across the Illinois prairie.

"I don't see why you say that, Aunt Lillian," she replied. "Bad news
travels faster than good."

"And not a word from Comyn. It is cruel of him not to send us a line,
telling us where his regiment is."

Virginia did not reply. She had long since learned that the wisdom of
silence was the best for her aunt's unreasonableness. Certainly, if
Clarence's letters could not pass the close lines of the Federal troops,
news of her father's Texas regiment could not come from Red River.

"How was Judge Whipple to-day?" asked Mrs. Colfax presently.

"Very weak. He doesn't seem to improve much."

"I can't see why Mrs. Brice,--isn't that her name?--doesn't take him to
her house. Yankee women are such prudes."

Virginia began to rock slowly, and her foot tapped the porch.

"Mrs. Brice has begged the Judge to come to her. But he says he has lived
in those rooms, and that he will die there,--when the time comes."

"How you worship that woman, Virginia! You have become quite a Yankee
yourself, I believe, spending whole days with her, nursing that old man."

"The Judge is an old friend of my father's; I think he would wish it,"
replied the girl, in a lifeless voice.