er
one moment when one wheel was not in a mud hole. All my bones
ache, Honey-bud, and I'm cross with talking to so many Yankees,
and--do you believe me !--that ve'y horrid Stanton creature gave
orders that I was to take the oath!"

"The--oath?" asked Ailsa, amazed.

"Certainly. And I took it," she added fiercely, "becose of my
husband! If it had not been fo' Curt I'd have told Mr. Stanton
what I thought of his old oath!"

"What kind of an oath was it, Celia?"

Celia repeated it haughtily:

"'I do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God, to
faithfully support the Constitution of the United States, and of
the State of New York. So he'p me God.'"

"It is the oath of fealty," said Ailsa in a hushed voice.

"It was not necessa'y," said Celia coldly. "My husband is
sufficient to keep me--harmless. . . . But I know what I feel in
my heart, Honey-bud; and so does eve'y Southern woman--God help us
all. . . . Is that little Miss Lynden going with us?"

"Letty? Yes, of course."

Celia began to undress. "She's a ve'y sweet little minx. . . .
She is--odd, somehow. . . . So young--such a he'pless, cute little
thing. . . Ailsa, in that child's eyes--or in her features
somewhere, somehow, I see--I feel a--a sadness, somehow--like the
gravity of expe'ience, the _something_ that wisdom brings to the
ve'y young too early. It is odd, isn't it."

"Letty is a strange, gentle little thing. I've often wondered----"

"What, Honey-bee?"

"I--don't know," said Ailsa vaguely. "It is not natural that a
happy woman should be so solemnly affectionate to another. I've
often thought that she must, sometime or other, have known deep
unhappiness."

When Celia was ready to retire, Ailsa bade her good-night and
wandered away down the stairs, Letty was still on duty; she glanced
into the sick-diet kitchen as she passed and saw the girl bending
over a stew-pan.

She did not disturb her. With evening a soft melancholy had begun
to settle over Ailsa. It came in the evening, now, often--a
sensation not entirely sad, not unwelcome, soothing her, composing
her mind for serious thought, for the sweet sadness of memory.

Always she walked, now, companioned by memories of Berkley.
Wherever she moved--in the quiet of the sick wards, in the silence
of the moonlight, seated by smeared windows watching the beating
rain, in the dead house, on duty in the kitchen contriving broths,
or stretched among her pillows, always the m