Bud, once or twice, had considered marrying. To get him a wife was the normal and natural thing to do. No house, without one, could be said to be complete. He was quite unemotional over the idea, and in the few tentative proposals he had made among the daughters of his mountain neighbors he was met by an equally unemotional refusal. Unemotionally they had already made other plans, and though Bud was well enough they saw no reason for shifting their affections. Besides, to do this would in all probability involve considerable shooting on the part of certain young men who would be more or less directly concerned in any such alteration of arrangements. Bud accepted these decisions philosophically. There was no harm in asking even if in the end he did not receive. If the evenings seemed a little lonelier than before after these half-hearted ventures, it was not because any of these young ladies had left their mark, but merely because he had now been longer alone. Bud moved slowly back over the road he had just followed with Roxie Kester and at the ford where he had met her, stopped where he had stopped before. The setting had not changed except that the slowly sinking sun was now casting a mellow glow over tree and stream and road instead of the more brilliant sheen of the direct rays. There at the bend stood the same thick cluster of rhododendrons through which she had pushed. For a moment he waited as though he expected them to open again and reveal once more that slight figure. He found his blood running faster because of this. Then, half ashamed of his mood, he started on with a muttered curse at his foolishness. CHAPTER II When Captain Edward Allston, A.E.F., received his discharge from the army, he returned to his home in Baltimore to put up, as graciously as possible, with the fuss about his safe return which he knew he must inevitably face sooner or later. He played his part like a gentleman. For a week he allowed his family to do with him what they wished and accepted with a smile every attention they and his many friends, including even the sub-debs, showered upon him. Within decent limits he even permitted them to make a hero of him, although this, by all odds, was the most disagreeable demand made upon him. He felt that those who had been deprived of the chance of serving directly were entitled to some compensation, and if they enjoyed this sort of thing, this was the sort of thing he should allow them to enjoy.