tely, on his way. He had stopped, and was
looking back toward the house--Clarendon was a great place for looking
back, perhaps because there was little in the town to which to look
forward--when a white man, wearing a tinned badge upon his coat, came
up, took Peter by the arm and led him away, despite some feeble
protests on the old man's part.

_Five_

At the end of the garden stood a frame house with a wide, columned
porch. It had once been white, and the windows closed with blinds that
still retained a faded tint of green. Upon the porch, in a comfortable
arm chair, sat an old lady, wearing a white cap, under which her white
hair showed at the sides, and holding her hands, upon which she wore
black silk mits, crossed upon her lap. On the top step, at opposite
ends, sat two young people--one of them a rosy-cheeked girl, in the
bloom of early youth, with a head of rebellious brown hair. She had
been reading a book held open in her hand. The other was a
long-legged, lean, shy young man, of apparently twenty-three or
twenty-four, with black hair and eyes and a swarthy complexion. From
the jack-knife beside him, and the shavings scattered around, it was
clear that he had been whittling out the piece of pine that he was
adjusting, with some nicety, to a wooden model of some mechanical
contrivance which stood upon the floor beside him. They were a
strikingly handsome couple, of ideally contrasting types.

"Mother," said Miss Treadwell, "this is Henry French--Colonel
French--who has come back from the North to visit his old home and the
graves of his ancestors. I found him in the cemetery; and this is his
dear little boy, Philip--named after his grandfather."

The old lady gave the colonel a slender white hand, thin almost to
transparency.

"Henry," she said, in a silvery thread of voice, "I am glad to see
you. You must excuse my not rising--I can't walk without help. You are
like your father, and even more like your grandfather, and your little
boy takes after the family." She drew Phil toward her and kissed him.

Phil accepted this attention amiably. Meantime the young people had
risen.

"This," said Miss Treadwell, laying her hand affectionately on the
girl's arm, "is my niece Graciella--my brother Tom's child. Tom is
dead, you know, these eight years and more, and so is Graciella's
mother, and she has lived with us."

Graciella gave the colonel her hand with engaging frankness. "I'm sure
we're awfully