"Jack," laughed Eloise, "I must discipline you." For answer I caught up her hand behind Aunt Lucretia’s back and kissed it. "I’m sorry for you, Jack," she said with her old quietness, "but—but—well, I’ll see you to-night and explain." Then she looked out and exclaimed, "The Home Stretch, Jack! Isn’t it beautiful? Has it changed any?" *CHAPTER III* *THE HICKORIES* We drove up to the great mansion built of home-baked bricks. It sat on a blue grass slope, and before it lay twenty acres of blue grass lawn, tree-peopled: oaks, ash, poplars; and elms, red and white; and a great broad-topped gum. Eloise and I remembered this last best of all, for in the fall it early turned into a great, flaming brushheap of red, crimson streaked with black. Scattered about on the lawn, filling the gaps, were single trees of dogwood. In the dusk they shone like silver nosegays in dark vases. The evening dank was in the air as we drove up; that rare odor, which is really no odor, but only a memory of one; and as we whirled up the drive there came a whisp of perfume, blue grass cut before its time, fresh spring hay, for a sick brood mare, in the meadow beyond. The night sounds made me homesick, even though I was at home; a whippoorwill, a whinnying mare, the lowing of a lonesome calf in the barn. Far off, in the faint purple twilight, stood the hills; and nearer was the black fringe of trees which moated Stone’s River. Here was home and April, and my heart was eager for them. This was The Home Stretch, the home of my grandsire, General John Rutherford. His daughter, my Aunt Lucretia, ran the farm for him, as she did everything else within ten miles of her, for my grandsire was old, and had lost a leg while fighting with Stonewall Jackson in the Valley. Eloise guessed my thoughts. Her voice was quiet and tender as she said, "You should see our hickories, Jack!" I jumped from the surrey at the door, and drew her with me. "Let us look at them first of all," I said, "because there was our playhouse, there were our dreams." She smiled as she pointed to the walks still lined with sunken ale bottles, their mouths projecting upward as borders for our flower beds. Aunt Lucretia had gone into the house. Thomas had wheeled the surrey and team to the barn. The land we stood on had once belonged to Andrew Jackson. Here he had lived before he had moved to the farm four miles away known as the Hermitage. Clover Bottom had been the pride of a great, strong heart. In the field beyond had stood the pioneer store where Jackson and Coffee had traded, with Indians. Beyond that was the far-famed circular field, in the great bend of Stone’s River, and level as a floor, where Truxton and Plowboy and the unbeaten Maria had once raced. Still farther beyond Stone’s River circled like a tube of quicksilver through the green of the wooded hills.