"Why, no, 'tain't possible. You--you are a--Yankee!" "Oh, I know it, but----" Eventually he continued: "Well, some day, you know, when there's no more fighting, we might----" He observed that she had again withdrawn suddenly into the shadow, so he said: "Well, good-bye!" When he held her fingers she bowed her head, and he saw a pink blush steal over the curves of her cheek and neck. "Am I never going to see you again?" She made no reply. "Never?" he repeated. After a long time, he bent over to hear a faint reply: "Sometimes--when there are no troops in the neighbourhood--grandpa don't mind if I--walk over as far as that old oak tree yonder--in the afternoons." It appeared that the captain's grip was very strong, for she uttered an exclamation and looked at her fingers as if she expected to find them mere fragments. He rode away. The bay horse leaped a flower-bed. They were almost to the drive, when the girl uttered a panic-stricken cry. The captain wheeled his horse violently, and upon his return journey went straight through a flower-bed. The girl had clasped her hands. She beseeched him wildly with her eyes. "Oh, please, don't believe it! I never walk to the old oak tree. Indeed I don't! I never--never--never walk there." The bridle drooped on the bay charger's neck. The captain's figure seemed limp. With an expression of profound dejection and gloom he stared off at where the leaden sky met the dark green line of the woods. The long-impending rain began to fall with a mournful patter, drop and drop. There was a silence. At last a low voice said, "Well--I might--sometimes I might--perhaps--but only once in a great while--I might walk to the old tree--in the afternoons." THE VETERAN Out of the low window could be seen three hickory trees placed irregularly in a meadow that was resplendent in spring-time green. Farther away, the old, dismal belfry of the village church loomed over the pines. A horse, meditating in the shade of one of the hickories, lazily swished his tail. The warm sunshine made an oblong of vivid yellow on the floor of the grocery. "Could you see the whites of their eyes?" said the man, who was seated on a soap box. "Nothing of the kind," replied old Henry warmly. "Just a lot of flitting figures, and I let go at where they 'peared to be the thickest. Bang!" "Mr. Fleming," said the grocer--his deferential voice expressed somehow the old man's exact social weight--"Mr. Fleming, you never was frightened much in them battles, was you?" The veteran looked down and grinned. Observing his manner, the entire group tittered. "Well, I guess I was," he answered finally. "Pretty well scared, sometimes. Why, in my first battle I thought the sky was falling down. I thought the world was coming to an end. You bet I was scared."