The young man muttered
something from the hall which Courtland did not catch. "It's Cousin Tom
Higbee," she explained half disdainfully. "He's had some ugliness with
his horse, I reckon; but paw ought to teach him how to behave. And--I
don't think he likes No'th'n men," she added gravely.

Courtland, who had kept his temper with his full understanding of the
intruder's meaning, smiled as he took Miss Reed's hand in parting.
"That's quite enough explanation, and I don't know why it shouldn't be
even an apology."

Yet the incident left little impression on him as he strolled back to
Redlands. It was not the first time he had tasted the dregs of former
sectional hatred in incivility and discourtesy, but as it seldom came
from his old personal antagonists--the soldiers--and was confined to the
callow youth, previous non-combatants and politicians, he could afford
to overlook it. He did not see Miss Sally during the following week.

CHAPTER IV.

On the next Sunday he was early at church. But he had perhaps
accented the occasion by driving there in a light buggy behind a fast
thoroughbred, possibly selected more to the taste of a smart cavalry
officer than an agricultural superintendent. He was already in a side
pew, his eyes dreamily fixed on the prayer-book ledge before him, when
there was a rustle at the church door, and a thrill of curiosity and
admiration passed over the expectant congregation. It was the entrance
of the Dows party, Miss Sally well to the fore. She was in her new
clothes, the latest fashion in Louisville, the latest but two in Paris
and New York.

It was over twenty years ago. I shall not imperil the effect of that
lovely vision by recalling to the eye of to-day a fashion of yesterday.
Enough, that it enabled her to set her sweet face and vapory golden hair
in a horseshoe frame of delicate flowers, and to lift her oval chin
out of a bewildering mist of tulle. Nor did a certain light polonaise
conceal the outlines of her charming figure. Even those who were
constrained to whisper to each other that "Miss Sally" must "be now
going on twenty-five," did so because she still carried the slender
graces of seventeen. The organ swelled as if to welcome her; as she took
her seat a ray of sunlight, that would have been cruel and searching to
any other complexion, drifted across the faint pink of her cheeks,
and nestling in her nebulous hair became itself transfigured. A few
stained-glass Virtues on the