e newspaper. The yellow cat
slept on, the bees buzzed and droned, the sweet mountain air brushed
through the trees, a robin sang. Half an hour passed. Tom raised his
head. "I hear some one coming!" He reached for the tobacco box.

It proved to be an old well-loved country doctor, on a white horse, with
his saddle bags before him. Sairy hurried out, too, to the gate.
"Doctor, I want to ask you something about Tom--" "Psha, I'm all right,"
said Tom. "Won't you get down and set a little, doctor?"

The doctor would and did, and after he had prescribed for the tollgate
keeper a two hours' nap every day and not to get too excited over war
news, Tom read him Allan's letter, and they got into a hot discussion of
the next battle. Sairy turned the drying apples, brushed away the bees,
and brought fresh water from the well, then sat down again with her
mending. "Doctor, how's the girl at Three Oaks?"

The doctor came back from Maryland to his own county and to the fold
which he tended without sleep, without rest, and with little pay save in
loving hearts. "Miriam Cleave? She's better, Mrs. Cole, she's better!"

"I'm mighty glad to hear it," said Sairy. "'T ain't a decline, then?"

"No, no! Just shock on shock coming to a delicate child. Her mother will
bring her through. And there's a great woman."

"That's so, that's so!" assented Tom cordially. "A great woman."

Sairy nodded, drawing her thread across a bit of beeswax. "For once you
are both right. He isn't there now, doctor?"

"No. He wasn't there but a week or two."

"You don't--"

"No, Tom. I don't know where he has gone. They have some land in the far
south, down somewhere on the Gulf. He may have gone there."

"I reckon," said Tom, "he couldn't stand it in Virginia. All the earth
beginnin' to tremble under marchin' feet and everybody askin', 'Where's
the army to-day?' I reckon he couldn't stand it. I couldn't. Allan don't
believe he did it, an' I don't believe it either."

"Nor I," said Sairy.

"He came up here," said Tom, "just as quiet an' grave an' simple as you
or me. An' he sat there in his lawyer's clothes, with his back to that
thar pillar, an' he told Sairy an' me all about Allan. He told us how
good he was an' how all the men loved him an' how valuable he was to the
service. An' he said that the wound he got at Gaines's Mill wasn't so
bad after all as it might have been, and that Allan would soon be
rejoining. An' he said that being a scout wasn't as