But the mails and travel were slow in those days, and when the young soldier reached Richmond the last, sad rites were over, and for the third time in his brief career the grave had closed over a beautiful woman who had loved him and upon whose personality had been based in part, that ideal of woman as goddess or angel before which his spirit throughout his life, with all its vicissitudes, bowed down. As the lumbering old stage crawled along the road toward Richmond, he lived over again the years spent in the sunshine of her presence. Her death was a profound shock to him. How strange that one so fair, so merry, so bubbling with _life_ should cease to be! Would it always be his fate, he wondered, to love where untimely death was lying in wait? Upon the night when he reached "home" and every night till, his furlough over, he returned to his post of duty at Fortress Monroe, he lay in his old room with his old household gods--his books in their shelves, his pictures on the walls, his desk and deep arm-chair, and other objects made dear by daily use in their accustomed places, and "the lamplight gloating o'er," around him. He was touched at the sweet, familiar look of it all and at the thoughtfulness of himself of which he saw signs everywhere. Could it be that he had been two years an exile from these homelike comforts or had it been only one of his dreams? In spite of the void her absence made, it was good to be back--good after his wanderings to come into his own again. In the hush and loneliness of those few days under the same roof, the grief-stricken man and youth, their pride broken by their common sorrow, came nearer together than they ever had been before. It seemed that the gentle spirit of her whom each had loved hovered about them, binding them to each other by invisible, but sacred, cords. John Allan spoke to the players' son in tones that were almost fatherly and with quick response, the tender-hearted youth became again the Edgar of the days before reminders of his dependence upon charity had opened his eyes to the difference between a real and an adopted father. Under this reconciling influence, the youth poured out expressions of penitence for the past and made resolutions for the future and Mr. Allan promised to apply for the desired appointment to West Point, but added that thereafter, he should consider himself relieved of all responsibility concerning Edgar. This blunt and ungracious assurance strained the bond between the adopted father and son; the promised letter of application to the Secretary of War, ruthlessly shattered it. That his indulgencies during his year at the University of Virginia, so freely and earnestly repented, should have been exposed in the letter seemed to the boy unnecessary and cruel, but the man who had been fifteen years his father, the husband of her over whom the grave had but just closed and who had always loved him--Edgar--as an own and only son, had seen fit to add to the declaration,