Crittenden, and he held his hand out when the latter
emerged from the crowd, with the curious embarrassment that assails the
newspaper man when he finds himself betrayed into unusual feeling.

"I say," he said; "that was good, _good_!"

The officer who, too, had stood still as a statue, seemed to be moving
toward him, and again Crittenden turned away--to look for his mother.
She had gone home at once--she could not face him now in that crowd--and
as he was turning to his own buggy, he saw Judith and from habit started
toward her, but, changing his mind, he raised his hat and kept on his
way, while the memory of the girl's face kept pace with him.

She was looking at him with a curious wistfulness that was quite beyond
him to interpret--a wistfulness that was in the sudden smile of welcome
when she saw him start toward her and in the startled flush of surprise
when he stopped; then, with the tail of his eye, he saw the quick
paleness that followed as the girl's sensitive nostrils quivered once
and her spirited face settled quickly into a proud calm. And then he
saw her smile--a strange little smile that may have been at herself or
at him--and he wondered about it all and was tempted to go back, but
kept on doggedly, wondering at her and at himself with a miserable grim
satisfaction that he was at last over and above it all. She had told him
to conquer his boyish love for her and, as her will had always been law
to him, he had made it, at last, a law in this. The touch of the
loadstone that never in his life had failed, had failed now, and now,
for once in his life, desire and duty were one.

He found his mother at her seat by her open window, the unopened buds of
her favourite roses hanging motionless in the still air outside, but
giving their fresh green faint fragrance to the whole room within; and
he remembered the quiet sunset scene every night for many nights to
come. Every line in her patient face had been traced there by a sorrow
of the old war, and his voice trembled:

"Mother," he said, as he bent down and kissed her, "I'm going."

Her head dropped quickly to the work in her lap, but she said nothing,
and he went quickly out again.

IV

It was growing dusk outside. Chickens were going to roost with a great
chattering in some locust-trees in one corner of the yard. An aged
darkey was swinging an axe at the woodpile and two little pickaninnies
were gathering a basket of chips. Already the air was f