so if you will only give me just one gentle,
forgiving kind word to comfort mother."

He set his teeth, and shook his head.

"Good-bye, Gen'l Darrington. When you lie down to die, I hope God will
be more merciful to your poor soul, than you have shown yourself to
your suffering child."

He bowed profoundly.

Her hand was on the knob of the door, when he pointed to the western
veranda.

"You are going back to town? Then, if you please, be so good as to pass
out through that rear entrance, and close the glass door after you. A
side path leads to the lawn; and I prefer that you should not meet the
servants, who pry and tattle."

When she stood on the veranda, and turned to close the wide arched
glass door, whence the inside red silk curtain had been looped back,
her last view of the gaunt, tall figure within, showed him leaning on
his stick, with the tin box held in his left hand, and the dying
sunlight shining on his silver hair and furrowed face.

Along the serpentine path which was bordered with masses of brilliant
chrysanthemums, Beryl walked rapidly, feeling almost stifled by the
pressure of contending emotions. Recollecting that these spice censers
of Autumn were her mother's favorite flowers, she stooped and broke
several lovely clusters of orange and garnet color, hoping that a
lingering breath of perfume from the home of her girlhood, might afford
at least a melancholy pleasure to the distant invalid.

Advancing into the elm avenue, she heard a voice calling, and looking
back, saw the old negro man, Bedney, waving his white apron and running
toward her; but at that moment his steps were arrested by the sudden,
loud and rapid ringing of a bell. He paused, listened, wavered; then
threw up his hands, and hurried back to the house, whence issued the
impatient summons.

The sun had gone down in the green sea of far-off pine tops, but the
western sky glowed like some vast altar of topaz, whereon zodiacal
fires had kindled the rays of vivid rose, that sprang into the zenith
and cooled their flush in the pale blue of the upper air. Under the
elms, swift southern twilight was already filling the arches with
purple gloom, and when the heavy iron gate closed with a sullen clang
behind her, Beryl drew a long deep breath of relief. On the sultry
atmosphere broke the gurgling andante music of the "branch," as it
eddied among the nodding ferns, and darted under the bridge; and the
weary, thirsty woman knelt on the m