nd gout, retaining the strength to
insert but a single stipulation in the marriage contract, to the effect
that his daughter should drop the name of Jane and be known as Dudley in
her husband's household. To this the dashing bridegroom acquiesced with
readiness, and when, within a year of the wedding, his wife presented
him with a son, he called the boy, as he called the mother, by her
maiden name.

He was a jovial young buck, who lived in his cards and his cups and
loathed a quarrel as he loved a fight.

When the war between the States arose he went with Virginia, caring
little for either cause, but conscious that his heart was where his home
was. So he kissed the young mother and the boy at her side and rode
lightly away with a laugh upon his lips, to fall as lightly in the mad
charge of cavalry at Brandy Station.

When the news came Jane Dudley listened to it in silence, her hands
clasping the worsteds she was winding. After the words were spoken she
laid the worsteds carefully aside, stooping to pick up a fallen ball.
Then she crossed the room and went upstairs.

She said little, refusing herself alike to consolation and to
acquaintances, spending her days in the shuttered house with her boy
beside her. When he fretted at the restraint she tied a band of crepe on
his little jacket and sent him to play on the green, while she took up
her worsteds again and finished the muffler she had been crocheting. If
she wept it was in secret, when the lights were out.

Some years later the house was sold over her head, but when she stood,
penniless, upon the threshold it was to cross it as haughtily as she had
done as a bride. The stiff folds of her black silk showed no wavering
ripple, the repose of her lips betrayed no tremor. The smooth, high
pompadour of her black hair passed as proudly beneath the arched doorway
as it had done in the days of her wifehood and Julius Webb.

Her neighbours opened their wasted stores to her need, and out of their
poverty offered her abundance, but she put aside their proffered
assistance and undertook, unaided, the support and education of her
child, maintaining throughout the struggle her air of unflinching irony.
She moved into a small white frame house opposite the church, and let
out her spare rooms to student boarders. Her pride was never lowered and
her crepe was never laid aside. She sat up far into the night to darn
the sleeves of her black silk gown, but the stitches were of such