"Baynell would never have done that in this world," he declared, "if you had not been there to hear the neighing, too. Why, it stands to reason. The family must have known the horse might whinny at any moment. They relied on his winking at it, and he would have done it if you had not been there. He took that pose of being so regardful of the needs of the service because he has been favoring the Roscoes in every way imaginable. Why, hardly anybody else has a stick of timber left, and every day houses are seized for military occupation, and the owners turned adrift, but _I_ know that when one of his men stole only a plank from Judge Roscoe's fence, he had the fellow tied up by his thumbs with the plank on his back for hours in the sun. That was for the sake of _discipline_, my dear fellow--not for Judge Roscoe's plank. On the contrary--quite the reverse!" Seymour wagged his satiric head, unconvinced, and Ashley remembered afterward that he vaguely wished that Baynell would not make so definite a point about these matters, provoking a sort of comment that ordinary conduct could hardly incur. Baynell ought to be in camp. CHAPTER VIII Baynell, himself, reached the same conclusion the next evening, but by an altogether different process of reasoning. He had noticed the unusual stir among the "ladies" early in the afternoon and a sort of festival aspect that the old house was taking on. The parlors were opened and a glow of sunshine illumined the windows and showed the grove from a new aspect--the choicer view where the slope was steep. The river rounded the point of woods, and there was a great stretch of cliffs opposite; beyond were woods again, reaching to the foot-hills that clustered about the base of the distant mountains bounding the prospect. The glimpse seen through the rooms was like a great painting in intense, clear, fine colors, and he paused for a moment to glance at it as he passed down the hall, for all the doors were standing broadly aflare and all the windows were open to the summer-like zephyr that played through the house. "Oh, Captain Baynell!" cried Adelaide, catching sight of him and gasping in the sheer joy of the anticipation of a great occasion. "The Sewing-Society is going to meet here, and you can come in, too! Mayn't he come in, Cousin Leonora?"