eer on cheer burst forth, and the
horns and fifes in joyous fanfare, echoed by the solid outbreak of the
drums.

"What are they cheering for, mother?" I asked an old Dutch dame who
waved her kerchief at us.

"For Willett and for George the Virginian, sir," she said, dimpling and
dropping me a courtesy.

"George the Virginian?" I asked, wondering. "Do you mean his
Excellency?"

And still she dimpled and nodded and bobbed her white starched cap, and
I made nothing of what she said until I heard men shouting, "Yorktown!"
and "The war ends! Hurrah!"

"Hurrah! Hurrah!" shouted a mounted officer, spurring past us up the
hill; "Butler's dead, and Cornwallis is taken!"

"Taken?" I repeated incredulously.

The booming guns were my answer. High against the blue a jeweled ensign
fluttered, silver, azure and blood red, its staff and halyards wrapped
in writhing jets of snow-white smoke flying upward from the guns.

I rode toward it, cap in hand, head raised, awed in the presence of
God's own victory! The shouting streets echoed and reechoed as we
passed between packed ranks of townspeople; cheers, the pealing music
of the bells, the thunderous shock of the guns grew to a swimming,
dreamy sound, through which the flag fluttered on high, crowned with
the golden nimbus of the sun!

"Carus!"

"Ah, sweetheart, did they wake you? Sleep on; the war is over!" I
whispered, bending low above her. "Now indeed is all well with the
world, and fit once more for you to live in."

And, as we moved forward, I saw her blue eyes lifted dreamily, watching
the flag which she had served so well.

CHAPTER XVI

THE END

That brief and lovely season which in our Northland for a score of days
checks the white onset of the snow, and which we call the Indian
summer, bloomed in November when the last red leaf had fluttered to the
earth. A fairy summer, for the vast arches of the skies burned sapphire
and amethyst, and hill and woodland, innocent of verdure, were clothed
in tints of faintest rose and cloudy violet; and all the world put on a
magic livery, nor was there leaf nor stem nor swale nor tuft of moss
too poor to wear some royal hint of gold, deep-veined or crusted
lavishly, where the crested oaks spread, burnished by the sun.

Snowbird and goldfinch were with us--the latter veiling his splendid
tints in modest russet; and now, from the north, came to us silent
flocks of birds, all gray and rose, outriders of winter's crysta