He was twice severely wounded; you may have noticed that his left arm is stiff. When our Sacred Cause was lost, with the small remains of his small fortune he purchased this old place called the Farms, and here, sir, he has come, to pass the remainder of his days in, as I may well say, the Past--the only country left open to him, as indeed to many of us." And the old gentleman's cough ended in the groan. "And Miss Carroll has not been with them here?" asked the rector, giving the helm of conversation a slight turn from this well-beaten track. "No, she has not. But there have been good reasons for it. To give you the causes, I must make a slight detower into retrospect. At a military post in Alabama, when Sara was about seven years old, the Major met the lady who is now Madam Carroll; she was then a widow named Morris, with one child, a little girl. You have seen this lady for yourself, sir, and know what she is--a domestic angel, yet a very Muse in culture; one of the loveliest women, one of the most engaging, upon my word, that ever walked the face of this earth, and honored it with her tread." (The junior warden spoke with enthusiasm.) "She is of course very much younger than her husband, _thir_-ty three or four years at the least, I should say; for Carroll was fifty-six at the time of his second marriage, though no one would have suspected it. I saw Madam Carroll very soon afterwards, and she could not have been then more than twenty one or two; a little fairy-like girl-mother. She must have been married the first time when not more than sixteen. Later they had a son, the boy you know, who is now, save Sara, the only child." "Ah, I see; I understand," said the rector.