and threw her arms around him and cried.

So down the river went Chad and Dan--drifting with the tide--Chad in
the stern, Dan lying at full length, with his head on a blue army-coat
and looking up at the over-swung branches and the sky and the clouds
above them--down, through a mist of memories for Chad--down to the
capital.

And Harry Dean, too, was on his way home--coming up from the far
South--up through the ravaged land of his own people, past homes and
fields which his own hands had helped to lay waste.

CHAPTER 29.

MELISSA AND MARGARET

The early spring sunshine lay like a benediction over the Dean
household, for Margaret and her mother were home from exile. On the
corner of the veranda sat Mrs. Dean, where she always sat, knitting.
Under the big weeping willow in the garden was her husband's grave.
When she was not seated near it, she was there in the porch, and to it
her eyes seemed always to stray when she lifted them from her work.

The mail had just come and Margaret was reading a letter from Dan, and,
as she read, her cheeks flushed.

"He took me into his own tent, mother, and put his own clothes on me
and nursed me like a brother. And now he is going to take me to you and
Margaret, he says, and I shall be strong enough, I hope, to start in a
week. I shall be his friend for life."

Neither mother nor daughter spoke when the girl ceased reading. Only
Margaret rose soon and walked down the gravelled walk to the stile.

Beneath the hill, the creek sparkled. She could see the very pool where
her brothers and the queer little stranger from the mountains were
fishing the day he came into her life. She remembered the indignant
heart-beat with which she had heard him call her "little gal," and she
smiled now, but she could recall the very tone of his voice and the
steady look in his clear eyes when he offered her the perch he had
caught. Even then his spirit appealed unconsciously to her, when he
sturdily refused to go up to the house because her brother was "feelin'
hard towards him." How strange and far away all that seemed now! Up the
creek and around the woods she strolled, deep in memories. For a long
while she sat on a stone wall in the sunshine--thinking and dreaming,
and it was growing late when she started back to the house. At the
stile, she turned for a moment to look at the old Buford home across
the fields. As she looked, she saw the pike-gate open and a woman's
figure enter, and she kep