brains in peace. I gave it my beloved
boy--your father's life--in Mexico. We buried him in its flag. I sent
you to West Point and made you swear to defend that flag with your
life. How now can I ask you to repudiate your oath and turn your back
on your rearing?

"Believing as I do in the right of the State first and the Union
afterwards, I had hoped you might see it differently. But who, but
God, controls the course of an honest mind?

"Go, my son--I shall never see you again. But I know you, my son, and
I shall die knowing you did what you thought was right."

The young man wept when he read this--he was neither too old nor too
hardened for tears--and when he rode away, from the ridge of the
Mountain he looked down again--the last time, on all that had been
his life's happiness.

It was an hour afterwards when the old General called in his
overseer.

"Watts," he said, "in the accursed war which is about to wreck the
South and which will eventually end in our going back into the Union
as a subdued province and under the heel of our former slaves, there
will be many changes. I, myself, will not live to see it. I have two
grandsons, as you know, Tom and Richard. Richard is in Europe; he
went there following Alice Westmore, and is going to stay, till this
fight is over. Now, I have added a codicil to my will and I wish you
to hear it."

He took up a lengthy document and read the last codicil:

"_Since the above will was written and acknowledged, leaving The
Gaffs to be equally divided between my two grandsons, Thomas and
Richard Travis, my country has been precipitated into the horrors of
Civil War. In view of this I hereby change my will as above and give
and bequeath The Gaffs to that one of my grandsons who shall
fight--it matters not to me on which side--so that he fights. For The
Gaffs shall never go to a Dominecker. If both fight and survive the
war, it shall be divided equally between them as above expressed. If
one be killed it shall go to the survivor. If both be killed it shall
be sold and the money appropriated among those of my slaves who have
been faithful to me to the end, one-fifth being set aside for my
faithful overseer, Hillard Watts._"

In the panel of the wall he opened a small secret drawer, zinc-lined,
and put the will in it.

"It shall remain there unchanged," he said, "and only you and I shall
know where it is. If I die suddenly, let it remain until after the
war, and then do as you th