Neville Trueman held on the even tenor of his way, through the period during which the tide of war was ebbing away on the Atlantic coast and on the lower Mississippi. Notwithstanding the tried and true character of his loyalty, he was not free from ungenerous and unjust aspersions by those prejudiced and bigoted against his American birth. He had, however, one friend who never swerved from her generous admiration of his character and respect for his conduct. Katharine Drayton never failed to defend both the one and the other when unkindly criticised in her presence. Yet to himself she was, while uniformly kind and courteous, yet unusually reserved in the expression of her personal feelings. The words of high appreciation which were spoken, in his defence to others, and which would to him have been a guerdon compensating a hundredfold all his trials and troubles, were to him unuttered. A sense of maiden modesty, if not a deeper and tenderer feeling, sealed her lips and made her, on this subject, dumb in his presence. If the enthusiastic friendship of her brother could have made amends for this reserve Neville had, indeed, ample compensation. Nevertheless a sense of loneliness and isolation were at times oppressively felt by the young man. Almost unconsciously to himself the character and person of Katharine Drayton had become to him very dear. They occupied much of his thought, and mingled even with his morning and evening orisons. Yet he sedulously avoided giving expression, even to himself, to his desires and aspirations. The sad uncertainties of the times forbade the thought of marrying or giving in marriage. His own anomalous position as having, apparently, an allegiance divided between the two countries unhappily at war, was also felt to be a great embarrassment in all his personal relations. Above all he was not without the apprehension that the heart of Katharine Drayton might have been won by the brave soldier whose untimely death she deplored with a sorrow deep and unfeigned. Her lacerated affections he felt to be too tender and too sacred a subject to be lightly approached. Moreover, what had he, a poor Methodist itinerant, without a home, without a country, dependent for his daily food and nightly shelter upon the Providence of God and the generosity of an alien people, themselves impoverished by a long and cruel conflict with his own countrymen, to offer in exchange for her love! For himself he had no fears, no forebodings for the future, no feeling of humiliation in accepting the generous hospitality of his kind congregations. But, he questioned, how could he ask the delicately-nurtured Katharine Drayton, the heiress of many acres, whose lightest wish had been gladly gratified by loving hands,--how could he ask her to leave the sheltering roof and cheerful hearth, where she reigned a queen, to share the privations, discomforts, and it might be poverty, of his migratory existence? The question smote with appalling emphasis