man
with a shock of perfectly white hair was sitting with a Bible on his
knee. He had a rugged face framed in a circle of gray beard and his
glance was absent-minded and remote. "Father," said my grandmother,
"Belle has come. Here is one of her boys."

Closing his book on his glasses to mark the place of his reading he
turned to greet my mother who entered at this moment. His way of speech
was as strange as his look and for a few moments I studied him with
childish intentness. His face was rough-hewn as a rock but it was
kindly, and though he soon turned from his guests and resumed his
reading no one seemed to resent it.

Young as I was I vaguely understood his mood. He was glad to see us but
he was absorbed in something else, something of more importance, at the
moment, than the chatter of the family. My uncles who came in a few
moments later drew my attention and the white-haired dreamer fades from
this scene.

The room swarmed with McClintocks. There was William, a black-bearded,
genial, quick-stepping giant who seized me by the collar with one hand
and lifted me off the floor as if I were a puppy just to see how much I
weighed; and David, a tall young man with handsome dark eyes and a droop
at the outer corner of his eyelids which gave him in repose a look of
melancholy distinction. He called me and I went to him readily for I
loved him at once. His voice pleased me and I could see that my mother
loved him too.

From his knee I became acquainted with the girls of the family. Rachel,
a demure and sweet-faced young woman, and Samantha, the beauty of the
family, won my instant admiration, but Deb, as everybody called her,
repelled me by her teasing ways. They were all gay as larks and their
hearty clamor, so far removed from the quiet gravity of my grandmother
Garland's house, pleased me. I had an immediate sense of being perfectly
at home.

There was an especial reason why this meeting should have been, as it
was, a joyous hour. It was, in fact, a family reunion after the war. The
dark days of sixty-five were over. The Nation was at peace and its
warriors mustered out. True, some of those who had gone "down South" had
not returned. Luke and Walter and Hugh were sleeping in The Wilderness,
but Frank and Richard were safely at home and father was once more the
clarion-voiced and tireless young man he had been when he went away to
fight. So they all rejoiced, with only a passing tender word for those
whose bodies