racious land"--that when his fighting
days were over, and the retired list lengthened by his name, it would
be a pleasant thing to have his final bivouac among the gallant foes
who had won his admiration by their dauntless manner of giving and
taking blows.

The exigencies and absorptions of military life, in time, dimmed the
fancy, but it never altogether vanished. Out on the plains with
Custer, away in the mountains and the Indian country, vegetating in the
dullness of frontier posts, amid the bustle, the luxury and excitement
of city life, the fancy would return; the memory of those soft starlit
Virginia evenings would infold him with a subtle spell. In thought he
would again sit smoking in the tent door, the gray shadows stealing out
from their covert in the woods, reconnoitering all the country ere they
swept down and took possession, in the name of their queen--the night.
The air would grow cool with the fragrant breath of the ocean and the
pines; whip-poor-wills would chant in the tree tops, and partridges
sound their blithe note away in the fields. It was not wonderful that
when the necessity of securing a country home arose, the fancy should
resume its sway, and that a meditated flitting southward should suggest
Virginia as its goal.

The idea that any portion of his family would be displeased by the
realization of his fancy, or feel themselves aggrieved by his
arrangements, never entered into the veteran's calculations; he
returned from the South with his purchase made, and his mind filled
with anticipations of the joy the unlading of this precious honey would
occasion in the domestic hive, and when he was met by the angry buzz of
discontent instead of the gentle hum of applause, his surprise was
great, and his indignation unbounded.

"What the devil are they grumbling about?" he demanded of his wife.
"Shirley's a fine plantation. The water is good, the air superb; there
are excellent gardens and first-rate oyster beds. The house is
old-fashioned, but it's comfortable, and a little money will make it
more so. What's the matter with them?"

"The girls are young, Percival," explained the mother, putting in a
plea for her rebels. "They are used to society and admiration. They
don't take interest in gardens and oyster beds yet; they like variety
and excitement. The country is very dull."

"Not at all dull," contradicted the general. "You talk as if I were
requiring you all to Selkirk on a ten acre