aughter
knew, by any means.

They were talking at the time, as it happened, of his military
experience: "I served under Scott in Mexico. Jane thinks me a hero, of
course. But I confess to you that I enlisted, in the first place, to
keep the wolf out of the house at home. I had spent our last dollar in
manufacturing my patent scissors, and they--well, they wouldn't cut
anything, unless--I used to suspect Atropos had borrowed them and meant
to snip the thread for me, it was stretched so tightly just then."

She looked gravely at his empty sleeve.

The captain caught the glance, and coughed uncomfortably: "Oh, I did not
lose that in the service, you understand. No such luck! Five days after
I was discharged, after I had come out of every battle with a whole
skin, I was on a railway-train going home. Collision: arm taken off at
the elbow. If it had happened just one week earlier, I should have had a
pension, and Jane--Well, Jane has had a rough time of it, Miss Fleming.
But it was my luck!"

They had returned through the woods, and were in sight again of the
house standing darkly among the pines. Two gentlemen, pacing up and down
the solitary road, came down the hill to meet them.

"Tut! tut! It is that Virginia lawyer who has come up to get into
practice here--Judge Rhodes. You know him, Miss Fleming. There's an end
to our quiet talk. That fellow besieges a woman with his click-clack:
never leaves a crack for a sensible man to edge in a word."

Miss Fleming turned her honest eyes full on his for a moment, but did
not speak. The captain's startled, foolish old heart throbbed with a
feeling which he had not known since that day in the boat on the bayou
when Virginie Morot first put her warm little hand in his. Virginie as a
wife had been a trifle of a shrew. Love in the remembrance often has a
bitter twang. But this was friendship! How sweet were the friendship and
confidence of a woman! Pretty women of late years approached the captain
in his fatherly capacity, much to his disrelish. A man need not have his
gray hairs and rheumatism thrown in his teeth at every turn. Miss
Fleming, now, saw beneath them: she saw what a gallant young fellow he
was at heart. He looked down at her eagerly, but she was carelessly
inspecting the judge and his companion.

"Who is the fair-haired, natty little man?"

"Oh! Phil Waring, a young fellow about town. Society man. Too fond of
cards. Nice lad, but no experience: no companion for y