ed, but their lips had never met. Over the young girl's soul
there sat still the unbroken mystery of life; nor had the reverent
devotion of the boy yet learned love's iconoclasm.

For two years Colonel Fairfax had been with his regiment, fighting for
what he considered the welfare of his country and for the institutions
in whose justice he had been taught to believe. There remained at the
old Fairfax home in Louisburg only the wife of Colonel Fairfax and the
son Henry, the latter chafing at a part which seemed to him so
obviously ignoble. One by one his comrades, even younger than himself,
departed and joined the army hastening forward toward the throbbing
guns. Spirited and proud, restive under comparisons which he had never
heard but always dreaded to hear. Henry Fairfax begged his mother to
let him go, though still she said, "Not yet."

But the lines of the enemy tightened ever about Louisburg. Then came a
day--a fatal day--fraught with the tidings of what seemed a double
death. The wife of Colonel Henry Fairfax was grande dame that day,
when she buried her husband and sent away her son. There were yet
traditions to support.

Henry Fairfax said good-bye to Mary Ellen upon the gallery of the old
home, beneath a solemn, white-faced moon, amid the odours of the
drooping honeysuckle. Had Mary Ellen's eyes not been hid beneath the
lids they might have seen a face pale and sad as her own. They sat
silent, for it was no time for human speech. The hour came for
parting, and he rose. His lips just lightly touched her cheek. It
seemed to him he heard a faint "good-bye." He stepped slowly down the
long walk in the moonlight, and his hand was at his face. Turning at
the gate for the last wrench of separation, he gazed back at a drooping
form upon the gallery. Then Mrs. Beauchamp came and took Ellen's head
upon her bosom, seeing that now she was a woman, and that her
sufferings had begun.

CHAPTER II

THE PLAYERS OF THE GAME

When the band major was twenty miles away in front of Louisburg his
trumpets sounded always the advance. The general played the game
calmly. The line of the march was to be along the main road leading
into the town. With this course determined, the general massed his
reserves, sent on the column of assault, halted at the edge of the
wood, deployed his skirmishers, advanced them, withdrew them, retreated
but advanced again, ever irresistibly sweeping the board in toward the
ba