tract."

"Now, Doctor, you are in one of your cynical moods. I hate you to talk
this way about the finest gentleman I ever knew, or ever shall know. You
delight to tease me."

"Yes--you are so real. No one could get hysterics out of you. Now why do
you suppose James Penhallow wants to plunge into this chaotic war?"

"Or your son, Tom? Why do you get up of a winter night to ride miles to
see some poor woman who will never pay you a penny?"

"Pure habit."

"Nonsense. You go--and Uncle Jim goes--because to go is duty."

"Then I think duty is a woman--that accounts for it, Leila. I retire
beaten."

"You are very bad to-day--but make Uncle Jim talk it all out to Aunt
Ann."

"He will, and soon. He has been routed by a dozen excuses. I told him at
last that the mill business has leaked out and the village is saying
things. I told him it must not come to her except through him, and that
he could not now use her health as an excuse for delay. It is strange a
man should be so timid."

And still Penhallow lingered, finding more or less of reason in the
delays created by the lawyers. Meanwhile he had accepted the command of
the 129th Pennsylvania infantry which was being drilled at Harrisburg, so
that he was told there was no occasion for haste in assuming charge. But
at last he felt that he must no longer delay.

The sun was setting on an afternoon in July when Penhallow, seeing as she
sat on the porch how the roses of the spring of health were blooming on
his wife's cheeks, said, "I want to talk to you alone, Ann. Can you walk
to the river?"

"Yes, I was there yesterday."

The cat-birds, most delightful of the love-poets of summer, were singing
in the hedges, and as they walked through the garden Penhallow said, "The
rose crop is promising, Ann."

"Yes." She was silent until they sat on the bank above the little river.
Then she said, "You are keeping something from me, James. No news can
trouble me as much as--as to be sure that I am kept in the dark about
your affairs."

"I meant to be frank, Ann, but I have felt so alarmed about your
health--"

"You need not be--I can bear anything but not to know--"

"That is why I brought you here, my dear. You are aware that I took out
of the business the money you loaned to us."

"Yes--yes--I know."

"I have given up my partnership and withdrawn my capital. The business
will go on without me."

"Was this because--I?--but no matter. Go on, please."

He was incapab