Virginia was not to blame that her heart was too full to catch the undertone of sorrow in Horace Carey's words as she replied graciously: "Anything that I can grant." "Life is rather uncertain--even with a good doctor in the community--"Dr. Carey's smile was always winning. "I have hoarded less than I should have done if there had been a Carey to follow me. There will be nobody but Bo Peep to miss me, especially after awhile. I want you to give him a home if he ever needs one. He has some earnings to keep him from want. But you and I are the only Virginians in the valley. Promise me!" "Of course I will, always, Horace. Be sure of that." "Thank you, Virginia. I am planning to start to California in a few days. I may be gone for several months. I'll tell you good-by now, for I may not be down this way again before I go." Virginia remembered afterward the doctor's strong handclasp and the steady gaze of his dark eyes and the pathos of his voice as he bade her good-by. But she did not note these then, for at that moment Thaine came down the walk with his father, and in the sorrow of parting with her son she had no mind for other things. Dreary rains filled up the first days of May. At Camp Leedy, where the Kansas volunteers mobilized on the old Fair Ground on the outskirts of Topeka, Thaine Aydelot sat under the shelter of his tent watching the water pouring down the canvas walls of other tents and overflowing the deep ruts that cut the grassy sod with long muddy gashes. Camp Leedy was made up mostly of muddy gashes crossed by streams of semi-liquid mud supposed to be roads. Thaine sat on a pile of sodden straw. His clothing was muddy, his feet were wet, and the chill of the cold rain made him shiver. "Noble warfare, this!" he said to himself. "Asher Aydelot knew his bearing when he told me that war was no ways like peace. I wonder what's going on right now down at the Sunflower Ranch. The rain ought to fill that old spillway draw from the lake down in the woods. It's nearly time for the water lilies to bloom, too." The memory of the May night two years before with Leigh Shirley, all pink and white and sweet and modest, came surging across his mind as a heavy dash of rain deluged the tent walls about him. "Look here, Private Thaine Aydelot, Twentieth Kansas Volunteers, if you are going to be a soldier stop that memory business right here, except to remember what Private Asher Aydelot, of the Third Ohio Infantry, told you about guard duty twenty-six hours out of twenty-four. Heigh ho!" Thaine ended with a sigh, then he shut his teeth grimly and stared at the unceasing downpour with unseeing eyes. A noisy demonstration in the camp roused him, and in a minute more young Todd Stewart lay stretched at full length in the mud before his tent. "Welcome to our city, whose beauties have overcome others also," Thaine said, as he helped Todd to rise from the mud.