why had she brought it home with
her? I doubt which way the contest would have gone, had not Mandy seen
me climb into her vacated seat and take up the reins. "Pete" then
stolidly took up his place under the cart.

We turned and drove back up the shady street, Ellen and I. I saw her
fingers twisting together in her lap, but as yet she had not spoken. The
flush on her cheek was deeper now. She beat her hands together softly,
confused, half frightened; but she did not beg me to leave her.

"If you could get away," she began at last, "I would ask you to drive me
back home. Aunt Mandy and I are living there together. Kitty Stevenson's
visiting me--you'll--you'll want to call on Kitty. My father has been in
East Kentucky, but I understand he's ordered here this week. Major
Stevenson is with him. We thought we might get word, and so came on
through the lines."

"You had no right to do so. The pickets should have stopped you," I
said. "At the same time, I am very glad they didn't."

"So you are a Colonel," she said after a time, with an Army girl's nice
reading of insignia.

"Yes," I answered, "I am an officer. Now if I could only be a
gentleman!"

"Don't!" she whispered. "Don't talk in that way, please."

"Do you think I could be?"

"I think you have been," she whispered, all her face rosy now.

We were now near the line of our own pickets on this edge of the town.
Making myself known, I passed through and drove out into the country
roads, along the edge of the hills, now glorious in their autumn hues.
It was a scene fair as Paradise to me. Presently Ellen pointed to a
mansion house on a far off hill--such a house as can be found nowhere in
America but in this very valley; an old family seat, lying, reserved and
full of dignity, at a hilltop shielded with great oaks. I bethought me
again of the cities of peace I had seen on the far horizons of another
land than this.

"That is our home," she said. "We have not often been here since
grandfather died, and then my mother. But this is the place that we
Meriwethers all call home."

Then I saw again what appeal the profession of arms makes to a man--how
strong is its fascination. It had taken the master of a home like this
from a life like this, and plunged him into the hardships and dangers of
frontier war, again into the still more difficult and dangerous
conflicts between great armies. Not for months, for years, had he set
foot on his own sod--sod like ours in Loud