ance. Then had come an inspiration.
The stirring narration of how the Newmarket cadets had charged the
Northern guns was to have been his cue, carrying him with the momentum
of its intrinsic heroism over the ramparts of tongue-tied shyness. That
was what he had essayed this morning, aided and abetted by the tuneful
fragrance of June in Virginia. The stage had been set--his courage had
mounted--and before he had reached his magnificent peroration, she had
laughed at him. Ye Gods! She had affronted the erstwhile Confederate
States of America and his spirit was galled.

Suddenly Conscience looked up and met his gaze penitently. It was a
change from mockery so swift and complete that he should have suspected
it, but he saw only a flash of sun through dark clouds.

"Do you like poetry?" she abruptly demanded.

"Like poetry!" Again the boy's countenance needed a twinkle of merriment
to redeem it from a too serious acceptance of self. "Not to like
poetry--if it's real poetry--is simply to be a plain clod." He spoke
with an oracular and pedantic assurance which challenged the girl's
mischief afresh.

"Shall I recite you something?" was her mild and seemingly placating
suggestion, "just to see if it is real poetry?"

"Will you? I wish you would." He bent forward in eager anticipation.
Verse should pave the way with music for the avowal which he had so far
failed to force across the barrier between heart and lips.

She rose from the hammock and stood beside one of the broad verandah
pillars, very straight and slender and flower-like, with the June sun on
her hair. Stuart's heart was conscious of a sudden glow. A boy new to
love, like a man new to drink, can recognize from a sip an elation that
the jaded taste has forever forfeited. Then in a rich voice with a
slightly exaggerated elocution, Conscience began:

"Up from the meadows, rich with corn, clear in the cool September
morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand, green-walled by the hills
of Maryland."

Those schools wherein the last of the Farquaharsons had derived his
primary education had not starred or featured the poems of John
Greenleaf Whittier. Stuart's eyes dwelt devouringly on the
elocutionist--as yet unruffled by suspicion. They were doing their best
to say the things at which his lips balked. But as the recitation
proceeded their light died from hope to misery and from misery to the
anger of hurt pride. He stood very rigid