_one_, to work for, is an incentive to great deeds.'

Mr. Summers's face was flushed; and he looked suddenly up when he had
done speaking.

I withdrew my eyes in confusion, and, with the careless remark, 'Mrs.
Partington would tell you that you were speaking paregorically,' I left
a place that was getting entirely too hot to hold me.

A few days after, Mr. Summers started for the seat of war, with the
commission of first lieutenant, and Helen Legram became principal of the
Peppersville Academy. I think that bright spring days are disagreeable,
glaring things, when some one whom you like and have been accustomed to
see in certain places, is seen there no more; and the day that Mr.
Summers left, I was out of all patience with the April sunshine.

He had said no more: a friendly pressure of the hand from him, and a
sincerely expressed hope on my part that he would return unharmed--a
request from Mr. Bull to 'give it to 'em well'--a caution from Mrs. Bull
not to expose himself, if he could help it, to the night air--a
pincushion from Miss Friggs, because men never have conveniences-and he
was gone, with, no reasonable prospect of his return.

I said this to myself a great many times; but I also said that I did not
go to Peppersville to fall in love with the principal of the Academy.

Those everlasting recitations began to be unendurable; the walks about
Peppersville were totally uninteresting, and I did not know what to do
with myself. I cultivated Helen Legram; and, during the vacation, she
took me home with her to the farm.

It seemed like a new life, that three weeks' visit, and I enjoyed it
extremely. We went on expeditions up the mountains, and lived a sort of
vagrant life that was just what we both needed. The roar of cannon could
not reach us there; the sight of bleeding, dying men was far away; and
we almost forgot that the teeth of the children whom she had nourished
at her breast were tugging at the vitals of the Union.

One afternoon, amid the fragrant odor of pine trees, Helen Legram told
me the story of Mr. Summers's life.

He was born and educated in Florida, much to my astonishment, and had
entailed upon him the misery of a worthless, dissipated father. His
mother, after dragging out a saddened existence, sank into the grave
when her youngest boy was just entering upon the years of boyhood.
Finally, the elder Summers, who had always boasted of his patrician
blood, killed a man in a fit of mingled pa