The old gentleman squared himself to fix her with his weak red eyes.

"Oh, you're just the same," he returned pettishly, "just the same."

"But I don't steal your chickens, sir," protested the girl, laughing.

The Major grunted and looked down at her in angry silence; then his face
relaxed and a frosty smile played about his lips.

"You are young, my child," he replied, in a kind of austere sadness, "and
youth is always an enemy to the old--to the old," he repeated quietly, and
looked at his wrinkled hand.

But in the excitement of the next autumn, he showed for a time a revival of
his flagging spirit. When the elections came he followed them with an
absorption that had in it all the violence of a mental malady. The four
possible Presidents that stood before the people were drawn for him in bold
lines of black and white--the outward and visible distinction between, on
the one side, the three "adventurers" whom he heartily opposed, and, on the
other, the "Kentucky gentleman," for whom he as heartily voted. There was
no wavering in his convictions--no uncertainty; he was troubled by no
delicate shades of indecision. What he believed, and that alone, was
God-given right; what he did not believe, with all things pertaining to it,
was equally God-forsaken error.

Toward the Governor, when the people's choice was known, he displayed a
resentment that was almost touching in its simplicity.

"There's a man who would tear the last rag of honour from the Old
Dominion," he remarked, in speaking of his absent neighbour.

"Ah, Major," sighed the rector, for it was upon one of his weekly visits,
"what course would you have us gird our loins to pursue?"

"Course?" promptly retorted the Major. "Why, the course of courage, sir."

The rector shook his great head. "My dear friend, I fear you recognize the
virtue only when she carries the battle-axe," he observed.

For a moment the Major glared at him; then, restrained by his inherited
reverence for the pulpit, he yielded the point with the soothing
acknowledgment that he was always "willing to make due allowance for
ministers of the gospel."

"My dear sir," gasped Mr. Blake, as his jaw dropped. His face showed
plainly that so professional an allowance was exactly what he did not take
to be his due; but he let sleeping dangers lie, and it was not until a
fortnight later, when he rode out with a copy of the _Charleston Mercury_
and the news of the secession of South Carolina, t