ve a protecting feeling
in the presence of his mother--he was so tall and large, and she so
small. She scarcely reached to the top of his shoulder, and even now, at
the age of forty-five, her cheeks had the delicate bloom and freshness
of a young girl's.

"Sit by the fire here," she said, as she pushed him into an armchair
that she pulled directly in front of the grate.

"No, you must not do that," she added, taking the poker from his hand.
"Don't you know that it is a delight for me to wait upon you, my son
come from the war!"

Then she prodded the coals until they glowed a deep red and the room was
suffused with generous warmth.

"What is this bundle that you have?" she asked, taking it from him.

"A new uniform, mother, that I have just bought, and in which I hope to
do you credit."

She flitted about the room attending to his wants, bringing him a hot
drink, and she would listen to no account of himself until she was sure
that he was comfortable. He followed her with his eyes, noting how
little she had changed in the three years that had seemed so long.

She was a Northern woman, of a Quaker family in Philadelphia, whom his
father had married very young and brought to live on a great place in
Virginia. Prescott always believed she had never appreciated the fact
that she was entering a new social world when she left Philadelphia; and
there, on the estate of her husband, a just and generous man, she saw
slavery under its most favourable conditions. It must have been on one
of their visits to the Richmond house, perhaps at the slave market
itself, that she beheld the other side; but this was a subject of which
she would never speak to her son Robert. In fact, she was silent about
it to all people, and he only knew that she was not wholly like the
Southern women about him. When the war came she did not seek to persuade
her son to either side, but when he made his choice he was always sure
that he caused her pain, though she never said a word.

"Do you wear such thin clothing as this out there in those cold
forests?" she asked, fingering his coat.

"Mother," he replied with a smile, "this is the style now; the shops
recommend it, and you know we've all heard that a man had better be dead
than out of the style."

"And you have become a great soldier?" she said, looking at him fondly.

He laughed, knowing that in any event he would seem great to her.

"Not great, mother," he replied; "but I know that I have t