he old distrust of his own strength--was fallen from him.
At the moment he could have gone to Betty, fearless and full of hope, and
have said, "Come, for I am grown up at last--at last I have grown up to my
love." A great tenderness was in his heart, and the tears, which had not
risen for all the bodily suffering of the past two weeks, came slowly to
his eyes. The purpose of life seemed suddenly clear to him, and the large
patience of the sky passed into his own nature as he sat facing the white
dawn. At rare intervals in the lives of all strenuous souls there comes
this sense of kinship with external things--this passionate recognition of
the appeal of the dumb world. Sky and mountains and the white sweep of the
fields awoke in him the peculiar tenderness he had always felt for animals
or plants. His old childish petulance was gone from him forever; in its
place he was aware of a kindly tolerance which softened even the common
outlines of his daily life. It was as if he had awakened breathlessly to
find himself a man.

And Betty came to him again--not in detached visions, but entire and
womanly. When he remembered her as on that last night at Chericoke it was
with the impulse to fall down and kiss her feet. Reckless and blind with
anger as he had been, she would have come cheerfully with him wherever his
road led; and it was this passionate betrayal of herself that had taught
him the full measure of her love. An attempt to trifle, to waver, to
bargain with the future, he might have looked back upon with tender scorn;
but the gesture with which she had made her choice was as desperate as his
own mood--and it was for this one reckless moment that he loved her best.

The east paled slowly as the day broke in a cloud, and the long shadows
beside the fire lost their reddish glimmer. A little bird, dazed by the
cold and the strange light, flew into the smoke against the stunted pine,
and fell, a wet ball of feathers at Dan's feet. He picked it up, warmed it
in his coat, and fed it from the loose crumbs in his pocket.

When Pinetop awoke he was gently stroking the bird while he sang in a low
voice:--

"Gay and happy, gay and happy,
We'll be gay and happy still."

VII

"I WAIT MY TIME"

When he returned to Winchester it was to find Virginia already there as
Jack Morson's wife. Since her marriage in late summer she had followed her
husband's regiment from place to place, drifting at last to a big yellow
ho