colonel, and who is my father.
What do you know of Colonel John Woodville?"

"I met his son once," replied Dick briefly.

She glanced at him sharply. Dick thought for a moment that he saw alarm
in her look, but he concluded that it was only anger.

They stood confronting each other, the little group of officers and the
woman, and Colonel Winchester, embarrassed, but knowing that he must do
something, went forward and pushed back a door opening into the hall.
Dick automatically followed him, and then stepped back, startled.

A roar like that of a lion met them. An old man, with a high, bald and
extremely red forehead lay in a huge bed by a window. It was a great
head, and eyes, set deep, blazed under thick, white lashes. His body was
covered to the chin.

Dick saw that the man's anger was that of the caged wild beast, and
there was something splendid and terrible about it.

"You infernal Yankees!" he cried, and his voice again rumbled like that
of a lion.

"Colonel Charles Woodville, I presume?" said Colonel Winchester
politely.

"Yes, Colonel Charles Woodville," thundered the man, "fastened here
in bed by a bullet from one of your cursed vessels in the Mississippi,
while you rob and destroy!"

And then he began to curse. He drew one hand from under the cover and
shook his clenched fist at them in a kind of rhythmic beat while the
oaths poured forth. To Dick it was not common swearing. There was
nothing coarse and vulgar about it. It was denunciation, malediction,
fulmination, anathema. It had a certain majesty and dignity. Its
richness and variety were unequaled, and it was hurled forth by a voice
deep, powerful and enduring.

Dick listened with amazement and then admiration. He had never heard its
like, nor did he feel any offense. The daughter, too, stood by,
pursing her prim lips, and evidently approving. Colonel Winchester was
motionless like a statue, while the infuriated man shook his fist at him
and launched imprecations. But his face had turned white and Dick saw
that he was fiercely angry.

When the old man ceased at last from exhaustion Colonel Winchester said
quietly:

"If you had spoken to me in the proper manner we might have gone away
and found quarters elsewhere. But we intend to stay here and we will
repay your abuse with good manners."

Dick saw the daughter flush, but the old man said:

"Then it will be the first time that good manners were ever brought from
the country north of the