Crittenden

And so the time was come for the South to prove its loyalty--not to

itself nor to the North, but to the world.

Under him he saw his mother's eyes fill with tears, for these words of

her son were the dying words of her lion-hearted husband. And Judith had

sat motionless, watching him with peculiar intensity and flushing a

little, perhaps at the memory of her jesting taunt, while Grafton had

stood still--his eyes fixed, his face earnest--missing not a word. He

was waiting for Crittenden, and he held his hand out when the latter

emerged from the crowd, with the curious embarrassment that assails the

newspaper man when he finds himself betrayed into unusual feeling.

"I say," he said; "that was good, good!"

The officer who, too, had stood still as a statue, seemed to be moving

toward him, and again Crittenden turned away--to look for his mother.

She had gone home at once--she could not face him now in that crowd--and

as he was turning to his own buggy, he saw Judith and from habit started

toward her, but, changing his mind, he raised his hat and kept on his

way, while the memory of the girl's face kept pace with him.

She was looking at him with a curious wistfulness that was quite beyond

him to interpret--a wistfulness that was in the sudden smile of welcome

when she saw him start toward her and in the startled flush of surprise

when he stopped; then, with the tail of his eye, he saw the quick

paleness that followed as the girl's sensitive nostrils quivered once

and her spirited face settled quickly into a proud calm. And then he

saw her smile--a strange little smile that may have been at herself or

at him--and he wondered about it all and was tempted to go back, but

kept on doggedly, wondering at her and at himself with a miserable grim

satisfaction that he was at last over and above it all. She had told him

to conquer his boyish love for her and, as her will had always been law

to him, he had made it, at last, a law in this. The touch of the

loadstone that never in his life had failed, had failed now, and now,

for once in his life, desire and duty were one.

He found his mother at her seat by her open window, the unopened buds of

her favourite roses hanging motionless in the still air outside, but

giving their fresh green faint fragrance to the whole room within; and

he remembered the quiet sunset scene every night for many nights to

come. Every line in her patient face had been traced there by a sorrow

of the old war, and his voice trembled: "Mother," he said, as he bent down and kissed her, "I'm going."