o our duty
as soldiers the more sorrow we must bring upon our own friends."

"That's a rather solemn view to take of what Jack regards as the path of
glory."

"Oh, you know what I mean: under the flag there can or ought to be no
friendships--the bullet sent from the musket, the sword drawn in light,
must be aimed blindly. It might be my fate, for example, to meet
Jack, to--to--"

"Yes," Olympia laughed demurely, ignoring the sentimental aspect of
Vincent's remark. "Yes, that might paralyze the arm of valor; but, then,
you and Jack have met before, when duty demanded one thing and affection
another: I don't see that the dilemma softened the blows, or that either
of you are any the worse for them."

Vincent was the real Southerner of his epoch--impulsive, sentimental,
ardent in all that he espoused, without the slightest notion of humor,
though imaginative as a dreamer; love, war, and his State, Virginia,
were passions that he thought it a duty to uphold at any and all times.
He colored under the girl's satiric sally. If she had been a man he
would have bid her to battle on the spot. Her sly fun and gentle malice
he resented as insulting, coarse, and unwomanly. He flashed a look of
piteous, surprised reproach at her as she flecked the flies from the
neck of her horse. He rode along moodily--too angry, too wretched to
trust himself to speak, for he felt sure he must say something bitter.
But, as she gave no sign of resuming the discourse, he was forced to
take up the burden again. Venturing nearer her side, he said in a
conciliating, argumentative tone, as if he had not heard the
foregoing speech:

"Do you know, it seems to me, Olympia, that you of the North do not seem
to realize the seriousness of the war, the determination of our side to
make the South free? Here you go about the common business of life,
parties, balls, dress, and all the follies of peace, as if war could not
affect you at all. Your newspapers are full of coarse jokes at the
expense of your own soldiers, your own President. There seems no
devotion to your own cause, such as we feel in the South. I believe that
if put to a vote more than half the North would side with us to-day."

CHAPTER III.

MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE.

Olympia had been jogging along, apparently oblivious to everything but
the blazing vision of sun and cloud above the lake, purpling shapes of
mirage, reflecting the smooth surface of the glowing water. But as the
y