; and a little later when Dan and he were alone, he put the same
+question to his grandson. "They're delightful girls, are they not, my boy?"
+he ventured incautiously. "You have noticed, I dare say, how your
+grandmother takes to Betty--and she's not a woman of many fancies, is your
+grandmother."
+
+"Oh, but Virginia!" exclaimed Dan, with enthusiasm. "I wish you could have
+seen her in her red dress to-day. You don't half realize what a thundering
+beauty that girl is. Why, she positively took my breath away."
+
+The Major chuckled and rubbed his hands together.
+
+"I don't, eh?" he said, scenting a romance as an old war horse scents a
+battle. "Well, well, maybe not; but I see where the wind blows anyway, and
+you have my congratulations on either hand. I shan't deny that we old folks
+had a leaning to Betty; but youth is youth, and we shan't oppose your
+fancy. So I congratulate you, my boy, I congratulate you."
+
+"Ah, she wouldn't look at me, sir," declared Dan, feeling that the pace was
+becoming a little too impetuous. "I only wish she would; but I'd as soon
+expect the moon to drop from the skies."
+
+"Not look at you! Pooh, pooh!" protested the old gentleman, indignantly.
+"Proper pride is not vanity, sir; and there's never been a Lightfoot yet
+that couldn't catch a woman's eye, if I do say it who should not. Pooh,
+pooh! it isn't a faint heart that wins the ladies."
+
+"I know you to be an authority, my dear grandpa," admitted the young man,
+lightly glancing into the gilt-framed mirror above the mantel. "If there's
+any of your blood in me, it makes for conquest." From the glass he caught
+the laughter in his eyes and turned it on his grandfather.
+
+"It ill becomes me to rob the Lightfoots of one of their chief
+distinctions," said the Major, smiling in his turn. "We are not a proud
+people, my boy; but we've always fought like men and made love like
+gentlemen, and I hope that you will live up to your inheritance."
+
+Then, as his grandson ran upstairs to dress, he followed him as far as Mrs.
+Lightfoot's chamber, and informed her with a touch of pomposity: "That it
+was Virginia, not Betty, after all. But we'll make the best of it, my
+dear," he added cheerfully. "Either of the Ambler girls is a jewel of
+priceless value."
+
+The little old lady received this flower of speech with more than ordinary
+unconcern.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Lightfoot, that the boy has begun already?"
+she demanded, in amazement.
+
+"He doesn't say so," replied the Major, with a chuckle; "but I see what he
+means--I see what he means. Why, he told me he wished I could have seen her
+to-day in her red dress--and, bless my soul, I wish I could, ma'am."
+
+"I don't see what good it would do you," returned his wife, coolly. "But
+did he have the face to tell you he was in love with the girl, Mr.
+Lightfoot?"
+
+"Have the face?" repeated the Major, testily. "Pray, why shouldn't he have
+the face, ma'am? Whom should he tell, I'd like to know, before he tells his
+grandfather?" and with a final "pooh, pooh!" he returned angrily to his
+library and to the _Richmond Whig_, a paper he breathlessly read and
+mightily abused.
+
+Dan, meanwhile, upstairs in his room with Champe, was busily sorting his
+collection of neckwear.
+
+"Look here, Champe, I'll give you all these red ties, if you want them," he
+generously concluded. "I believe, after all, I'll take to wearing white or
+black ones again."
+
+"What?" asked Champe, in astonishment, turning on his heel. "Have the skies
+fallen, or does Beau Montjoy forsake the fashions?"
+
+"Confound the fashions!" retorted Dan, impatiently. "I don't care a jot for
+the fashions. You may have all these, if you choose," and he tossed the
+neckties upon the bed.
+
+Champe picked up one and examined it with interest.
+
+"O woman," he murmured as he did so, "your hand is small but mighty."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+LOVE IN A MAZE
+
+
+Despite Virginia's endeavour to efface herself for her guests, she shone
+unrivalled at the party, and Dan, who had held her hand for an ecstatic
+moment under the mistletoe, felt, as he rode home in the moonlight
+afterwards, that his head was fairly on fire with her beauty. She had been
+sweetly candid and flatteringly impartial. He could not honestly assert
+that she had danced with him oftener than with Morson, or a dozen others,
+but he had a pleasant feeling that even when she shook her head and said,
+"I cannot," her soft eyes added for her, "though I really wish to." There
+was something almost pitiable, he told himself in the complacency with
+which that self-satisfied ass Morson would come and take her from him. As
+if he hadn't sense enough to discover that it was merely because she was
+his hostess that she went with him at all. But some men would never
+understand women, though they lived to be a thousand, and got rejected once
+a day.
+
+Out in the moonlight, with the Governor's wine singing in his blood, he
+found that his emotions had a way of tripping lightly off his tongue. There
+were hot words with Diggs, who hinted that Virginia was not the beauty of
+the century, and threats of blows with Morson, who too boldly affirmed that
+she was. In the end Champe rode between them, and sent Prince Rupert on his
+way with a touch of the whip.
+
+"For heaven's sake, keep your twaddle to yourselves!" he exclaimed
+impatiently, "or take my advice, and make for the nearest duck pond. You've
+both gone over your depth in the Governor's Madeira, and I advise you to
+keep quiet until you've had your heads in a basin of ice water. There, get
+out of my road, Morson. I can't sit here freezing all night."
+
+"Do you dare to imply that I am drunk, sir?" demanded Morson, in a fury.
+"Bear witness, gentlemen, that the insult was unprovoked."
+
+"Oh, insult be damned!" retorted Champe. "If you shake your fist at me
+again, I'll pitch you head over heels into that snowdrift."
+
+"Pitch whom, sir?" roared Morson, riding at the wall, when Diggs caught his
+bridle and roughly dragged him back.
+
+"Come, now, don't make a beast of yourself," he implored.
+
+"Who's a beast?" was promptly put by Morson; but leaving it unanswered,
+Diggs wheeled his horse about and started up the turnpike. "You've let Beau
+get out of sight," he said. "We'd better catch up with him," and he set off
+at a gallop.
+
+Dan, who had ridden on at Champe's first words, did not even turn his head
+when the three came abreast with him. The moonlight was in his eyes, and
+the vision of Virginia floated before him at his saddle bow. He let the
+reins fall loosely on Prince Rupert's neck, and as the hoofs rang on the
+frozen road, thrust his hands for warmth into his coat. In another dress,
+with his dark hair blown backward in the wind, he might have been a
+cavalier fresh from the service of his lady or his king, or riding
+carelessly to his death for the sake of the drunken young Pretender.
+
+But he was only following his dreams, and they hovered round Virginia,
+catching their rosy glamour from her dress. In the cold night air he saw
+her walking demurely through the lancers, her skirt held up above her satin
+shoes, her coral necklace glowing deeper pink against her slim white
+throat. Mistletoe and holly hung over her, and the light of the candles
+shone brighter where her radiant figure passed. He caught the soft flash of
+her shy brown eyes, he heard her gentle voice speaking trivial things with
+profound tenderness. His hand still burned from the light pressure of her
+finger tips. Oh, his day had come, he told himself, and he was furiously in
+love at last.
+
+As for going back to college, the very idea was absurd. At twenty years it
+was quite time for him to settle down and keep open house like other men.
+Virginia, in rose pink, flitted up the crooked stair and across the white
+panels of the parlor, and with a leap, his heart went after her. He saw
+Great-aunt Emmeline lean down from her faded canvas as if to toss her apple
+at the young girl's feet. Ah, poor old beauty, hanging in a gilded frame,
+what was her century of dust to a bit of living flesh that had bright eyes
+and was coloured like a flower?
+
+When he was safely married he would have his wife's portrait hung upon the
+opposite wall, only he rather thought he should have the dogs in and let
+her be Diana, with a spear instead of an apple in her hand. Two beauties in
+one family--that was something to be proud of even in Virginia.
+
+It was at this romantic point that Champe shattered his visions by shooting
+a jest at him about the "love sick swain."
+
+"Oh, be off, and let a fellow think, won't you?" he retorted angrily.
+
+"Do you hear him call it thinking?" jeered Diggs, from the other side.
+
+"He doesn't call it mooning, oh, no," scoffed Champe.
+
+"Oh, there's nothing half so sweet in life," sang Morson, striking an
+attitude that almost threw him off his horse.
+
+"Shut up, Morson," commanded Diggs, "you ought to be thankful if you had
+enough sense left to moon with."
+
+"Sense, who wants sense?" inquired Morson, on the point of tears. "I have
+heart, sir."
+
+"Then keep it bottled up," rejoined Champe, coolly, as they turned into the
+drive at Chericoke.
+
+In Dan's room they found Big Abel stretched before the fire asleep; and as
+the young men came in, he sat up and rubbed his eyes.
+
+"Hi! young Marsters, hit's ter-morrow!" he exclaimed.
+
+"To-morrow! I wish it were to-morrow," responded Dan, cheerfully. "The fire
+makes my head spin like a top. Here, come and pull off my coat, Big Abel,
+or I'll have to go to bed with my clothes on."
+
+Big Abel pulled off the coat and brushed it carefully; then he held out his
+hand for Champe's.
+
+"I hope dis yer coat ain' gwine lose hit's set 'fo' hit gits ter me," he
+muttered as he hung them up. "Seems like you don' teck no cyar yo' clothes,
+nohow, Marse Dan. I'se de wuss dress somebody dis yer side er de po' w'ite
+trash. Wat's de use er bein' de quality ef'n you ain' got de close?"
+
+"Stop grumbling, you fool you," returned Dan, with his lordly air. "If it's
+my second best evening suit you're after, you may take it; but I tell you
+now, it's the last thing you're going to get out of me till summer."
+
+Big Abel took down the second best suit of clothes and examined them with
+an interest they had never inspired before. "I d'clar you sutney does set
+hard," he remarked after a moment, and added, tentatively, "I dunno whar de
+shuts gwine come f'om."
+
+"Not from me," replied Dan, airily; "and now get out of here, for I'm going
+to sleep."
+
+But when he threw himself upon his bed it was to toss with feverish
+rose-coloured dreams until the daybreak.
+
+His blood was still warm when he came down to breakfast; but he met his
+grandfather's genial jests with a boyish attempt at counter-buff.
+
+"Oh, you needn't twit me, sir," he said with an embarrassed laugh; "to wear
+the heart upon the sleeve is hereditary with us, you know."
+
+"Keep clear of the daws, my son, and it does no harm," responded the Major.
+"There's nothing so becoming to a gentleman as a fine heart well worn, eh,
+Molly?"
+
+He carefully spread the butter upon his cakes, for his day of love-making
+was over, and his eye could hold its twinkle while he watched Dan fidget in
+his seat.
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot promptly took up the challenge. "For my part I prefer one
+under a buttoned coat," she replied briskly; "but be careful, Mr.
+Lightfoot, or you will put notions into the boys' heads. They are at the
+age when a man has a fancy a day and gets over it before he knows it."
+
+"They are at the age when I had my fancy for you, Molly," gallantly
+retorted the Major, "and I seem to be carrying it with me to my grave."
+
+"It would be a dull wit that would go roving from Aunt Molly," said Champe,
+affectionately; "but there aren't many of her kind in the world."
+
+"I never found but one like her," admitted the Major, "and I've seen a good
+deal in my day, sir."
+
+The old lady listened with a smile, though she spoke in a severe voice.
+"You mustn't let them teach you how to flatter, Mr. Morson," she said
+warningly, as she filled the Major's second cup of coffee--"Cupid, Mr.
+Morson will have a partridge."
+
+"The man who sits at your table will never question your supremacy, dear
+madam," returned Jack Morson, as he helped himself to a bird. "There is
+little merit in devotion to such bounty."
+
+"Shall I kick him, grandma?" demanded Dan. "He means that we love you
+because you feed us, the sly scamp."
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot shook her head reprovingly. "Oh, I understand you, Mr.
+Morson," she said amiably, "and a compliment to my housekeeping never goes
+amiss. If a woman has any talent, it will come out upon her table."
+
+"You're right, Molly, you're right," agreed the Major, heartily. "I've
+always held that there was nothing in a man who couldn't make a speech or
+in a woman who couldn't set a table."
+
+Dan stirred restlessly in his chair, and at the first movement of Mrs.
+Lightfoot he rose and went out into the hall. An hour later he ordered
+Prince Rupert and started joyously to Uplands.
+
+As he rode through the frosted air he pictured to himself a dozen different
+ways in which it was possible that he might meet Virginia. Would she be
+upon the portico or in the parlour? Was she still in pink or would she wear
+the red gown of yesterday? When she gave him her hand would she smile as
+she had smiled last night? or would she stand demurely grave with down
+dropped lashes?
+
+The truth was that she did none of the things he had half expected of her.
+She was sitting before a log fire, surrounded by a group of Harrisons and
+Powells, who had been prevailed upon to spend the night, and when he
+entered she gave him a sleepy little nod from the corner of a rosewood
+sofa. As she lay back in the firelight she was like a drowsy kitten that
+had just awakened from a nap. Though less radiant, her beauty was more
+appealing, and as she stared at him with her large eyes blinking, he wanted
+to stoop down and rock her off to sleep. He regarded her calmly this
+morning, for, with all his tenderness, she did not fire his brain, and the
+glory of the vision had passed away. Half angrily he asked himself if he
+were in love with a pink dress and nothing more?
+
+An hour afterward he came noisily into the library at Chericoke and aroused
+the Major from his Horace by stamping distractedly about the room.
+
+"Oh, it's all up with me, sir," he began despondently. "I might as well go
+out and hang myself. I don't know what I want and yet I'm going mad because
+I can't get it."
+
+"Come, come," said the Major, soothingly. "I've been through it myself,
+sir, and since your grandmother's out of earshot, I'd as well confess that
+I've been through it more than once. Cheer up, cheer up, you aren't the
+first to dare the venture--_Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona_, you know."
+
+His assurance was hardly as comforting as he had intended it to be. "Oh, I
+dare say, there've been fools enough before me," returned Dan, impatiently,
+as he flung himself out of the room.
+
+He grew still more impatient when the day came for him to return to
+college; and as they started out on horseback, with Zeke and Big Abel
+riding behind their masters, he declared irritably that the whole system of
+education was a nuisance, and that he "wished the ark had gone down with
+all the ancient languages on board."
+
+"There would still be law," suggested Morson, pleasantly. "So cheer up,
+Beau, there's something left for you to learn."
+
+Then, as they passed Uplands, they turned, with a single impulse, and
+cantered up the broad drive to the portico. Betty and Virginia were in the
+library; and as they heard the horses, they came running to the window and
+threw it open.
+
+"So you will come back in the summer--all of you," said Virginia,
+hopefully, and as she leaned out a white camellia fell from her bosom to
+the snow beneath. In an instant Jack Morson was off his horse and the
+flower was in his hand. "We'll bring back all that we take away," he
+answered gallantly, his fair boyish face as red as Virginia's.
+
+Dan could have kicked him for the words, but he merely said savagely, "Have
+you left your pocket handkerchief?" and turned Prince Rupert toward the
+road. When he looked back from beneath the silver poplars, the girls were
+still standing at the open window, the cold wind flushing their cheeks and
+blowing the brown hair and the red together.
+
+Virginia was the first to turn away. "Come in, you'll take cold," she said,
+going to the fire. "Peggy Harrison never goes out when the wind blows, you
+know, she says it's dreadful for the complexion. Once when she had to come
+back from town on a March day, she told me she wore six green veils. I
+wonder if that's the way she keeps her lovely colour?"
+
+"Well, I wouldn't be Peggy Harrison," returned Betty, gayly, and she added
+in the same tone, "so Mr. Morson got your camellia, after all, didn't he?"
+
+"Oh, he begged so hard with his eyes," answered Virginia. "He had seen me
+give Dan a white rose on Christmas Eve, you know, and he said it wasn't
+fair to be so unfair."
+
+"You gave Dan a white rose?" repeated Betty, slowly. Her face was pale, but
+she was smiling brightly.
+
+Virginia's soft little laugh pealed out. "And it was your rose, too,
+darling," she said, nestling to Betty like a child. "You dropped it on the
+stair and I picked it up. I was just going to take it to you because it
+looked so lovely in your hair, when Dan came along and he would have it,
+whether or no. But you don't mind, do you, just a little bit of white
+rosebud?" She put up her hand and stroked her sister's cheek. "Men are so
+silly, aren't they?" she added with a sigh.
+
+For a moment Betty looked down upon the brown head on her bosom; then she
+stooped and kissed Virginia's brow. "Oh, no, I don't mind, dear," she
+answered, "and women are very silly, too, sometimes."
+
+She loosened Virginia's arms and went slowly upstairs to her bedroom, where
+Petunia was replenishing the fire. "You may go down, Petunia," she said as
+she entered. "I am going to put my things to rights, and I don't want you
+to bother me--go straight downstairs."
+
+"Is you gwine in yo' chist er draws?" inquired Petunia, pausing upon the
+threshold.
+
+"Yes, I'm going into my chest of drawers, but you're not," retorted Betty,
+sharply; and when Petunia had gone out and closed the door after her, she
+pulled out her things and began to straighten rapidly, rolling up her
+ribbons with shaking fingers, and carefully folding her clothes into
+compact squares. Ever since her childhood she had always begun to work at
+her chest of drawers when any sudden shock unnerved her. After a great
+happiness she took up her trowel and dug among the flowers of the garden;
+but when her heart was heavy within her, she shut her door and put her
+clothes to rights.
+
+Now, as she worked rapidly, the tears welled slowly to her lashes, but she
+brushed them angrily away, and rolled up a sky-blue sash. She had worn the
+sash at Chericoke on Christmas Eve, and as she looked at it, she felt, with
+the keenness of pain, a thrill of her old girlish happiness. The figure of
+Dan, as he stood upon the threshold with the powdering of snow upon his
+hair, rose suddenly to her eyes, and she flinched before the careless
+humour of his smile. It was her own fault, she told herself a little
+bitterly, and because it was her own fault she could bear it as she should
+have borne the joy. There was nothing to cry over, nothing even to regret;
+she knew now that she loved him, and she was glad--glad even of this. If
+the bitterness in her heart was but the taste of knowledge, she would not
+let it go; she would keep both the knowledge and the bitterness.
+
+In the next room Mammy Riah was rocking back and forth upon the hearth,
+crooning to herself while she carded a lapful of wool. Her cracked old
+voice, still with its plaintive sweetness, came faintly to the girl who
+leaned her cheek upon the sky-blue sash and listened, half against her
+will:--
+
+  "Oh, we'll all be done wid trouble, by en bye, little chillun,
+    We'll all be done wid trouble, by en bye.
+  Oh, we'll set en chatter wid de angels, by en bye, little chillun,
+    We'll set en chatter wid de angels, by en bye."
+
+The door opened and Virginia came softly into the room, and stopped short
+at the sight of Betty.
+
+"Why, your things were perfectly straight, Betty," she exclaimed in
+surprise. "I declare, you'll be a real old maid."
+
+"Perhaps I shall," replied Betty, indifferently; "but if I am, I'm going to
+be a tidy one."
+
+"I never heard of one who wasn't," remarked Virginia, and added, "you've
+put all your ribbons into the wrong drawer."
+
+"I like a change," said Betty, folding up a muslin skirt.
+
+  "Oh, we'll slip en slide on de golden streets, by en bye,
+         little chillun,
+    We'll slip en slide on de golden streets, by en bye,"
+
+sang Mammy Riah, in the adjoining room.
+
+"Aunt Lydia found six red pinks in bloom in her window garden," observed
+Virginia, cheerfully. "Why, where are you going, Betty?"
+
+"Just for a walk," answered Betty, as she put on her bonnet and cloak. "I'm
+not afraid of the cold, you know, and I'm so tired sitting still," and she
+added, as she fastened her fur tippet, "I shan't be long, dear."
+
+She opened the door, and Mammy Riah's voice followed her across the hall
+and down the broad staircase:--
+
+  "Oh, we'll ride on de milk w'ite ponies, by en bye, little chillun,
+    We'll ride on de milk w'ite ponies, by en bye."
+
+At the foot of the stair she called the dogs, and they came bounding
+through the hall and leaped upon her as she crossed the portico. Then, as
+she went down the drive and up the desolate turnpike, they ran ahead of her
+with short, joyous barks.
+
+The snow had melted and frozen again, and the long road was like a gray
+river winding between leafless trees. The gaunt crows were still flying
+back and forth over the meadows, but she did not have corn for them to-day.
+Had she been happy, she would not have forgotten them; but the pain in her
+breast made her selfish even about the crows.
+
+With the dogs leaping round her, she pressed bravely against the wind,
+flying breathlessly from the struggle at her heart. There was nothing to
+cry over, she told herself again, nothing even to regret. It was her own
+fault, and because it was her own fault she could bear it quietly as she
+should have borne the joy.
+
+She had reached the spot where he had lifted her upon the wall, and leaning
+against the rough stones she looked southward to where the swelling meadows
+dipped into the projecting line of hills. He was before her then, as he
+always would be, and shrinking back, she put up her hand to shut out the
+memory of his eyes. She could have hated that shallow gayety, she told
+herself, but for the tenderness that lay beneath it--since jest as he might
+at his own scars, when had he ever made mirth of another's? Had she not
+seen him fight the battles of free Levi? and when Aunt Rhody's cabin was in
+flames did he not bring out one of the negro babies in his coat? That
+dare-devil courage which had first caught her girlish fancy, thrilled her
+even to-day as the proof of an ennobling purpose. She remembered that he
+had gone whistling into the burning cabin, and coming out again had coolly
+taken up the broken air; and to her this inherent recklessness was clothed
+with the sublimity of her own ideals.
+
+The cold wind had stiffened her limbs, and she ran back into the road and
+walked on rapidly. Beyond the whitened foldings of the mountains a deep red
+glow was burning in the west, and she wanted to hold out her hands to it
+for warmth. Her next thought was that a winter sunset soon died out, and as
+she turned quickly to go homeward, she saw that she was before Aunt
+Ailsey's cabin, and that the little window was yellow from the light
+within.
+
+Aunt Ailsey had been dead for years, but the free negro Levi had moved into
+her hut, and as Betty looked up she saw him standing beneath the blasted
+oak, with a bundle of brushwood upon his shoulder. He was an honest-eyed,
+grizzled-haired old negro, who wrung his meagre living from a blacksmith's
+trade, bearing alike the scornful pity of his white neighbours and the
+withering contempt of his black ones. For twenty years he had moved from
+spot to spot along the turnpike, and he had lived in the dignity of
+loneliness since the day upon which his master had won for himself the
+freedom of Eternity, leaving to his servant Levi the labour of his own
+hands.
+
+As the girl spoke to him he answered timidly, fingering the edge of his
+ragged coat.
+
+Yes, he had managed to keep warm through the winter, and he had worn the
+red flannel that she had given him.
+
+"And your rheumatism?" asked Betty, kindly.
+
+He replied that it had been growing worse of late, and with a sympathetic
+word the girl was passing by when some newer pathos in his solitary figure
+stayed her feet, and she called back quickly, "Uncle Levi, were you ever
+married?"
+
+"Dar, now," cried Uncle Levi, halting in the path while a gleam of the
+wistful humour of his race leaped to his eyes. "Dar, now, is you ever hyern
+de likes er dat? Mah'ed! Cose I'se mah'ed. I'se mah'ed quick'en Marse
+Bolling. Ain't you never hyern tell er Sarindy?"
+
+"Sarindy?" repeated the girl, questioningly.
+
+"Lawd, Lawd, Sarindy wuz a moughty likely nigger," said Uncle Levi,
+proudly; "she warn' nuttin' but a fiel' han', but she 'uz a moughty
+likely nigger."
+
+"And did she die?" asked Betty, in a whisper.
+
+Uncle Levi rubbed his hands together, and shifted the brushwood upon his
+shoulder.
+
+"Who say Sarindy dead?" he demanded sternly, and added with a chuckle, "she
+warn' nuttin' but a fiel' han', young miss, en I 'uz Marse Bolling's body
+sarvent, so w'en dey sot me loose, dey des sol' Sarindy up de river. Lawd,
+Lawd, she warn' nuttin' but a fiel' han', but she 'uz pow'ful likely."
+
+He went chuckling up the path, and Betty, with a glance at the fading
+sunset, started briskly homeward. As she walked she was asking herself, in
+a wonder greater than her own love or grief, if Uncle Levi really thought
+it funny that they sold Sarindy up the river.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE MAJOR LOSES HIS TEMPER
+
+
+When Betty reached home the dark had fallen, and as she entered the house
+she heard the crackling of fresh logs from the library, and saw her mother
+sitting alone in the firelight, which flickered softly on her pearl-gray
+silk and ruffles of delicate lace.
+
+She was humming in a low voice one of the old Scotch ballads the Governor
+loved, and as she rocked gently in her rosewood chair, her shadow flitted
+to and fro upon the floor. One loose bell sleeve hung over the carved arm
+of the rocker, and the fingers of her long white hand, so fragile that it
+was like a flower, played silently upon the polished wood.
+
+As the girl entered she looked up quickly. "You haven't been wandering off
+by yourself again?" she asked reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, it is quite safe, mamma," replied Betty, impatiently. "I didn't meet a
+soul except free Levi."
+
+"Your father wouldn't like it, my dear," returned Mrs. Ambler, in the tone
+in which she might have said, "it is forbidden in the Scriptures," and she
+added after a moment, "but where is Petunia? You might, at least, take
+Petunia with you."
+
+"Petunia is such a chatterbox," said Betty, tossing her wraps upon a chair,
+"and if she sees a cricket in the road she shrieks, 'Gawd er live, Miss
+Betty,' and jumps on the other side of me. No, I can't stand Petunia."
+
+She sat down upon an ottoman at her mother's feet, and rested her chin in
+her clasped hands.
+
+"But did you never go walking in your life, mamma?" she questioned.
+
+Mrs. Ambler looked a little startled. "Never alone, my dear," she replied
+with dignity. "Why, I shouldn't have thought of such a thing. There was a
+path to a little arbour in the glen at my old home, I remember,--I think it
+was at least a quarter of a mile away,--and I sometimes strolled there with
+your father; but there were a good many briers about, so I usually
+preferred to stay on the lawn."
+
+Her voice was clear and sweet, but it had none of the humour which gave
+piquancy to Betty's. It might soothe, caress, even reprimand, but it could
+never jest; for life to Mrs. Ambler was soft, yet serious, like a continued
+prayer to a pleasant and tender Deity.
+
+"I'm sure I don't see how you stood it," said Betty, sympathetically.
+
+"Oh, I rode, my dear," returned her mother. "I used to ride very often with
+your father or--or one of the others. I had a brown mare named Zephyr."
+
+"And you never wanted to be alone, never for a single instant?"
+
+"Alone?" repeated Mrs. Ambler, wonderingly, "why, of course I read my Bible
+and meditated an hour every morning. In my youth it would have been
+considered very unladylike not to do it, and I'm sure there's no better way
+of beginning the day than with a chapter in the Bible and a little
+meditation. I wish you would try it, Betty." Her eyes were upon her
+daughter, and she added in an unchanged voice, "Don't you think you might
+manage to make your hair lie smoother, dear? It's very pretty, I know; but
+the way it curls about your face is just a bit untidy, isn't it?"
+
+Then, as the Governor came in from his day in town, she turned eagerly to
+hear the news of his latest speech.
+
+"Oh, I've had a great day, Julia," began the Governor; but as he stooped to
+kiss her, she gave a little cry of alarm. "Why, you're frozen through!" she
+exclaimed. "Betty, stir the fire, and make your father sit down by the
+fender. Shall I mix you a toddy, Mr. Ambler?"
+
+"Tut, tut!" protested the Governor, laughing, "a touch of the wind is good
+for the blood, my dear."
+
+There was a light track of snow where he had crossed the room, and as he
+rested his foot upon the brass knob of the fender, the ice clinging to his
+riding-boot melted and ran down upon the hearth.
+
+"Oh, I've had a great day," he repeated heartily, holding his plump white
+hands to the flames. "It was worth the trip to test the spirit of Virginia;
+and it's sound, Julia, as sound as steel. Why, when I said in my
+speech--you'll remember the place, my dear--that if it came to a choice
+between slavery and the Union, we'd ship the negroes back to Africa, and
+hold on to the flag, I was applauded to the echo, and it would have done
+you good to hear the cheers."
+
+"I knew it would be so, Mr. Ambler," returned his wife, with conviction.
+"Even if they thought otherwise I was sure your speech would convince them.
+Dr. Crump was talking to me only yesterday, and he said that he had heard
+both Mr. Yancey and Mr. Douglas, and that neither of them--"
+
+"I know, my love, I know," interposed the Governor, waving his hand. "I
+have myself heard the good doctor commit the same error of judgment. But,
+remember, it is easy to convince a man who already thinks as you do; and
+since the Major has gone over to the Democrats, the doctor has grown
+Whiggish, you know."
+
+Mrs. Ambler flushed. "I'm sure I don't see why you should deny that you
+have a talent for oratory," she said gravely. "I have sometimes thought it
+was why I fell in love with you, you made such a beautiful speech the first
+day I met you at the tournament in Leicesterburg. Fred Dulany crowned me,
+you remember; and in your speech you brought in so many lovely things about
+flowers and women."
+
+"Ah, Julia, Julia," sighed the Governor, "so the sins of my youth are
+rising to confound me," and he added quickly to Betty, "Isn't that some one
+coming up the drive, daughter?"
+
+Betty ran to the window and drew back the damask curtains. "It's the Major,
+papa," she said, nodding to the old gentleman through the glass, "and he
+does look so cold. Go out and bring him in, and don't--please don't talk
+horrid politics to-night."
+
+"I'll not, daughter, on my word, I'll not," declared the Governor, and he
+wore the warning as a breastplate when he went out to meet his guest.
+
+The Major, in his tight black broadcloth, entered, with his blandest smile,
+and bowed over Mrs. Ambler's hand.
+
+"I saw your firelight as I was passing, dear madam," he began, "and I
+couldn't go on without a glimpse of you, though I knew that Molly was
+waiting for me at the end of three cold miles."
+
+He put his arm about Betty and drew her to him.
+
+"You must borrow some of your sister's blushes, my child," he said; "it
+isn't right to grow pale at your age. I don't like to see it," and then, as
+Virginia came shyly in, he held out his other hand, and accused her of
+stealing his boy's heart away from him. "But we old folks must give place
+to the young," he continued cheerfully; "it's nature, and it's human
+nature, too."
+
+"It will be a dull day when you give place to any one else, Major,"
+returned the Governor, politely.
+
+"And a far off one I trust," added Mrs. Ambler, with her plaintive smile.
+
+"Well, maybe so," responded the Major, settling himself in an easy chair
+beside the fire. "Any way, you can't blame an old man for fighting for his
+own, as my friend Harry Smith put it when he lost his leg in the War of
+1812. 'By God, it belongs to me,' he roared to the surgeon, 'and if it
+comes off, I'll take it off myself, sir.' It took six men to hold him, and
+when it was over all he said was, 'Well, gentlemen, you mustn't blame a man
+for fighting for his own.' Ah, he was a sad scamp, was Harry, a sad scamp.
+He used to say that he didn't know whether he preferred a battle or a
+dinner, but he reckoned a battle was better for the blood. And to think
+that he died in his bed at last like any Christian."
+
+"That reminds me of Dick Wythe, who never needed any tonic but a fight,"
+returned the Governor, thoughtfully. "You remember Dick, don't you,
+Major?--a hard drinker, poor fellow, but handsome enough to have stepped
+out of Homer. I've been sitting by him at the post-office on a spring day,
+and seen him get up and slap a passer-by on the face as coolly as he'd take
+his toddy. Of course the man would slap back again, and when it was over
+Dick would make his politest bow, and say pleasantly, 'Thank you, sir, I
+felt a touch of the gout.' He told me once that if it was only a twinge, he
+chose a man of his own size; but if it was a positive wrench, he struck out
+at the biggest he could find."
+
+The Major leaned back, laughing. "That was Dick, sir, that was Dick!" he
+exclaimed, "and it was his father before him. Why, I've had my own blows
+with Taylor Wythe in his day, and never a hard word afterward, never a
+word." Then his face clouded. "I saw Dick's brother Tom in town this
+morning," he added. "A sneaking fellow, who hasn't the spirit in his whole
+body that was in his father's little finger. Why, what do you suppose he
+had the impudence to tell me, sir? Some one had asked him, he said, what he
+should do if Virginia went to war, and he had answered that he'd stay at
+home and build an asylum for the fools that brought it on." He turned his
+indignant face upon Mrs. Ambler, and she put in a modest word of sympathy.
+
+"You mustn't judge Tom by his jests, sir," rejoined the Governor,
+persuasively. "His wit takes with the town folks, you know, and I hear that
+he's becoming famous as a post-office orator."
+
+"There it is, sir, there it is," retorted the Major. "I've always said that
+the post-offices were the ruin of this country--and that proves my words.
+Why, if there were no post-offices, there'd be fewer newspapers; and if
+there were fewer newspapers, there wouldn't be the _Richmond Whig_."
+
+The Governor's glance wandered to his writing table.
+
+"Then I should never see my views in print, Major," he added, smiling; and
+a moment afterward, disregarding Mrs. Ambler's warning gestures, he plunged
+headlong into a discussion of political conditions.
+
+As he talked the Major sat trembling in his chair, his stern face flushing
+from red to purple, and the heavy veins upon his forehead standing out like
+cords. "Vote for Douglas, sir!" he cried at last. "Vote for the biggest
+traitor that has gone scot free since Arnold! Why, I'd sooner go over to
+the arch-fiend himself and vote for Seward."
+
+"I'm not sure that you won't go farther and fare worse," replied the
+Governor, gravely. "You know me for a loyal Whig, sir, but I tell you
+frankly, that I believe Douglas to be the man to save the South. Cast him
+off, and you cast off your remaining hope."
+
+"Tush, tush!" retorted the Major, hotly. "I tell you I wouldn't vote to
+have Douglas President of Perdition, sir. Don't talk to me about your
+loyalty, Peyton Ambler, you're mad--you're all mad! I honestly believe that
+I am the only sane man in the state."
+
+The Governor had risen from his chair and was walking nervously about the
+room. His eyes were dim, and his face was pallid with emotion.
+
+"My God, sir, don't you see where you are drifting?" he cried, stretching
+out an appealing hand to the angry old gentleman in the easy chair.
+
+"Drifting! Pooh, pooh!" protested the Major, "at least I am not drifting
+into a nest of traitors, sir."
+
+And with his wrath hot within he rose to take his leave, very red and
+stormy, but retaining the presence of mind to assure Mrs. Ambler that the
+glimpse of her fireside would send him rejoicing upon his way.
+
+Such burning topics went like strong wine to his head, and like strong wine
+left a craving which always carried him back to them in the end. He would
+quarrel with the Governor, and make his peace, and at the next meeting
+quarrel, without peace-making, again.
+
+"Don't, oh, please don't talk horrid politics, papa," Betty would implore,
+when she saw the nose of his dapple mare turn into the drive between the
+silver poplars.
+
+"I'll not, daughter, I give you my word I'll not," the Governor would
+answer, and for a time the conversation would jog easily along the well
+worn roads of county changes and by the green graves of many a long dead
+jovial neighbour. While the red logs spluttered on the hearth, they would
+sip their glasses of Madeira and amicably weigh the dust of "my friend Dick
+Wythe--a fine fellow, in spite of his little weakness."
+
+But in the end the live question would rear its head and come hissing from
+among the quiet graves; and Dick Wythe, who loved his fight, or Plaintain
+Dudley, in his ruffled shirt, would fall back suddenly to make way for the
+wrangling figures of the slaveholder and the abolitionist.
+
+"I can't help it, Betty, I can't help it," the Governor would declare, when
+he came back from following the old gentleman to the drive; "did you see
+Mr. Yancey step out of Dick Wythe's dry bones to-day? Poor Dick, an honest
+fellow who loved no man's quarrel but his own; it's too bad, I declare it's
+too bad." And the next day he would send Betty over to Chericoke to stroke
+down the Major's temper. "Slippery are the paths of the peacemaker," the
+girl laughed one morning, when she had ridden home after an hour of
+persuasion. "I go on tip-toe because of your indiscretions, papa. You
+really must learn to control yourself, the Major says."
+
+"Control myself!" repeated the Governor, laughing, though he looked a
+little vexed. "If I hadn't the control of a stoic, daughter, to say nothing
+of the patience of Job, do you think I'd be able to listen calmly to his
+tirades? Why, he wants to pull the Government to pieces for his pleasure,"
+then he pinched her cheek and added, smiling, "Oh, you sly puss, why don't
+you play your pranks upon one of your own age?"
+
+Through the long winter many visits were exchanged between Uplands and
+Chericoke, and once, on a mild February morning, Mrs. Lightfoot drove over
+in her old coach, with her knitting and her handmaid Mitty, to spend the
+day. She took Betty back with her, and the girl stayed a week in the queer
+old house, where the elm boughs tapped upon her window as she slept, and
+the shadows on the crooked staircase frightened her when she went up and
+down at night. It seemed to her that the presence of Jane Lightfoot still
+haunted the home that she had left. When the snow fell on the roof and the
+wind beat against the panes, she would open her door and look out into the
+long dim halls, as if she half expected to see a girlish figure in a muslin
+gown steal softly to the stair.
+
+Dan was less with her in that stormy week than was the memory of his
+mother; even Great-aunt Emmeline, whose motto was written on the ivied
+glass, grew faint beside the outcast daughter of whom but one pale
+miniature remained. Before Betty went back to Uplands she had grown to know
+Jane Lightfoot as she knew herself.
+
+When the spring came she took up her trowel and followed Aunt Lydia into
+the garden. On bright mornings the two would work side by side among the
+flowers, kneeling in a row with the small darkies who came to their
+assistance. Peter, the gardener, would watch them lazily, as he leaned upon
+his hoe, and mutter beneath his breath, "Dat dut wuz dut, en de dut er de
+flow'r baids warn' no better'n de dut er de co'n fiel'."
+
+Betty would laugh and shake her head as she planted her square of pansies.
+She was working feverishly to overcome her longing for the sight of Dan,
+and her growing dread of his return.
+
+But at last on a sunny morning, when the lilacs made a lane of purple to
+the road, the Major drove over with the news that "the boys would not be
+back again till autumn. They'll go abroad for the summer," he added
+proudly. "It's time they were seeing something of the world, you know. I've
+always said that a man should see the world before thirty, if he wants to
+stay at home after forty," then he smiled down on Virginia, and pinched her
+cheek. "It won't hurt Dan, my dear," he said cheerfully. "Let him get a
+glimpse of artificial flowers, that he may learn the value of our own
+beauties."
+
+"Of Great-aunt Emmeline, you mean, sir," replied Virginia, laughing.
+
+"Oh, yes, my child," chuckled the Major. "Let him learn the value of
+Great-aunt Emmeline, by all means."
+
+When the old gentleman had gone, Betty went into the garden, where the
+grass was powdered with small spring flowers, and gathered a bunch of white
+violets for her mother. Aunt Lydia was walking slowly up and down in the
+mild sunshine, and her long black shadow passed over the girl as she knelt
+in the narrow grass-grown path. A slender spray of syringa drooped down
+upon her head, and the warm wind was sweet with the heavy perfume of the
+lilacs. On the whitewashed fence a catbird was calling over the meadow, and
+another answered from the little bricked-up graveyard, where the gate was
+opened only when a fresh grave was to be hollowed out amid the periwinkle.
+
+As Betty knelt there, something in the warm wind, the heavy perfume, or the
+old lady's flitting shadow touched her with a sudden melancholy, and while
+the tears lay upon her lashes, she started quickly to her feet and looked
+about her. But a great peace was in the air, and around her she saw only
+the garden wrapped in sunshine, the small spring flowers in bloom, and Aunt
+Lydia moving up and down in the box-bordered walk.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE MEETING IN THE TURNPIKE
+
+
+On a late September afternoon Dan rode leisurely homeward along the
+turnpike. He had reached New York some days before, but instead of hurrying
+on with Champe, he had sent a careless apology to his expectant
+grandparents while he waited over to look up a missing trunk.
+
+"Oh, what difference does a day make?" he had urged in reply to Champe's
+remonstrances, "and after going all the way to Paris, I can't afford to
+lose my clothes, you know. I'm not a Leander, my boy, and there's no Hero
+awaiting me. You can't expect a fellow to sacrifice the proprieties for
+his grandmother."
+
+"Well, I'm going, that's all," rejoined Champe, and Dan heartily responded,
+"God be with you," as he shook his hand.
+
+Now, as he rode slowly up the turnpike on a hired horse, he was beginning
+to regret, with an impatient self-reproach, the three tiresome days he had
+stolen from his grandfather's delight. It was characteristic of him at the
+age of twenty-one that he began to regret what appeared to be a pleasure
+only after it had proved to be a disappointment. Had the New York days been
+gay instead of dull, it is probable that he would have ridden home with an
+easy conscience and a lordly belief that there was something generous in
+the spirit of his coming back at all.
+
+A damp wind was blowing straight along the turnpike, and the autumn fields,
+brilliant with golden-rod and sumach, stretched under a sky which had
+clouded over so suddenly that the last rays of sun were still shining upon
+the mountains.
+
+He had left Uplands a mile behind, throwing, as he passed, a wistful glance
+between the silver poplars. A pink dress had fluttered for an instant
+beyond the Doric columns, and he had wondered idly if it meant Virginia,
+and if she were still the pretty little simpleton of six months ago. At the
+thought of her he threw back his head and whistled gayly into the
+threatening sky, so gayly that a bluebird flying across the road hovered
+round him in the air. The joy of living possessed him at the moment, a mere
+physical delight in the circulation of his blood, in the healthy beating of
+his pulses. Old things which he had half forgotten appealed to him suddenly
+with all the force of fresh impressions. The beauty of the September
+fields, the long curve in the white road where the tuft of cedars grew, the
+falling valley which went down between the hills, stood out for him as if
+bathed in a new and tender light. The youth in him was looking through his
+eyes.
+
+And the thought of Virginia went merrily with his mood. What a pretty
+little simpleton she was, by George, and what a dull world this would be
+were it not for the pretty simpletons in pink dresses! Why, in that case
+one might as well sit in a library and read Horace and wear red flannel.
+One might as well--a drop of rain fell in his face and he lowered his head.
+When he did so he saw that Betty was coming along the turnpike, and that
+she wore a dress of blue dimity.
+
+In a flash of light his first wonder was that he should ever have preferred
+pink to blue; his second that a girl in a dimity gown and a white chip
+bonnet should be fleeing from a storm along the turnpike. As he jumped from
+his horse he faced her a little anxiously.
+
+"There's a hard shower coming, and you'll be wet," he said.
+
+"And my bonnet!" cried Betty, breathlessly. She untied the blue strings and
+swung them over her arm. There was a flush in her cheeks, and as he drew
+nearer she fell back quickly.
+
+"You--you came so suddenly," she stammered.
+
+He laughed aloud. "Doesn't the Prince always come suddenly?" he asked. "You
+are like the wandering princess in the fairy tale--all in blue upon a
+lonely road; but this isn't just the place for loitering, you know. Come up
+behind me and I'll carry you to shelter in Aunt Ailsey's cabin; it isn't
+the first time I've run away, with you, remember." He lifted her upon the
+horse, and started at a gallop up the turnpike. "I'm afraid the steed
+doesn't take the romantic view," he went on lightly. "There, get up,
+Barebones, the lady doesn't want to wet her bonnet. Lean against me, Betty,
+and I'll try to shelter you."
+
+But the rain was in their faces, and Betty shut her eyes to keep out the
+hard bright drops. As she clung with both hands to his arm, her wet cheek
+was hidden against his coat, and the blue ribbons on her breast were blown
+round them in the wind. It was as if one of her dreams had awakened from
+sleep and come boldly out into the daylight; and because it was like a
+dream she trembled and was half ashamed of its reality.
+
+"Here we are!" he exclaimed, in a moment, as he turned the horse round the
+blasted tree into the little path amid the vegetables. "If you are soaked
+through, we might as well go on; but if you're half dry, build a fire and
+get warm." He put her down upon the square stone before the doorway, and
+slipping the reins over the branch of a young willow tree, followed her
+into the cabin. "Why, you're hardly damp," he said, with his hand on her
+arm. "I got the worst of it."
+
+He crossed over to the great open fireplace, and kneeling upon the hearth
+raked a hollow in the old ashes; then he kindled a blaze from a pile of
+lightwood knots, and stood up brushing his hands together. "Sit down and
+get warm," he said hospitably. "If I may take upon myself to do the duties
+of free Levi's castle, I should even invite you to make yourself at home."
+With a laugh he glanced about the bare little room,--at the uncovered
+rafters, the rough log walls, and the empty cupboard with its swinging
+doors. In one corner there was a pallet hidden by a ragged patchwork quilt,
+and facing it a small pine table upon which stood an ash-cake ready for the
+embers.
+
+The laughter was still in his eyes when he looked at Betty. "Now where's
+the sense of going walking in the rain?" he demanded.
+
+"I didn't," replied Betty, quickly. "It was clear when I started, and the
+clouds came up before I knew it. I had been across the fields to the woods,
+and I was coming home along the turnpike." She loosened her hair, and
+kneeling upon the smooth stones, dried it before the flames. As she shook
+the curling ends a sparkling shower of rain drops was scattered over Dan.
+
+"Well, I don't see much sense in that," he returned slowly, with his gaze
+upon her.
+
+She laughed and held out her moist hands to the fire. "Well, there was more
+than you see," she responded pleasantly, and added, while she smiled at him
+with narrowed eyes, "dear me, you've grown so much older."
+
+"And you've grown so much prettier," he retorted boldly.
+
+A flush crossed her face, and her look grew a little wistful. "The rain has
+bewitched you," she said.
+
+"You may call me a fool if you like," he pursued, as if she had not spoken,
+"but I did not know until to-day that you had the most beautiful hair in
+the world. Why, it is always sunshine about you." He put out his hand to
+touch a loose curl that hung upon her shoulder, then drew it quickly back.
+"I don't suppose I might," he asked humbly.
+
+Betty gathered up her hair with shaking hands, which gleamed white in the
+firelight, and carelessly twisted it about her head.
+
+"It is not nearly so pretty as Virginia's," she said in a low voice.
+
+"Virginia's? Oh, nonsense!" he exclaimed, and walked rapidly up and down
+the room.
+
+Beyond the open door the rain fell heavily; he heard it beating softly on
+the roof and dripping down upon the smooth square stone before the
+threshold. A red maple leaf was washed in from the path and lay a wet bit
+of colour upon the floor. "I wonder where old man Levi is?" he said
+suddenly.
+
+"In the rain, I'm afraid," Betty answered, "and he has rheumatism, too; he
+was laid up for three months last winter."
+
+She spoke quietly, but she was conscious of a quiver from head to foot, as
+if a strong wind had swept over her. Through the doorway she saw the young
+willow tree trembling in the storm and felt curiously akin to it.
+
+Dan came slowly back to the hearth, and leaning against the crumbling
+mortar of the chimney, looked thoughtfully down upon her. "Do you know what
+I thought of when I saw you with your hair down, Betty?"
+
+She shook her head, smiling.
+
+"I don't suppose I'd thought of it for years," he went on quickly; "but
+when you took your hair down, and looked up at me so small and white, it
+all came back to me as if it were yesterday. I remembered the night I first
+came along this road--God-forsaken little chap that I was--and saw you
+standing out there in your nightgown--with your little cold bare feet. The
+moonlight was full upon you, and I thought you were a ghost. At first I
+wanted to run away; but you spoke, and I stood still and listened. I
+remember what it was, Betty.--'Mr. Devil, I'm going in,' you said. Did you
+take me for the devil, I wonder?"
+
+She smiled up at him, and he saw her kind eyes fill with tears. The
+wavering smile only deepened the peculiar tenderness of her look.
+
+"I had been sitting in the briers for an hour," he resumed, after a moment;
+"it was a day and night since I had eaten a bit of bread, and I had been
+digging up sassafras roots with my bare fingers. I remember that I rooted
+at one for nearly an hour, and found that it was sumach, after all. Then I
+got up and went on again, and there you were standing in the moonlight--"
+He broke off, hesitated an instant, and added with the gallant indiscretion
+of youth, "By George, that ought to have made a man of me!"
+
+"And you are a man," said Betty.
+
+"A man!" he appeared to snap his fingers at the thought. "I am a
+weather-vane, a leaf in the wind, a--an ass. I haven't known my own mind
+ten minutes during the last two years, and the only thing I've ever gone
+honestly about is my own pleasure. Oh, yes, I have the courage of my
+inclinations, I admit."
+
+"But I don't understand--what does it mean?--I don't understand," faltered
+Betty, vaguely troubled by his mood.
+
+"Mean? Why, it means that I've been ruined, and it's too late to mend me.
+I'm no better than a pampered poodle dog. It means that I've gotten
+everything I wanted, until I begin to fancy there's nothing under heaven I
+can't get." Then, in one of his quick changes of temper, his face cleared
+with a burst of honest laughter.
+
+She grew merry instantly, and as she smiled up at him, he saw her eyes like
+rays of hazel light between her lashes. "Has the black crow gone?" she
+asked. "Do you know when I have a gray day Mammy calls it the black crow
+flying by. As long as his shadow is over you, there's always a gloom at the
+brain, she says. Has he quite gone by?"
+
+"Oh, he flew by quickly," he answered, laughing, "he didn't even stay to
+flap his wings." Then he became suddenly grave. "I wonder what kind of a
+man you'll fall in love with, Betty?" he said abruptly.
+
+She drew back startled, and her eyes reminded him of those of a frightened
+wild thing he had come upon in the spring woods one day. As she shrank from
+him in her dim blue dress, her hair fell from its coil and lay like a gold
+bar across her bosom, which fluttered softly with her quickened breath.
+
+"I? Why, how can I tell?" she asked.
+
+"He'll not be black and ugly, I dare say?"
+
+She shook her head, regaining her composure.
+
+"Oh, no, fair and beautiful," she answered.
+
+"Ah, as unlike me as day from night?"
+
+"As day from night," she echoed, and went on after a moment, her girlish
+visions shining in her eyes:--
+
+"He will be a man, at least," she said slowly, "a man with a faith to fight
+for--to live for--to make him noble. He may be a beggar by the roadside,
+but he will be a beggar with dreams. He will be forever travelling to some
+great end--some clear purpose." The last words came so faintly that he bent
+nearer to hear. A deep flush swept to her forehead, and she turned from him
+to the fire. These were things that she had hidden even from Virginia.
+
+But as he looked steadily down upon her, something of her own pure fervour
+was in his face. Her vivid beauty rose like a flame to his eyes, and for a
+single instant it seemed to him that he had never looked upon a woman until
+to-day.
+
+"So you would sit with him in the dust of the roadside?" he asked, smiling.
+
+"But the dust is beautiful when the sun shines on it," answered the girl;
+"and on wet days we should go into the pine woods, and on fair ones rest in
+the open meadows; and we should sing with the robins, and make friends with
+the little foxes."
+
+He laughed softly. "Ah, Betty, Betty, I know you now for a dreamer of
+dreams. With all your pudding-mixing and your potato-planting you are
+moon-mad like the rest of us."
+
+She made a disdainful little gesture. "Why, I never planted a potato in my
+life."
+
+"Don't scoff, dear lady," he returned warningly; "too great literalness is
+the sin of womankind, you know."
+
+"But I don't care in the least for vegetable-growing," she persisted
+seriously.
+
+The humour twinkled in his eyes. "Thriftless woman, would you prefer to
+beg?"
+
+"When the Major rode by," laughed Betty; "but when I heard you coming, I'd
+lie hidden among the briers, and I'd scatter signs for other gypsies that
+read, 'Beware the Montjoy.'"
+
+His face darkened and he frowned. "So it's the Montjoy you're afraid of,"
+he rejoined gloomily. "I'm not all Lightfoot, though I'm apt to forget it;
+the Montjoy blood is there, all the same, and it isn't good blood."
+
+"Your blood is good," said Betty, warmly.
+
+He laughed again and met her eyes with a look of whimsical tenderness.
+"Make me your beggar, Betty," he prayed, smiling.
+
+"You a beggar!" She shook a scornful head. "I can shut my eyes and see your
+fortune, sir, and it doesn't lie upon the roadside. I see a well-fed
+country gentleman who rises late to breakfast and storms when the birds are
+overdone, who drinks his two cups of coffee and eats syrup upon his
+cakes--"
+
+"O pleasant prophetess!" he threw in.
+
+"I look and see him riding over the rich fields in the early morning,
+watching from horseback the planting and the growing and the ripening of
+the corn. He has a dozen servants to fetch the whip he drops, and a dozen
+others to hold his bridle when he pleases to dismount; the dogs leap round
+him in the drive, and he brushes away the one that licks his face. I see
+him grow stout and red-faced as he reads a dull Latin volume beside his
+bottle of old port--there's your fortune, sir, the silver, if you please."
+She finished in a whining voice, and rose to drop a courtesy.
+
+"On my word, you're a witch, Betty," he exclaimed, laughing, "a regular
+witch on a broomstick."
+
+"Does the likeness flatter you? Shall I touch it up a bit? Just a dash more
+of red in the face?"
+
+"Well, I reckon it's true as prophecy ever was," he said easily. "It isn't
+likely that I'll ever be a beggar, despite your kindly wishes for my soul's
+welfare; and, on the whole, I think I'd rather not. When all's said and
+done, I'd rather own my servants and my cultivated acres, and come down
+late to hot cakes than sit in the dust by the roadside and eat sour grapes.
+It may not be so good for the soul, but it's vastly more comfortable; and
+I'm not sure that a fat soul in a lean body is the best of life, Betty."
+
+"At least it doesn't give one gout," retorted Betty, mercilessly, adding as
+she went to the door: "but the rain is holding up, and I must be going.
+I'll borrow your horse, if you please, Dan." She tied on her flattened
+bonnet, and with her foot on the threshold, stood looking across the wet
+fields, where each spear of grass pieced a string of shining rain drops.
+Over the mountains the clouds tossed in broken masses, and loose streamers
+of vapour drifted down into the lower foldings of the hills. The cool smell
+of the moist road came to her on the wind.
+
+Dan unfastened the reins from the young willow, and led the horse to the
+stone at the entrance. Then he threw his coat over the dampened saddle and
+lifted Betty upon it. "Pooh! I'm as tough as a pine knot." He scoffed at
+her protests. "There, sit steady; I'd better hold you on, I suppose."
+
+Slipping the reins loosely over his arm, he laid his hand upon the blue
+folds of her skirt. "If you feel yourself going, just catch my shoulder,"
+he added; "and now we're off."
+
+They left the little path and went slowly down the turnpike, under the
+dripping trees. Across the fields a bird was singing after the storm, and
+the notes were as fresh as the smell of the rain-washed earth. A fuller
+splendour seemed to have deepened suddenly upon the meadows, and the
+golden-rod ran in streams of fire across the landscape.
+
+"Everything looks so changed," said Betty, wistfully; "are you sure that we
+are still in the same world, Dan?"
+
+"Sure?" he looked up at her gayly. "I'm sure of but one thing in this life,
+Betty, and that is that you should thank your stars you met me."
+
+"I don't doubt that I should have gotten home somehow," responded Betty,
+ungratefully, "so don't flatter yourself that you have saved even my
+bonnet." From its blue-lined shadow she smiled brightly down upon him.
+
+"Well, all the same, I dare to be grateful," he rejoined. "Even if you
+haven't saved my hat,--and I can't honestly convince myself that you
+have,--I thank my stars I met you, Betty." He threw back his head and sang
+softly to himself as they went on under the scudding clouds.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+IF THIS BE LOVE
+
+
+An hour later, Cephas, son of Cupid, gathering his basketful of chips at
+the woodpile, beheld his young master approaching by the branch road, and
+started shrieking for the house. "Hi! hit's Marse Dan! hit's Marse Dan!" he
+yelled to his father Cupid in the pantry; "I seed 'im fu'st! Fo' de Lawd, I
+seed 'im fu'st!" and the Major, hearing the words, appeared instantly at
+the door of his library.
+
+"It's the boy," he called excitedly. "Bless my soul, Molly, the boy has
+come!"
+
+The old lady came hurriedly downstairs, pinning on her muslin cap, and by
+the time Dan had dismounted at the steps the whole household was assembled
+to receive him.
+
+"Well, well, my boy," exclaimed the Major, moving nervously about, "this is
+a surprise, indeed. We didn't look for you until next week. Well, well."
+
+He turned away to wipe his eyes, while Dan caught his grandmother in his
+arms and kissed her a dozen times. The joy of these simple souls touched
+him with a new tenderness; he felt unworthy of his grandmother's kisses and
+the Major's tears. Why had he stayed away when his coming meant so much?
+What was there in all the world worth the closer knitting of these strong
+blood ties?
+
+"By George, but I'm glad to get here," he said heartily. "There's nothing
+I've seen across the water that comes up to being home again; and the sight
+of your faces is better than the wonders of the world, I declare. Ah,
+Cupid, old man, I'm glad to see you. And Aunt Rhody and Congo, how are you
+all? Why, where's Big Abel? Don't tell me he isn't here to welcome me."
+
+"Hyer I is, young Marster, hyer I is," cried Big Abel, stretching out his
+hand over Congo's head, and "Hyer I is, too," shouted Cephas from behind
+him. "I seed you fu'st, fo' de Lawd, I seed you fu'st!"
+
+They gathered eagerly round him, and with a laugh, and a word for one and
+all, he caught the outstretched hands, scattering his favours like a young
+Jove. "Yes, I've remembered you--there, don't smother me. Did you think I'd
+dare to show my face, Aunt Rhody, without the gayest neckerchief in Europe?
+Why, I waited over in New York just to see that it was safe. Oh, don't
+smother me, I say." The dogs came bounding in, and he greeted them with
+much the same affectionate condescension, caressing them as they sprang
+upon him, and pushing away the one that licked his face. When the overseer
+ran in hastily to shake his hand, there was no visible change in his
+manner. He greeted black and white with a courtesy which marked the social
+line, with an affability which had a touch of the august. Had the gulf
+between them been less impassable, he would not have dared the hearty
+handshake, the genial word, the pat upon the head--these were a tribute
+which he paid to the very humble.
+
+When the servants had streamed chattering out through the back door, he put
+his arms about the old people and led them into the library. "Why, what's
+become of Champe?" he inquired, glancing complacently round the book-lined
+walls.
+
+"Ah, you mustn't expect to see anything of Champe these days," replied the
+Major, waiting for Mrs. Lightfoot to be seated before he drew up his chair.
+"His heart's gone roving, I tell him, and he follows mighty closely after
+it. If you don't find him at Uplands, you've only to inquire at Powell
+Hall."
+
+"Uplands!" exclaimed Dan, hearing the one word. "What is he doing at
+Uplands?"
+
+The Major chuckled as he settled himself in his easy chair and stretched
+out his slippered feet. "Well, I should say that he was doing a very
+commendable thing, eh, Molly?" he rejoined jokingly.
+
+"He's losing his head, if that's what you mean," retorted the old lady.
+
+"Not his head, but his heart, my dear," blandly corrected the Major, "and I
+repeat that it is a very commendable thing to do--why, where would you be
+to-day, madam, if I hadn't fallen in love with you?"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot sniffed as she unwound her knitting. "I don't doubt that I
+should be quite as well off, Mr. Lightfoot," she replied convincingly.
+
+"Ah, maybe so, maybe so," admitted the Major, with a sigh; "but I'm very
+sure that I shouldn't be, my dear."
+
+The old lady softened visibly, but she only remarked:--
+
+"I'm glad that you have found it out, sir," and clicked her needles.
+
+Dan, who had been wandering aimlessly about the room, threw himself into a
+chair beside his grandmother and caught at her ball of yarn.
+
+"It's Virginia, I suppose," he suggested.
+
+The Major laughed until his spectacles clouded.
+
+"Virginia!" he gasped, wiping the glasses upon his white silk handkerchief.
+"Listen to the boy, Molly, he believes every last one of us--myself to
+boot, I reckon--to be in love with Miss Virginia."
+
+"If he does, he believes as many men have done before him," interposed Mrs.
