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The lovely October morning was more than half gone when Milton brought the horse round to the door, and the moment came to say farewell. The Colonel had shown sincere eagerness that the visit should be prolonged for at least another day, but a reason for hurry which the young man hardly confessed to himself was urging him back along the way he had come. He was ready to forget his plans for shooting and wandering eastward on the river shore. He had paid a parting visit to Madam Bellamy in her own room, where she lay on a couch in the sunshine, and had seen the silver cup–a lucky cup he devoutly hoped it might indeed be–on a light stand by her side. It held a few small flowers, as if it had so been brought in to her in the early morning. Her eyes were dim with weeping. She had not thought of its age and history, neither did the sight of such pathetic loot wake bitter feelings against her foes. It was only the cup that her little children had used, one after another, in their babyhood; the last and dearest had kept it longest, and even he was dead–fallen in battle, like the rest.

She wore a hood and wrapping of black lace, which brought out the delicacy of her features like some quaint setting. Her hand trembled as she bade her young guest farewell. As he looked back from the doorway she was like some exiled queen in a peasant’s lodging, such dignity and sweet patience were in her look. “I think you bring good fortune,” she said. “Nothing can make me so happy as to have my husband find a little pleasure.”

As the young man crossed the outer room the familiar eyes of the old portrait caught his own with wistful insistency. He suddenly suspected the double reason: he had been dreaming of other eyes, and knew that his fellow-traveler had kept him company. “Madam Bellamy,” he said, turning back, and blushing as he bent to speak to her in a lower voice,–“the portrait; is it like any one? is it like your granddaughter? Could I have seen her on my way here?”

Madam Bellamy looked up at his eager face with a light of unwonted pleasure in her eyes. “Yes,” said she, “my granddaughter would have been on her way to Whitfields. She has always been thought extremely like the picture: it is her great-grandmother. Good-by; pray let us see you at Fairford again;” and they said farewell once more, while Tom Burton promised something, half to himself, about the Christmas hunt,

“Je vous en prie, Belle amie,”

he whispered, and a most lovely hope was in his heart.

“You have been most welcome,” said the Colonel at parting. “I beg that you will be so kind as to repeat this visit. I shall hope that we may have some shooting together.”

“I shall hope so too,” answered Tom Burton, warmly. Then, acting from sudden impulse, he quickly unslung his gun, and begged his old friend to keep it–to use it, at any rate, until he came again.

The old Virginian did not reply for a moment. “Your grandfather would have done this, sir. I loved him, and I take it from you both. My own gun is too poor a thing to offer in return.” His voice shook; it was the only approach to a lament, to a complaint, that he had made.

This was the moment of farewell; the young man held the Colonel’s hand in a boyish eager grasp. “I wish that I might be like a son to you,” he said. “May I write, sometimes, and may I really come to Fairford again?”

The old Colonel answered him most affectionately, “Oh yes; we must think of the Christmas hunt,” he said, and so they parted.

Tom Burton rode slowly away, and presently the fireless chimneys of Fairford were lost to sight behind the clustering trees. The noonday light was shining on the distant river; the road was untraveled and untenanted for miles together, except by the Northern rider and his Southern steed.