who was laughing.
"Margeret knows a lot. Just see how satisfied he is, now, the
satisfaction of having had to fight some one. If he knew it was
anybody's orders, even yours, he would not enjoy that corner half so
much. That is the sweet disposition of our Uncle Matthew."

Overhanging eyebrows of iron-gray were the first thing to arrest
attention in Matthew Loring's face. They shadowed dark expressive eyes
in a swarthy setting. His hair and mustache were of the same grey, and
very bushy. He had the broad head and square jaw of the aggressive
type. Not a large man, even in his prime, he looked almost frail as he
settled back in his chair. He was probably sixty, but looked older.

"Still knitting socks, Mistress Nesbitt?" he inquired, with a caustic
smile. "Charming occupation. Do you select that quality and color for
any beauties to be found in them? I can remember seeing your mother
using knitting needles on this very veranda thirty--yes, forty years
ago. But I must say I never saw her make anything heavier than lace.
And what's all this, Gertrude? Do you entertain your visitors these
days by dragging out the old linen for their inspection? Why are you
dallying with the servants' tasks?"

"No; it is my own task, uncle," returned his niece, with unruffled
serenity. "Not a very beautiful one, but consoling because of its
usefulness."

"Usefulness--huh! In your mother's day ladies were not expected to be
useful."

"Alas for us that the day is past," said the girl, tearing off another
strip of muslin.

"Now, do you wonder that I adore my Judge?" whispered Evilena to
Delaven.

CHAPTER XIII.

Despite his natural irritability, to which no one appeared to pay much
attention, Mr. Loring grew almost cordial under the geniality and
hopefulness emanating from Judge Clarkson, whom he was really very
glad to see, and of whom he had numberless queries to ask regarding
the hostilities of the past few months.

The enforced absence abroad had kept him in a highly nervous
condition, doing much to counteract the utmost care given him by the
most learned specialists of Europe. Half his fortune had been lost by
those opening guns at Sumter. His warehouses, piled with great cotton
bales for shipment to England, had been fired--burned to the ground.
The capture of Beaufort, near which was another plantation of his, had
made further wreck for him, financially, and whatever the foreign
doctors might to with his body, his min