o is more animated when the beasts are stirred into action.

"What was it that General Breckinridge said, Stuart?" She put the
question innocently. "When the Newmarket cadets made their charge?"

"He said--" Suddenly the boy caught the riffled mockery of her eyes and
abruptly his inspired recital broke off in exasperation, "May I ask just
why you find that such a funny story?" he inquired with ironical
dignity. "Most people seem to think it was rather pitiful than comic to
send to their slaughter boys almost young enough to be in the nursery."

The eyes of Conscience Williams twinkled. "Maybe it isn't the story
itself that's funny," she deigned to admit. "When your father told it, I
cried--but when you tell it your face is so furious that--that you seem
about to begin the war between the states all over again."

"Of course that makes it perfectly clear." Into the manner of young Mr.
Stuart Farquaharson came now the hauteur of dignified rebuke. He
enveloped himself in a sudden and sullen silence, brooding as he sat
with his eyes fixed on his riding boots.

"What did General Breckinridge say?" She prompted persistently. Such
sheer perversity maddened him. He had been reciting to her a story of
exalted heroism--the narrative of how the boy cadets had hurled their
young bodies against the Northern cannon and of how General Breckinridge
had prayed for forgiveness as he gave the command which sent this
flowering youth to its fate. And she found it amusing! He could not see
how genuinely comic was his own unreconstructed ardor--how exaggerated
was his cocksure manner--how thoroughly he spoke as though he himself
had bled on the field of honor.

From her hammock she watched him with serene and inscrutable
complacency, from under long, half-closed lashes. In his gaze was
inarticulate wrath, but back of that--idolatry. He had from birth
breathed an atmosphere of traditions in which the word "chivalry" was
defined, not as an obsolete term, but as a thing still kept sacredly
aflame in the hearts of gentlemen. To the stilted gallantry of his
boyhood, ideals had meant more than ideas until Conscience Williams had
come from her home on Cape Cod and turned his life topsy-turvy. Since
her advent he had dreamed only of dark eyes and darker hair and crimson
lips. He had rehearsed eloquent and irresistible speeches, only to have
them die on a tongue which swelled painfully and clove to the roof of
his mouth when he essayed their utter