table Kentucky
standards. Just as there had been education, sometimes enforced by the
use of a switch when the tutor--imported from Lexington--thought it
necessary to impress learning on a rebellious young mind by a painful
application in another portion of the body. Education, as well as a
blooded horse in the stables, and all the other prerequisites of a young
blue-grass grandee. But never any understanding, affection, or sympathy.

That cold behavior--the cutting, weighing, and judgment of every act of
childish mischief and boyish recklessness--might have crushed some into
a colorless obedience. But it had made of Drew a rebel long before he
tugged on the short gray shell jacket of a Confederate cavalryman.

Drew had forgotten the feel of linen next to his now seldom clean skin,
the set of broadcloth across the shoulders. And he depended upon the
roan's services with appreciation which had nothing to do with boasted
bloodlines, having discovered in the army that a cold-blooded horse
could keep going on rough forage when a finer bred hunter broke down.
But today the famed dinner table at Red Springs was a painful memory to
one facing only cold hoecake and stone-hard dried beef.

He had circled back to the brush screening the brook and the tree house.
Now he stood very still, his hand sliding one of the heavy Colts out of
its holster. The roan was still grazing, paying no attention to a figure
who was kneeling on the limb-supported platform and turning over the
gear Drew had left piled there.

The scout flitted about a bush, choosing a path which would bring him
out at the stranger's back. That same warm sun, now striking from a
different angle into the tree house, was bright on a thick tangle of
yellow hair, curly enough to provide its owner with a combing problem.

Drew straightened to his full height. The sense of the past which had
dogged him all day now struck like a blow. He couldn't help calling
aloud that name, even though the soberer part of his brain knew there
could be no answer.

"Shelly!"

The blond head turned, and blue eyes looked at him, startled, across a
bowed shoulder. Drew's puzzlement was complete. Not Sheldon, of course,
but who? The other's open surprise changed to wide-eyed recognition
first.

"Drew!" The hail came in the cracked voice of an adolescent as the other
jumped down to face the scout. They stood at almost eye-to-eye level,
but the stranger was still all boy, awkwardly unsure