+Lightfoot, with a homely philosophy.
+
+"Well, isn't it Virginia?" asked Dan.
+
+"I tell you frankly," pursued the Major, in a confidential voice, "that if
+you want a rival with Virginia, you'll be apt to find a stout one in Jack
+Morson. He was back a week ago, and he's a fine fellow--a first-rate
+fellow. I declare, he came over here one evening and I couldn't begin a
+single quotation from Horace that he didn't know the end of it. On my word,
+he's not only a fine fellow, but a cultured gentleman. You may remember,
+sir, that I have always maintained that the two most refining influences
+upon the manners were to be found in the society of ladies and a knowledge
+of the Latin language."
+
+Dan gave the yarn an impatient jerk. "Tell me, grandma," he besought her.
+
+As was her custom, the old lady came quickly to the point and appeared to
+transfix the question with the end of her knitting-needle. "I really think
+that it is Betty, my child," she answered calmly.
+
+"What does he mean by falling in love with Betty?" demanded Dan, while he
+rose to his feet, and the ball of yarn fell upon the floor.
+
+"Don't ask me what he means, sir," protested the Major. "If a man in love
+has any meaning in him, it takes a man in love to find it out. Maybe you'll
+be better at it than I am; but I give it up--I give it up."
+
+With a gloomy face Dan sat down again, and resting his arms on his knees,
+stared at the vase of golden-rod between the tall brass andirons. Cupid
+came in to light the lamps, and stopped to inquire if Mrs. Lightfoot would
+like a blaze to be started in the fireplace. "It's a little chilly, my
+dear," remarked the Major, slapping his arm. "There's been a sharp change
+in the weather;" and Cupid removed the vase of golden-rod and laid an
+armful of sticks crosswise on the andirons.
+
+"Draw up to the hearth, my boy," said the Major, when the fire burned.
+"Even if you aren't cold, it looks cheerful, you know--draw up, draw up,"
+and he at once began to question his grandson about the London streets,
+evoking as he talked dim memories of his own early days in England. He
+asked after St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey half as if they were personal
+friends of whose death he feared to hear; and upon being answered that they
+still stood unchanged, he pressed eagerly for the gossip of the Strand and
+Fleet Street. Was Dr. Johnson's coffee-house still standing? and did Dan
+remember to look up the haunts of Mr. Addison in his youth? "I've gotten a
+good deal out of Champe," he confessed, "but I like to hear it again--I
+like to hear it. Why, it takes me back forty years, and makes me younger."
+
+And when Champe came in from his ride, he found the old gentleman upon the
+hearth-rug, his white hair tossing over his brow, as he recited from Mr.
+Addison with the zest of a schoolboy of a hundred years ago.
+
+"Hello, Beau! I hope you got your clothes," was Champe's greeting, as he
+shook his cousin's hand.
+
+"Oh, they turned up all right," said Dan, carelessly, "and, by-the-way,
+there was an India shawl for grandma in that very trunk."
+
+Champe crossed to the fireplace and stood fingering one of the tall vases.
+"It's a pity you didn't stop by Uplands," he observed. "You'd have found
+Virginia more blooming than ever."
+
+"Ah, is that so?" returned Dan, flushing, and a moment afterward he added
+with an effort, "I met Betty in the turnpike, you know."
+
+Six months ago, he remembered, he had raved out his passion for Virginia,
+and to-day he could barely stammer Betty's name. A great silence; seemed to
+surround the thought of her.
+
+"So she told me," replied Champe, looking steadily at Dan. For a moment he
+seemed about to speak again; then changing his mind, he left the room with
+a casual remark about dressing for supper.
+
+"I'll go, too," said Dan, rising from his seat. "If you'll believe me, I
+haven't spoken to my old love, Aunt Emmeline. So proud a beauty is not to
+be treated with neglect."
+
+He lighted one of the tall candles upon the mantel-piece, and taking it in
+his hand, crossed the hall and went into the panelled parlour, where
+Great-aunt Emmeline, in the lustre of her amber brocade, smiled her
+changeless smile from out the darkened canvas. There was wit in her curved
+lip and spirit in her humorous gray eyes, and the marble whiteness of her
+brow, which had brought her many lovers in her lifetime, shone undimmed
+beneath the masses of her chestnut hair. With her fair body gone to dust,
+she still held her immortal apple by the divine right of her remembered
+beauty.
+
+As Dan looked at her it seemed to him for the first time that he found a
+likeness to Betty--to Betty as she smiled up at him from the hearth in Aunt
+Ailsey's cabin. It was not in the mouth alone, nor in the eyes alone, but
+in something indefinable which belonged to every feature--in the kindly
+fervour that shone straight out from the smiling face. Ah, he knew now why
+Aunt Emmeline had charmed a generation.
+
+He blew out the candle, and went back into the hall where the front door
+stood half open. Then taking down his hat, he descended the steps and
+strolled thoughtfully up and down the gravelled drive.
+
+The air was still moist, and beyond the gray meadows the white clouds
+huddled like a flock of sheep upon the mountain side. From the branches of
+the old elms fell a few yellowed leaves, and among them birds were flying
+back and forth with short cries. A faint perfume came from the high urns
+beside the steps, where a flowering creeper was bruised against the marble
+basins.
+
+With a cigar in his mouth, Dan passed slowly to and fro against the lighted
+windows, and looked up tenderly at the gray sky and the small flying birds.
+There was a glow in his face, for, with a total cessation of time, he was
+back in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, and the rain was on the roof.
+
+In one of those rare moods in which the least subjective mind becomes that
+of a mystic, he told himself that this hour had waited for him from the
+beginning of time--had bided patiently at the crossroads until he came up
+with it at last. All his life he had been travelling to meet it, not in
+ignorance, but with half-unconscious knowledge, and all the while the fire
+had burned brightly on the hearth, and Betty had knelt upon the flat stones
+drying her hair. Again it seemed to him that he had never looked into a
+woman's face before, and the shame of his wandering fancies was heavy upon
+him. He called himself a fool because he had followed for a day the flutter
+of Virginia's gown, and a dotard for the many loves he had sworn to long
+before. In the twilight he saw Betty's eyes, grave, accusing, darkened with
+reproach; and he asked himself half hopefully if she cared--if it were
+possible for a moment that she cared. There had been humour in her smile,
+but, for all his effort, he could bring back no deeper emotion than pity or
+disdain--and it seemed to him that both the pity and the disdain were for
+himself.
+
+The library window was lifted suddenly, as the Major called out to him that
+"supper was on its way"; and, with an impatient movement of the shoulders,
+he tossed his cigar into the grass and went indoors.
+
+The next afternoon he rode over to Uplands, and found Virginia alone in the
+dim, rose-scented parlour, where the quaint old furniture stood in the
+gloom of a perpetual solemnity. The girl, herself, made a bright spot of
+colour against the damask curtains, and as he looked at her he felt the
+same delight in her loveliness that he felt in Great-aunt Emmeline's.
+Virginia had become a picture to him, and nothing more.
+
+When he entered she greeted him with her old friendliness, gave him both
+her cool white hands, and asked him a hundred shy questions about the
+countries over sea. She was delicately cordial, demurely glad.
+
+"It seems an age since you went away," she said flatteringly, "and so many
+things have happened--one of the big trees blew down on the lawn, and Jack
+Powell broke his arm--and--and Mr. Morson has been back twice, you know."
+
+"Yes, I know," he answered, "but I rather think the tree's the biggest
+thing, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, it is the biggest," admitted Virginia, sweetly. "I couldn't get my
+arms halfway round it--and Betty was so distressed when it fell that she
+cried half the day, just as if it were a human being. Aunt Lydia has been
+trying to build a rockery over the root, and she's going to cover it with
+portulaca." She went to the long window and pointed out the spot where it
+had stood. "There are so many one hardly misses it," she added cheerfully.
+
+At the end of an hour Dan asked timidly for Betty, to hear that she had
+gone riding earlier with Champe. "She is showing him a new path over the
+mountain," said Virginia. "I really think she knows them all by heart."
+
+"I hope she hasn't taken to minding cattle," observed Dan, irritably. "I
+believe in women keeping at home, you know," and as he rose to go he told
+Virginia that she had "an Irish colour."
+
+"I have been sitting in the sun," she answered shyly, going back to the
+window when he left the room.
+
+Dan went quickly out to Prince Rupert, but with his foot in the stirrup, he
+saw Miss Lydia training a coral honeysuckle at the end of the portico, and
+turned away to help her fasten up a broken string. "It blew down
+yesterday," she explained sadly. "The storm did a great deal of damage to
+the flowers, and the garden looked almost desolate this morning, but Betty
+and I worked there until dinner. I tell Betty she must take my place among
+the flowers, she has such a talent for making them bloom. Why, if you will
+come into the garden, you will be surprised to see how many summer plants
+are still in blossom."
+
+She spoke wistfully, and Dan looked down on her with a tender reverence
+which became him strangely. "Why, I shall be delighted to go with you," he
+answered. "Do you know I never see you without thinking of your roses? You
+seem to carry their fragrance in your clothes." There was a touch of the
+Major's flattery in his manner, but Miss Lydia's pale cheeks flushed with
+pleasure.
+
+Smiling faintly, she folded her knitted shawl over her bosom, and he
+followed her across the grass to the little whitewashed gate of the garden.
+There she entered softly, as if she were going into church, her light steps
+barely treading down the tall grass strewn with rose leaves. Beyond the
+high box borders the gay October roses bent toward her beneath a light
+wind, and in the square beds tangles of summer plants still flowered
+untouched by frost. The splendour of the scarlet sage and the delicate
+clusters of the four-o'clocks and sweet Williams made a single blur of
+colour in the sunshine, and under the neatly clipped box hedges, blossoms
+of petunias and verbenas straggled from their trim rows across the walk.
+
+As he stood beside her, Dan drew in a long breath of the fragrant air. "I
+declare, it is like standing in a bunch of pinks," he remarked.
+
+"There has been no hard frost as yet," returned Miss Lydia, looking up at
+him. "Even the verbenas were not nipped, and I don't think I ever had them
+bloom so late. Why, it is almost the first of October."
+
+They strolled leisurely up and down the box-bordered paths, Miss Lydia
+talking in her gentle, monotonous voice, and Dan bending his head as he
+flicked at the tall grass with his riding-whip.
+
+"He is a great lover of flowers," said the old lady after he had gone, and
+thought in her simple heart that she spoke the truth.
+
+For two days Dan's pride held him back, but the third being Sunday, he went
+over in the afternoon with the pretence of a message from his grandmother.
+As the day was mild the great doors were standing open, and from the drive
+he saw Mrs. Ambler sitting midway of the hall, with her Bible in her hand
+and her class of little negroes at her feet. Beyond her there was a strip
+of green and the autumn glory of the garden, and the sunlight coming from
+without fell straight upon the leaves of the open book.
+
+She was reading from the gospel of St. John, and she did not pause until
+the chapter was finished; then she looked up and said, smiling: "Shall I
+ask you to join my class, or will you look for the girls out of doors?
+Virginia, I think, is in the garden, and Betty has just gone riding down
+the tavern road."
+
+"Oh, I'll go after Betty," replied Dan, promptly, and with a gay "good-by"
+he untied Prince Rupert and started at a canter for the turnpike.
+
+A quarter of a mile beyond Uplands the tavern road branched off under a
+deep gloom of forest trees. The white sand of the turnpike gave place to a
+heavy clay soil, which went to dust in summer and to mud in winter,
+impeding equally the passage of wheels. On either side a thick wood ran for
+several miles, and the sunshine filtered in bright drops through the green
+arch overhead.
+
+When Dan first caught sight of Betty she was riding in a network of sun and
+shade, her face lifted to the bit of blue sky that showed between the
+tree-tops. At the sound of his horse she threw a startled look behind her,
+and then, drawing aside from the sunken ruts in the "corduroy" road,
+waited, smiling, until he galloped up.
+
+"Why, it's never you!" she exclaimed, surprised.
+
+"Well, that's not my fault, Betty," he gayly returned. "If I had my way, I
+assure you it would be always I. You mustn't blame a fellow for his ill
+luck, you know." Then he laid his hand on her bridle and faced her sternly.
+
+"Look here, Betty, you haven't been treating me right," he said.
+
+She threw out a deprecating little gesture. "Do I need to put on more
+humility?" she questioned, humbly. "Is it respect that I have failed in,
+sir?"
+
+"Oh, bosh!" he interposed, rudely. "I want to know why you went riding
+three afternoons with Champe--it wasn't fair of you, you know."
+
+Betty sighed sadly. "No one has ever asked me before why I went riding with
+Champe," she confessed, "and the mighty secret has quite gnawed into my
+heart."
+
+"Share it with me," begged Dan, gallantly, "only I warn you that I shall
+have no mercy upon Champe."
+
+"Poor Champe," said Betty.
+
+"At least he went riding with you three afternoons--lucky Champe!"
+
+"Ah, so he did; and must I tell you why?"
+
+He nodded. "You shan't go home until you do," he declared grimly.
+
+Betty reached up and plucked a handful of aspen leaves, scattering them
+upon the road.
+
+"By what right, O horse-taming Hector (isn't that the way they talk in
+Homer?)"
+
+"By the right of the strongest, O fair Helena (it's the way they talk in
+translations of Homer)."
+
+"How very learned you are!" sighed Betty.
+
+"How very lovely you are!" sighed Dan.
+
+"And you will really force me to tell you?" she asked.
+
+"For your own sake, don't let it come to that," he replied.
+
+"But are you sure that you are strong enough to hear it?"
+
+"I am strong enough for anything," he assured her, "except suspense."
+
+"Well, if I must, then let me whisper it--I went because--" she drew back,
+"I implore you not to uproot the forest in your wrath."
+
+"Speak quickly," urged Dan, impatiently.
+
+"I went because--brace yourself--I went because he asked me."
+
+"O Betty!" he cried, and caught her hand.
+
+"O Dan!" she laughed, and drew her hand away.
+
+"You deserve to be whipped," he went on sternly. "How dare you play with
+the green-eyed monster I'm wearing on my sleeve? Haven't you heard his
+growls, madam?"
+
+"He's a pretty monster," said Betty. "I should like to pat him."
+
+"Oh, he needs to be gently stroked, I tell you."
+
+"Does he wake often--poor monster?"
+
+Dan lowered his abashed eyes to the road.
+
+"Well, that--ah, that depends--" he began awkwardly.
+
+"Ah, that depends upon your fancies," finished Betty, and rode on rapidly.
+
+It was a moment before he came up with her, and when he did so his face was
+flushed.
+
+"Do you mind about my fancies, Betty?" he asked humbly.
+
+"I?" said Betty, disdainfully. "Why, what have I to do with them?"
+
+"With my fancies? nothing--so help me God--nothing."
+
+"I am glad to hear it," she replied quietly, stroking her horse. Her cheeks
+were glowing and she let the overhanging branches screen her face. As they
+rode on silently they heard the rustling of the leaves beneath the horses'
+feet, and the soft wind playing through the forest. A chain of lights and
+shadows ran before them into the misty purple of the distance, where the
+dim trees went up like gothic spires.
+
+Betty's hands were trembling, but fearing the stillness, she spoke in a
+careless voice.
+
+"When do you go back to college?" she inquired politely.
+
+"In two days--but it's all the same to you, I dare say."
+
+"Indeed it isn't. I shall be very sorry."
+
+"You needn't lie to me," he returned irritably. "I beg your pardon, but a
+lie is a lie, you know."
+
+"So I suppose, but I wasn't lying--I shall be very sorry."
+
+A fiery maple branch fell between them, and he impatiently thrust it aside.
+
+"When you treat me like this you raise the devil in me," he said angrily.
+"As I told you before, Betty, when I'm not Lightfoot I'm Montjoy--it may be
+this that makes you plague me so."
+
+"O Dan, Dan!" she laughed, but in a moment added gravely: "When you're
+neither Lightfoot nor Montjoy, you're just yourself, and it's then, after
+all, that I like you best. Shall we turn now?" She wheeled her horse about
+on the rustling leaves, and they started toward the sunset light shining
+far up the road.
+
+"When you like me best," said Dan, passionately. "Betty, when is that?" His
+ardent look was on her face, and she, defying her fears, met it with her
+beaming eyes. "When you're just yourself, Dan," she answered and galloped
+on. Her lips were smiling, but there was a prayer in her heart, for it
+cried, "Dear God, let him love me, let him love me."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+BETTY'S UNBELIEF
+
+
+"Dear God, let him love me," she prayed again in the cool twilight of her
+chamber. Before the open window she put her hands to her burning cheeks and
+felt the wind trickle between her quivering fingers. Her heart fluttered
+like a bird and her blood went in little tremours through her veins. For a
+single instant she seemed to feel the passage of the earth through space.
+"Oh, let him love me! let him love me!" she cried upon her knees.
+
+When Virginia came in she rose and turned to her with the brightness of
+tears on her lashes.
+
+"Do you want me to help you, dear?" she asked, gently.
+
+"Oh, I'm all dressed," answered Virginia, coming toward her. She held a
+lamp in her hand, and the light fell over her girlish figure in its muslin
+gown. "You are so late, Betty," she added, stopping before the bureau.
+"Were you by yourself?"
+
+"Not all the way," replied Betty, slowly.
+
+"Who was with you? Champe?"
+
+"No, not Champe--Dan," said Betty, stooping to unfasten her boots.
+
+Virginia was pinning a red verbena in her hair, and she turned to catch a
+side view of her face.
+
+"Do you know I really believe Dan likes you best," she carelessly remarked.
+"I asked him the other afternoon what colour hair he preferred, and he
+snapped out, 'red' as suddenly as that. Wasn't it funny?"
+
+For a moment Betty did not speak; then she came over and stood beside her
+sister.
+
+"Would you mind if he liked me better than you, dear?" she asked,
+doubtfully. "Would you mind the least little bit?"
+
+Virginia laughed merrily and stooped to kiss her.
+
+"I shouldn't mind if every man in the world liked you better," she answered
+gayly. "If they only had as much sense as I've got, they would, foolish
+things."
+
+"I never knew but one who did," returned Betty, "and that was the Major."
+
+"But Champe, too."
+
+"Well, perhaps,--but Champe's afraid of you. He calls you Penelope, you
+know, because of the 'wooers.' We counted six horses at the portico
+yesterday, and he made a bet with me that all of them belonged to the
+'wooers'--and they really did, too."
+
+"Oh, but wooing isn't winning," laughed Virginia, going toward the door.
+"You'd better hurry, Betty, supper's ready. I wouldn't touch my hair, if I
+were you, it looks just lovely." Her white skirts fluttered across the
+dimly lighted hall, and in a moment Betty heard her soft step on the stair.
+
+Two days later Betty told Dan good-by with smiling lips. He rode over in
+the early morning, when she was in the garden gathering loose rose leaves
+to scatter among her clothes. There had been a sharp frost the night
+before, and now as it melted in the slanting sun rays, Miss Lydia's summer
+flowers hung blighted upon their stalks. Only the gay October roses were
+still in their full splendour.
+
+"What an early Betty," said Dan, coming up to her as she stood in the wet
+grass beside one of the quaint rose squares. "You are all dewy like a
+flower."
+
+"Oh, I had breakfast an hour ago," she answered, giving him her moist hand
+to which a few petals were clinging.
+
+"Ye Gods! have I missed an hour? Why, I expected to sit waiting on the
+door-step until you had had your sleep out."
+
+"Don't you know if you gather rose leaves with the dew on them, their
+sweetness lasts twice as long?" asked Betty.
+
+"So you got up to gather ye rosebuds, after all, and not to wish me God
+speed?" he said despondently.
+
+"Well, I should have been up anyway," replied Betty, frankly. "This is the
+loveliest part of the day, you know. The world looks so fresh with the
+first frost over it--only the poor silly summer flowers take cold and die."
+
+"If you weren't a rose, you'd take cold yourself," remarked Dan, pointing,
+with his riding-whip, to the hem of her dimity skirt. "Don't stand in the
+grass like that, you make me shiver."
+
+"Oh, the sun will dry me," she laughed, stepping from the path to the bare
+earth of the rose bed. "Why, when you get well into the sunshine it feels
+like summer." She talked on merrily, and he, paying small heed to what she
+said, kept his ardent look upon her face. His joy was in her bright
+presence, in the beauty of her smile, in the kind eyes that shone upon him.
+Speech meant so little when he could put out his arm and touch her if he
+dared.
+
+"I am going away in an hour, Betty," he said, at last.
+
+"But you will be back again at Christmas."
+
+"At Christmas! Heavens alive! You speak as if it were to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, but time goes very quickly, you know."
+
+Dan shook his head impatiently. "I dare say it does with you," he returned,
+irritably, "but it wouldn't if you were as much in love as I am."
+
+"Why, you ought to be used to it by now," urged Betty, mercilessly. "You
+were in love last year, I remember."
+
+"Betty, don't punish me for what I couldn't help. You know I love you."
+
+"Oh, no," said Betty, nervously plucking rose leaves. "You have been too
+often in love before, my good Dan."
+
+"But I was never in love with you before," retorted Dan, decisively.
+
+She shook her head, smiling. "And you are not in love with me now," she
+replied, gravely. "You have found out that my hair is pretty, or that I can
+mix a pudding; but I do not often let down my hair, and I seldom cook, so
+you'll get over it, my friend, never fear."
+
+He flushed angrily. "And if I do not get over it?" he demanded.
+
+"If you do not get over it?" repeated Betty, trembling. She turned away
+from him, strewing a handful of rose leaves upon the grass. "Then I shall
+think that you value neither my hair nor my housekeeping," she added,
+lightly.
+
+"If I swear that I love you, will you believe me, Betty?"
+
+"Don't tempt my faith, Dan, it's too small."
+
+"Whether you believe it or not, I do love you," he went on. "I may have
+been a fool now and then before I found it out, but you don't think that
+was falling in love, do you? I confess that I liked a pair of fine eyes or
+rosy cheeks, but I could laugh about it even while I thought it was love I
+felt. I can't laugh about being in love with you, Betty."
+
+"I thank you, sir," replied Betty, saucily.
+
+"When I saw you kneeling by the fire in free Levi's cabin, I knew that I
+loved you," he said, hotly.
+
+"But I can't always kneel to you, Dan," she interposed.
+
+He put her words impatiently aside, "and what's more I knew then that I had
+loved you all my life without knowing it," he pursued. "You may taunt me
+with fickleness, but I'm not fickle--I was merely a fool. It took me a long
+time to find out what I wanted, but I've found out at last, and, so help me
+God, I'll have it yet. I never went without a thing I wanted in my life."
+
+"Then it will be good for you," responded Betty. "Shall I put some rose
+leaves into your pocket?" She spoke indifferently, but all the while she
+heard her heart singing for joy.
+
+In the rage of his boyish passion, he cut brutally at the flowers growing
+at his feet.
+
+"If you keep this up, you'll send me to the devil!" he exclaimed.
+
+She caught his hand and took the whip from his fingers. "Ah, don't hurt the
+poor flowers," she begged, "they aren't to blame."
+
+"Who is to blame, Betty?"
+
+She looked up wistfully into his angry face. "You are no better than a
+child, Dan," she said, almost sadly, "and you haven't the least idea what
+you are storming so about. It's time you were a man, but you aren't, you're
+just--"
+
+"Oh, I know, I'm just a pampered poodle dog," he finished, bitterly.
+
+"Well, you ought to be something better, and you must be."
+
+"I'll be anything you please, Betty; I'll be President, if you wish it."
+
+"No, thank you, I don't care in the least for Presidents."
+
+"Then I'll be a beggar, you like beggars."
+
+"You'll be just yourself, if you want to please me, Dan," she said
+earnestly. "You will be your best self--neither the flattering Lightfoot,
+nor the rude Montjoy. You will learn to work, to wait patiently, and to
+love one woman. Whoever she may be, I shall say, God bless her."
+
+"God bless her, Betty," he echoed fervently, and added, "Since it's a man
+you want, I'll be a man, but I almost wish you had said a President. I
+could have been one for you, Betty."
+
+Then he held out his hand. "I don't suppose you will kiss me good-by?" he
+pleaded.
+
+"No, I shan't kiss you good-by," she answered.
+
+"Never, Betty?"
+
+Smiling brightly, she gave him her hand. "When you have loved me two years,
+perhaps,--or when you marry another woman. Good-by, dear, good-by."
+
+He turned quickly away and went up the little path to the gate. There he
+paused for an instant, looked back, and waved his hand. "Good-by, my
+darling!" he called, boldly, and passed under the honeysuckle arbour. As he
+mounted his horse in the drive he saw her still standing as he had left
+her, the roses falling about her, and the sunshine full upon her bended
+head.
+
+Until he was hidden by the trees she watched him breathlessly, then,
+kneeling in the path, she laid her cheek upon the long grass he had trodden
+underfoot. "O my love, my love," she whispered to the ground.
+
+Miss Lydia called her from the house, and she went to her with some loose
+roses in her muslin apron. "Did you call me, Aunt Lydia?" she asked,
+lifting her radiant eyes to the old lady's face. "I haven't gathered very
+many leaves."
+
+"I wanted you to pot some white violets for me, dear," answered Miss Lydia,
+from the back steps. "My winter garden is almost full, but there's a spot
+where I can put a few violets. Poor Mr. Bill asked for a geranium for his
+window, so I let him take one."
+
+"Oh, let me pot them for you," begged Betty, eager to be of service. "Send
+Petunia for the trowel, and I'll choose you a lovely plant. It's too bad to
+see all the dear verbenas bitten by the frost." She tossed a rose into Miss
+Lydia's hands, and went back gladly into the garden.
+
+A fortnight after this the Major came over and besought her to return with
+him for a week at Chericoke. Mrs. Lightfoot had taken to her bed, he said
+sadly, and the whole place was rapidly falling to rack and ruin. "We need
+your hands to put it straight again," he added, "and Molly told me on no
+account to come back without you. I am at your mercy, my dear."
+
+"Why, I should love to go," replied Betty, with the thought of Dan at her
+heart. "I'll be ready in a minute," and she ran upstairs to find her
+mother, and to pack her things.
+
+The Major waited for her standing; and when she came down, followed by
+Petunia with her clothes, he helped her, with elaborate courtesy, into the
+old coach before the portico.
+
+"It takes me back to my wedding day, Betty," he said, as he stepped in
+after her and slammed the door. "It isn't often that I carry off a pretty
+girl so easily."
+
+"Now I know that you didn't carry off Mrs. Lightfoot easily," returned
+Betty, laughing from sheer lightness of spirits. "She has told me the whole
+story, sir, from the evening that she wore the peach-blow brocade, that
+made you fall in love with her on the spot, to the day that she almost
+broke down at the altar. You had a narrow escape from bachelorship, sir, so
+you needn't boast."
+
+The Major chuckled in his corner. "I don't doubt that Molly told you so,"
+he replied, "but, between you and me, I don't believe it ever occurred to
+her until forty years afterwards. She got it out of one of those silly
+romances she reads in bed--and, take my word for it, you'll find it
+somewhere in the pages of her Mrs. Radcliffe, or her Miss Burney. Molly's a
+sensible woman, my child,--I'm the last man to deny it--but she always did
+read trash. You won't believe me, I dare say, but she actually tried to
+faint when I kissed her in the carriage after her wedding--and, bless my
+soul, I came to find that she had 'Evelina' tucked away under her cape."
+
+"Why, she is the most sensible woman in the world," said Betty, "and I'm
+quite sure that she was only fitting herself to your ideas, sir. No, you
+can't make me believe it of Mrs. Lightfoot."
+
+"My ideas never took the shape of an Evelina," dissented the Major, warmly,
+"but it's a dangerous taste, my dear, the taste for trash. I've always said
+that it ruined poor Jane, with all her pride. She got into her head all
+kind of notions about that scamp Montjoy, with his pale face and his long
+black hair. Poor girl, poor girl! I tried to bring her up on Homer and
+Milton, but she took to her mother's bookshelf as a duck to water." He
+wiped his eyes, and Betty patted his hand, and wondered if "the scamp
+Montjoy" looked the least bit like his son.
+
+When they reached Chericoke she shook hands with the servants and ran
+upstairs to Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber. The old lady, in her ruffled
+nightcap, which she always put on when she took to bed, was sitting upright
+under her dimity curtains, weeping over "Thaddeus of Warsaw." There was a
+little bookstand at her bedside filled with her favourite romances, and at
+the beginning of the year she would start systematically to read from the
+first volume upon the top shelf to the last one in the corner near the
+door. "None of your newfangled writers for me, my dear," she would protest,
+snapping her fingers at literature. "Why, they haven't enough sentiment to
+give their hero a title--and an untitled hero! I declare, I'd as lief have
+a plain heroine, and, before you know it, they'll be writing about their
+Sukey Sues, with pug noses, who eloped with their Bill Bates, from the
+nearest butcher shop. Ugh! don't talk to me about them! I opened one of Mr.
+Dickens's stories the other day and it was actually about a chimney
+sweep--a common chimney sweep from a workhouse! Why, I really felt as if I
+had been keeping low society."
+
+Now, as she caught sight of Betty, she laid aside her book, wiped her eyes
+on a stiffly folded handkerchief, and became cheerful at once. "I warned
+Mr. Lightfoot not to dare to show his face without you," she began; "so I
+suppose he brought you off by force."
+
+"I was only too glad to come," replied Betty, kissing her; "but what must I
+do for you first? Shall I rub your head with bay rum?"
+
+"There's nothing on earth the matter with my head, child," retorted Mrs.
+Lightfoot, promptly, "but you may go downstairs, as soon as you take off
+your things, and make me some decent tea and toast. Cupid brought me up two
+waiters at dinner, and I wouldn't touch either of them with a ten-foot
+pole."
+
+Betty took off her bonnet and shawl and hung them on a chair. "I'll go down
+at once and see about it," she answered, "and I'll make Car'line put away
+my things. It's my old room I'm to have, I suppose."
+
+"It's the whole house, if you want it, only don't let any of the darkies
+have a hand at my tea. It's their nature to slop."
+
+"But it isn't mine," Betty answered her, and ran, laughing, down into the
+dining room.
+
+"Dar ain' been no sich chunes sense young Miss rid away in de dead er de
+night time," muttered Cupid, in the pantry. "Lawd, Lawd, I des wish you'd
+teck up wid Marse Champe, en move 'long over hyer fer good en all. I reckon
+dar 'ud be times, den, I reckon, dar 'ould."
+
+"There are going to be times now, Uncle Cupid," responded Betty,
+cheerfully, as she arranged the tray for Mrs. Lightfoot. "I'm going to make
+some tea and toast right on this fire for your old Miss. You bring the
+kettle, and I'll slice the bread."
+
+Cupid brought the kettle, grumbling. "I ain' never hyern tell er sich a
+mouf es ole Miss es got," he muttered. "I ain' sayin' nuttin' agin er
+stomick, case she ain' never let de stuff git down dat fur--en de stomick
+hit ain' never tase it yit."
+
+"Oh, stop grumbling, Uncle Cupid," returned Betty, moving briskly about the
+room. She brought the daintiest tea cup from the old sideboard, and leaned
+out of the window to pluck a late microphylla rosebud from the creeper upon
+the porch. Then, with the bread on the end of a long fork, she sat before
+the fire and asked Cupid about the health and fortunes of the house
+servants and the field hands.
+
+"I ain' mix wid no fiel' han's," grunted Cupid, with a social pride
+befitting the Major. "Dar ain' no use er my mixin' en I ain' mix. Dey stay
+in dere place en I stay in my place--en dere place hit's de quarters, en my
+place hit's de dinin' 'oom."
+
+"But Aunt Rhody--how's she?" inquired Betty, pleasantly, "and Big Abel? He
+didn't go back to college, did he?"
+
+"Zeke, he went," replied Cupid, "en Big Abel he wuz bleeged ter stay behint
+'case his wife Saphiry she des put 'er foot right down. Ef'n he 'uz gwine
+off again, sez she, she 'uz des gwine tu'n right in en git mah'ed agin. She
+ain' so sho', nohow, dat two husban's ain' better'n one, is Saphiry, en she
+got 'mos' a min' ter try hit. So Big Abel he des stayed behint."
+
+"That was wise of Big Abel," remarked Betty. "Now open the door, Uncle
+Cupid, and I'll carry this upstairs," and as Cupid threw open the door, she
+went out, holding the tray before her.
+
+The old lady received her graciously, ate the toast and drank the tea, and
+even admitted that it couldn't have been better if she had made it with her
+own hands. "I think that you will have to come and live with me, Betty,"
+she said good-humouredly. "What a pity you can't fancy one of those useless
+boys of mine. Not that I'd have you marry Dan, child, the Major has spoiled
+him to death, and now he's beginning to repent it; but Champe, Champe is a
+good and clever lad and would make a mild and amiable husband, I am sure.
+Don't marry a man with too much spirit, my dear; if a man has any extra
+spirit, he usually expends it in breaking his wife's."
+
+"Oh, I shan't marry yet awhile," replied Betty, looking out upon the
+falling autumn leaves.
+
+"So I said the day before I married Mr. Lightfoot," rejoined the old lady,
+settling her pillows, "and now, if you have nothing better to do, you might
+read me a chapter of 'Thaddeus of Warsaw'; you will find it to be a book of
+very pretty sentiment."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE MONTJOY BLOOD
+
+
+In the morning Betty was awakened by the tapping of the elm boughs on the
+roof above her. An autumn wind was blowing straight from the west, and when
+she looked out through the small greenish panes of glass, she saw eddies of
+yellowed leaves beating gently against the old brick walls. Overhead light
+gray clouds were flying across the sky, and beyond the waving tree-tops a
+white mist hung above the dim blue chain of mountains.
+
+When she went downstairs she found the Major, in his best black broadcloth,
+pacing up and down before the house. It was Sunday, and he intended to
+drive into town where the rector held his services.
+
+"You won't go in with me, I reckon?" he ventured hopefully, when Betty
+smiled out upon him from the library window. "Ah, my dear, you're as fresh
+as the morning, and only an old man to look at you. Well, well, age has its
+consolations; you'll spare me a kiss, I suppose?"
+
+"Then you must come in to get it," answered Betty, her eyes narrowing.
+"Breakfast is getting cold, and Cupid is calling down Aunt Rhody's wrath
+upon your head."
+
+"Oh, I'll come, I'll come," returned the Major, hurrying up the steps, and
+adding as he entered the dining room, "My child, if you'd only take a fancy
+to Champe, I'd be the happiest man on earth."
+
+"Now I shan't allow any matchmaking on Sunday," said Betty, warningly, as
+she prepared Mrs. Lightfoot's breakfast. "Sit down and carve the chicken
+while I run upstairs with this."
+
+She went out and came back in a moment, laughing merrily. "Do you know, she
+threatens to become bedridden now that I am here to fix her trays," she
+explained, sitting down between the tall silver urns and pouring out the
+Major's coffee. "What an uncertain day you have for church," she added as
+she gave his cup to Cupid.
+
+With his eyes on her vivid face the old man listened rapturously to her
+fresh young voice--the voice, he said, that always made him think of clear
+water falling over stones. It was one of the things that came to her from
+Peyton Ambler, he knew, with her warm hazel eyes and the sweet, strong
+curve of her mouth. "Ah, but you're like your father," he said as he
+watched her. "If you had brown hair you'd be his very image."
+
+"I used to wish that I had," responded Betty, "but I don't now--I'd just as
+soon have red." She was thinking that Dan did not like brown hair so much,
+and the thought shone in her face--only the Major, in his ignorance,
+mistook its meaning.
+
+After breakfast he got into the coach and started off, and Betty, with the
+key basket on her arm, followed Cupid and Aunt Rhody into the storeroom.
+Then she gathered fresh flowers for the table, and went upstairs to read a
+chapter from the Bible to Mrs. Lightfoot.
+
+The Major stayed to dinner in town, returning late in a moody humour and
+exhausted by his drive. As Betty brushed her hair before her bureau, she
+heard him talking in a loud voice to Mrs. Lightfoot, and when she went in
+at supper time the old, lady called her to her bedside and took her hand.
+
+"He has had a touch of the gout, Betty," she whispered in her ear, "and he
+heard some news in town which upset him a little. You must try to cheer him
+up at supper, child."
+
+"Was it bad news?" asked Betty, in alarm.
+
+"It may not be true, my dear. I hope it isn't, but, as I told Mr.
+Lightfoot, it is always better to believe the worst, so if any surprise
+comes it may be a pleasant one. Somebody told him in church--and they had
+much better have been attending to the service, I'm sure,--that Dan had
+gotten into trouble again, and Mr. Lightfoot is very angry about it. He had
+a talk with the boy before he went away, and made him promise to turn over
+a new leaf this year--but it seems this is the most serious thing that has
+happened yet. I must say I always told Mr. Lightfoot it was what he had to
+expect."
+
+"In trouble again?" repeated Betty, kneeling by the bed. Her hands went
+cold, and she pressed them nervously together.
+
+"Of course we know very little about it, my dear," pursued Mrs. Lightfoot.
+"All we have heard is that he fought a duel and was sent away from the
+University. He was even put into gaol for a night, I believe--a Lightfoot
+in a common dirty gaol! Well, well, as I said before, all we can do now is
+to expect the worst."
+
+"Oh, is that all?" cried Betty, and the leaping of her heart told her the
+horror of her dim foreboding. She rose to her feet and smiled brightly down
+upon the astonished old lady.
+
+"I don't know what more you want," replied Mrs. Lightfoot, tartly. "If he
+ever gets clean again after a whole night in a common gaol, I must say I
+don't see how he'll manage it. But if you aren't satisfied I can only tell
+you that the affair was all about some bar-room wench, and that the papers
+will be full of it. Not that the boy was anything but foolish," she added
+hastily. "I'll do him the justice to admit that he's more of a fool than a
+villain--and I hardly know whether it's a compliment that I'm paying him or
+not. He got some quixotic notion into his head that Harry Maupin insulted
+the girl in his presence, and he called him to account for it. As if the
+honour of a barkeeper's daughter was the concern of any gentleman!"
+
+"Oh!" cried Betty, and caught her breath. The word went out of her in a
+sudden burst of joy, but the joy was so sharp that a moment afterwards she
+hid her wet face in the bedclothes and sobbed softly to herself.
+
+"I don't think Mr. Lightfoot would have taken it so hard but for Virginia,"
+said the old lady, with her keen eyes on the girl. "You know he has always
+wanted to bring Dan and Virginia together, and he seems to think that the
+boy has been dishonourable about it."
+
+"But Virginia doesn't care--she doesn't care," protested Betty.
+
+"Well, I'm glad to hear it," returned Mrs. Lightfoot, relieved, "and I hope
+the foolish boy will stay away long enough for his grandfather to cool off.
+Mr. Lightfoot is a high-tempered man, my child. I've spent fifty years in
+keeping him at peace with the world. There now, run down and cheer him up."
+
+She lay back among her pillows, and Betty leaned over and kissed her with
+cold lips before she dried her eyes and went downstairs to find the Major.
+
+With the first glance at his face she saw that Dan's cause was hopeless for
+the hour, and she set herself, with a cheerful countenance, to a discussion
+of the trivial happenings of the day. She talked pleasantly of the rector's
+sermon, of the morning reading with Mrs. Lightfoot, and of a great hawk
+that had appeared suddenly in the air and raised an outcry among the
+turkeys on the lawn. When these topics were worn threadbare she bethought
+herself of the beauty of the autumn woods, and lamented the ruined garden
+with its last sad flowers.
+
+The Major listened gloomily, putting in a word now and then, and keeping
+his weak red eyes upon his plate. There was a heavy cloud on his brow, and
+the flush that Betty had learned to dread was in his face. Once when she
+spoke carelessly of Dan, he threw out an angry gesture and inquired if she
+"found Mrs. Lightfoot easier to-night?"
+
+"Oh, I think so," replied the girl, and then, as they rose from the table,
+she slipped her hand through his arm and went with him into the library.
+
+"Shall I sit with you this evening?" she asked timidly. "I'd be so glad to
+read to you, if you would let me."
+
+He shook his head, patted her affectionately upon the shoulder, and smiled
+down into her upraised face. "No, no, my dear, I've a little work to do,"
+he replied kindly. "There are a few papers I want to look over, so run up
+to Molly and tell her I sent my sunshine to her."
+
+He stooped and kissed her cheek; and Betty, with a troubled heart, went
+slowly up to Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber.
+
+The Major sat down at his writing table, and spread his papers out before
+him. Then he raised the wick of his lamp, and with his pen in his hand,
+resolutely set himself to his task. When Cupid came in with the decanter of
+Burgundy, he filled a glass and held it absently against the light, but he
+did not drink it, and in a moment he put it down with so tremulous a hand
+that the wine spilled upon the floor.
+
+"I've a touch of the gout, Cupid," he said testily. "A touch of the gout
+that's been hanging over me for a month or more."
+
+"Huccome you ain' fit hit, Ole Marster?"
+
+"Oh, I've been fighting it tooth and nail," answered the old gentleman,
+"but there are some things that always get the better of you in the end,
+Cupid, and the gout's one of them."
+
+"En rheumaticks hit's anurr," added Cupid, rubbing his knee.
+
+He rolled a fresh log upon the andirons and went out, while the Major
+returned, frowning, to his work.
+
+He was still at his writing table, when he heard the sound of a horse
+trotting in the drive, and an instant afterwards the quick fall of the old
+brass knocker. The flush deepened in his face, and with a look at once
+angry and appealing, he half rose from his chair. As he waited the outside
+bars were withdrawn, there followed a few short steps across the hall, and
+Dan came into the library.
+
+"I suppose you know what's brought me back, grandpa?" he said quietly as he
+entered.
+
+The Major started up and then sat down again.
+
+"I do know, sir, and I wish to God I didn't," he replied, choking in his
+anger.
+
+Dan stood where he had halted upon his entrance, and looked at him with
+eyes in which there was still a defiant humour. His face was pale and his
+hair hung in black streaks across his forehead. The white dust of the
+turnpike had settled upon his clothes, and as he moved it floated in a
+little cloud about him.
+
+"I reckon you think it's a pretty bad thing, eh?" he questioned coolly,
+though his hands trembled.
+
+The Major's eyes flashed ominously from beneath his heavy brows.
+
+"Pretty bad?" he repeated, taking a long breath. "If you want to know what
+I think about it, sir, I think that it's a damnable disgrace. Pretty
+bad!--By God, sir, do you call having a gaol-bird for a grandson pretty
+bad?"
+
+"Stop, sir!" called Dan, sharply. He had steadied himself to withstand the
+shock of the Major's temper, but, in the dash of his youthful folly, he had
+forgotten to reckon with his own. "For heaven's sake, let's talk about it
+calmly," he added irritably.
+
+"I am perfectly calm, sir!" thundered the Major, rising to his feet. The
+terrible flush went in a wave to his forehead, and he put up one quivering
+hand to loosen his high stock. "I tell you calmly that you've done a
+damnable thing; that you've brought disgrace upon the name of Lightfoot."
+
+"It is not my name," replied Dan, lifting his head. "My name is Montjoy,
+sir."
+
+"And it's a name to hang a dog for," retorted the Major.
+
+As they faced each other with the same flash of temper kindling in both
+faces, the likeness between them grew suddenly more striking. It was as if
+the spirit of the fiery old man had risen, in a finer and younger shape,
+from the air before him.
+
+"At all events it is not yours," said Dan, hotly. Then he came nearer, and
+the anger died out of his eyes. "Don't let's quarrel, grandpa," he pleaded.
+"I've gotten into a mess, and I'm sorry for it--on my word I am."
+
+"So you've come whining to me to get you out," returned the Major, shaking
+as if he had gone suddenly palsied.
+
+Dan drew back and his hand fell to his side.
+
+"So help me God, I'll never whine to you again," he answered.
+
+"Do you want to know what you have done, sir?" demanded the Major. "You
+have broken your grandmother's heart and mine--and made us wish that we had
+left you by the roadside when you came crawling to our door. And, on my
+oath, if I had known that the day would ever come when you would try to
+murder a Virginia gentleman for the sake of a bar-room hussy, I would have
+left you there, sir."
+
+"Stop!" said Dan again, looking at the old man with his mother's eyes.
+
+"You have broken your grandmother's heart and mine," repeated the Major, in
+a trembling voice, "and I pray to God that you may not break Virginia
+Ambler's--poor girl, poor girl!"
+
+"Virginia Ambler!" said Dan, slowly. "Why, there was nothing between us,
+nothing, nothing."
+
+"And you dare to tell me this to my face, sir?" cried the Major.
+
+"Dare! of course I dare," returned Dan, defiantly. "If there was ever
+anything at all it was upon my side only--and a mere trifling fancy."
+
+The old gentleman brought his hand down upon his table with a blow that
+sent the papers fluttering to the floor. "Trifling!" he roared. "Would you
+trifle with a lady from your own state, sir?"
+
+"I was never in love with her," exclaimed Dan, angrily.
+
+"Not in love with her? What business have you not to be in love with her?"
+retorted the Major, tossing back his long white hair. "I have given her to
+understand that you are in love with her, sir."
+
+The blood rushed to Dan's head, and he stumbled over an ottoman as he
+turned away.
+
+"Then I call it unwarrantable interference," he said brutally, and went
+toward the door. There the Major's flashing eyes held him back an instant.
+
+"It was when I believed you to be worthy of her," went on the old man,
+relentlessly, "when--fool that I was--I dared to hope that dirty blood
+could be made clean again; that Jack Montjoy's son could be a gentleman."
+
+For a moment only Dan stood motionless and looked at him from the
+threshold. Then, without speaking, he crossed the hall, took down his hat,
+and unbarred the outer door. It slammed after him, and he went out into the
+night.
+
+A keen wind was still blowing, and as he descended the steps he felt it
+lifting the dampened hair from his forehead. With a breath of relief he
+stood bareheaded in the drive and raised his face to the cool elm leaves
+that drifted slowly down. After the heated atmosphere of the library there
+was something pleasant in the mere absence of light, and in the soft
+rustling of the branches overhead. The humour of his blood went suddenly
+quiet as if he had plunged headlong into cold water.
+
+While he stood there motionless his thoughts were suspended, and his
+senses, gaining a brief mastery, became almost feverishly alert; he felt
+the night wind in his face, he heard the ceaseless stirring of the leaves,
+and he saw the sparkle of the gravel in the yellow shine that streamed from
+the library windows. But with his first step, his first movement, there
+came a swift recoil of his anger, and he told himself with a touch of
+youthful rhetoric, "that come what would, he was going to the devil--and
+going speedily."
+
+He had reached the gate and his hand was upon the latch, when he heard the
+house door open and shut behind him and his name called softly from the
+steps.
+
+He turned impulsively and stood waiting, while Betty came quickly through
+the lamplight that fell in squares upon the drive.
+
+"Oh, come back, Dan, come back," she said breathlessly.
+
+With his hand still on the gate he faced her, frowning.
+
+"I'd die first, Betty," he answered.
+
+She came swiftly up to him and stood, very pale, in the faint starlight
+that shone between the broken clouds. A knitted shawl was over her
+shoulders, but her head was bare and her hair made a glow around her face.
+Her eyes entreated him before she spoke.
+
+"Oh, Dan, come back," she pleaded.
+
+He laughed angrily and shook his head.
+
+"I'll die first, Betty," he repeated. "Die! I'd die a hundred times first!"
+
+"He is so old," she said appealingly. "It is not as if he were young and
+quite himself, Dan--Oh, it is not like that--but he loves you, and he is so
+old."
+
+"Don't, Betty," he broke in quickly, and added bitterly, "Are you, too,
+against me?"
+
+"I am for the best in you," she answered quietly, and turned away from him.
+
+"The best!" he snapped his fingers impatiently. "Are you for the shot at
+Maupin? the night I spent in gaol? or the beggar I am now? There's an equal
+choice, I reckon."
+
+She looked gravely up at him.
+
+"I am for the boy I've always known," she replied, "and for the man who was
+here two weeks ago--and--yes, I am for the man who stands here now. What
+does it matter, Dan? What does it matter?"
+
+"O, Betty!" he cried breathlessly, and hid his face in his hands.
+
+"And most of all, I am for the man you are going to be," she went on
+slowly, "for the great man who is growing up. Dan, come back!"
+
+His hands fell from his eyes. "I'll not do that even for you, Betty," he
+answered, "and, God knows, there's little else I wouldn't do for
+you--there's nothing else."
+
+"What will you do for yourself, Dan?"
+
+"For myself?" his anger leaped out again, and he steadied himself against
+the gate. "For myself I'll go as far as I can from this damned place. I
+wish to God I'd fallen in the road before I came here. I wish I'd gone
+after my father and followed in his steps. I'll live on no man's charity,
+so help me God. Am I a dog to be kicked out and to go whining back when the
+door opens? Go--I'll go to the devil, and be glad of it!" For a moment
+Betty did not answer. Her hands were clasped on her bosom, and her eyes
+were dark and bright in the pallor of her face. As he looked at her the
+rage died out of his voice, and it quivered with a deeper feeling.
+
+"My dear, my dearest, are you, too, against me?" he asked.
+
+She met his gaze without flinching, but the bright colour swept suddenly to
+her cheeks and dyed them crimson.
+
+"Then if you will go, take me with you," she said.
+
+He fell back as if a star had dropped at his feet. For a breathless instant
+she saw only his eyes, and they drew her step by step. Then he opened his
+arms and she went straight into them.
+
+"Betty, Betty," he said in a whisper, and kissed her lips.
+
+She put her hands upon his shoulders, and stood with his arms about her,
+looking up into his face.
+
+"Take me with you--oh, take me with you," she entreated. "I can't be left.
+Take me with you."
+
+"And you love me--Betty, do you love me?"
+
+"I have loved you all my life--all my life," she answered; "how can I begin
+to unlove you now--now when it is too late? Do you think I am any the less
+yours if you throw me away? If you break my heart can I help its still
+loving you?"
+
+"Betty, Betty," he said again, and his voice quivered.
+
+"Take me with you," she repeated passionately, saying it over and over
+again with her lips upon his arm.
+
+He stooped and kissed her almost roughly, and then put her gently away from
+him.
+
+"It is the way my mother went," he said, "and God help me, I am my father's
+son. I am afraid,--afraid--do you know what that means?"
+
+"But I am not afraid," answered the girl steadily.
+
+He shivered and turned away; then he came back and knelt down to kiss her
+skirt. "No, I can't take you with me," he went on rapidly, "but if I live
+to be a man I shall come back--I _will_ come back--and you--"
+
+"And I am waiting," she replied.
+
+He opened the gate and passed out into the road.
+
+"I will come back, beloved," he said again, and went on into the darkness.
+
+Leaning over the gate she strained her eyes into the shadows, crying his
+name out into the night. Her voice broke and she hid her face in her arm;
+then, fearing to lose the last glimpse of him, she looked up quickly and
+sobbed to him to come back for a moment--but for a moment. It seemed to
+her, clinging there upon the gate, that when he went out into the darkness
+he had gone forever--that the thud of his footsteps in the dust was the
+last sound that would ever come from him to her ears.
+
+Had he looked back she would have gone straight out to him, had he raised a
+finger she would have followed with a cheerful face; but he did not look
+back, and at last his footsteps died away upon the road.
+
+When she could see or hear nothing more of him, she turned slowly and crept
+toward the house. Her feet dragged under her, and as she walked she cast
+back startled glances at the gate. The rustling of the leaves made her
+stand breathless a moment, her hand at her bosom; but it was only the wind,
+and she went step by step into the house, turning upon the threshold to
+throw a look behind her.
+
+In the hall she paused and laid her hand upon the library door, but the
+Major had bolted her out, and she heard him pacing with restless strides up
+and down the room. She listened timidly awhile, then, going softly by, went
+up to Mrs. Lightfoot.
+
+The old lady was asleep, but as the girl entered she awoke and sat up, very
+straight, in bed. "My pain is much worse, Betty," she complained. "I don't
+expect to get a wink of sleep this entire night."
+
+"I thought you were asleep when I came in," answered Betty, keeping away
+from the candlelight; "but I am so sorry you are in pain. Shall I make you
+a mustard plaster?"
+
+Though she smiled, her voice was spiritless and she moved with an effort.
+She felt suddenly very tired, and she wanted to lie down somewhere alone in
+the darkness.
+
+"I'd just dropped off when Mr. Lightfoot woke me slamming the doors,"
+pursued the old lady, querulously. "Men have so little consideration that
+nothing surprises me, but I do think he might be more careful when he knows
+I am suffering. No, I won't take the mustard plaster, but you may bring me
+a cup of hot milk, if you will. It sometimes sends me off into a doze."
+
+Betty went slowly downstairs again and heated the milk on the dining-room
+fire. When it was ready she daintily arranged it upon a tray and carried it
+upstairs. "I hope it will do you good," she said gently as she gave it to
+the old lady. "You must try to lie quiet--the doctor told you so."
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot drank the milk and remarked amiably that it was "very nice
+though a little smoked--and now, go to bed, my dear," she added kindly. "I
+mustn't keep you from your beauty sleep. I'm afraid I've worn you out as it
+is."
+
+Betty smiled and shook her head; then she placed the tray upon a chair, and
+went out, softly closing the door after her.
+
+In her own room she threw herself upon her bed, and cried for Dan until the
+morning.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE ROAD AT MIDNIGHT
+
+
+When Dan went down into the shadows of the road, he stopped short before he
+reached the end of the stone wall, and turned for his last look at
+Chericoke. He saw the long old house, with its peaked roof over which the
+elm boughs arched, the white stretch of drive before the door, and the
+leaves drifting ceaselessly against the yellow squares of the library
+windows. As he looked Betty came slowly from the shadow by the gate, where
+she had lingered, and crossed the lighted spaces amid the falling leaves.
+On the threshold, as she turned to throw a glance into the night, it seemed
+to him, for a single instant, that her eyes plunged through the darkness
+into his own. Then, while his heart still bounded with the hope, the door
+opened, and shut after her, and she was gone.
+
+For a moment he saw only blackness--so sharp was the quick shutting off of
+the indoor light. The vague shapes upon the lawn showed like mere drawings
+in outline, the road became a pallid blur in the formless distance, and the
+shine of the lamplight on the drive shifted and grew dim as if a curtain
+had dropped across the windows. Like a white thread on the blackness he saw
+the glimmer beneath his grandmother's shutters, and it was as if he had
+looked in from the high top of an elm and seen her lying with her candle on
+her breast.
+
+As he stood there the silence of the old house knocked upon his heart like
+sound--and quick fears sprang up within him of a sudden death, or of Betty
+weeping for him somewhere alone in the stillness. The long roof under the
+waving elm boughs lost, for a heartbeat, the likeness of his home, and
+became, as the clouds thickened in the sky, but a great mound of earth over
+which the wind blew and the dead leaves fell.
+
+But at last when he turned away and followed the branch road, his racial
+temperament had triumphed over the forebodings of the moment; and with the
+flicker of a smile upon his lips, he started briskly toward the turnpike.
+As the mind in the first ecstasy of a high passion is purified from the
+stain of mere emotion, so the Major, and the Major's anger, were forgotten,
+and his own bitter resentment swept as suddenly from his thoughts. He was
+overpowered and uplifted by the one supreme feeling from which he still
+trembled. All else seemed childish and of small significance beside the
+memory of Betty's lips upon his own. What room had he for anger when he was
+filled to overflowing with the presence of love?
+
+The branch road ran out abruptly into the turnpike, and once off the
+familiar way by his grandfather's stone wall, he felt the blackness of the
+night close round him like a vault. Without a lantern there was small hope
+of striking the tavern or the tavern road till morning. To go on meant a
+night upon the roadside or in the fields.
+
+As he stretched out his arm, groping in the blackness, he struck suddenly
+upon the body of the blasted tree, and coming round it, his eyes caught the
+red light of free Levi's fire, and he heard the sound of a hammer falling
+upon heated iron. The little path was somewhere in the darkness, and as he
+vainly sought for it, he stumbled over a row of stripped and headless
+cornstalks which ran up to the cabin door. Once upon the smooth stone
+before the threshold, he gave a boyish whistle and lifted his hand to
+knock. "It is I, Uncle Levi--there are no 'hants' about," he cried.
+
+The hammer was thrown aside, and fell upon the stones, and a moment
+afterward, the door flew back quickly, showing the blanched face of free
+Levi and the bright glow of the hearth. "Dis yer ain' no time fur pranks,"
+said the old man, angrily. "Ain't yer ever gwine ter grow up, yit?" and he
+added, slowly, "Praise de Lawd hit's you instid er de devil."
+
+"Oh, it's I, sure enough," returned Dan, lightly, as he came into the
+cabin. "I'm on my way to Merry Oaks Tavern, Uncle Levi,--it's ten miles
+off, you know, and this blessed night is no better than an ink-pot. I'd
+positively be ashamed to send such a night down on a respectable planet.
+It's that old lantern of yours I want, by the way, and in case it doesn't
+turn up again, take this to buy a new one. No, I can't rest to-night. This
+is my working time, and I must be up and doing." He reached for the rusty
+old lantern behind the door, and lighted it, laughing as he did so. His
+face was pale, and there was a nervous tremor in his hands, but his voice
+had lost none of its old heartiness. "Ah, that's it, old man," he said,
+when the light was ready. "We'll shake hands in case it's a long parting.
+This is a jolly world. Uncle Levi,--good-by, and God bless you," and,
+leaving the old man speechless on the hearth, he closed the door and went
+out into the night.
+
+On the turnpike again, with the lantern swinging in his hand, he walked
+rapidly in the direction of the tavern road, throwing quick flashes of
+light before his footsteps. Behind him he heard the falling of free Levi's
+hammer, and knew that the old negro was toiling at his rude forge for the
+bread which he would to-morrow eat in freedom.
+
+With the word he tossed back his hair and quickened his steps, as if he
+were leaving servitude behind him in the house at Chericoke; and, as the
+anger blazed up within his heart he found pleasure in the knowledge that at
+last he was starting out to level his own road. Under the clouds on the
+long turnpike it all seemed so easy--as easy as the falling of free Levi's
+hammer, which had faded in the distance.
+
+What was it, after all? A year or two of struggle and of attainment, and he
+would come back flushed with success, to clasp Betty in his arms. In a
+dozen different ways he pictured to himself the possible manner of that
+home-coming, obliterating the year or two that lay between. He saw himself
+a great lawyer from a little reading and a single speech, or a judge upon
+his bench, famed for his classic learning and his grave decisions. He had
+only to choose, he felt, and he might be anything--had they not told him so
+at college? did not even his grandfather admit it? He had only to
+choose--and, oh, he would choose well--he would choose to be a man, and to
+come riding back with his honours thick upon him.
+
+Looking ahead, he saw himself a few years hence, as he rode leisurely
+homeward up the turnpike, while the stray countrymen he met took off their
+harvest hats, and stared wonderingly long after he was gone. He saw the
+Governor hastening to the road to shake his hand, he saw his grandfather
+bowed with the sense of his injustice, tremulous with the flutter of his
+pride; and, best of all, he saw Betty--Betty, with the rays of light
+beneath her lashes, coming straight across the drive into his arms.
+
+And then all else faded slowly from him to give place to Betty, and he saw
+her growing, changing, brightening, as he had seen her from her childhood
+up. The small white figure in the moonlight, the merry little playmate,
+hanging on his footsteps, eager to run his errands, the slender girl, with
+the red braids and the proud shy eyes, and the woman who knelt upon the
+hearth in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, smiling up at him as she dried her
+hair--all gathered round him now illuminated against the darkness of the
+night. Betty, Betty,--he whispered her name softly beneath his breath, he
+spoke it aloud in the silence of the turnpike, he even cried it out against
+the mountains, and waited for the echo--Betty, Betty. There was not only
+sweetness in the thought of her, there was strength also. The hand that had
+held him back when he would have gone out blindly in his passion was the
+hand of a woman, not of a girl--of a woman who could face life smiling
+because she felt deep in herself the power to conquer it. Two days ago she
+had been but the girl he loved, to-night, with her kisses on his lips, she
+had become for him at once a shield and a religion. He looked outward and
+saw her influence a light upon his pathway; he turned his gaze within and
+found her a part of the sacred forces of his life--of his wistful
+childhood, his boyish purity, and the memory of his mother.
