born and where he
had awaited his destiny. Look as I would, I could find no letters
from him, no clothing or books that might have been his. He had been
dead but twenty years, and yet nothing seemed to have survived
except the tree he had planted. It seemed incredible and cruel that
no physical memory of him should linger to be cherished among his
kindred,--nothing but the dull image in the brain of that aged
sister. I used to pace the garden walks in the evening, wondering
that no breath of his, no echo of his laugh, of his call to his pony
or his whistle to his dogs, should linger about those shaded paths
where the pale roses exhaled their dewy, country smell. Sometimes,
in the dim starlight, I have thought that I heard on the grasses
beside me the stir of a footfall lighter than my own, and under the
black arch of the lilacs I have fancied that he bore me company.

"There was, I found, one day in the year for which my old aunt
waited, and which stood out from the months that were all of a
sameness to her. On the thirtieth of May she insisted that I should
bring down the big flag from the attic and run it up upon the tall
flagstaff beside Lyon's tree in the garden. Later in the morning she
went with me to carry some of the garden flowers to the grave in the
orchard,--a grave scarcely larger than a child's.

"I had noticed, when I was hunting for the flag in the attic, a
leather trunk with my own name stamped upon it, but was unable to
find the key. My aunt was all day less apathetic than usual; she
seemed to realize more clearly who I was, and to wish me to be with
her. I did not have an opportunity to return to the attic until
after dinner that evening, when I carried a lamp up-stairs and
easily forced the lock of the trunk. I found all the things that I
had looked for; put away, doubtless, by his mother, and still
smelling faintly of lavender and rose leaves; his clothes, his
exercise books, his letters from the army, his first boots, his
riding-whip, some of his toys, even. I took them out and replaced
them gently. As I was about to shut the lid, I picked up a copy of
the AEneid, on the fly-leaf of which was written in a slanting,
boyish hand,

Lyon Hartwell, January, 1862.

He had gone to the wars in Sixty-three, I remembered.

"My uncle, I gathered, was none too apt at his Latin, for the pages
were dog-eared and rubbed and interlined, the margins mottled with
pencil sketches--bugles, stacked bayonets, a