e of the latter began to lighten.

I asked him what he said.

"Just that he was the happy man to have kind hearts to weep for him. A
fine thing for a landless, childless fellow like me to say! But it's
gospel truth, Andrew. I told him that his bairns would be great folks
some day, and that their proudest boast would be that their father had
ridden on this errand. Oh, and all the rest of the easy consolations.
If it had been me, I would not have been muckle cheered. It's well I
never married, for I would not have had the courage to leave my
fireside."

We were now getting into a new and far lovelier country. The heavy
forests and swamps which line the James and the York had gone, and
instead we had rolling spaces of green meadowland, and little hills
which stood out like sentinels of the great blue chain of mountains
that hung in the west. Instead of the rich summer scents of the
Tidewater, we had the clean, sharp smell of uplands, and cool winds
relieved the noontide heat. By and by we struck the Rapidan, a water
more like our Scots rivers, flowing in pools and currents, very
different from the stagnant reaches of the Pamunkey. We were joined for
a little bit by two men from Stafford county, who showed us the paths
that horses could travel.

It was late in the afternoon that we reached a broad meadow hemmed in
by noble cedars. I knew without telling that we were come to the scene
of the tragedy, and with one accord we fell silent. The place had been
well looked after, for a road had been made through the woods, and had
been carried over marshy places on a platform of cedar piles. Presently
we came to a log fence with a gate, which hung idly open. Within was a
paddock, and beyond another fence, and beyond that a great pile of
blackened timber. The place was so smiling and homelike under the
westering sun that one looked to see a trim steading with the smoke of
hearth fires ascending, and to hear the cheerful sounds of labour and
of children's voices. Instead there was this grim, charred heap, with
the light winds swirling the ashes.

Every man of us uncovered his head as he rode towards the melancholy
place. I noticed a little rosary, which had been carefully tended, but
horses had ridden through it, and the blossoms were trailing crushed on
the ground. There was a flower garden too, much trampled, and in one
corner a little stream of water had been led into a pool fringed with
forget-me-nots. A tiny water-wheel wa