+
+He had passed Uplands, and now, as he followed the tavern way, he held the
+flash of his lantern near the ground, and went slowly by the crumbling
+hollows in the strip of "corduroy" road. There was a thick carpet of moist
+leaves underfoot, and above the wind played lightly among the overhanging
+branches. His lantern made a shining circle in the midst of a surrounding
+blackness, and where the light fell the scattered autumn leaves sent out
+gold and scarlet flashes that came and went as quickly as a flame. Once an
+owl flew across his path, and startled by the lantern, blindly fluttered
+off again. Somewhere in the distance he heard the short bark of a fox; then
+it died away, and there was no sound except the ceaseless rustle of the
+trees.
+
+By the time he came out of the wood upon the open road, his high spirits
+had gone suddenly down, and the visions of an hour ago showed stale and
+lifeless to his clouded eyes. After a day's ride and a poor dinner, the
+ten-mile walk had left him with aching limbs, and a growing conviction that
+despite his former aspirations, he was fast going to the devil along the
+tavern road. When at last he swung open the whitewashed gate before the
+inn, and threw the light of his lantern on the great oaks in the yard, the
+relief he felt was hardly brighter than despair, and it made very little
+difference, he grimly told himself, whether he put up for the night or kept
+the road forever. With a clatter he went into the little wooden porch and
+knocked upon the door.
+
+He was still knocking when a window was raised suddenly above him, and a
+man's voice called out, "if he wanted a place for night-hawks to go on to
+hell." Then, being evidently a garrulous body, the speaker leaned
+comfortably upon the sill, and sent down a string of remarks, which Dan
+promptly shortened with an oath.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Jack Hicks," he cried, angrily, "and come down and open
+this door before I break it in. I've walked ten miles to-night and I can't
+stand here till morning. How long has it been since you had a guest?"
+
+"There was six of 'em changin' stages this mornin'," drawled Jack, in
+reply, still hanging from the sill. "I gave 'em a dinner of fried chicken
+and battercakes, and two of 'em being Yankees hadn't never tasted it
+befo'--and a month ago one dropped in to spend the night--"
+
+He broke off hastily, for his wife had joined him at the window, and as Dan
+looked up with the flash of the lantern in his face, she gave a cry and
+called his name.
+
+"Put on your clothes and go down, you fool," she said, "it's Mr. Dan--don't
+you see it's Mr. Dan, and he's as white as yo' nightshirt. Go down, I tell
+you,--go down and let him in." There was a skurrying in the room and on the
+staircase, and a moment later the door was flung open and a lamp flashed in
+the darkness.
+
+"Walk in, suh, walk right in," said Jack Hicks, hospitably, "day or night
+you're welcome--as welcome as the Major himself." He drew back and stood
+with the lamplight full upon him--a loose, ill-proportioned figure, with a
+flabby face and pale blue eyes set under swollen lids.
+
+"I want something to eat, Jack," returned Dan, as he entered and put down
+his lantern, "and a place to sleep--in fact I want anything you have to
+offer."
+
+Then, as Mrs. Hicks appeared upon the stair, he greeted her, despite his
+weariness, with something of his old jesting manner. "I am begging a
+supper," he remarked affably, as he shook her hand, "and I may as well
+confess, by the way, that I am positively starving."
+
+The woman beamed upon him, as women always did, and while she led the way
+into the little dining room, and set out the cold meat and bread upon the
+oil-cloth covering of the table, she asked him eager questions about the
+Major and Mrs. Lightfoot, which he aroused himself to parry with a tired
+laugh. She was tall and thin, with a wrinkled brown face, and a row of curl
+papers about her forehead. Her faded calico wrapper hung loosely over her
+nightgown, and he saw her bare feet through the cracks in her worn-out
+leather slippers.
+
+"The poor young gentleman is all but dead," she said at last. "You give him
+his supper, Jack, and I'll go right up to fix his room. To think of his
+walkin' ten miles in the pitch blackness--the poor young gentleman."
+
+She went out, her run down slippers flapping on the stair, and Dan, as he
+ate his ham and bread, listened impatiently to the drawling voice of Jack
+Hicks, who discussed the condition of the country while he drew apple cider
+from a keg into a white china pitcher. As he talked, his fat face shone
+with a drowsy good-humour, and his puffed lids winked sleepily over his
+expressionless blue eyes. He moved heavily as if his limbs were forever
+coming in the way of his intentions.
+
+"Yes, suh, I never was one of them folks as ain't satisfied unless they're
+always a-fussin'," he remarked, as he placed the pitcher upon the table.
+"Thar's a sight of them kind in these here parts, but I ain't one of 'em.
+Lord, Lord, I tell 'em, befo' you git ready to jump out of the fryin' pan,
+you'd better make mighty sure you ain't fixin' to land yo'self in the fire.
+That's what I always had agin these here abolitionists as used to come
+pokin' round here--they ain't never learned to set down an' cross thar
+hands, an' leave the Lord to mind his own business. Bless my soul, I reckon
+they'd have wanted to have a hand in that little fuss of Lucifer's if
+they'd been alive--that's what I tell 'em, suh. An' now thar's all this
+talk about the freein' of the niggers--free? What are they goin' to do with
+'em after they're done set 'em free? Ain't they the sons of Ham? I ask 'em;
+an' warn't they made to be servants of servants like the Bible says? It's a
+bold man that goes plum agin the Bible, and flies smack into the face of
+God Almighty--it's a bold man, an' he ain't me, suh. What I say is, if the
+Lord can stand it, I reckon the rest of the country--"
+
+He paused to draw breath, and Dan laid down his knife and fork and pushed
+back his chair. "Before you begin again, Jack," he said coolly, "will you
+spare enough wind to carry me upstairs?"
+
+"That's what I tell 'em," pursued Jack amiably, as he lighted a candle and
+led the way into the hall. "They used to come down here every once in a
+while an' try to draw me out; and one of 'em 'most got a coat of tar an'
+feathers for meddlin' with my man Lacy; but if the Lord--here we are, here
+we are."
+
+He stopped upon the landing and opened the door of a long room, in which
+Mrs. Hicks was putting the last touches to the bed. She stopped as Dan came
+in, and by the pale flicker of a tallow candle stood looking at him from
+the threshold. "If you'll jest knock on the floor when you wake up, I'll
+know when to send yo' hot water," she said, "and if thar's anything else
+you want, you can jest knock agin."
+
+With a smile he thanked her and promised to remember; and then as she went
+out into the hall, he bolted the door, and threw himself into a chair
+beside the window. Sleep had quite deserted him, and the dawn was on the
+mountains when at last he lay down and closed his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+AT MERRY OAKS TAVERN
+
+
+Upon awaking his first thought was that he had got "into a deucedly
+uncomfortable fix," and when he stretched out his hand from the bedside the
+need of fresh clothes appeared less easy to be borne than the more abstract
+wreck of his career. For the first time he clearly grasped some outline of
+his future--a future in which a change of linen would become a luxury; and
+it was with smarting eyes and a nervous tightening of the throat that he
+glanced about the long room, with its whitewashed walls, and told himself
+that he had come early to the end of his ambition. In the ill-regulated
+tenor of his thoughts but a hair's breadth divided assurance from despair.
+Last night the vaguest hope had seemed to be a certainty; to-day his fat
+acres and the sturdy slaves upon them had vanished like a dream, and the
+building of his fortunes had become suddenly a very different matter from
+the rearing of airy castles along the road.
+
+As he lay there, with his strong white hands folded upon the quilt, his
+eyes went beyond the little lattice at the window, and rested upon the dark
+gray chain of mountains over which the white clouds sailed like birds.
+Somewhere nearer those mountains he knew that Chericoke was standing under
+the clouded sky, with the half-bared elms knocking night and day upon the
+windows. He could see the open doors, through which the wind blew steadily,
+and the crooked stair down which his mother had come in her careless
+girlhood.
+
+It seemed to him, lying there, that in this one hour he had drawn closer
+into sympathy with his mother, and when he looked up from his pillow, he
+half expected to see her merry eyes bending over him, and to feel her thin
+and trembling hand upon his brow. His old worship of her awoke to life, and
+he suffered over again the moment in his childhood when he had called her
+and she had not answered, and they had pushed him from the room and told
+him she was dead. He remembered the clear white of her face, with the
+violet shadows in the hollows; and he remembered the baby lying as if
+asleep upon her bosom. For a moment he felt that he had never grown older
+since that day--that he was still a child grieving for her loss--while all
+the time she was not dead, but stood beside him and smiled down upon his
+pillow. Poor mother, with the merry eyes and the bitter mouth.
+
+Then as he looked the face grew younger, though the smile did not change,
+and he saw that it was Betty, after all--Betty with the tenderness in her
+eyes and the motherly yearning in her outstretched arms. The two women he
+loved were forever blended in his thoughts, and he dimly realized that
+whatever the future made of him, he should be moulded less by events than
+by the hands of these two women. Events might subdue, but love alone could
+create the spirit that gave him life.
+
+There was a tap at his door, and when he arose and opened it, Mrs. Hicks
+handed in a pitcher of hot water and inquired "if he had recollected to
+knock upon the floor?"
+
+He set the water upon the table, and after he had dressed brushed
+hopelessly, with a trembling hand, at the dust upon his clothes. Then he
+went to the window and stood gloomily looking down among the great oak
+trees to the strip of yard where a pig was rooting in the acorns.
+
+A small porch ran across the entrance to the inn, and Jack Hicks was
+already seated on it, with a pipe in his mouth, and his feet upon the
+railing. His drowsy gaze was turned upon the woodpile hard by, where an old
+negro slave was chopping aimlessly into a new pine log, and a black urchin
+gathering chips into a big split basket. At a little distance the Hopeville
+stage was drawn out under the trees, the empty shafts lying upon the
+ground, and on the box a red and black rooster stood crowing. Overhead
+there was a dull gray sky, and the scene, in all its ugliness, showed
+stripped of the redeeming grace of lights and shadows.
+
+Jack Hicks, smoking on his porch, presented a picture of bodily comfort and
+philosophic ease of mind. He was owner of some rich acres, and his
+possessions, it was said, might have been readily doubled had he chosen to
+barter for them the peace of perfect inactivity. To do him justice the idea
+had never occurred to him in the light of a temptation, and when a
+neighbour had once remarked in his hearing that he "reckoned Jack would
+rather lose a dollar than walk a mile to fetch it," he had answered
+blandly, and without embarrassment, that "a mile was a goodish stretch on a
+sandy road." So he sat and dozed beneath his sturdy oaks, while his wife
+went ragged at the heels and his swarm of tow-headed children rolled
+contentedly with the pigs among the acorns.
+
+Dan was still looking moodily down into the yard, when he heard a gentle
+pressure upon the handle of his door, and as he turned, it opened quickly
+and Big Abel, bearing a large white bundle upon his shoulders, staggered
+into the room.
+
+"Ef'n you'd des let me knowed hit, I could er brung a bigger load," he
+remarked sternly.
+
+While he drew breath Dan stared at him with the blankness of surprise.
+"Where did you come from, Big Abel?" he questioned at last, speaking in a
+whisper.
+
+Big Abel was busily untying the sheet he had brought, and spreading out the
+contents upon the bed, and he did not pause as he sullenly answered:--
+
+"Ole Marster's."
+
+"Who sent you?"
+
+Big Abel snorted. "Who gwine sen' me?" he demanded in his turn.
+
+"Well, I declare," said Dan, and after a moment, "how did you get away,
+man?"
+
+"Lawd, Lawd," returned Big Abel, "I wa'n' bo'n yestiddy nur de day befo'.
+Terreckly I seed you a-cuttin' up de drive, I knowed dar wuz mo' den wuz in
+de tail er de eye, en w'en you des lit right out agin en bang de do' behint
+you fitten ter bus' hit, den I begin ter steddy 'bout de close in de big
+wa'drobe. I got out one er ole Miss's sheets w'en she wa'n' lookin, en I
+tie up all de summer close de bes' I kin--caze dat ar do' bang hit ain'
+soun' like you gwine be back fo' de summer right plum hyer. I'se done heah
+a do' bang befo' now, en dars mo' in it den des de shettin' ter stay shet."
+
+"So you ran away?" said Dan, with a long whistle.
+
+"Ain't you done run away?"
+
+"I--oh, I was turned out," answered the young man, with his eyes on the
+negro. "But--bless my soul, Big Abel, why did you do it?"
+
+Big Abel muttered something beneath his breath, and went on laying out the
+things.
+
+"How you gwine git dese yer close ef I ain' tote 'em 'long de road?" he
+asked presently. "How you gwine git dis yer close bresh ef I ain' brung hit
+ter you? Whar de close you got? Whar de close bresh?"
+
+"You're a fool, Big Abel," retorted Dan. "Go back where you belong and
+don't hang about me any more. I'm a beggar, I tell you, and I'm likely to
+be a beggar at the judgment day."
+
+"Whar de close bresh?" repeated Big Abel, scornfully.
+
+"What would Saphiry say, I'd like to know?" went on Dan. "It isn't fair to
+Saphiry to run off this way."
+
+"Don' you bodder 'bout Saphiry," responded Big Abel. "I'se done loss my
+tase fur Saphiry, young Marster."
+
+"I tell you you're a fool," snapped out Dan, sharply.
+
+"De Lawd he knows," piously rejoined Big Abel, and he added: "Dar ain' no
+use a-rumpasin' case hyer I is en hyer I'se gwine ter stay. Whar you run,
+dar I'se gwine ter run right atter, so 'tain' no use a-rumpasin'. Hit's a
+pity dese yer ain' nuttin' but summer close."
+
+Dan looked at him a moment in silence, then he put out his hand and slapped
+him upon the shoulder.
+
+"You're a fool--God bless you," he said.
+
+"Go 'way f'om yer, young Marster," responded the negro, in a high
+good-humour. "Dar's a speck er dut right on yo' shut."
+
+"Then give me another," cried Dan, gayly, and threw off his coat.
+
+When he went down stairs, carefully brushed, a half-hour afterward, the
+world had grown suddenly to wear a more cheerful aspect. He greeted Mrs.
+Hicks with his careless good-humour, and spoke pleasantly to the dirty
+white-haired children that streamed through the dining room.
+
+"Yes, I'll take my breakfast now, if you please," he said as he sat down at
+one end of the long, oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Hicks brought him his
+coffee and cakes, and then stood, with her hands upon a chair back, and
+watched him with a frank delight in his well-dressed comely figure.
+
+"You do favour the Major, Mr. Dan," she suddenly remarked.
+
+He started impatiently. "Oh, the Lightfoots are all alike, you know," he
+responded. "We are fond of saying that a strain of Lightfoot blood is good
+for two centuries of intermixing." Then, as he looked up at her faded
+wrapper and twisted curl papers, he flinched and turned away as if her
+ugliness afflicted his eyes. "Do not let me keep you," he added hastily.
+
+But the woman stooped to shake a child that was tugging at her dress, and
+talked on in her drawling voice, while a greedy interest gave life to her
+worn and sallow face. "How long do you think of stayin'?" she asked
+curiously, "and do you often take a notion to walk so fur in the dead of
+night? Why, I declar, when I looked out an' saw you I couldn't believe my
+eyes. That's not Mr. Dan, I said, you won't catch Mr. Dan out in the pitch
+darkness with a lantern and ten miles from home."
+
+"I really do not want to keep you," he broke in shortly, all the
+good-humour gone from his voice.
+
+"Thar ain't nothin' to do right now," she answered with a searching look
+into his face. "I was jest waitin' to bring you some mo' cakes." She went
+out and came in presently with a fresh plateful. "I remember jest as well
+the first time you ever took breakfast here," she said. "You wa'n't more'n
+twelve, I don't reckon, an' the Major brought you by in the coach, with Big
+Abel driving. The Major didn't like the molasses we gave him, and he pushed
+the pitcher away and said it wasn't fit for pigs; and then you looked about
+real peart and spoke up, 'It's good molasses, grandpa, I like it.' Sakes
+alive, it seems jest like yestiddy. I don't reckon the Major is comin' by
+to-day, is he?"
+
+He pushed his plate away and rose hurriedly, then, without replying, he
+brushed past her, and went out upon the porch.
+
+There he found Jack Hicks, and forced himself squarely into a discussion of
+his altered fortunes. "I may as well tell you, Jack," he said, with a touch
+of arrogance, "that I'm turned out upon the world, at last, and I've got to
+make a living. I've left Chericoke for good, and as I've got to stay here
+until I find a place to go, there's no use making a secret of it."
+
+The pipe dropped from Jack's mouth, and he stared back in astonishment.
+
+"Bless my soul and body!" he exclaimed. "Is the old gentleman crazy or is
+you?"
+
+"You forget yourself," sharply retorted Dan.
+
+"Well, well," pursued Jack, good-naturedly, as he knocked the ashes from
+his pipe and slowly refilled it. "If you hadn't have told me, I wouldn't
+have believed you--well, well." He put his pipe into his mouth and hung on
+it for a moment; then he took it out and spoke thoughtfully. "I reckon I've
+known you from a child, haven't I, Mr. Dan?" he asked.
+
+"That's so, Jack," responded the young man, "and if you can recommend me, I
+want you to help me to a job for a week or two--then I'm off to town."
+
+"I've known you from a child year in an' year out," went on Jack, blandly
+disregarding the interruption. "From the time you was sech a
+pleasant-spoken little boy that it did me good to bow to you when you rode
+by with the Major. 'Thar's not another like him in the country,' I said to
+Bill Bates, an' he said to me, 'Thar's not a man between here an'
+Leicesterburg as ain't ready to say the same.' Then time went on an' you
+got bigger, an' the year came when the crops failed an' Sairy got sick, an'
+I took a mortgage on this here house--an' what should happen but that you
+stepped right up an' paid it out of yo' own pocket. And you kept it from
+the Major. Lord, Lord, to think the Major never knew which way the money
+went."
+
+"We won't speak of that," said Dan, throwing back his head. The thought
+that the innkeeper might be going to offer him the money stung him into
+anger.
+
+But Jack knew his man, and he would as soon have thought of throwing a
+handful of dust into his face. "Jest as you like, suh, jest as you like,"
+he returned easily, and went on smoking.
+
+Dan sat down in a chair upon the porch, and taking out his knife began idly
+whittling at the end of a stick. A small boy, in blue jean breeches,
+watched him eagerly from the steps, and he spoke to him pleasantly while he
+cut into the wood.
+
+"Did you ever see a horse's head on a cane, sonny?"
+
+The child sucked his dirty thumb and edged nearer.
+
+"Naw, suh, but I've seen a dawg's," he answered, drawing out his thumb like
+a stopper and sticking it in again.
+
+"Well, you watch this and you'll see a horse's. There, now don't take your
+eyes away."
+
+He whittled silently for a time, then as he looked up his glance fell on
+the stagecoach in the yard, and he turned from it to Jack Hicks.
+
+"There's one thing on earth I know about, Jack," he said, "and that's a
+horse."
+
+"Not a better jedge in the county, suh," was Jack's response.
+
+As Dan whittled a flush rose to his face. "Does Tom Hyden still drive the
+Hopeville stage?" he asked.
+
+"Well, you see it's this way," answered Jack, weighing his words. "Tom he's
+a first-rate hand at horses, but he drinks like a fish, and last week he
+married a wife who owns a house an' farm up the road. So long as he had to
+earn his own livin' he kept sober long enough to run the stage, but since
+he's gone and married, he says thar's no call fur him to keep a level
+head--so he don't keep it. Yes, that's about how 'tis, suh."
+
+Dan finished the stick and handed it to the child. "I tell you what, Jack,"
+he said suddenly, "I want Tom Hyden's place, and I'm going to drive that
+stage over to Hopeville this afternoon. Phil Banks runs it, doesn't
+he?--well, I know him." He rose and stood humorously looking out upon the
+coach. "There's no time like the present," he added, "so I begin work
+to-day."
+
+Jack Hicks silently stared up at him for a moment; then he coughed and
+exclaimed hoarsely:--
+
+"The jedgment ain't fur off," but Dan laughed the prophecy aside and went
+upstairs to write to Betty.
+
+"I've got a job, Big Abel," he began, going into his room, where the negro
+was pressing a pair of trousers with a flatiron, "and what's more it will
+keep me till I get another."
+
+Big Abel gloomily shook his head. "We all 'ud des better go 'long home ter
+Ole Miss," he returned, for he was in no mood for compromises. "Caze I ain'
+use ter de po' w'ite trash en dey ain' use ter me."
+
+"Go if you want to," retorted Dan, sternly, "but you go alone," and the
+negro, protesting under his breath, laid the clothes away and went down to
+his breakfast.
+
+Dan sat down by the window and wrote a letter to Betty which he never sent.
+When he thought of her now it was as if half the world instead of ten miles
+lay between them; and quickly as he would have resented the hint of it from
+Jack Hicks, to himself he admitted that he was fast sinking where Betty
+could not follow him. What would the end be? he asked, and disheartened by
+the question, tore the paper into bits and walked moodily up and down the
+room. He had lived so blithely until to-day! His lines had fallen so
+smoothly in the pleasant places! Not without a grim humour he remembered
+now that last year his grievance had been that his tailor failed to fit
+him. Last year he had walked the floor in a rage because of a wrinkled
+coat, and to-day--His road had gone rough so suddenly that he stumbled like
+a blind man when he tried to go over it in his old buoyant manner.
+
+An hour later he was still pacing restlessly to and fro, when the door
+softly opened and Mrs. Hicks looked in upon him with a deprecating smile.
+As she lingered on the threshold, he stopped in the middle of the room and
+threw her a sharp glance over his shoulder.
+
+"Is there anything you wish?" he questioned irritably.
+
+Shaking her head, she came slowly toward him and stood in her soiled
+wrapper and curl papers, where the gray light from the latticed window fell
+full upon her.
+
+"It ain't nothin'," she answered hurriedly. "Nothin' except Jack's been
+tellin' me you're in trouble, Mr. Dan."
+
+"Then he has been telling you something that concerns nobody but myself,"
+he replied coolly, and continued his walking.
+
+There was a nervous flutter of her wrapper, and she passed her knotted hand
+over her face.
+
+"You are like yo' mother, Mr. Dan," she said with an unexpectedness that
+brought him to a halt. "An' I was the last one to see her the night she
+went away. She came in here, po' thing, all shiverin' with the cold, an'
+she wouldn't set down but kep' walkin' up an' down, up an' down, jest like
+you've been doin' fur this last hour. Po' thing! Po' thing! I tried to make
+her take a sip of brandy, but she laughed an' said she was quite warm, with
+her teeth chatterin' fit to break--"
+
+"You are very good, Mrs. Hicks," interrupted Dan, in an affected drawl
+which steadied his voice, "but do you know, I'd really rather that you
+wouldn't."
+
+Her sallow face twitched and she looked wistfully up at him.
+
+"It isn't that, Mr. Dan," she went on slowly, "but I've had trouble myself,
+God knows, and when I think of that po' proud young lady, an' the way she
+went, I can't help sayin' what I feel--it won't stay back. So if you'll
+jest keep on here, an' give up the stage drivin' an' wait twil the old
+gentleman comes round--Jack an' I'll do our best fur you--we'll do our
+best, even if it ain't much."
+
+Her lips quivered, and as he watched her it seemed to him that a new
+meaning passed into her face--something that made her look like Betty and
+his mother--that made all good women who had loved him look alike. For the
+moment he forgot her ugliness, and with the beginning of that keener
+insight into life which would come to him as he touched with humanity, he
+saw only the dignity with which suffering had endowed this plain and simple
+woman. The furrows upon her cheeks were no longer mere disfigurements; they
+raised her from the ordinary level of the ignorant and the ugly into some
+bond of sympathy with his dead mother.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Hicks," he stammered, abashed and reddening. "Why, I shall
+take a positive pleasure in driving the stage, I assure you."
+
+He crossed to the mirror and carefully brushed a stray lock of hair into
+place; then he took up his hat and gloves and turned toward the door. "I
+think it is waiting for me now," he added lightly; "a pleasant evening to
+you."
+
+But she stood straight before him and as he met her eyes his affected
+jauntiness dropped from him. With a boyish awkwardness he took her hand and
+held it for an instant as he looked at her. "My dear madam, you are a good
+woman," he said, and went whistling down to take the stage.
+
+Upon the porch he found Jack Hicks seated between a stout gentleman and a
+thin lady, who were to be the passengers to Hopeville; and as Dan appeared
+the innkeeper started to his feet and swung open the door of the coach for
+the thin lady to pass inside. "You'll find it a pleasant ride, mum," he
+heartily assured her. "I've often taken it myself an', rain or shine,
+thar's not a prettier road in all Virginny," then he moved humbly back as
+Dan, carelessly drawing on his gloves, came down the steps. "I hope we
+haven't hurried you, suh," he stammered.
+
+"Not a bit--not a bit," returned Dan, affably, slipping on his overcoat,
+which Big Abel had run up to hold for him.
+
+"You gwine git right soakin' wet, Marse Dan," said Big Abel, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, I'll not melt," responded Dan, and bowing to the thin lady he stepped
+upon the wheel and mounted lightly to the box.
+
+"There's no end to this eternal drizzle," he called down, as he tucked the
+waterproof robe about him and took up the reins.
+
+Then, with a merry crack of the whip, the stage rolled through the gate and
+on its way.
+
+As it turned into the road, a man on horseback came galloping from the
+direction of the town, and when he neared the tavern he stood up in his
+stirrups and shouted his piece of news.
+
+"Thar was a raid on Harper's Ferry in the night," he yelled hoarsely. "The
+arsenal has fallen, an' they're armin' the damned niggers."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE NIGHT OF FEAR
+
+
+Late in the afternoon, as the Governor neared the tavern, he was met by a
+messenger with the news; and at once turning his horse's head, he started
+back to Uplands. A dim fear, which had been with him since boyhood, seemed
+to take shape and meaning with the words; and in a lightning flash of
+understanding he knew that he had lived before through the horror of this
+moment. If his fathers had sinned, surely the shadow of their wrong had
+passed them by to fall the heavier upon their sons; for even as his blood
+rang in his ears, he saw a savage justice in the thing he feared--a
+recompense to natural laws in which the innocent should weigh as naught
+against the guilty.
+
+A fine rain was falling; and as he went on, the end of a drizzling
+afternoon dwindled rapidly into night. Across the meadows he saw the lamps
+in scattered cottages twinkle brightly through the dusk which rolled like
+fog down from the mountains. The road he followed sagged between two gray
+hills into a narrow valley, and regaining its balance upon the farther
+side, stretched over a cattle pasture into the thick cover of the woods.
+
+As he reached the summit of the first hill, he saw the Major's coach
+creeping slowly up the incline, and heard the old gentleman scolding
+through the window at Congo on the box.
+
+"My dear Major, home's the place for you," he said as he drew rein. "Is it
+possible that the news hasn't reached you yet?"
+
+Remembering Congo, he spoke cautiously, but the Major, in his anger, tossed
+discretion to the winds.
+
+"Reached me?--bless my soul!--do you take me for a ground hog?" he cried,
+thrusting his red face through the window. "I met Tom Bickels four miles
+back, and the horses haven't drawn breath since. But it's what I expected
+all along--I was just telling Congo so--it all comes from the mistaken
+tolerance of black Republicans. Let me open my doors to them to-day, and
+they'll be tempting Congo to murder me in my bed to-morrow."
+
+"Go 'way f'om yer, Ole Marster," protested Congo from the box, flicking at
+the harness with his long whip.
+
+The Governor looked a little anxiously at the negro, and then shook his
+head impatiently. Though a less exacting master than the Major, he had not
+the same childlike trust in the slaves he owned.
+
+"Shall you not turn back?" he asked, surprised.
+
+"Champe's there," responded the Major, "so I came on for the particulars. A
+night in town isn't to my liking, but I can't sleep a wink until I hear a
+thing or two. You're going out, eh?"
+
+"I'm riding home," said the Governor, "it makes me uneasy to be away from
+Uplands." He paused, hesitated an instant, and then broke out suddenly.
+"Good God, Major, what does it mean?"
+
+The Major shook his head until his long white hair fell across his eyes.
+
+"Mean, sir?" he thundered in a rage. "It means, I reckon, that those damned
+friends of yours have a mind to murder you. It means that after all your
+speech-making and your brotherly love, they're putting pitchforks into the
+hands of savages and loosening them upon you. Oh, you needn't mind Congo,
+Governor. Congo's heart's as white as mine."
+
+"Dat's so, Ole Marster," put in Congo, approvingly.
+
+The Governor was trembling as he leaned down from his saddle.
+
+"We know nothing as yet, sir," he began, "there must be some--"
+
+"Oh, go on, go on," cried the Major, striking the carriage window. "Keep up
+your speech-making and your handshaking until your wife gets murdered in
+her bed--but, by God, sir, if Virginia doesn't secede after this, I'll
+secede without her!"
+
+The coach moved on and the Governor, touching his horse with the whip, rode
+rapidly down the hill.
+
+As he descended into the valley, a thick mist rolled over him and the road
+lost itself in the blur of the surrounding fields. Without slackening his
+pace, he lighted the lantern at his saddle-bow and turned up the collar of
+his coat about his ears. The fine rain was soaking through his clothes, but
+in the tension of his nerves he was oblivious of the weather. The sun might
+have risen overhead and he would not have known it.
+
+With the coming down of the darkness a slow fear crept, like a physical
+chill, from head to foot. A visible danger he felt that he might meet face
+to face and conquer; but how could he stand against an enemy that crept
+upon him unawares?--against the large uncertainty, the utter ignorance of
+the depth or meaning of the outbreak, the knowledge of a hidden evil which
+might be even now brooding at his fireside?
+
+A thousand hideous possibilities came toward him from out the stretch of
+the wood. The light of a distant window, seen through the thinned edge of
+the forest; the rustle of a small animal in the underbrush; the drop of a
+walnut on the wet leaves in the road; the very odours which rose from the
+moist earth and dripped from the leafless branches--all sent him faster on
+his way, with a sound within his ears that was like the drumming of his
+heart.
+
+To quiet his nerves, he sought to bring before him a picture of the house
+at Uplands, of the calm white pillars and the lamplight shining from the
+door; but even as he looked the vision of a slave-war rushed between, and
+the old buried horrors of the Southampton uprising sprang suddenly to life
+and thronged about the image of his home. Yesterday those tales had been
+for him as colourless as history, as dry as dates; to-night, with this new
+fear at his heart, the past became as vivid as the present, and it seemed
+to him that beyond each lantern flash he saw a murdered woman, or an infant
+with its brains dashed out at its mother's breast. This was what he feared,
+for this was what the message meant to him: "The slaves are armed and
+rising."
+
+And yet with it all, he felt that there was some wild justice in the thing
+he dreaded, in the revolt of an enslaved and ignorant people, in the
+pitiable and ineffectual struggle for a freedom which would mean, in the
+beginning, but the power to go forth and kill. It was the recognition of
+this deeper pathos that made him hesitate to reproach even while his
+thoughts dwelt on the evils--that would, if the need came, send him
+fearless and gentle to the fight. For what he saw was that behind the new
+wrongs were the old ones, and that the sinners of to-day were, perhaps, the
+sinned against of yesterday.
+
+When at last he came out into the turnpike, he had not the courage to look
+among the trees for the lights of Uplands; and for a while he rode with his
+eyes following the lantern flash as it ran onward over the wet ground. The
+small yellow circle held his gaze, and as if fascinated he watched it
+moving along the road, now shining on the silver grains in a ring of sand,
+now glancing back from the standing water in a wheelrut, and now
+illuminating a mossy stone or a weed upon the roadside. It was the one
+bright thing in a universe of blackness, until, as he came suddenly upon an
+elevation, the trees parted and he saw the windows of his home glowing upon
+the night. As he looked a great peace fell over him, and he rode on,
+thanking God.
+
+When he turned into the drive, his past anxiety appeared to him to be
+ridiculous, and as he glanced from the clear lights in the great house to
+the chain of lesser ones that stretched along the quarters, he laughed
+aloud in the first exhilaration of his relief. This at least was safe, God
+keep the others.
+
+At his first call as he alighted before the portico, Hosea came running for
+his horse, and when he entered the house, the cheerful face of Uncle
+Shadrach looked out from the dining room.
+
+"Hi! Marse Peyton, I 'lowed you wuz gwine ter spen' de night."
+
+"Oh, I had to get back, Shadrach," replied the Governor. "No, I won't take
+any supper--you needn't bring it--but give me a glass of Burgundy, and then
+go to bed. Where is your mistress, by the way? Has she gone to her room?"
+
+Uncle Shadrach brought the bottle of Burgundy from the cellaret and placed
+it upon the table.
+
+"Naw, suh, Miss July she set out ter de quarters ter see atter Mahaley," he
+returned. "Mahaley she's moughty bad off, but 'tain' no night fur Miss
+July--dat's w'at I tell 'er--one er dese yer spittin' nights ain' no night
+ter be out in."
+
+"You're right, Shadrach, you're right," responded the Governor; and rising
+he drank the wine standing. "It isn't a fit night for her to be out, and
+I'll go after her at once."
+
+He took up his lantern, and as the old negro opened the doors before him,
+went out upon the back porch and down the steps.
+
+From the steps a narrow path ran by the kitchen, and skirting the
+garden-wall, straggled through the orchard and past the house of the
+overseer to the big barn and the cabins in the quarters. There was a light
+from the barn door, and as he passed he heard the sound of fiddles and the
+shuffling steps of the field hands in a noisy "game." The words they sang
+floated out into the night, and with the squeaking of the fiddles followed
+him along his path.
+
+When he reached the quarters, he went from door to door, asking for his
+wife. "Is this Mahaley's cabin?" he anxiously inquired, "and has your
+mistress gone by?"
+
+In the first room an old negro woman sat on the hearth wrapping the hair of
+her grandchild, and she rose with a courtesy and a smile of welcome. At the
+question her face fell and she shook her head.
+
+"Dis yer ain' Mahaley, Marster," she replied. "En dis yer ain' Mahaley's
+cabin--caze Mahaley she ain' never set foot inside my do', en I ain' gwine
+set foot at her buryin'." She spoke shrilly, moved by a hidden spite, but
+the Governor, without stopping, went on along the line of open doors. In
+one a field negro was roasting chestnuts in the embers of a log fire, and
+while waiting he had fallen asleep, with his head on his breast and his
+gnarled hands hanging between his knees. The firelight ran over him, and as
+he slept he stirred and muttered something in his dreams.
+
+After the first glance, his master passed him by and moved on to the
+adjoining cabin. "Does Mahaley live here?" he asked again and yet again,
+until, suddenly, he had no need to put the question for from the last room
+he heard a low voice praying, and upon looking in saw his wife kneeling
+with her open Bible near the bedside.
+
+With his hat in his hand, he stood within the shadow of the doorway and
+waited for the earnest voice to fall silent. Mahaley was dying, this he saw
+when his glance wandered to the shrunken figure beneath the patchwork
+quilt; and at the same instant he realized how small a part was his in
+Mahaley's life or death. He should hardly have known her had he met her
+last week in the corn field; and it was by chance only that he knew her now
+when she came to die.
+
+As he stood there the burden of his responsibility weighed upon him like
+old age. Here in this scant cabin things so serious as birth and death
+showed in a pathetic bareness, stripped of all ceremonial trappings, as
+mere events in the orderly working out of natural laws--events as
+seasonable as the springing up and the cutting down of the corn. In these
+simple lives, so closely lived to the ground, grave things were sweetened
+by an unconscious humour which was of the soil itself; and even death lost
+something of its strangeness when it came like the grateful shadow which
+falls over a tired worker in the field.
+
+Mrs. Ambler finished her prayer and rose from her knees; and as she did so
+two slave women, crouching in a corner by the fire, broke into loud
+moaning, which filled the little room with an animal and inarticulate sound
+of grief.
+
+"Come away, Julia," implored the Governor in a whisper, resisting an
+impulse to close his ears against the cry.
+
+But his wife shook her head and spoke for a moment with the sick woman
+before she wrapped her shawl about her and came out into the open air. Then
+she gave a sigh of relief, and, with her hand through her husband's arm,
+followed the path across the orchard.
+
+"So you came home, after all," she said. For a moment he made no response;
+then, glancing about him in the darkness, he spoke in a low voice, as if
+fearing the sound of his own words.
+
+"Bad news brought me home, Julia," he replied, "At the tavern they told me
+a message had come to Leicesterburg from Harper's Ferry. An attack was made
+on the arsenal at midnight, and, it may be but a rumour, my dear, it was
+feared that the slaves for miles around were armed for an uprising."
+
+His voice faltered, and he put out his hand to steady her, but she looked
+up at him and he saw her clear eyes shining in the gloom.
+
+"Oh, poor creatures," she murmured beneath her breath.
+
+"Julia, Julia," he said softly, and lifted the lantern that he might look
+into her face. As the light fell on her he knew that she was as much a
+mystery to him now as she had been twenty years ago on her wedding-day.
+
+When they went into the house, he followed Uncle Shadrach about and
+carefully barred the windows, shooting bolts which were rusted from disuse.
+After the old negro had gone out he examined the locks again; and then
+going into the hall took down a bird gun and an army pistol from their
+places on the rack. These he loaded and laid near at hand beside the books
+upon his table.
+
+There was no sleep for him that night, and until dawn he sat, watchful, in
+his chair, or moved softly from window to window, looking for a torch upon
+the road and listening for the sound of approaching steps.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+CRABBED AGE AND CALLOW YOUTH
+
+
+With the morning came trustier tidings. The slaves had taken no part in the
+attack, the weapons had dropped from the few dark hands into which they had
+been given, and while the shots that might bring them freedom yet rang at
+Harper's Ferry, the negroes themselves went with cheerful faces to their
+work, or looked up, singing, from their labours in the field. In the green
+valley, set amid blue mountains, they moved quietly back and forth, raking
+the wind-drifts of fallen leaves, or ploughing the rich earth for the
+autumn sowing of the grain.
+
+As the Governor was sitting down to breakfast, the Lightfoot coach rolled
+up to the portico, and the Major stepped down to deliver himself of his
+garnered news. He was in no pleasant humour, for he had met Dan face to
+face that morning as he passed the tavern, and as if this were not
+sufficient to try the patience of an irascible old gentleman, a spasm of
+gout had seized him as he made ready to descend.
+
+But at the sight of Mrs. Ambler, he trod valiantly upon his gouty toe, and
+screwed his features into his blandest smile--an effort which drew so
+heavily upon the source of his good-nature, that he arrived at Chericoke an
+hour later in what was known to Betty as "a purple rage."
+
+"You know I have always warned you, Molly," was his first offensive thrust
+as he entered Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber, "that your taste for trash would be
+the ruin of the family. It has ruined your daughter, and now it is ruining
+your grandson. Well, well, you can't say that it is for lack of warning."
+
+From the centre of her tester bed, the old lady calmly regarded him. "I
+told you to bring back the boy, Mr. Lightfoot," she returned. "You surely
+saw him in town, didn't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I saw him," replied the Major, loosening his high black stock.
+"But where do you suppose I saw him, ma'am? and how? Why, the young
+scapegrace has actually gone and hired himself out as a stagedriver--a
+common stagedriver. And, bless my soul, he had the audacity to tip his hat
+to me from the box--from the box with the reins in his hand, ma'am!"
+
+"What stage, Mr. Lightfoot?" inquired his wife, with an eye for
+particulars.
+
+"Oh, I wash my hands of him," pursued the Major, waving her question aside.
+"I wash my hands of him, and that's the end of it. In my day, the young
+were supposed to show some respect for their elders, and every calf wasn't
+of the opinion that he could bellow like a bull--but things are changed
+now, and I wash my hands of it all. A more ungrateful family, I am willing
+to maintain, no man was ever blessed with--which comes, I reckon, from
+sparing the rod and spoiling the child--but I'm sure I don't see how it is
+that it is always your temper that gets inherited."
+
+The personal note fell unheeded upon his wife's ears.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that you came away and left the boy sitting on
+the box of a stagecoach?" she demanded sharply.
+
+"Would you have me claim a stagedriver as a grandson?" retorted the Major,
+"because I may as well say now, ma'am, that there are some things I'll not
+stoop to. Why, I'd as lief have an uncle who was a chimney sweep."
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot turned uneasily in bed. "It means, I suppose, that I shall
+have to get up and go after him," she remarked, "and you yourself heard the
+doctor tell me not to move out of bed for a week. It does seem to me, Mr.
+Lightfoot, that you might show some consideration for my state of health.
+Do ride in this afternoon, and tell Dan that I say he must behave himself
+properly."
+
+But the Major turned upon her the terrific countenance she had last seen on
+Jane's wedding day, and she fell silent from sheer inability to utter a
+protest befitting the occasion.
+
+"If that stagedriver enters my house, I leave it, ma'am," thundered the old
+gentleman, with a stamp of his gouty foot. "You may choose between us, if
+you like,--I have never interfered with your fancies--but, by God, if you
+bring him inside my doors I--I will horsewhip him, madam," and he went
+limping out into the hall.
+
+On the stair he met Betty, who looked at him with pleading eyes, but fled,
+affrighted, before the colour of his wrath; and in his library he found
+Champe reading his favourite volume of Mr. Addison.
+
+"I hope you aren't scratching up my books, sir," he observed, eying the
+pencil in his great-nephew's hand.
+
+Champe looked at him with his cool glance, and rose leisurely to his feet.
+"Why, I'd as soon think of scrawling over Aunt Emmeline's window pane," he
+returned pleasantly, and added, "I hope you had a successful trip, sir."
+
+"I got a lukewarm supper and a cold breakfast," replied the Major
+irritably, "and I heard that the Marines had those Kansas raiders entrapped
+like rats in the arsenal, if that is what you mean."
+
+"No, I wasn't thinking of that," replied Champe, as quietly as before. "I
+came home to find out about Dan, you know, and I hoped you went into town
+to look him up."
+
+"Well, I didn't, sir," declared the Major, "and as for that scamp--I have
+as much knowledge of his whereabouts as I care for.--Do you know, sir," he
+broke out fiercely, "that he has taken to driving a common stage?"
+
+Champe was sharpening his pencil, and he did not look up as he answered.
+"Then the sooner he leaves off the better, eh, sir?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, there's your everlasting wrangling!" exclaimed the Major with a
+hopeless gesture. "You catch it from Molly, I reckon, and between you,
+you'll drive me into dotage yet. Always arguing! Never any peace. Why, I
+believe if I were to take it into my head to remark that white is white,
+you would both be setting out to convince me that it is black. I tell you
+now, sir, that the sooner you curb that tendency of yours, the better it
+will be."
+
+"Aren't we rather straying from the point?" interposed Champe half angrily.
+
+"There it is again," gasped the Major.
+
+The knife slipped in Champe's hand and scratched his finger. "Surely you
+don't intend to leave Dan to knock about for himself much longer?" he said
+coolly. "If you do, sir, I don't mind saying that I think it is a damn
+shame."
+
+"How dare you use such language in my presence?" roared the old gentleman,
+growing purple to the neck. "Have you, also, been fighting for barmaids and
+taking up with gaol-birds? It is what I have to expect, I suppose, and I
+may as well accustom my ears to profanity; but damn you, sir, you must
+learn some decency;" and going into the hall he shouted to Congo to bring
+him a julep.
+
+Champe said nothing more; and when the julep appeared on a silver tray, he
+left the room and went upstairs to where Betty was waiting. "He's awful,
+there's no use mincing words, he's simply awful," he remarked in an
+exhausted voice.
+
+"But what does he say? tell me," questioned Betty, as she moved to a little
+peaked window which overlooked the lawn.
+
+"What doesn't he say?" groaned Champe with his eyes upon her as she stood
+relieved against the greenish panes of glass.
+
+"Do you think I might speak to him?" she persisted eagerly.
+
+"My dear girl, do you want to have your head bitten off for your pains? His
+temper is positively tremendous. By Jove, I didn't know he had it in him
+after all these years; I thought he had worn it out on dear Aunt Molly. And
+Beau, by the way, isn't going to be the only one to suffer for his daring,
+which makes me wish that he had chosen to embrace the saintly instead of
+the heroic virtues. I confess that I could find it in my heart to prefer
+less of David and more of Job."
+
+"How can you?" remonstrated Betty. She pressed her hands together and
+looked wistfully up at him. "But what are you going to do about it?" she
+demanded.
+
+For a moment his eyes dwelt on her.
+
+"Betty, Betty, how you care!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Care?" she laughed impatiently. "Oh, I care, but what good does that do?"
+
+"Would you care as much for me, I wonder?" She smiled up at him and shook
+her head.
+
+"No, I shouldn't, Champe," she answered honestly.
+
+He turned his gaze away from her, and looked through the dim old window
+panes out upon the clustered elm boughs.
+
+"Well, I'll do this much," he said in a cheerful voice. "I'll ride to the
+tavern this morning and find out how the land lies there. I'll see Beau,
+and I'll do my best for him, and for you, Betty." She put out her hand and
+touched his arm. "Dear Champe!" she exclaimed impulsively.
+
+"Oh, I dare say," he scoffed, "but is there any message?"
+
+"Tell him to come back," she answered, "to come back now, or when he will."
+
+"Or when he will," he repeated smiling, and went down to order his horse.
+
+At the tavern he found Jack Hicks and a neighbouring farmer or two, seated
+upon the porch discussing the raid upon Harper's Ferry. They would have
+drawn him into the talk, but he asked at once for Dan, and upon learning
+the room in which he lodged, ran up the narrow stair and rapped upon the
+door. Then, without waiting for a response, he burst into the room with
+outstretched hand. "Why, they've put you into a tenpin alley," were his
+words of greeting.
+
+With a laugh Dan sprang up from his chair beside the window. "What on earth
+are you doing here, old man?" he asked.
+
+"Well, just at present I'm trying to pull you out of the hole you've
+stumbled into. I say, in the name of all that's rational, why did you allow
+yourself to get into such a scrape?"
+
+Dan sat down again and motioned to a split-bottomed chair he had used for a
+footstool.
+
+"There's no use going into that," he replied frowning, "I raised the row
+and I'm ready to bear the consequences."
+
+"Ah, that's the point, my dear fellow; Aunt Molly and I have been bearing
+them all the morning."
+
+"Of course, I'm sorry for that, but I may as well tell you now that things
+are settled so far as I am concerned. I've been kicked out and I wouldn't
+go back again if they came for me in a golden chariot."
+
+"I hardly think that's likely to happen," was Champe's cheerful rejoinder.
+"The old gentleman has had his temper touched, as, I dare say, you're
+aware, and, as ill-luck would have it, he saw you on the stagecoach this
+morning. My dear Beau, you ought to have crawled under the box."
+
+"Nonsense!" protested Dan, "it's no concern of his." He turned his flushed
+boyish face angrily away.
+
+Champe looked at him steadily with a twinkle in his eyes. "Well, I hope
+your independence will come buttered," he remarked. "I doubt if you will
+find the taste of dry bread to your liking. By the way, do you intend to
+enter Jack Hicks's household?"
+
+"For a fortnight, perhaps. I've written to Judge Compton, and if he'll take
+me into his office, I shall study law."
+
+Champe gave a long whistle. "I should have supposed that your taste would
+be for tailoring," he observed, "your genius for the fashions is immense."
+
+"I hope to cultivate that also," said Dan, smiling, as he glanced at his
+coat.
+
+"What? on bread and cheese and Blackstone?"
+
+"Oh, Blackstone! I never heard he wasn't a well-dressed old chap."
+
+"At least you'll take half my allowance?"
+
+Dan shook his head. "Not a cent--not a copper cent."
+
+"But how will you live, man?"
+
+"Oh, somehow," he laughed carelessly. "I'll live somehow."
+
+"It's rather a shame, you know," responded Champe, "but there's one thing
+of which I am very sure--the old gentleman will come round. We'll make him
+do it, Aunt Molly and I--and Betty."
+
+Dan started.
+
+"Betty sent you a message, by the way," pursued Champe, looking through the
+window. "It was something about coming home; she says you are to come home
+now--or when you will." He rose and took up his hat and riding-whip.
+
+"Or when I will," said Dan, rising also. "Tell her--no, don't tell her
+anything--what's the use?"
+
+"She doesn't need telling," responded Champe, going toward the door; and he
+added as they went together down the stair, "She always understands without
+words, somehow."
+
+Dan followed him into the yard, and watched him, from under the oaks beside
+the empty stagecoach, as he mounted and rode away.
+
+"For heaven's sake, remember my warning," said Champe, turning in the
+saddle, "and don't insist upon eating dry bread if you're offered butter."
+
+"And you will look after Aunt Molly and Betty?" Dan rejoined.
+
+"Oh, I'll look after them," replied the other lightly, and rode off at an
+amble.
+
+Dan looked after the horse and rider until they passed slowly out of sight;
+then, coming back to the porch, he sat down among the farmers, and
+listened, abstractedly, to the drawling voice of Jack Hicks.
+
+When Champe reached Chericoke, he saw Betty looking for him from Aunt
+Emmeline's window seat; and as he dismounted, she ran out and joined him
+upon the steps.
+
+"And you saw him?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"It was pleasant to think that you came to meet me for my own sake," he
+returned; and at her impatient gesture, caught her hand and looked into her
+eyes.
+
+"I saw him, my dear," he said, "and he was in a temper that would have
+proved his descent had he been lost in infancy."
+
+She eagerly questioned him, and he answered with forbearing amusement. "Is
+that all?" she asked at last, and when he nodded, smiling, she went up to
+Mrs. Lightfoot's bedside and besought her "to make the Major listen to
+reason."
+
+"He never listened to it in his life, my child," the old lady replied, "and
+I think it is hardly to be expected of him that he should begin at his
+present age." Then she gathered, bit by bit, the news that Champe had
+brought, and ended by remarking that "the ways of men and boys were past
+finding out."
+
+"Do you think the Major will ever forgive him?" asked Betty, hopelessly.
+
+"He never forgave poor Jane," answered Mrs. Lightfoot, her voice breaking
+at the mention of her daughter. "But whether he forgives him or not, the
+silly boy must be made to come home; and as soon as I am out of this bed,
+I must get into the coach and drive to that God-forsaken tavern. After ten
+years, nothing will content them, I suppose, but that I should jolt my
+bones to pieces."
+
+Betty looked at her anxiously. "When will you be up?" she inquired,
+flushing, as the old lady's sharp eyes pierced her through.
+
+"I really think, my dear, that you are less sensible than I took you to
+be," returned Mrs. Lightfoot. "It was very foolish of you to allow yourself
+to take a fancy to Dan. You should have insisted upon preferring Champe, as
+I cautioned you to do. In entering into marriage it is always well to
+consider first, family connections and secondly, personal disposition; and
+in both of these particulars there is no fault to be found with Champe. His
+mother was a Randolph, my child, which is greatly to his credit. As for
+Dan, I fear he will make anything but a safe husband."
+
+"Safe!" exclaimed Betty indignantly, "did you marry the Major because he
+was 'safe,' I wonder?"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot accepted the rebuke with meekness.
+
+"Had I done so, I should certainly have proved myself to be a fool," she
+returned with grim humour, "but since you have fully decided that you
+prefer to be miserable, I shall take you with me tomorrow when I go for
+Dan."
+
+But on the morrow the old lady did not leave her bed, and the doctor, who
+came with his saddlebags from Leicesterburg, glanced her over and ordered
+"perfect repose of mind and body" before he drank his julep and rode away.
+
+"Perfect repose, indeed!" scoffed his patient, from behind her curtains,
+when the visit was over. "Why, the idiot might as well have ordered me a
+mustard plaster. If he thinks there's any 'repose' in being married to Mr.
+Lightfoot, I'd be very glad to have him try it for a week."
+
+Betty made no response, for her throat was strained and aching; but in a
+moment Mrs. Lightfoot called her to her bedside and patted her upon the
+arm.
+
+"We'll go next week, child," she said gently. "When you have been married
+as long as I have been, you will know that a week the more or the less of a
+man's society makes very little difference in the long run."
+
+And the next week they went. On a ripe October day, when the earth was all
+red and gold, the coach was brought out into the drive, and Mrs. Lightfoot
+came down, leaning upon Champe and Betty.
+
+The Major was reading his Horace in the library, and though he heard the
+new pair of roans pawing on the gravel, he gave no sign of displeasure. His
+age had oppressed him in the last few days, and he carried stains, like
+spilled wine, on his cheeks. He could not ease his swollen heart by
+outbursts of anger, and the sensitiveness of his temper warned off the
+sympathy which he was too proud to unbend and seek. So he sat and stared at
+the unturned Latin page, and the hand he raised to his throat trembled
+slightly in the air.
+
+Outside, Betty, in her most becoming bonnet, with her blue barege shawl
+over her soft white gown, wrapped Mrs. Lightfoot in woollen robes, and
+fluttered nervously when the old lady remembered that she had left her
+spectacles behind.
+
+"I brought the empty case; here it is, my dear," she said, offering it to
+the girl. "Surely you don't intend to take me off without my glasses?"
+
+Mitty was sent upstairs on a search for them, and in her absence her
+mistress suddenly decided that she needed an extra wrap. "The little white
+nuby in my top drawer, Betty--I felt a chill striking the back of my neck."
+
+Betty threw her armful of robes into the coach, and ran hurriedly up to the
+old lady's room, coming down, in a moment, with the spectacles in one hand
+and the little white shawl in the other.
+
+"Now, we must really start, Congo," she called, as she sat down beside Mrs.
+Lightfoot, and when the coach rolled along the drive, she leaned out and
+kissed her hand to Champe upon the steps.
+
+"It is a heavenly day," she said with a sigh of happiness. "Oh, isn't it
+too good to be real weather?"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot did not answer, for she was busily examining the contents of
+her black silk bag.
+
+"Stop Congo, Betty," she exclaimed, after a hasty search. "I have forgotten
+my handkerchief; I sprinkled it with camphor and left it on the bureau.
+Tell him to go back at once."
+
+"Take mine, take mine!" cried the girl, pressing it upon her; and then
+turning her back upon the old lady, she leaned from the window and looked
+over the valley filled with sunshine.
+
+The whip cracked, the fat roans kicked the dust, and on they went merrily
+down the branch road into the turnpike; past Aunt Ailsey's cabin, past the
+wild cherry tree, where the blue sky shone through naked twigs; down the
+long curve, past the tuft of cedars--and still the turnpike swept wide and
+white, into the distance, dividing gay fields dotted with browsing cattle.
+At Uplands Betty caught a glimpse of Aunt Lydia between the silver poplars,
+and called joyfully from the window; but the words were lost in the
+rattling of the wheels; and as she lay back in her corner, Uplands was left
+behind, and in a little while they passed into the tavern road and went on
+beneath the shade of interlacing branches.
+
+Underfoot the ground was russet, and through the misty woods she saw the
+leaves still falling against a dim blue perspective. The sunshine struck in
+arrows across the way, and far ahead, at the end of the long vista, there
+was golden space.
+
+With the ten miles behind them, they came to the tavern in the early
+afternoon, and, as a small tow-headed boy swung open the gate, the coach
+rolled into the yard and drew up before the steps.
+
+Jack Hicks started from his seat, and throwing his pipe aside, came
+hurriedly to the wheels, but before he laid his hand upon the door, Betty
+opened it and sprang lightly to the ground, her face radiant in the shadow
+of her bonnet.
+
+"Let me speak, child," called Mrs. Lightfoot after her, adding, with
+courteous condescension, "How are you, Mr. Hicks? Will you go up at once
+and tell my grandson to pack his things and come straight down. As soon as
+the horses are rested we must start back again."
+
+With visible perturbation Jack looked from the coach to the tavern door,
+and stood awkwardly scraping his feet upon the road.
+
+"I--I'll go up with all the pleasure in life, mum," he stammered; "but I
+don't reckon thar's no use--he--he's gone."
+
+"Gone?" cried the aghast old lady; and Betty rested her hand upon the
+wheel.
+
+"Big Abel, he's gone, too," went on Jack, gaining courage from the
+accustomed sound of his own drawl. "Mr. Dan tried his best to git away
+without him--but Lord, Lord, the sense that nigger's got. Why, his marster
+might as well have tried to give his own skin the slip--"
+
+"Where did they go?" sharply put in the old lady. "Don't mumble your words,
+speak plainly, if you please."
+
+"He wouldn't tell me, mum; I axed him, but he wouldn't say. A letter came
+last night, and this morning at sunup they were off--Mr. Dan in front, and
+Big Abel behind with the bundle on his shoulder. They walked to
+Leicestersburg, that's all I know, mum."
+
+"Let me get inside," said Betty, quickly. Her face had gone white, but she
+thanked Jack when he picked up the shawl she dropped, and went steadily
+into the coach. "We may as well go back," she added with a little laugh.
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot threw an anxious look into her face.
+
+"We must consider the horses, my dear," she responded. "Mr. Hicks, will you
+see that the horses are well fed and watered. Let them take their time."
+
+"Oh, I forgot the horses," returned Betty apologetically, and patiently sat
+down with her arm leaning in the window. There was a smile on her lips, and
+she stared with bright eyes at the oak trees and the children playing among
+the acorns.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE HUSH BEFORE THE STORM
+
+
+The autumn crept into winter; the winter went by, short and fitful, and the
+spring unfolded slowly. With the milder weather the mud dried in the roads,
+and the Major and the Governor went daily into Leicesterburg. The younger
+man had carried his oratory and his influence into the larger cities of the
+state, and he had come home, at the end of a month of speech-making, in a
+fervour of almost boyish enthusiasm.
+
+"I pledge my word for it, Julia," he had declared to his wife, "it will
+take more than a Republican President to sever Virginia from the Union--in
+fact, I'm inclined to think that it will take a thunderbolt from heaven, or
+the Major for a despot!"
+
+When, as the spring went on, men came from the political turmoil to ask for
+his advice, he repeated the words with a conviction that was in itself a
+ring of emphasis.
+
+"We are in the Union, gentlemen, for better or for worse"--and of all the
+guests who drank his Madeira under the pleasant shade of his maples, only
+the Major found voice to raise a protest.
+
+"We'll learn, sir, we'll live and learn," interposed the old gentleman.
+
+"Let us hope we shall live easily," said the doctor, lifting his glass.
+
+"And learn wisdom," added the rector, with a chuckle.
+
+Through the spring and summer they rode leisurely back and forth, bringing
+bundles of newspapers when they came, and taking away with them a memory of
+the broad white portico and the mellow wine.
+
+The Major took a spasmodic part in the discussions of peace or war, sitting
+sometimes in a moody silence, and flaring up, like an exhausted candle, at
+the news of an abolition outbreak. In his heart he regarded the state of
+peace as a mean and beggarly condition and the sure resort of bloodless
+cowards; but even a prospect of the inspiring dash of war could not elicit
+so much as the semblance of his old ardour. His smile flashed but seldom
+over his harsh features--it needed indeed the presence of Mrs. Ambler or of
+Betty to bring it forth--and his erect figure had given way in the chest,
+as if a strong wind bent him forward when he walked.
+
+"He has grown to be an old man," his neighbours said pityingly; and it is
+true that the weight of his years had fallen upon him in a night--as if he
+had gone to bed in a hale old age, with the sap of youth in his veins, to
+awaken with bleared eyes and a trembling hand. Since the day of his wife's
+return from the tavern, when he had peered from his hiding-place in his
+library window, he had not mentioned his grandson by name; and yet the
+thought of him seemed forever lying beneath his captious exclamations. He
+pricked nervously at the subject, made roundabout allusions to the base
+ingratitude from which he suffered; and the desertion of Big Abel had
+damned for him the whole faithful race from which the offender sprang.
+
+"They are all alike," he sweepingly declared. "There is not a trustworthy
+one among them. They'll eat my bread and steal my chickens, and then run
+off with the first scapegrace that gives them a chance."
+
+"I think Big Abel did just right," said Betty, fearlessly.
+
+The old gentleman squared himself to fix her with his weak red eyes.
+
+"Oh, you're just the same," he returned pettishly, "just the same."
+
+"But I don't steal your chickens, sir," protested the girl, laughing.
+
+The Major grunted and looked down at her in angry silence; then his face
+relaxed and a frosty smile played about his lips.
