"I said he’d be telling about it first," said Uncle Jack, wagging his head at the crowd, where the old General stood telling them that it was _he_ who had bred the great little filly and that it was _his old mare_ who was the dam of her! "And the little old no-count thing did play off on you sure enough, didn’t she, Grandpa?" came from the tear-eyed tot beside him, so naively in earnest and telling such a plain unvarnished truth that even the old General’s partisans had to wink and nudge each other as they walked off. The old General laughed as he picked her up and said: "And here’s the little girl that saved her, gentlemen, the smartest girl in Tennessee; and she’s got more horse sense than her old granddaddy!" There was one more heat, of course; but it was only a procession, and those behind—and that meant the field—cannot swear to this day which way Little Sister went.... *II* *"A TWILIGHT PIECE"* ... "And all that I was born to be and do, a twilight piece." —_Robert Browning_. *CHAPTER I* *THE FLAME IN THE WOOD* Home again and Tennessee in April! When the train swept over the Highland Rim, the woods, not yet in full leaf, seemed afire with the clustering blooms of the pink azaleas. On both sides, in little sudden and short valleys, and farther off on dwarf-oak hillsides, they blazed. Far beyond their faint, mist-like flush mingled with the sky line in the distant openings, and seemed an arc of soft sunset clouds. Cream-white dogwoods rose up in open spaces against the blurred, pink backgrounds, clustering like evening stars in rose cloud-banks. Anon they grew in separate groups, down in little dells, and each of these tiny bowls was full of them. Their odor, soft and fragrant, swept through the train, dew-damp and like old memories in sweetness. This seems to me to be the main thought about all wild flowers, that they alone are God’s idea of beauty and not those that bloom in gardens and hot houses through the skill of man. If, from any cause, such as the gas from a comet’s tail, men should vanish in a night, none of these last would live to bloom again. Like their makers they would pass from the earth. But like Nature’s Maker the wild sweet things of the wood and meadows and mountains would bloom again, although man were not, mirroring God’s idea of beauty even to the desert. If it is Nature’s great desire that that which is best shall live, the wild flowers have Nature’s underwriting of approval. Ancient Linnæus said of one unfolding: "I saw God in his glory passing near me and bowed my head in worship."