est of Panama hats, welcomed him. "Glad to see yo',
cun'nel. I reckoned I'd waltz over and bring along the boy," pointing to
a grizzled negro servant of sixty who was bowing before them, "to
tote yo'r things over instead of using a hack. I haven't run much on
horseflesh since the wah--ha! ha! What I didn't use up for remounts I
reckon yo'r commissary gobbled up with the other live stock, eh?" He
laughed heartily, as if the recollections were purely humorous, and
again clapped Courtland on the back.

"Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Drummond, Major Reed," said Courtland,
smiling.

"Yo' were in the wah, sir?"

"No--I"--returned Drummond, hesitating, he knew not why, and angry at
his own embarrassment.

"Mr. Drummond, the vice-president of the company," interposed Courtland
cheerfully, "was engaged in furnishing to us the sinews of war."

Major Reed bowed a little more formally. "Most of us heah, sir, were
in the wah some time or other, and if you gentlemen will honah me by
joining in a social glass at the hotel across the way, I'll introduce
you to Captain Prendergast, who left a leg at Fair Oaks." Drummond would
have declined, but a significant pressure on his arm from Courtland
changed his determination. He followed them to the hotel and into the
presence of the one-legged warrior (who turned out to be the landlord
and barkeeper), to whom Courtland was hilariously introduced by Major
Reed as "the man, sir, who had pounded my division for three hours at
Stony Creek!"

Major Reed's house was but a few minutes' walk down the dusty lane,
and was presently heralded by the baying of three or four foxhounds and
foreshadowed by a dilapidated condition of picket-fence and stuccoed
gate front. Beyond it stretched the wooden Doric columns of the
usual Southern mansion, dimly seen through the broad leaves of the
horse-chestnut-trees that shaded it. There were the usual listless black
shadows haunting the veranda and outer offices--former slaves and still
attached house-servants, arrested like lizards in breathless attitudes
at the approach of strange footsteps, and still holding the brush,
broom, duster, or home implement they had been lazily using, in their
fixed hands. From the doorway of the detached kitchen, connected by a
gallery to the wing of the mansion, "Aunt Martha," the cook, gazed also,
with a saucepan clasped to her bosom, and her revolving hand with the
scrubbing cloth in it apparently stopped on a dead centre.