"That little foot," he said, moved to admiration, "that little foot makes the true footprint of the greater vanished people! She is of the blood of male and female heroes: she knows how to do and she knows how to suffer! Now if I fall in love with her--!" and there surged through him the invitation to do so. But at the end of his first year the doctor felt that he had made only a general advance toward the long battle-line of Love; he had reconnoitred, but he had not attacked; he had a vast marital receptivity embracing many square miles. He had slid his hands along the nuptial rope, but he could not as yet discover who was waiting beside the bridal knot. On the other hand, there were two or three cases of wounded on the other side; and if one could have been privileged to stand near, it would have been possible to see Love's ambulances secretly and mournfully moving here and there to the rear. If as much as this could not be said for him, what right would he have had to be practising there--or to be alive anywhere! * * * * * And now the winter of that first year had come: it brought an immense stride--in Progress. It was the twenty-fourth of December. Darkness was beginning to fall on road and woods and fields; and he was driving rapidly home because he was tired and ravenous and because he was thinking of his supper--always that good Kentucky supper. But to-night he would have to eat solitary because some days previous his uncle had gone to New York--gone in his quiet way: announcing the fact one morning and stopping there--his reasons were his own. About a mile from home the doctor's horse, rushing on through the gathering Christmas twilight, began to overtake a vehicle moving at a stately pace as though its mission involved affairs too elaborate for haste. As he approached from the rear he recognized that it was Frederick Ousley's carriage, returning from his afternoon wedding several miles across the country.