“Loved me!” repeated the old man, quivering in his chair, “I tell you, madam, I would rather have been Peyton Ambler's friend than President of the Confederacy! Do you remember the time he gave me his last keg of brandy and went without for a month?” She nodded, smiling, and the Major, with red eyes and shaking hands, wandered into endless reminiscences of the long friendship. To Betty these trivial anecdotes were only a fresh torture, but Mrs. Ambler followed them eagerly, comparing her recollections with the Major's, and repeating in a low voice to herself characteristic stories which she had not heard before. “I remember that--we had been married six months then,” she would say, with the unearthly light upon her face. “It is almost like living again to hear you, Major.” “Well, madam, life is a sad affair, but it is the best we've got,” responded the old gentleman, gravely. “He loved it,” returned Mrs. Ambler, and as the Major rose to go, she followed him into the hall and inquired if Mrs. Lightfoot had been successful with her weaving. “She told me that she intended to have her old looms set up again,” she added, “and I think that I shall follow her example. Between us we might clothe a regiment of soldiers.” “She has had the servants brushing off the cobwebs for a week,” replied the Major, “and to-day I actually found Car'line at a spinning wheel on the back flagstones. There's not the faintest doubt in my mind that if Molly had been placed in the Commissary department our soldiers would be living to-day on the fat of the land. She has knitted thirty pairs of socks since spring. Good-by, my dear lady, good-by, and may God sustain you in your double affliction.” He crossed the portico, bowed as he descended the steps, and, mounting in the drive, rode slowly away upon his dappled mare. When he reached the turnpike he lifted his hat again and passed on at an amble. During the next few months it seemed to Betty that she aged a year each day. The lines closed and opened round them; troops of blue and gray cavalrymen swept up and down the turnpike; the pastures were invaded by each army in its turn, and the hen-house became the spoil of a regiment of stragglers. Uncle Shadrach had buried the silver beneath the floor of his cabin, and Aunt Floretta set her dough to rise each morning under a loose pile of kindling wood. Once a deserter penetrated into Betty's chamber, and the girl drove him out at the point of an old army pistol, which she kept upon her bureau.