wrote to me."

"A letter I wrote to you?" I repeated, and then as I saw the
superscription, I felt my cheeks grow hot. For it read, "To be delivered
at once to Mrs. Stewart."

"Ay," she said, "a letter you wrote to me, and which I should never have
received had you not forgot it and left it lying on my table in my study
at Riverview. Can you guess what I felt, Tom, when they brought it to me
here, and I opened it and read that you had gone to the swamp alone
amongst those devils? I thought that you were dead, since the letter had
been delivered, and the whole extent of the wrong I had done you sprang
up before me. But they told me you were not dead,--that Colonel
Washington had come for you, and that you had ridden hastily away with
him. I could guess the story, and I should never have known that you had
saved the place but for the chance which made you forget this letter."

I had tried to stop her more than once. She had gone on without heeding
me, but now she paused.

"It was nothing," I said. "Nothing. There was no real danger. Thank Long.
He was with me. He is a better man than I."

"Oh, yes," she cried, "they are all better men than you, I dare say! Do
not provoke me, sir, or you will have me quarreling with you before I
have said what I came here to say. Can you guess what that is?" and she
paused again, to look at me with a great light in her eyes.

But I was far past replying. I gazed up at her, bewildered, dazzled. I
had never known this woman.

"I see you cannot guess," she said. "Of course you cannot guess! How
could you, knowing me as you have known me? 'Tis this. Riverview is
yours, Tom, and shall be always yours from this day forth, as of right it
has ever been."

Riverview mine? No, no, I did not want Riverview. It was something
else I wanted.

"I shall not take it, aunt," I said quite firmly. "I am going to make a
name for myself,--with my sword, you know," I added with a smile, "and
when I have once done that, there is something else which I shall ask you
for, which will be dearer to me--oh, far dearer--than a hundred
Riverviews."

What ailed the women? Here was Dorothy too on her knees and kissing my
bandaged hand.

"Oh, Tom, Tom," she cried, "do you not understand?"

"Understand?" I repeated blankly. "Understand what, Dorothy?"

"Don't you remember, dear, what happened just before the troops came?"

"Oh, very clearly," I answered. "The Indians got Brightson down and
stabbed him, and