Isabella's bowed head would have made Isabella start away from her with incredulous horror in her blue eyes. For Evey was doubting the justice of the Cause, and Evey was thinking that nothing could be worth so much of the heart's blood of a land's youth, and Evey was saying to herself, "I will not be proud of Richard. Other mothers are weeping because his mother is glad. That is all it comes to."

Evey's soft body shuddered with hate of the whole horrible war, as she drew herself from Isabella's arms.

"Oh," cried Isabella, her eyes flashing, "you are cold-hearted - he always said you were cold-hearted, Evey. I am sorry I came to you."

"I am not cold-hearted," said Evey quietly," but I am sick of war. How can any woman in this land not be sick of Isa?"

war,

"I am not," defied Isabella. "I do not begrudge it my father. If I were a man I would be like Richard."

"I begrudge it my brother," said Evey. Her deep eyes shone. "If I were a man, I would try to stop the war."

"I don't understand you, Evey; you used to think it so glorious."

"I was a little fool," said Evey bitterly. Then she caught Isabella back to her and the two girls cried together before they kissed and parted. Isa might not always understand Evey, but she could not help loving her.

Far out over the hills things had happened which the town was yet to hear of. All over the country men were coming home. Wounded, worn-out, defeated; on horseback, or on foot, they were coming, The dusty highways were dotted and strung with them, the green wood-roads and mountain-trails were blotted with their ragged grayness. One of them, shortcutting by the river-path at sunset, had been halted by the apparition of Bruce's white skiff, idle under the dipping willows; and there, leaning his tattered sleeve, with its captain's stripe, on a tree, Evey found him. He turned her a haggard face of no

age, unshorn, dusty, under a sunburned shock of hair.

66

'Richard!" Evey's startled voice rang, her heart sped forward to new disaster. "You are not wounded. Did you bring home some who is or dead?" Her thoughts flew to her father.

Richard shook his head as he came running up the bank. She saw that he controlled trembling lips. He made her sit down on a bench and dropped at her feet. "What is it then?" Her beating heart shook her to the point of pain.

Richard looked up at her, still biting his lip, fumbling with his cap.

"O Evey," he said, "I have seen Lee surrender!

He flung his arm across the bench and hid his eyes in his ragged sleeve.

Evey put her own arm over his head protectingly. Her flowing black sleeve covered it, her hand touched his tense shoulders with comfort. Above him her eyes were luminous with joy. She breathed deeply as one dropping a burden. It seemed to Evey as if all the women in the land must be sending up that blessed sigh of relief, that it must be an audible song ascending to the skies. And Richard was brokenhearted because he was not allowed to fight any longer-poor little boy!

Presently, looking up, Richard reached a hand to Evey's sleeve, and held it as if it saved as well as sheltered. "Evey," he said, and it was plain that the words welled up from his heart, "I did n't know I was coming back to you when I started

- but, O Evey, will you have me back? Will you let me belong to you forever?"

Her prayer had been answered. The war that bore Richard from her had cast him back on the steadfast shores of her heart. Why then did Evey sit silent, brooding over him with such a wistful face?

She made a tender, involuntary little movement toward him. Richard's arms went up, and round her.

"It is not that!" cried Evey.

Not love him? Oh, Evey loved him well, only now the love was mingled with past pain, with long sorrow, with sad wisdom too deep by far for Evey's years. She scarcely knew a way to make clear to Richard how, though her heart was indeed full of this love, it was filled, too, with yearning for love as she had first known it-love unalloyed with life, a lifting joy.

So, homesick for a little, green, heartshaped, untried world of youth. she sat, her cheek quietly against Richard's upreached hand, her fingers twisting at a black ribbon, and playing with an empty ring.

"Evey!" cried Richard. He took the ring from her. "Why, I lost that!"

"On pnrpose?" whispered Evey. "Yes," said Richard unsteadily; "the the morning I left you."

"The emerald is still lost," said Evey. She pressed her lips to his torn sleeve.

Never mind," said Richard, still unsteadily, "we'll take the ring down to Myers in the morning."

But Myers, in all of his dusty stock, had not another heart-shaped emerald. How could he have, thought Evey, when there was not another in the whole world?

They chose a ruby finally, and waited in the window-seat behind the geraniums while it was being set in the empty ring. To them in that tiny, timeless, sunny haven, appeared, after seconds, or ages, old Myers, his fine, wise face wrinkled with a musing smile. He stood watching them, two children whom he had known all their lives, while Richard fitted the ring in its old place on Evey's finger.

