the house.

"Is that yo'r manners, Mr. Tom?" called the young lady after him,
a slight flush rising to her sallow cheek. 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