up Black Oak Mountain.
Do you know him?"

"I have known him since I was able to talk. And is that where you go
every day--is it he who takes you on these long walks and climbs that
have brought back your health and strength? God bless the old doctor."

Just then the old doctor himself drove slowly down the road in his
rickety old buggy. I waved my hand at him and shouted that I would
be on hand the next day at the usual time. He stopped his horse and
called to Amaryllis to come out to him. They talked for five minutes
while I waited. Then the old doctor drove on.

When we got to the house Amaryllis lugged out an encyclopaedia and
sought a word in it. "The doctor said," she told me, "that you needn't
call any more as a patient, but he'd be glad to see you any time as
a friend. And then he told me to look up my name in the encyclopaedia
and tell you what it means. It seems to be the name of a genus of
flowering plants, and also the name of a country girl in Theocritus
and Virgil. What do you suppose the doctor meant by that?"

"I know what he meant," said I. "I know now."

A word to a brother who may have come under the spell of the unquiet
Lady Neurasthenia.

The formula was true. Even though gropingly at times, the physicians
of the walled cities had put their fingers upon the specific
medicament.

And so for the exercise one is referred to good Doctor Tatum on Black
Oak Mountain--take the road to your right at the Methodist meeting
house in the pine-grove.

Absolute rest and exercise!

What rest more remedial than to sit with Amaryllis in the shade,
and, with a sixth sense, read the wordless Theocritan idyl of the
gold-bannered blue mountains marching orderly into the dormitories of
the night?

XV

OCTOBER AND JUNE

The Captain gazed gloomily at his sword that hung upon the wall. In
the closet near by was stored his faded uniform, stained and worn by
weather and service. What a long, long time it seemed since those old
days of war's alarms!

And now, veteran that he was of his country's strenuous times, he had
been reduced to abject surrender by a woman's soft eyes and smiling
lips. As he sat in his quiet room he held in his hand the letter he
had just received from her--the letter that had caused him to wear
that look of gloom. He re-read the fatal paragraph that had destroyed
his hope.

In declining the honour you have done me in asking me to be
your wife, I feel that I ought to