e to you, Mother, and to Miriam. They
leave for Greenwood to-morrow."

"And Cousin Judith," persisted Miriam. "What did she have on? Did she
sing to you?"

Cleave picked up her fallen book and smoothed the leaves. "She was not
there. The Silver Hill people had taken her for the night. I passed them
on the road.... There'll be thick ice, Will, if this weather lasts."

Later, when good-night had been said and he was alone in his bare,
high-ceiled room, he looked, not at his law books nor at the poet's
words, left lying on the table, but he drew a chair before the
fireplace, and from its depths he raised his eyes to his grandfather's
sword slung above the mantel-shelf. He sat there, long, with the sword
before him; then he rose, took a book from the case, trimmed the
candles, and for an hour read of the campaigns of Fabius and Hannibal.

CHAPTER IV

GREENWOOD

The April sunshine, streaming in at the long windows, filled the
Greenwood drawing-room with dreamy gold. It lit the ancient wall-paper
where the shepherds and shepherdesses wooed between garlands of roses,
and it aided the tone of time among the portraits. The boughs of peach
and cherry blossoms in the old potpourri jars made it welcome, and the
dark, waxed floor let it lie in faded pools. Miss Lucy Cary was glad to
see it as she sat by the fire knitting fine white wool into a sacque for
a baby. There was a fire of hickory, but it burned low, as though it
knew the winter was over. The knitter's needles glinted in the sunshine.
She was forty-eight and unmarried, and it was her delight to make
beautiful, soft little sacques and shoes and coverlets for every actual
or prospective baby in all the wide circle of her kindred and friends.

A tap at the door, and the old Greenwood butler entered with the
mail-bag. Miss Lucy, laying down her knitting, took it from him with
eager fingers. _Place a la poste_--in eighteen hundred and sixty-one!
She untied the string, emptied letters and papers upon the table beside
her, and began to sort them. Julius, a spare and venerable piece of
grey-headed ebony, an autocrat of exquisite manners and great family
pride, stood back a little and waited for directions.

Miss Lucy, taking up one after another the contents of the bag, made her
comments half aloud. "Newspapers, newspapers! Nothing but the twelfth
and Fort Sumter! _The Whig._--'South Carolina is too hot-headed!--but
when all's said, the North remains the aggressor.