So Evey's lost emerald blossomed at last. Red war, heart's blood, crimson cheeks of youth, had gone to make up that blossoming. Evey shut the ring suddenly in her palm.

"Don't you like it?" asked Richard imploringly.

They had been married, and living at the old Red Hill place for a year. now. Richard had pointed out to Evey that the boy might be safely left with two grandmothers, an old colored mammy, and Martie. Evey had pretended to assent, and was deep in her first stroll with Richard through the summer-time. She hid her anxiety so successfully that Richard thought she was enjoying herself, and proposed a remoter, greener depth, where wilder creek waters narrowed between steeper hillsides, and where, instead of sunshine being sprinkled with shadow, shadow was sprinkled with sunshine.

It seemed to Evey, as Richard spoke, that the baby was receding to a vanishing point of space, that she was being lured to these haunts of girlhood to make her forget that she had a baby at all. She had heard of men being jealous of their children. Was Richard one of these monsters? "I won't go a step further," declared Evey.

Now I've tired you!" cried Richard with extravagant self-reproach. He stripped off his coat, and made her sit down on it, before she could utter a protest. She fidgeted. What might not be happening to the baby? She looked suspiciously at Richard, who had stretched himself at her side. His head touched her knee.

"Evey," said Richard, — his arms went up and drew her down to his lips, "I'm the happiest man in the world.”

"But perhaps," thought Evey, "it's because we're here together—just us two again." She caught her breath, she dared the question. "You mean -?"

66

"Yes," whispered Richard. He let her go so that he could see up into her eyes. Her white blush answered his look. " To think of us, Evey, us - having a little son!"

IN 1858, when I was seventeen years old, it was determined that I should have a good education. My parents could well afford this, for my grandfather had left considerable property, and besides that there were other means. The plan was that I should have a liberal training, and then make up my mind as to what profession I would adopt. It was at first proposed that I should go to West Point, but my fancy for war had passed, and not even the argument that there was war to come and that soon, affected me. My desire, moved by my teacher Escher, was to go to Heidelberg; fortunately it was determined that I should begin my exploration of the realm of higher learning at Harvard College. We supposed that I was far enough along to enter the sophomore class in 1859, and that after graduating I should go to Germany for further study. For my own part I cared little where I went or what I did. There was need of enlargement, the resources about

me were used up, and I was so shaped that if a change had not been made, I should have wandered away in search of adventures.

My father went with me to Cambridge, and as it was well on in the first term, I was placed under a tutor recommended by his classmate Dixwell. I was then a lank fellow, six feet high, very slender, nimble from a good though limited physical training, still rather feeble from attacks of malaria and megrims. As for my training, what has been said before shows that it was, from the schoolmaster's point of view, a jumble of unrelated matters a very poor basis for collegiate study, which took no account of a training in arms and equitation, and as little of philosophy and geology, or a knowledge of human nature. Still, on going me over, my tutor thought I could be put in the sophomore class in the autumn of 1859.

Although my studies interested me,

anything did, for I had then and ever since a capacity to be interested in anything put before me, my tutor most commanded my attention. He was a senior in Harvard College, and had a welldeserved name for scholarship in the classics, as well as for a miscellaneous assortment of talents and knowledge. He was reputed to be the best player of the game of checkers in the country; knew the political history of the United States amazingly well; was learned in pugilism, having at his tongue's end the story of all the prize fights of recent times; withal he was the merriest little man I have ever seen. His curly head and radiant visage charmed me at first, and remain as treasured recollections in a whole gallery of such memories. I well recall my first morning with him, when, after going over the best of what I could and could not do, he asked me if I could box. I pleaded guilty to some knowledge of that ignoble art. At that time I had not learned of his interest in it, and thought that I would be lowered in his eyes by the confession. To my surprise, indeed to my horror, for I had a swordsman's contempt for the business, he insisted on my having a bout with him at once. I had learned boxing in Scherer's school of arms, where it was taught by a competent man but classed as a very degrading form of fighting, ranking below quarterstaff. It was regarded as an ignoble, if sometimes necessary, means of defense, only to be resorted to in extremity when you were contending with common people and had no blessed steel at hand. The eager little man proved very unskillful. At the very first tap he tipped over, his head going against a window-pane, smashing the glass but happily not harming him. I shall never forget my mingled wonder and exasperation at this incident. My training with the reverend philosopher Escher had set up in my mind a category of the tutor into which this new-found specimen by no means fitted.

