As she dropped off to sleep she could hear the hum of voices below, where Dr. Cary and her father were keeping up their discussion of the war. And as she was still trying to make out what they were saying, the sun came streaming into her room through a broken shutter and woke her up. CHAPTER XXV THE TRICK-DOCTOR Ruth Welch on awaking, still, perhaps, had some little feeling about what she understood to be her hosts’ attitude on the question of Northerners, but when on coming downstairs she was greeted on the veranda by her young hostess, who presented her with a handful of dewy roses, and looked as sweet as any one of them, or all of them put together, her resentment vanished, and, as she expressed it to her mother afterward, she “went over to the enemy bag and baggage.” As she looked out through the orchard and across over the fields, glowing after the last night’s rain, there came to Ruth for the first time that tender feeling which comes to dwellers in the country, almost like a sweet odor, and compensates them for so much besides, and which has made so many a poet, whether he has written or not. Her hostess took her around the yard to show her her rose-bushes, particularly one which she said had come from one which had always been her mother’s favorite at their old home. “We have not always lived here?” Her voice had a little interrogation in it as she looked at Ruth, much as if she had said, “You know?” And just as if she had said it, Ruth answered, softly, “Yes, I know.” “It was almost entirely destroyed once during the war when a regiment of cavalry camped in the yard,” continued the young hostess, “and we thought it gone; but to our delight a little sprig put up next spring, and some day I hope this may be almost as good as the old one.” She sighed, and her eyes rested on the horizon far away. Ruth saw that the roses she had given her had come from that bush, and she would have liked to stretch out her arms and take her into a bond of hearty friendship.