He found his mother at her seat by her open window, the unopened buds of her favourite roses hanging motionless in the still air outside, but giving their fresh green faint fragrance to the whole room within; and he remembered the quiet sunset scene every night for many nights to come. Every line in her patient face had been traced there by a sorrow of the old war, and his voice trembled: "Mother," he said, as he bent down and kissed her, "I'm going." Her head dropped quickly to the work in her lap, but she said nothing, and he went quickly out again. IV It was growing dusk outside. Chickens were going to roost with a great chattering in some locust-trees in one corner of the yard. An aged darkey was swinging an axe at the woodpile and two little pickaninnies were gathering a basket of chips. Already the air was filled with the twilight sounds of the farm--the lowing of cattle, the bleating of calves at the cowpens, the bleat of sheep from the woods, and the nicker of horses in the barn. Through it all, Crittenden could hear the nervous thud of Raincrow's hoofs announcing rain--for that was the way the horse got his name, being as black as a crow and, as Bob claimed, always knowing when falling weather was at hand and speaking his prophecy by stamping in his stall. He could hear Basil noisily making his way to the barn. As he walked through the garden toward the old family graveyard, he could still hear the boy, and a prescient tithe of the pain, that he felt would strike him in full some day, smote him so sharply now that he stopped a moment to listen, with one hand quickly raised to his forehead. Basil was whistling--whistling joyously. Foreboding touched the boy like the brush of a bird's wing, and death and sorrow were as remote as infinity to him. At the barn-door the lad called sharply: "Bob!" "Suh!" answered a muffled voice, and Bob emerged, gray with oatdust. "I want my buggy to-night." Bob grinned. "Sidebar?" "Yes." "New whip--new harness--little buggy mare--reckon?" "I want 'em all." Bob laughed loudly. "Oh, I know. You gwine to see Miss Phyllis dis night, sho--yes, Lawd!" Bob dodged a kick from the toe of the boy's boot--a playful kick that was not meant to land--and went into the barn and came out again.