is tempter came to him. "I'll make it twenty dollars," he
said, but Gideon shook his head. Then they started. The drums tapped.
Away they went, the flag kissing the breeze. Martha stole up to say
good-bye to him. Her eyes were overflowing, and she clung to him.

"Come, Gidjon," she plead, "fu' my sake. Oh, my God, won't you come
with us--it's freedom." He kissed her, but shook his head.

"Hunt me up when you do come," she said, crying bitterly, "fu' I do
love you, Gidjon, but I must go. Out yonder is freedom," and she was
gone with them.

He drew out a pace after the troops, and then, turning, looked back
at the house. He went a step farther, and then a woman's gentle voice
called him, "Gideon!" He stopped. He crushed his cap in his hands, and
the tears came into his eyes. Then he answered, "Yes, Mis' Ellen, I's
a-comin'."

He stood and watched the dusty column until the last blue leg swung
out of sight and over the grey hills the last drum-tap died away, and
then turned and retraced his steps toward the house.

Gideon had triumphed mightily.

MAMMY PEGGY'S PRIDE

In the failing light of the midsummer evening, two women sat upon the
broad veranda that ran round three sides of the old Virginia mansion.
One was young and slender with the slightness of delicate girlhood.
The other was old, black and ample,--a typical mammy of the old south.
The girl was talking in low, subdued tones touched with a note of
sadness that was strange in one of her apparent youth, but which
seemed as if somehow in consonance with her sombre garments.

"No, no, Peggy," she was saying, "we have done the best we could, as
well as even papa could have expected of us if he had been here. It
was of no use to keep struggling and straining along, trying to keep
the old place from going, out of a sentiment, which, however honest it
might have been, was neither common sense nor practical. Poor people,
and we are poor, in spite of the little we got for the place, cannot
afford to have feelings. Of course I hate to see strangers take
possession of the homestead, and--and--papa's and mamma's and brother
Phil's graves are out there on the hillside. It is hard,--hard, but
what was I to do? I couldn't plant and hoe and plow, and you couldn't,
so I am beaten, beaten." The girl threw out her hands with a
despairing gesture and burst into tears.

Mammy Peggy took the brown head in her lap and let her big hands
wander softly over the girl's pale