o the ford--a
beautiful old house--the kind you see a lot of in the South--high white
pillars--dignified and aristocratic. It seemed to be quiet and safe, so
we trotted up the drive, the eleven of us. The front door was open, and
I jumped off my horse and ran up the steps and stood in the doorway.
There were four or five people in the hall, and they'd seen us coming
and were scared. A nice old lady was lying back in a chair, as pale as
ashes, with her hand to her heart, gasping ninety to the second, and two
or three negroes stood around her with their eyes rolling. And right in
the middle of the place a red-headed girl in a white dress was bending
over a grizzled old negro man who was locking a large travelling-bag. As
cool as a cucumber that girl was."

The General stopped and considered.

"I wish I could describe the scene the way I saw it--I remember exactly.
It was a big, square hall running through from front to back, and the
back door was open, and you saw a garden with box hedges, and woods
behind it. Stairs went up each side the hall and a balcony ran around
the second story, with bedrooms opening off it. There was a high, oval
window at the back over the balcony, and the sun poured through.

"The girl finished locking her bag as if she hadn't noticed scum of the
earth like us, and then she deliberately picked up a bunch of long white
flowers that lay by the bag--lilies, I think you call them--and stood
up, and looked right past me, as if she was struck with the landscape,
and didn't see me. She was a tall girl, and when she stood straight the
light from the back window just hit her hair and shone through the loose
part of it--there was a lot, and it was curly. I give you my word that,
as she stood there and looked calmly beyond me, in her white dress, with
the stalk of flowers over her shoulder, and the sun turning that
wonderful red-gold hair into a halo--I give you my word she was a
perfect picture of a saint out of a stained-glass window in a church.
But she didn't act like one."

The General was seized with sudden, irresistible laughter. He sobered
quickly.

"I took one look at the vision, and I knew it was all up with me. Talk
about love at first sight--before she ever spoke a word I--well." He
pulled up the sentence as if it were a horse. "I snatched off my cap and
I said, said I, 'I'm very sorry to disturb you,' just as politely as I
knew how, but all the answer she gave me was to glance across at t