"No, to drop it when we have reached the gate. Won't you, please? I don't deny that I am a fool. I have always been a fool. My father said so and he was right. Everybody made fun of me because I was so easily cheated; and you ought to be willing to forgive a man who was born a failure. Whenever there has been a mistake to be made I have made it. Once I was caught in a storm and when I came in dripping, my father said that I hadn't sense enough to come in out of the rain. But I am stronger with every one else than I am with you, and----" She was laughing at me; but it was a laugh of sympathy, of forgiveness, and I caught her hand and placed it upon my arm. And so we walked along in silence, she pressing my arm when the road was rough. Daylight was coming and we could see the house, dark and lonesome beyond the black ravine. "What a peculiar man the General is," I said, feeling the growing heaviness of the silence. "I can hardly place him; but I believe he has a kind heart." "Yes," she replied, "he is kind and brave and generous, but over it all is a weakness." "And he is of a type that is fast disappearing," said I. "A few years more and his class will be but a memory, and then will come almost a forgetfulness, but later on he will reappear as a caricature from the pen of some careless and unsympathetic writer." We had crossed the ravine and were now at the gate, and here I halted. "What, aren't you going in?" she asked, looking up at me, and in the dim light I could see her face, pale and sad. "No," I answered, "I am going to town." "At this hour, and when you are so tired?" "The horse is rested, and as for myself, my duty must give me vigor." "I don't understand you. What can you do in town?" "I can bear the divinest of tidings--I can tell Alf that Millie loves him." She stood looking down, and, bending over her, I kissed her hair, and oh, the heaven of that moment, at the gate, in the dawn; and oh, the thrilling perfume of her hair, damp with the dew brushed from the vine and the leaf of the spice-wood bush. And there, without a word, I left her, her white hands clasped on her bosom; and over the roadway I galloped with a message on my lips and incense in my soul. CHAPTER XVI. The sun was an hour above the tree-tops when I rode up to the livery-stable, and the town was lazily astir. Merchants were sprinkling the brick pavements in front of their stores, and on the public square was a bon-fire of trash swept from the court-house. I hastened to the jail, and for the first time the jailer hesitated when I applied for admission. My eagerness, apparent to every one, appeared to be mistrusted by him, and he shook his head. I told him that he might go in with me, that my mission was simply to deliver a message.