and very attentive, making no
effort to interrupt, but holding her gaze defiantly as she went on:

"Up the street came the Rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding
ahead.
Under his slouch hat left and right, he glanced and the old flag
caught his sight."

At these lines the boy flinched, but still he said nothing. Like a
soldier who stands at attention under the threat of a firing squad he
listened to the end--or rather to the stanzas which recite:

"'Shoot, if you must at this old gray head, but spare your
country's flag,' she said.
A flush of manhood, a look of shame, into the face of their leader
came...."

That was too much! The man of whom these impious words were spoken was
that gallant knight, without reproach, whose name is hallowed in every
Southern heart. Very slowly Stuart Farquaharson raised his hand.

"I think," he announced with a shake of repressed fury in his voice,
"I'll have to go home now. Good afternoon."

"Then you don't like poetry?"

"I don't consider that poetry," he said with a dignity which an
archbishop might have envied. "I consider it slander of a dead hero."

"You mean, then," Conscience seemed a little frightened now and her
utterance was hurried and fluttering, "that you are mad and are going?
You never go until later than this."

It was difficult to be both courteous and honest, and Stuart's code
demanded both.

"I expect there wasn't ever the same reason before."

This time it was the girl's eyes that leaped into flame and she stamped
a small foot.

"Did you ever have any _fun_ in your life?" she demanded. "You know
perfectly well that I teased you just because you were such a solemn owl
that you're not far from being a plain, every-day prig. All right; go if
you like and don't come to see me again until you get over the idea that
you're a--a--" she halted for a word, then added scornfully--"a
combination high priest and Prince of Wales."

Stuart Farquaharson bowed stiffly.

"All right," he said. "I won't forget. Good-by."

* * * * *

At the dinner table that evening Mrs. Farquaharson noted with concern
the trance-like abstraction in which her son sat, as one apart. Later as
she mixed for the General the night-cap toddy, which was an institution
hallowed by long usage, she commented on it.

"I'm afraid Stuart isn't well," she volunteered. "He's not a moody boy
by nature, and he doe