with his friend Franklin, before either could have been said to have
noticed fully these strangers, whom no one seemed to know, and who sat
quite apart and unengaged. Battersleigh, master of ceremonies by
natural right, and comfortable gentleman at heart, spied out these
three, and needed but a glance to satisfy himself of their identity.
Folk were few in that country, and Sam had often been very explicit in
his descriptions.

"Sir," said Battersleigh, approaching and bowing as he addressed the
stranger, "I shall make bold to introjuce meself--Battersleigh of
Ellisville, sir, at your service. If I am not mistaken, you will be
from below, toward the next town. I bid ye a very good welcome, and we
shall all hope to see ye often, sir. We're none too many here yet, and
a gintleman and his family are always welcome among gintlemen. Allow
me, sir, to presint me friend Captain Franklin, Captain Ned Franklin of
the--th' Illinois in the late unplisantness.--Ned, me boy,
Colonel--ye'll pardon me not knowin' the name?"

"My name is Buford, sir," said the other as he rose. "I am very glad
to see you gentlemen. Colonel Battersleigh, Captain Franklin. I was
so unlucky as to be of the Kentucky troops, sir, in the same
unpleasantness. I want to introduce my wife, gentlemen, and my niece,
Miss Beauchamp."

Franklin really lost a part of what the speaker was saying. He was
gazing at this form half hidden in the shadows, a figure with hands
drooping, with face upturned, and just caught barely by one vagrant ray
of light which left the massed shades piled strongly about the heavy
hair. There came upon him at that moment, as with a flood-tide of
memory, all the vague longing, the restlessness, the incertitude of
life which had harried him before he had come to this far land, whose
swift activity had helped him to forget. Yet even here he had been
unsettled, unhappy. He had missed, he had lacked--he knew not what.
Sometimes there had come vague dreams, recurrent, often of one figure,
which he could not hold in his consciousness long enough to trace to
any definite experience or association--a lady of dreams, against whom
he strove and whom he sought to banish. Whom he had banished! Whom he
had forgotten! Whom he had never known! Who had ever been in his life
a vague, delicious mystery!

The young woman rose, and stood out a pace or two from the shadows.
Her hand rested upon the arm of the elder lady. She turned her fa