it was nothing more than your being
playmates together. He's a good boy, and I don't believe that scandal
about him any more than I would about Bernard; but he's Amos Burr's son,
after all, though he has raised himself a long way above him, and, as
poor Aunt Griselda used to say, 'When all's said and done, a Battle's a
Battle.'"

Eugenia was looking into the fire.

"Yes," she repeated slowly, "a Battle's a Battle, after all."

"That's right, dear. I knew you'd say so. I always declared that you
were more of a Battle than all the rest of us put together--if you do
look the image of a Tucker. Tom was telling me only last week that he'd
leave you as free as air and trust the name in your hands sooner than he
would in his own--and he has a great deal of family pride, you know,
though he was so wild in his youth. But I remember my father once
saying: 'A Battle may go a long way down the wrong road, but he'll
always pull up in time to turn.'"

Her beautiful eyes shone in the firelight, and her placid mouth formed a
round hole above her dimpled chin, giving her large face an expression
almost infantile. She took up the key basket, which she had placed on
the mantel-piece, cast a glance at the pile of logs to see if it had
been replenished, felt the cover on the bed, after inquiring if it
sufficed, and, with a cheerful "good-night," passed out, closing the
door behind her.

Eugenia did not turn as the door closed. She stood motionless upon the
hearth rug, looking down into the fire. Something in the huge old
fireplace, with its bent andirons supporting the blazing logs, in the
increasing bed of embers upon the bricks, in the sharp odour of the knot
of resinous pine she had thrown on with the hickory, brought before her
the winter evenings in Delphy's little cabin, when they sat upon
three-legged stools and roasted early winesaps. She saw the negro faces
in the glow of the hearth, and she saw Nicholas and herself sitting side
by side in the shadow. His childish face, with its look of ancient care,
came back to her with the knotted boyish hands that had carried and
fetched at her bidding. The whole wistful little figure was imaged in
the flames, melting rapidly into the boy, eager to act, ardent to
achieve, who had bidden her good-bye on that November afternoon, and,
dissolving again, to reappear as the strong man who had come upon her in
Uncle Ish's little shanty, bearing the old negro's bag upon his
shoulder.

She had l