I smiled again, and then began to think it all over. Mars was a total stranger to me. I had never seen him before in my life, and, so long as we remained on an equal footing as strangers to the fair K. C., I had been disposed to indulge in a little of the usual jealousy of "military interference," and, from my exalted stand-point as a man of the world and at least ten years his senior in age, to look upon him as a boy with no other attractions than his buttons and a good figure; but Beauty's answer set me to thinking. I was a Yankee, too, only she didn't know it; if she had, perhaps Mars would have stood the better chance of the two. I, too, had borne arms against the Sunny South (as a valiant militia-man when the first call came in '61), and had only escaped wearing the uniform she detested from the fact that our regimental rig was gray, and my talents had never conspired to raise me above the rank of lance-corporal. I, too, had participated in the desecration of the "sacred soil" (digging in the hot sun at the first earthworks we threw up across the Long Bridge); in fact, if she only knew it, there was probably more reason, more real cause, for resentment against me, than against the handsome, huffy stripling two seats in front. He was a "Yank," of course; but judging from the smooth, ruddy cheek, and the downiest of downy moustaches fringing his upper lip, had but just cut loose from the apron-strings of his maternal West Point. Why! he must have been at school when we of the old Seventh tramped down Broadway that April afternoon to the music of "Sky-rockets," half drowned in stentorian cheers. In fact, I began, in the few seconds it took me to consider this, to look upon Mars as rather an ill-used individual. Very probably he was stationed somewhere in the vicinity, for loud appeals had been made for regular cavalry ever since the year previous, when the Ku-Klux began their devilment in the neighborhood. Very probably he knew Judge Summers; visited at his plantation; had heard of Miss Kitty's coming, and was disposed to show her attention. Meeting her on the train alone and unescorted, he had done nothing more than was right in offering his services. He had simply acted as a gentleman, and been rebuffed. Ah, Miss Kitty, you must, indeed, be very young, thought I, and so asked,-- "Have you been long in the South since the war, Miss Carrington?" "I? Oh, no! We lived in Kentucky before the war, and when it broke out mother took me abroad. I was a little bit of a girl then, and was put at school in Paris, but mother died very soon afterwards, and then auntie took charge of me. Why, I only left school last June!"