and he was an expert to bargain for food and forage.
He exhibited then all the qualities that afterward raised him so high in
the commercial world.

Although they were saddened often by the spectacle of the ruin the long
war had made, they kept their spirits, on the whole, wonderfully well.
The two colonels, excellent horsemen, were an unfailing source of
cheerfulness. When they alluded to the war they remembered only the
great victories the South had won, and invariably they spoke of its end
as a compromise. They also began to talk of Charleston, toward which
their hearts now turned, and a certain handsome Madame Delaunay whom
Harry Kenton remembered well.

As they left Virginia and entered North Carolina they heard that the
Confederate troops everywhere were surrendering. The war, which had
been so terrible and sanguinary only two or three months before, ended
absolutely with the South's complete exhaustion. Already the troops were
going home by the scores of thousands. They saw men who had just taken
off their uniforms guiding the ploughs in the furrows. Smoke rose once
more from the chimneys of the abandoned homes, and the boys who had faced
the cannon's mouth were rebuilding rail fences. The odor of grass and
newly turned earth was poignant and pleasant. The two colonels expanded.

"Though my years have been devoted to military pursuits, Hector," said
Colonel Leonidas Talbot, "the agricultural life is noble, and many of
the hardy virtues of the South are due to the fact that we are chiefly a
rural population."

"Truly spoken, Leonidas, but for four years agriculture has not had
much chance with us, and perhaps agriculture is not all. It was the
mechanical genius of the North that kept us from taking New York and
Boston."

"Which reminds me, Happy," said St. Clair to Langdon, "that, after all,
you didn't sleep in the White House at Washington with your boots on."

"I changed my mind," replied Happy easily. "I didn't want to hurt
anybody's feelings."

Soon they entered the mountains, and they met many Confederate soldiers
returning to their homes. Harry always sought from them news of his
father, and he learned at last that he was somewhere in the western
part of the state. Then he heard, a day or two later, that a band of
guerrillas to the south of them were plundering and sometimes murdering.
They believed from what details they could gather that it was Slade and
Skelly with a new force, and the