of his ancestors, had
mixed his with the water that is not water because it is fire.

He "crooked the pregnant hinges" of the elbow without cessation, many a
time and oft, and all the vices--as they usually do--followed _en
train_. One of the oldest names in the Carolinas had been dragged in
the dust by this latest and most degenerate scion thereof. Nay, in that
dust Lacy had wallowed--shameless, persistent, beast-like.

To Lacy, therefore, the Civil War came as a godsend, as it had to many
another man in like circumstances, for it afforded another and more
congenial outlet for the wild passion beating out from his heart. The
war sang to him of arms and men--ay, as war has sung since Troia's day,
of women, too.

He did not give over the habits of a lifetime, which, though short, had
been hard, but he leavened them, temporarily obliterated them even, by
splendid feats of arms. Fortune was kind to him. Opportunity smiled
upon him. Was it running the blockade off Charleston, or passing
through the enemy's lines with despatches in Virginia, or heading a
desperate attack on Little Round Top in Pennsylvania, he always won the
plaudits of men, often the love of women. And in it all he seemed to
bear a charmed life.

When the people saw him intoxicated on the streets of Charleston that
winter of '63 they remembered that he was a hero. When some of his more
flagrant transgressions came to light, they recalled some splendid feat
of arms, and condoned what before they had censured.

He happened to be in Charleston because he had been shot to pieces at
Gettysburg and had been sent down there to die. But die he would not,
at least not then. Ordinarily he would not have cared much about
living, for he realized that, when the war was over, he would speedily
sink back to that level to which he habitually descended when there was
nothing to engage his energies; but his acquaintance with Miss Fanny
Glen had altered him.

Lacy met her in the hospital and there he loved her. Rhett Sempland met
her in a hospital, also. Poor Sempland had been captured in an obscure
skirmish late in 1861. Through some hitch in the matter he had been
held prisoner in the North until the close of 1863, when he had been
exchanged and, wretchedly ill, he had come back to Charleston, like
Lacy, to die.

He had found no opportunity for distinction of any sort. There was no
glory about his situation, but prison life and fretting had made him
show what he ha