it."

"Oh, Beau, Beau!" lamented Champe. "How have the mighty fallen? You aren't
so particular now about wearing only white or black ties, I reckon."

"Well, shoestrings are usually black, I believe," returned Dan, with a
laugh, raising his hand to his throat.

Champe seated himself upon the end of an oak log, and taking off his hat,
ran his hand through his curling hair. "I was at home last summer on a
furlough," he remarked, "and I declare, I hardly knew the valley. If we
ever come out of this war it will take an army with ploughshares to bring
the soil up again. As for the woods--well, well, we'll never have them back
in our day."

"Did you see Uplands?" asked Dan eagerly.

"For a moment. It was hardly safe, you know, so I was at home only a day.
Grandpa told me that the place had lain under a shadow ever since
Virginia's death. She was buried in Hollywood--it was impossible to bring
her through the lines they said--and Betty and Mrs. Ambler have taken this
very hardly."

"And the Governor," said Dan, with a tremor in his voice as he thought of
Betty.

"And Jack Morson," added Champe, "he fell at Brandy Station when I was with
him. At first he was wounded only slightly, and we tried to get him to the
rear, but he laughed and went straight in again. It was a sabre cut that
finished him at the last."

"He was a first-rate chap," commented Dan, "but I never knew exactly why
Virginia fell in love with him."

"The other fellow never does. To be quite candid, it is beyond my
comprehension how a certain lady can prefer the infantry to the
cavalry--yet she does emphatically."

Dan coloured.

"Was grandpa well?" he inquired lamely.

With a laugh Champe flung one leg over the other, and clasped his knee.

"It's an ill wind that blows nobody good," he responded. "Grandpa's
thoughts are so much given to the Yankees that he has become actually
angelic to the rest of us. By the way, do you know that Mr. Blake is in the
army?"

"What?" cried Dan, aghast.

"Oh, I don't mean that he really carries a rifle--though he swears he would
if he only had twenty years off his shoulders--but he has become our
chaplain in young Chrysty's place, and the boys say there is more gun
powder in his prayers than in our biggest battery."

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Dan.

"You ought to hear him--it's better than fighting on your own account. Last
Sunday he gave us a prayer in which he said: 'O Lord, thou knowest that we
are the g