infernal prison after the Ohio raid, but for trying to get us
out. Harry here told me. That was generous."

"That was nothing," said Chad. "You forget, you could have killed me
once and--and you didn't." Margaret was listening eagerly.

"You didn't give me time," laughed General Hunt.

"Oh, yes, I did. I saw you lift your pistol and drop it again. I have
never ceased to wonder why you did that."

Richard Hunt laughed. "Perhaps I'm sorry sometimes that I did," he
said, with a certain dryness.

"Oh, no, you aren't, General," said Margaret.

Thus they chatted and laughed and joked together above the sombre tide
of feeling that showed in the face of each if it reached not his
tongue, for, when the war was over, the hatchet in Kentucky was buried
at once and buried deep. Son came back to father, brother to brother,
neighbor to neighbor; political disabilities were removed and the
sundered threads, unravelled by the war, were knitted together fast.
That is why the postbellum terrors of reconstruction were practically
unknown in the State. The negroes scattered, to be sure, not from
disloyalty so much as from a feverish desire to learn whether they
really could come and go as they pleased. When they learned that they
were really free, most of them drifted back to the quarters where they
were born, and meanwhile the white man's hand that had wielded the
sword went just as bravely to the plough, and the work of rebuilding
war-shattered ruins began at once. Old Mammy appeared, by and by, shook
hands with General Hunt and made Chad a curtsey of rather distant
dignity. She had gone into exile with her "chile" and her "ole Mistis"
and had come home with them to stay, untempted by the doubtful sweets
of freedom. "Old Tom, her husband, had remained with Major Buford, was
with him on his deathbed," said Margaret, "and was on the place still,
too old, he said, to take root elsewhere."

Toward the middle of the afternoon Dan rose and suggested that they
take a walk about the place. Margaret had gone in for a moment to
attend to some household duty, and as Richard Hunt was going away next
day he would stay, he said, with Mrs. Dean, who was tired and could not
join them. The three walked toward the dismantled barn where the
tournament had taken place and out into the woods. Looking back, Chad
saw Margaret and General Hunt going slowly toward the garden, and he
knew that some crisis was at hand between the two. He had hard work
li