ret there was no trace of consciousness. The past was wiped
clean of all save courtesy and kindness. There were the Hunts--Nellie,
and the Lieutenant of the Lexington Rifles, Richard Hunt, a
dauntless-looking dare-devil, with the ready tongue of a coffee-house
wit and the grace of a cavalier. There was Elizabeth Morgan, to whom
Harry's grave eyes were always wandering, and Miss Jennie Overstreet,
who was romantic and openly now wrote poems for the Observer, and who
looked at Chad with no attempt to conceal her admiration of his
appearance and her wonder as to who he was. And there were the
neighbors roundabout--the Talbotts, Quisenberrys, Clays, Prestons,
Morgans--surely no less than forty strong, and all for dinner. It was
no little trial for Chad in that crowd of fine ladies, judges,
soldiers, lawyers, statesmen--but he stood it well. While his
self-consciousness made him awkward, he had pronounced dignity of
bearing; his diffidence emphasized his modesty, and he had the good
sense to stand and keep still. Soon they were at table--and what a
table and what a dinner that was! The dining-room was the biggest and
sunniest room in the house; its walls covered with hunting prints,
pictures of game and stag heads. The table ran the length of it. The
snowy tablecloth hung almost to the floor. At the head sat Mrs. Dean,
with a great tureen of calf's head soup in front of her. Before the
General was the saddle of venison that was to follow, drenched in a
bottle of ancient Madeira, and flanked by flakes of red-currant jelly.
Before the Major rested broiled wild ducks, on which he could show his
carving skill--on game as well as men. A great turkey supplanted the
venison, and last to come, and before Richard Hunt, Lieutenant of the
Rifles, was a Kentucky ham. That ham! Mellow, aged, boiled in
champagne, baked brown, spiced deeply, rosy pink within, and of a
flavor and fragrance to shatter the fast of a Pope; and without, a
brown-edged white layer, so firm that the lieutenant's deft carving
knife, passing through, gave no hint to the eye that it was delicious
fat. There had been merry jest and laughter and banter and gallant
compliment before, but it was Richard Hunt's turn now, and story after
story he told, as the rose-flakes dropped under his knife in such thin
slices that their edges coiled. It was full half an hour before the
carver and story-teller were done. After that ham the tablecloth was
lifted, and the dessert spread o