use on the edge of the fiery little town. Dan, passing along the street
one day, heard his name called in a familiar voice, and turned to find her
looking at him through the network of a tall, wrought-iron gate.

"Virginia! Bless my soul! Where's Betty?" he exclaimed amazed.

Virginia left the gate and gave him her hand over the dried creepers on the
wall.

"Why, you look ten years older," was her response.

"Indeed! Well, two years of beggary, to say nothing of eight months of war,
isn't just the thing to insure immortal youth, is it? You see, I'm turning
gray."

The pallor of the long march was in his face, giving him a striking though
unnatural beauty. His eyes were heavy and his hair hung dishevelled about
his brow, but the change went deeper still, and the girl saw it. "You're
bigger--that's it," she said, and added impulsively, "Oh, how I wish Betty
could see you now."

Her hand was upon the wall and he gave it a quick, pleased pressure.

"I wish to heaven she could," he echoed heartily.

"But I shall tell her everything when I write--everything. I shall tell her
that you are taller and stronger and that you have been in all the fights
and haven't a scar to show. Betty loves scars, you see, and she doesn't
mind even wounds--real wounds. She wanted to go into the hospitals, but I
came away and mamma wouldn't let her."

"For God's sake, don't let her," said Dan, with a shudder, his Southern
instincts recoiling from the thought of service for the woman he loved.
"There are a plenty of them in the hospitals and it's no place for Betty,
anyway."

"I'll tell her you think so," returned Virginia, gayly. "I'll tell her
that--and what else?"

He met her eyes smiling.

"Tell her I wait my time," he answered, and began to talk lightly of other
things. Virginia followed his lead with her old shy merriment. Her marriage
had changed her but little, though she had grown a trifle stately, he
thought, and her coquetry had dropped from her like a veil. As she stood
there in her delicate lace cap and soft gray silk, the likeness to her
mother was very marked, and looking into the future, Dan seemed to see her
beauty ripen and expand with her growing womanhood. How many of her race
had there been, he wondered, shaped after the same pure and formal plan.

"And it is all just the same," he said, his eyes delighting in her beauty.
"There is no change--don't tell me there is any change, for I'll not
believe it. You bring i