But as the hours wore on she became more and more anxious for Val’s return and when in the early evening she heard a horseman ride rapidly up to the front of the house she was the first on the porch to welcome him. It was not Tracy, however, but Hal, and he brought information that was by no means welcome. “We’re ordered off!” he announced. He had little more to tell than that. Tracy was already on the move and they need not expect to see him for a long time to come. The Confederate Government was combing the country for men and big events were expected. Hal gave his meager news and was off again ere they realized it, and the household settled down to await events. “That’s the way it goes,” Mrs. May sighed as they sat at the table that night and looked about at the empty places. “In the morning the house is full. In the evening we are deserted. We women haven’t the easiest part in some ways.” “That is the misfortune of being born a girl,” April said bitterly. “We have our place, too, honey,” Miss Imogene replied with a gentle rebuke in her tone. “I think our men need us just as we are. Fighting isn’t just letting off guns.” “But I might take the place of a man who won’t fight!” April burst out and, jumping to her feet, she left the room amid a hush that lasted some little time after she had gone. All knew of whom she was thinking, and the rest of the meal was eaten in comparative silence. CHAPTER XVII CONFIDENCES It was many months before Dorothea saw Val Tracy again and in the quiet days that followed the departure of all the men in the May household, she and Miss Imogene often speculated over what had happened to young Larry Stanchfield. There was no answer to their problem, but this common secret brought a close intimacy between the two. It was not to be wondered at that the girl should find her heart drawn to this gentle, white-haired little lady; and the elder woman, perhaps because of her past memories, took a special interest in the child of her old friend. Miss Imogene, looking back upon the days of her girlhood, regarded the life about her with the kindly eyes of that romantic time. Indeed the love affairs of the young people she knew seemed to interest her more than the momentous events that were happening in the world. Stirring tales of Forrest’s raids, or of victory nearer home, such as the brilliant Confederate General Johnston’s defeat of Palmer, which roused April to wild enthusiasm, drew from her only an anxious inquiry about one or other of the young officers whose love secrets had been poured into her sympathetic ear. “I wouldn’t like anything to happen to Bennie Hardee till he had made it up with Myrtle Clay,” she would murmur anxiously; or, knitting her brows, “Every General ought to talk seriously to his young officers about writing home the minute a battle is over. Emmie Polk hasn’t heard from Will Cary and she is half crazy with anxiety.”