canebrakes near by and the Cypress Swamp just beyond the hills. That memorable night of the ball was long, long past when this March morning dawned. The colonel was very old now and very feeble, with dimmed memories and utterly alone. He had lost his wife years before. His five beautiful daughters were married and gone. Alice, the most beautiful of all, the youngest, the brightest, the highest spirited, was dead after the wrecking of her young life. The old man had aged and failed rapidly since Alice's death. He, who used to be so cheerful, sat brooding at first, turning his aching memories this way and that way, trying to see whether he might not have done something to prevent the soft-hearted child from being frightened into marrying a man whom she feared almost as much as she disliked. He was always thinking about it in those early days after her death in the bloom of youth and beauty, but he rarely spoke of it even then, and after a time he was allowed to forget. Mercifully memory faded as weakness increased. The gentle, unhappy old man became ere long again a gentle, happy child, and yet--even to the last--when aroused to glimmering consciousness the gallant manner of the courtly gentleman of the old school came back. Miss Judy thought she had never seen so polished a bearing as the colonel's had been and would be--in a way--as long as he lived. She wondered uneasily that morning, as she looked toward his house, whether the servants took good care of him; and she made up her mind to be more watchful of him herself. She was much afraid that the rain might make his rheumatism worse.