She looked more closely at him, at the flush that crept below the fair skin of his neck and more than common paleness of his cheek. “I think,” said she, “I am going to like you very much. I might be telling my poor story of a sword to Captain John there a hundred times, and he could not once get at the innermost meaning of it for a woman’s heart.” “I saw the battle,” said he, encouraged by a sympathy he had never known before. “I know you did,” said she. “And I saw him dead.” “_Ochame!_” “And I saw you dropping the sword when you tugged it from the scabbard, and you cried out and ran and washed your hands, though they were quite clean.” “Indeed I did I,” said Miss Mary, all trembling as the past was so plainly set before her. “You are uncanny--no, no, you are not uncanny, you are only ready-witted, and you know how a sister would feel when her dead brother’s sword was brought back to her, and the blood of the brothers of other sisters was on its blade. That’s my only grievance with those soldier brothers of mine. I said I did not think much of the soldiers; oh! boy, I love them all. I sometimes grieve that God made me a woman that I might not be putting on the red coat too, and following the drum. And still and on, I would have no son of mine a soldier. Three fozy, foggy brothers--what did the armies do for them? They never sharpened their wits, but they sit and dover and dream, dream, even-on, never knowing all that’s in their sister Mary’s mind. And here you are, a boy, yet you get to my thoughts in a flash. Oh! I think I am going to be very fond of you.”