+
+"You are young, my child," he replied, in a kind of austere sadness, "and
+youth is always an enemy to the old--to the old," he repeated quietly, and
+looked at his wrinkled hand.
+
+But in the excitement of the next autumn, he showed for a time a revival of
+his flagging spirit. When the elections came he followed them with an
+absorption that had in it all the violence of a mental malady. The four
+possible Presidents that stood before the people were drawn for him in bold
+lines of black and white--the outward and visible distinction between, on
+the one side, the three "adventurers" whom he heartily opposed, and, on the
+other, the "Kentucky gentleman," for whom he as heartily voted. There was
+no wavering in his convictions--no uncertainty; he was troubled by no
+delicate shades of indecision. What he believed, and that alone, was
+God-given right; what he did not believe, with all things pertaining to it,
+was equally God-forsaken error.
+
+Toward the Governor, when the people's choice was known, he displayed a
+resentment that was almost touching in its simplicity.
+
+"There's a man who would tear the last rag of honour from the Old
+Dominion," he remarked, in speaking of his absent neighbour.
+
+"Ah, Major," sighed the rector, for it was upon one of his weekly visits,
+"what course would you have us gird our loins to pursue?"
+
+"Course?" promptly retorted the Major. "Why, the course of courage, sir."
+
+The rector shook his great head. "My dear friend, I fear you recognize the
+virtue only when she carries the battle-axe," he observed.
+
+For a moment the Major glared at him; then, restrained by his inherited
+reverence for the pulpit, he yielded the point with the soothing
+acknowledgment that he was always "willing to make due allowance for
+ministers of the gospel."
+
+"My dear sir," gasped Mr. Blake, as his jaw dropped. His face showed
+plainly that so professional an allowance was exactly what he did not take
+to be his due; but he let sleeping dangers lie, and it was not until a
+fortnight later, when he rode out with a copy of the _Charleston Mercury_
+and the news of the secession of South Carolina, that he found the daring
+to begin a direct approach.
+
+It was a cold, bright evening in December, and the Major unfolded the paper
+and read it by the firelight, which glimmered redly on the frosted window
+panes. When he had finished, he looked over the fluttering sheet into the
+pale face of the rector, and waited breathlessly for the first decisive
+words.
+
+"May she depart in peace," said the minister, in a low voice.
+
+The old gentleman drew a long breath, and, in the cheerful glow, the other,
+looking at him, saw his weak red eyes fill with tears. Then he took out his
+handkerchief, shook it from its folds, and loudly blew his nose.
+
+"It was the Union our fathers made, Mr. Blake," he said.
+
+"And the Union you fought for, Major," returned the rector.
+
+"In two wars, sir," he glanced down at his arm as if he half expected to
+see a wound, "and I shall never fight for another," he added with a sigh.
+"My fighting days are over."
+
+They were both silent, and the logs merrily crackled on the great brass
+andirons, while the flames went singing up the chimney. A glass of Burgundy
+was at the rector's hand, and he lifted it from the silver tray and sipped
+it as he waited. At last the old man spoke, bending forward from his
+station upon the hearth-rug.
+
+"You haven't seen Peyton Ambler, I reckon?"
+
+"I passed him coming out of town and he was trembling like a leaf," replied
+the rector. "He looks badly, by the way. I must remember to tell the doctor
+he needs building up."
+
+"He didn't speak about this, eh?"
+
+"About South Carolina? Oh, yes, he spoke, sir. It happened that Jack Powell
+came up with him when I did--the boy was cheering with all his might, and I
+heard him ask the Governor if he questioned the right of the state to
+secede?"
+
+"And Peyton said, sir?" The Major leaned eagerly toward him.
+
+"He said," pursued the rector, laughing softly. "'God forbid, my boy, that
+I should question the right of any man or any country to pursue folly.'"
+
+"Folly!" cried the Major, sharply, firing at the first sign of opposition.
+"It was a brave deed, sir, a brave deed--and I--yes, I envy the honour for
+Virginia. And as for Peyton Ambler, it is my belief that it is he who has
+sapped the courage of the state. Why, my honest opinion is that there are
+not fifty men in Virginia with the spirit to secede--and they are women."
+
+The rector laughed and tapped his wine-glass.
+
+"You mustn't let that reach Mrs. Lightfoot's ears, Major," he cautioned,
+"for I happen to know that she prides herself upon being what the papers
+call a 'skulker.'" He stopped and rose heavily to his feet, for, at this
+point, the door was opened by Cupid and the old lady rustled stiffly into
+the room.
+
+"I came down to tell you, Mr. Lightfoot, that you really must not allow
+yourself to become excited," she explained, when the rector had comfortably
+settled her upon the hearth-rug.
+
+"Pish! tush! my dear, there's not a cooler man in Virginia," replied the
+Major, frowning; but for the rest of the evening he brooded in troubled
+silence in his easy chair.
+
+In February, a week after a convention of the people was called at
+Richmond, the old gentleman surrendered to a sharp siege of the gout, and
+through the long winter days he sat, red and querulous, before the library
+fire, with his bandaged foot upon the ottoman that wore Aunt Emmeline's
+wedding dress. From Leicesterburg a stanch Union man had gone to the
+convention; and the Major still resented the selection of his neighbours as
+bitterly as if it were an affront to aspirations of his own.
+
+"Dick Powell! Pooh! he's another Peyton Ambler," he remarked testily, "and
+on my word there're too many of his kind--too many of his kind. What we
+lack, sir, is men of spirit."
+
+When his friends came now he shot his angry questions, like bullets, from
+the fireside. "Haven't they done anything yet, eh? How much longer do you
+reckon that roomful of old women will gabble in Richmond? Why, we might as
+well put a flock of sheep to decide upon a measure!"
+
+But the "roomful of old women" would not be hurried, and the Major grew
+almost hoarse with scolding. For more than two months, while North and
+South barked at each other across her borders, Virginia patiently and
+fruitlessly worked for peace; and for more than two months the Major
+writhed a prisoner upon the hearth.
+
+With the coming of the spring his health mended, and on an April morning,
+when Betty and the Governor drove over for a quiet chat, they found him
+limping painfully up and down the drive with the help of a great
+gold-knobbed walking-stick.
+
+He greeted them cordially, and limped after them into the library where
+Mrs. Lightfoot sat knitting. While he slowly settled his foot, in its loose
+"carpet" slipper, upon the ottoman, he began a rambling story of the War of
+1812, recalling with relish a time when rations grew scant in camp, and
+"Will Bolling and myself set out to scour the country." His thoughts had
+made a quick spring backward, and in the midst of events that fired the
+Governor's blood, he could still fondly dwell upon the battles of his
+youth.
+
+The younger man, facing him upon the hearth, listened with his patient
+courtesy, and put in a sympathetic word at intervals. No personal anxiety
+could cloud his comely face, nor any grievance of his own sharpen the edge
+of his peculiar suavity. It was only when he rose to go that he voiced, for
+a single instant, his recognition of the general danger, and replied to the
+Major's inquiry about his health with the remark, "Ah, grave times make
+grave faces, sir."
+
+Then he bowed over Mrs. Lightfoot's hand, and with his arm about Betty went
+out to the carriage.
+
+"The Major's an old man, daughter," he observed, as they rolled rapidly
+back to Uplands.
+
+"You mean he has broken--" said Betty, and stopped short.
+
+"Since Dan went away." As the Governor completed her sentence, he turned
+and looked thoughtfully into her face. "It's hard to judge the young, my
+dear, but--" he broke off as Betty had done, and added after a pause, "I
+wonder where he is now?"
+
+Betty raised her eyes and met his look. "I do not know," she answered, "but
+I do know that he will come back;" and the Governor, being wise in his
+generation, said nothing more.
+
+That afternoon he went down into the country to inspect a decayed
+plantation which had come into his hands, and returning two days later, he
+rode into Leicesterburg and up to the steps of the little post-office,
+where, as usual, the neighbouring farmers lounged while they waited for an
+expected despatch, or discussed the midday mail with each newcomer. It was
+April weather, and the afternoon sunshine, having scattered the loose
+clouds in the west, slanted brightly down upon the dusty street, the little
+whitewashed building, and the locust tree in full bloom before the porch.
+
+When he had dismounted, the Governor tied his horse to the long white pole,
+raised for that purpose along the sidewalk, and went slowly up the steps,
+shaking a dozen outstretched hands before he reached the door.
+
+"What news, gentlemen?" he asked with his pleasant smile. "For two days I
+have been beyond the papers."
+
+"Then there's news enough, Governor," responded several voices, uniting in
+a common excitement. "There's news enough since Tuesday, and yet we're
+waiting here for more. The President has called for troops from Virginia to
+invade the South."
+
+"To invade the South," repeated the Governor, paling, and a man behind him
+took up the words and said them over with a fine sarcasm, "To invade the
+South!"
+
+The Governor turned away and walked to the end of the little porch, where
+he stood leaning upon the railing. With his eyes on the blossoming locust
+tree, he waited, in helpless patience, for the words to enter into his
+thoughts and to readjust his conceptions of the last few months. There
+slowly came to him, as he recognized the portentous gravity in the air
+about him, something of the significance of that ringing call; and as he
+stood there he saw before him the vision of an army led by strangers
+against the people of its blood--of an army wasting the soil it loved,
+warring for an alien right against the convictions it clung to and the
+faith it cherished.
+
+His brow darkened, and he turned with set lips to the group upon the steps.
+He was about to speak, but before the words were uttered, there was a cheer
+from the open doorway, and a man, waving a despatch in his hand, came
+running into the crowd.
+
+"Last night there was a secret session," he cried gayly, "and Virginia has
+seceded! hurrah! hurrah! Virginia has seceded!" The gay voice passed, and
+the speaker, still waving the paper in his hand, ran down into the street.
+
+The men upon the porch looked at one another, and were silent. In the
+bright sunshine their faces showed pale and troubled, and when the sound of
+cheers came floating from the courthouse green, they started as if at the
+first report of cannon. Then, raising his hand, the Governor bared his head
+and spoke:--
+
+"God bless Virginia, gentlemen," he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next week Champe came home from college, flushed with enthusiasm, eager
+to test his steel.
+
+"It's great news, uncle," were his first joyful words, as he shook the
+Major's hand.
+
+"That it is, my boy, that it is," chuckled the Major, in a high
+good-humour.
+
+"I'm going, you know," went on the young man lightly. "They're getting up a
+company in Leicesterburg, and I'm to be Captain. I got a letter about it a
+week ago, and I've been studying like thunder ever since."
+
+"Well, well, it will be a pleasant little change for you," responded the
+old man. "There's nothing like a few weeks of war to give one an appetite."
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot looked up from her knitting with a serious face.
+
+"Don't you think it may last months, Mr. Lightfoot?" she inquired
+dubiously. "I was wondering if I hadn't better supply Champe with extra
+underclothing."
+
+"Tut-tut, ma'am," protested the Major, warmly. "Can't you leave such things
+as war to my judgment? Haven't I been in two? Months! Nonsense! Why, in two
+weeks we'll sweep every Yankee in the country as far north as Greenland.
+Two weeks will be ample time, ma'am."
+
+"Well, I give them six months," generously remarked Champe, in defiance of
+the Major's gathering frown.
+
+"And what do you know about it, sir?" demanded the old gentleman. "Were you
+in the War of 1812? Were you even in the Mexican War, sir?"
+
+"Well, hardly," replied Champe, smiling, "but all the same I give them six
+months to get whipped."
+
+"I'm sure I hope it will be over before winter," observed Mrs. Lightfoot,
+glancing round. "Things will be a little upset, I fear."
+
+The Major twitched with anger. "There you go again--both of you!" he
+exclaimed. "I might suppose after all these years you would place some
+reliance on my judgment; but, no, you will keep up your croaking until our
+troops are dictating terms at Washington. Six months! Tush!"
+
+"Professor Bates thinks it will take a year," returned Champe, his interest
+overleaping his discretion.
+
+"And when did he fight, sir?" inquired the Major.
+
+"Well, any way, it's safer to prepare for six months," was Champe's
+rejoinder. "I shouldn't like to run short of things, you know."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the kind, sir," thundered the Major. "It's going to
+be a two weeks' war, and you shall take an outfit for two weeks, or stay at
+home! By God, sir, if you contradict me again I'll not let you go to fight
+the Yankees."
+
+Champe stared for an instant into the inflamed face of the old gentleman,
+and then his cheery smile broke out.
+
+"That settles it, uncle," he said soothingly. "It's to be a war of two
+weeks, and I'll come home a Major-general before the holidays."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THIRD
+
+THE SCHOOL OF WAR
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+HOW MERRY GENTLEMEN WENT TO WAR
+
+
+The July sun fell straight and hot upon the camp, and Dan, as he sat on a
+woodpile and ate a green apple, wistfully cast his eyes about for a deeper
+shade. But the young tree from which he had just shaken its last fruit
+stood alone between the scattered tents and the blur of willows down the
+gentle slope, and beneath its speckled shadow the mess had gathered
+sleepily, after the mid-day meal.
+
+In the group of privates, stretched under the gauzy shade on the trampled
+grass, the first thing to strike an observer would have been, perhaps,
+their surprising youth. They were all young--the eldest hardly more than
+three and twenty--and the faces bore a curious resemblance in type, as if
+they were, one and all, variations from a common stock. There was about
+them, too, a peculiar expression of enthusiasm, showing even in the faces
+of those who slept; a single wave of emotion which, rising to its height in
+an entire people revealed itself in the features of the individual soldier.
+As yet the flower of the South had not withered on its stalk, and the men
+first gathered to defend the borders were men who embraced a cause as
+fervently as they would embrace a woman; men in whom the love of an
+abstract principle became, not a religion, but a romantic passion.
+
+Beyond them, past the scattered tents and the piles of clean straw, the
+bruised grass of the field swept down to a little stream and the fallen
+stones that had once marked off the turnpike. Farther away, there was a
+dark stretch of pines relieved against the faint blue tracery of the
+distant mountains.
+
+Dan, sitting in the thin shelter on the woodpile, threw a single glance at
+the strip of pines, and brought back his gaze to Big Abel who was splitting
+an oak log hard by. The work had been assigned to the master, who had, in
+turn, tossed it to the servant, with the remark that he "came out to kill
+men, not to cut wood."
+
+"I say, Big Abel, this sun's blazing hot," he now offered cheerfully.
+
+Big Abel paused for a moment and wiped his brow with his blue cotton
+sleeve.
+
+"Dis yer ain' no oak, caze it's w'it-leather," he rejoined in an injured
+tone, as he lifted the axe and sent it with all his might into the
+shivering log, which threw out a shower of fine chips. The powerful stroke
+brought into play the negro's splendid muscles, and Dan, watching him,
+carelessly observed to a young fellow lying half asleep upon the ground,
+"Big Abel could whip us all, Bland, if he had a mind to."
+
+Bland grunted and opened his eyes; then he yawned, stretched his arms, and
+sat up against the logs. He was bright and boyish-looking, with a frank
+tanned face, which made his curling flaxen hair seem almost white.
+
+"I worked like a darky hauling yesterday," he said reproachfully, "but when
+your turn comes, you climb a woodpile and pass the job along. When we go
+into battle I suppose Dandy and you will sit down to boil coffee, and hand
+your muskets to the servants."
+
+"Oh, are we ever going into battle?" growled Jack Powell from the other
+side. "Here I've been at this blamed drilling until I'm stiff in every
+joint, and I haven't seen so much as the tail end of a fight. You may rant
+as long as you please about martial glory, but if there's any man who
+thinks it's fun merely to get dirty and eat raw food, well, he's welcome to
+my share of it, that's all. I haven't had so much as one of the necessities
+of life since I settled down in this old field; even my hair has taken to
+standing on end. I say, Beau, do you happen to have any pomade about you?
+Oh, you needn't jeer, Bland, there's no danger of your getting bald, with
+that sheepskin over your scalp; and, besides, I'm willing enough to
+sacrifice my life for my country. I object only to giving it my hair
+instead."
+
+"I believe you'll find a little in my knapsack," gravely replied Dan, to be
+assailed on the spot by a chorus of comic demands.
+
+"I say, Beau, have you any rouge on hand? I'm growing pale. Please drop a
+little cologne on this handkerchief, my boy. May I borrow your powder puff?
+I've been sitting in the sun. Don't you want that gallon of stale
+buttermilk to take your tan off, Miss Nancy?"
+
+"Oh, shut up!" cried Dan, sharply; "if you choose to turn pigs simply
+because you've come out to do a little fighting, I've nothing to say
+against it; but I prefer to remain a gentleman, that's all."
+
+"He prefers to remain a gentleman, that's all," chanted the chorus round
+the apple tree.
+
+"And I'll knock your confounded heads off, if you keep this up," pursued
+Dan furiously.
+
+"And he'll knock our confounded heads off, if we keep this up," shouted the
+chorus in a jubilant refrain.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you one thing," remarked Jack Powell, feeling his
+responsibility in the matter of the pomade. "All I've got to say is, if
+this is what you call war, it's a pretty stale business. The next time I
+want to be frisky, I'll volunteer to pass the lemonade at a Sunday-school
+picnic."
+
+"And has anybody called it war, Dandy?" inquired Bland, witheringly.
+
+"Well, somebody might, you know," replied Jack, opening his fine white
+shirt at the neck, "did I hear you call it war, Kemper?" he asked politely,
+as he punched a stout sleeper beside him.
+
+Kemper started up and aimed a blow at vacancy. "Oh, you heard the devil!"
+he retorted.
+
+"I beg your pardon; it was mistaken identity," returned Jack suavely.
+
+"Look here, my lad, don't fool with Kemper when he's hot," cautioned Bland,
+"He's red enough to fire those bales of straw. I say, Kemper, may I light
+my pipe at your face?"
+
+"Shut up, now, or he'll be puffing round here like a steam engine," said a
+small dark man named Baker, "let smouldering fires lie on a day like this.
+Give me a light, Dandy."
+
+Jack Powell held out his cigar, and then, leaning back against the tree,
+blew a cloud of smoke about his head.
+
+"I'll be blessed if I don't think seven hours' drill is too much of a bad
+thing," he plaintively remarked; "and I may as well add, by the bye, that
+the next time I go to war, I intend to go in the character of a
+Major-general."
+
+"Make it Commander-in-chief. Don't be too modest, my boy."
+
+"Well, you may laugh if you like," pursued Jack, "but between you and me,
+it was all the fault of those girls at home--they have an idea that
+patriotism never trims its sleeves, you know. On my word, I might have been
+Captain of the Leicesterburg Guards after Champe Lightfoot joined the
+cavalry; but such averted looks were turned from me by the ladies, that I
+had to jump into the ranks merely to reinstate myself in their regard. They
+made even Governor Ambler volunteer as a private, I believe, but he was
+lucky and got made a Colonel instead."
+
+Bland laughed softly.
+
+"That reminds me of our Colonel," he observed. "I overheard him talking to
+himself the other day, and he said: 'All I ask is not to be in command of a
+volunteer regiment in hell.'"
+
+"Oh, he won't," put in Dan; "all the volunteers will be in heaven--unless
+they're sent down below because they were too big fools to join the
+cavalry."
+
+"Then, in heaven's name, why didn't you join the cavalry?" inquired Baker.
+
+Dan looked at him a moment, and then threw the apple core at a water bucket
+that stood upside down upon the grass. "Well, I couldn't go on my own
+horse, you see," he replied, "and I wouldn't go on the Government's. I
+don't ride hacks."
+
+"So you came into the infantry to get court-martialled," remarked Bland.
+"The captain said down the valley, you'll remember, that if the war lasted
+a month, you'd be court-martialled for disobedience on the thirtieth day."
+
+Dan growled under his breath. "Well, I didn't enter the army to be hectored
+by any fool who comes along," he returned. "Look at that fellow Jones, now.
+He thinks because he happens to be Lieutenant that he's got a right to
+forget that I'm a gentleman and he's not. Why, the day before we came up
+here, he got after me at drill about being out of step, or some little
+thing like that; and, by George, to hear him roar you'd have thought that
+war wasn't anything but monkeying round with a musket. Why, the rascal came
+from my part of the country, and his father before him wasn't fit to black
+my boots."
+
+"Did you knock him down?" eagerly inquired Bland.
+
+"I told him to take off his confounded finery and I would," answered Dan.
+"So when drill was over, we went off behind a tent, and I smashed his nose.
+He's no coward, I'll say that for him, and when the Captain told him he
+looked as if he'd been fighting, he laughed and said he had had 'a little
+personal encounter with the enemy.'"
+
+"Well, I'm willing enough to do battle for my country," said Jack Powell,
+"but I'll be blessed if I'm going to have my elbow jogged by the poor white
+trash while I'm doing it."
+
+"He was scolding at us yesterday because when we were detailed to clean out
+the camp, we gave the order to the servants," put in Baker. "Clean out the
+camp! Does he think my grandmother was a chambermaid?" He suddenly broke
+off and helped himself to a drink of water from a dripping bucket that a
+tall mountaineer was passing round the group.
+
+"Been to the creek, Pinetop?" he asked good-humouredly.
+
+The mountaineer, who had won his title from his great height, towering as
+he did above every man in the company, nodded drowsily as he settled
+himself upon the ground. He was lithe and hardy as a young hickory, and his
+abundant hair was of the colour of ripe wheat. At the call to arms he had
+come, with long strides, down from his bare little cabin in the Blue Ridge,
+bringing with him a flintlock musket, a corncob pipe, and a stockingful of
+Virginia tobacco. Since the day of his arrival, he had accepted the pointed
+jokes of the mess into which he had drifted, with grave lips and a flicker
+of his calm blue eyes. They had jeered him unmercifully, and he had
+regarded them with serene and wondering attention. "I say, Pinetop, is it
+raining up where you are?" a wit had put to him on the first day, and he
+had looked down and answered placidly:--
+
+"Naw, it's cl'ar."
+
+As he sat down in the group beside the woodpile, Bland tossed him the
+latest paper, but carefully folding it into a square, he laid it aside, and
+stretched himself upon the brown grass.
+
+"This here's powerful weather for sweatin'," he pleasantly observed, as he
+pulled a mullein leaf from the foot of the apple tree and placed it over
+his eyes. Then he turned over and in a moment was sleeping as quietly as a
+child.
+
+Dan got down from the logs and stood thoughtfully staring in the direction
+of the happy little town lying embosomed in green hills. That little town
+gave to him, as he stood there in the noon heat, a memory of deep gardens
+filled with fragrance, of open houses set in blue shadows, and of the
+bright fluttering of Confederate flags. For a moment he looked toward it
+down the hot road; then, with a sigh, he turned away and wandered off to
+seek the outside shadow of a tent.
+
+As he flung himself down in the strip of shade, his gaze went longingly to
+the dim chain of mountains which showed like faint blue clouds against the
+sky, while his thoughts returned, as a sick man's, to the clustered elm
+boughs and the smooth lawn at Chericoke, and to Betty blooming like a
+flower in a network of sun and shade.
+
+The memory was so vivid that when he closed his eyes it was almost as if he
+heard the tapping of the tree-tops against the roof, and felt the pleasant
+breeze blowing over the sweet-smelling meadows. He looked, through his
+closed eyes, into the dim old house, seeing the rustling grasses in the
+great blue jar and their delicate shadow trembling on the pure white wall.
+There was the tender hush about it that belongs to the memories of dead
+friends or absent places; a hush that was reverent as a Sabbath calm. He
+saw the shining swords of the Major and the Major's father; the rear door
+with the microphylla roses nodding upon the lintel, and, high above all,
+the shadowy bend of the staircase, with Betty standing there in her cool
+blue gown.
+
+He opened his eyes with a start, and pillowing his head on his arm, lay
+looking off into the burning distance. A bee, straying from a field of
+clover across the road, buzzed, for a moment, round his face, and then
+knocked, with a flapping noise, against the canvas tent. Far away, beyond
+the murmur of the camp, he heard a partridge whistling in a tangled meadow;
+and at the same instant his own name called through the sunlight.
+
+"I say, Beau, Beau, where are you?" He sat up, and shouted in response, and
+Jack Powell came hurriedly round the tent to fling himself down upon the
+beaten grass.
+
+"Oh, you don't know what you missed!" he cried, chuckling. "You didn't stay
+long enough to hear the joke on Bland."
+
+"I hope it's a fresh one," was Dan's response. "If it's that old thing
+about the mule and the darky, I may as well say in the beginning that I
+heard it in the ark."
+
+"Oh, it's new, old man. He made the mistake of trying to get some fun out
+of Pinetop, and he got more than he bargained for, that's all. He began to
+tease him about those blue jean trousers he carries in his knapsack. You've
+seen them, I reckon?"
+
+Dan nodded as he chewed idly at a blade of grass. "I tried to get him to
+throw them away yesterday," he said, "and he did go so far as to haul them
+out and look them over; but after meditating a half hour, he packed them
+away again and declared there was 'a sight of wear left in them still.' He
+told me if he ever made up his mind to get rid of them, and peace should
+come next day, he'd never forgive himself."
+
+"Well, I warned Bland not to meddle with him," pursued Jack, "but he got
+bored and set in to make things lively. 'Look here, Pinetop,' he began,
+'will you do me the favour to give me the name of the tailor who made your
+blue jeans?' and, bless your life, Pinetop just took the mullein leaf from
+his eyes, and sang out 'Maw.' That was what Bland wanted, of course, so,
+without waiting for the danger signal, he plunged in again. 'Then if you
+don't object I should be glad to have the pattern of them,' he went on, as
+smooth as butter. 'I want them to wear when I go home again, you know. Why,
+they're just the things to take a lady's eye--they have almost the fit of a
+flour-sack--and the ladies are fond of flour, aren't they?' The whole crowd
+was waiting, ready to howl at Pinetop's answer, and, sure enough, he raised
+himself on his elbow, and drawled out in his sing-song tone: 'I say, Sonny,
+ain't yo' Maw done put you into breeches yit?'"
+
+"It serves him right," said Dan sternly, "and that's what I like about
+Pinetop, Jack, there's no ruffling him." He brushed off the bee that had
+fallen on his head, and dodged as it angrily flew back again.
+
+"Some of the boys raised a row when he came into our mess," returned Jack,
+"but where every man's fighting for his country, we're all equal, say I.
+What makes me dog-tired, though, is the airs some of these fool officers
+put on; all this talk about an 'officer's mess' now, as if a man is too
+good to eat with me who wouldn't dare to sit down to my table if he had on
+civilian's clothes. It's all bosh, that's what it is."
+
+He got up and strolled off with his grievance, and Dan, stretching himself
+upon the ground, looked across the hills, to the far mountains where the
+shadows thickened.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE DAY'S MARCH
+
+
+In the gray dawn tents were struck, and five days' rations were issued with
+the marching orders. As Dan packed his knapsack with trembling hands, he
+saw men stalking back and forth like gigantic shadows, and heard the hoarse
+shouting of the company officers through the thick fog which had rolled
+down from the mountains. There was a persistent buzz in the air, as if a
+great swarm of bees had settled over the misty valley. Each man was asking
+unanswerable questions of his neighbour.
+
+At a little distance Big Abel, with several of the company "darkies" was
+struggling energetically over the property of the mess, storing the cooking
+utensils into a stout camp chest, which the strength of several men would
+lift, when filled, into the wagon. Bland, who had just tossed his overcoat
+across to them, turned abruptly upon Dan, and demanded warmly "what had
+become of his case of razors?"
+
+"Where are we going?" was Dan's response, as he knelt down to roll up his
+oilcloth and blanket. "By Jove, it looks as if we'd gobble up Patterson for
+breakfast!"
+
+"I say, where's my case of razors?" inquired Bland, with irritation. "They
+were lying here a moment ago, and now they're gone. Dandy, have you got my
+razors?"
+
+"Look here, Beau, what are you going to leave behind?" asked Kemper over
+Bland's shoulder.
+
+"Leave behind? Why, dull care," rejoined Dan gayly. "By the way, Pinetop,
+why don't you save your appetite for Patterson's dainties?"
+
+Pinetop, who was leisurely eating his breakfast of "hardtack" and bacon,
+took a long draught from his tin cup, and replied, as he wiped his mouth on
+his shirt sleeve, that he "reckoned thar wouldn't be any trouble about
+finding room for them, too." The general gayety was reflected in his face;
+he laughed as he bit deeply into his half-cooked bacon.
+
+Dan stood up and nervously strapped on his knapsack; then he swung his
+canteen over his shoulder and carefully tightened his belt. His face was
+flushed, and when he spoke his voice quivered with emotion. It seemed to
+him that the delay of every instant was a reckless waste of time, and he
+trembled at the thought that the enemy might be preparing to fall upon them
+unawares; that while the camp was swarming like an ant's nest, Patterson
+and his men might be making good use of the fleeting moments.
+
+"Why the devil don't we move? We ought to move," he said angrily, as he
+glanced round the crowded field where the men were arraying themselves in
+all the useless trappings of the Southern volunteer. Kemper was busily
+placing his necessary toilet articles in his haversack, having thrown away
+half his rations for the purpose; Jack Powell, completely dressed for the
+march, was examining his heavy revolver, with the conscious pride a field
+officer might have felt in his sword. As he stuck it into his belt, he
+straightened himself with a laugh and jauntily set his small cap on his
+curling hair; he was clean, comely, and smooth-shaven as if he had just
+stepped from a hot bath and the hands of his barber.
+
+"You may roll Dandy in the dust and he'll come out washed," Baker had once
+forcibly remarked.
+
+"I say, boys, why don't we start?" persisted Dan impatiently, flicking with
+his handkerchief at a grain of sand on his high boots. Then, as Big Abel
+brought him a cup of coffee, he drank it standing, casting eager glances
+over the rim of his cup. He had an odd feeling that it was all a great fox
+hunt they were soon to start upon; that they were waiting only for the
+calling of the hounds. The Major's fighting blood had stirred within his
+grandson's veins, and generations of dead Lightfoots were scenting the
+coming battle from the dust. When Dan thought now of the end to which he
+should presently be marching, it suggested to him but a quickened
+exhilaration of the pulses and an old engraving of "Waterloo," which hung
+on the dining-room wall at Chericoke. That was war; and he remembered
+vividly the childish thrill with which he had first looked up at it. He saw
+the prancing horses, the dramatic gestures of the generals with flowing
+hair, the blur of waving flags and naked swords. It was like a page torn
+from the eternal Romance; a page upon which he and his comrades should play
+heroic parts; and it was white blood, indeed, that did not glow with the
+hope of sharing in that picture; of hanging immortal in an engraving on the
+wall.
+
+The "fall in" of the sergeant was already sounding from the road, and, with
+a last glance about the field, Dan ran down the gentle slope and across the
+little stream to take his place in the ranks of the forming column. An
+officer on a milk-white horse was making frantic gestures to the line, and
+the young man followed him an instant with his eyes. Then, as he stood
+there in the warm sunshine, he felt his impatience prick him like a needle.
+He wanted to push forward the regiments in front of him, to start in any
+direction--only to start. The suppressed excitement of the fox hunt was
+upon him, and the hoarse voices of the officers thrilled him as if they
+were the baying of the hounds. He heard the musical jingle of moving
+cavalry, the hurried tread of feet in the soft dust, the smothered oaths of
+men who stumbled over the scattered stones. And, at last, when the sun
+stood high above, the long column swung off toward the south, leaving the
+enemy and the north behind it.
+
+"By God, we're running away," said Bland in a whisper. With the words the
+gayety passed suddenly from the army, and it moved slowly with the
+dispirited tread of beaten men. The enemy lay to the north, and it was
+marching to the south and home.
+
+As it passed through the fragrant streets of Winchester, women, with
+startled eyes, ran from open doors into the deep old gardens, and watched
+it over the honeysuckle hedges. Under the fluttering flags, past the long
+blue shadows, with the playing of the bands and the clatter of the
+canteens--on it went into the white dust and the sunshine. From a wide
+piazza, a group of schoolgirls pelted the troops with roses, and as Dan
+went by he caught a white bud and stuck it into his cap. He looked back
+laughing, to meet the flash of laughing eyes; then the gray line swept out
+upon the turnpike and went down the broad road through the smooth green
+fields, over which the sunlight lay like melted gold.
+
+Dan, walking between Pinetop and Jack Powell, felt a sudden homesickness
+for the abandoned camp, which they were leaving with the gay little town
+and the red clay forts, naked to the enemy's guns. He saw the branching
+apple tree, the burned-out fires, the silvery fringe of willows by the
+stream; and he saw the men in blue already in possession of his woodpile,
+broiling their bacon by the logs that Big Abel had cut.
+
+At the end of three miles the brigades abruptly halted, and he listened,
+looking at the ground, to an order, which was read by a slim young officer
+who pulled nervously at his moustache. Down the column came a single
+ringing cheer, and, without waiting for the command, the men pushed eagerly
+forward along the road. What was a forced march of thirty miles to an army
+that had never seen a battle?
+
+As they went on a boyish merriment tripped lightly down the turnpike; jests
+were shouted, a wit began to tease a mounted officer who was trying to
+reach the front, and somebody with a tenor voice was singing "Dixie." A
+stray countryman, sitting upon the wall of loose stones, was greeted
+affectionately by each passing company. He was a big, stupid-looking man,
+with a gray fowl hanging, head downward, from his hand, and as he responded
+"Howdy," in an expressionless tone, the fowl craned its long neck upward
+and pecked at the creeper on the wall.
+
+"Howdy, Jim!" "Howdy, Peter!" "Howdy, Luke!" sang the first line. "How's
+your wife?" "How's your wife's mother?" "How's your sister-in-law's uncle?"
+inquired the next. The countryman spat into the ditch and stared solemnly
+in reply, and the gray fowl, still craning its neck, pecked steadily at the
+leaves upon the stones.
+
+Dan looked up into the blue sky, across the open meadows to the far-off low
+mountains, and then down the long turnpike where the dust hung in a yellow
+cloud. In the bright sunshine he saw the flash of steel and the glitter of
+gold braid, and the noise of tramping feet cheered him like music as he
+walked on gayly, filled with visions. For was he not marching to his chosen
+end--to victory, to Chericoke--to Betty? Or if the worst came to the
+worst--well, a man had but one life, after all, and a life was a little
+thing to give his country. Then, as always, his patriotism appealed to him
+as a romance rather than a religion--the fine Southern ardour which had
+sent him, at the first call, into the ranks, had sprung from an inward, not
+an outward pressure. The sound of the bugle, the fluttering of the flags,
+the flash of hot steel in the sunlight, the high old words that stirred
+men's pulses--these things were his by blood and right of heritage. He
+could no more have stifled the impulse that prompted him to take a side in
+any fight than he could have kept his heart cool beneath the impassioned
+voice of a Southern orator. The Major's blood ran warm through many
+generations.
+
+"I say, Beau, did you put a millstone in my knapsack?" inquired Bland
+suddenly. His face was flushed, and there was a streak of wet dust across
+his forehead. "If you did, it was a dirty joke," he added irritably. Dan
+laughed. "Now that's odd," he replied, "because there's one in mine also,
+and, moreover, somebody has stuck penknives in my boots. Was it you,
+Pinetop?"
+
+But the mountaineer shook his head in silence, and then, as they halted to
+rest upon the roadside, he flung himself down beneath the shadow of a
+sycamore, and raised his canteen to his lips. He had come leisurely at his
+long strides, and as Dan looked at him lying upon the short grass by the
+wall, he shook his own roughened hair, in impatient envy. "Why, you've
+stood it like a Major, Pinetop," he remarked.
+
+Pinetop opened his eyes. "Stood what?" he drawled.
+
+"Why, this heat, this dust, this whole confounded march. I don't believe
+you've turned a hair, as Big Abel says."
+
+"Good Lord," said Pinetop. "I don't reckon you've ever ploughed up hill
+with a steer team."
+
+Without replying, Dan unstrapped his knapsack and threw it upon the
+roadside. "What doesn't go in my haversack, doesn't go, that's all," he
+observed. "How about you, Dandy?"
+
+"Oh, I threw mine away a mile after starting," returned Jack Powell, "my
+luxuries are with a girl I left behind me. I've sacrificed everything to
+the cause except my toothbrush, and, by Jove, if the weight of that goes on
+increasing, I shall be forced to dispense with it forever. I got rid of my
+rations long ago. Pinetop says a man can't starve in blackberry season, and
+I hope he's right. Anyway, the Lord will provide--or he won't, that's
+certain."
+
+"Is this the reward of faith, I wonder?" said Dan, as he looked at a lame
+old negro who wheeled a cider cart and a tray of green apple pies down a
+red clay lane that branched off under thick locust trees. "This way, Uncle,
+here's your man."
+
+The old negro slowly approached them to be instantly surrounded by the
+thirsty regiment.
+
+"Howdy, Marsters? howdy?" he began, pulling his grizzled hair. "Dese yer's
+right nice pies, dat dey is, suh."
+
+"Look here, Uncle, weren't they made in the ark, now?" inquired Bland
+jestingly, as he bit into a greasy crust.
+
+"De ark? naw, suh; my Mehaley she des done bake 'em in de cabin over
+yonder." He lifted his shrivelled hand and pointed, with a tremulous
+gesture, to a log hut showing among the distant trees.
+
+"What? are you a free man, Uncle?"
+
+"Free? Go 'way f'om yer! ain' you never hyearn tell er Marse Plunkett?"
+
+"Plunkett?" gravely repeated Bland, filling his canteen with cider. "Look
+here, stand back, boys, it's my turn now.--Plunkett--Plunkett--can I have a
+long-lost friend named Plunkett? Where is he, Uncle? has he gone to fight?"
+
+"Marse Plunkett? Naw, suh, he ain' fit nobody."
+
+"Well, you tell him from me that he'd better enlist at once," put in Jack
+Powell. "This isn't the time for skulkers, Uncle; he's on our side, isn't
+he?" The old negro shook his head, looking uneasily at the froth that
+dripped from the keg into the dust.
+
+"Naw, suh, Marse Plunkett, he's fur de Un'on, but he's pow'ful feared er de
+Yankees," he returned.
+
+Bland broke into a laugh. "Oh, come, that's downright treason," he
+protested merrily. "Your Marse Plunkett's a skulker sure enough, and you
+may tell him so with my compliments. You're on the Yankee side, too, I
+reckon, and there're bullets in these pies, sure as I live."
+
+The old man shuffled nervously on his bare feet.
+
+"Go 'way, Marster, w'at I know 'bout 'sides'?" he replied, tilting his keg
+to drain the last few drops into the canteen of a thirsty soldier. "I'se on
+de Lawd's side, dat's whar I is."
+
+He fell back startled, for the call of "Column, forward!" was shouted down
+the road, and in an instant the men had left the emptied cart, and were
+marching on into the sunny distance.
+
+As the afternoon lengthened the heat grew more oppressive. Straight ahead
+there was dust and sunshine and the ceaseless tramp, and on either side the
+fresh fields were scorched and whitened by a powdering of hot sand. Beyond
+the rise and dip of the hills, the mountains burned like blue flames on the
+horizon, and overhead the sky was hard as an inverted brazier.
+
+Dan had begun to limp, for his stiff boots galled his feet. His senses were
+blunted by the hot sand which filled his eyes and ears and nostrils, and
+there was a shimmer over all the broad landscape. When he shook his hair
+from his forehead, the dust floated slowly down and settled in a scorching
+ring about his neck.
+
+The day closed gradually, and as they neared the river, the mountains
+emerged from obscure outlines into wooded heights upon which the trees
+showed soft and gray in the sunset. A cool breath was blown through a strip
+of damp woodland, where the pale bodies of the sycamores were festooned in
+luxuriant vines, and from the twilight long shadows stretched across the
+red clay road. Then, as they went down a rocky slope, a fringe of willows
+appeared suddenly from the blur of green, and they saw the Shenandoah
+running between falling banks, with the colours of the sunset floating like
+pink flowers upon its breast.
+
+With a shout the front line plunged into the stream, holding its heavy
+muskets high above the current of the water, and filing upon the opposite
+bank, into a rough road which wound amid the ferns.
+
+Midway of the river, near the fording point, there was a little island
+which lay like a feathery tree-top upon the tinted water; and as Dan went
+by, he felt the brush of willows on his face and heard the soft lapping of
+the small waves upon the shore. The keen smell of the sycamores drifted to
+him from the bank that he had left, and straight up stream he saw a single
+peaked blue hill upon which a white cloud rested. For a moment he lingered,
+breathing in the fragrance, then the rear line pressed upon him, and,
+crossing rapidly, he stood on the rocky edge, shaking the water from his
+clothes. Out of the after-glow came the steady tramp of tired feet, and
+with aching limbs, he turned and hastened with the column into the mountain
+pass.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE REIGN OF THE BRUTE
+
+
+The noise of the guns rolled over the green hills into the little valley
+where the regiment had halted before a wayside spring, which lay hidden
+beneath a clump of rank pokeberry. As each company filled its canteens, it
+filed across the sunny road, from which the dust rose like steam, and stood
+resting in an open meadow that swept down into a hollow between two gently
+rising hills. From the spring a thin stream trickled, bordered by short
+grass, and the water, dashed from it by the thirsty men, gathered in
+shining puddles in the red clay road. By one of these puddles a man had
+knelt to wash his face, and as Dan passed, draining his canteen, he looked
+up with a sprinkling of brown drops on his forehead. Near him, unharmed by
+the tramping feet, a little purple flower was blooming in the mud.
+
+Dan gazed thoughtfully down upon him and upon the little purple flower in
+its dangerous spot. What did mud or dust matter, he questioned grimly, when
+in a breathing space they would be in the midst of the smoke that hung
+close above the hill-top? The sound of the cannon ceased suddenly, as
+abruptly as if the battery had sunk into the ground, and through the sunny
+air he heard a long rattle that reminded him of the fall of hail on the
+shingled roof at Chericoke. As his canteen struck against his side, it
+seemed to him that it met the resistance of a leaden weight. There was a
+lump in his throat and his lips felt parched, though the moisture from the
+fresh spring water was hardly dried. When he moved he was conscious of
+stepping high above the earth, as he had done once at college after an
+over-merry night and many wines.
+
+Straight ahead the sunshine lay hot and still over the smooth fields and
+the little hollow where a brook ran between marshy banks. High above he saw
+it flashing on the gray smoke that hung in tatters from the tree-tops on
+the hill.
+
+An ambulance, drawn by a white and a bay horse, turned gayly from the road
+into the meadow, and he saw, with surprise, that one of the surgeons was
+trimming his finger nails with a small penknife. The surgeon was a slight
+young man, with pointed yellow whiskers, and light blue eyes that squinted
+in the sunshine. As he passed he stifled a yawn with an elaborate
+affectation of unconcern.
+
+A man on horseback, with a white handkerchief tied above his collar,
+galloped up and spoke in a low voice to the Colonel. Then, as his horse
+reared, he glanced nervously about, grew embarrassed, and, with a sharp
+jerk of the bridle, galloped off again across the field. Presently other
+men rode back and forth along the road; there were so many of them that Dan
+wondered, bewildered, if anybody was left to make the battle beyond the
+hill.
+
+The regiment formed into line and started at "double quick" across the
+broad meadow powdered white with daisies. As it went into the ravine,
+skirting the hillside, a stream of men came toward it and passed slowly to
+the rear. Some were on stretchers, some were stumbling in the arms of
+slightly wounded comrades, some were merely warm and dirty and very much
+afraid. One and all advised the fresh regiment to "go home and finish
+ploughing." "The Yankees have got us on the hip," they declared
+emphatically. "Whoopee! it's as hot as hell where you're going." Then a
+boy, with a blood-stained sleeve, waved his shattered arm in the air and
+laughed deliriously. "Don't believe them, friends, it's glorious!" he
+cried, in the voice of the far South, and lurched forward upon the grass.
+
+The sight of the soaked shirt and the smell of blood turned Dan faint. He
+felt a sudden tremor in his limbs, and his arteries throbbed dully in his
+ears. "I didn't know it was like this," he muttered thickly. "Why, they're
+no better than mangled rabbits--I didn't know it was like this."
+
+They wound through the little ravine, climbed a hillside planted in thin
+corn, and were ordered to "load and lie down" in a strip of woodland. Dan
+tore at his cartridge with set teeth; then as he drove his ramrod home, a
+shell, thrown from a distant gun, burst in the trees above him, and a red
+flame ran, for an instant, along the barrel of his musket. He dodged
+quickly, and a rain of young pine needles fell in scattered showers from
+the smoked boughs overhead. Somewhere beside him a man was groaning in
+terror or in pain. "I'm hit, boys, by God, I'm hit this time." The groans
+changed promptly into a laugh. "Bless my soul! the plagued thing went right
+into the earth beneath me."
+
+"Damn you, it went into my leg," retorted a hoarse voice that fell suddenly
+silent.
+
+With a shiver Dan lay down on the carpet of rotted pine-cones and peered,
+like a squirrel, through the meshes of the brushwood. At first he saw only
+gray smoke and a long sweep of briers and broom-sedge, standing out dimly
+from an obscurity that was thick as dusk. Then came a clatter near at hand,
+and a battery swept at a long gallop across the thinned edge of the pines.
+So close it came that he saw the flashing white eyeballs and the spreading
+sorrel manes of the horses, and almost felt their hot breath upon his
+cheek. He heard the shouts of the outriders, the crack of the stout whips,
+the rattle of the caissons, and, before it passed, he had caught the
+excited gestures of the men upon the guns. The battery unlimbered, as he
+watched it, shot a few rounds from the summit of the hill, and retreated
+rapidly to a new position. When the wind scattered the heavy smoke, he saw
+only the broom-sedge and several ridges of poor corn; some of the gaunt
+stalks blackened and beaten to the ground, some still flaunting their brave
+tassels beneath the whistling bullets. It was all in sunlight, and the gray
+smoke swept ceaselessly to and fro over the smiling face of the field.
+
+Then, as he turned a little in his shelter, he saw that there was a single
+Confederate battery in position under a slight swell on his left. Beyond it
+he knew that the long slope sank gently into a marshy stream and the broad
+turnpike, but the brow of the hill went up against the sky, and hidden in
+the brushwood he could see only the darkened line of the horizon. Against
+it the guns stood there in the sunlight, unsupported, solitary, majestic,
+while around them the earth was tossed up in the air as if a loose plough
+had run wild across the field. A handful of artillerymen moved back and
+forth, like dim outlines, serving the guns in a group of fallen horses that
+showed in dark mounds upon the hill. From time to time he saw a rammer
+waved excitedly as a shot went home, or heard, in a lull, the hoarse voices
+of the gunners when they called for "grape!"
+
+As he lay there, with his eyes on the solitary battery, he forgot, for an
+instant, his own part in the coming work. A bullet cut the air above him,
+and a branch, clipped as by a razor's stroke, fell upon his head; but his
+nerves had grown steady and his thoughts were not of himself; he was
+watching, with breathless interest, for another of the gray shadows at the
+guns to go down among the fallen horses.
+
+Then, while he watched, he saw other batteries come out upon the hill; saw
+the cannon thrown into position and heard the call change from "grape!" to
+"canister!" On the edge of the pines a voice was speaking, and beyond the
+voice a man on horseback was riding quietly back and forth in the open.
+Behind him Jack Powell called out suddenly, "We're ready, Colonel Burwell!"
+and his voice was easy, familiar, almost affectionate.
+
+"I know it, boys!" replied the Colonel in the same tone, and Dan felt a
+quick sympathy spring up within him. At that instant he knew that he loved
+every man in the regiment beside him--loved the affectionate Colonel, with
+the sleepy voice, loved Pinetop, loved the lieutenant whose nose he had
+broken after drill.
+
+At a word he had leaped, with the others, to his feet, and stood drawn up
+for battle against the wood. Then it was that he saw the General of the day
+riding beside fluttering colours across the waste land to the crest of the
+hill. He was rallying the scattered brigades about the flag--so the fight
+had gone against them and gone badly, after all.
+
+Around him the men drifted back, frightened, straggling, defeated, and the
+broken ranks closed up slowly. The standards dipped for a moment before a
+sharp fire, and then, as the colour bearers shook out the bright folds,
+soared like great red birds' wings above the smoke.
+
+It seemed to Dan that he stood for hours motionless there against the
+pines. For a time the fight passed away from him, and he remembered a
+mountain storm which had caught him as a boy in the woods at Chericoke. He
+heard again the cloud burst overhead, the soughing of the pines and the
+crackling of dried branches as they came drifting down through interlacing
+boughs. The old childish terror returned to him, and he recalled his mad
+rush for light and space when he had doubled like a hare in the wooded
+twilight among the dim bodies of the trees. Then as now it was not the open
+that he feared, but the unseen horror of the shelter.
+
+Again the affectionate voice came from the sunlight and he gripped his
+musket as he started forward. He had caught only the last words, and he
+repeated them half mechanically, as he stepped out from the brushwood. Once
+again, when he stood on the trampled broom-sedge, he said them over with a
+nervous jerk, "Wait until they come within fifty yards--and, for God's
+sake, boys, shoot at the knees!"
+
+He thought of the jolly Colonel, and laughed hysterically. Why, he had been
+at that man's wedding--had kissed his bride--and now he was begging him to
+shoot at people's knees!
+
+With a cheer, the regiment broke from cover and swept forward toward the
+summit of the hill. Dan's foot caught in a blackberry vine, and he stumbled
+blindly. As he regained himself a shell ripped up the ground before him,
+flinging the warm clods of earth into his face. A "worm" fence at a little
+distance scattered beneath the fire, and as he looked up he saw the long
+rails flying across the field. For an instant he hesitated; then something
+that was like a nervous spasm shook his heart, and he was no more afraid.
+Over the blackberries and the broom-sedge, on he went toward the swirls of
+golden dust that swept upward from the bright green slope. If this was a
+battle, what was the old engraving? Where were the prancing horses and the
+uplifted swords?
+
+Something whistled in his ears and the air was filled with sharp sounds
+that set his teeth on edge. A man went down beside him and clutched at his
+boots as he ran past; but the smell of the battle--a smell of oil and
+smoke, of blood and sweat--was in his nostrils, and he could have kicked
+the stiff hands grasping at his feet. The hot old blood of his fathers had
+stirred again and the dead had rallied to the call of their descendant. He
+was not afraid, for he had been here long before.
+
+Behind him, and beside him, row after row of gray men leaped from the
+shadow--the very hill seemed rising to his support--and it was almost
+gayly, as the dead fighters lived again, that he went straight onward over
+the sunny field. He saw the golden dust float nearer up the slope, saw the
+brave flags unfurling in the breeze--saw, at last, man after man emerge
+from the yellow cloud. As he bent to fire, the fury of the game swept over
+him and aroused the sleeping brute within him. All the primeval instincts,
+throttled by the restraint of centuries--the instincts of bloodguiltiness,
+of hot pursuit, of the fierce exhilaration of the chase, of the death
+grapple with a resisting foe--these awoke suddenly to life and turned the
+battle scarlet to his eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two hours later, when the heavy clouds were smothering the sunset, he came
+slowly back across the field. A gripping nausea had seized upon him--a
+nausea such as he had known before after that merry night at college. His
+head throbbed, and as he walked he staggered like a drunken man. The
+revulsion of his overwrought emotions had thrown him into a state of
+sensibility almost hysterical.
+
+The battle-field stretched grimly round him, and as the sunset was blotted
+out, a gray mist crept slowly from the west. Here and there he saw men
+looking for the wounded, and he heard one utter an impatient "Pshaw!" as he
+lifted a half-cold body and let it fall. Rude stretchers went by him on
+either side, and still the field seemed as thickly sown as before; on the
+left, where a regiment of Zouaves had been cut down, there was a flash of
+white and scarlet, as if the loose grass was strewn with great tropical
+flowers. Among them he saw the reproachful eyes of dead and dying horses.
+
+Before him, on the gradual slope of the hill, stood a group of abandoned
+guns, and there was something almost human in the pathos of their utter
+isolation. Around them the ground was scorched and blackened, and scattered
+over the broken trails lay the men who had fallen at their post. He saw
+them lying there in the fading daylight, with the sponges and the rammers
+still in their hands, and he saw upon each man's face the look with which
+he had met and recognized the end. Some were smiling, some staring, and one
+lay grinning as if at a ghastly joke. Near him a boy, with the hair still
+damp on his forehead, had fallen upon an uprooted blackberry vine, and the
+purple stain of the berries was on his mouth. As Dan looked down upon him,
+the smell of powder and burned grass came to him with a wave of sickness,
+and turning he stumbled on across the field. At the first step his foot
+struck upon something hard, and, picking it up, he saw that it was a Minie
+ball, which, in passing through a man's spine, had been transformed into a
+mass of mingled bone and lead. With a gesture of disgust he dropped it and
+went on rapidly. A stretcher moved beside him, and the man on it, shot
+through the waist, was saying in a whisper, "It is cold--cold--so cold."
+Against his will, Dan found, he had fallen into step with the men who bore
+the stretcher, and together they kept time to the words of the wounded
+soldier who cried out ceaselessly that it was cold. On their way they
+passed a group on horseback and, standing near it, a handsome artilleryman,
+who wore a red flannel shirt with one sleeve missing. As Dan went on he
+discovered that he was thinking of the handsome man in the red shirt and
+wondering how he had lost his missing sleeve. He pondered the question as
+if it were a puzzle, and, finally, yielded it up in doubt.
+
+Beyond the base of the hill they came into the small ravine which had been
+turned into a rude field hospital. Here the stretcher was put down, and a
+tired-looking surgeon, wiping his hands upon a soiled towel, came and knelt
+down beside the wounded man.
+
+"Bring a light--I can't see--bring a light!" he exclaimed irritably, as he
+cut away the clothes with gentle fingers.
+
+Dan was passing on, when he heard his name called from behind, and turning
+quickly found Governor Ambler anxiously regarding him.
+
+"You're not hurt, my boy?" asked the Governor, and from his tone he might
+have parted from the younger man only the day before.
+
+"Hurt? Oh, no, I'm not hurt," replied Dan a little bitterly, "but there's a
+whole field of them back there, Colonel."
+
+"Well, I suppose so--I suppose so," returned the other absently. "I'm
+looking after my men now, poor fellows. A victory doesn't come cheap, you
+know, and thank God, it was a glorious victory."
+
+"A glorious victory," repeated Dan, looking at the surgeons who were
+working by the light of tallow candles.
+
+The Governor followed his gaze. "It's your first fight," he said, "and you
+haven't learned your lesson as I learned mine in Mexico. The best, or the
+worst of it, is that after the first fight it comes easy, my boy, it comes
+too easy."
+
+There was hot blood in him also, thought Dan, as he looked at him--and yet
+of all the men that he had ever known he would have called the Governor the
+most humane.
+
+"I dare say--I'll get used to it, sir," he answered. "Yes, it was a
+glorious victory."
+
+He broke away and went off into the twilight over the wide meadow to the
+little wayside spring. Across the road there was a field of clover, where a
+few campfires twinkled, and he hastened toward it eager to lie down in the
+darkness and fall asleep. As his feet sank in the moist earth, he looked
+down and saw that the little purple flower was still blooming in the mud.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+AFTER THE BATTLE
+
+
+The field of trampled clover looked as if a windstorm had swept over it,
+strewing the contents of a dozen dismantled houses. There were stacks of
+arms and piles of cooking utensils, knapsacks, half emptied, lay beside the
+charred remains of fires, and loose fence rails showed red and white
+glimpses of playing cards, hidden, before the fight, by superstitious
+soldiers.
+
+Groups of men were scattered in dark spots over the field, and about them
+stragglers drifted slowly back from the road to Centreville. There was no
+discipline, no order--regiment was mixed with regiment, and each man was
+hopelessly inquiring for his lost company.
+
+As Dan stepped over the fallen fence upon the crushed pink heads of the
+clover, he came upon a circle of privates making merry over a lunch basket
+they had picked up on the turnpike--a basket brought by one of the
+Washington parties who had gayly driven out to watch the battle. A broken
+fence rail was ablaze in the centre of the group, and as the red light fell
+on each soiled and unshaven face, it stood out grotesquely from the
+surrounding gloom. Some were slightly wounded, some had merely scented the
+battle from behind the hill--all were drinking rare wine in honour of the
+early ending of the war. As Dan looked past them over the darkening meadow,
+where the returning soldiers drifted aimlessly across the patches of red
+light, he asked himself almost impatiently if this were the pure and
+patriotic army that held in its ranks the best born of the South? To him,
+standing there, it seemed but a loosened mass, without strength and without
+cohesion, a mob of schoolboys come back from a sham battle on the college
+green. It was his first fight, and he did not know that what he looked upon
+was but the sure result of an easy victory upon the undisciplined ardour of
+raw troops--that the sinews of an army are wrought not by a single trial,
+but by the strain of prolonged and strenuous endeavour.
+
+"I say, do you reckon they'll lemme go home ter-morrow?" inquired a
+slightly wounded man in the group before him. "Thar's my terbaccy needs
+lookin' arter or the worms 'ull eat it clean up 'fo' I git thar." He shook
+the shaggy hair from his face, and straightened the white cotton bandage
+about his chin. On the right side, where the wound was, his thick sandy
+beard had been cut away, and the outstanding tuft on his left cheek gave
+him a peculiarly ill-proportioned look.
+
+"Lordy! I tell you we gave it ter 'em!" exclaimed another in excited jerks.
+"Fight! Wall, that's what I call fightin', leastways it's put. I declar' I
+reckon I hit six Yankees plum on the head with the butt of this here
+musket."
+
+He paused to knock the head off a champagne bottle, and lifting the broken
+neck to his lips drained the foaming wine, which spilled in white froth
+upon his clothes. His face was red in the firelight, and when he spoke his
+words rolled like marbles from his tongue. Dan, looking at him, felt a
+curious conviction that the man had not gone near enough to the guns to
+smell the powder.
+
+"Wall, it may be so, but I ain't seed you," returned the first speaker,
+contemptuously, as he stroked his bandage. "I was thar all day and I ain't
+seed you raise no special dust."
+
+"Oh, I ain't claimin' nothin' special," put in the other, discomfited.
+
+"Six is a good many, I reckon," drawled the wounded man, reflectively, "and
+I ain't sayin' I settled six on 'em hand to hand--I ain't sayin' that." He
+spoke with conscious modesty, as if the smallness of his assertion was
+equalled only by the greatness of his achievements. "I ain't sayin' I
+settled more'n three on 'em, I reckon."
+
+Dan left the group and went on slowly across the field, now and then
+stumbling upon a sleeper who lay prone upon the trodden clover, obscured by
+the heavy dusk. The mass of the army was still somewhere on the long
+road--only the exhausted, the sickened, or the unambitious drifted back to
+fall asleep upon the uncovered ground.
+
+As Dan crossed the meadow he drew near to a knot of men from a Kentucky
+regiment, gathered in the light of a small wood fire, and recognizing one
+of them, he stopped to inquire for news of his missing friends.
+
+"Oh, you wouldn't know your sweetheart on a night like this," replied the
+man he knew--a big handsome fellow, with a peculiar richness of voice.
+"Find a hole, Montjoy, and go to sleep in it, that's my advice. Were you
+much cut up?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Dan, uneasily. "I'm trying to make sure that we
+were not. I lost the others somewhere on the road--a horse knocked me
+down."
+
+"Well, if this is to be the last battle, I shouldn't mind a scratch
+myself," put in a voice from the darkness, "even if it's nothing more than
+a bruise from a horse's hoof. By the bye, Montjoy, did you see the way
+Stuart rode down the Zouaves? I declare the slope looked like a field of
+poppies in full bloom. Your cousin was in that charge, I believe, and he
+came out whole. I saw him afterwards."
+
+"Oh, the cavalry gets the best of everything," said Dan, with a sigh, and
+he was passing on, when Jack Powell, coming out of the darkness, stumbled
+against him, and broke into a delighted laugh.
+
+"Why, bless my soul, Beau, I thought you'd run after the fleshpots of
+Washington!" His face was flushed with excitement and the soft curls upon
+his forehead were wet and dark. Around his mouth there was a black stain
+from bitten cartridges. "By George, it was a jolly day, wasn't it, old
+man?" he added warmly.
+
+"Where are the others?" asked Dan, grasping his arm in an almost frantic
+pressure.
