back to her so pleasant descriptions of it, with its fresh grass and shadowy trees, that she had longed to be there too. So it was through this halo of romance and love that Bell looked at the farm-house and its occupants, preferring good Aunt Betsy because she seemed the most interested in the soldiers, working as soon as breakfast was over upon the peaches, and kindly furnishing her best check apron, together with pan and knife for Bell, who offered her assistance, notwithstanding Wilford’s warning that the fruit would stain her hands, and his advice that she had better be putting up her things for going home. “She was not going that day,” she said, point blank, and as Katy too had asked to stay a little longer, Wilford was compelled to yield, and taking his hat sauntered off toward Linwood; while Katy went listlessly into the kitchen, where Bell Cameron sat, her tongue moving much faster than her hands, which pared so slowly and cut away so much of the juicy pulp, besides making so frequent journeys to her mouth, that Aunt Betsy looked in alarm at the rapidly disappearing fruit, wishing to herself that “Miss Camern had not ’listed.” But _Miss Camern_ had enlisted, and so had Bob, or rather he had gone to his duty, and as she worked, she repeated to Helen the particulars of his going, telling how, when the war first broke out, and Sumter was bombarded, Bob, who, from long association with Southern men at West Point, had imbibed many of their ideas, was very sympathetic with the rebelling States, gaining the cognomen of a secessionist, and once actually thinking of casting in his lot with that side rather than the other. But a little incident saved him, she said. The remembrance of a queer old lady whom he met in the cars, and who, at parting held her wrinkled hand above his head in benediction, charging him not to go against the flag, and promising her prayers for his safety if found on the side of the Union. “I wish you could hear Bob tell the story, the funny part I mean,” she continued, narrating as well as she could the particulars of Lieutenant Bob’s meeting with Aunt Betsy, who, as the story progressed and she recognized herself in the queer old Yankee woman, who shook hands with the conductor and was going to law about a sheep-pasture, dropped her head lower and lower over her pan of peaches, while a scarlet flush spread itself all over her thin face, but changed to a grayish white as Bell concluded with “Bob says the memory of that hand lifted above his head haunted him day and night, during the period of his uncertainty, and was at last the means of saving him from treachery to his country.” “Thank God!” came involuntarily from Aunt Betsy’s quivering lips, and, looking up, Bell saw the great tears running down her cheeks, tears which she wiped away with her arm, while she said faintly, “That old woman, who made a fool of herself in the cars, was _me_!”