pace or two behind Cousin Merry, the officer in blue strode
away from the hearth to meet them. But Aunt Marianna forestalled her
husband's greeting, rising suddenly from a chair, her crinoline rustling
across the carpet. She held out her hands, and then hesitated, studying
Drew's face, looking a little daunted, as if she had expected something
she did not find. The assurance she had displayed at their last meeting
on the Lexington road was missing.

"Drew?"

He bowed, conscious that he must present an odd figure in the
ill-fitting clothing of Meredith Barrett's long dead husband.

Major Forbes held out his hand. "Welcome home, my boy."

My boy. Consciously or unconsciously the major's tone strove to thrust
Drew into the past, or so he believed. The major might almost be
considering Drew an unruly schoolboy now safely out of some scrape,
welcome indeed if he would settle down quietly into the conventional
mold of Oak Hill or Red Springs. But he was no schoolboy, and at that
moment the parlor of Oak Hill, for all its luxury and warmth, was a box
sealing him in stifling confinement which he could no longer endure.
Drew held tight control over that resurgence of his old impatience,
knowing that his first instinct had been right: the old life fitted him
now no better than his coat. But he answered civilly:

"Thank you, suh."

His proper courtesy apparently reassured his aunt. She came to him, her
hands on his shoulders as she stood on tip-toe to kiss his cheek. "Drew,
come home with us, dear--please!"

He shook his head. "I don't belong at Red Springs, ma'am. I never did."

"Nonsense!" Major Forbes put the force of a field officer's authority
into that denial. "I do not and never did agree with many of Alexander
Mattock's decisions. I do so even less when they pertain to your
situation, my boy. You have every right to consider Red Springs your
home. You must come to us, resume your interrupted education, take your
proper place in the family and the community--"

Drew shook his head again. The major paused. He had been studying Drew,
and now there was a faint shadow of uneasiness in his own expression. He
might be slowly realizing that he was not fronting a repentant schoolboy
rescued from a piece of regrettable youthful folly. A veteran was being
forced against his will to recognize the stamp of his own experience on
another, if much younger, man.

"What are your plans?" he asked in another tone of voice entirely.