It was night when Jacquelin reached home; but so keen was the watch in those times, that the ambulance had been heard in the dark, so that when he arrived there was quite a crowd on the lawn ready to receive him, and the next moment he was in his mother’s arms. Sergeant O’Meara, who had been detailed to go on with the ambulance, took back to the court-house an account of the meeting. “It was wurruth the drive,” he said, “to see ’um whan we got there. An’ if I’d been th’ Gineral himself, or the Captain, they couldn’t ’a’ made more fuss over me. Bedad! I thought they moust tak’ me for a Gineral at least; but no, ut was me native gintilitee. I was that proud of meself I almost shed tears of j’y. The only thing I lacked was some wan to say me so gran’ that could appreciate me. An ould gintleman—a Docther Major Cary—a good Oirish naim, bedad!—was there to say wan of the leddies, and ivery toime a leddy cooms in, oop he gits, and bows very gran’, an’ the leddy bows an’ passes by, an’ down he sets, an’ I watches him out o’ the tail of me eye, an’ ivery toime he gits oup, oup I gits too. An’ I says: “‘I always rise for the leddies; me mither was a leddy,’ an’ he says, with a verra gran’ bow: ‘Yis,’ he says, ‘an’ her son is a gintleman, too.’ What dy’e think o’ that? An’ I says, ‘Yis, I know he is.’” Next morning Jacquelin was in a very softened mood. The joy of being free and at home again was tempered by memory of the past and realization of the present; but he was filled with a profound feeling which, perhaps, he himself could not have named. As he hobbled out to the front portico and gazed around on the wide fields spread out below him, with that winding ribbon of tender green, where the river ran between its borders of willows and sycamores, he renewed his resolve to follow in his father’s footsteps. He would keep the place at all sacrifices. He was in this pleasant frame of mind when Hiram Still came around the house. Still had aged during the war, his voice had become more confidential. As he came up to Jacquelin, the latter, notwithstanding his outstretched hand and warm words, had a sudden return of his old feeling of suspicion and dislike. “Mr. Jacquelin, I swan, I am glad to see you, suh—an’ to see you lookin’ so well. I told yo’ Ma you’d come back all right. An’ I told that Yankee what brought you up last night that ’twas a shame they treated you as they done, and if you hadn’t come back all right we’d ’a’ come up thar an’ cleaned ’em out. Yes, sir, we would that. “I sent him off this mornin’—saw him acrost the ford myself he added, lowering his voice confidentially, “because I don’t like to have ’em prowling around my place—_our_ place—too much. Stirs up th’ niggers so you can’t get no work out of ’em. And I didn’t like that fellow’s looks, particularly. Well, I certainly am glad to see you lookin’ so well.”