of her skin
seemed to shine through.

"Good-night, Golden Girl," said Dalton, and kissed the tips of her
fingers as she stood on the stairs. Then he went off to join the
others.

Madge did not go to bed. She went out alone and watched the moon rise.
Oscar Waterman's house was on a hill which gave a view of the whole
valley. Gradually under the moon the houses of Charlottesville showed
the outlines of the University, and far beyond the shadowy sweep of the
Blue Ridge. What a world it had been in the old days--great men had
ridden over these red roads in swaying carriages, Jefferson, Lafayette,
Washington himself.

If she could only meet men like that. Men to whom life was more than a
game--a carnival. From the stone bench where she sat she had a view
through the long French windows of the three tables of bridge--there
were slender, restless girls, eager, elegant youths. "Perhaps they are
no worse than those who lived here before them," Madge's sense of
justice told her. "But isn't there something better?"

From her window later, she saw Dalton's car flash out into the road.
The light wound down and down, and appeared at last upon the highway.
It was not the first time that George had played the game with another
girl. But he had always come back to her. She had often wondered why
she let him come. "Why do I let him?" she asked the moon.

III

It really was a great moon. It shone through the windows of the Bird
Room at Huntersfield, wooing George out into the fragrant night. He
could hear voices on the lawn--young Paine's laugh--Becky's. Once when
he looked he saw them on the ridge, silhouetted against the golden sky.
They were dancing, and Randy's clear whistle, piping a modern tune,
came up to him, tantalizing him.

But the Judge held him. It took him nearly an hour to get through with
the Bob-whites and the sandpipers, the wild turkeys, the ducks and the
wild geese. And long before that time George was bored to extinction.
He had little imagination. To him the Trumpeter was just a stuffed old
bird. He could not picture him as blowing his trumpet beside the moon,
or wearing a golden crown as in "The Seven Brothers." He had never
heard of "The Seven Brothers," and nobody in the world wore crowns
except kings. As for the old eagle, it is doubtful whether George had
ever felt the symbolism of his presence on a silver coin, or that he
had ever linked him in his heart with God.

Then, suddenl