de their start into the South.
But in going they did not neglect to pass the camp of the Invincibles
who were now in the apex of the army farthest south. They had found an
unusually comfortable place on a grassy plot beside a fine, cool spring,
and most of them were lying down. But Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant-
Colonel Hector St. Hilaire sat on empty kegs, with a board on an empty
box between them. The great game which ran along with the war had been
renewed. St. Clair and Langdon sat on the grass beside them, watching
the contest.

The two colonels looked up at the sound of hoofs and paused a moment.

"I'm getting his king into a close corner, Harry," said Colonel Talbot,
"and he'll need a lot of time for thinking. Where are you two going,
or perhaps I shouldn't ask you such a question?"

"There's no secret about it," replied Harry. "We're going to Richmond
with dispatches."

"He was incorrect in saying that he was getting my king into a close
corner, as I'll presently show him," said Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire;
"but you boys are lucky. I suppose you'll stay a while in the capital.
You'll sleep in white beds, you'll eat at tables, with tablecloths on
'em. You'll hear the soft voices of the women and girls of the South,
God bless 'em!"

"And if you went on to Charleston you'd find just as fine women there,"
said Colonel Leonidas Talbot.

He sighed and a shade of sadness crossed his face. Harry heard and saw
and understood. He remembered a night long, long ago in that heat of
rebellion, when he had looked down from the window of his room, and,
in the dark, had seen two figures, a man and a woman, upon a piazza,
Colonel Talbot and Madame Delaunay, talking softly together. He had felt
then that he was touching almost unconsciously upon the thread of an old
romance. A thread slender and delicate, but yet strong enough in its
very tenderness and delicacy to hold them both. The perfume of the
flowers and of the old romance that night in the town so far away came
back. He was moved, and when his eyes met Colonel Talbot's some kind
of an understanding passed between them.

"The good are never rewarded," said Happy Tom.

"How so?" asked Harry.

"Because the proof of it sits on his horse here before us. Why should a
man like George Dalton be sent to Richmond? A sour Puritan who does not
know how to enjoy a dance or anything else, who looks upon the beautiful
face of a girl as a sin and an abominati