"Adjieu," said the young centaur; and Sosthene replied from the creaking caleche, "Adjieu, 'Thanase," while the rider bestowed his rustic smile upon the group. Madame Sosthene's eyes met his, and her lips moved in an inaudible greeting; but the eyes of her little daughter were in her lap. Bonaventure's gaze was hostile. A word or two passed between uncle and nephew, including a remark and admission that the cattle-thieves were getting worse than ever; and with a touch of the spur, the young horseman galloped on. It seems enough to admit that Zosephine's further remarks were silly without reporting them in full. "Look at his back! What airs! If I had looked up I should have laughed in his face!" etc. "Well," she concluded, after much such chirruping, "there's one comfort--he doesn't care a cent for me. If I should die to-morrow, he would forget to come to the funeral. And you think I wouldn't be glad? Well, you're mistaken, as usual. I hate him, and I just know he hates me! Everybody hates me!" The eyes of her worshipper turned upon her. But she only turned her own away across the great plain to the vast arching sky, and patted the caleche with a little foot that ached for deliverance from its Sunday shoe. Then her glance returned, and all the rest of the way home she was as sweet as the last dip of cane-juice from the boiling battery. CHAPTER IV. THE CONSCRIPT OFFICER. By and by 'Thanase was sixteen. Eighteen was the lowest age for conscription, yet he was in the Confederate uniform. But then so was his uncle Sosthene; so was his father. It signified merely that he had been received into the home guard. The times were sadly unsettled. Every horseman, and how much more every group of horsemen, that one saw coming across the prairie, was watched by anxious eyes, from the moment they were visible specks, to see whether the uniform would turn out to be the blue or the gray. Which was the more unwelcome I shall not say, but this I can, that the blue meant invasion and the gray meant conscription. Sosthene was just beyond the limit of age, and 'Thanase two years below it; but 'Thanase's father kept a horse saddled all the time, and slept indoors only on stormy nights.