+
+"The others? they're all right--all except poor Welch, who got a ball in
+his thigh, you know. Did you see him when he was taken off the field? He
+laughed as he passed me and shouted back that he 'was always willing to
+spare a leg or two to the cause!'"
+
+"Where are you off to?" inquired Dan, still grasping his arm.
+
+"I? oh, I'm on the scent of water. I haven't learned to sleep dirty yet,
+which Bland says is a sign I'm no soldier. By the way, your darky, Big
+Abel, has a coffee-boiler over yonder in the fence corner. He's been
+tearing his wool out over your absence; you'd better ease his mind." With a
+laugh and a wave of his hand, he plunged into the darkness, and Dan made
+his way slowly to the campfire, which twinkled from the old rail fence. As
+he groped toward it curses sprang up like mustard from the earth beneath.
+"Get off my leg, and be damned," growled a voice under his feet. "Oh, this
+here ain't no pesky jedgment day," exclaimed another just ahead. Without
+answering he stepped over the dark bodies, and, ten minutes later, came
+upon Big Abel waiting patiently beside the dying fire.
+
+At sight of him the negro leaped, with a shout, to his feet; then,
+recovering himself, hid his joy beneath an accusing mask.
+
+"Dis yer coffee hit's done 'mos' bile away," he remarked gloomily. "En ef'n
+it don' tase like hit oughter tase, 'tain' no use ter tu'n up yo' nose,
+caze 'tain' de faul' er de coffee, ner de faul' er me nurr."
+
+"How are you, old man?" asked Bland, turning over in the shadow.
+
+"Who's there?" responded Dan, as he peered from the light into the
+obscurity.
+
+"All the mess except Welch, poor devil. Baker got his hair singed by our
+rear line, and he says he thinks it's safer to mix with the Yankees next
+time. Somebody behind him shot his cowlick clean off."
+
+"Cowlick, the mischief!" retorted Baker, witheringly. "Why, my scalp is as
+bald as your hand. The fool shaved me like a barber."
+
+"It's a pity he didn't aim at your whiskers," was Dan's rejoinder. "The
+chief thing I've got against this war is that when it's over there won't be
+a smooth-shaven man in the South."
+
+"Oh, we'll stand them up before our rear line," suggested Baker, moodily.
+"You may laugh, Bland, but you wouldn't like it yourself, and if they keep
+up their precious marksmanship your turn will come yet. We'll be a regiment
+of baldheads before Christmas."
+
+Dan sat down upon the blanket Big Abel had spread and leaned heavily upon
+his knapsack, which the negro had picked up on the roadside. A nervous
+chill had come over him and he was shaking with icy starts from head to
+foot. Big Abel brought a cup of coffee, and as he took it from him, his
+hand quivered so that he set the cup upon the ground; then he lifted it and
+drank the hot coffee in long draughts.
+
+"I should have lost my very identity but for you, Big Abel," he observed
+gratefully, as he glanced round at the property the negro had protected.
+
+Big Abel leaned forward and stirred the ashes with a small stick.
+
+"En I done fit fer 'em, suh," he replied. "I des tell you all de fittin'
+ain' been over yonder on dat ar hill caze I'se done fit right yer in dis
+yer fence conder, en I ain' fit de Yankees nurr. Lawd, Lawd, dese yer folks
+es is been a-sniffin' roun' my pile all day, ain' de kinder folks I'se used
+ter, caze my folks dey don' steal w'at don' b'long ter 'em, en dese yer
+folks dey do. Ole Marster steal? Huh! he 'ouldn't even tech a chicken dat
+'uz roos'in in his own yard. But dese yer sodgers!--Why, you cyarn tu'n yo'
+eye a splinter off de vittles fo' dey's done got 'em. Dey poke dey han's
+right spang in de fire en eat de ashes en all."
+
+He went off grumbling to lie down at a little distance, and Dan sat
+thoughtfully looking into the smouldering fire. Bland and Baker, having
+heatedly discussed the details of the victory, had at last drifted into
+silence; only Pinetop was awake--this he learned from the odour of the
+corncob pipe which floated from a sheltered corner.
+
+"Come over, Pinetop," called Dan, cordially, "and let's make ready for the
+pursuit to-morrow. Why, to-morrow we may eat a civilized dinner in
+Washington--think of that!"
+
+He spoke excitedly, for he was still quivering from the tumult of his
+thoughts. There was no sleep possible for him just now; his limbs twitched
+restlessly, and he felt the prick of strong emotion in his blood.
+
+"I say, Pinetop, what do you think of the fight?" he asked with an
+embarrassed boyish eagerness. In the faint light of the fire his eyes
+burned like coals and there was a thick black stain around his mouth. The
+hand in which he had held his ramrod was of a dark rust colour, as if the
+stain of the battle had seared into the skin. A smell of hot powder still
+hung about his clothes.
+
+The mountaineer left the shadow of the fence corner and slowly dragged
+himself into the little glow, where he sat puffing at his corncob pipe. He
+gave an easy, sociable nod and stared silently at the embers.
+
+"Was it just what you imagined it would be?" went on Dan, curiously.
+
+Pinetop took his pipe from his mouth and nodded again. "Wall, 'twas and
+'twan't," he answered pleasantly.
+
+"I must say it made me sick," admitted Dan, leaning his head in his hand.
+"I've always been a fool about the smell of blood; and it made me downright
+sick."
+
+"Wall, I ain't got much of a stomach for a fight myself," returned Pinetop,
+reflectively. "You see I ain't never fought anythin' bigger'n a skunk until
+to-day; and when I stood out thar with them bullets sizzlin' like fryin'
+pans round my head, I kind of says to myself: 'Look here, what's all this
+fuss about anyhow? If these here folks have come arter the niggers, let 'em
+take 'em off and welcome.' I ain't never owned a nigger in my life, and,
+what's more, I ain't never seen one that's worth owning. 'Let 'em take 'em
+and welcome,' that's what I said. Bless your life, as I stood out thar I
+didn't see how I was goin' to fire my musket, till all of a jiffy a thought
+jest jumped into my head and sent me bangin' down that hill. 'Them folks
+have set thar feet on ole Virginny,' was what I thought 'They've set thar
+feet on ole Virginny, and they've got to take 'em off damn quick!'"
+
+His teeth closed over his pipe as if it were a cartridge; then, after a
+silent moment, he opened his mouth and spoke again.
+
+"What I can't make out for the life of me," he said, "is how those boys
+from the other states gave thar licks so sharp. If I'd been born across the
+line in Tennessee, I wouldn't have fired my musket off to-day. They wan't
+a-settin' thar feet on Tennessee. But ole Virginny--wall, I've got a
+powerful fancy for ole Virginny, and they ain't goin' to project with her
+dust, if I can stand between." He turned away, and, emptying his pipe,
+rolled over upon the ground.
+
+Dan lay down upon the blanket, and, with his hand upon his knapsack, gazed
+at the small red ember burning amid the ashes. When the last spark faded
+into blackness it was as if his thoughts went groping for a light. Sleep
+came fitfully in flights and pauses, in broken dreams and brief awakenings.
+Losing himself at last it was only to return to the woods at Chericoke and
+to see Betty coming to him among the dim blue bodies of the trees. He saw
+the faint sunshine falling upon her head and the stir of the young leaves
+above her as a light wind passed. Under her feet the grass was studded with
+violets, and the bonnet swinging from her arm was filled with purple
+blossoms. She came on steadily over the path of grass and violets, but when
+he reached out to touch her a great shame fell over him for there was blood
+upon his hand.
+
+There was something cold in his face, and he emerged slowly from his sleep
+into the consciousness of dawn and a heavy rain. The swollen clouds hung
+close above the hills, and the distance was obscured by the gray sheets of
+water which fell like a curtain from heaven to earth. Near by a wagon had
+drawn up in the night, and he saw that a group of half-drenched privates
+had already taken shelter between the wheels. Gathering up his oilcloth, he
+hastily formed a tent with the aid of a deep fence corner, and, when he had
+drawn his blanket across the opening, sat partly protected from the shower.
+As the damp air blew into his face, he became quickly and clearly awake,
+and it was with the glimmer of a smile that he looked over the wet meadow
+and the sleeping regiments. Then a shudder followed, for he saw in the
+lines of gray men stretched beneath the rain some likeness to that other
+field beyond the hill where the dead were still lying, row on row. He saw
+them stark and cold on the scorched grass beside the guns, or in the thin
+ridges of trampled corn, where the gay young tassels were now storm-beaten
+upon the ripped-up earth. He saw them as he had seen them the evening
+before--not in the glow of battle, but with the acuteness of a brooding
+sympathy--saw them frowning, smiling, and with features which death had
+twisted into a ghastly grin. They were all there--each man with open eyes
+and stiff hands grasping the clothes above his wound.
+
+But to Dan, sitting in the gray dawn in the fence corner, the first horror
+faded quickly into an emotion almost triumphant. The great field was
+silent, reproachful, filled with accusing eyes--but was it not filled with
+glory, too? He was young, and his weakened pulses quickened at the thought.
+Since men must die, where was a brighter death than to fall beneath the
+flutter of the colours, with the thunder of the cannon in one's ears? He
+knew now why his fathers had loved a fight, had loved the glitter of the
+bayonets and the savage smell of the discoloured earth.
+
+For a moment the old racial spirit flashed above the peculiar sensitiveness
+which had come to him from his childhood and his suffering mother; then the
+flame went out and the rows of dead men stared at him through the falling
+rain in the deserted field.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE WOMAN'S PART
+
+
+At sunrise on the morning of the battle Betty and Virginia, from the
+whitewashed porch of a little railway inn near Manassas, watched the
+Governor's regiment as it marched down the single street and into the red
+clay road. Through the first faint sunshine, growing deeper as the sun rose
+gloriously above the hills, there sounded a peculiar freshness in the
+martial music as it triumphantly floated back across the fields. To Betty
+it almost seemed that the drums were laughing as they went to battle; and
+when the gay air at last faded in the distance, the silence closed about
+her with a strangeness she had never felt before--as if the absence of
+sound was grown melancholy, like the absence of light.
+
+She shut her eyes and brought back the long gray line passing across the
+sunbeams: the tanned eager faces, the waving flags, the rapid, almost
+impatient tread of the men as they swung onward. A laugh had run along the
+column as it went by her and she had smiled in quick sympathy with some
+foolish jest. It was all so natural to her, the gayety and the ardour and
+the invincible dash of the young army--it was all so like the spirit of Dan
+and so dear to her because of the likeness.
+
+Somewhere--not far away, she knew--he also was stepping briskly across the
+first sun rays, and her heart followed him even while she smiled down upon
+the regiment before her. It was as if her soul were suddenly freed from her
+bodily presence, and in a kind of dual consciousness she seemed to be
+standing upon the little whitewashed porch and walking onward beside Dan at
+the same moment. The wonder of it glowed in her rapt face, and Virginia,
+turning to put some trivial question, was startled by the passion of her
+look.
+
+"Have--have you seen--some one, Betty?" she whispered.
+
+The charm was snapped and Betty fell back into time and place.
+
+"Oh, yes, I have seen--some one," her voice thrilled as she spoke. "I saw
+him as clearly as I see you; he was all in sunshine and there was a flag
+close above his head. He looked up and smiled at me. Yes, I saw him! I saw
+him!"
+
+"It was Dan," said Virginia--not as a question, but in a wondering assent.
+"Why, Betty, I thought you had forgotten Dan--papa thought so, too."
+
+"Forgotten!" exclaimed Betty scornfully. She fell away from the crowd and
+Virginia followed her. The two stood leaning against the whitewashed wall
+in the dust that still rose from the street. "So you thought I had
+forgotten him," said Betty again. She raised her hand to her bosom and
+crushed the lace upon her dress. "Well, you were wrong," she added quietly.
+
+Virginia looked at her and smiled. "I am almost glad," she answered in her
+sweet girlish voice. "I don't like to have Dan forgotten even if--if he
+ought to be."
+
+"I didn't love him because he ought to be loved," said Betty. "I loved him
+because I couldn't help it--because he was himself and I was myself, I
+suppose. I was born to love him, and to stop loving him I should have to be
+born again. I don't care what he does--I don't care what he is even--I
+would rather love him than--than be a queen." She held her hands tightly
+together. "I would be his servant if he would let me," she went on. "I
+would work for him like a slave--but he won't let me. And yet he does love
+me just the same--just the same."
+
+"He does--he does," admitted Virginia softly. She had never seen Betty like
+this before, and she felt that her sister had become suddenly very strange
+and very sacred. Her hands were outstretched to comfort, but Betty turned
+gently away from her and went up the narrow staircase to the bare little
+room where the girls slept together.
+
+Alone within the four white walls she moved breathlessly to and fro like a
+woodland creature that has been entrapped. At the moment she was telling
+herself that she wanted to keep onward with the army; then her courage
+would have fluttered upward like the flags. It was not the sound of the
+cannon that she dreaded, nor the sight of blood--these would have nerved
+her as they nerved the generations at her back--but the folded hands and
+the terrible patience that are the woman's share of a war. The old fighting
+blood was in her veins--she was as much the child of her father as a son
+could have been--and yet while the great world over there was filled with
+noise she was told to go into her room and pray. Pray! Why, a man might
+pray with his musket in his hand, that was worth while.
+
+In the adjoining room she saw her mother sitting in a square of sunlight
+with her open Bible on her knees.
+
+"Oh, speak, mamma!" she called half angrily. "Move, do anything but sit so
+still. I can't bear it!" She caught her breath sharply, for with her words
+a low sound like distant thunder filled the room and the little street
+outside. As she clung with both hands to the window it seemed to her that a
+gray haze had fallen over the sunny valley. "Some one is dead," she said
+almost calmly, "that killed how many?"
+
+The room stifled her and she ran hurriedly down into the street, where a
+few startled women and old men had rushed at the first roll of the cannon.
+As she stood among them, straining her eyes from end to end of the little
+village, her heart beat in her throat and she could only quaver out an
+appeal for news.
+
+"Where is it? Doesn't any one know anything? What does it mean?"
+
+"It means a battle, Miss, that's one thing," remarked on obliging
+by-stander who leaned heavily upon a wooden leg. "Bless you, I kin a'most
+taste the powder." He smacked his lips and spat into the dust. "To think
+that I went all the way down to Mexico fur a fight," he pursued
+regretfully, "when I could have set right here at home and had it all in
+old Virginny. Well, well, that comes of hurryin' the Lord afo' he's ready."
+
+He rambled on excitedly, but Betty, frowning with impatience, turned from
+him and walked rapidly up and down the single street, where the voices of
+the guns growled through the muffling distance. "That killed how many? how
+many?" she would say at each long roll, and again, "How many died that
+moment, and was one Dan?"
+
+Up and down the little village, through the heavy sunshine and the white
+dust, among the whimpering women and old men, she walked until the day wore
+on and the shadows grew longer across the street. Once a man had come with
+the news of a sharp repulse, and in the early afternoon a deserter
+straggled in with the cry that the enemy was marching upon the village. It
+was not until the night had fallen, when the wounded began to arrive on
+baggage trains, that the story of the day was told, and a single shout went
+up from the waiting groups. The Confederacy was established! Washington was
+theirs by right of arms, and tomorrow the young army would dictate terms of
+peace to a great nation! The flags waved, women wept, and the wounded
+soldiers, as they rolled in on baggage cars, were hailed as the deliverers
+of a people. The new Confederacy! An emotion half romantic, half maternal
+filled Betty as she bent above an open wound--for it was in her blood to do
+battle to the death for a belief, to throw herself into a cause as into the
+arms of a lover. She was made of the stuff of soldiers, and come what might
+she would always take her stand upon her people's side.
+
+There were cheers and sobs in the little street about her; in the distance
+a man was shouting for the flag, and nearer by a woman with a lantern in
+her hand was searching among the living for her dead. The joy and the
+anguish of it entered into the girl like wine. She felt her pulses leap and
+a vigour that was not her own nerved her from head to foot. With that power
+of ardent sacrifice which lies beneath all shams in the Southern heart, she
+told herself that no endurance was too great, no hope too large with which
+to serve the cause.
+
+The exaltation was still with her when, a little later, she went up to her
+room and knelt down to thank God. Her people's simple faith was hers also,
+and as she prayed with her brow on her clasped hands it was as if she gave
+thanks to some great warrior who had drawn his sword in defence of the land
+she loved. God was on her side, supreme, beneficent, watchful in little
+things, as He has been on the side of all fervent hearts since the
+beginning of time.
+
+But after her return to Uplands in midsummer she suffered a peculiar
+restlessness from the tranquil August weather. The long white road
+irritated her with its aspect of listless patience, and at times she wanted
+to push back the crowding hills and leave the horizon open to her view.
+When a squadron of cavalry swept along the turnpike her heart would follow
+it like a bird while she leaned, with straining eyes, against a great white
+column. Then, as the last rider was blotted out into the landscape, she
+would clasp her hands and walk rapidly up and down between the lilacs. It
+was all waiting--waiting--waiting--nothing else.
+
+"Something must happen, mamma, or I shall go mad," she said one day,
+breaking in upon Mrs. Ambler as she sorted a heap of old letters in the
+library.
+
+"But what? What?" asked Virginia from the shadow of the window seat.
+"Surely you don't want a battle, Betty?"
+
+Mrs. Ambler shuddered.
+
+"Don't tempt Providence, dear," she said seriously, untying a faded ribbon
+about a piece of old parchment. "Be grateful for just this calm and go out
+for a walk. You might take this pitcher of flaxseed tea to Floretta's
+cabin, if you've nothing else to do. Ask how the baby is to-day, and tell
+her to keep the red flannel warm on its chest."
+
+Betty went into the hall after her bonnet and came back for the pitcher.
+"I'm going to walk across the fields to Chericoke," she said, "and Hosea is
+to bring the carriage for me about sunset. We must have some white silk to
+make those flags out of, and there isn't a bit in the house."
+
+She went out, stepping slowly in her wide skirts and holding the pitcher
+carefully before her.
+
+Floretta's baby was sleeping, and after a few pleasant words the girl kept
+on to Chericoke. There she found that the Major had gone to town for news,
+leaving Mrs. Lightfoot to her pickle making in the big storeroom, where the
+earthenware jars stood in clean brown rows upon the shelves. The air was
+sharp with the smell of vinegar and spices, and fragrant moisture dripped
+from the old lady's delicate hands. At the moment she had forgotten the war
+just beyond her doors, and even the vacant places in her household; her
+nervous flutter was caused by finding the plucked corn too large to salt.
+
+"Come in, child, come in," she said, as Betty appeared in the doorway.
+"You're too good a housekeeper to mind the smell of brine."
+
+"How the soldiers will enjoy it," laughed Betty in reply. "It's fortunate
+that both sides are fond of spices."
+
+The old lady was tying a linen cloth over the mouth of a great brown jar,
+and she did not look up as she answered. "I'm not consulting their tastes,
+my dear, though, as for that, I'm willing enough to feast our own men so
+long as the Yankees keep away. This jar, by the bye, is filled with
+'Confederate pickle'--it was as little as I could do to compliment the
+Government, I thought, and the green tomato catchup I've named in honour of
+General Beauregard."
+
+Betty smiled; and then, while Mrs. Lightfoot stood sharply regarding
+Car'line, who was shucking a tray of young corn, she timidly began upon her
+mission. "The flags must be finished, and I can't find the silk," she
+pleaded. "Isn't there a scrap in the house I may have? Let me look about
+the attic."
+
+The old lady shook her head. "I haven't allowed anybody to set foot in my
+attic for forty years," she replied decisively. "Why, I'd almost as soon
+they'd step into my grandfather's vault." Then as Betty's face fell she
+added generously. "As for white silk, I haven't any except my wedding
+dress, and that's yellow with age; but you may take it if you want it. I'm
+sure it couldn't come to a better end; at least it will have been to the
+front upon two important occasions."
+
+"Your wedding dress!" exclaimed Betty in surprise, "oh, how could you?"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot smiled grimly.
+
+"I could give more than a wedding dress if the Confederacy called for it,
+my dear," she answered. "Indeed, I'm not perfectly sure that I couldn't
+give the Major himself--but go upstairs and wait for me while I send
+Car'line for the keys."
+
+She returned to the storeroom, and Betty went upstairs to wander leisurely
+through the cool faintly lighted chambers. They were all newly swept and
+scented with lavender, and the high tester beds, with their slender fluted
+posts, looked as if they had stood spotless and untouched for generations.
+In Dan's room, which had been his mother's also, the girl walked slowly up
+and down, meeting, as she passed, her own eyes in the darkened mirror. Her
+mind fretted with the thought that Dan's image had risen so often in the
+glass, and yet had left no hint for her as she looked in now. If it had
+only caught and held his reflection, that blank mirror, she could have
+found it, she felt sure, though a dozen faces had passed by since. Was
+there nothing left of him, she wondered, nothing in the place where he had
+lived his life? She turned to the bed and picked up, one by one, the
+scattered books upon the little table. Among them there was a copy of the
+"Morte d'Arthur," and as it fell open in her hand, she found a bit of her
+own blue ribbon between the faded leaves. A tremor ran through her limbs,
+and going to the window she placed the book upon the sill and read the
+words aloud in the fragrant stillness. Behind her in the dim room Dan
+seemed to rise as suddenly as a ghost--and that high-flown chivalry of his,
+which delighted in sounding phrases as in heroic virtues, was loosened from
+the leaves of the old romance.
+
+"For there was never worshipful man nor worshipful woman but they loved one
+better than another, and worship in arms may never be foiled; but first
+reserve the honour to God, and secondly the quarrel must come of thy lady;
+and such love I call virtuous love."
+
+She leaned her cheek upon the book and looked out dreamily into the green
+box mazes of the garden. In the midst of war a great peace had come to her,
+and the quiet summer weather no longer troubled her with its unbroken calm.
+Her heart had grown suddenly strong again; even the long waiting had become
+but a fit service for her love.
+
+There was a step in the hall and Mrs. Lightfoot rustled in with her wedding
+dress.
+
+"You may take it and welcome, child," she said, as she gave it into Betty's
+arms. "I can't help feeling that there was something providential in my
+selecting white when my taste always leaned toward a peach-blow brocade.
+Well, well, who would have believed that I was buying a flag as well as a
+frock? If I'd even hinted such a thing, they would have said I had the
+vapours."
+
+Betty accepted the gift with her pretty effusion of manner, and went
+downstairs to where Hosea was waiting for her with the big carriage. As she
+drove home in a happy revery, her eyes dwelt contentedly on the sunburnt
+August fields, and the thought of war did not enter in to disturb her
+dreams.
+
+Once a line of Confederate cavalrymen rode by at a gallop and saluted her
+as her face showed at the window. They were strangers to her, but with the
+peculiar feeling of kinship which united the people of the South, she
+leaned out to wish them "God speed" as she waved her handkerchief.
+
+When, a little later, she turned into the drive at Uplands, it was to find,
+from the prints upon the gravel, that the soldiers had been there before
+her. Beyond the Doric columns she caught a glimpse of a gray sleeve, and
+for a single instant a wild hope shot up within her heart. Then as the
+carriage stopped, and she sprang quickly to the ground, the man in gray
+came out upon the portico, and she saw that it was Jack Morson.
+
+"I've come for Virginia, Betty," he began impulsively, as he took her hand,
+"and she promises to marry me before the battle."
+
+Betty laughed with trembling lips. "And here is the dress," she said gayly,
+holding out the yellowed silk.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+ON THE ROAD TO ROMNEY
+
+
+After a peaceful Christmas, New Year's Day rose bright and mild, and Dan as
+he started from Winchester with the column felt that he was escaping to
+freedom from the tedious duties of camp life.
+
+"Thank God we're on the war-path again," he remarked to Pinetop, who was
+stalking at his side. The two had become close friends during the dull
+weeks after their first battle, and Bland, who had brought a taste for the
+classics from the lecture-room, had already referred to them in pointless
+jokes as "Pylades and Orestes."
+
+"It looks mighty like summer," responded Pinetop cheerfully. He threw a
+keen glance up into the blue clouds, and then sniffed suspiciously at the
+dust that rose high in the road. "But I ain't one to put much faith in
+looks," he added with his usual caution, as he shifted the knapsack upon
+his shoulders.
+
+Dan laughed easily. "Well, I'm heartily glad I left my overcoat behind me,"
+he said, breathing hard as he climbed the mountain road, where the red clay
+had stiffened into channels.
+
+The sunshine fell brightly over them, lying in golden drops upon the fallen
+leaves. To Dan the march brought back the early winter rides at Chericoke,
+and the chain of lights and shadows that ran on clear days over the tavern
+road. Joyously throwing back his head, he whistled a love song as he
+tramped up the mountain side. The irksome summer, with its slow fevers and
+its sharp attacks of measles, its scarcity of pure water and supplies of
+half-cooked food, was suddenly blotted from his thoughts, and his first
+romantic ardour returned to him in long draughts of wind and sun. After
+each depression his elastic temperament had sprung upward; the past months
+had but strengthened him in body as in mind.
+
+In the afternoon a gray cloud came up suddenly and the sunshine, after a
+feeble struggle, was driven from the mountains. As the wind blew in short
+gusts down the steep road, Dan tightened his coat and looked at Pinetop's
+knapsack with his unfailing laugh.
+
+"That's beginning to look comfortable. I hope to heaven the wagons aren't
+far off."
+
+Pinetop turned and glanced back into the valley. "I'll be blessed if I
+believe they're anywhere," was his answer.
+
+"Well, if they aren't, I'll be somewhere before morning; why, it feels like
+snow."
+
+A gust of wind, sharp as a blade, struck from the gray sky, and whirlpools
+of dead leaves were swept into the forest. Falling silent, Dan swung his
+arms to quicken the current of his blood, and walked on more rapidly. Over
+the long column gloom had settled with the clouds, and they were brave lips
+that offered a jest in the teeth of the wind. There were no blankets, few
+overcoats, and fewer rations, and the supply wagons were crawling somewhere
+in the valley.
+
+The day wore on, and still the rough country road climbed upward embedded
+in withered leaves. On the high wind came the first flakes of a snowstorm,
+followed by a fine rain that enveloped the hills like mist. As Dan stumbled
+on, his feet slipped on the wet clay, and he was forced to catch at the
+bared saplings for support. The cold had entered his lungs as a knife, and
+his breath circled in a little cloud about his mouth. Through the storm he
+heard the quick oaths of his companions ring out like distant shots.
+
+When night fell they halted to bivouac by the roadside, and until daybreak
+the pine woods were filled with the cheerful glow of the campfires. There
+were no rations, and Dan, making a jest of his hunger, had stretched
+himself in the full light of the crackling branches. With the defiant
+humour which had made him the favourite of the mess, he laughed at the
+frozen roads, at the change in the wind, at his own struggles with the wet
+kindling wood, at the supply wagons creeping slowly after them. His courage
+had all the gayety of his passions--it showed itself in a smile, in a
+whistle, in the steady hand with which he played toss and catch with fate.
+The superb silence of Pinetop, plodding evenly along, was as far removed
+from him as the lofty grandeur of the mountains. A jest warmed his heart
+against the cold; with set lips and grave eyes, he would have fallen before
+the next ridge was crossed.
+
+Through the woods other fires were burning, and long reddish shadows crept
+among the pine trees over the rotting mould. For warmth Dan had spread a
+covering of dried leaves over him, raking them from sheltered corners of
+the forest. When he rose from time to time during the night to take his
+turn at replenishing the fire the leaves drifted in gravelike mounds about
+his feet.
+
+For three days the march was steadily upward over long ridges coated deep
+with ice. In the face of the strong wind, which blew always down the steep
+road, the army passed on, complaining, cursing, asking a gigantic question
+of its General. Among the raw soldiers there had been desertions by the
+dozen, filling the streets of the little town with frost-bitten
+malcontents. "It was all a wild goose chase," they declared bitterly, "and
+if Old Jack wasn't a March hare--well, he was something madder!"
+
+Dan listened to the curses with his ready smile, and walked on bravely.
+Since the first evening he had uttered no complaint, asked no question. He
+had undertaken to march, and he meant to march, that was all. In the front
+with which he veiled his suffering there was no lessening of his old
+careless confidence--if his dash had hardened into endurance it wore still
+an expression that was almost debonair.
+
+So as the column straggled weakly upward, he wrung his stiffened fingers
+and joked with Jack Powell, who stumbled after him. The cold had brought a
+glow to his tanned face, and when he lifted his eyes from the road Pinetop
+saw that they were shining brightly. Once he slipped on the frozen mud, and
+as his musket dropped from his hand, it went off sharply, the load entering
+the ground.
+
+"Are you hurt?" asked Jack, springing toward him; but Dan looked round
+laughing as he clasped his knee.
+
+"Oh, I merely groaned because I might have been," he said lightly, and
+limped on, singing a bit of doggerel which had taken possession of his
+regiment.
+
+  "Then let the Yanks say what they will,
+    We'll be gay and happy still;
+  Gay and happy, gay and happy,
+    We'll be gay and happy still."
+
+On the third day out they reached a little village in the mountains, but
+before the week's end they had pushed on again, and the white roads still
+stretched before them. As they went higher the tracks grew steeper, and now
+and then a musket shot rang out on the roadside as a man lost his footing
+and went down upon the ice. Behind them the wagon train crept inch by inch,
+or waited patiently for hours while a wheel was hoisted from the ditch
+beside the road. There was blood on the muzzles of the horses and on the
+shining ice that stretched beyond them.
+
+To Dan these terrible days were as the anguish of a new birth, in which the
+thing to be born suffered the conscious throes of awakening life. He could
+never be the same again; something was altered in him forever; this he felt
+dimly as he dragged his aching body onward. Days like these would prove the
+stuff that had gone into the making of him. When the march to Romney lay
+behind him he should know himself to be either a soldier or a coward. A
+soldier or a coward! he said the words over again as he struggled to keep
+down the pangs of hunger, telling himself that the road led not merely to
+Romney, but to a greater victory than his General dreamed of. Romney might
+be worthless, after all, the grim march but a mad prank of Jackson's, as
+men said; but whether to lay down one's arms or to struggle till the end
+was reached, this was the question asked by those stern mountains. Nature
+stood ranged against him--he fought it step by step, and day by day.
+
+At times something like delirium seized him, and he went on blindly,
+stepping high above the ice. For hours he was tortured by the longing for
+raw beef, for the fresh blood that would put heat into his veins. The
+kitchen at Chericoke flamed upon the hillside, as he remembered it on
+winter evenings when the great chimney was filled with light and the crane
+was in its place above the hickory. The smell of newly baked bread floated
+in his nostrils, and for a little while he believed himself to be lying
+again upon the hearth as he thrilled at Aunt Rhody's stories. Then his
+fancies would take other shapes, and warm colours would glow in red and
+yellow circles before his eyes. When he thought of Betty now it was no
+longer tenderly but with a despairing passion. He was haunted less by her
+visible image than by broken dreams of her peculiar womanly beauties--of
+her soft hands and the warmth of her girlish bosom.
+
+But from the first day to the last he had no thought of yielding; and each
+feeble step had sent him a step farther upon the road. He had often fallen,
+but he had always struggled up again and laughed. Once he made a ghastly
+joke about his dying in the snow, and Jack Powell turned upon him with an
+oath and bade him to be silent.
+
+"For God's sake don't," added the boy weakly, and fell to whimpering like
+a child.
+
+"Oh, go home to your mother," retorted Dan, with a kind of desperate
+cruelty.
+
+Jack sobbed outright.
+
+"I wish I could," he answered, and dropped over upon the roadside.
+
+Dan caught him up, and poured his last spoonful of brandy down his throat,
+then he seized his arm and dragged him bodily along.
+
+"Oh, I say don't be an ass," he implored. "Here comes old Stonewall."
+
+The commanding General rode by, glanced quietly over them, and passed on,
+his chest bowed, his cadet cap pulled down over his eyes. A moment later
+Dan, looking over the hillside, at the winding road, saw him dismount and
+put his shoulder to a sunken wheel. The sight suddenly nerved the younger
+man, and he went on quickly, dragging Jack up with him.
+
+That night they rested in a burned-out clearing where the pine trees had
+been felled for fence rails. The rails went readily to fires, and Pinetop
+fried strips of fat bacon in the skillet he had brought upon his musket.
+Somebody produced a handful of coffee from his pocket, and a little later
+Dan, dozing beside the flames, was awakened by the aroma.
+
+"By George!" he burst out, and sat up speechless.
+
+Pinetop was mixing thin cornmeal paste into the gravy, and he looked up as
+he stirred busily with a small stick.
+
+"Wall, I reckon these here slapjacks air about done," he remarked in a
+moment, adding with a glance at Dan, "and if your stomach's near as empty
+as your eyes, I reckon your turn comes first."
+
+"I reckon it does," said Dan, and filling his tin cup, he drank scalding
+coffee in short gulps. When he had finished it, he piled fresh rails upon
+the fire and lay down to sleep with his feet against the embers.
+
+With the earliest dawn a long shiver woke him, and as he put out his hand
+it touched something wet and cold. The fire had died to a red heart, and a
+thick blanket of snow covered him from head to foot. Straight above there
+was a pale yellow light where the stars shone dimly after the storm.
+
+He started to his feet, rubbing a handful of snow upon his face. The red
+embers, sheltered by the body of a solitary pine, still glowed under the
+charred brushwood, and kneeling upon the ground, he fanned them into a
+feeble blaze. Then he laid the rails crosswise, protecting them with his
+blanket until they caught and flamed up against the blackened pine.
+
+Near by Jack Powell was moaning in his sleep, and Dan leaned over to shake
+him into consciousness. "Oh, damn it all, wake up, you fool!" he said
+roughly, but Jack rolled over like one drugged and broke into frightened
+whimpers such as a child makes in the dark. He was dreaming of home, and as
+Dan listened to the half-choked words, his face contracted sharply. "Wake
+up, you fool!" he repeated angrily, rolling him back and forth before the
+fire.
+
+A little later, when Jack had grown warm beneath his touch, he threw a
+blanket over him, and turned to lie down in his own place. As he tossed a
+last armful on the fire, his eyes roamed over the long mounds of snow that
+filled the clearing, and he caught his breath as a man might who had waked
+suddenly among the dead. In the beginning of dawn, with the glimmer of
+smouldering fires reddening the snow, there was something almost ghastly in
+the sloping field filled with white graves and surrounded by white
+mountains. Even the wintry sky borrowed, for an hour, the spectral aspect
+of the earth, and the familiar shapes of cloud, as of hill, stood out with
+all the majesty of uncovered laws--stripped of the mere frivolous effect of
+light or shade. It was like the first day--or the last.
+
+Dan, sitting watchful beside the fire, fell into the peculiar mental state
+which comes only after an inward struggle that has laid bare the sinews of
+one's life. He had fought the good fight to the end, and he knew that from
+this day he should go easier with himself because he knew that he had
+conquered.
+
+The old doubt--the old distrust of his own strength--was fallen from him.
+At the moment he could have gone to Betty, fearless and full of hope, and
+have said, "Come, for I am grown up at last--at last I have grown up to my
+love." A great tenderness was in his heart, and the tears, which had not
+risen for all the bodily suffering of the past two weeks, came slowly to
+his eyes. The purpose of life seemed suddenly clear to him, and the large
+patience of the sky passed into his own nature as he sat facing the white
+dawn. At rare intervals in the lives of all strenuous souls there comes
+this sense of kinship with external things--this passionate recognition of
+the appeal of the dumb world. Sky and mountains and the white sweep of the
+fields awoke in him the peculiar tenderness he had always felt for animals
+or plants. His old childish petulance was gone from him forever; in its
+place he was aware of a kindly tolerance which softened even the common
+outlines of his daily life. It was as if he had awakened breathlessly to
+find himself a man.
+
+And Betty came to him again--not in detached visions, but entire and
+womanly. When he remembered her as on that last night at Chericoke it was
+with the impulse to fall down and kiss her feet. Reckless and blind with
+anger as he had been, she would have come cheerfully with him wherever his
+road led; and it was this passionate betrayal of herself that had taught
+him the full measure of her love. An attempt to trifle, to waver, to
+bargain with the future, he might have looked back upon with tender scorn;
+but the gesture with which she had made her choice was as desperate as his
+own mood--and it was for this one reckless moment that he loved her best.
+
+The east paled slowly as the day broke in a cloud, and the long shadows
+beside the fire lost their reddish glimmer. A little bird, dazed by the
+cold and the strange light, flew into the smoke against the stunted pine,
+and fell, a wet ball of feathers at Dan's feet. He picked it up, warmed it
+in his coat, and fed it from the loose crumbs in his pocket.
+
+When Pinetop awoke he was gently stroking the bird while he sang in a low
+voice:--
+
+  "Gay and happy, gay and happy,
+    We'll be gay and happy still."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"I WAIT MY TIME"
+
+
+When he returned to Winchester it was to find Virginia already there as
+Jack Morson's wife. Since her marriage in late summer she had followed her
+husband's regiment from place to place, drifting at last to a big yellow
+house on the edge of the fiery little town. Dan, passing along the street
+one day, heard his name called in a familiar voice, and turned to find her
+looking at him through the network of a tall, wrought-iron gate.
+
+"Virginia! Bless my soul! Where's Betty?" he exclaimed amazed.
+
+Virginia left the gate and gave him her hand over the dried creepers on the
+wall.
+
+"Why, you look ten years older," was her response.
+
+"Indeed! Well, two years of beggary, to say nothing of eight months of war,
+isn't just the thing to insure immortal youth, is it? You see, I'm turning
+gray."
+
+The pallor of the long march was in his face, giving him a striking though
+unnatural beauty. His eyes were heavy and his hair hung dishevelled about
+his brow, but the change went deeper still, and the girl saw it. "You're
+bigger--that's it," she said, and added impulsively, "Oh, how I wish Betty
+could see you now."
+
+Her hand was upon the wall and he gave it a quick, pleased pressure.
+
+"I wish to heaven she could," he echoed heartily.
+
+"But I shall tell her everything when I write--everything. I shall tell her
+that you are taller and stronger and that you have been in all the fights
+and haven't a scar to show. Betty loves scars, you see, and she doesn't
+mind even wounds--real wounds. She wanted to go into the hospitals, but I
+came away and mamma wouldn't let her."
+
+"For God's sake, don't let her," said Dan, with a shudder, his Southern
+instincts recoiling from the thought of service for the woman he loved.
+"There are a plenty of them in the hospitals and it's no place for Betty,
+anyway."
+
+"I'll tell her you think so," returned Virginia, gayly. "I'll tell her
+that--and what else?"
+
+He met her eyes smiling.
+
+"Tell her I wait my time," he answered, and began to talk lightly of other
+things. Virginia followed his lead with her old shy merriment. Her marriage
+had changed her but little, though she had grown a trifle stately, he
+thought, and her coquetry had dropped from her like a veil. As she stood
+there in her delicate lace cap and soft gray silk, the likeness to her
+mother was very marked, and looking into the future, Dan seemed to see her
+beauty ripen and expand with her growing womanhood. How many of her race
+had there been, he wondered, shaped after the same pure and formal plan.
+
+"And it is all just the same," he said, his eyes delighting in her beauty.
+"There is no change--don't tell me there is any change, for I'll not
+believe it. You bring it all back to me,--the lawn and the lilacs and the
+white pillars, and Miss Lydia's garden, with the rose leaves in the paths.
+Why are there always rose leaves in Miss Lydia's paths, Virginia?"
+
+Virginia shook her head, puzzled by his whimsical tone.
+
+"Because there are so many roses," she answered seriously.
+
+"No, you're wrong, there's another reason, but I shan't tell you."
+
+"My boxes are filled with rose leaves now," said Virginia. "Betty gathered
+them for me."
+
+The smile leaped to his eyes. "Oh, but it makes me homesick," he returned
+lightly. "If I tell you a secret, don't betray me, Virginia--I am downright
+homesick for Betty."
+
+Virginia patted his hand.
+
+"So am I," she confessed, "and so is Mammy Riah--she's with me now, you
+know--and she says that I might have been married without Jack, but never
+without Betty. Betty made my dress and iced my cake and pinned on my veil."
+
+"Ah, is that so?" exclaimed Dan, absent-mindedly. He was thinking of Betty,
+and he could almost see her hands as she pinned on the wedding veil--those
+small white hands with the strong fingers that had closed about his own.
+
+"When you get your furlough you must go home, Dan," Virginia was saying;
+"the Major is very feeble and--and he quarrels with almost everyone."
+
+"My furlough," repeated Dan, with a laugh. "Why, the war may end to-morrow
+and then we'll all go home together and kill the fatted calf among us. Yes,
+I'd like to see the old man again before I die."
+
+"I pray every night that the war may end tomorrow," said Virginia, "but it
+never does." Then she turned eagerly to the Governor, who was coming toward
+them under the leafless trees along the street.
+
+"Here's Dan, papa, do make him come in and be good."
+
+The Governor, holding himself erect in his trim gray uniform, insisted,
+with his hand upon Dan's shoulder, that Virginia should be obeyed; and the
+younger man, yielding easily, followed him through the iron gate and into
+the yellow house.
+
+"I don't see you every day, my boy, sit down, sit down," began the
+Governor, as he took his stand upon the hearth-rug. "Daughter, haven't you
+learned the way to the pantry yet? Dan looks as if he'd been on starvation
+rations since he joined the army. They aren't living high at Romney, eh?"
+and then, as Virginia went out, he fell to discussing the questions on all
+men's lips--the prospect of peace in the near future; hopes of intervention
+from England; the attitude of other foreign powers; and the reasons for the
+latest appointments by the President. When the girl came in again they let
+such topics go, and talked of home while she poured the coffee and helped
+Dan to fried chicken. She belonged to the order of women who delight in
+feeding a hungry man, and her eyes did not leave his face as she sat behind
+the tray and pressed the food upon him.
+
+"Dan thinks the war will be over before he gets his furlough," she said a
+little wistfully.
+
+A shadow crossed the Governor's face.
+
+"Then I may hope to get back in time to watch the cradles in the wheat
+field," he remarked. "There's little doing on the farm I'm afraid while I'm
+away."
+
+"If they hold out six months longer--well, I'll be surprised," exclaimed
+Dan, slapping the arm of his chair with a gesture like the Major's.
+"They've found out we won't give in so long as there's a musket left; and
+that's enough for them."
+
+"Maybe so, maybe so," returned the Governor, for it was a part of his
+philosophy to cast his conversational lines in the pleasant places. "Please
+God, we'll drink our next Christmas glass at Chericoke."
+
+"In the panelled parlour," added Dan, his eyes lighting.
+
+"With Aunt Emmeline's portrait," finished Virginia, smiling.
+
+For a time they were all silent, each looking happily into the far-off
+room, and each seeing a distinct and different vision. To the Governor the
+peaceful hearth grew warm again--he saw his wife and children gathered
+there, and a few friendly neighbours with their long-lived, genial jokes
+upon their lips. To Virginia it was her own bridal over again with the fear
+of war gone from her, and the quiet happiness she wanted stretching out
+into the future. To Dan there was first his own honour to be won, and then
+only Betty and himself--Betty and himself under next year's mistletoe
+together.
+
+"Well, well," sighed the Governor, and came back regretfully to the
+present. "It's a good place we're thinking of, and I reckon you're sorry
+enough you left it before you were obliged to. We all make mistakes, my
+boy, and the fortunate ones are those who live long enough to unmake them."
+
+His warm smile shone out suddenly, and without waiting for a reply, he
+began to ask for news of Jack Powell and his comrades, all of whom he knew
+by name. "I was talking to Colonel Burwell about you the other day," he
+added presently, "and he gave you a fighting record that would do honour to
+the Major."
+
+"He's a nice old chap," responded Dan, easily, for in the first years of
+the Army of Northern Virginia the question of rank presented itself only
+upon the parade ground, and beyond the borders of the camp a private had
+been known to condescend to his own Colonel. "A gentleman fights for his
+country as he pleases, a plebeian as he must," the Governor would have
+explained with a touch of his old oratory. "He's a nice old chap himself,
+but, by George, the discipline fits like a straight-jacket," pursued Dan,
+as he finished his coffee. "Why, here we are three miles below Winchester
+in a few threadbare tents, and they make as much fuss about our coming into
+town as if we were the Yankees themselves. Talk about Romney! Why, it's no
+colder at Romney than it was here last week, and yet Loring's men are
+living in huts like princes."
+
+"Show me a volunteer and I'll show you a grumbler," put in the Governor,
+laughing.
+
+"Oh, I'm not grumbling, I'm merely pointing out the facts," protested Dan;
+then he rose and stood holding Virginia's hand as he met her upward glance
+with his unflinching admiration. "Come again! Why, I should say so," he
+declared. "I'll come as long as I have a collar left, and then--well, then
+I'll pass the time of day with you over the hedge. Good-by, Colonel,
+remember I'm not a grumbler, I'm merely a man of facts."
+
+The door closed after him and a moment later they heard his clear whistle
+in the street.
+
+"The boy is like his father," said the Governor, thoughtfully, "like his
+father with the devil broken to harness. The Montjoy blood may be bad
+blood, but it makes big men, daughter." He sighed and drew his small figure
+to its full height.
+
+Virginia was looking into the fire. "I hope he will come again," she
+returned softly, thinking of Betty.
+
+But when he called again a week later Virginia did not see him. It was a
+cold starlit night, and the big yellow house, as he drew near it, glowed
+like a lamp amid the leafless trees. Beside the porch a number of cavalry
+horses were fastened to the pillars, and through the long windows there
+came the sound of laughter and of gay "good-bys."
+
+The "fringe of the army," as Dan had once jeeringly called it, was merrily
+making ready for a raid.
+
+As he listened he leaned nearer the window and watched, half enviously, the
+men he had once known. His old life had been a part of theirs and now,
+looking in from the outside, it seemed very far away--the poetry of war
+beside which the other was mere dull history in which no names were
+written. He thought of Prince Rupert, and of his own joy in the saddle, and
+the longing for the raid seized him like a heartache. Oh, to feel again the
+edge of the keen wind in his teeth and to hear the silver ring of the hoofs
+on the frozen road.
+
+
+                   "Jine the cavalry,
+                   Jine the cavalry,
+  If you want to have a good time jine the cavalry."
+
+The words floated out to him, and he laughed aloud as if he had awakened
+from a comic dream.
+
+That was the romance of war, but, after all, he was only the man who bore
+the musket.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE ALTAR OF THE WAR GOD
+
+
+With the opening spring Virginia went down to Richmond, where Jack Morson
+had taken rooms for her in the house of an invalid widow whose three sons
+were at the front. The town was filled to overflowing with refugees from
+the North and representatives from the South, and as the girl drove through
+the crowded streets, she exclaimed wonderingly at the festive air the
+houses wore.
+
+"Why, the doors are all open," she observed. "It looks like one big
+family."
+
+"That's about what it is," replied Jack. "The whole South is here and
+there's not a room to be had for love or money. Food is getting dear, too,
+they say, and the stranger within the gates has the best of everything." He
+stopped short and laughed from sheer surprise at Virginia's loveliness.
+
+"Well, I'm glad I'm here, anyway," said the girl, pressing his arm, "and
+Mammy Riah's glad, too, though she won't confess it.--Aren't you just
+delighted to see Jack again, Mammy?"
+
+The old negress grunted in her corner of the carriage. "I ain' seed no use
+in all dis yer fittin'," she responded. "W'at's de use er fittin' ef dar
+ain' sumpen' ter fit fer dat you ain' got a'ready?"
+
+"That's it, Mammy," replied Jack, gayly, "we're fighting for freedom, and
+we haven't had it yet, you see."
+
+"Is dat ar freedom vittles?" scornfully retorted the old woman. "Is it
+close? is it wood ter bu'n?"
+
+"Oh, it will soon be here and you'll find out," said Virginia, cheerfully,
+and when a little later she settled herself in her pleasant rooms, she
+returned to her assurances.
+
+"Aren't you glad you're here, Mammy, aren't you glad?" she insisted, with
+her arm about the old woman's neck.
+
+"I'd des like ter git a good look at ole Miss agin," returned Mammy Riah,
+softening, "caze ef you en ole Miss ain' des like two peas in a pod, my
+eyes hev done crack wid de sight er you. Dar ain' been nuttin' so pretty es
+you sence de day I dressed ole Miss in 'er weddin' veil."
+
+"You're right," exclaimed Jack, heartily. "But look at this, Virginia,
+here's a regular corn field at the back. Mrs. Minor tells me that
+vegetables have grown so scarce she has been obliged to turn her flower
+beds into garden patches." He threw open the window, and they went out upon
+the wide piazza which hung above the young corn rows.
+
+During the next few weeks, when Jack was often in the city, an almost
+feverish gayety possessed the girl. In the war-time parties, where the
+women wore last year's dresses, and the wit served for refreshment, her
+gentle beauty became, for a little while, the fashion. The smooth bands of
+her hair were copied, the curve of her eyelashes was made the subject of
+some verses which _The Examiner_ printed and the English papers quoted
+later on. It was a bright and stately society that filled the capital that
+year; and on pleasant Sundays when Virginia walked from church, in her
+Leghorn bonnet and white ruffles flaring over crinoline as they neared the
+ground, men, who had bled on fields of honour for the famous beauties of
+the South, would drop their talk to follow her with warming eyes. Cities
+might fall and battles might be lost and won, but their joy in a beautiful
+woman would endure until a great age.
+
+At last Jack Morson rode away to service, and the girl kept to the quiet
+house and worked on the little garments which the child would need in the
+summer. She was much alone, but the delicate widow, who had left her couch
+to care for the sick and wounded soldiers, would sometimes come and sit
+near her while she sewed.
+
+"This is the happiest time--before the child comes," she said one day, and
+added, with the observant eye of mothers, "it will be a boy; there is a
+pink lining to the basket."
+
+"Yes, it will be a boy," replied Virginia, wistfully.
+
+"I have had six," pursued the woman, "six sons, and yet I am alone now.
+Three are dead, and three are in the army. I am always listening for the
+summons that means another grave." She clasped her thin hands and smiled
+the patient smile that chilled Virginia's blood.
+
+"Couldn't you have kept one back?" asked the girl in a whisper.
+
+The woman shook her head. Much brooding had darkened her mind, but there
+was a peculiar fervour in her face--an inward light that shone through her
+faded eyes.
+
+"Not one--not one," she answered. "When the South called, I sent the first
+two, and when they fell, I sent the others--only the youngest I kept back
+at first--he is just seventeen. Then another call came and he begged so
+hard I let him go. No, I gave them all gladly--I have kept none back."
+
+She lowered her eyes and sat smiling at her folded hands. Weakened in body
+and broken by many sorrows as she was, with few years before her and those
+filled with inevitable suffering, the fire of the South still burned in her
+veins, and she gave herself as ardently as she gave her sons. The pity of
+it touched Virginia suddenly, and in the midst of her own enthusiasm she
+felt the tears upon her lashes. Was not an army invincible, she asked, into
+which the women sent their dearest with a smile?
+
+Through the warm spring weather she sat beside the long window that gave on
+the street, or walked slowly up and down among the vegetable rows in the
+garden. The growing of the crops became an unending interest to her and she
+watched them, day by day, until she learned to know each separate plant and
+to look for its unfolding. When the drought came she carried water from the
+hydrant, and assisted by Mammy Riah sprinkled the young tomatoes until they
+shot up like weeds. "It is so much better than war," she would say to Jack
+when he rode through the city. "Why will men kill one another when they
+might make things live instead?"
+
+Beside the piazza, there was a high magnolia tree, and under this she made
+a little rustic bench and a bed of flowers. When the hollyhocks and the
+sunflowers bloomed it would look like Uplands, she said, laughing.
+
+Under the magnolia there was quiet, but from her front window, while she
+sat at work, she could see the whole overcrowded city passing through sun
+and shadow. Sometimes distinguished strangers would go by, men from the far
+South in black broadcloth and slouch hats; then the President, slim and
+erect and very grave, riding his favourite horse to one of the encampments
+near the city; and then a noted beauty from another state, her chin lifted
+above the ribbons of her bonnet, a smile tucked in the red corners of her
+lips. Following there would surge by the same eager, staring throng--men
+too old to fight who had lost their work; women whose husbands fought in
+the trenches for the money that would hardly buy a sack of flour; soldiers
+from one of the many camps; noisy little boys with tin whistles; silent
+little girls waving Confederate flags. Back and forth they passed on the
+bright May afternoons, filling the street with a ceaseless murmur and the
+blur of many colours.
+
+And again the crowd would part suddenly to make way for a battalion
+marching to the front, or for a single soldier riding, with muffled drums,
+to his grave in Hollywood. The quick step or the slow gait of the riderless
+horse; the wild cheers or the silence on the pavement; the "Bonnie Blue
+Flag" or the funeral dirge before the coffin; the eager faces of men
+walking to where death was or the fallen ones of those who came back with
+the dead; the bold flags taking the wind like sails or the banners furled
+with crepe as they drooped forward--there was not a day when these things
+did not go by near together. To Virginia, sitting at her window, it was as
+if life and death walked on within each other's shadow.
+
+Then came the terrible days when the city saw McClellan sweeping toward it
+from the Chickahominy, when senators and clergymen gathered with the slaves
+to raise the breastworks, and men turned blankly to ask one another "Where
+is the army?" With the girl the question meant only mystification; she felt
+none of the white terror that showed in the faces round her. There was in
+her heart an unquestioning, childlike trust in the God of battles--sooner
+or later he would declare for the Confederacy and until then--well, there
+was always General Lee to stand between. Her chief regret was that the
+lines had closed and her mother could not come to her as she had promised.
+
+In the intense heat that hung above the town she sat at her southern
+window, where the river breeze blew across the garden, and watched placidly
+the palm-leaf fan which Mammy Riah waved before her face. The magnolia tree
+had flowered in great white blossoms, and the heavy perfume mingled in
+Virginia's thoughts with the yellow sunshine, the fretful clamour, and the
+hot dust of the city. When at the end of May a rain storm burst overhead
+and sent the wide white petals to the earth, it was almost a relief to see
+them go. But by the morrow new ones had opened, and the perfume she had
+sickened of still floated from the garden.
+
+That afternoon the sound of the guns rolled up the Williamsburg road, and
+in the streets men shouted hoarsely of an engagement with the enemy at
+Seven Pines. With the noise Virginia thrilled to her first feeling of
+danger, starting from a repose which, in its unconsciousness, had been as
+profound as sleep. The horror of war rushed in upon her at the moment, and
+with a cry she leaned out into the street, and listened for the next roll
+of the cannon.
+
+A woman, with a scared face, looked up, saw her, and spoke hysterically.
+
+"There's not a man left in the city," she cried. "They've taken my father
+to defend the breastworks and he's near seventy. If you can sew or wash or
+cook, there'll be work enough for you, God knows, to-morrow!"
+
+She hurried on and Virginia, turning from the window, buried herself in the
+pillows upon the bed, trying in vain to shut out the noise of the
+cannonading and the perfume of the magnolia blossoms which came in on the
+southern breeze. With night the guns grew silent and the streets empty, but
+still the girl lay sleepless, watching with frightened eyes the shadow of
+Mammy Riah's palm-leaf fan.
+
+At dawn the restless murmur began again, and Virginia, looking out in the
+hot sunrise, saw the crowd hastening back to the hospitals lower down. They
+were all there, all as they had been the day before--old men limping out
+for news or returning beside the wounded; women with trembling lips and
+arms filled with linen; ambulances passing the corner at a walk, surrounded
+by men who had staggered after them because there was no room left inside;
+and following always the same curious, pallid throng, fresh upon the scent
+of some new tragedy. Presently the ambulances gave out, and yet the wounded
+came--some walking, and moaning as they walked, some borne on litters by
+devoted servants, some drawn in market wagons pressed into use. The great
+warehouses and the churches were thrown open to give them shelter, but
+still they came and still the cry went up, "Room, more room!"
+
+Virginia watched it all, leaning out to follow the wagons as they passed
+the corner. The sight sickened her, but something that was half a ghastly
+fascination, and half the terror of missing a face she knew, kept her hour
+after hour motionless upon her knees. At each roll of the guns she gave a
+nervous shiver and grew still as stone.
+
+Then, as she knelt there, a man, in clerical dress, came down the pavement
+and stopped before her window. "I hope your husband's wound was not
+serious, Mrs. Morson," he said sympathetically. "If I can be of any
+assistance, please don't hesitate to call on me."
+
+"Jack wounded!--oh, he is not wounded," replied Virginia. She rose and
+stood wildly looking down upon him.
+
+He saw his mistake and promptly retracted what he could.
+
+"If you don't know of it, it can't be true," he urged kindly. "So many
+rumours are afloat that half of them are without foundation. However, I
+will make inquiries if you wish," and he passed on with a promise to return
+at once.
+
+For a time Virginia stood blankly gazing after him; then she turned
+steadily and took down her bonnet from the wardrobe. She even went to the
+bureau and carefully tied the pink ribbon strings beneath her chin.
+
+"I am going out, Mammy Riah," she said when she had finished. "No, don't
+tell me I mustn't--I am going out, I say."
+
+She stamped her foot impatiently, but Mammy Riah made no protest.
+
+"Des let's go den," she returned, smoothing her head handkerchief as she
+prepared to follow.
+
+The sun was already high above, and the breeze, which had blown for three
+days from the river, had dropped suddenly since dawn. Down the brick
+pavement the relentless glare flashed back into the sky which hung hot blue
+overhead. To Virginia, coming from the shade of her rooms, the city seemed
+a furnace and the steady murmur a great discord in which every note was one
+of pain.
+
+Other women looking for their wounded hurried by her--one stopped to ask if
+she had been into the unused tobacco warehouse and if she had seen there a
+boy she knew by name? Another, with lint bandages in her hand, begged her
+to come into a church hard by and assist in ravelling linen for the
+surgeons. Then she looked down, saw the girl's figure, and grew nervous.
+"You are not fit, my dear, go home," she urged, but Virginia shook her head
+and smiled.
+
+"I am looking for my husband," she answered in a cold voice and passed on.
+Mammy Riah caught up with her, but she broke away. "Go home if you want
+to--oh, go back," she cried irritably. "I am looking for Jack, you know."
+
+Into the rude hospitals, one after one, she went without shuddering,
+passing up and down between the ghastly rows lying half clothed upon the
+bare plank floors. Her eyes were strained and eager, and more than one
+dying man turned to look after her as she went by, and carried the memory
+of her face with him to death. Once she stopped and folded a blanket under
+the head of a boy who moaned aloud, and then gave him water from a pitcher
+close at hand. "You're so cool--so cool," he sobbed, clutching at her
+dress, but she smiled like one asleep and passed on rapidly.
+
+When the long day had worn out at last, she came from an open store filled
+with stretchers, and started homeward over the burning pavement. Her search
+was useless, and the reaction from her terrible fear left her with a sudden
+tremor in her heart. As she walked she leaned heavily upon Mammy Riah, and
+her colour came and went in quick flashes. The heat had entered into her
+brain and with it the memory of open wounds and the red hands of surgeons.
+Reaching the house at last, she flung herself all dressed upon the bed and
+fell into a sleep that was filled with changing dreams.
+
+At midnight she cried out in agony, believing herself to be still in the
+street. When Mammy Riah bent over her she did not know her, but held out
+shaking hands and asked for her mother, calling the name aloud in the
+silent house, deserted for the sake of the hospitals lower down. She was
+walking again on and on over the hot bricks, and the deep wounds were
+opening before her eyes while the surgeons went by with dripping hands.
+Once she started up and cried out that the terrible blue sky was crushing
+her down to the pavement which burned her feet. Then the odour of the
+magnolia filled her nostrils, and she talked of the scorching dust, of the
+noise that would not stop, and of the feeble breeze that blew toward her
+from the river. All night she wandered back and forth in the broad glare of
+the noon, and all night Mammy Riah passed from the clinging hands to the
+window where she looked for help in the empty street. And then, as the gray
+dawn broke, Virginia put her simple services by, and spoke in a clear
+voice.
+
+"Oh, how lovely," she said, as if well pleased. A moment more and she lay
+smiling like a child, her chin pressed deep in her open palm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the full sunrise a physician, who had run in at the old woman's cry,
+came from the house and stopped bareheaded in the breathless heat. For a
+moment he stared over the moving city and then up into the cloudless blue
+of the sky.
