n ovah dis heah body."

The deputy had his foot on the threshold. He caught sight of the face of
Miss Carvel within, and stopped abruptly.

"I have a warrant here from the Provost Marshal, ma'am, to seize personal
property to satisfy a claim against Colonel Carvel."

Virginia took the order, read it, and handed it back. "I do not see how I
am to prevent you," she said. The deputy was plainly abashed.

"I'm sorry, Miss. I--I can't tell you how sorry I am. But it's got to be
done."

Virginia nodded coldly. And still the man hesitated. "What are you
waiting for?" she said.

The deputy wiped his muddy feet. He made his men do likewise. Then he
entered the chill drawing-room, threw open the blinds and glanced around
him.

"I expect all that we want is right here," he said. And at the sight of
the great chandelier, with its cut-glass crystals, he whistled. Then he
walked over to the big English Rothfield piano and lifted the lid.

The man was a musician. Involuntarily he rested himself on the mahogany
stool, and ran his fingers over the keys. They seemed to Virginia,
standing motionless in the ball, to give out the very chords of agony.

The piano, too, had been her mother's. It had once stood in the brick
house of her grandfather Colfax at Halcyondale. The songs of Beatrice lay
on the bottom shelf of the what-not near by. No more, of an evening when
they were alone, would Virginia quietly take them out and play them over
to the Colonel, as he sat dreaming in the window with his cigar,
--dreaming of a field on the borders of a wood, of a young girl who held
his hand, and sang them softly to herself as she walked by his side. And,
when they reached the house in the October twilight, she had played them
for him on this piano. Often he had told Virginia of those days, and
walked with her over those paths.

The deputy closed the lid, and sent out to the van for a truck. Virginia
stirred. For the first time she heard the words of Mammy Easter.

"Come along upstairs wid yo' Mammy, honey. Dis ain't no place for us, I
reckon." Her words were the essence of endearment. And yet, while she
pronounced them, she glared unceasingly at the intruders. "Oh, de good
Lawd'll burn de wicked!"

The men were removing the carved legs. Virginia went back into the room
and stood before the deputy.

"Isn't there something else you could take? Some jewellery?" She flushed.
"I have a necklace--"

"No, miss. This warrant's on your father