ay 'my
country.' For it is your birthplace. There must be no mine or thine."

"I am a poor wretch without a country, Primrose," he said falteringly.

"Nay, nay! You must have a share in your father's country. I shall not
let you go back to England."

"I have thought the best place to go would be one's grave. Everything
has failed. Friends are dead or strayed away. The cause is lost. For I
know now no armies can make a stand against such men as these patriots.
And if I had never gone across the sea, I suppose I should be one of
them. But it is ill coming in at the eleventh hour, when you have lost
all and must beg charity."

"But we have abundant charity and love."

"You are on the winning side."

Her beautiful, tender eyes smiled on him, and the tremulous lips tried
not to follow, but she was proud of it, her country's side.

"Oh, forgive me!" she cried in a burst of pity.

"Nay, Primrose, I am not so much of a coward but that I can stand being
beaten and endure the stigma of a lost cause--an unjust cause, we shall
have to admit sooner or later. But I seem to have been shilly-shallying,
a sort of gold-lace soldier, and the only time I was ever roused--oh,
Primrose! believe that I did not know who I should attack until it was
too late."

"And, Phil, you will take it all back now. Come hither in the parlor.
There is one soldier who will shake hands heartily without malice, and
my Cousin Andrew is often dropping in--_your_ cousin," in a sweet,
unsteady voice, that was half a laugh and half a cry. "And we shall all
be friends. Allin!"

He thought the name had never sounded so sweet and he would have gone up
to the cannon's mouth if she had summoned him that way. She had caught
it from Polly saying it so much.

But he hesitated a little, too. Besides the morning of the skirmish
there had been the other encounter of hard words.

She took a hand of each and clasped them together, though she felt the
resistance to the very finger ends. She smiled at one and at the other,
and the sweetness of the rosy lips and dimpled chin was enough to
conquer the most bitter enemies.

"Now you are to be friends, honest and true. This is what women will
have to do: gather up the ends and tie them together, and make cunning
chains that you cannot escape. Oh, there comes Madam Wetherill. See,
dear aunt, I have reconciled Tory and Rebel!" and she laughed
bewitchingly.

Allin said he must go, but he did wish Philemon Nevitt had no