+
+"God damn war!" he said suddenly, and went back to his knife.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE MONTJOY BLOOD AGAIN
+
+
+A month later Dan heard of Virginia's death when, at the end of the Seven
+Days, he was brought wounded into Richmond. As he lay upon church cushions
+on the floor of an old warehouse on Main Street, with Big Abel shaking a
+tattered palm-leaf fan at his side, a cavalryman came up to him and held
+out a hand that trembled slightly from fatigue.
+
+"I heard you were here. Can I do anything for you, Beau?" he asked.
+
+For an instant Dan hesitated; then the other smiled, and he recognized Jack
+Morson.
+
+"My God! You've been ill!" he exclaimed in horror. Jack laughed and let his
+hand fall. The boyish colour was gone from his face, and he wore an
+untrimmed beard which made him look twice his age.
+
+"Never better in my life," he answered shortly. "Some men are made of
+india-rubber, Montjoy, and I'm one of them. I've managed to get into most
+of these blessed fights about Richmond, and yet I haven't so much as a pin
+prick to show for it. But what's wrong with you? Not much, I hope. I've
+just seen Bland, and he told me he thought you were left at Malvern Hill
+during that hard rain on Tuesday night. How did you get knocked over,
+anyway?"
+
+"A rifle ball went through my leg," replied Dan impatiently. "I say, Big
+Abel, can't you flirt that fan a little faster? These confounded flies
+stick like molasses." Then he held up his left hand and looked at it with a
+grim smile. "A nasty fragment of a shell took off a couple of my fingers,"
+he added. "At first I thought they had begun throwing hornets' nests from
+their guns--it felt just like it. Yes, that's the worst with me so far;
+I've still got a bone to my leg, and I'll be on the field again before
+long, thank God."
+
+"Well, the worst thing about getting wounded is being stuffed into a hole
+like this," returned Jack, glancing about contemptuously. "Whoever has had
+the charge of our hospital arrangements may congratulate himself that he
+has made a ghastly mess of them. Why, I found a man over there in the
+corner whose leg had mortified from sheer neglect, and he told me that the
+supplies for the sick had given out, and they'd offered him cornbread and
+bacon for breakfast."
+
+Dan began to toss restlessly, grumbling beneath his breath. "If you ever
+see a ball making in your direction," he advised, "dodge it clean or take
+it square in the mouth; don't go in for any compromises with a gun, they
+aren't worth it." He lay silent for a moment, and then spoke proudly. "Big
+Abel hauled me off the field after I went down. How he found me, God only
+knows, but find me he did, and under fire, too."
+
+"'Twuz des like pepper," remarked Big Abel, fanning briskly, "but soon es I
+heah dat Marse Dan wuz right flat on de groun', I know dat dar warn' nobody
+ter go atter 'im 'cep'n' me. Marse Bland he come crawlin' out er de bresh,
+wuckin' 'long on his stomick same es er mole, wid his face like a rabbit
+w'en de dawgs are 'mos' upon 'im, en he sez hard es flint, 'Beau he's down
+over yonder, en I tried ter pull 'im out, Big Abel, 'fo' de Lawd I did!'
+Den he drap right ter de yerth, en I des stop long enough ter put a tin
+bucket on my haid 'fo' I began ter crawl atter Marse Dan. Whew! dat ar
+bucket hit sutney wuz a he'p, dat 'twuz, case I des hyeard de cawn
+a-poppin' all aroun' hit, en dey ain' never come thoo yit.
+
+"Well, suh, w'en I h'ist dat bucket ter git a good look out dar dey wuz
+a-fittin' twel dey bus', a-dodgin' in en out er de shucks er wheat dat dey
+done pile 'mos' up ter de haids. I ain' teck but one good look, suh, den I
+drap de bucket down agin en keep a-crawlin' like Marse Bland tole me twel I
+git 'mos' ter de cawn fiel' dat run right spang up de hill whar de big guns
+wuz a-spittin' fire en smoke. En sho' 'nough dar wuz Marse Dan lyin' unner
+a pine log dat Marse Bland hed roll up ter 'im ter keep de Yankees f'om
+hittin' 'im; en w'en he ketch sight er me he des blink his eyes fur a
+minute en laugh right peart.
+
+"'Wat dat you got on yo' haid, Big Abel?' he sez."
+
+"Big Abel's a hero, there's no mistake," put in Dan, delighted. "Do you
+know he lifted me as if I were a baby and toted me out of that God-forsaken
+corn field in the hottest fire I ever felt--and I tipped the scales at a
+hundred and fifty pounds before I went to Romney."
+
+"Go way, Marse Dan, you ain' nuttin' but a rail," protested Big Abel, and
+continued his story. "Atter I done tote him outer de cawn fiel' en thoo de
+bresh, den I begin ter peer roun' fer one er dese yer ambushes, but dere
+warn' nairy one un um dat warn' a-bulgin' a'ready. I d'clar dey des bulged
+twel dey sides 'mos' split. I seed a hack drive long by wid two gemmen
+a-settin' up in hit, en one un em des es well es I is,--but w'en I helt
+Marse Dan up right high, he shake his haid en pint ter de udder like he
+kinder skeered. 'Dis yer's my young brudder,' he sez, speakin' sof'; 'en
+dis yer's my young Marster,' I holler back, but he shake his haid agin en
+drive right on. Lawd, Lawd, my time's 'mos' up, I 'low den--yes, suh, I
+do--but w'en I tu'n roun' squintin' my eyes caze de sun so hot--de sun he
+wuz kinder shinin' thoo his back like he do w'en he hu't yo' eyes en you
+cyan' see 'im--dar came a dump cyart a-joltin' up de road wid a speckled
+mule hitch ter it. A lot er yuther w'ite folks made a bee line fer dat ar
+dump cyart, but dey warn' 'fo' me, caze w'en dey git dar, dar I wuz
+a-settin' wid Marse Dan laid out across my knees. Well, dey lemme go--dey
+bleeged ter caze I 'uz gwine anyway--en de speckled mule she des laid back
+'er years en let fly fer Richmon'. Yes, suh, I ain' never seed sech a mule
+es dat. She 'uz des es full er sperit es a colt, en her name wuz Sally."
+
+"The worst of it was after getting here," finished Dan, who had lain
+regarding Big Abel with a proud paternal eye, "they kept us trundling round
+in that cart for three mortal hours, because they couldn't find a hole to
+put us into. An uncovered wagon was just in front of us, filled with poor
+fellows who had been half the day in the sweltering heat, and we made the
+procession up and down the city, until at last some women rushed up with
+their servants and cleared out this warehouse. One was not over sixteen and
+as pretty as a picture. 'Don't talk to me about the proper authorities,'
+she said, stamping her foot, 'I'll hang the proper authorities when they
+turn up--and in the meantime we'll go to work!' By Jove, she was a trump,
+that girl! If she didn't save my life, she did still better and saved my
+leg."
+
+"Well, I'll try to get you moved by to-morrow," said Jack reassuringly.
+"Every home in the city is filled with the wounded, they tell me, but I
+know a little woman who had two funerals from her house to-day, so she may
+be able to find room for you. This heat is something awful, isn't it?"
+
+"Damnable. I hope, by the way, that Virginia is out of it by now."
+
+Jack flinched as if the words struck him between the eyes. For a moment he
+stood staring at the straw pallets along the wall; then he spoke in a queer
+voice.
+
+"Yes, Virginia's out of it by now; Virginia's dead, you know."
+
+"Dead!" cried Dan, and raised himself upon his cushion. The room went black
+before him, and he steadied himself by clutching at Big Abel's arm. At the
+instant the horrors of the battle-field, where he had seen men fall like
+grass before the scythe, became as nothing to the death of this one young
+girl. He thought of her living beauty, of the bright glow of her flesh, and
+it seemed to him that the earth could not hide a thing so fair.
+
+"I left her in Richmond in the spring," explained Jack, gripping himself
+hard. "I was off with Stuart, you know, and I thought her mother would get
+to her, but she couldn't pass the lines and then the fight came--the one at
+Seven Pines and--well, she died and the child with her."
+
+Dan's eyes grew very tender; a look crept into them which only Betty and
+his mother had seen there before.
+
+"I would have died for her if I could, Jack, you know that," he said
+slowly.
+
+Jack walked off a few paces and then came back again. "I remember the
+Governor's telling me once," he went on in the same hard voice, "that if a
+man only rode boldly enough at death it would always get out of the way. I
+didn't believe it at the time, but, by God, it's true. Why, I've gone
+straight into the enemy's lines and heard the bullets whistling in my ears,
+but I've always come out whole. When I rode with Stuart round McClellan's
+army, I was side by side with poor Latane when he fell in the skirmish at
+Old Church, and I sat stock still on my horse and waited for a fellow to
+club me with his sabre, but he wouldn't; he looked at me as if he thought I
+had gone crazy, and actually shook his head. Some men can't die, confound
+it, and I'm one of them."
+
+He went out, his spurs striking the stone steps as he passed into the
+street, and Dan fell back upon the narrow cushions to toss with fever and
+the memory of Virginia--of Virginia in the days when she wore her rose-pink
+gown and he believed he loved her.
+
+At the door an ambulance drew up and a stretcher was brought into the
+building, and let down in one corner. The man on it was lying very still,
+and when he was lifted off and placed upon the blood-soaked top of the long
+pine table, he made no sound, either of fear or of pain. The close odours
+of the place suddenly sickened Dan and he asked Big Abel to draw him nearer
+the open window, where he might catch the least breeze from the river; but
+outside the July sunlight lay white and hot upon the bricks, and when he
+struggled up the reflected heat struck him down again. On the sidewalk he
+saw several prisoners going by amid a hooting crowd, and with his old
+instinct to fight upon the weaker side, he hurled an oath at the tormenters
+of his enemies.
+
+"Go to the field, you crows, and be damned!" he called.
+
+One of the prisoners, a ruddy-cheeked young fellow in private's clothes,
+looked up and touched his cap.
+
+"Thank you, sir, I hope we'll meet at the front," he said, in a rich Irish
+brogue. Then he passed on to Libby prison, while Dan turned from the window
+and lay watching the surgeon's faces as they probed for bullets.
+
+It was a long unceiled building, filled with bright daylight and the
+buzzing of countless flies. Women, who had volunteered for the service,
+passed swiftly over the creaking boards, or knelt beside the pallets as
+they bathed the shattered limbs with steady fingers. Here and there a child
+held a glass of water to a man who could not raise himself, or sat fanning
+the flies from a pallid face. None was too old nor too young where there
+was work for all.
+
+A stir passed through the group about the long pine table, and one of the
+surgeons, wiping the sweat from his brow, came over to where Dan lay, and
+stopped to take breath beside the window.
+
+"By Jove, that man died game," he said, shaking his handkerchief at the
+flies. "We took both his legs off at the knee, and he just gripped the
+table hard and never winked an eyelash. I told him it would kill him, but
+he said he'd be hanged if he didn't take his chance--and he took it and
+died. Talk to me about nerve, that fellow had the cleanest grit I ever
+saw."
+
+Dan's pulses fluttered, as they always did at an example of pure pluck.
+
+"What's his regiment?" he asked, watching the two slaves who, followed by
+their mistresses, were bringing the body back to the stretcher.
+
+"Oh, he was a scout, I believe, serving with Stuart when he was wounded.
+His name is--by the way, his name is Montjoy. Any relative of yours, I
+wonder?"
+
+Raising himself upon his elbow, Dan turned to look at the dead man beside
+him. A heavy beard covered the mouth and chin, but he knew the sunken black
+eyes and the hair that was like his own.
+
+"Yes," he answered after a long pause, "he is a relative of mine, I think;"
+and then, while the man lay waiting for his coffin, he propped himself upon
+his arm and followed curiously the changes made by death.
+
+At his first recognition there had come only a wave of repulsion--the old
+disgust that had always dogged the memory of his father; then, with the
+dead face before his eyes, he was aware of an unreasoning pride in the
+blood he bore--in the fact that the soldier there had died pure game to the
+last. It was as a braggart and a bully that he had always thought of him;
+now he knew that at least he was not a craven--that he could take blows as
+he dealt them, from the shoulder out. He had hated his father, he told
+himself unflinchingly, and he did not love him now. Had the dead man opened
+his eyes he could have struck him back again with his mother's memory for a
+weapon. There had been war between them to the grave, and yet, despite
+himself, he knew that he had lost his old boyish shame of the Montjoy
+blood. With the instinct of his race to glorify physical courage, he had
+seen the shadow of his boyhood loom from the petty into the gigantic. Jack
+Montjoy may have been a scoundrel,--doubtless he was one,--but, with all
+his misdeeds on his shoulders, he had lived pure game to the end.
+
+A fresh bleeding of Dan's wound brought on a sudden faintness, and he fell
+heavily upon Big Abel's arm. With the pain a groan hovered an instant on
+his lips, but, closing his eyes, he bit it back and lay silent. For the
+first time in his life there had come to him, like an impulse, the
+knowledge that he must not lower his father's name.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FOURTH
+
+THE RETURN OF THE VANQUISHED
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE RAGGED ARMY
+
+
+The brigade had halted to gather rations in a corn field beside the road,
+and Dan, lying with his head in the shadow of a clump of sumach, hungrily
+regarded the "roasting ears" which Pinetop had just rolled in the ashes. A
+malarial fever, which he had contracted in the swamps of the Chickahominy,
+had wasted his vitality until he had begun to look like the mere shadow of
+himself; gaunt, unwashed, hollow-eyed, yet wearing his torn gray jacket and
+brimless cap as jauntily as he had once worn his embroidered waistcoats.
+His hand trembled as he reached out for his share of the green corn, but
+weakened as he was by sickness and starvation, the defiant humour shone all
+the clearer in his eyes. He had still the heart for a whistle, Bland had
+said last night, looking at him a little wistfully.
+
+As he lay there, with the dusty sumach shrub above him, he saw the ragged
+army pushing on into the turnpike that led to Maryland. Lean, sun-scorched,
+half-clothed, dropping its stragglers like leaves upon the roadside,
+marching in borrowed rags, and fighting with the weapons of its enemies,
+dirty, fevered, choking with the hot dust of the turnpike--it still pressed
+onward, bending like a blade beneath Lee's hand. For this army of the sick,
+fighting slow agues, old wounds, and the sharp diseases that follow on
+green food, was becoming suddenly an army of invasion. The road led into
+Maryland, and the brigades swept into it, jesting like schoolboys on a
+frolic.
+
+Dan, stretched exhausted beside the road, ate his ear of corn, and idly
+watched the regiment that was marching by--marching, not with the even
+tread of regular troops, but with scattered ranks and broken column, each
+man limping in worn-out shoes, at his own pace. They were not fancy
+soldiers, these men, he felt as he looked after them. They were not
+imposing upon the road, but when their chance came to fight, they would be
+very sure to take it. Here and there a man still carried his old squirrel
+musket, with a rusted skillet handle stuck into the barrel, but when before
+many days the skillet would be withdrawn, the load might be relied upon to
+wing straight home a little later. On wet nights those muskets would stand
+upright upon their bayonets, with muzzles in the earth, while the rain
+dripped off, and on dry days they would carry aloft the full property of
+the mess, which had dwindled to a frying pan and an old quart cup; though
+seldom cleaned, they were always fit for service--or if they went foul what
+was easier than to pick up a less trusty one upon the field. On the other
+side hung the blankets, tied at the ends and worn like a sling from the
+left shoulder. The haversack was gone and with it the knapsack and the
+overcoat. When a man wanted a change of linen he knelt down and washed his
+single shirt in the brook, sitting in the sun while it dried upon the bank.
+If it was long in drying he put it on, wet as it was, and ran ahead to fall
+in with his company. Where the discipline was easy, each infantryman might
+become his own commissary.
+
+Dan finished his corn, threw the husks over his head, and sat up, looking
+idly at the irregular ranks. He was tired and sick, and after a short rest
+it seemed all the harder to get up and take the road again. As he sat there
+he began to bandy words with the sergeant of a Maryland regiment that was
+passing.
+
+"Hello! what brigade?" called the sergeant in friendly tones. He looked fat
+and well fed, and Dan felt this to be good ground for resentment.
+
+"General Straggler's brigade, but it's none of your business," he promptly
+retorted.
+
+"General Straggler has a pretty God-forsaken crew," taunted the sergeant,
+looking back as he stepped on briskly. "I've seen his regiments lining the
+road clear up from Chantilly."
+
+"If you'd kept your fat eyes open at Manassas the other day, you'd have
+seen them lining the battle-field as well," pursued Dan pleasantly, chewing
+a long green blade of corn. "Old Stonewall saw them, I'll be bound. If
+General Straggler didn't win that battle I'd like to know who did."
+
+"Oh, shucks!" responded the sergeant, and was out of hearing.
+
+The regiment passed by and another took its place. "Was that General Lee
+you were yelling at down there, boys?" inquired Dan politely, smiling the
+smile of a man who sits by the roadside and sees another sweating on the
+march.
+
+"Naw, that warn't Marse Robert," replied a private, limping with bare feet
+over the border of dried grass. "'Twas a blamed, blank, bottomless well,
+that's what 'twas. I let my canteen down on a string and it never came back
+no mo'."
+
+Dan lowered his eyes, and critically regarded the tattered banner of the
+regiment, covered with the names of the battles over which it had hung
+unfurled. "Tennessee, aren't you?" he asked, following the flag.
+
+The private shook his head, and stooped to remove a pebble from between his
+toes.
+
+"Naw, we ain't from Tennessee," he drawled. "We've had the measles--that's
+what's the matter with us."
+
+"You show it, by Jove," said Dan, laughing. "Step quickly, if you
+please--this is the cleanest brigade in the army."
+
+"Huh!" exclaimed the private, eying them with contempt. "You look like it,
+don't you, sonny? Why, I'd ketch the mumps jest to look at sech a set o'
+rag-a-muffins!"
+
+He went on, still grunting, while Dan rose to his feet and slung his
+blanket from his shoulder. "Look here, does anybody know where we're going
+anyway?" he asked of the blue sky.
+
+"I seed General Jackson about two miles up," replied a passing countryman,
+who had led his horse into the corn field. "Whoopee! he was going at a
+God-a'mighty pace, I tell you. If he keeps that up he'll be over the
+Potomac before sunset."
+
+"Then we are going into Maryland!" cried Jack Powell, jumping to his feet.
+"Hurrah for Maryland! We're going to Maryland, God bless her!"
+
+The shouts passed down the road and the Maryland regiment in front sent
+back three rousing cheers.
+
+"By Jove, I hope I'll find some shoes there," said Dan, shaking the sand
+from his ragged boots, and twisting the shreds of his stockings about his
+feet. "I've had to punch holes in my soles and lace them with shoe strings
+to the upper leather, or they'd have dropped off long ago."
+
+"Well, I'll begin by making love to a seamstress when I'm over the
+Potomac," remarked Welch, getting upon his feet. "I'm decidedly in need of
+a couple of patches."
+
+"You make love! You!" roared Jack Powell. "Why, you're the kind of thing
+they set up in Maryland to keep the crows away. Now if it were Beau, there,
+I see some sense in it--for, I'll be bound, he's slain more hearts than
+Yankees in this campaign. The women always drain out their last drop of
+buttermilk when he goes on a forage."
+
+"Oh, I don't set up to be a popinjay," retorted Welch witheringly.
+
+"Popinjay, the devil!" scowled Dan, "who's a popinjay?"
+
+"Wall, I'd like a pair of good stout breeches," peacefully interposed
+Pinetop. "I've been backin' up agin the fence when I seed a lady comin' for
+the last three weeks, an' whenever I set down, I'm plum feared to git up
+agin. What with all the other things,--the Yankees, and the chills, and the
+measles,--it's downright hard on a man to have to be a-feared of his own
+breeches."
+
+Dan looked round with sympathy. "That's true; it's a shame," he admitted
+smiling. "Look here, boys, has anybody got an extra pair of breeches?"
+
+A howl of derision went up from the regiment as it fell into ranks.
+
+"Has anybody got a few grape-leaves to spare?" it demanded in a high
+chorus.
+
+"Oh, shut up," responded Dan promptly. "Come on, Pinetop, we'll clothe
+ourselves to-morrow."
+
+The brigade formed and swung off rapidly along the road, where the dust lay
+like gauze upon the sunshine. At the end of a mile somebody stopped and
+cried out excitedly. "Look here, boys, the persimmons on that tree over
+thar are gittin' 'mos fit to eat. I can see 'em turnin'," and with the
+words the column scattered like chaff across the field. But the first man
+to reach the tree came back with a wry face, and fell to swearing at "the
+darn fool who could eat persimmons before frost."
+
+"Thar's a tree in my yard that gits ripe about September," remarked
+Pinetop, as he returned dejectedly across the waste. "Ma she begins to dry
+'em 'fo' the frost sets in."
+
+"Oh, well, we'll get a square meal in the morning," responded Dan, growing
+cheerful as he dreamed of hospitable Maryland.
+
+Some hours later, in the warm dusk, they went into bivouac among the trees,
+and, in a little while, the campfires made a red glow upon the twilight.
+
+Pinetop, with a wooden bucket on his arm, had plunged off in search of
+water, and Dan and Jack Powell were sent, in the interests of the mess, to
+forage through the surrounding country.
+
+"There's a fat farmer about ten miles down, I saw him," remarked a lazy
+smoker, by way of polite suggestion.
+
+"Ten miles? Well, of all the confounded impudence," retorted Jack, as he
+strolled off with Dan into the darkness.
+
+For a time they walked in silence, depressed by hunger and the exhaustion
+of the march; then Dan broke into a whistle, and presently they found
+themselves walking in step with the merry air.
+
+"Where are your thoughts, Beau?" asked Jack suddenly, turning to look at
+him by the faint starlight.
+
+Dan's whistle stopped abruptly.
+
+"On a dish of fried chicken and a pot of coffee," he replied at once.
+
+"What's become of the waffles?" demanded Jack indignantly. "I say, old man,
+do you remember the sinful waste on those blessed Christmas Eves at
+Chericoke? I've been trying to count the different kinds of meat--roast
+beef, roast pig, roast goose, roast turkey--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, won't you?"
+
+"Well, I was just thinking that if I ever reach home alive I'll deliver the
+Major a lecture on his extravagance."
+
+"It isn't the Major; it's grandma," groaned Dan.
+
+"Oh, that queen among women!" exclaimed Jack fervently; "but the wines are
+the Major's, I reckon,--it seems to me I recall some port of which he was
+vastly proud."
+
+Dan delivered a blow that sent Jack on his knees in the stubble of an old
+corn field.
+
+"If you want to make me eat you, you're going straight about it," he
+declared.
+
+"Look out!" cried Jack, struggling to his feet, "there's a light over there
+among the trees," and they walked on briskly up a narrow country lane which
+led, after several turnings, to a large frame house well hidden from the
+road.
+
+In the doorway a woman was standing, with a lamp held above her head, and
+when she saw them she gave a little breathless call.
+
+"Is that you, Jim?"
+
+Dan went up the steps and stood, cap in hand, before her. The lamplight was
+full upon his ragged clothes and upon his pallid face with its strong
+high-bred lines of mouth and chin.
+
+"I thought you were my husband," said the woman, blushing at her mistake.
+"If you want food you are welcome to the little that I have--it is very
+little." She led the way into the house, and motioned, with a pitiable
+gesture, to a table that was spread in the centre of the sitting room.
+
+"Will you sit down?" she asked, and at the words, a child in the corner of
+the room set up a frightened cry.
+
+"It's my supper--I want my supper," wailed the child.
+
+"Hush, dear," said the woman, "they are our soldiers."
+
+"Our soldiers," repeated the child, staring, with its thumb in its mouth
+and the tear-drops on its cheeks.
+
+For an instant Dan looked at them as they stood there, the woman holding
+the child in her arms, and biting her thin lips from which hunger had
+drained all the red. There was scant food on the table, and as his gaze
+went back to it, it seemed to him that, for the first time, he grasped the
+full meaning of a war for the people of the soil. This was the real
+thing--not the waving banners, not the bayonets, not the fighting in the
+ranks.
+
+His eyes were on the woman, and she smiled as all women did upon whom he
+looked in kindness.
+
+"My dear madam, you have mistaken our purpose--we are not as hungry as we
+look," he said, bowing in his ragged jacket. "We were sent merely to ask
+you if you were in need of a guard for your smokehouse. My Colonel hopes
+that you have not suffered at our hands."
+
+"There is nothing left," replied the woman mystified, yet relieved. "There
+is nothing to guard except the children and myself, and we are safe, I
+think. Your Colonel is very kind--I thank him;" and as they went out she
+lighted them with her lamp from the front steps.
+
+An hour later they returned to camp with aching limbs and empty hands.
+
+"There's nothing above ground," they reported, flinging themselves beside
+the fire, though the night was warm. "We've scoured the whole country and
+the Federals have licked it as clean as a plate before us. Bless my soul!
+what's that I smell? Is this heaven, boys?"
+
+"Licked it clean, have they?" jeered the mess. "Well, they left a sheep
+anyhow loose somewhere. Beau's darky hadn't gone a hundred yards before he
+found one."
+
+"Big Abel? You don't say so?" whistled Dan, in astonishment, regarding the
+mutton suspended on ramrods above the coals.
+
+"Well, suh, 'twuz des like dis," explained Big Abel, poking the roast with
+a small stick. "I know I ain' got a bit a bus'ness ter shoot dat ar sheep
+wid my ole gun, but de sheep she ain' got no better bus'ness strayin' roun'
+loose needer. She sutney wuz a dang'ous sheep, dat she wuz. I 'uz des
+a-bleeged ter put a bullet in her haid er she'd er hed my blood sho'."
+
+As the shout went up he divided the legs of mutton into shares and went off
+to eat his own on the dark edge of the wood.
+
+A little later he came back to hang Dan's cap and jacket on the branches of
+a young pine tree. When he had arranged them with elaborate care, he raked
+a bed of tags together, and covered them with an army blanket stamped in
+the centre with the half obliterated letters U. S.
+
+"That's a good boy, Big Abel, go to sleep," said Dan, flinging himself down
+upon the pine-tag bed. "Strange how much spirit a sheep can put into a man.
+I wouldn't run now if I saw Pope's whole army coming."
+
+Turning over he lay sleepily gazing into the blue dusk illuminated with the
+campfires which were slowly dying down. Around him he heard the subdued
+murmur of the mess, deep and full, though rising now and then into a
+clearer burst of laughter. The men were smoking their brier-root pipes
+about the embers, leaning against the dim bodies of the pines, while they
+discussed the incidents of the march with a touch of the unconquerable
+humour of the Confederate soldier. Somebody had a fresh joke on the
+quartermaster, and everybody hoped great things of the campaign into
+Maryland.
+
+"I pray it may bring me a pair of shoes," muttered Dan, as he dropped off
+into slumber.
+
+The next day, with bands playing "Maryland, My Maryland," and the Southern
+Cross taking the September wind, the ragged army waded the Potomac, and
+passed into other fields.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A STRAGGLER FROM THE RANKS
+
+
+In two weeks it swept back, wasted, stubborn, hungrier than ever. On a
+sultry September afternoon, Dan, who had gone down with a sharp return of
+fever, was brought, with a wagonful of the wounded, and placed on a heap of
+straw on the brick pavement of Shepherdstown. For two days he had been
+delirious, and Big Abel had held him to his bed during the long nights when
+the terrible silence seemed filled with the noise of battle; but, as he was
+lifted from the wagon and laid upon the sidewalk, he opened his eyes and
+spoke in a natural voice.
+
+"What's all this fuss, Big Abel? Have I been out of my head?"
+
+"You sutney has, suh. You've been a-prayin' en shoutin' so loud dese las'
+tree days dat I wunner de Lawd ain' done shet yo' mouf des ter git rid er
+you."
+
+"Praying, have I?" said Dan. "Well, I declare. That reminds me of Mr.
+Blake, Big Abel. I'd like to know what's become of him."
+
+Big Abel shook his head; he was in no pleasant humour, for the corners of
+his mouth were drawn tightly down and there was a rut between his bushy
+eyebrows.
+
+"I nuver seed no sich place es dis yer town in all my lifetime," he
+grumbled. "Dey des let us lie roun' loose on de bricks same es ef we ain'
+been fittin' fur 'em twel we ain' nuttin' but skin en bone. Dose two wagon
+loads er cut-up sodgers hev done fill de houses so plum full dat dey sticks
+spang thoo de cracks er de do's. Don' talk ter me, suh, I ain' got no use
+fur dis wah, noways, caze hit's a low-lifeted one, dat's what 'tis; en ef
+you'd a min' w'at I tell you, you'd be settin' up at home right dis minute
+wid ole Miss a-feedin' you on br'ile chicken. You may fit all you wanter--I
+ain' sayin' nuttin' agin yo' fittin ef yo' spleen hit's up--but you could
+er foun' somebody ter fit wid back at home widout comin' out hyer ter git
+yo'se'f a-jumbled up wid all de po' white trash in de county. Dis yer wah
+ain' de kin' I'se use ter, caze hit jumbles de quality en de trash
+tergedder des like dey wuz bo'n blood kin."
+
+"What are you muttering about now, Big Abel?" broke in Dan impatiently.
+"For heaven's sake stop and find me a bed to lie on. Are they going to
+leave me out here in the street on this pile of straw?"
+
+"De Lawd he knows," hopelessly responded Big Abel. "Dey's a-fixin' places,
+dey sez, dat's why all dese folks is a-runnin' dis away en dat away like
+chickens wid dere haids chopped off. 'Fo' you hed yo' sense back dey wanted
+ter stick you over yonder in dat ole blue shanty wid all de skin peelin'
+off hit, but I des put my foot right down en 'lowed dey 'ouldn't. W'at you
+wan' ketch mo'n you got fur?"
+
+"But I can't stay here," weakly remonstrated Dan, "and I must have
+something to eat--I tell you I could eat nails. Bring me anything on God's
+earth except green corn."
+
+The street was filled with women, and one of them, passing with a bowl of
+gruel in her hand, came back and held it to his lips.
+
+"You poor fellow!" she said impulsively, in a voice that was rich with
+sympathy. "Why, I don't believe you've had a bite for a month."
+
+Dan smiled at her from his heap of straw--an unkempt haggard figure.
+
+"Not from so sweet a hand," he responded, his old spirit rising strong
+above misfortune.
+
+His voice held her, and she regarded him with a pensive face. She had known
+men in her day, which had declined long since toward its evening, and with
+the unerring instinct of her race she knew that the one before her was well
+worth the saving. Gallantry that could afford to jest in rags upon a pile
+of straw appealed to her Southern blood as little short of the heroic. She
+saw the pinch of hunger about the mouth, and she saw, too, the singular
+beauty which lay, obscured to less keen eyes, beneath the fever and the
+dirt.
+
+"The march must have been fearful--I couldn't have stood it," she said,
+half to test the man.
+
+Rising to the challenge, he laughed outright. "Well, since you mention it,
+it wasn't just the thing for a lady," he answered, true to his salt.
+
+For a moment she looked at him in silence, then turned regretfully to Big
+Abel.
+
+"The houses have filled up already, I believe," she said, "but there is a
+nice dry stable up the street which has just been cleaned out for a
+hospital. Carry your master up the next square and then into the alley a
+few steps where you will find a physician. I am going now for food and
+bandages."
+
+She hurried on, and Big Abel, seizing Dan beneath the arms, dragged him
+breathlessly along the street.
+
+"A stable! Huh! Hit's a wunner dey ain' ax us ter step right inter a nice
+clean pig pen," he muttered as he walked on rapidly.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind the stable, but this pace will kill me," groaned Dan.
+"Not so fast, Big Abel, not so fast."
+
+"Dis yer ain' no time to poke," replied Big Abel, sternly, and lifting the
+young man in his arms, he carried him bodily into the stable and laid him
+on a clean-smelling bed of straw. The place was large and well lighted, and
+Dan, as he turned over, heaved a grateful sigh.
+
+"Let me sleep--only let me sleep," he implored weakly.
+
+And for two days he slept, despite the noise about him. Dressed in clean
+clothes, brought by the lady of the morning, and shaved by the skilful hand
+of Big Abel, he buried himself in the fresh straw and dreamed of Chericoke
+and Betty. The coil of battle swept far from him; he heard none of the fret
+and rumour that filled the little street; even the moans of the men beneath
+the surgeons' knives did not penetrate to where he lay sunk in the stupor
+of perfect contentment. It was not until the morning of the third day, when
+the winds that blew over the Potomac brought the sounds of battle, that he
+was shocked back into a troubled consciousness of his absence from the
+army. Then he heard the voices of the guns calling to him from across the
+river, and once or twice he struggled up to answer.
+
+"I must go, Big Abel--they are in need of me," he said. "Listen! don't you
+hear them calling?"
+
+"Go way f'om yer, Marse Dan, dey's des a-firin' at one anurr," returned Big
+Abel, but Dan still tossed impatiently, his strained eyes searching through
+the door into the cloudy light of the alley. It was a sombre day, and the
+oppressive atmosphere seemed heavy with the smoke of battle.
+
+"If I only knew how it was going," he murmured, in the anguish of
+uncertainty. "Hush! isn't that a cheer, Big Abel?"
+
+"I don' heah nuttin' but de crowin' er a rooster on de fence."
+
+"There it is again!" cried Dan, starting up. "I can swear it is our side.
+Listen--go to the door--by God, man, that's our yell! Ah, there comes the
+rattle of the muskets--don't you hear it?"
+
+"Lawd, Marse Dan, I'se done hyern dat soun' twel I'm plum sick er it,"
+responded Big Abel, carefully measuring out a dose of arsenic, which had
+taken the place of quinine in a country where medicine was becoming as
+scarce as food. "You des swallow dis yer stuff right down en tu'n over en
+go fas' asleep agin."
+
+Taking the glass with trembling hands, Dan drained it eagerly.
+
+"It's the artillery now," he said, quivering with excitement. "The
+explosions come so fast I can hardly separate them. I never knew how long
+shells could screech before--do you mean to say they are really across the
+river? Go into the alley, Big Abel, and tell me if you see the smoke."
+
+Big Abel went out and returned, after a few moments, with the news that the
+smoke could be plainly seen, he was told, from the upper stories. There was
+such a crowd in the street, he added, that he could barely get
+along--nobody knew anything, but the wounded, who were arriving in great
+numbers, reported that General Lee could hold his ground "against Lucifer
+and all his angels."
+
+"Hold his ground," groaned Dan, with feverish enthusiasm, "why, he could
+hold a hencoop, for the matter of that, against the whole of North America!
+Oh, but this is worse than fighting. I must get up!"
+
+"You don' wanter git out dar in dat mess er skeered rabbits," returned Big
+Abel. "You cyarn see yo' han' befo' you fur de way dey's w'igglin' roun' de
+street, en w'at's mo' you cyarn heah yo' own w'uds fur de racket dey's
+a-kickin' up. Des lis'en ter 'em now, des lis'en!"
+
+"Oh, I wish I could tell our guns," murmured Dan at each quick explosion.
+"Hush! there comes the cheer, now--somebody's charging! It may be our
+brigade, Big Abel, and I not in it."
+
+He closed his eyes and fell back from sheer exhaustion, still following, as
+he lay there, the battalion that had sprung forward with that charging
+yell. Gray, obscured in smoke, curved in the centre, uneven as the
+Confederate line of battle always was--he saw it sweep onward over the
+September field. At the moment to have had his place in that charge beyond
+the river, he would have cheerfully met his death when the day was over.
+
+Through the night he slept fitfully, awaking from time to time to ask
+eagerly if it were not almost daybreak; then with the dawn the silence that
+had fallen over the Potomac seemed to leave a greater blank to be filled
+with the noises along the Virginia shore. The hurrying footsteps in the
+street outside kept up ceaselessly until the dark again; mingled with the
+cries of the wounded and the prayers of the frightened he heard always that
+eager, tireless passing of many feet. So familiar it became, so constant an
+accompaniment to his restless thoughts, that when at last the day wore out
+and the streets grew empty, he found himself listening for the steps of a
+passer-by as intently as he had listened in the morning for the renewed
+clamour of the battle on the Maryland fields.
+
+The stir of the retreat did not reach the stable where he lay; all night
+the army was recrossing the Potomac, but to Dan, tossing on his bed of
+straw, it lighted the victor's watch-fires on the disputed ground. He had
+not seen the shattered line of battle as it faced disease, exhaustion, and
+an army stronger by double numbers, nor had he seen the gray soldiers lying
+row on row where they had kept the "sunken road." Thick as the trampled
+corn beneath them, with the dust covering them like powder, and the
+scattered fence rails lying across their faces, the dead men of his own
+brigade were stretched upon the hillside, but through the long night he lay
+wakeful in the stable, watching with fevered eyes the tallow dips that
+burned dimly on the wall.
+
+In the morning a nurse, coming with a bowl of soup, brought the news that
+Lee's army was again on Virginia soil.
+
+"McClellan has opened a battery," she explained, "that's the meaning of
+this fearful noise--did you ever hear such sounds in your life? Yes, the
+shells are flying over the town, but they've done no harm as yet."
+
+She hastened off, and a little later a dishevelled straggler, with a cloth
+about his forehead, burst in at the open door.
+
+"They're shelling the town," he cried, waving a dirty hand, "an' you'll be
+prisoners in an hour if you don't git up and move. The Yankees are comin',
+I seed 'em cross the river. Lee's cut up, I tell you, he's left half his
+army dead in Maryland. Thar! they're shellin' the town, sho' 'nough!"
+
+With a last wave he disappeared into the alley, and Dan struggled from his
+bed and to the door. "Give me your arm, Big Abel," he said, speaking in a
+loud voice that he might be heard above the clamour. "I can't stay here. It
+isn't being killed I mind, but, by God, they'll never take me prisoner so
+long as I'm alive. Come here and give me your arm. You aren't afraid to go
+out, are you?"
+
+"Lawd, Marse Dan, I'se mo' feared ter stay hyer," responded Big Abel, with
+an ashen face. "Whar we gwine hide, anyhow?"
+
+"We won't hide, we'll run," returned Dan gravely, and with his arm on the
+negro's shoulder, he passed through the alley out into the street. There
+the noise bewildered him an instant, and his eyes went blind while he
+grasped Big Abel's sleeve.
+
+"Wait a minute, I can't see," he said. "Now, that's right, go on. By
+George, it's bedlam turned loose, let's get out of it!"
+
+"Dis away, Marse Dan, dis away, step right hyer," urged Big Abel, as he
+slipped through the hurrying crowd of fugitives which packed the street.
+White and black, men and women, sick and well, they swarmed up and down in
+the dim sunshine beneath the flying shells, which skimmed the town to
+explode in the open fields beyond. The wounded were there--all who could
+stand upon their feet or walk with the aid of crutches--stumbling on in a
+mad panic to the meadows where the shells burst or the hot sun poured upon
+festering cuts. Streaming in noisy groups, the slaves fled after them,
+praying, shrieking, calling out that the day of judgment was upon them, yet
+bearing upon their heads whatever they could readily lay hands on--bundles,
+baskets, babies, and even clucking fowls tied by the legs. Behind them went
+a troop of dogs, piercing the tumult with excited barks.
+
+Dan, fevered, pallid, leaning heavily upon Big Abel, passed unnoticed amid
+a throng which was, for the most part, worse off than himself. Men with old
+wounds breaking out afresh, or new ones staining red the cloths they wore,
+pushed wildly by him, making, as all made, for the country roads that led
+from war to peace. It was as if the hospitals of the world had disgorged
+themselves in the sunshine on the bright September fields.
+
+Once, as Dan moved slowly on, he came upon a soldier, with a bandage at his
+throat sitting motionless upon a rock beside a clump of thistles, and moved
+by the expression of supreme terror on the man's face, he stopped and laid
+a hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"What's the trouble, friend--given up?" he asked, and then drew back
+quickly for the man was dead. After this they went on more rapidly, flying
+from the horrors along the road as from the screaming shells and the dread
+of capture.
+
+At the hour of sunset, after many halts upon the way, they found themselves
+alone and still facing the open road. Since midday they had stopped for
+dinner with a hospitable farmer, and, some hours later, Big Abel had
+feasted on wild grapes, which he had found hidden in the shelter of a
+little wood. In the same wood a stream had tinkled over silver rocks, and
+Dan, lying upon the bank of moss, had bathed his face and hands in the
+clear water. Now, while the shadows fell in spires across the road, they
+turned into a quiet country lane, and stood watching the sun as it dropped
+beyond the gray stone wall. In the grass a small insect broke into a low
+humming, and the silence, closing the next instant, struck upon Dan's ears
+like a profound and solemn melody. He took off his cap, and still leaning
+upon Big Abel, looked with rested eyes on the sloping meadow brushed with
+the first gold of autumn. Something that was not unlike shame had fallen
+over him--as if the horrors of the morning were a mere vulgar affront which
+man had put upon the face of nature. The very anguish of the day obtruded
+awkwardly upon his thoughts, and the wild clamour he had left behind him
+showed with a savage crudeness against a landscape in which the dignity of
+earth--of the fruitful life of seasons and of crops--produced in a solitary
+observer a quiet that was not untouched by awe. Where nature was suggestive
+of the long repose of ages, the brief passions of a single generation
+became as the flicker of a candle or the glow of a firefly in the night.
+
+"Dat's a steep road ahead er us," remarked Big Abel suddenly, as he stared
+into the shadows.
+
+Dan came back with a start.
+
+"Where shall we sleep?" he asked. "No, not in that field--the open sky
+would keep me awake, I think. Let's bivouac in the woods as usual."
+
+They moved on a little way and entered a young pine forest, where Big Abel
+gathered a handful of branches and kindled a light blaze.
+
+"You ain' never eat nigger food, is you, Marse Dan?" he inquired as he did
+so.
+
+"Good Lord!" ejaculated Dan, "ask a man who has lived two months on
+corn-field peas if he's eaten hog food, and he'll be pretty sure to answer
+'yes.' Do you know we must have crawled about six miles to-day." He lay
+back on the pine tags and stared straight above where the long green
+needles were illuminated on a background of purple space. A few fireflies
+made golden points among the tree-tops.
+
+"Well, I'se got a hunk er middlin'," pursued Big Abel thoughtfully, "a
+strip er fat en a strip er lean des like hit oughter be--but a nigger
+'ooman she gun hit ter me, en I 'low Ole Marster wouldn't tech hit wid a
+ten-foot pole." He stuck the meat upon the end of Dan's bayonet and held it
+before the flames. "Ole Marster wouldn't tech hit, but den he ain' never
+had dese times."
+
+"You're right," replied Dan idly, filling his pipe and lighting it with a
+small red ember, "and all things considered, I don't think I'll raise any
+racket about that middling, Big Abel."
+
+"Hit ain' all nigger food, no how," added Big Abel reflectively, "caze de
+'ooman she done steal it f'om w'ite folks sho's you bo'n."
+
+"I only wish she had been tempted to steal some bread along with it,"
+rejoined Dan.
+
+Big Abel's answer was to draw a hoecake wrapped in an old newspaper from
+his pocket and place it on a short pine stump. Then he reached for his
+jack-knife and carefully slit the hoecake down the centre, after which he
+laid the bacon in slices between the crusts.
+
+"Did she steal that, too?" inquired Dan laughing.
+
+"Naw, suh, I stole dis."
+
+"Well, I never! You'll be ashamed to look the Major in the face when the
+war is over."
+
+Big Abel nodded gloomily as he passed the sandwich to Dan, who divided it
+into two equal portions. "Dar's somebody got ter do de stealin' in dis yer
+worl'," he returned with rustic philosophy, "des es dar's somebody got ter
+be w'ite folks en somebody got ter be nigger, caze de same pusson cyarn be
+ner en ter dat's sho'. Dar ain' 'oom fer all de yerth ter strut roun' wid
+dey han's in dey pockets en dey nose tu'nt up des caze dey's hones'. Lawd,
+Lawd, ef I'd a-helt my han's back f'om pickin' en stealin' thoo dis yer
+wah, whar 'ould you be now--I ax you dat?"
+
+Catching a dried branch the flame shot up suddenly, and he sat relieved
+against the glow, like a gigantic statue in black basalt.
+
+"Well, all's fair in love and war," replied Dan, adjusting himself to
+changed conditions. "If that wasn't as true as gospel, I should be dead
+to-morrow from this fat bacon."
+
+Big Abel started up.
+
+"Lis'en ter dat ole hoot owl," he exclaimed excitedly, "he's a-settin'
+right over dar on dat dead limb a-hootin' us plum in de mouf. Ain' dat like
+'em, now? Is you ever seed sech airs as dey put on?"
+
+He strode off into the darkness, and Dan, seized with a sudden homesickness
+for the army, lay down beside his musket and fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
+
+
+At daybreak they took up the march again, Dan walking slowly, with his
+musket striking the ground and his arm on Big Abel's shoulder. Where the
+lane curved in the hollow, they came upon a white cottage, with a woman
+milking a spotted cow in the barnyard. As she caught sight of them, she
+waved wildly with her linsey apron, holding the milk pail carefully between
+her feet as the spotted cow turned inquiringly.
+
+"Go 'way, I don't want no stragglers here," she cried, as one having
+authority.
+
+Leaning upon the fence, Dan placidly regarded her.
+
+"My dear madam, you commit an error of judgment," he replied, pausing to
+argue.
+
+With the cow's udder in her hand the woman looked up from the streaming
+milk.
+
+"Well, ain't you stragglers?" she inquired.
+
+Dan shook his head reproachfully.
+
+"What air you, then?"
+
+"Beggars, madam."
+
+"I might ha' knowed it!" returned the woman, with a snort. "Well, whatever
+you air, you kin jest as eas'ly keep on along that thar road. I ain't got
+nothing on this place for you. Some of you broke into my smokehouse night
+befo' last an' stole all the spar' ribs I'd been savin'. Was you the ones?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Oh, you're all alike," protested the woman, scornfully, "an' a bigger set
+o' rascals I never seed."
+
+"Huh! Who's a rascal?" exclaimed Big Abel, angrily.
+
+"This is the reward of doing your duty, Big Abel," remarked Dan, gravely.
+"Never do it again, remember. The next time Virginia is invaded we'll sit
+by the fire and warm our feet. Good morning, madam."
+
+"Why ain't you with the army?" inquired the woman sharply, slapping the cow
+upon the side as she rose from her seat and took up the milk pail. "An
+officer rode by this morning an' he told me part of the army was campin'
+ten miles across on the other road."
+
+"Did he say whose division?"
+
+"Oh, I reckon you kin fight as well under one general as another, so long
+as you've got a mind to fight at all. You jest follow this lane about three
+miles and then keep straight along the turnpike. If you do that I reckon
+you'll git yo' deserts befo' sundown." She came over to the fence and stood
+fixing them with hard, bright eyes. "My! You do look used up," she admitted
+after a moment. "You'd better come in an' git a glass of this milk befo'
+you move on. Jest go roun' to the gate and I'll meet you at the po'ch. The
+dog won't bite you if you don't touch nothin'."
+
+"All right, go ahead and hide the spoons," called Dan, as he swung open the
+gate and went up a little path bordered by prince's feathers.
+
+The woman met them at the porch and led them into a clean kitchen, where
+Dan sat down at the table and Big Abel stationed himself behind his chair.
+
+"Drink a glass of that milk the first thing," she said, bustling heavily
+about the room, and browbeating them into submissive silence, while she
+mixed the biscuits and broke the eggs into a frying-pan greased with bacon
+gravy. Plump, hearty, with a full double chin and cheeks like winter
+apples, she moved briskly from the wooden safe to the slow fire, which she
+stirred with determined gestures.
+
+"It's time this war had stopped, anyhow," she remarked as she slapped the
+eggs up into the air and back again into the pan. "An' if General Lee ever
+rides along this way I mean to tell him that he ought to have one good
+battle an' be done with it. Thar's no use piddlin' along like this twil
+we're all worn out and thar ain't a corn-field pea left in Virginny. Look
+here (to Big Abel), you set right down on that do' step an' I'll give you
+something along with yo' marster. It's a good thing I happened to look
+under the cow trough yestiddy or thar wouldn't have been an egg left in
+this house. That's right, turn right in an' eat hearty--don't mince with
+me." Big Abel, cowed by her energetic manner, seated himself upon the door
+step, and for a half-hour the woman ceaselessly plied them with hot
+biscuits and coffee made from sweet potatoes.
+
+"You mustn't think I mind doing for the soldiers," she said when they took
+their leave a little later, "but I've a husban' with General Lee and I
+can't bear to see able-bodied men stragglin' about the country. No, don't
+give me nothin'--it ain't worth it. Lord, don't I know that you don't git
+enough to buy a bag of flour." Then she pointed out the way again and they
+set off with a well-filled paper of luncheon.
+
+"Beware of hasty judgments, Big Abel," advised Dan, as they strolled along
+the road. "Now that woman there--she's the right sort, though she rather
+took my breath away."
+
+"She 'uz downright ficy at fu'st," replied Big Abel, "but I d'clar dose
+eggs des melted in my mouf like butter. Whew! don't I wish I had dat ole
+speckled hen f'om home. I could hev toted her unner my arm thoo dis wah des
+es well es not."
+
+The sun was well overhead, and across the landscape the heavy dew was
+lifted like a veil. Here and there the autumn foliage tinted the woods in
+splashes of red and yellow; and beyond the low stone wall an old sheep
+pasture was ablaze in goldenrod. From a pointed aspen beside the road a
+wild grapevine let down a fringe of purple clusters, but Big Abel, with a
+full stomach, passed them by indifferently. A huge buzzard, rising suddenly
+from the pasture, sailed slowly across the sky, its heavy shadow skimming
+the field beneath. As yet the flames of war had not blown over this quiet
+spot; in the early morning dew it lay as fresh as the world in its
+beginning.
+
+At the end of the lane, when they came out upon the turnpike, they met an
+old farmer riding a mule home from the market.
+
+"Can you tell me if McClellan has crossed the Potomac?" asked Dan, as he
+came up with him. "I was in the hospital at Shepherdstown, and I left it
+for fear of capture. No news has reached me, but I am on my way to rejoin
+the army."
+
+"Naw, suh, you might as well have stayed whar you were," responded the old
+man, eying him with the suspicion which always met a soldier out of ranks.
+"McClellan didn't do no harm on this side of the river--he jest set up a
+battery on Douglas hill and scolded General Lee for leaving Maryland so
+soon. You needn't worry no mo' 'bout the Yankees gittin' on this side--thar
+ain't none of 'em left to come, they're all dead. Why, General Lee cut 'em
+all up into little pieces, that's what he did. Hooray! it was jest like
+Bible times come back agin."
+
+Then, as Dan moved on, the farmer raised himself in his stirrups and called
+loudly after him. "Keep to the Scriptures, young man, and remember Joshua,
+Smite them hip an' thigh, as the Bible says."
+
+All day in the bright sunshine they crept slowly onward, halting at brief
+intervals to rest in the short grass by the roadside, and stopping to ask
+information of the countrymen or stragglers whom they met. At last in the
+red glow of the sunset they entered a strip of thin woodland, and found an
+old negro gathering resinous knots from the bodies of fallen pines.
+
+"Bless de Lawd!" he exclaimed as he faced them. "Is you done come fer de
+sick sodger at my cabin?"
+
+"A sick soldier? Why, we are all sick soldiers," answered Dan. "Where did
+he come from?" The old man shook his head, as he placed his heavy split
+basket on the ground at his feet.
+
+"I dunno, marster, he ain' come, he des drapped. 'Twuz yestiddy en I 'uz
+out hyer pickin' up dis yer lightwood des like I is doin' dis minute, w'en
+I heah 'a-bookerty! bookerty! bookerty!' out dar in de road 'en a w'ite
+hoss tu'n right inter de woods wid a sick sodger a-hangin' ter de saddle.
+Yes, suh, de hoss he come right in des like he knowed me, en w'en I helt
+out my han' he poke his nose spang inter it en w'innied like he moughty
+glad ter see me--en he wuz, too, dat's sho'. Well, I ketch holt er his
+bridle en lead 'im thoo de woods up ter my do' whar he tu'n right in en
+begin ter nibble in de patch er kebbage. All dis time I 'uz 'lowin' dat de
+sodger wuz stone dead, but w'en I took 'im down he opened his eyes en axed
+fur water. Den I gun 'im a drink outer de goa'd en laid 'im flat on my bed,
+en in a little w'ile a nigger come by dat sez he b'longed ter 'im, but
+befo' day de nigger gone agin en de hoss he gone, too."
+
+"Well, we'll see about him, uncle, go ahead," said Dan, and as the old
+negro went up the path among the trees, he followed closely on his
+footsteps. When they had gone a little way the woods opened suddenly and
+they came upon a small log cabin, with a yellow dog lying before the door.
+The dog barked shrilly as they approached, and a voice from the dim room
+beyond called out:--
+
+"Hosea! Are you back so soon, Hosea?"
+
+At the words Dan stopped as if struck by lightning, midway of the vegetable
+garden; then breaking from Big Abel, he ran forward and into the little
+cabin.
+
+"Is the hurt bad, Governor?" he asked in a trembling voice.
+
+The Governor smiled and held out a steady hand above the ragged patchwork
+quilt. His neat gray coat lay over him and as Dan caught the glitter and
+the collar he remembered the promotion after Seven Pines.
+
+"Let me help you, General," he implored. "What is it that we can do?"
+
+"I have come to the end, my boy," replied the Governor, his rich voice
+unshaken. "I have seen men struck like this before and I have lived twelve
+hours longer than the strongest of them. When I could go no farther I sent
+Hosea ahead to make things ready--and now I am keeping alive to hear from
+home. Give me water."
+
+Dan held the glass to his lips, and looking up, the Governor thanked him
+with his old warm glance that was so like Betty's. "There are some things
+that are worth fighting for," said the older man as he fell back, "and the
+sight of home is one of them. It was a hard ride, but every stab of pain
+carried me nearer to Uplands--and there are poor fellows who endure worse
+things and yet die in a strange land among strangers." He was silent a
+moment and then spoke slowly, smiling a little sadly.
+
+"My memory has failed me," he said, "and when I lay here last night and
+tried to recall the look of the lawn at home, I couldn't remember--I
+couldn't remember. Are there elms or maples at the front, Dan?"
+
+"Maples, sir," replied Dan, with the deference of a boy. "The long walk
+bordered by lilacs goes up from the road to the portico with the Doric
+columns--you remember that?"
+
+"Yes, yes, go on."
+
+"The maples have grown thick upon the lawn and close beside the house there
+is the mimosa tree that your father set out on his twenty-first birthday."
+
+"The branches touch the library window. I had them trimmed last year that
+the shutters might swing back. What time is it, Dan?"
+
+Dan turned to the door.
+
+"What time is it, Big Abel?" he called to the negro outside.
+
+"Hit's goin' on eight o'clock, suh," replied Big Abel, staring at the west.
+"De little star he shoots up moughty near eight, en dar he is a-comin'."
+
+"Hosea is there by now," said the Governor, turning his head on a pillow of
+pine needles. "He started this morning, and I told him to change horses
+upon the road and eat in the saddle. Yes, he is there by now and Julia is
+on the way. Am I growing weaker, do you think? There is a little brandy on
+the chair, give me a few drops--we must make it last all night."
+
+After taking the brandy he slept a little, and awaking quietly, looked at
+Dan with dazed eyes.
+
+"Who is it?" he asked, stretching out his hand. "Why, I thought Dick Wythe
+was dead."
+
+Dan bent over him, smoothing the hair from his brow with hands that were
+gentle as a woman's.
+
+"Surely you haven't forgotten me," he said.
+
+"No--no, I remember, but it is dark, too dark. Why doesn't Shadrach bring
+the candles? And we might as well have a blaze in the fireplace to-night.
+It has grown chilly; there'll be a white frost before morning."
+
+There was a basket of resinous pine beside the hearth, and Dan kindled a
+fire from a handful of rich knots. As the flames shot up, the rough little
+cabin grew more cheerful, and the Governor laughed softly lying on his
+pallet.
+
+"Why, I thought you were Dick Wythe, my boy," he said. "The light was so
+dim I couldn't see, and, after all, it was no great harm, for there was not
+a handsomer man in the state than my friend Dick--the ladies used to call
+him 'Apollo Unarmed,' you know. Ah, I was jealous enough of Dick in my day,
+though he never knew it. He rather took Julia's fancy when I first began
+courting her, and, for a time, he pretended to reform and refused to touch
+a drop even at the table. I've seen him sit for hours, too, in Julia's
+Bible class of little negroes, with his eyes positively glued on her face
+while she read the hymns aloud. Yes, he was over head and ears in love with
+her, there's no doubt of that--though she has always denied it--and, I dare
+say, he would have been a much better man if she had married him, and I a
+much worse one. Somehow, I can't help feeling that it wasn't quite just,
+and that I ought to square up things with Dick at Judgment Day. I shouldn't
+like to reap any good from his mistakes, poor fellow." He broke off for an
+instant, lay gazing at the lightwood blaze, and then took up the thread.
+"He had his fall at last, and it's been on my conscience ever since that I
+didn't toss that bowl of apple toddy through the window when I saw him
+going towards it. We were at Chericoke on Christmas Eve in a big snowstorm,
+and Dick couldn't resist his glass--he never could so long as there was a
+drop at the bottom of it--the more he drank, the thirstier he got, he used
+to say. Well, he took a good deal, more than he could stand, and when the
+Major began toasting the ladies and called them the prettiest things God
+ever made, Dick flew into a rage and tried to fight him. 'There are two
+prettier sights than any woman that ever wore petticoats,' he thundered;
+'and (here he ripped out an oath) I'll prove it to you at the sword's point
+before sunrise. God made but one thing, sir, prettier than the cobwebs on a
+bottle of wine, and that's the bottle of wine without the cobwebs!' Then he
+went at the Major, and we had to hold him back and rub snow on his temples.
+That night I drove home with Julia, and she accepted me before we passed
+the wild cherry tree on the way to Uplands."
+
+As he fell silent the old negro, treading softly, came into the room and
+made the preparations for his simple supper, which he carried outside
+beneath the trees. In a little bared place amid charred wood, a fire was
+started, and Dan watched through the open doorway the stooping figures of
+the two negroes as they bent beside the flames. In a little while Big Abel
+came into the room and beckoned him, but he shook his head impatiently and
+turned away, sickened by the thought of food.
+
+"Go, my boy," said the Governor, as if he had seen it through closed eyes.
+"I never saw a private yet that wasn't hungry--one told me last week that
+his diet for a year had varied only three times--blackberries, chinquapins,
+and persimmons had kept him alive, he said."
+
+Then his mind wandered again, and he talked in a low voice of the wheat
+fields at Uplands and of the cradles swinging all day in the sunshine. Dan,
+moving to the door, stared, with aching eyes, at the rich twilight which
+crept like purple mist among the trees. The very quiet of the scene grated
+as a discord upon his mood, and he would have welcomed with a feeling of
+relief any violent manifestation of the savagery of nature. A storm, an
+earthquake, even the thunder of battle he felt would be less tragic than
+just this pleasant evening with the serene moon rising above the hills.
+
+Turning back into the room, he drew a split-bottomed chair beside the
+hearth, and began his patient watch until the daybreak. Under the patchwork
+quilt the Governor lay motionless, dead from the waist down, only the
+desire in his eyes struggling to keep the spirit to the clay. Big Abel and
+the old negro made themselves a bed beneath the trees, and as they raked
+the dried leaves together the mournful rustling filled the little cabin.
+Then they lay down, the yellow dog beside them, and gradually the silence
+of the night closed in.
