re at that time--because of that very day I was left adrift in the
world, every hope and every comfort gone. Because of Louisburg--why,
this--Ellisville! This is the result of that day! And you refer to it
with eagerness."

Poor Franklin groaned at this, but thought of no right words to say
until ten hours afterward, which is mostly the human way. "I know--I
could have known," he blundered--"I should not be so rude as to suppose
that--ah, it was only _you_ that I remembered! The war is past and
gone, The world, as you say, is very small. It was only that I was
glad--"

"Ah, sir," said Mary Ellen, and her voice now held a plaintiveness
which was the stronger from the droop of the tenderly curving
lips--"ah, sir, but you must remember! To lose your relatives, even in
a war for right and principle--and the South was right!" (this with a
flash of the eye late pensive)--"that is hard enough. But for me it
was not one thing or another; it was the sum of a thousand misfortunes.
I wonder that I am alive. It seems to me as though I had been in a
dream for a long, long time. It is no wonder that those of us left
alive went away, anywhere, as far as we could, that we gave up our
country--that we came even here!" She waved a hand at the brown
monotony visible through the window.

"You blame me as though it were personal!" broke in Franklin; but she
ignored him.

"We, our family," she went on, "had lived there for a dozen
generations. You say the world is small. It is indeed too small for a
family again to take root which has been torn up as ours has been. My
father, my mother, my two brothers, nearly every relative I had, killed
in the war or by the war--our home destroyed--our property taken by
first one army and then the other--you should not wonder if I am
bitter! It was the field of Louisburg which cost me everything. I
lost all--all--on that day which you wish me to remember. You wish me
to remember that you saw me then, that I perhaps saw you. Why, sir, if
you wished me to hate you, you could do no better--and I do not wish to
hate any one. I wish to have as many friends as we may, here in this
new country; but for remembering--why, I can remember nothing else, day
or night, but Louisburg!"

"You stood so," said Franklin, doggedly and fatuously, "just as you did
last night. You were leaning on the arm of your mother--"

Mary Ellen's eyes dilated. "It was not my mother," said she.

"A friend?" sai