ittle Branch running at
the foot of the hill, and just across it, you will see the white
palings, and the big gate with stone pillars, and two tremendous brass
dogs on top, showing their teeth and ready to spring. There's no
mistaking the place, because it is the only one left in the country
that looks like the good old times before the war; and the Yankees
would not have spared it, had it not been such comfortable bombproof
headquarters for their officers. It's our show place now, and General
Darrington keeps it up in better style, than any other estate I know."

"Thank you. I will find it."

Beryl walked away in the direction indicated, and the agent of the
railway station, leaning against the door of the baggage room, looked
with curious scrutiny after her.

"I should like to know who she is. No ordinary person, that is clear.
Such a grand figure and walk, and such a steady look in her big solemn
eyes, as if she saw straight through a person, clothes, flesh and all.
Wonder what her business can be with the old general?"

From early childhood Beryl had listened so intently to her mother's
glowing descriptions of the beauty and elegance of her old home "Elm
Bluff," that she soon began to identify the land-marks along the road,
alter passing the cemetery, where so many generations of Darringtons
slept in one corner, enclosed by a lofty iron railing; exclusive in
death as in life; jealously guarded and locked from contact with the
surrounding dwellers in "God's Acre."

The October day had begun quite cool and crisp, with a hint of frost in
its dewy sparkle, but as though vanquished Summer had suddenly faced
about, and charged furiously to cover her retreat, the south wind came
heavily laden with hot vapor from equatorial oceanic caldrons; and now
the afternoon sun, glowing in a cloudless sky, shed a yellowish glare
that burned and tingled like the breath of a furnace; while along the
horizon, a dim dull haze seemed blotting out the boundary of earth and
sky.

A portion of the primeval pine forest having been preserved, the trees
had attained gigantic height, thrusting their plumy heads heavenward,
as their lower limbs died; and year after year the mellow brown carpet
of reddish straw deepened, forming a soft safe nidus for the seeds that
sprang up and now gratefully embroidered it with masses of golden rod,
starry white asters, and tall, feathery spikes of some velvety purple
bloom, which looked royal by the side