"You have told me your story; let me tell you mine,"--throwing himself on the grass beside her. "Look at me, Grey. Other women have despised me, as rough, callous, uncouth: you never have. I've had no hot-house usage in the world; the sun and rain hardly fell on me unpaid. I've earned every inch of this flesh and muscle, worked for it as it grew; the knowledge that I have, scanty enough, but whatever thought I do have of God or life, I've had to grapple and struggle for. Other men grow, inhale their being, like yonder tree God planted and watered. I think sometimes He forgot me,"--with a curious woman's tremor in his voice, gone in an instant. "I scrambled up like that scraggy parasite, without a root. Do you know now why I am sharp, wary, suspicious, doubt if there be a God? Grey," turning fiercely, "I am tired of this. God did make me. I want rest. I want love, peace, religion, in my life." She said nothing. She forgot herself, her timid shyness now, and looked into his eyes, a noble, helpful woman, sounding the depths of the turbid soul laid bare for her. He laid his big, ill-jointed hand on her knee. "I thought," he said.--great drops of sweat coming out on his sallow lips,--"God meant you to help me. There is my life, little girl. You may do what you will with it. It does not value much to me." And Grey, woman-like, gathered up the despised hand and life, and sobbed a little as she pressed them to her heart. An hour after, they went together up the old porch-steps, halting a moment where the grape-vines clustered thickest about the shingled wall. The house was silent; even the village slept in the moonlight: no sound of life in the great sweep of dusky hill and valley, save the wreaths of mist over the watercourses, foaming and drifting together silently: before morning they would stretch from base to base of the hills like a Dead Sea, ashy and motionless. They stood silent a moment, until the chirp of some robin, frightened by their steps in its nest overhead, had hummed drowsily down into sleep. "It is not good-night, but good-bye, that I must bid you, Grey," he said, stooping to see her face. "I know. But you will come again. God tells me that." "I will come. Remember, Grey, I am going to save life, not to take it. Corrupt as I am, my hands are clean of this butchery for the sake of interest." Grey's eyes wandered. She knows nothing about the war, to be candid: only that it is like a cold pain at her heart, day and night,--sorry that the slaves are slaves, wondering if they could be worse off than the free negroes swarming in the back-alleys yonder,--as sorry, being unpatriotic, for the homeless women in Virginia as for the stolen horses of Chambersburg. Grey's principles, though mixed, are sound, as far as they go, you see. Just then thinking only of herself. "You will come back to me?" clinging to his arm.