uggy.

"Young Cap'n, dat gal Molly mighty nigh pesterin' de life out o' me. I
done tol' her I'se gwine to de wah."

"What did she say?"

"De fool nigger--she jes laughed--she jes laughed."

The boy, too, laughed, as he gathered the reins and the mare sprang
forward.

"We'll see--we'll see."

And Bob with a triumphant snort turned toward Molly's cabin.

The locust-trees were quiet now and the barn was still except for the
occasional stamp of a horse in his stall or the squeak of a pig that was
pushed out of his warm place by a stronger brother. The night noises
were strong and clear--the cricket in the grass, the croaking frogs from
the pool, the whir of a night-hawk's wings along the edge of the yard,
the persistent wail of a whip-poor-will sitting lengthwise of a willow
limb over the meadow-branch, the occasional sleepy caw of crows from
their roost in the woods beyond, the bark of a house-dog at a
neighbour's home across the fields, and, further still, the fine high
yell of a fox-hunter and the faint answering yelp of a hound.

And inside, in the mother's room, the curtain was rising on a tragedy
that was tearing open the wounds of that other war--the tragedy upon
which a bloody curtain had fallen more than thirty years before. The
mother listened quietly, as had her mother before her, while the son
spoke quietly, for time and again he had gone over the ground to
himself, ending ever with the same unalterable resolve.

There had been a Crittenden in every war of the nation--down to the two
Crittendens who slept side by side in the old graveyard below the
garden.

And the Crittenden--of whom he had spoken that morning--the gallant
Crittenden who led his Kentuckians to death in Cuba, in 1851, was his
father's elder brother. And again he repeated the dying old
Confederate's deathless words with which he had thrilled the Legion that
morning--words heard by her own ears as well as his. What else was left
him to do--when he knew what those three brothers, if they were alive,
would have him do?

And there were other untold reasons, hid in the core of his own heart,
faced only when he was alone, and faced again, that night, after he had
left his mother and was in his own room and looking out at the moonlight
and the big weeping willow that drooped over the one white tomb under
which the two brothers, who had been enemies in the battle, slept side
by side thus in peace. So far he had followed in their footsteps,