+
+After midnight, Dan, who had dozed in his chair from weariness, was
+awakened by the excited tones of the Governor's voice. The desire was
+vanquished at last and the dying man had gone back in delirium to the
+battle he had fought beyond the river. On the hearth the resinous pine
+still blazed and from somewhere among the stones came the short chirp of a
+cricket.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing--a mere scratch. Lay me beneath that tree, and tell
+Barnes to support D. H. Hill at the sunken road. Richardson is charging us
+across the ploughed ground and we are fighting from behind the stacked
+fence rails. Ah, they advance well, those Federals--not a man out of line,
+and their fire has cut the corn down as with a sickle. If Richardson keeps
+this up, he will sweep us from the wood and beyond the slope. No, don't
+take me to the hospital. Please God, I'll die upon the field and hear the
+cannon at the end. Look! they are charging again, but we still hold our
+ground. What, Longstreet giving way? They are forcing him from the
+ridge--the enemy hold it now! Ah, well, there is A. P. Hill to give the
+counter stroke. If he falls upon their flank, the day is--"
+
+His voice ceased, and Dan, crossing the room, gave him brandy from the
+glass upon the chair. The silence had grown suddenly oppressive, and as the
+young man went back to his seat, he saw a little mouse gliding like a
+shadow across the floor. Startled by his footsteps, it hesitated an instant
+in the centre of the room, and then darted along the wall and disappeared
+between the loose logs in the corner. Often during the night it crept out
+from its hiding place, and at last Dan grew to look for it with a certain
+wistful comfort in its shy companionship.
+
+Gradually the stars went out above the dim woods, and the dawn whitened
+along the eastern sky. With the first light Dan went to the open door and
+drew a deep breath of the refreshing air. A new day was coming, but he met
+it with dulled eyes and a crippled will. The tragedy of life seemed to
+overhang the pleasant prospect upon which he looked, and, as he stood
+there, he saw in his vision of the future only an endless warfare and a
+wasted land. With a start he turned, for the Governor was speaking in a
+voice that filled the cabin and rang out into the woods.
+
+"Skirmishers, forward! Second the battalion of direction! Battalions,
+forward!"
+
+He had risen upon his pallet and was pointing straight at the open door,
+but when, with a single stride, Dan reached him, he was already dead.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+IN THE SILENCE OF THE GUNS
+
+
+At noon the next day, Dan, sitting beside the fireless hearth, with his
+head resting on his clasped hands, saw a shadow fall suddenly upon the
+floor, and, looking up, found Mrs. Ambler standing in the doorway.
+
+"I am too late?" she said quietly, and he bowed his head and motioned to
+the pallet in the corner.
+
+Without seeing the arm he put out, she crossed the room like one bewildered
+by a sudden blow, and went to where the Governor was lying beneath the
+patchwork quilt. No sound came to her lips; she only stretched out her hand
+with a protecting gesture and drew the dead man to her arms. Then it was
+that Dan, turning to leave her alone with her grief, saw that Betty had
+followed her mother and was coming toward him from the doorway. For an
+instant their eyes met; then the girl went to her dead, and Dan passed out
+into the sunlight with a new bitterness at his heart.
+
+A dozen yards from the cabin there was a golden beech spreading in wide
+branches against the sky, and seating himself on a fallen log beneath it,
+he looked over the soft hills that rose round and deep-bosomed from the dim
+blue valley. He was still there an hour later when, hearing a rustle in the
+grass, he turned and saw Betty coming to him over the yellowed leaves. His
+first glance showed him that she had grown older and very pale; his second
+that her kind brown eyes were full of tears.
+
+"Betty, is it this way?" he asked, and opened his arms.
+
+With a cry that was half a sob she ran toward him, her black skirt sweeping
+the leaves about her feet. Then, as she reached him, she swayed forward as
+if a strong wind blew over her, and as he caught her from the ground, he
+kissed her lips. Her tears broke out afresh, but as they stood there in
+each other's arms, neither found words to speak nor voice to utter them.
+The silence between them had gone deeper than speech, for it had in it all
+the dumb longing of the last two years--the unshaken trust, the bitterness
+of the long separation, the griefs that had come to them apart, and the
+sorrow that had brought them at last together. He held her so closely that
+he felt the flutter of her breast with each rising sob, and an anguish that
+was but a vibration from her own swept over him like a wave from head to
+foot. Since he had put her from him on that last night at Chericoke their
+passion had deepened by each throb of pain and broadened by each step that
+had led them closer to the common world. Not one generous thought, not one
+temptation overcome but had gone to the making of their love to-day--for
+what united them now was not the mere prompting of young impulse, but the
+strength out of many struggles and the fulness out of experiences that had
+ripened the heart of each.
+
+"Let me look at you," said Betty, lifting her wet face. "It has been so
+long, and I have wanted you so much--I have hungered sleeping and waking."
+
+"Don't look at me, Betty, I am a skeleton--a crippled skeleton, and I will
+not be looked at by my love."
+
+"Your love can see you with shut eyes. Oh, my best and dearest, do you
+think you could keep me from seeing you however hard you tried? Why,
+there's a lamp in my heart that lets me look at you even in the night."
+
+"Your lamp flatters, I am afraid to face it. Has it shown you this?"
+
+He drew back and held up his maimed hand, his eyes fastened upon her face,
+where the old fervour had returned.
+
+With a sob that thrilled through him, she caught his hand to her lips and
+then held it to her bosom, crooning over it little broken sounds of love
+and pity. Through the spreading beech above a clear gold light filtered
+down upon her, and a single yellow leaf was caught in her loosened hair. He
+saw her face, impassioned, glorified, amid a flood of sunshine.
+
+"And I did not know," she said breathlessly. "You were wounded and there
+was no one to tell me. Whenever there has been a battle I have sat very
+still and shut my eyes, and tried to make myself go straight to you. I have
+seen the smoke and heard the shots, and yet when it came I did not know it.
+I may even have laughed and talked and eaten a stupid dinner while you were
+suffering. Now I shall never smile again until I have you safe."
+
+"But if I were dying I should want to see you smiling. Nobody ever smiled
+before you, Betty."
+
+"If you are wounded, you will send for me. Promise me; I beg you on my
+knees. You will send for me; say it or I shall be always wretched. Do you
+want to kill me, Dan? Promise."
+
+"I shall send for you. There, will that do? It would be almost worth dying
+to have you come to me. Would you kiss me then, I wonder?"
+
+"Then and now," she answered passionately. "Oh, I sometimes think that wars
+are fought to torture women! Hold me in your arms again or my heart will
+break. I have missed Virginia so--never a day passes that I do not see her
+coming through the rooms and hear her laugh--such a baby laugh, do you
+remember it?"
+
+"I remember everything that was near to you, beloved."
+
+"If you could have seen her on her wedding day, when she came down in her
+pink crepe shawl and white bonnet that I had trimmed, and looked back,
+smiling at us for the last time. I have almost died with wanting her
+again--and now papa--papa! They loved life so, and yet both are dead, and
+life goes on without them."
+
+"My poor love, poor Betty."
+
+"But not so poor as if I had lost you, too," she answered; "and if you are
+wounded even a little remember that you have promised, and I shall come to
+you. Prince Rupert and I will pass the lines together. Do you know that I
+have Prince Rupert, Dan?"
+
+"Keep him, dear, don't let him get into the army."
+
+"He lives in the woods night and day, and when he comes to pasture I go
+after him while Uncle Shadrach watches the turnpike. When the soldiers come
+by, blue or gray, we hide him behind the willows in the brook. They may
+take the chickens--and they do--but I should kill the man who touched
+Prince Rupert's bridle."
+
+"You should have been a soldier, Betty."
+
+She shook her head. "Oh, I couldn't shoot any one in cold blood--as you
+do--that's different. I'd have to hate him as much--as much as I love you."
+
+"How much is that?"
+
+"A whole world full and brimming over; is that enough?"
+
+"Only a little world?" he answered. "Is that all?"
+
+"If I told you truly, you would not believe me," she said earnestly. "You
+would shake your head and say: 'Poor silly Betty, has she gone moon mad?'"
+
+Catching her in his arms again, he kissed her hair and mouth and hands and
+the ruffle at her throat. "Poor silly Betty," he repeated, "where is your
+wisdom now?"
+
+"You have turned it into folly, sad little wisdom that it was."
+
+"Well, I prefer your folly," he said gravely. "It was folly that made you
+love me at the first; it was pure folly that brought you out to me that
+night at Chericoke--but the greatest folly of all is just this, my dear."
+
+"But it will keep you safe."
+
+"Who knows? I may get shot to-morrow. There, there, I only said it to feel
+your arms about me."
+
+Her hands clung to him and the tears, rising to her lashes, fell fast upon
+his coat.
+
+"Oh, don't let me lose you," she begged. "I have lost so much--don't let me
+lose you, too."
+
+"Living or dead, I am yours, that I swear."
+
+"But I don't want you dead. I want the feel of you. I want your hands, your
+face. I want _you_."
+
+"Betty, Betty," he said softly. "Listen, for there is no word in the world
+that means so much as just your name."
+
+"Except yours."
+
+"No interruptions, this is martial law. Dear, dearest, darling, are all
+empty sounds; but when I say 'Betty,' it is full of life."
+
+"Say it again, then."
+
+"Betty, do you love me?"
+
+"Ask: 'Betty, is the sun shining?'"
+
+"It always shines about you."
+
+"Because my hair is red?"
+
+"Red? It is pure gold. Do you remember when I found that out on the hearth
+in free Levi's cabin? The colour went to my head, but when I put out my
+hand to touch a curl, you drew away and fastened them up again. Now I have
+pulled them all down and you dare not move."
+
+"Shall I tell you why I drew away?"
+
+The tears were still on her lashes, but in the exaltation of a great
+passion, life, death, the grave, and things beyond had dwindled like stars
+before the rising sun.
+
+"You told me then--because I was 'a pampered poodle dog.' Well, I've
+outgrown that objection certainly. Let us hope you have a fancy for lean
+hounds."
+
+She put up her hands in protest.
+
+"I drew away partly because I knew you did not love me," she said, meeting
+his eyes with her clear and ardent gaze, "but more because--I knew that I
+loved you."
+
+"You loved me then? Oh, Betty, if I had only known!"
+
+"If you had known!" She covered her face. "Oh, it was terrible enough as it
+was. I wanted to beat myself for shame."
+
+"Shame? In loving me, my darling?"
+
+"In loving you like that."
+
+"Nonsense. If you had only said to me: 'My good sir, I love you a little
+bit,' I should have come to my senses on the spot. Even pampered poodle
+dogs are not all fat, Betty, and, as it was, I did come to the years of
+discretion that very night. I didn't sleep a wink."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"I walked the floor till daybreak."
+
+"And I sat by the window."
+
+"I hurled every hard name at myself that I could think of. 'Dolt and idiot'
+seemed to stick. By George, I can't get over it. To think that I might have
+galloped down that turnpike and swept you off your feet. You wouldn't have
+withstood me, Betty, you couldn't."
+
+"Yet I did," she said, smiling sadly.
+
+"Oh, I didn't have a fair chance, you see."
+
+"Perhaps not," she answered, "though sometimes I was afraid you would hear
+my heart beating and know it all. Do you remember that morning in the
+garden with the roses?--I wouldn't kiss you good-by, but if you had done it
+against my will I'd have broken down. After you had gone I kissed the grass
+where you had stood."
+
+"My God! I can't leave you, Betty."
+
+She met his passionate gaze with steady eyes.
+
+"If you were not to go I should never have told you," she answered; "but if
+you die in battle you must remember it at the last."
+
+"It seems an awful waste of opportunities," he said, "but I'll make it up
+on the day that I come back a Major-general. Then I shall say 'forward,
+madam,' and you'll marry me on the spot."
+
+"Don't be too sure. I may grow coy again when the war is over."
+
+"When you do I'll find the remedy--for I'll be a Major-general, then, and
+you a private. This war must make me, dear. I shan't stay in the ranks much
+longer."
+
+"I like you there--it is so brave," she said.
+
+"But you'll like me anywhere, and I prefer the top--the very top. Oh, my
+love, we'll wring our happiness from the world before we die!"
+
+With a shiver she came back to the earth.
+
+"I had almost forgotten him," she said in keen self-reproach, and went
+quickly over the rustling leaves to the cabin door. As Dan followed her the
+day seemed to grow suddenly darker to his eyes.
+
+On the threshold he met Mrs. Ambler, composed and tearless, wearing her
+grief as a veil that hid her from the outside world. Before her calm gray
+eyes he fell back with an emotion not unmixed with awe.
+
+"I did the best I could," he said bluntly, "but it was nothing."
+
+She thanked him quietly, asking a few questions in her grave and gentle
+voice. Was he conscious to the end? Did he talk of home? Had he expressed
+any wishes of which she was not aware?
+
+"They are bringing him to the wagon now," she finished steadily. "No, do
+not go in--you are very weak and your strength must be saved to hold your
+musket. Shadrach and Big Abel will carry him, I prefer it to be so. We left
+the wagon at the end of the path; it is a long ride home, but we have
+arranged to change horses, and we shall reach Uplands, I hope, by sunrise."
+
+"I wish to God I could go with you!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Your place is with the army," she answered. "I have no son to send, so you
+must go in his stead. He would have it this way if he could choose."
+
+For a moment she was silent, and he looked at her placid face and the
+smooth folds of her black silk with a wonder that checked his words.
+
+"Some one said of him once," she added presently, "that he was a man who
+always took his duty as if it were a pleasure; and it was true--so true. I
+alone saw how hard this was for him, for he hated war as heartily as he
+dreaded death. Yet when both came he met them squarely and without looking
+back."
+
+"He died as he had lived, the truest gentleman I have ever known," he said.
+
+A pleased smile hovered for an instant on her lips.
+
+"He fought hard against secession until it came," she pursued quietly, "for
+he loved the Union, and he had given it the best years of his life--his
+strong years, he used to say. I think if he ever felt any bitterness toward
+any one, it was for the man or men who brought us into this; and at last he
+used to leave the room because he could not speak of them without anger. He
+threw all his strength against the tide, yet, when it rushed on in spite of
+him, he knew where his duty guided him, and he followed it, as always, like
+a pleasure. You thought him sanguine, I suppose, but he never was so--in
+his heart, though the rest of us think differently, he always felt that he
+was fighting for a hopeless cause, and he loved it the more for very pity
+of its weakness. 'It is the spirit and not the bayonet that makes history,'
+he used to say."
+
+Heavy steps crossed the cabin floor, and Uncle Shadrach and Big Abel came
+out bringing the dead man between them. With her hand on the gray coat,
+Mrs. Ambler walked steadily as she leaned on Betty's shoulder. Once or
+twice she noticed rocks in the way, and cautioned the negroes to go
+carefully down the descending grade. The bright leaves drifted upon them,
+and through the thin woods, along the falling path, over the lacework of
+lights and shadows, they went slowly out into the road where Hosea was
+waiting with the open wagon.
+
+The Governor was laid upon the straw that filled the bottom, Mrs. Ambler
+sat down beside him, and as Betty followed, Uncle Shadrach climbed upon the
+seat above the wheel.
+
+"Good-by, my boy," said Mrs. Ambler, giving him her hand.
+
+"Good-by, my soldier," said Betty, taking both of his. Then Hosea cracked
+the whip and the wagon rolled out into the road, scattering the gray dust
+high into the sunlight.
+
+Dan, standing alone against the pines, looked after it with a gnawing
+hunger at his heart, seeing first Betty's eyes, next the gleam of her hair,
+then the dim figures fading into the straw, and at last the wagon caught up
+in a cloud of dust. Down the curving road, round a green knoll, across a
+little stream, and into the blue valley it passed as a speck upon the
+landscape. Then the distance closed over it, the sand settled in the road,
+and the blank purple hills crowded against the sky.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"THE PLACE THEREOF"
+
+
+In the full beams of the sun the wagon turned into the drive between the
+lilacs and drew up before the Doric columns. Mr. Bill and the two old
+ladies came out upon the portico, and the Governor was lifted down by Uncle
+Shadrach and Hosea and laid upon the high tester bed in the room behind the
+parlour.
+
+As Betty entered the hall, the familiar sights of every day struck her eyes
+with the smart of a physical blow. The excitement of the shock had passed
+from her; there was no longer need to tighten the nervous strain, and
+henceforth she must face her grief where the struggle is always hardest--in
+the place where each trivial object is attended by pleasant memories. While
+there was something for her hands to do--or the danger of delay in the long
+watch upon the road--it had not been so hard to brace her strength against
+necessity, but here--what was there left that she must bring herself to
+endure? The torturing round of daily things, the quiet house in which to
+cherish new regrets, and outside the autumn sunshine on the long white
+turnpike. The old waiting grown sadder, was begun again; she must put out
+her hands to take up life where it had stopped, go up and down the shining
+staircase and through the unchanged rooms, while her ears were always
+straining for the sound of the cannon, or the beat of a horse's hoofs upon
+the road.
+
+The brick wall around the little graveyard was torn down in one corner,
+and, while the afternoon sun slanted between the aspens, the Governor was
+laid away in the open grave beneath rank periwinkle. There was no minister
+to read the service, but as the clods of earth fell on the coffin, Mrs.
+Ambler opened her prayer book and Betty, kneeling upon the ground, heard
+the low words with her eyes on the distant mountains. Overhead the aspens
+stirred beneath a passing breeze, and a few withered leaves drifted slowly
+down. Aunt Lydia wept softly, and the servants broke into a subdued
+wailing, but Mrs. Ambler's gentle voice did not falter.
+
+"He, cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a
+shadow, and never continueth in one stay."
+
+She read on quietly in the midst of the weeping slaves, who had closed
+about her. Then, at the last words, her hands dropped to her sides, and she
+drew back while Uncle Shadrach shovelled in the clay.
+
+"It is but a span," she repeated, looking out into the sunshine, with a
+light that was almost unearthly upon her face.
+
+"Come away, mamma," said Betty, holding out her arms; and when the last
+spray of life-everlasting was placed upon the finished mound, they went out
+by the hollow in the wall, turning from time to time to look back at the
+gray aspens. Down the little hill, through the orchard, and across the
+meadows filled with waving golden-rod, the procession of white and black
+filed slowly homeward. When the lawn was reached each went to his
+accustomed task, and Aunt Lydia to her garden.
+
+An hour later the Major rode over in response to a message which had just
+reached him.
+
+"I was in town all the morning," he explained in a trembling voice, "and I
+didn't get the news until a half hour ago. The saddest day of my life,
+madam, is the one upon which I learn that I have outlived him."
+
+"He loved you, Major," said Mrs. Ambler, meeting his swimming eyes.
+
+"Loved me!" repeated the old man, quivering in his chair, "I tell you,
+madam, I would rather have been Peyton Ambler's friend than President of
+the Confederacy! Do you remember the time he gave me his last keg of brandy
+and went without for a month?"
+
+She nodded, smiling, and the Major, with red eyes and shaking hands,
+wandered into endless reminiscences of the long friendship. To Betty these
+trivial anecdotes were only a fresh torture, but Mrs. Ambler followed them
+eagerly, comparing her recollections with the Major's, and repeating in a
+low voice to herself characteristic stories which she had not heard before.
+
+"I remember that--we had been married six months then," she would say, with
+the unearthly light upon her face. "It is almost like living again to hear
+you, Major."
+
+"Well, madam, life is a sad affair, but it is the best we've got,"
+responded the old gentleman, gravely.
+
+"He loved it," returned Mrs. Ambler, and as the Major rose to go, she
+followed him into the hall and inquired if Mrs. Lightfoot had been
+successful with her weaving. "She told me that she intended to have her old
+looms set up again," she added, "and I think that I shall follow her
+example. Between us we might clothe a regiment of soldiers."
+
+"She has had the servants brushing off the cobwebs for a week," replied the
+Major, "and to-day I actually found Car'line at a spinning wheel on the
+back flagstones. There's not the faintest doubt in my mind that if Molly
+had been placed in the Commissary department our soldiers would be living
+to-day on the fat of the land. She has knitted thirty pairs of socks since
+spring. Good-by, my dear lady, good-by, and may God sustain you in your
+double affliction."
+
+He crossed the portico, bowed as he descended the steps, and, mounting in
+the drive, rode slowly away upon his dappled mare. When he reached the
+turnpike he lifted his hat again and passed on at an amble.
+
+During the next few months it seemed to Betty that she aged a year each
+day. The lines closed and opened round them; troops of blue and gray
+cavalrymen swept up and down the turnpike; the pastures were invaded by
+each army in its turn, and the hen-house became the spoil of a regiment of
+stragglers. Uncle Shadrach had buried the silver beneath the floor of his
+cabin, and Aunt Floretta set her dough to rise each morning under a loose
+pile of kindling wood. Once a deserter penetrated into Betty's chamber, and
+the girl drove him out at the point of an old army pistol, which she kept
+upon her bureau.
+
+"If you think I am afraid of you come a step nearer," she had said coolly,
+and the man had turned to run into the arms of a Federal officer, who was
+sweeping up the stragglers. He was a blue-eyed young Northerner, and for
+three days after that he had set a guard upon the portico at Uplands. The
+memory of the small white-faced girl, with her big army pistol and the
+blazing eyes haunted him from that hour until Appomattox, when he heaved a
+sigh of relief and dismissed it from his thoughts. "She would have shot the
+rascal in another second," he said afterward, "and, by George, I wish she
+had."
+
+The Governor's wine cellar was emptied long ago, the rare old wine flowing
+from broken casks across the hall.
+
+"What does it matter?" Mrs. Ambler had asked wearily, watching the red
+stream drip upon the portico. "What is wine when our soldiers are starving
+for bread? And besides, war lives off the soil, as your father used to
+say."
+
+Betty lifted her skirts and stepped over the bright puddles, glancing
+disdainfully after the Hessian stragglers, who went singing down the drive.
+
+"I hope their officers will get them," she remarked vindictively, "and the
+next time they offer us a guard, I shall accept him for good and all, if he
+happens to have been born on American soil. I don't mind Yankees so
+much--you can usually quiet them with the molasses jug--but these
+foreigners are awful. From a Hessian or a renegade Virginian, good Lord
+deliver us."
+
+"Some of them have kind hearts," remarked Mrs. Ambler, wonderingly. "I
+don't see how they can bear to come down to fight us. The Major met General
+McClellan, you know, and he admitted afterwards that he shouldn't have
+known from his manner that he was not a Southern gentleman."
+
+"Well, I hope he has left us a shoulder of bacon in the smokehouse,"
+replied Betty, laughing. "You haven't eaten a mouthful for two days,
+mamma."
+
+"I don't feel that I have a right to eat, my dear," said Mrs. Ambler. "It
+seems a useless extravagance when every little bit helps the army."
+
+"Well, I can't support the army, but I mean to feed you," returned Betty
+decisively, and she went out to ask Hosea if he had found a new hiding
+place for the cattle. Except upon the rare mornings when Mr. Bill left his
+fishing, the direction of the farm had fallen entirely upon Betty's
+shoulders. Wilson, the overseer, was in the army, and Hosea had gradually
+risen to take his place. "We must keep things up," the girl had insisted,
+"don't let us go to rack and ruin--papa would have hated it so," and, with
+the negro's aid, she had struggled to keep up the common tenor of the old
+country life.
+
+Rising at daybreak, she went each morning to overlook the milking of the
+cows, hidden in their retreat among the hills; and as the sun rose higher,
+she came back to start the field hands to the ploughing and the women to
+the looms in one of the detached wings. Then there was the big storehouse
+to go into, the rations of the servants to be drawn from their secret
+corners, the meal to be measured, and the bacon to be sliced with the care
+which fretted her lavish hands. After this there came the shucking of the
+corn, a negro frolic even in war years, so long as there was any corn to
+shuck, and lastly the counting of the full bags of grain before the heavy
+wagon was sent to the little mill beside the river. From sunrise to sunset
+the girl's hands were not idle for an instant, and in the long evenings, by
+the light of the home-made tallow dips, which served for candles, she would
+draw out a gray yarn stocking and knit busily for the army, while she
+tried, with an aching heart, to cheer her mother. Her sunny humour had made
+play of a man's work as of a woman's anxiety.
+
+Sometimes, on bright mornings, Mr. Bill would stroll over with his rod upon
+his shoulder and a string of silver perch in his hand. He had grown old and
+very feeble, and his angling had become a passion mightier than an army
+with bayonets. He took small interest in the war--at times he seemed almost
+unconscious of the suffering around him--but he enjoyed his chats with
+Union officers upon the road, who occasionally capped his stories of big
+sport with tales of mountain trout which they had drawn from Northern
+streams. He would sit for hours motionless under the willows by the river,
+and once when his house was fired, during a raid up the valley, he was
+heard to remark regretfully that the messenger had "scared away his first
+bite in an hour." Placid, wide-girthed, dull-faced, innocent as a child, he
+sat in the midst of war dangling his line above the silver perch.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE PEACEFUL SIDE OF WAR
+
+
+On a sparkling January morning, when Lee's army had gone into winter
+quarters beside the Rappahannock, Dan stood in the doorway of his log hut
+smoking the pipe of peace, while he watched a messmate putting up a chimney
+of notched sticks across the little roadway through the pines.
+
+"You'd better get Pinetop to daub your chinks for you," he suggested. "He
+can make a mixture of wet clay and sandstone that you couldn't tell from
+mortar."
+
+"You jest wait till I git through these shoes an' I'll show you," remarked
+Pinetop, from the woodpile, where he was making moccasins of untanned beef
+hide laced with strips of willow. "I ain't goin' to set my bar' feet on
+this frozen groun' agin, if I can help it. 'Tain't so bad in summer, but, I
+d'clar it takes all the spirit out of a fight when you have to run
+bar-footed over the icy stubble."
+
+"Jack Powell lost his shoes in the battle of Fredericksburg," said Baker,
+as he carefully fitted his notched sticks together. "That's why he got
+promoted, I reckon. He stepped into a mud puddle, and his feet came out but
+his shoes didn't."
+
+"Well, I dare say, it was cheaper for the Government to give him a title
+than a pair of shoes," observed Dan, cynically. "Why, you are going in for
+luxury! Is that pile of oak shingles for your roof? We made ours of rails
+covered with pine tags."
+
+"And the first storm that comes along sweeps them off--yes, I know. By the
+way, can anybody tell me if there's a farmer with a haystack in these
+parts?"
+
+"Pinetop got a load about three miles up," replied Dan, emptying his pipe
+against the door sill. "I say, who is that cavalry peacock over yonder? By
+George, it's Champe!"
+
+"Perhaps it's General Stuart," suggested Baker witheringly, as Champe came
+composedly between the rows of huts, pursued by the frantic jeers of the
+assembled infantry.
+
+"Take them earrings off yo' heels--take 'em off! Take 'em off!" yelled the
+chorus, as his spurs rang on the stones. "My gal she wants 'em--take 'em
+off!"
+
+"Take those tatters off your backs--take 'em off!" responded Champe, genial
+and undismayed, swinging easily along in his worn gray uniform, his black
+plume curling over his soft felt hat.
+
+As Dan watched him, standing in the doorway, he felt, with a sudden
+melancholy, that a mental gulf had yawned between them. The last grim
+months which had aged him with experiences as with years, had left Champe
+apparently unchanged. All the deeper knowledge, which he had bought with
+his youth for the price, had passed over his cousin like the clouds,
+leaving him merely gay and kind as he had been of old.
+
+"Hello, Beau!" called Champe, stretching out his hand as he drew near. "I
+just heard you were over here, so I thought I'd take a look. How goes the
+war?"
+
+Dan refilled his pipe and borrowed a light from Pinetop.
+
+"To tell the truth," he replied, "I have come to the conclusion that the
+fun and frolic of war consist in picket duty and guarding mule teams."
+
+"Well, these excessive dissipations have taken up so much of your time that
+I've hardly laid eyes on you since you got routed by malaria. Any news from
+home?"
+
+"Grandma sent me a Christmas box, which she smuggled through, heaven knows
+how. We had a jolly dinner that day, and Pinetop and I put on our first
+clean clothes for three months. Big Abel got a linsey suit made at
+Chericoke--I hope he'll come along in it."
+
+"Oh, Beau, Beau!" lamented Champe. "How have the mighty fallen? You aren't
+so particular now about wearing only white or black ties, I reckon."
+
+"Well, shoestrings are usually black, I believe," returned Dan, with a
+laugh, raising his hand to his throat.
+
+Champe seated himself upon the end of an oak log, and taking off his hat,
+ran his hand through his curling hair. "I was at home last summer on a
+furlough," he remarked, "and I declare, I hardly knew the valley. If we
+ever come out of this war it will take an army with ploughshares to bring
+the soil up again. As for the woods--well, well, we'll never have them back
+in our day."
+
+"Did you see Uplands?" asked Dan eagerly.
+
+"For a moment. It was hardly safe, you know, so I was at home only a day.
+Grandpa told me that the place had lain under a shadow ever since
+Virginia's death. She was buried in Hollywood--it was impossible to bring
+her through the lines they said--and Betty and Mrs. Ambler have taken this
+very hardly."
+
+"And the Governor," said Dan, with a tremor in his voice as he thought of
+Betty.
+
+"And Jack Morson," added Champe, "he fell at Brandy Station when I was with
+him. At first he was wounded only slightly, and we tried to get him to the
+rear, but he laughed and went straight in again. It was a sabre cut that
+finished him at the last."
+
+"He was a first-rate chap," commented Dan, "but I never knew exactly why
+Virginia fell in love with him."
+
+"The other fellow never does. To be quite candid, it is beyond my
+comprehension how a certain lady can prefer the infantry to the
+cavalry--yet she does emphatically."
+
+Dan coloured.
+
+"Was grandpa well?" he inquired lamely.
+
+With a laugh Champe flung one leg over the other, and clasped his knee.
+
+"It's an ill wind that blows nobody good," he responded. "Grandpa's
+thoughts are so much given to the Yankees that he has become actually
+angelic to the rest of us. By the way, do you know that Mr. Blake is in the
+army?"
+
+"What?" cried Dan, aghast.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that he really carries a rifle--though he swears he would
+if he only had twenty years off his shoulders--but he has become our
+chaplain in young Chrysty's place, and the boys say there is more gun
+powder in his prayers than in our biggest battery."
+
+"Well, I never!" exclaimed Dan.
+
+"You ought to hear him--it's better than fighting on your own account. Last
+Sunday he gave us a prayer in which he said: 'O Lord, thou knowest that we
+are the greatest army thou hast ever seen; put forth thy hand then but a
+very little and we will whip the earth.' By Jove, you look cosey here," he
+added, glancing into the hut where Dan and Pinetop slept in bunks of straw.
+"I hope the roads won't dry before you've warmed your house." He shook
+hands again, and swung off amid the renewed jeers that issued from the open
+doorways.
+
+Dan watched him until he vanished among the distant pines, and then,
+turning, went into the little hut where he found Pinetop sitting before a
+rude chimney, which he had constructed with much labour. A small book was
+open on his knee, over which his yellow head drooped like a child's, and
+Dan saw his calm face reddened by the glow of the great log fire.
+
+"Hello! What's that?" he inquired lightly.
+
+The mountaineer started from his abstraction, and the blood swept to his
+forehead as he rose from the half of a flour barrel upon which he had been
+sitting.
+
+"'Tain't nothin'," he responded, and as he towered to his great height his
+fair curls brushed the ceiling of crossed rails. In his awkwardness the
+book fell to the floor, and before he could reach it, Dan had stooped, with
+a laugh, and picked it up.
+
+"I say, there are no secrets in this shebang," he said smiling. Then the
+smile went out, and his face grew suddenly grave, for, as the book fell
+open in his hand, he saw that it was the first primer of a child, and on
+the thumbed and tattered page the word "RAT" stared at him in capital
+letters.
+
+"By George, man!" he exclaimed beneath his breath, as he turned from
+Pinetop to the blazing logs.
+
+For the first time in his life he was brought face to face with the tragedy
+of hopeless ignorance for an inquiring mind, and the shock stunned him, at
+the moment, past the power of speech. Until knowing Pinetop he had, in the
+lofty isolation of his class, regarded the plebeian in the light of an
+alien to the soil, not as a victim to the kindly society in which he
+himself had moved--a society produced by that free labour which had
+degraded the white workman to the level of the serf. At the instant the
+truth pierced home to him, and he recognized it in all the grimness of its
+pathos. Beside that genial plantation life which he had known he saw rising
+the wistful figure of the poor man doomed to conditions which he could not
+change--born, it may be, like Pinetop, self-poised, yet with an untaught
+intellect, grasping, like him, after the primitive knowledge which should
+be the birthright of every child. Even the spectre of slavery, which had
+shadowed his thoughts, as it had those of many a generous mind around him,
+faded abruptly before the very majesty of the problem that faced him now.
+In his sympathy for the slave, whose bondage he and his race had striven to
+make easy, he had overlooked the white sharer of the negro's wrong. To men
+like Pinetop, slavery, stern or mild, could be but an equal menace, and yet
+these were the men who, when Virginia called, came from their little cabins
+in the mountains, who tied the flint-locks upon their muskets and fought
+uncomplainingly until the end. Not the need to protect a decaying
+institution, but the instinct in every free man to defend the soil, had
+brought Pinetop, as it had brought Dan, into the army of the South.
+
+"Look here, old man, you haven't been quite fair to me," said Dan, after
+the long silence. "Why didn't you ask me to help you with this stuff?"
+
+"Wall, I thought you'd joke," replied Pinetop blushing, "and I knew yo'
+nigger would."
+
+"Joke? Good Lord!" exclaimed Dan. "Do you think I was born with so short a
+memory, you scamp? Where are those nights on the way to Romney when you
+covered me with your overcoat to keep me from freezing in the snow? Where,
+for that matter, is that march in Maryland when Big Abel and you carried me
+three miles in your arms after I had dropped delirious by the roadside? If
+you thought I'd joke you about this, Pinetop, all I can say is that you've
+turned into a confounded fool."
+
+Pinetop came back to the fire and seated himself upon the flour barrel in
+the corner. "'Twas this way, you see," he said, breaking, for the first
+time, through his strong mountain reserve. "I al'ays thought I'd like to
+read a bit, 'specially on winter evenings at home, when the nights are long
+and you don't have to git up so powerful early in the mornings, but when I
+was leetle thar warn't nobody to teach me how to begin; maw she didn't know
+nothin' an' paw he was dead, though he never got beyond the first reader
+when he was 'live."
+
+He looked up and Dan nodded gravely over his pipe.
+
+"Then when I got bigger I had to work mighty hard to keep things goin'--an'
+it seemed to me every time I took out that thar leetle book at night I got
+so dead sleepy I couldn't tell one letter from another; A looked jest like
+Z."
+
+"I see," said Dan quietly. "Well, there's time enough here anyhow. It will
+be a good way to pass the evenings." He opened the primer and laid it on
+his knee, running his fingers carelessly through its dog-eared pages. "Do
+you know your letters?" he inquired in a professional tone.
+
+"Lordy, yes," responded Pinetop. "I've got about as fur as this here
+place." He crossed to where Dan sat and pointed with a long forefinger to
+the printed words, his mild blue eyes beaming with excitement.
+
+"I reckon I kin read that by myself," he added with an embarrassed laugh.
+"T-h-e c-a-t c-a-u-g-h-t t-h-e r-a-t. Ain't that right?"
+
+"Perfectly. We'll pass on to the next." And they did so, sitting on the
+halves of a divided flour barrel before the blazing chimney.
+
+From this time there were regular lessons in the little hut, Pinetop
+drawling over the soiled primer, or crouching, with his long legs twisted
+under him and his elbows awkwardly extended, while he filled a sheet of
+paper with sprawling letters.
+
+"I'll be able to write to the old woman soon," he chuckled jubilantly, "an'
+she'll have to walk all the way down the mounting to git it read."
+
+"You'll be a scholar yet if this keeps up," replied Dan, slapping him upon
+the shoulder, as the mountaineer glanced up with a pleased and shining
+face. "Why, you mastered that first reader there in no time."
+
+"A powerful heap of larnin' has to pass through yo' head to git a leetle to
+stick thar," commented Pinetop, wrinkling his brows. "Air we goin' to have
+the big book agin to-night?"
+
+"The big book" was a garbled version of "Les Miserables," which, after
+running the blockade with a daring English sailor, had passed from regiment
+to regiment in the resting army. At first Dan had begun to read with only
+Pinetop for a listener, but gradually, as the tale unfolded, a group of
+eager privates filled the little hut and even hung breathlessly about the
+doorway in the winter nights. They were mostly gaunt, unwashed volunteers
+from the hills or the low countries, to whom literature was only a vast
+silence and life a courageous struggle against greater odds. To Dan the
+picturesqueness of the scene lent itself with all the force of its strong
+lights and shadows, and with the glow of the pine torches on the open page,
+his eyes would sometimes wander from the words to rest upon the kindling
+faces in the shaggy circle by the fire. Dirty, hollow-eyed, unshaven, it
+sat spellbound by the magic of the tale it could not read.
+
+"By Gosh! that's a blamed good bishop," remarked an unkempt smoker one
+evening from the threshold, where his beef-hide shoes were covered with
+fine snow. "I don't reckon Marse Robert could ha' beat that."
+
+"Marse Robert ain't never tried," put in a companion by the fire.
+
+"Wall, I ain't sayin' he had," corrected the first speaker, through a cloud
+of smoke. "Lord, I hope when my time comes I kin slip into heaven on Marse
+Robert's coat-tails."
+
+"If you don't, you won't never git thar!" jeered the second. Then they
+settled themselves again, and listened with sombre faces and twitching
+lips.
+
+It was during this winter that Dan learned how one man's influence may fuse
+individual and opposing wills into a single supreme endeavour. The Army of
+Northern Virginia, as he saw it then, was moulded, sustained, and made
+effective less by the authority of the Commander than by the simple power
+of Lee over the hearts of the men who bore his muskets. For a time Dan had
+sought to trace the groundspring of this impassioned loyalty, seeking a
+reason that could not be found in generals less beloved. Surely it was not
+the illuminated figure of the conqueror, for when had the Commander held
+closer the affection of his troops than in that ill-starred campaign into
+Maryland, which left the moral victory of a superb fight in McClellan's
+hands? No, the charm lay deeper still, beyond all the fictitious aids of
+fortune--somewhere in that serene and noble presence he had met one evening
+as the gray dusk closed, riding alone on an old road between level fields.
+After this it was always as a high figure against a low horizon that he had
+seen the man who made his army.
+
+As the long winter passed away, he learned, not only much of the spirit of
+his own side, but something that became almost a sunny tolerance, of the
+great blue army across the Rappahannock. He had exchanged Virginian tobacco
+for Northern coffee at the outposts, and when on picket duty along the cold
+banks of the river he would sometimes shout questions and replies across
+the stream. In these meetings there was only a wide curiosity with little
+bitterness; and once a friendly New England picket had delivered a
+religious homily from the opposite shore, as he leaned upon his rifle.
+
+"I didn't think much of you Rebs before I came down here," he had concluded
+in a precise and energetic shout, "but I guess, after all, you've got souls
+in your bodies like the rest of us."
+
+"I reckon we have. Any coffee over your side?"
+
+"Plenty. The war's interfered considerably with the tobacco crop, ain't
+it?"
+
+"Well, rather; we've enough for ourselves, but none to offer our visitors."
+
+"Look here, are all these things about you in the papers gospel truth?"
+
+"Can't say. What things?"
+
+"Do you always carry bowie knives into battle?"
+
+"No, we use scissors--they're more convenient."
+
+"When you catch a runaway nigger do you chop him up in little pieces and
+throw him to the hogs?"
+
+"Not exactly. We boil him down and grease our cartridges."
+
+"After Bull Run did you set up all the live Zouaves you got hold of as
+targets for rifle practice?"
+
+"Can't remember about the Zouaves. Rather think we made them into flags."
+
+"Well, you Rebels take the breath out of me," commented the picket across
+the river; and then, as the relief came, Dan hurried back to look for the
+mail bag and a letter from Betty. For Betty wrote often these days--letters
+sometimes practical, sometimes impassioned, always filled with cheer, and
+often with bright gossip. Of her own struggle at Uplands and the long days
+crowded with work, she wrote no word; all her sympathy, all her large
+passion, and all her wise advice in little matters were for Dan from the
+beginning to the end. She made him promise to keep warm if it were
+possible, to read his Bible when he had the time, and to think of her at
+all hours in every season. In a neat little package there came one day a
+gray knitted waistcoat which he was to wear when on picket duty beside the
+river, "and be very sure to fasten it," she had written. "I have sewed the
+buttons on so tight they can't come off. Oh, if I had only papa and
+Virginia and you back again I could be happy in a hovel. Dear mamma says
+so, too."
+
+And after much calm advice there would come whole pages that warmed him
+from head to foot. "Your kisses are still on my lips," she wrote one day.
+"The Major said to me, 'Your mouth is very warm, my dear,' and I almost
+answered, 'you feel Dan's kisses, sir.' What would he have said, do you
+think? As it was I only smiled and turned away, and longed to run straight
+to you to be caught up in your arms and held there forever. O my beloved,
+when you need me only stretch out your hands and I will come."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE SILENT BATTLE
+
+
+Despite the cheerfulness of Betty's letters, there were times during the
+next dark years when it seemed to her that starvation must be the only end.
+The negroes had been freed by the Governor's will, but the girl could not
+turn them from their homes, and, with the exception of the few field hands
+who had followed the Union army, they still lived in their little cabins
+and drew their daily rations from the storehouse. Betty herself shared
+their rations of cornmeal and bacon, jealously guarding her small supplies
+of milk and eggs for Mrs. Ambler and the two old ladies. "It makes no
+difference what I eat," she would assure protesting Mammy Riah. "I am so
+strong, you see, and besides I really like Aunt Floretta's ashcakes."
+
+Spring and summer passed, with the ripened vegetables which Hosea had
+planted in the garden, and the long winter brought with it the old daily
+struggle to make the slim barrels of meal last until the next harvesting.
+It was in this year that the four women at Uplands followed the Major's
+lead and invested their united fortune in Confederate bonds. "We will rise
+or fall with the government," Mrs. Ambler had said with her gentle
+authority. "Since we have given it our best, let it take all freely."
+
+"Surely money is of no matter," Betty had answered, lavishly disregardful
+of worldly goods. "Do you think we might give our jewels, too? I have
+grandma's pearls hidden beneath the floor, you know."
+
+"If need be--let us wait, dear," replied her mother, who, grave and pallid
+as a ghost, would eat nothing that, by any chance, could be made to reach
+the army.
+
+"I do not want it, my child, there are so many hungrier than I," she would
+say when Betty brought her dainty little trays from the pantry.
+
+"But I am hungry for you, mamma--take it for my sake," the girl would beg,
+on the point of tears. "You are starving, that is it--and yet it does not
+feed the army."
+
+In these days it seemed to her that all the anguish of her life had centred
+in the single fear of losing her mother. At times she almost reproached
+herself with loving Dan too much, and for months she would resolutely keep
+her thoughts from following him, while she laid her impassioned service at
+her mother's feet. Day or night there was hardly a moment when she was not
+beside her, trying, by very force of love, to hold her back from the death
+to which she went with her slow and stately tread.
+
+For Mrs. Ambler, who had kept her strength for a year after the Governor's
+death, seemed at last to be gently withdrawing from a place in which she
+found herself a stranger. There was nothing to detain her now; she was too
+heartsick to adapt herself to many changes; loss and approaching poverty
+might be borne by one for whom the chief thing yet remained, but she had
+seen this go, and so she waited, with her pensive smile, for the moment
+when she too might follow. If Betty were not looking she would put her
+untasted food aside; but the girl soon found this out, and watched her
+every mouthful with imploring eyes.
+
+"Oh, mamma, do it to please me," she entreated.
+
+"Well, give it back, my dear," Mrs. Ambler answered, complaisant as always,
+and when Betty triumphantly declared, "You feel better now--you know you
+do, you dearest," she responded readily:--
+
+"Much better, darling; give me some straw to plait--I have grown to like to
+have my hands busy. Your old bonnet is almost gone, so I shall plait you
+one of this and trim it with a piece of ribbon Aunt Lydia found yesterday
+in the attic."
+
+"I don't mind going bareheaded, if you will only eat."
+
+"I was never a hearty eater. Your father used to say that I ate less than a
+robin. It was the custom for ladies to have delicate appetites in my day,
+you see; and I remember your grandma's amazement when Miss Pokey
+Mickleborough was asked at our table what piece of chicken she preferred,
+and answered quite aloud, 'Leg, if you please.' She was considered very
+indelicate by your grandma, who had never so much as tasted any part except
+the wing."
+
+She sat, gentle and upright, in her rosewood chair, her worn silk dress
+rustling as she crossed her feet, her beautiful hands moving rapidly with
+the straw plaiting. "I was brought up very carefully, my dear," she added,
+turning her head with its shining bands of hair a little silvered since the
+beginning of the war. "'A girl is like a flower,' your grandpa always said.
+'If a rough wind blows near her, her bloom is faded.' Things are different
+now--very different."
+
+"But this is war," said Betty.
+
+Mrs. Ambler nodded over the slender braid.
+
+"Yes, this is war," she added with her wistful smile, and a moment
+afterward looked up again to ask in a dazed way:--
+
+"What was the last battle, dear? I can't remember."
+
+Betty's glance sought the lawn outside where the warm May sunshine fell in
+shafts of light upon the purple lilacs.
+
+"They are fighting now in the Wilderness," she answered, her thoughts
+rushing to the famished army closed in the death grapple with its enemy.
+"Dan got a letter to me and he says it is like fighting in a jungle, the
+vines are so thick they can't see the other side. He has to aim by ear
+instead of sight."
+
+Mrs. Ambler's fingers moved quickly.
+
+"He has become a very fine man," she said. "Your father always liked
+him--and so did I--but at one time we were afraid that he was going to be
+too much his father's son--he looked so like him on his wild days,
+especially when he had taken wine and his colour went high."
+
+"But he has the Lightfoot eyes. The Major, Champe, even their Great-aunt
+Emmeline have those same gray eyes that are always laughing."
+
+"Jane Lightfoot had them, too," added Mrs. Ambler. "She used to say that to
+love hard went with them. 'The Lightfoot eyes are never disillusioned,' she
+once told me. I wonder if she remembered that afterwards, poor girl."
+
+Betty was silent for a moment.
+
+"It sounds cruel," she confessed, "but you know, I have sometimes thought
+that it may have been just a little bit her fault, mamma."
+
+Mrs. Ambler smiled. "Your grandpa used to say 'get a woman to judge a woman
+and there comes a hanging.'"
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that," responded Betty, blushing. "Jack Montjoy was a
+scoundrel, I suppose--but I think that even if Dan had been a scoundrel,
+instead of so big and noble--I could have made his life so much better just
+because I loved him; if love is only large enough it seems to me that all
+such things as being good and bad are swallowed up."
+
+"I don't know--your father was very good, and I loved him because of it. He
+was of the salt of the earth, as Mr. Blake wrote to me last year."
+
+"There has never been anybody like papa," said Betty, her eyes filling.
+"Not even Dan--for I can't imagine papa being anything but what he was--and
+yet I know even if Dan were as wild as the Major once believed him to be, I
+could have gone with him not the least bit afraid. I was so sure of myself
+that if he had beaten me he could not have broken my spirit. I should
+always have known that some day he would need me and be sorry."
+
+Tender, pensive, bred in the ancient ways, Mrs. Ambler looked up at her and
+shook her head.
+
+"You are very strong, my child," she answered, "and I think it makes us all
+lean too much upon you."
+
+Taking her hand, Betty kissed each slender finger. "I lean on you for the
+best in life, mamma," she answered, and then turned to the window. "It's
+my working time," she said, "and there is poor Hosea trying to plough
+without horses. I wonder how he'll manage it."
+
+"Are all the horses gone, dear?"
+
+"All except Prince Rupert and papa's mare. Peter keeps them hidden in the
+mountains, and I carried them the last two apples yesterday. Prince Rupert
+knew me in the distance and whinnied before Peter saw me. Now I'll send
+Aunt Lydia to you, dearest, while I see about the weaving. Mammy Riah has
+almost finished my linsey dress." She kissed her again and went out to
+where the looms were working in one of the detached wings.
+
+The summer went by slowly. The famished army fell back inch by inch, and at
+Uplands the battle grew more desperate with the days. Without horses it was
+impossible to plant the crops and on the open turnpike swept by bands of
+raiders as by armies, it was no less impossible to keep the little that was
+planted. Betty, standing at her window in the early mornings, would glance
+despairingly over the wasted fields and the quiet little cabins, where the
+negroes were stirring about their work. Those little cabins, forming a
+crescent against the green hill, caused her an anxiety before which her own
+daily suffering was of less account. When the time came that was fast
+approaching, and the secret places were emptied of their last supplies,
+where could those faithful people turn in their distress? The question
+stabbed her like a sword each morning before she put on her bonnet of
+plaited straw and ran out to make her first round of the farm. Behind her
+cheerful smile there was always the grim fear growing sharper every hour.
+
+Then on a golden summer afternoon, when the larder had been swept by a band
+of raiders, she became suddenly aware that there was nothing in the house
+for her mother's supper, and, with the army pistol in her hand, set out
+across the fields for Chericoke. As she walked over the sunny meadows, the
+shadow that was always lifted in Mrs. Ambler's presence fell heavily upon
+her face and she choked back a rising sob. What would the end be? she asked
+herself in sudden anguish, or was this the end?
+
+Reaching Chericoke she found Mrs. Lightfoot and Aunt Rhody drying sliced
+sweet potatoes on boards along the garden fence, where the sunflowers and
+hollyhocks flaunted in the face of want.
+
+"I've just gotten a new recipe for coffee, child," the old lady began in
+mild excitement. "Last year I made it entirely of sweet potatoes, but Mrs.
+Blake tells me that she mixes rye and a few roasted chestnuts. Mr.
+Lightfoot took supper with her a week ago, and he actually congratulated
+her upon still keeping her real old Mocha. Be sure to try it."
+
+"Indeed I shall--the very next time Hosea gets any sweet potatoes. Some
+raiders have just dug up the last with their sabres and eaten them raw."
+
+"Well, they'll certainly have colic," remarked Mrs. Lightfoot, with
+professional interest.
+
+"I hope so," said Betty, "but I've come over to beg something for mamma's
+supper--eggs, chickens, anything except bacon. She can't touch that, she'd
+starve first."
+
+Looking anxious, Mrs. Lightfoot appealed to Aunt Rhody, who was busily
+spreading little squares of sweet potatoes on the clean boards. "Rhody,
+can't you possibly find us some eggs?" she inquired.
+
+Aunt Rhody stopped her work and turned upon them all the dignity of two
+hundred pounds of flesh.
+
+"How de hens gwine lay w'en dey's done been eaten up?" she demanded.
+
+"Isn't there a single chicken left?" hopelessly persisted the old lady.
+
+"Who gwine lef' 'em? Ain' dose low-lifeted sodgers dat rid by yestiddy done
+stole de las' one un 'um off de nes'?"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot sternly remonstrated.
+
+"They were our own soldiers, Rhody, and they don't steal--they merely
+take."
+
+"I don' see de diffunce," sniffed Aunt Rhody. "All I know is dat dey pulled
+de black hen plum off de nes' whar she wuz a-settin'. Den des now de
+Yankees come a-prancin' up en de ducks tuck ter de water en de Yankees dey
+went a-wadin' atter dem. Yes, Lawd, dey went a-wadin' wid dey shoes on."
+
+The old lady sighed.
+
+"I'm afraid there's nothing, Betty," she said, "though Congo has gone to
+town to see if he can find any fowls, and I'll send some over if he brings
+them. We had a Sherman pudding for dinner ourselves, and I know the sorghum
+in it will give the Major gout for a month. Well, well, this is war, I
+reckon, and I must say, for my part, I never expected it to be conducted
+like a flirtation behind a fan."
+
+"I nuver seed no use a-fittin' unless you is gwine ter fit in de yuther
+pusson's yawd," interpolated Aunt Rhody. "De way ter fit is ter keep
+a-sidlin' furder f'om yo' own hen roos' en nigher ter de hen roos' er de
+somebody dat's a-fittin' you."
+
+"Hold your tongue, Rhody," retorted Mrs. Lightfoot, and then drew Betty a
+little to one side. "I have some port wine, my dear," she whispered, "which
+Cupid buried under the old asparagus bed, and I'll tell him to dig up
+several bottles and take them to you. The other servants don't know of it,
+so I can't get it out till after dark. Poor Julia! how does she stand these
+terrible days?"
+
+Betty's lips quivered. "I have to force her to eat," she replied, "and it
+seems almost cruel--she is so tired of life."
+
+"I know, my dear," responded the old lady, wiping her eyes; "and we have
+our troubles, too. Champe is in prison now, and Mr. Lightfoot is very much
+upset. He says this General Grant is not like the others, that he knows
+him--and he's the kind to hang on as long as he's alive."
+
+"But we must win in the end," said Betty, desperately; "we have sacrificed
+so much, how can it all be lost?"
+
+"That's what Mr. Lightfoot says--we'll win in the end, but the end's a long
+way off. By the way, did you know that Car'line had run off after the
+Yankees? When I think how that girl had been spoiled!"
+
+"Oh, I wish they'd all go," returned Betty. "All except Mammy and Uncle
+Shadrach and Hosea--and even they make starvation that much nearer."
+
+"Well, we shan't starve yet awhile, dear; I'm in hopes that Congo will
+ransack the town. If you would only stay."
+
+But Betty shook her head and went back across the meadows, walking rapidly
+through the lush grass of the deserted pastures. Her mind was so filled
+with Mrs. Lightfoot's forebodings, that when, in climbing the low stone
+wall, she saw the free negro, Levi, coming toward her, she turned to him
+with a gesture that was almost an appeal for sympathy.
+
+"Uncle Levi, these are sad times now," she said. "I am looking for
+something for mamma's supper and I can find nothing."
+
+The old negro, shabbier, lonelier, poorer than ever, shambled up to the
+wall where she was standing and uncovered a split basket full of eggs.
+
+"I'se got a pa'cel er hens hid in de woods over yonder," he explained, "en
+I keep de eggs behin' de j'ists in my cabin. Sis Floretty she tole me dat
+de w'ite folks wuz wuss off den de niggers now, so I brung you dese."
+
+"Oh, Uncle Levi!" cried Betty, seizing his gnarled old hands. As she looked
+at his stricken figure a compassion as acute as pain brought the quick
+tears to her eyes. She remembered the isolation of his life, the scornful
+suspicion he had met from white and black, and the injustice that had set
+him free and sold Sarindy up the river.
+
+"You wuz moughty good ter me," muttered free Levi, shuffling his bare feet
+in the long grass, "en Marse Dan, he wuz moughty good ter me, too, 'fo' he
+went away on dat black night. I 'members de time w'en dat ole Rainy-day
+Jones up de big road (we all call him Rainy-day caze he looked so sour) had
+me right by de collar wid de hick'ry branch a sizzlin' in de a'r, en I des
+'lowed de een had mos' come. Yes, Lawd, I did, but I warn' countin' on
+Marse Dan. He warn' mo'n wais' high ter ole Rainy-day, but de furs' thing I
+know dar wuz ole Rainy-day on de yerth wid Marse Dan a-lashin' 'im wid de
+branch er hick'ry."
+
+"We shall never forget you--Dan and I," answered Betty, as she took the
+basket, "and when the time comes we will repay you."
+
+The old negro smiled and turned from her, and Betty, quickening her pace,
+ran on to Uplands, reaching the house a little breathless from the long
+walk.
+
+In the chamber upstairs she found Mrs. Ambler sitting before the window
+with her open Bible on the sill, where a spray of musk roses entered from
+the outside wall.
+
+"All well, mamma?" she asked in a cheerful voice.
+
+Mrs. Ambler started and turned slowly from the window.
+
+"I see a great light on the road," she murmured wonderingly.
+
+Crossing to where she sat, Betty leaned out above the climbing roses and
+glanced to the mountains huddled against the sky.
+
+"It is General Sheridan going up the valley," she said.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE LAST STAND
+
+
+In the face of a damp April wind a remnant of Lee's army pushed forward
+along an old road skirted by thin pine woods. As the column moved on
+slowly, it threw out skirmishers on either flank, where the Federal cavalry
+hovered in the distance. Once in an open clearing it formed into a hollow
+square and marched in battle line to avoid capture. While the regiments
+kept in motion the men walked steadily in the ranks, with their hollowed
+eyes staring straight ahead from their gaunt, tanned faces; but at the
+first halt they fell like logs upon the roadside, sleeping amid the sound
+of shots and the stinging cavalry. With the cry of "Forward!" they
+struggled to their feet again, and went stumbling on into the vast
+uncertainty and the approaching night. Breathless, starving, with their
+rags pinned together, and their mouths bleeding from three days' rations of
+parched corn, they still kept onward, marching with determined eyes to
+whatever and wherever the end might be. Petersburg had fallen, Richmond was
+in flames behind them, the Confederacy was, perhaps, buried in the ruins of
+its Capitol, but Lee was still somewhere to the front, so his army
+followed.
+
+"How long have we been marching, boys? I can't remember," asked Dan, when,
+after a short rest, they formed again and started forward over the old
+road. In the tatters of his gray uniform, with his broken shoes tied on his
+feet and his black hair hanging across his eyes, he might have been one of
+the beggars who warm themselves in the sun of Southern countries.
+
+"Oh, I reckon we left the Garden of Eden about six thousand years ago,"
+responded a wag from somewhere--he was too tired to recognize the voice.
+"There! the skirmishers have struck that blamed cavalry again. Plague them!
+They're as bad as wasps!"
+
+"Has anybody some parched corn?" inquired Bland, plaintively. "I'll trade a
+whole raw ear for it. It makes my gums bleed so, I can't chew it."
+
+Dan plunged his hand into his pocket, and drew out the corn which he had
+shelled and parched at the last halt. As he exchanged it for the "whole raw
+ear," he fell to wondering vaguely what had become of Big Abel since that
+dim point in eternity when they had left the trenches that surrounded
+Petersburg. Then time was divided into periods of nights and days, now
+night and day alike were made up in breathless marching, in throwing out
+skirmishers against those "wasps" of cavalrymen, and in trying to force
+aching teeth to grind parched corn. Panting and sick with hunger, he
+struggled on like a driven beast that sees the place ahead, where he must
+turn and grapple for the end with the relentless hunter on his track.
+
+As the day ended the moist wind gathered strength and sang in his ears as
+he crept forward--now sleeping, now waking, for a time filled with warm
+memories of his college life, and again fighting over the last hopeless
+campaign from the Wilderness to the trenches where Petersburg had fallen.
+They had yielded step by step, but the great hunter had pressed on, and now
+the thin brigades were gathering for the last stand together.
+
+Overhead he heard the soughing of the pines, and around him the steady
+tramp of feet too tired to lift themselves from out the heavy mud. Straight
+above in the muffled sky a star shone dimly, and for a time he watched it
+in his effort to keep awake. Then he began on the raw corn in his pocket,
+shelling it from the cob as he walked along; but when the taste of blood
+rose to his lips, he put the ear away again, and stooped to rub his eyes
+with a handful of damp earth. Then, at last, in sheer desperation, he
+loosened the grip upon his thoughts, and stumbled on, between waking and
+sleeping, into the darkness that lay ahead.
+
+In the road before him the door at Chericoke opened wide as on the old
+Christmas Eves, and he saw the Major and the Governor draining their
+glasses under the garlands of mistletoe and holly, while Betty and
+Virginia, in dresses of white tarleton, stood against the ruddy glow that
+filled the panelled parlour. The cheerful Christmas smell was in the
+air--the smell of apple toddy, of roasted turkey, of plum pudding in a
+blaze of alcohol. As he entered after his long ride from college, Betty
+came up to him and slipped a warm white hand into his cold one, while he
+met the hazel beams from beneath her lashes.
+
+"I hope you have brought Jack Morson," she said. "Virginia is waiting. See
+how lovely she looks in her white flounces, with the string of coral about
+her neck."
+
+"But the war, Betty?" he asked, with blinking eyes, and as he put out his
+hand to touch the pearls upon her bosom, he saw that it was whole again--no
+wound was there, only the snowflakes that fell from his sleeve upon her
+breast. "What of the war, dear? I must go back to the army."
+
+Betty laughed long and merrily.
+
+"Why, you're dreaming, Dan," she said. "It all comes of those wicked
+stories of the Major's. In a moment you will believe that this is really
+1812, and you've gone without your rations."
+
+"Thank God!" he cried aloud, and the sound of his own voice woke him, as he
+slipped and went down in a mudhole upon the road. The Christmas smell faded
+from his nostrils; in its place came the smoke from Pinetop's pipe--a
+faithful friend until the last. Overhead the star was still shining, and to
+the front he heard a single shot from the hovering cavalry, withdrawing for
+the night.