My work with my mentor went in a

fair

way for some months during the win

ter and spring in Cambridge, and during the summer in Keene, New Hampshire. In Cambridge, I found myself in an unhappy social position, for the reason that my station as a sub-freshman, as an inferior to the men of my own age already in college, was humiliating to my sense of self-importance, and in marked contrast to that I had won at home. In Keene, I found myself in a charming New England community, where the life resembled that to which I was native. There, the fact that I could ride, shoot, act in theatricals, spout poetry, and descant on philosophy, put me back into the class of men, so that I was myself again.

While in Keene, there came an odd incident in my education which, though but a trifle, proved most telling. My tu tor, with whom I had read much Latin verse in a manner which he approved, for my scanning was uncommonly good, I had a natural ear for it, one day asked me the rule for the quantity of a syllable, only to find that I was absolutely ignorant of such written prescriptions. The long list of these rules was then produced they were to be learned at once. Now I cannot by any contriv ance manage to fix in my mind a succession of irrelevances. If he had commanded me to commit all of Ovid, I should willingly have set about the task; as it was, I asked him if in his opinion Horace had learned those precious rules. He was sure that he had not, and equally certain that I must learn them if I had any expectation of getting into Harvard College. On that issue we parted. I refused to spend time on an unnecessary bit of purely formal work.

I was the more content to give up a training in Harvard College, for the reason that my stay in Keene had convinced me that I was more naturalist than humanist, in that I could not content myself with the book side of culture. The life of the fields, the brooks, and rocks. was nearer to me than that of the men and thoughts of long ago. Moreover, in

some way I had come across Agassiz's'essay on classification, then just published, and in it I found something at once of science and philosophy. As I recall it, this essay was the introduction to Agassiz's series, never completed, of contributions to the natural history of North America, the volume concerning the Testudinata. These creatures had interested me in my childhood; I had one of them among my first "pets" when I was about ten years old, and fancied, I think with good reason, that he learned to know me and to come to my call. While at Keene, I became much interested in several aquatic species which were new to me. The essay and the descriptions in the memoir, along with the other contacts of nature in that lovely district, reawakened my enthusiasm for the world below man, so that the demand of my tutor that I should set me to learning rules for scanning Latin verse came most inopportunely for my college education.

At the time of my secession from the humanities, Agassiz was in Europe; he did not return, I think, until the autumn of 1859. I had, however, picked up several acquaintances among his pupils, learned what they were about, and gained some notion of his methods. After about a month he returned, and I had my first contact with the man who was to have the most influence on my life of any the teachers to whom I am indebted. I shall never forget even the lesser incidents of this meeting, for this great master by his presence gave an importance to his surroundings, so that the room where you met him, and the furniture, stayed with the memory of him.

of

When I first met Louis Agassiz, he was still in the prime of his admirable manhood; though he was then fifty-two years old, and had passed his constructive period, he still had the look of a young man. His face was the most genial and engaging that I had ever seen, and his manner captivated me altogether. But as I had been among men who had a free swing, and for a year among people who

seemed to me to be cold and superrational, hungry as I doubtless was for human sympathy, Agassiz's welcome went to my heart, — I was at once his captive. It has been my good chance to see many men of engaging presence and ways, but I have never known his equal.

As the personal quality of Agassiz was the greatest of his powers, and as my life was greatly influenced by my immediate and enduring affection for him, I am tempted to set forth some incidents which show that my swift devotion to my newfound master was not due to the accidents of the situation or to any boyish fancy. I will content myself with one of those stories, which will of itself show how easily he captivated men, even those of the ruder sort.

Some years after we came together, when indeed I was formally his assistant, I believe it was in 1866, he became much interested in the task of comparing the skeletons of thorough-bred horses with those of common stock. I had at his request tried, but without success, to obtain the bones of certain famous stallions from my acquaintances among the racing men in Kentucky. Early one morning there was a fire, supposed to be incendiary, in the stables at the Beacon Park track, a mile from the College, in which a number of horses had been killed and many badly scorched. I had just returned from the place, where I had left a mob of irate owners and jockeys in a violent state of mind. intent on finding some one to hang. I had seen the chance of getting a valuable lot of stallions for the museum, but it was evident that the time was most inopportune for suggesting such a disposition of the remains. Had I done so, the results would have been, to say the least, unpleasant.

As I came away from the profane lot of horse-men gathered about the ruins of their fortunes or their hopes. I met Agassiz almost running to seize the chance of specimens. I told him to come back with me: that we must wait until the mob had spent its rage: but he kept on. I told