ning from the fields and mounting the moonlit
steps. "I have thought it out," he said. "I am going as chaplain." He
touched Stafford, of whom he was fond, on the shoulder. "It's the
sweetest night, and as I came along I loved every leaf of the trees and
every blade of grass. It's home, it's fatherland, it's sacred soil, it's
mother, dear Virginia--"

He broke off, said good-night, and entered the house.

The younger men prepared to follow. "The next time that we meet," said
Stafford, "may be in the thunder of the fight. I have an idea that I'll
know it if you're there. I'll look out for you."

"And I for you," said Cleave. Each had spoken with entire courtesy and a
marked lack of amity. There was a moment's pause, a feeling as of the
edge of things. Cleave, not tall, but strongly made, with his thick dark
hair, his tanned, clean shaven, squarely cut face, stood very straight,
in earnest and formidable. The other, leaning against the pillar, was
the fairer to look at, and certainly not without his own strength. The
one thought, "I will know," and the other thought, "I believe you to be
my foe of foes. If I can make you leave this place early, without
speaking to her, I will do it."

Cleave turned squarely. "You have reason to regret leaving Greenwood--"

Stafford straightened himself against the pillar, studied for a moment
the seal ring which he wore, then spoke with deliberation. "Yes. It is
hard to quit Paradise for even such a tourney as we have before us. Ah
well! when one comes riding back the welcome will be the sweeter!"

They went indoors. Later, alone in a pleasant bedroom, the man who had
put a face upon matters which the facts did not justify, opened wide the
window and looked out upon moon-flooded hill and vale. "Do I despise
myself?" he thought. "If it was false to-night I may yet make it truth
to-morrow. All's fair in love and war, and God knows my all is in this
war! Judith! Judith! Judith! look my way, not his!" He stared into the
night, moodily enough. His room was at the side of the house. Below lay
a slope of flower garden, then a meadow, a little stream, and beyond, a
low hilltop crowned by the old Greenwood burying-ground. "Why not
sleep?... Love is war--the underlying, the primeval, the immemorial....
All the same, Maury Stafford--"

In her room upon the other side of the house, Judith had found the
candles burning on the dressing-table. She blew them out, parted the
window curtains of flowe