"Please, David, please hush and give me a bird and a biscuit--I'm hungry," answered Caroline as she sank on a cushion beside Mrs. Buchanan. "According to the ink slingers of all times you ought not to be; but Andy has already got outside of two sandwiches, so I suppose you are due one small bird. That cake is grand, beautiful. I've put it away to eat all by myself to-morrow. Andrew Sevier doesn't need any. He wouldn't know cake from corn-pone--he's moonstruck." Just at this point a well-aimed pine-cone glanced off David's collar and he settled down to the business in hand, which was the disposal of a bursting and perfectly hot potato, handed fresh from the coals by the attentive Jeff. And it was more than an hour later that the tired hunters wended their way back to the city. Polly was so sleepy that she could hardly sit her horse and was in a subdued and utterly fascinating mood, with which she did an irreparable amount of damage to the stranger within her gates as she rode along the moonlit pike, and for which she had later to make answer. The woman's champion dozed in the tonneau and only David had the spirit to sing as they whirled along. Hadn't Phoebe stirred the sugar into his cup of coffee and then in an absolutely absent-minded manner tasted it before she had come around the fire to hand it to him? It had been a standing argument between them for years as to a man's right to this small attention, which they both teased Mrs. Matilda for bestowing upon the major. It was an insignificant, inconsequent little ceremony in itself but it fired a train in David's mind, made for healing the wound in his heart and brought its consequences. Another reconstruction campaign began to shape its policy in the mind of David Kildare which had to do with the molding of the destiny of the high-headed young woman of his affections, rather than with the amelioration of conditions in his native city. So, high and clear he sang the call of the mocking-bird with its ecstasies and its minors. But late as it was, after he had landed his guests at their doors, he had a long talk over the phone with the clerk of his headquarters and sent a half-dozen telegrams before he turned into his room. When he switched on his lights he saw that Andrew stood by the window looking out into the night. His face was so drawn and white as he turned that David started and reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder. "Dave," he said, "I'm a blackguard and a coward--don't touch me!" "What is it, Andrew?" asked David as he laid his arm across the tense shoulders. "I thought I was strong and dared to stay--now I know I'm a coward and couldn't go. I'll have to sneak away and leave her--hurt!" His voice was low and toned with an unspeakable scorn of himself. "Andy," asked David, as he swung him around to face him, "was Caroline Darrah too much for you--and the moon?"