e been playing dolls with
the last flowers."

He stopped a moment as they were moving over the grassy ring. "Flower
dolls! They were playing flower dolls that morning in June when I came
down from the blue room and out into the garden. There they sat, on the
red earth in the little cedar wood, with their bright ladies. Deb told
me all their names. She told me more than that--she told me you were
reading in the arbour. Jacqueline, are you sorry that I found you
there?"

"No, I am not sorry; I am glad. You could make me wretched, but you
could not make me repentant. Oh, Lewis! I shall hear those shots
to-night--"

"No, you will not--I shall read you to sleep. Why, if you were a
soldier's wife, would you hear all the bullets flying? There, the last
red has faded, and I hear the children's voices! Come in; come in out of
the dark."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE DUEL

It was nine o'clock of a November morning when a coach, driven out from
Richmond, passed a country tavern and a blacksmith's shop, and, turning
from the main road, went jolting through a stubble-field down to the
steep and grassy bank of the James. It was a morning fine and clear,
with the hoar frost yet upon the ground. The trees, of which there were
many, were bare, saving the oaks, which yet held a rusty crimson. In the
fields the crows were cawing, and beyond the network of branch and bough
the river flashed and murmured among its multitude of islets. The place
was solitary, screened from the highroad by a rise of land, and fitted
for a lovers' meeting or for other concerns of secrecy.

The coach drew up beneath a spreading oak with the mistletoe clustering
in the dull red upper branches. Three men stepped out,--Lewis Rand, the
gentleman acting as his second, and a good physician. "We are first on
the field," said Rand, looking at his watch. "It is early yet. Pompey,
drive a hundred yards down the bank--as far as those bushes yonder--and
wait until you are called. Ha! there could be no better spot, Mr.
Jones!"

"I've seen no better in my experience, sir," answered Skelton Jones.
"When I was last out, we had the worst of fare!--starveling locust
wood--damned poor makeshift at gentlemanly privacy--stuck between a
schoolhouse and a church! But this is good; this is nonpareil! Fine,
brisk, frosty weather, too! I hate to fight on a muggy, leaden,
dispirited day, weeping like a widow! It's as crisp as mint, this
morning--hey, Doctor?"

"I find," said t