o-day both the
sight of a face and the thought of an endangered State had worked to
make the light intenser. His old, familiar room looked strange to him
to-night. A tall bookcase faced him. He went across and stood before it,
staring through the diamond panes at the backs of the books. Here were
his Coke and Blackstone, Vattel, Henning, Kent, and Tucker, and here
were other books of which he was fonder than of those, and here were a
few volumes of the poets. Of them all, only the poets managed to keep
to-night a familiar look. He took out a volume, old, tawny-backed,
gold-lettered, and opened it at random--

Her face so faire, as flesh it seemed not,
But hevenly pourtraict of bright angels hew,
Cleare as the sky, withouten blame or blot--

A bell rang below. Youthful and gay, shattering the quiet of the house,
a burst of voices proclaimed "the children's" return from Tullius's
cabin. When, in another moment, Cleave came downstairs, it was to find
them both in wait at the foot, illumined by the light from the
dining-room door. Miriam laid hold of him. "Richard, Richard! tell me
quick! Which was the greatest, Achilles or Hector?"

Will, slight and fair, home for the holidays from Lexington and, by
virtue of his cadetship in the Virginia Military Institute, an authority
on most things, had a movement of impatience. "Girls are so stupid! Tell
her it was Hector, and let's go to supper! She'll believe you."

Within the dining-room, at the round table, before the few pieces of
tall, beaded silver and the gilt-banded china, while Mehalah the
waitress brought the cakes from the kitchen and the fire burned softly
on the hearth below the Saint Memin of a general and law-giver, talk
fell at once upon the event of the day, the meeting that had passed the
Botetourt Resolutions. Miriam, with her wide, sensitive mouth, her
tip-tilted nose, her hazel eyes, her air of some quaint, bright garden
flower swaying on its stem, was for war and music, and both her brothers
to become generals. "Or Richard can be the general, and you be a
cavalryman like Cousin Fauquier! Richard can fight like Napoleon and you
may fight like Ney!"

The cadet stiffened. "Thank you for nothing, Missy! Anyhow, I shan't
sulk in my tents like your precious Achilles--just for a girl! Richard!
'Old Jack' says--"

"I wish, Will," murmured his mother, "that you'd say 'Major Jackson.'"

The boy laughed. "'Old Jack' is what we ca