n having
so deftly hid, filled her heart with a vague foreboding.

Dale was mumbling aloud as he read, and did not hear her; but a slight
pressure on his shoulder brought him slowly back from scenes of carnage,
and he looked up into her face, smiling down at him.

"Stop awhile, and speak to Mac! Your eyes seem tired!"

"They're not. That was a great man--that Pompey!"

"Great," she agreed, a trifle piqued that he ignored her dog.

"Those fights," he said tensely, "were the biggest things a feller ever
did!"

"He did something bigger than conquering men," she told him.

"What?" he challenged.

"The battles won over himself," she answered slowly. "His upright life,
his unsullied honor toward all those women whom he made captive. In
battles of that kind there are great generals today. In that respect
everyone can be a Pompey. I wish I could feel," she thought again of the
Colonel's troubled face, "that you, without any doubt at all, were going
to be one!"

"I see what you mean," at last he said, turning back to the book; but
instantly pushed it away with a gesture of impatience and gazed moodily
into the high polish of the mahogany table, as though somewhere down in
its ancient graining an answer might be found to his troubled thoughts.

She watched him, with a curious look of interest.

"I don't understand it," he finally murmured. "By that very teachin',
we're branded worse than any kind of beasts. There's somethin' wrong,
Miss Jane; there's somethin' wrong!" A soft and peculiar light, which
she had often seen when his pupils began to dilate and contract,
fitfully crossed and recrossed them.

"I don't think I understand _you_," she replied.

"Then look!" he turned quickly. Again the curious light. She felt
herself being charmed by it, and wondered if a quail might feel so while
crouching before the point of a bird-dog. In a whisper-haunted voice he
began to speak; "It's a summer night. A lazy mist hangs in the valley. I
can see it--I've seen it most a thousand times! It hangs from the
mountain's waist like a skirt on a half dressed woman, and above is all
naked in the starlight. The air is still and clear, up thar," he slipped
unconsciously into the familiar dialect as he grew more intense, "'n'
the mist below is smooth 'n' white. Ye'd think ye could walk acrost on
hit. No sign or sound of the world kin touch this place, 'n' one might
as well be standin' on some crag that overlooks eternity. Back in a cave