Rushing to the door we saw the pony going down the lane, or rather standing in the lane, for he had planted his forefeet firmly on the ground, and with mulish obstinacy refused to move. A sharp cut from the whip, however, brought him to terms, and he went galloping off with his heels in the air quite as often as upon terra firma. I think Fan followed him bareheaded for nearly a mile, but all her calls and entreaties were in vain. Black Beauty was gone, and she cried herself into a headache which lasted until night, when, just as we were sitting down to supper, Phyllis came near dropping the hot corn cakes she was putting upon the table in her surprise and delight as she exclaimed, “Bress de Lord, dar’s Black Beauty now.” Looking from the window we saw a soldier in blue leading him toward the house and trying hard to hold him as he minced and pranced and shook his head in his delight to be home again. In a moment he was at the open door where he often came to be fed with sugar or cookies and Fan’s arms were around his neck and she was talking to him as if he was human and could understand her, while he whinnied in reply and rubbed his head against her face. “Col. Errington sent you this with his compliments,” the soldier said, handing a note to Fan, which was as follows: “DEAR MISS HATHERN “I have just learned of the abduction of your pony, and am very sorry for the anxiety it must have caused you. I am sure it is yours, as you ran so far after him, and for that reason I should like to keep him for myself. But honor compels me to send him back. “Hoping that you will not add the sin of thieving to my other enormities and that in the near future we may meet as friends instead of foes, “I am, yours very truly, “GEORGE W. ERRINGTON.” Fan’s first impulse, after reading this, was to tear it up, but she changed her mind, and I heard her tell Phyllis to give the soldier some supper, if he wanted it. “I suppose the tramp is hungry; they always are,” she said, apologetically, as her eyes wandered across the orchard to the enclosure on the hillside where, under the pine trees, our boy in grey was lying, with a boy in blue beside him. That night I saw Fan put Col. Errington’s note in a little box on our dressing bureau, where she kept her few trinkets, but his name was not mentioned between us until after the fall of Richmond, when Jack Fullerton, our neighbor, who had been in the war and who knew about Fan’s pony and the officer, whom he teasingly called Fan’s Yankee, brought a Washington paper in which we read that Col. Errington, who was so severely wounded at Petersburg, was recovering rapidly and would soon be able to be moved into his house on Franklin Square. “I suppose you are very glad that your gallant Colonel is getting well,” Jack said, and Fan replied, “Of course I am. Do you think me a murderess that I want any man to die.”