?"

"Once." The Major made a wry face. "I never tried again."

Dick colored. "Does he know about Ruth?"

"No, I dared not mention it." The Major looked at the other intently.
"Dick," he said, "what was this quarrel all about, anyway?"

"In the beginning, Major," admitted the young man, flushing, "it was so
childish--I'm ashamed to speak of it."

"Out with it!" commanded the Major. "I won't be hoodwinked by a
Fairfax any longer."

"Well, sir, if you must know, it was about--the War."

"The War!" exploded the Major. "By gad, sir, what about the War?"

"Dad and I were talking it over, and--well, to be frank, Major, I said
I thought the North had been right, and that, if I had been in the
world at the time, I would have fought with them despite my kinsmen."

"Go on! Did you fight in any other post-mortem wars? The Revolution,
or the fall of Rome?"

Dick ignored the sarcasm. "My sympathy for the North made him
furious," he went on. "We quarreled terribly and both of us said
things that I know we didn't mean. It was the Fairfax temper, sir; I--"

"Damn the Fairfax temper!" roared the Major. "Thank Heavens, the
Verneys are mild!"

Dick laughed, in spite of himself. "I apologized," he continued
soberly, "but he wouldn't listen; told me to get out; said if I chose
to change my opinions about the North, we'd talk it over, and I, of
course, refused."

"Of course!" interpolated the Major trimly.

"I've written since, suggesting that we forget it all and start anew,
but he won't listen, sir."

The Major stroked his beard ominously. "Did it ever occur to you,
Dick," he demanded, "that enough families were estranged by that War
without carrying it over into the Twentieth Century? Let me see--how
long after the War were you born? Twenty years, wasn't it? I
remember; your father and Ruth's were married about the same time."

"Every man has a right to his opinions, Major," Dick asserted with
spirit. "Of course I've no personal knowledge of the War,
but"--stubbornly--"the North was right."

"Fairfax to the core!" thought the Major in secret admiration. "The
boy's his father all over again. Well, Dick," he said mildly, "we
older men of the South feel a little differently about this War; but,
my boy, these post-bellum disputes don't pay, particularly when one
participant was born long after the guns were quiet. In my opinion you
didn't know enough about the War to quarrel over it. Great Scott,
qua