hne Dalrymple? Dalrymple's one
of her family names. She uses it to avoid publicity. The Pulaski City
_Clarion_ reprints her poems and calls her 'sweetest of Southland
songsters.' Major Garnet, I wept when I read it! It's the finest thing
she has ever written!"

"Ah! Brother March," the Major had seen the poem, but had not read it,
"Sister March will never surpass those lines of her's on, let's see;
they begin--Oh! dear me, I know them as well as I know my horse--How
does that----"

"I know what you mean, seh. You mean the ballad of Jack Jones!

"'Ho! Southrons, hark how one brave lad
Three Yankee standards----'"

"Captured!" cried the Major. "That's it; why, my sakes! Hold on,
Jeff-Jack, I'll be with you in just a minute. Why, I know it as--why, it
rhymes with 'cohorts enraptured!'--I--why, of course!--Ah! Jeff-Jack it
was hard on you that the despatches got your name so twisted. It's a
plumb shame, as they say." The Major's laugh grew rustic as he glanced
from Jeff-Jack, red with resentment, to Judge March, lifted half out of
his seat with emotion, and thence to the child, still gazing on the
young hero of many battles and one ballad.

"Well, that's all over; we can only hurry along home now, and----"

"Ah! President Garnet, _is_ it all over, seh? _Is_ it, Mr. Jones?"

"Can't say," replied Jeff-Jack, with his down-drawn smile, and the two
pairs went their opposite ways.

As the Judge loped down the hot turnpike after his distant wagon, his
son turned for one more gaze on the young hero, his hero henceforth, and
felt the blood rush from every vein to his heart and back again as Mr.
Ravenel at the last moment looked round and waved him farewell. Later he
recalled Major Garnet's offer of his daughter, but:

"I shall never marry," said John to himself.

V.

THE MASTER'S HOME-COMING

The Garnet estate was far from baronial in its extent. Rosemont's whole
area was scarcely sixty acres, a third of which was wild grove close
about three sides of the dwelling. The house was of brick, large, with
many rooms in two tall stories above a basement. At the middle of the
north front was a square Greek porch with wide steps spreading to the
ground. A hall extended through and let out upon a rear veranda that
spanned the whole breadth of the house. Here two or three wooden pegs
jutted from the wall, on which to hang a saddle, bridle, or gourd, and
from one of which always dangled a small cowhide whip. Barb