+
+"God damn this mud!" called a man behind him, as he lurched sideways from
+the ranks. Farther away three hoarse voices, the remnant of a once famous
+glee club, were singing in the endeavour to scare off sleep:--
+
+  "Rally round the flag, boys, rally once again!"
+
+And suddenly he was fighting in the tangles of the Wilderness, crouching
+behind a charred oak stump, while he loaded and fired at the little puffs
+of smoke that rose from the undergrowth beyond. He saw the low marshland,
+the stunted oaks and pines, and the heavy creepers that were pushed aside
+and trampled underfoot, and at his feet he saw a company officer with a
+bullet hole through his forehead and a covering of pine needles upon his
+face. About him the small twigs fell, as if a storm swept the forest, and
+as he dodged, like a sharpshooter from tree to tree, he saw a rush of flame
+and smoke in the distance where the woods were burning. Above the noise of
+the battle, he heard the shrieks of the wounded men in the track of the
+fire; and once he met a Union and a Confederate soldier, each shot through
+the leg, drawing each other back from the approaching flames. Then, as he
+passed on, tearing at the cartridges with his teeth, he came upon a
+sergeant in Union clothes, sitting against a pine stump with his cocked
+rifle in his hand, and his eyes on the wind-blown smoke. A moment before
+the man may have gone down at his shot, he knew--and yet, as he looked, an
+instinct stronger than the instinct to kill was alive within him, and he
+rushed on, dragging his enemy with him from the terrible woods. "I hope you
+are not much hurt," he said, as he placed him on the ground and ran back to
+where the line was charging. "One life has been paid for," he thought, as
+he rushed on to kill--and fell face downward on the wheel-ruts of the old
+road.
+
+  "Rally round the flag, boys, rally once again,"
+
+sang the three hoarse voices, straining against the wind.
+
+Dan struggled to his feet, and the scene shifted.
+
+He was back in his childhood, and the Major had just brought in a slave he
+had purchased from Rainy-day Jones--"the plague spot in the county," as the
+angry old gentleman declared.
+
+Dan sat on the pile of kindling wood upon the kitchen hearth and stared at
+the poor black creature shivering in the warmth, his face distorted with
+the toothache, and a dirty rag about his jaw. He heard Aunt Rhody snorting
+indignantly as she basted the turkeys, and he watched his grandmother
+bustling back and forth with whiskey and hot plasters.
+
+"Who made slavery, sir?" asked the boy suddenly, his hands in his breeches
+pockets and his head bent sideways.
+
+The Major started.
+
+"God, sir," he promptly replied.
+
+"Then I think it very strange of God," said the boy, "and when I grow up, I
+shall set them all free, grandpa--I shall set them free even if I have to
+fight to do it, sir."
+
+"What! like poor free Levi?" stormed the Major.
+
+"Wake up, confound you!" bawled somebody in his ear. "You've lurched
+against my side until my ribs are sore. I say, are you going on forever,
+anyhow? We've halted for the night."
+
+"I can't stop!" cried Dan, groping in the darkness, then he fell heavily
+upon the damp ground, while a voice down the road began shouting, "Detail
+for guard!" Half asleep and cursing, the men responded to their names and
+hurried off, and as the silence closed in, the army slept like a child upon
+the roadside.
+
+With the first glimmer of dawn they were on the march again, passing all
+day through the desolate flat country, where the women ran weeping to the
+doorways, and waved empty hands as they went by. Once a girl in a homespun
+dress, with a spray of apple blossoms in her black hair, brought out a
+wooden bucket filled with buttermilk and passed it along the line.
+
+"Fight to the end, boys," she cried defiantly, "and when the end comes,
+keep on fighting. If you go back on Lee there's not a woman in Virginia
+will touch your hand."
+
+"That's right, little gal!" shrieked a husky private. "Three cheers for
+Marse Robert! an' we'll whip the earth in our bar' feet befo' breakfast."
+
+"All the same I wish old Stonewall was along," muttered Pinetop. "If I
+could jest see old Stonewall or his ghost ahead, I'd know thar was an open
+road somewhere that Sheridan ain't got his eye on."
+
+As the sun rose high, refugees from Richmond flocked after them to shout
+that the town had been fired by the citizens, who had moved, with their
+families, to the Capitol Square as the flames spread from the great tobacco
+warehouses. Men who had wives and children in the city groaned as they
+marched farther from the ashes of their homes, and more than one staggered
+back into the ranks and went onward under a heavier burden.
+
+"Wall, I reckon things are fur the best--or they ain't." remarked Pinetop,
+in a cheerful tone. "Thar's no goin' agin that, you bet. What's the row
+back thar, I wonder?"
+
+The hovering enemy, grown bolder, had fallen upon the flank, and the
+stragglers and the rear guard were beating off the cavalry, when a regiment
+was sent back to relieve the pressure. Returning, Pinetop, who was of the
+attacking party, fell gravely to moralizing upon the scarcity of food.
+
+"I've tasted every plagued thing that grows in this country except dirt,"
+he observed, "an' I'm goin' to kneel down presently and take a good square
+mouthful of that."
+
+"That's one thing we shan't run short of," replied Dan, stepping round a
+mud hole. "By George, we've got to march in a square again across this
+open. I believe when I set out for heaven, I'll find some of those
+confounded Yankee troopers watching the road."
+
+Forming in battle line they advanced cautiously across the clearing, while
+the skirmishing grew brisker at the front. That night they halted but once
+upon the way, standing to meet attack against a strip of pines, watching
+with drawn breath while the enemy crept closer. They heard him in the
+woods, felt him in the air, saw him in the darkness--like a gigantic coil
+he approached inch by inch for the last struggle. Now and then a shot rang
+out, and the little band thrilled to a soldier, and waited breathlessly for
+the last charge that might end it all.
+
+"There's only one thing worse than starvation, and it's defeat!" cried Dan
+aloud; then the column swung on and the cry of "Close up, there! close up!"
+mingled in his ears with the steady tramp upon the road.
+
+In the early morning the shots grew faster, and as the column stopped in
+the cover of a wood, the bullets came singing among the tree-tops, from the
+left flank where the skirmishers had struck the enemy. During the short
+rest Dan slept leaning against a twisted aspen, and when Pinetop shook him,
+he awoke with a dizziness in his head that sent the flat earth slamming
+against the sky.
+
+"I believe I'm starving, Pinetop," he said, and his voice rang like a bell
+in his ears. "I can't see where to put my feet, the ground slips about so."
+
+For answer Pinetop felt in his pocket and brought out a slice of fat bacon,
+which he gave to him uncooked.
+
+"Wait till I git a light," he commanded. "A woman up the road gave me a
+hunk, and I've had my share."
+
+"You've had your share," repeated Dan, greedily, his eyes on the meat,
+though he knew that Pinetop was lying.
+
+The mountaineer struck a match and lighted a bit of pine, holding the bacon
+to the flame until it scorched.
+
+"You'd better git it all in yo' mouth quick," he advised, "for if the smell
+once starts on the breeze the whole brigade will be on the scent in a
+minute."
+
+Dan ate it to the last morsel and licked the warm juice from his fingers.
+
+"You lied, Pinetop," he said, "but, by God, you saved my life. What place
+is this, I wonder. Isn't there any hope of our cutting through Grant's
+lines to-day?"
+
+Pinetop glanced about him.
+
+"Somebody said we were comin' on to Sailor's Creek," he answered, "and it's
+about as God-forsaken country as I care to see. Hello! what's that?"
+
+In the road there was an abandoned battery, cut down and left to rot into
+the earth, and as they swept past it at "double quick," they heard the
+sound of rapid firing across the little stream.
+
+"It's a fight, thank God!" yelled Pinetop, and at the words a tumultuous
+joy urged Dan through the water and over the sharp stones. After all the
+hunger and the intolerable waiting, a chance was come for him to use his
+musket once again.
+
+As they passed through an open meadow, a rabbit, starting suddenly from a
+clump of sumach, went bounding through the long grass before the thin gray
+line. With ears erect and short white tail bobbing among the broom-sedge,
+the little quivering creature darted straight toward the low brow of a
+hill, where a squadron of cavalry made a blue patch on the green.
+
+"Geriminy! thar goes a good dinner," Pinetop gasped, smacking his lips.
+"An' I've got to save this here load for a Yankee I can't eat."
+
+With a long flying leap the rabbit led the charge straight into the enemy's
+ranks, and as the squirrel rifles rang out behind it, a blue horseman was
+swept from every saddle upon the hill.
+
+"By God, I'm glad I didn't eat that rabbit!" yelled Pinetop, as he reloaded
+and raised his musket to his shoulder.
+
+Back and forth before the line, the general of the brigade was riding
+bareheaded and frantic with delight. As he passed he made sweeping gestures
+with his left hand, and his long gray hair floated like a banner upon the
+wind.
+
+"They're coming, men!" he cried. "Get behind that fence and have your
+muskets ready to pick your man. When you see the whites of his eyes fire,
+and give the bayonet. They're coming! Here they are!"
+
+The old "worm" fence went down, and as Dan piled up some loose rails before
+him, a creeping brier tore his fingers until the blood spurted upon his
+sleeve. Then, kneeling on the ground, he raised his musket and fired at one
+of the skirmishers advancing briskly through the broom-sedge. In an instant
+the meadow and the hill beyond were blue with swarming infantry, and the
+little gray band fell back, step by step, loading and firing as it went
+across the field. As the road behind it closed, Dan turned to battle on his
+own account, and entering a thinned growth of pines, he dodged from tree to
+tree and aimed above the brushwood. Near him the colour bearer of the
+regiment was fighting with his flagstaff for a weapon, and out in the
+meadow a member of the glee club, crouching behind a clump of sassafras as
+he loaded, was singing in a cracked voice:--
+
+  "Rally round the flag, boys, rally once again!"
+
+Then a bullet went with a soft thud into the singer's breast, and the
+cracked voice was choked out beneath the bushes.
+
+Gripped by a sudden pity for the helpless flag he had loved and followed
+for four years, Dan made an impetuous dash from out the pines, and tearing
+the colours from the pole, tossed them over his arm as he retreated rapidly
+to cover. At the instant he held his life as nothing beside the faded strip
+of silk that wrapped about his body. The cause for which he had fought, the
+great captain he had followed, the devotion to a single end which had kept
+him struggling in the ranks, the daily sacrifice, the very poverty and cold
+and hunger, all these were bound up and made one with the tattered flag
+upon his arm. Through the belt of pines, down the muddy road, across the
+creek and up the long hill, he fell back breathlessly, loading and firing
+as he went, with his face turned toward the enemy. At the end he became
+like a fox before the hunters, dashing madly over the rough ground, with
+the colours blown out behind him, and the quick shots ringing in his ears.
+
+Then, as if by a single stroke, Lee's army vanished from the trampled
+broom-sedge and the strip of pines. The blue brigades closed upon the
+landscape and when they opened there were only a group of sullen prisoners
+and the sound of stray shots from the scattered soldiers who had fought
+their way beyond the stream.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+IN THE HOUR OF DEFEAT
+
+
+As the dusk fell Dan found himself on the road with a little company of
+stragglers, flying from the pursuing cavalry that drew off slowly as the
+darkness gathered. He had lost his regiment, and, as he went on, he began
+calling out familiar names, listening with strained ears for an answer that
+would tell of a friend's escape. At last he caught the outlines of a
+gigantic figure relieved on a hillock against the pale green west, and,
+with a shout, he hurried through the swarm of fugitives, and overtook
+Pinetop, who had stooped to tie his shoe on with a leather strap.
+
+"Thank God, old man!" he cried. "Where are the others?"
+
+Pinetop, panting yet imperturbable, held out a steady hand.
+
+"The Lord knows," he replied. "Some of 'em air here an' some ain't. I was
+goin' back agin to git the flag, when I saw you chased like a fox across
+the creek with it hangin' on yo' back. Then I kinder thought it wouldn't do
+for none of the regiment to answer when Marse Robert called, so I came
+along right fast and kep' hopin' you would follow."
+
+"Here I am," responded Dan, "and here are the colours." He twined the silk
+more closely about his arm, gloating over his treasure in the twilight.
+
+Pinetop stretched out his great rough hand and touched the flag as gently
+as if it were a woman.
+
+"I've fought under this here thing goin' on four years now," he said, "and
+I reckon when they take it prisoner, they take me along with it."
+
+"And me," added Dan; "poor Granger went down, you know, just as I took it
+from him. He fell fighting with the pole."
+
+"Wall, it's a better way than most," Pinetop replied, "an' when the angel
+begins to foot up my account on Jedgment Day, I shouldn't mind his cappin'
+the whole list with 'he lost his life, but he didn't lose his flag.' To
+make a blamed good fight is what the Lord wants of us, I reckon, or he
+wouldn't have made our hands itch so when they touch a musket."
+
+Then they trudged on silently, weak from hunger, sickened by defeat. When,
+at last, the disorganized column halted, and the men fell to the ground
+upon their rifles, Dan kindled a fire and parched his corn above the coals.
+After it was eaten they lay down side by side and slept peacefully on the
+edge of an old field.
+
+For three days they marched steadily onward, securing meagre rations in a
+little town where they rested for a while, and pausing from time to time,
+to beat off a feigned attack. Pinetop, cheerful, strong, undaunted by any
+hardship, set his face unflinchingly toward the battle that must clear a
+road for them through Grant's lines. Had he met alone a squadron of cavalry
+in the field, he would, probably, have taken his stand against a pine, and
+aimed his musket as coolly as if a squirrel were the mark. With his sunny
+temper, and his gloomy gospel of predestination, his heart could swell with
+hope even while he fought single-handed in the face of big battalions. What
+concerned him, after all, was not so much the chance of an ultimate victory
+for the cause, as the determination in his own mind to fight it out as long
+as he had a cartridge remaining in his box. As his fathers had kept the
+frontier, so he meant, on his own account, to keep Virginia.
+
+On the afternoon of the third day, as the little company drew near to
+Appomattox Court House, it found the road blocked with abandoned guns, and
+lined by exhausted stragglers, who had gone down at the last halting place.
+As it filed into an open field beyond a wooded level, where a few campfires
+glimmered, a group of Federal horsemen clattered across the front, and, as
+if by instinct, the column formed into battle line, and the hand of every
+man was on the trigger of his musket.
+
+"Don't fire, you fools!" called an officer behind them, in a voice sharp
+with irritation. "The army has surrendered!"
+
+"What! Grant surrendered?" thundered the line, with muskets at a trail as
+it rushed into the open.
+
+"No, you blasted fools--we've surrendered," shouted the voice, rising
+hoarsely in a gasping indignation.
+
+"Surrendered, the deuce!" scoffed the men, as they fell back into ranks.
+"I'd like to know what General Lee will think of your surrender?"
+
+A little Colonel, with his hand at his sword hilt, strutted up and down
+before a tangle of dead thistles.
+
+"I don't know what he thinks of it, he did it," he shrieked, without
+pausing in his walk.
+
+"It's a damn lie!" cried Dan, in a white heat. Then he threw his musket on
+the ground, and fell to sobbing the dry tearless sobs of a man who feels
+his heart crushed by a sudden blow.
+
+There were tears on all the faces round him, and Pinetop was digging his
+great fists into his eyes, as a child does who has been punished before his
+playmates. Beside him a man with an untrimmed shaggy beard hid his
+distorted features in shaking hands.
+
+"I ain't blubberin' fur myself," he said defiantly, "but--O Lord, boys--I'm
+cryin' fur Marse Robert."
+
+Over the field the beaten soldiers, in ragged gray uniforms, were lying
+beneath little bushes of sassafras and sumach, and to the right a few
+campfires were burning in a shady thicket. The struggle was over, and each
+man had fallen where he stood, hopeless for the first time in four long
+years. Up and down the road groups of Federal horsemen trotted with
+cheerful unconcern, and now and then a private paused to make a remark in
+friendly tones; but the men beneath the bushes only stared with hollow eyes
+in answer--the blank stare of the defeated who have put their whole
+strength into the fight.
+
+Taking out his jack-knife, Dan unfastened the flag from the hickory pole on
+which he had placed it, and began cutting it into little pieces, which he
+passed to each man who had fought beneath its folds. The last bit he put
+into his own pocket, and trembling like one gone suddenly palsied, passed
+from the midst of his silent comrades to a pine stump on the border of the
+woods. Here he sat down and looked hopelessly upon the scene before
+him--upon the littered roads and the great blue lines encircling the
+horizon.
+
+So this was the end, he told himself, with a bitterness that choked him
+like a grip upon the throat, this the end of his boyish ardour, his dream
+of fame upon the battle-field, his four years of daily sacrifice and
+suffering. This was the end of the flag for which he was ready to give his
+life three days ago. With his youth, his strength, his very bread thrown
+into the scale, he sat now with wrecked body and blighted mind, and saw his
+future turn to decay before his manhood was well begun. Where was the old
+buoyant spirit he had brought with him into the fight? Gone forever, and in
+its place he found his maimed and trembling hands, and limbs weakened by
+starvation as by long fever. His virile youth was wasted in the slow
+struggle, his energy was sapped drop by drop; and at the last he saw
+himself burned out like the battle-fields, where the armies had closed and
+opened, leaving an impoverished and ruined soil. He had given himself for
+four years, and yet when the end came he had not earned so much as an empty
+title to take home for his reward. The consciousness of a hard-fought fight
+was but the common portion of them all, from the greatest to the humblest
+on either side. As for him he had but done his duty like his comrades in
+the ranks, and by what right of merit should he have raised himself above
+their heads? Yes, this was the end, and he meant to face it standing with
+his back against the wall.
+
+Down the road a line of Federal privates came driving an ox before them,
+and he eyed them gravely, wondering in a dazed way if the taste of victory
+had gone to their heads. Then he turned slowly, for a voice was speaking at
+his side, and a tall man in a long blue coat was building a little fire
+hard by.
+
+"Your stomach's pretty empty, ain't it, Johnny?" he inquired, as he laid
+the sticks crosswise with precise movements, as if he had measured the
+length of each separate piece of wood. He was lean and rawboned, with a
+shaggy red moustache and a wart on his left cheek. When he spoke he showed
+an even row of strong white teeth.
+
+Dan looked at him with a kind of exhausted indignation.
+
+"Well, it's been emptier," he returned shortly.
+
+The man in blue struck a match and held it carefully to a dried pine
+branch, watching, with a serious face, as the flame licked the rosin from
+the crossed sticks. Then he placed a quart pot full of water on the coals,
+and turned to meet Dan's eyes, which had grown ravenous as he caught the
+scent of beef.
+
+"You see we somehow thought you Johnnies would be hard up," he said in an
+offhand manner, "so we made up our minds we'd ask you to dinner and cut our
+rations square. Some of us are driving over an ox from camp, but as I was
+hanging round and saw you all by yourself on this old stump, I had a
+feeling that you were in need of a cup of coffee. You haven't tasted real
+coffee for some time, I guess."
+
+The water was bubbling over and he measured out the coffee and poured it
+slowly into the quart cup. As the aroma filled the air, he opened his
+haversack and drew out a generous supply of raw beef which he broiled on
+little sticks, and laid on a spread of army biscuits. The larger share he
+offered to Dan with the steaming pot of coffee.
+
+"I declare it'll do me downright good to see you eat," he said, with a
+hospitable gesture.
+
+Dan sat down beside the bread and beef, and, for the next ten minutes, ate
+like a famished wolf, while the man in blue placidly regarded him. When he
+had finished he took out a little bag of Virginian tobacco and they smoked
+together beside the waning fire. A natural light returned gradually to
+Dan's eyes, and while the clouds of smoke rose high above the bushes, they
+talked of the last great battles as quietly as of the Punic Wars. It was
+all dead now, as dead as history, and the men who fought had left the
+bitterness to the camp followers or to the ones who stayed at home.
+
+"You have fine tobacco down this way," observed the Union soldier, as he
+refilled his pipe, and lighted it with an ember. Then his gaze followed
+Dan's, which was resting on the long blue lines that stretched across the
+landscape.
+
+"You're feeling right bad about us now," he pursued, as he crossed his legs
+and leaned back against a pine, "and I guess it's natural, but the time
+will come when you'll know that we weren't the worst you had to face."
+
+Dan held out his hand with something of a smile.
+
+"It was a fair fight and I can shake hands," he responded.
+
+"Well, I don't mean that," said the other thoughtfully. "What I mean is
+just this, you mark my words--after the battle comes the vultures. After
+the army of fighters comes the army of those who haven't smelled the
+powder. And in time you'll learn that it isn't the man with the rifle that
+does the most of the mischief. The damned coffee boilers will get their
+hands in now--I know 'em."
+
+"Well, there's nothing left, I suppose, but to swallow it down without any
+fuss," said Dan wearily, looking over the field where the slaughtered ox
+was roasting on a hundred bayonets at a hundred fires.
+
+"You're right, that's the only thing," agreed the man in blue; then his
+keen gray eyes were on Dan's face.
+
+"Have you got a wife?" he asked bluntly.
+
+Dan shook his head as he stared gravely at the embers.
+
+"A sweetheart, I guess? I never met a Johnnie who didn't have a
+sweetheart."
+
+"Yes, I've a sweetheart--God bless her!"
+
+"Well, you take my advice and go home and tell her to cure you, now she's
+got the chance. I like your face, young man, but if I ever saw a
+half-starved and sickly one, it is yours. Why, I shouldn't have thought you
+had the strength to raise your rifle."
+
+"Oh, it doesn't take much strength for that; and besides the coffee did me
+good, I was only hungry."
+
+"Hungry, hump!" grunted the Union soldier. "It takes more than hunger to
+give a man that blue look about the lips; it takes downright starvation."
+He dived into his haversack and drew out a quinine pill and a little bottle
+of whiskey.
+
+"If you'll just chuck this down it won't do you any harm," he went on, "and
+if I were you, I'd find a shelter before I went to sleep to-night; you
+can't trust April weather. Get into that cow shed over there or under a
+wagon."
+
+Dan swallowed the quinine and the whiskey, and as the strong spirit fired
+his veins, the utter hopelessness of his outlook muffled him into silence.
+Dropping his head into his open palms, he sat dully staring at the
+whitening ashes.
+
+After a moment the man in blue rose to his feet and fastened his haversack.
+
+"I live up by Bethlehem, New Hampshire," he remarked, "and if you ever come
+that way, I hope you'll look me up; my name's Moriarty."
+
+"Your name's Moriarty, I shall remember," repeated Dan, trying, with a
+terrible effort, to steady his quivering limbs.
+
+"Jim Moriarty, don't you forget it. Anybody at Bethlehem can tell you about
+me; I keep the biggest store around there." He went off a few steps and
+then came back to hold out an awkward hand in which there was a little heap
+of silver.
+
+"You'd just better take this to start you on your way," he said, "it ain't
+but ninety-five cents--I couldn't make out the dollar--and when you get it
+in again you can send it to Jim Moriarty at Bethlehem, New Hampshire.
+Good-by, and good luck to you this time."
+
+He strode off across the field, and Dan, with the silver held close in his
+palm, flung himself back upon the ground and slept until Pinetop woke him
+with a grasp upon his shoulder.
+
+"Marse Robert's passin' along the road," he said. "You'd better hurry."
+
+Struggling to his feet Dan rushed from the woods across the deserted field,
+to the lines of conquered soldiers standing in battle ranks upon the
+roadside. Between them the Commander had passed slowly on his dapple gray
+horse, and when Dan joined the ranks it was only in time to see him ride
+onward at a walk, with the bearded soldiers clinging like children to his
+stirrups. A group of Federal cavalrymen, drawn up beneath a persimmon tree,
+uncovered as he went by, and he returned the salute with a simple gesture.
+Lonely, patient, confirmed in courtesy, he passed on his way, and his
+little army returned to camp in the strip of pines.
+
+"'I've done my best for you,' that's what he said," sobbed Pinetop. "'I've
+done my best for you,'--and I kissed old Traveller's mane."
+
+Without replying, Dan went back into the woods and flung himself down on
+the spread of tags. Now that the fight was over all the exhaustion of the
+last four years, the weakness after many battles, the weariness after the
+long marches, had gathered with accumulated strength for the final
+overthrow.
+
+For three days he remained in camp in the pine woods, and on the third,
+after waiting six hours in a hard rain outside his General's tent, he
+secured the little printed slip which signified to all whom it might
+concern that he had become a prisoner upon his parole. Then, after a
+sympathetic word to the rest of the division, shivering beneath the
+sassafras bushes before the tent, he shook hands with his comrades under
+arms, and started with Pinetop down the muddy road. The war was over, and
+footsore, in rags and with aching limbs, he was returning to the little
+valley where he had hoped to trail his glory.
+
+Down the long road the gray rain fell straight as a curtain, and on either
+side tramped the lines of beaten soldiers who were marching, on their word
+of honour, to their distant homes. The abandoned guns sunk deep in the mud,
+the shivering men lying in rags beneath the bushes, and the charred remains
+of campfires among the trees were the last memories Dan carried from the
+four years' war.
+
+Some miles farther on, when the pickets had been passed, a man on a black
+horse rode suddenly from a little thicket and stopped across their path.
+
+"You fellows haven't been such darn fools as to give your parole, have
+you?" he asked in an angry voice, his hand on his horse's neck. "The fight
+isn't over yet and we want your muskets on our side. I belong to the
+partisan rangers, and we'll cut through to Johnston's army before daylight.
+If not, we'll take to the mountains and keep up the war forever. The
+country is ours, what's to hinder us?"
+
+He spoke passionately, and at each sharp exclamation the black horse rose
+on his haunches and pawed the air.
+
+Dan shook his head.
+
+"I'm out on parole," he replied, "but as soon as I'm exchanged, I'll fight
+if Virginia wants me. How about you, Pinetop?"
+
+The mountaineer shuffled his feet in the mud and stood solemnly surveying
+the landscape.
+
+"Wall, I don't understand much about this here parole business," he
+replied. "It seems to me that a slip of paper with printed words on it that
+I have to spell out as I go, is a mighty poor way to keep a man from
+fightin' if he can find a musket. I ain't steddyin' about this parole, but
+Marse Robert told me to go home to plant my crop, and I am goin' home to
+plant it."
+
+"It is all over, I think," said Dan with a quivering lip, as he stared at
+the ruined meadows. The smart was still fresh, and it was too soon for him
+to add, with the knowledge that would come to him from years,--"it is
+better so." Despite the grim struggle and the wasted strength, despite the
+impoverished land and the nameless graves that filled it, despite even his
+own wrecked youth and the hard-fought fields where he had laid it
+down--despite all these a shadow was lifted from his people and it was
+worth the price.
+
+They passed on, while the black horse pawed the dust, and the rider hurled
+oaths at their retreating figures. At a little house a few yards down the
+road they stopped to ask for food, and found a woman weeping at the kitchen
+table, with three small children clinging to her skirts. Her husband had
+fallen at Five Forks, she said, the safe was empty, and the children were
+crying for bread. Then Dan slipped into her hand the silver he had borrowed
+from the Union soldier, and the two returned penniless to the road.
+
+"At least we are men," he said almost apologetically to Pinetop, and the
+next instant turned squarely in the mud, for a voice from the other side
+had called out shrilly:--
+
+"Hi, Marse Dan, whar you gwine now?"
+
+"Bless my soul, it's Big Abel," he exclaimed.
+
+Black as a spade and beaming with delight, the negro emerged from the swarm
+upon the roadside and grasped Dan's outstretched hands.
+
+"Whar you gwine dis away, Marse Dan?" he inquired again.
+
+"I'm going home, Big Abel," responded Dan, as they walked on in a row of
+three. "No, don't shout, you scamp; I'd rather lie down and die upon the
+roadside than go home like this."
+
+"Well, you ain' much to look at, dat's sho'," replied Big Abel, his face
+shining like polished ebony, "en I ain' much to look at needer, but dey'll
+have ter recollect de way we all wuz befo' we runned away; dey'll have ter
+recollect you in yo' fine shuts en fancy waistcoats, en dey'll have ter
+recollect me in yo' ole uns. Sakes alive! I kin see dat one er yourn wid de
+little bit er flow'rs all over hit des es plain es ef 'twuz yestiddy."
+
+"The waistcoats are all gone now," said Dan gravely, "and so are the
+shirts. The war is over and you are your own master, Big Abel. You don't
+belong to me from this time on."
+
+Big Abel shook his head grinning.
+
+"I reckon hit's all de same," he remarked cheerfully, "en I reckon we'd es
+well be gwine on home, Marse Dan."
+
+"I reckon we would," said Dan, and they pushed on in silence.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+ON THE MARCH AGAIN
+
+
+That night they slept on the blood-stained floor of an old field hospital,
+and the next morning Pinetop parted from them and joined an engineer who
+had promised him a "lift" toward his mountains.
+
+As Dan stood in the sunny road holding his friend's rough hand, it seemed
+to him that such a parting was the sharpest wrench the end had brought.
+
+"Whenever you need me, old fellow, remember that I am always ready," he
+said in a husky voice.
+
+Pinetop looked past him to the distant woods, and his calm blue eyes were
+dim.
+
+"I reckon you'll go yo' way an' I'll go mine," he replied, "for thar's one
+thing sartain an' that is our ways don't run together. It'll never be the
+same agin--that's natur--but if you ever want a good stout hand for any
+uphill ploughing or shoot yo' man an' the police git on yo' track, jest
+remember that I'm up thar in my little cabin. Why, if every officer in the
+county was at yo' heels, I'd stand guard with my old squirrel gun and maw
+would with her kettle."
+
+Then he shook hands with Big Abel and strode on across a field to a little
+railway station, while Dan went slowly down the road with the negro at his
+side.
+
+In the afternoon when they had trudged all the morning through the heavy
+mud, they reached a small frame house set back from the road, with some
+straggling ailanthus shoots at the front and a pile of newly cut hickory
+logs near the kitchen steps. A woman, with a bucket of soapsuds at her
+feet, was wringing out a homespun shirt in the yard, and as they entered
+the little gate, she looked at them with a defiance which was evidently the
+result of a late domestic wrangle.
+
+"I've got one man on my hands," she began in a shrill voice, "an' he's as
+much as I can 'tend to, an' a long sight mo' than I care to 'tend to. He
+never had the spunk to fight anythin' except his wife, but I reckon he's
+better off now than them that had; it's the coward that gets the best of
+things in these days."
+
+"Shut up thar, you hussy!" growled a voice from the kitchen, and a fat man
+with bleared eyes slouched to the doorway. "I reckon if you want a supper
+you can work for it," he remarked, taking a wad of tobacco from his mouth
+and aiming it deliberately at one of the ailanthus shoots. "You split up
+that thar pile of logs back thar an' Sally'll cook yo' supper. Thar ain't
+another house inside of a good ten miles, so you'd better take your chance,
+I reckon."
+
+"That's jest like you, Tom Bates," retorted the woman passionately. "Befo'
+you'd do a lick of honest work you'd let the roof topple plum down upon our
+heads."
+
+For an instant Dan's glance cut the man like a whip, then crossing to the
+woodpile, he lifted the axe and sent it with a clean stroke into a hickory
+log.
+
+"We can't starve, Big Abel," he said coolly, "but we are not beggars yet by
+a long way."
+
+"Go 'way, Marse Dan," protested the negro in disgust. "Gimme dat ar axe en
+set right down and wait twel supper. You're des es white es a sheet dis
+minute."
+
+"I've got to begin some day," returned Dan, as the axe swung back across
+his shoulder. "I'll pay for my supper and you'll pay for yours, that's
+fair, isn't it?--for you're a free man now."
+
+Then he went feverishly to work, while Big Abel sat grumbling on the
+doorstep, and the farmer, leaning against the lintel behind him, watched
+the lessening pile with sluggish eyes.
+
+"You be real careful of this wood, Sally, an' it ought to last twel
+summer," he observed, as he glanced to where his wife stood wringing out
+the clothes. "If you warn't so wasteful that last pile would ha' held out
+twice as long."
+
+Dan chopped steadily for an hour, and then giving the axe to Big Abel, went
+into the little kitchen to eat his supper. The woman served him sullenly,
+placing some sobby biscuits and a piece of cold bacon on his plate, and
+pouring out a glass of buttermilk with a vicious thrust of the pitcher.
+When he asked if there was a shelter close at hand where he might sleep,
+she replied sourly that she reckoned the barn was good enough if he chose
+to spend the night there. Then as Big Abel finished his job and took his
+supper in his hand, they left the house and went across the darkening
+cattle pen, to a rotting structure which they took to be the barn. Inside
+the straw was warm and dry, and as Dan flung himself down upon it, he
+gasped out something like a prayer of thanks. His first day's labour with
+his hands had left him trembling like a nervous woman. An hour longer, he
+told himself, and he should have gone down upon the roadside.
+
+For a time he slept profoundly, and then awaking in the night, he lay until
+dawn listening to Big Abel's snores, and staring straight above where a
+solitary star shone through a crack in the shingled roof. From the other
+side of a thin partition came the soft breathing and the fresh smell of
+cows, and, now and then, he heard the low bleating of a new-born calf.
+
+He had been dreaming of a battle, and the impression was so vivid that, as
+he opened his eyes, he half imagined he still heard the sound of shots. In
+his sleep he had saved the flag and won promotion after victory, and for a
+moment the trampled straw seemed to him to be the battle-field, and the
+thin boards against which he beat the enemy's resisting line. As he came
+slowly to himself a sudden yearning for the army awoke within him. He
+wanted the red campfires and his comrades smoking against the dim pines;
+the peaceful bivouac where the long shadows crept among the trees and two
+men lay wrapped together beneath every blanket; above all, he wanted to see
+the Southern Cross wave in the sunlight, and to hear the charging yell as
+the brigade dashed into the open. He was homesick for it all to-night, and
+yet it was dead forever--dead as his own youth which he had given to the
+cause.
+
+Sharp pains racked him from head to foot, and his pulses burned as if from
+fever. It was like the weariness of old age, he thought, this utter
+hopelessness, these strained and quivering muscles. As a boy he had been
+hardy as an Indian and as fearless of fatigue. Now the long midnight
+gallops on Prince Rupert over frozen roads returned to him like the dim
+memories from some old romance. They belonged to the place of
+half-forgotten stories, with the gay waistcoats and the Christmas
+gatherings in the hall at Chericoke. For a country that was not he had
+given himself as surely as the men who were buried where they fought, and
+his future would be but one long struggle to adjust himself to conditions
+in which he had no part. His proper nature was compacted of the old life
+which was gone forever--of its ease, of its gayety, of its lavish
+pleasures. For the sake of this life he had fought for four years in the
+ranks, and now that it was swept away, he found himself like a man who
+stumbles on over the graves of his familiar friends. He remembered the
+words of the soldier in the long blue coat, and spoke them half aloud in
+the darkness: "There'll come a time when you'll find out that the army
+wasn't the worst you had to face." The army was not the worst, he knew this
+now--the grapple with a courageous foe had served to quicken his pulses and
+nerve his hand--the worst was what came afterward, this sense of utter
+failure and the attempt to shape one's self to brutal necessity. In the
+future that opened before him he saw only a terrible patience which would
+perhaps grow into a second nature as the years went on. In place of the old
+generous existence, he must from this day forth wring the daily bread of
+those he loved, with maimed hands, from a wasted soil.
+
+The thought of Betty came to him, but it brought no consolation. For
+himself he could meet the shipwreck standing, but Betty must be saved from
+it if there was salvation to be found. She had loved him in the days of his
+youth--in his strong days, as the Governor said--now that he was worn out,
+suffering, gray before his time, there was mere madness in his thought of
+her buoyant strength. "You may take ten--you may take twenty years to
+rebuild yourself," a surgeon had said to him at parting; and he asked
+himself bitterly, by what right of love dared he make her strong youth a
+prop for his feeble life? She loved him he knew--in his blackest hour he
+never doubted this--but because she loved him, did it follow that she must
+be sacrificed?
+
+Then gradually the dark mood passed, and with his eyes on the star, his
+mouth settled into the lines of smiling patience which suffering brings to
+the brave. He had never been a coward and he was not one now. The years had
+taught him nothing if they had not taught him the wisdom most needed by his
+impulsive youth--that so long as there comes good to the meanest creature
+from fate's hardest blow, it is the part of a man to stand up and take it
+between the eyes. In the midst of his own despair, of the haunting memories
+of that bland period which was over for his race, there arose suddenly the
+figure of the slave the Major had rescued, in Dan's boyhood, from the power
+of old Rainy-day Jones. He saw again the poor black wretch shivering in the
+warmth, with the dirty rag about his jaw, and with the sight he drew a
+breath that was almost of relief. That one memory had troubled his own
+jovial ease; now in his approaching poverty he might put it away from him
+forever.
+
+In the first light of a misty April sunrise they went out on the road
+again, and when they had walked a mile or so, Big Abel found some young
+pokeberry shoots, which he boiled in his old quart cup with a slice of
+bacon he had saved from supper. At noon they came upon a little farm and
+ploughed a strip of land in payment for a dinner that was lavishly pressed
+upon them. The people were plain, poor, and kindly, and the farmer followed
+Dan into the field with entreaties that he should leave the furrows and
+come in to meet his family. "Let yo' darky do a bit of work if he wants
+to," he urged, "but it makes me downright sick to see one of General Lee's
+soldiers driving my plough. The gals are afraid it'll bring bad luck."
+
+With a laugh, Dan tossed the ropes to Big Abel, who had been breaking clods
+of earth, and returned to the house, where he was placed in the seat of
+honour and waited on by a troop of enthusiastic red-cheeked maidens, each
+of whom cut one of the remaining buttons from his coat. Here he was asked
+to stay the night, but with the memory of the blue valley before his eyes,
+he shook his head and pushed on again in the early afternoon. The vision of
+Chericoke hung like a star above his road, and he struggled a little nearer
+day by day.
+
+Sometimes ploughing, sometimes chopping a pile of logs, and again lying for
+hours in the warm grass by the way, they travelled slowly toward the valley
+that held Dan's desire. The chill April dawns broke over them, and the
+genial April sunshine warmed them through after a drenching in a pearly
+shower. They watched the buds swell and the leaves open in the wood, the
+wild violets bloom in sheltered places, and the dandelions troop in ranks
+among the grasses by the road. Dan, halting to rest in the mild weather,
+would fall often into a revery long and patient, like those of extreme old
+age. With the sun shining upon his relaxed body and his eyes on the bright
+dust that floated in the slanting beams, he would lie for hours speechless,
+absorbed, filled with visions. One day he found a mountain laurel flowering
+in the woods, and gathering a spray he sat with it in his hands and dreamed
+of Betty. When Big Abel touched him on the arm he turned with a laugh and
+struggled to his feet. "I was resting," he explained, as they walked on.
+"It is good to rest like that in mind and body; to keep out thoughts and
+let the dreams come as they will."
+
+"De bes' place ter res' is on yo' own do' step," Big Abel responded, and
+quickening their pace, they went more rapidly over the rough clay roads.
+
+It was at the end of this day that they came, in the purple twilight, to a
+big brick house and found there a woman who lived alone with the memories
+of a son she had lost at Gettysburg. At their knock she came herself, with
+a few old servants, prompt, tearful, and very sad; and when she saw Dan's
+coat by the light of the lamp behind her, she put out her hands with a cry
+of welcome and drew him in, weeping softly as her white head touched his
+sleeve.
+
+"My mother is dead, thank God," he murmured, and at his words she looked up
+at him a little startled.
+
+"Others have come," she said, "but they were not like you; they did not
+have your voice. Have you been always poor like this?"
+
+He met her eyes smiling.
+
+"I have not always been a soldier," was his answer.
+
+For a moment she looked at him as if bewildered; then taking a lamp from an
+old servant, she led the way upstairs to her son's room, and laid out the
+dead man's clothes upon his bed.
+
+"We keep house for the soldiers now," she said, and went out to make things
+ready.
+
+As he plunged into the warm water and dried himself upon the fresh linen
+she had left, he heard the sound of passing feet in the broad hall, and
+from the outside kitchen there floated a savoury smell that reminded him of
+Chericoke at the supper hour. With the bath and the clean clothes his old
+instincts revived within him, and as he looked into the glass he caught
+something of the likeness of his college days. Beau Montjoy was not starved
+out after all, he thought with a laugh, he was only plastered over with
+malaria and dirt.
+
+For three days he remained in the big brick house lying at ease upon a sofa
+in the library, or listening to the tragic voice of the mother who talked
+of her only son. When she questioned him about Pickett's charge, he raised
+himself on his pillows and talked excitedly, his face flushing as if from
+fever.
+
+"Your son was with Armistead," he said, "and they all went down like
+heroes. I can see old Armistead now with his hat on his sword's point as he
+waved to us through the smoke. 'Who will follow me, boys?' he cried, and
+the next instant dashed straight on the defences. When he got to the second
+line there were only six men with him, beside Colonel Martin, and your son
+was one of them. My God! it was worth living to die like that."
+
+"And it is worth living to have a son die like that," she added, and wept
+softly in the stillness.
+
+The next morning he went on again despite her prayers. The rest was all too
+pleasant, but the memory of his valley was before him, and he thirsted for
+the pure winds that blew down the long white turnpike.
+
+"There is no peace for me until I see it again," he said at parting, and
+with a lighter step went out upon the April roads once more.
+
+The way was easier now for his limbs were stronger, and he wore the dead
+man's shoes upon his feet. For a time it almost seemed that the strength of
+that other soldier, who lay in a strange soil, had entered into his veins
+and made him hardier to endure. And so through the clear days they
+travelled with few pauses, munching as they walked from the food Big Abel
+carried in a basket on his arm.
+
+"We've been coming for three weeks, and we are getting nearer," said Dan
+one evening, as he climbed the spur of a mountain range at the hour of
+sunset. Then his glance swept the wide horizon, and the stick in his hand
+fell suddenly to the ground; for faint and blue and bathed in the sunset
+light he saw his own hills crowding against the sky. As he looked his heart
+swelled with tears, and turning away he covered his quivering face.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE RETURN
+
+
+As they passed from the shadow of the tavern road, the afternoon sunlight
+was slanting across the turnpike from the friendly hills, which alone of
+all the landscape remained unchanged. Loyal, smiling, guarding the ruined
+valley like peaceful sentinels, they had suffered not so much as an added
+wrinkle upon their brows. As Dan had left them five long years ago, so he
+found them now, and his heart leaped as he stood at last face to face. He
+was like a man who, having hungered for many days, finds himself suddenly
+satisfied again.
+
+Amid a blur of young foliage they saw first the smoking chimneys of
+Uplands, and then the Doric columns beyond a lane of flowering lilacs. The
+stone wall had crumbled in places, and strange weeds were springing up
+among the high blue-grass; but here and there beneath the maples he caught
+a glimpse of small darkies uprooting the intruders, and beyond the garden,
+in the distant meadows, ploughmen were plodding back and forth in the
+purple furrows. Peace had descended here at least, and, with a smile, he
+detected Betty's abounding energy in the moving spirit of the place. He saw
+her in the freshly swept walks, in the small negroes weeding the blue-grass
+lawn, in the distant ploughs that made blots upon the meadows. For a moment
+he hesitated, and laid his hand upon the iron gate; then, stifling the
+temptation, he turned back into the white sand of the road. Before he met
+Betty's eyes, he meant that his peace should be made with the old man at
+Chericoke.
+
+Big Abel, tramping at his side, opened his mouth from time to time to let
+out a rapturous exclamation.
+
+"Dar 'tis! des look at it!" he chuckled, when Uplands had been left far
+behind them. "Dat's de ve'y same clump er cedars, en dat's de wil' cher'y
+lyin' right flat on hit's back--dey's done cut it down ter git de
+cher'ies."
+
+"And the locust! Look, the big locust tree is still there, and in full
+bloom!"
+
+"Lawd, de 'simmons! Dar's de 'simmon tree way down yonder in the meadow,
+whar we all use ter set ouah ole hyar traps. You ain' furgot dose ole hyar
+traps, Marse Dan?"
+
+"Forgotten them! good Lord!" said Dan; "why I remember we caught five one
+Christmas morning, and Betty fed them and set them free again."
+
+"Dat she did, suh, dat she did! Hit's de gospel trufe!"
+
+"We never could hide our traps from Betty," pursued Dan, in delight. "She
+was a regular fox for scenting them out--I never saw such a nose for traps
+as hers, and she always set the things loose and smashed the doors."
+
+"We hid 'em one time way way in de thicket by de ice pond," returned Big
+Abel, "but she spied 'em out. Yes, Lawd, she spied 'em out fo' ouah backs
+wuz turnt."
+
+He talked on rapidly while Dan listened with a faint smile about his mouth.
+Since they had left the tavern road, Big Abel's onward march had been
+accompanied by ceaseless ejaculations. His joy was childlike, unrestrained,
+full of whimsical surprises--the flight of a bluebird or the recognition of
+a shrub beside the way sent him with shining eyes and quickened steps along
+the turnpike.
+
+From free Levi's cabin, which was still standing, though a battle had raged
+in the fallen woods beyond it, and men had fought and been buried within a
+stone's throw of the doorstep, they heard the steady falling of a hammer
+and caught the red glow from the rude forge at which the old negro worked.
+With the half-forgotten sound, Dan returned as if in a vision to his last
+night at Chericoke, when he had run off in his boyish folly, with free
+Levi's hammer beating in his ears. Then he had dreamed of coming back
+again, but not like this. He had meant to ride proudly up the turnpike,
+with his easily won honours on his head, and in his hands his magnanimous
+forgiveness for all who had done him wrong. On that day he had pictured the
+Governor hurrying to the turnpike as he passed, and he had seen his
+grandfather, shy of apologies, eager to make amends.
+
+That was his dream, and to-day he came back footsore, penniless, and in a
+dead man's clothes--a beggar as he had been at his first home-coming, when
+he had stood panting on the threshold and clutched his little bundle in his
+arms.
+
+Yet his pulses stirred, and he turned cheerfully to the negro at his side.
+
+"Do you see it, Big Abel? Tell me when you see it."
+
+"Dar's de cattle pastur'," cried Big Abel, "en dey's been a-fittin'
+dar--des look."
+
+"It must have been a skirmish," replied Dan, glancing down the slope. "The
+wall is all down, and see here," his foot struck on something hard and he
+stooped and picked up a horse's skull. "I dare say a squad of cavalry met
+Mosby's rangers," he added. "It looks as if they'd had a little frolic."
+
+He threw the skull into the pasture, and followed Big Abel, who was
+hurrying along the road.
+
+"We're moughty near dar," cried the negro, breaking into a run. "Des wait
+twel we pass de aspens, Marse Dan, des wait twel we pass de aspens, den
+we'll be right dar, suh."
+
+Then, as Dan reached him, the aspens were passed, and where Chericoke had
+stood they found a heap of ashes.
+
+At their feet lay the relics of a hot skirmish, and the old elms were
+perforated with rifle balls, but for these things Dan had neither eyes nor
+thoughts. He was standing before the place that he called home, and where
+the hospitable doors had opened he found only a cold mound of charred and
+crumbled bricks.
+
+For an instant the scene went black before his eyes, and as he staggered
+forward, Big Abel caught his arm.
+
+"I'se hyer, Marse Dan, I'se hyer," groaned the negro in his ear.
+
+"But the others? Where are the others?" asked Dan, coming to himself. "Hold
+me, Big Abel, I'm an utter fool. O Congo! Is that Congo?"
+
+A negro, coming with his hoe from the corn field, ran over the desolated
+lawn, and began shouting hoarsely to the hands behind him:--
+
+"Hi! Hit's Marse Dan, hit's Marse Dan come back agin!" he yelled, and at
+the cry there flocked round him a little troop of faithful servants,
+weeping, shouting, holding out eager arms.
+
+"Hi! hit's Marse Dan!" they shrieked in chorus. "Hit's Marse Dan en Brer
+Abel! Brer Abel en Marse Dan is done come agin!"
+
+Dan wept with them--tears of weakness, of anguish, of faint hope amid the
+dark. As their hands closed over his, he grasped them as if his eyes had
+gone suddenly blind.
+
+"Where are the others? Congo, for God's sake, tell me where are the
+others?"
+
+"We all's hyer, Marse Dan. We all's hyer," they protested, sobbing. "En Ole
+Marster en Ole Miss dey's in de house er de overseer--dey's right over dar
+behine de orchard whar you use ter projick wid de ploughs, en Brer Cupid
+and Sis Rhody dey's a-gittin' dem dey supper."
+
+"Then let me go," cried Dan. "Let me go!" and he started at a run past the
+gray ruins and the standing kitchen, past the flower garden and the big
+woodpile, to the orchard and the small frame house of Harris the overseer.
+
+Big Abel kept at his heels, panting, grunting, calling upon his master to
+halt and upon Congo to hurry after.
+
+"You'll skeer dem ter deaf--you'll skeer Ole Miss ter deaf," cried Congo
+from the rear, and drawing a trembling breath, Dan slackened his pace and
+went on at a walk. At last, when he reached the small frame house and put
+his foot upon the step, he hesitated so long that Congo slipped ahead of
+him and softly opened the door. Then his young master followed and stood
+looking with blurred eyes into the room.
+
+Before a light blaze which burned on the hearth, the Major was sitting in
+an arm chair of oak splits, his eyes on the blossoming apple trees outside,
+and above his head, the radiant image of Aunt Emmeline, painted as Venus in
+a gown of amber brocade. All else was plain and clean--the well-swept
+floor, the burnished andirons, the cupboard filled with rows of blue and
+white china--but that one glowing figure lent a festive air to the poorly
+furnished room, and enriched with a certain pomp the tired old man, dozing,
+with bowed white head, in the rude arm chair. It was the one thing saved
+from the ashes--the one vestige of a former greatness that still remained.
+
+As Dan stood there, a clock on the mantel struck the hour, and the Major
+turned slowly toward him.
+
+"Bring the lamps, Cupid," he said, though the daylight was still shining.
+"I don't like the long shadows--bring the lamps."
+
+Choking back a sob, Dan crossed the floor and knelt down by the chair.
+
+"We have come back, grandpa," he said. "We beg your pardon, and we have
+come back--Big Abel and I."
+
+For a moment the Major stared at him in silence; then he reached out and
+felt him with shaking hands as if he mistrusted the vision of his eyes.
+
+"So you're back, Champe, my boy," he muttered. "My eyes are bad--I thought
+at first that it was Dan--that it was Dan."
+
+"It is I, grandpa," said Dan, slowly. "It is I--and Big Abel, too. We are
+sorry for it all--for everything, and we have come back poorer than we went
+away."
+
+A light broke over the old man's face, and he stretched out his arms with a
+great cry that filled the room as his head fell forward on his grandson's
+breast. Then, when Mrs. Lightfoot appeared in the doorway, he controlled
+himself with a gasp and struggled to his feet.
+
+"Welcome home, my son," he said ceremoniously, as he put out his quivering
+hands, "and welcome home, Big Abel."
+
+The old lady went into Dan's arms as he turned, and looking over her head,
+he saw Betty coming toward him with a lamp shining in her hand.
+
+"My child, here is one of our soldiers," cried the Major, in joyful tones,
+and as the girl placed the lamp upon the table, she turned and met Dan's
+eyes.
+
+"It is the second time I've come home like this, Betty," he said, "only I'm
+a worse beggar now than I was at first."
+
+Betty shook his hand warmly and smiled into his serious face.
+
+"I dare say you're hungrier," she responded cheerfully, "but we'll soon
+mend that, Mrs. Lightfoot and I. We are of one mind with Uncle Bill, who,
+when Mr. Blake asked him the other day what we ought to do for our returned
+soldiers, replied as quick as that, 'Feed 'em, sir.'"
+
+The Major laughed with misty eyes.
+
+"You can't get Betty to look on the dark side, my boy," he declared, though
+Dan, watching the girl, saw that her face in repose had grown very sad.
+Only the old beaming smile brought the brightness now.
+
+"Well, I hope she will turn up the cheerful part of this outlook," he said,
+surrendering himself to the noisy welcome of Cupid and Aunt Rhody.
+
+"We may trust her--we may trust her," replied the old man as he settled
+himself back into his chair. "If there isn't any sunshine, Betty will make
+it for us herself."
+
+Dan met the girl's glance for an instant, and then looked at the old
+negroes hanging upon his hands.
+
+"Yes, the prodigal is back," he admitted, laughing, "and I hope the fatted
+calf is on the crane."
+
+"Dar's a roas' pig fur ter-morrow, sho's you bo'n," returned Aunt Rhody.
+"En I'se gwine to stuff 'im full." Then she hurried away to her fire, and
+Dan threw himself down upon the rug at the Major's feet.
+
+"Yes, we may trust Betty for the sunshine," repeated the Major, as if
+striving to recall his wandering thoughts. "She's my overseer now, you
+know, and she actually looks after both places in less time than poor
+Harris took to worry along with one. Why, there's not a better farmer in
+the county."
+
+"Oh, Major, don't," begged the girl, laughing and blushing beneath Dan's
+eyes. "You mustn't believe him, Dan, he wears rose-coloured glasses when he
+looks at me."
+
+"Well, my sight is dim enough for everything else, my dear," confessed the
+old man sadly. "That's why I have the lamps lighted before the sun goes
+down--eh, Molly?"
+
+Mrs. Lightfoot unwrapped her knitting and the ivory kneedles clicked in the
+firelight.
+
+"I like to keep the shadows away myself," she responded. "The twilight used
+to be my favourite hour, but I dread it now, and so does Mr. Lightfoot."
+
+"Well, the war's given us that in common," chuckled the Major, stretching
+out his feet. "If I remember rightly you once complained that our tastes
+were never alike, Molly." Then he glanced round with hospitable eyes. "Draw
+up, my boy, draw up to the fire and tell your story," he added invitingly.
+"By the time Champe comes home we'll have rich treats in store for the
+summer evenings."
+
+Betty was looking at him as he bent over the thin flames, and Dan saw her
+warm gaze cloud suddenly with tears. He put out his hand and touched hers
+as it lay on the Major's chair, and when she turned to him she was smiling
+brightly.
+
+"Here's Cupid with our supper," she said, going to the table, "and dear
+Aunt Rhody has actually gotten out her brandied peaches that she kept
+behind her 'jists.' If you ever doubted your welcome, Dan, this must banish
+it forever." Then as they gathered about the fruits of Aunt Rhody's
+labours, she talked on rapidly in her cheerful voice. "The silver has just
+been drawn up from the bottom of the well," she laughed, "so you mustn't
+wonder if it looks a little tarnished. There wasn't a piece missing, which
+is something to be thankful for already, and the port--how many bottles of
+port did you dig up from the asparagus bed, Uncle Cupid?"
+
+"I'se done hoed up 'mos' a dozen," answered Cupid, as he plied Dan with
+waffles, "en dey ain' all un um up yit."
+
+"Well, well, we'll have a bottle after supper," remarked the Major,
+heartily.
+
+"If there's anything that's been improved by this war it should be that
+port, I reckon," said Mrs. Lightfoot, her muslin cap nodding over the high
+old urns.
+
+"And Dan's appetite," finished Betty, merrily.
+
+When they rose from the table, the girl tied on her bonnet of plaited straw
+and kissed Mrs. Lightfoot and the Major.
+
+"It is almost mamma's supper time," she said, "and I must hurry back. Why,
+I've been away from her at least two hours." Then she looked at Dan and
+shook her head. "Don't come," she added, "it is too far for you, and Congo
+will see me safely home."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry for Congo, but his day is over," Dan returned, as he took
+up his hat and followed her out into the orchard. With a last wave to the
+Major, who watched them from the window, they passed under the blossoming
+fruit trees and went slowly down the little path, while Betty talked
+pleasantly of trivial things, cheerful, friendly, and composed. When she
+had exhausted the spring ploughing, the crops still to be planted and the
+bright May weather, Dan stopped beside the ashes of Chericoke, and looked
+at her with sombre eyes.
+
+"Betty, we must have it out," he said abruptly. "I have thought over it
+until I'm almost mad, and I see but one sensible thing for you to do--you
+must give me up--my dearest."
+
+A smile flickered about Betty's mouth. "It has taken you a long time to
+come to that conclusion," she responded.
+
+"I hoped until the end--even after I knew that hope was folly and that I
+was a fool to cling to it. I always meant to come back to you when I got
+the chance, but not like this--not like this."
+
+At the pain in his eyes the girl caught her breath with a sob that shook
+her from head to foot. Pity moved her with a passion stronger than mere
+love, and she put out her protecting arms with a gesture that would have
+saved him from the world--or from himself.
+
+"No, like this, Dan," she answered, with her lips upon his coat.
+
+He kissed her once and drew back.
+
+"I never meant to come home this way, Betty," he said, in a voice that
+trembled from its new humility.
+
+"My dear, my dear, I have grown to think that any way is a good way," she
+murmured, her eyes on the blackened pile that had once been Chericoke.
+
+"It is not right," he went on; "it is not fair. You cannot marry me--you
+must not."
+
+Again the humour quivered on the girl's lips.
+
+"I don't like to seem too urgent," she returned, "but will you tell me
+why?"
+
+"Why?" he repeated bitterly. "There are a hundred why's if you want them,
+and each one sufficient in itself. I am a beggar, a failure, a wreck, a
+broken-down soldier from the ranks. Do you think if it were anything less
+than pure madness on your part that I should stand here a moment and talk
+like this?--but because I am in love with you, Betty, it doesn't follow
+that I'm an utter ass."
+
+"That's flattering," responded Betty, "but it doesn't explain just what I
+want to know. Look me straight in the eyes--no evading now--and answer what
+I ask. Do you mean that we are to be neighbours and nothing more? Do you
+mean that we are to shake hands when we meet and drop them afterward? Do
+you mean that we are to stand alone together as we are standing now--that
+you are never to take me in your arms again? Do you mean this, my dear?"
+
+"I mean--just that," he answered between his teeth.
+
+For a moment Betty looked at him with a laugh of disbelief. Then, biting
+the smile upon her lips, she held out her hand with a friendly gesture.
+
+"I am quite content that it should be so," she said in a cordial voice. "We
+shall be very good neighbours, I fancy, and if you have any trouble with
+your crops, don't hesitate to ask for my advice. I've become an excellent
+farmer, the Major says, you know." She caught up her long black skirt and
+walked on, but when he would have followed, she motioned him back with a
+decisive little wave. "You really mustn't--I can't think of allowing it,"
+she insisted. "It is putting my neighbours to unheard-of trouble to make
+them see me home. Why, if I once begin the custom, I shall soon have old
+Rainy-day Jones walking back with me when I go to buy his cows." Still
+smiling she passed under the battle-scarred elms and stepped over the
+ruined gate into the road.
+
+Leaning against a twisted tree in the old drive, Dan watched her until her
+black dress fluttered beyond the crumbled wall. Then he gave a cry that
+checked her hastening feet.
+
+"Betty!" he called, and at his voice she turned.
+
+"What is it, dear friend?" she asked, and, standing amid the scattered
+stones, looked back at him with pleading eyes.
+
+"Betty!" he cried again, stretching out his arms; and as she ran toward
+him, he went down beside the ashes of Chericoke, and lay with his face half
+hidden against a broken urn.
+
+"I am coming," called Betty, softly, running over the fallen gate and along
+the drive. Then, as she reached him, she knelt down and drew him to her
+bosom, soothing him as a mother soothes a tired child.
+
+"It shall be as you wish--I shall be as you wish," she promised as she held
+him close.
+
+But his strength had come back to him at her touch, and springing to his
+feet, he caught her from the ground as he had done that day beside the
+cabin in the woods, kissing her eyelids and her faithful hands.
+
+"I can't do it, Betty, it's no use. There's still some fight left in me--I
+am not utterly beaten so long as I have you on my side."
+
+With a smile she lifted her face and he caught the strong courage of her
+look.
+
+"We will begin again," she said, "and this time, my dear, we will begin
+together."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Battle Ground, by Ellen Glasgow
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BATTLE GROUND ***
+
+***** This file should be named 6872.txt or 6872.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/6/8/7/6872/
+
+Produced by Wendy Crockett, Tiffany Vergon, Juliet
+Sutherland, Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+