d to glance in his direction he was patiently and
politely listening to a white-goateed, game-legged U.C.V. refight
the Civil War with so fiery a zest that he presently caught another
veteran a resounding crack on the funny-bone with the gold-headed
stick he was flourishing. Both gentlemen half rose, the one making
wry faces and rubbing his elbow, the other bowing and apologetic.

"Pahdon me, Majah! My deah suh, pahdon me! But I was just tellin'
this boy about the day in the Wilderness his grandfathah Hynds took
a Yankee bullet out of my leg with a paih of silvah scissahs and
bandaged it with the tail of his shirt.

"'I've lost my niggah and my instruments, Sam,' says the doctah,
'but that's no reason why the damyankees should have the
satisfaction of killin' a puffeckly good rebel, when there's not
enough to go around now. Hold your leg still,' says he, rollin' up
his sleeves, 'an' with the help of God and my scissahs and my
shirt-tail, I'll save it for you.' An' he did. I walked home from
Appomattox on that same leg, suh," said the veteran, and brought his
stick down on the toes of it with a force that made him utter a
muffled bellow.

The other, still nursing an outraged elbow, smiled sweetly.

"Thanks, Sam," he drawled.

The Author chuckled appreciatively. "And to think we Americans rush
abroad, when the republic of South Carolina is right next-door to
us!" he murmured.

A gentle change was creeping over Hynds House, perhaps because of
the delightful old ladies who had begun to come there. Old
gentlemen, too, formed the pleasant habit of dropping in, beguiled
by the artful Author, waited upon son-like by his secretary,
foregathered with as kith and kin by the Englishman, mint-juleped by
the three of them, enchanted by Alicia, and teaed and caked and
beloved by me. Even our cats adored them. The Black family could
spot a Confederate veteran as far off as the front gate, and would
rush wildly to meet him, rubbing and roaching and purring in and out
of his old legs. The Author insisted that their passion for U.C.V.'s
was an inherited trait with our cats, and that we ourselves were
merely acquired characteristics.

In April, just before Miss Emmeline was to return to Boston, and the
Englishman and his daughter were to go back home, Alicia and I
decided to give a farewell dance. It was to be in costume.

Hyndsville was pleasantly excited. Never had there been such
rummaging of attics, such searchings of old tr