"You—won't—marry me?" he said.

"Oh, how dare you ask me!" exclaimed Virginia, her face burning with the shame of it. She was standing with her hands behind her, her back against a great walnut trunk, the crusted branches of which hung over the bluff. Even as he looked at her, Eliphalet lost his head, and indiscretion entered his soul.

"You must!" he said hoarsely. "You must! You've got no notion of my money, I say."

"Oh!" she cried, "can't you understand? If you owned the whole of California, I would not marry you." Suddenly he became very cool. He slipped his hand into a pocket, as one used to such a motion, and drew out some papers.

"I cal'late you ain't got much idea of the situation, Miss Carvel," he said; "the wheels have been a-turning lately. You're poor, but I guess you don't know how poor you are,—eh? The Colonel's a man of honor, ain't he?"

For her life she could not have answered,—nor did she even know why she stayed to listen.

"Well," he said, "after all, there ain't much use in your lookin' over them papers. A woman wouldn't know. I'll tell you what they say: they say that if I choose, I am Carvel & Company."

The little eyes receded, and he waited a moment, seemingly to prolong a physical delight in the excitement and suffering of a splendid creature. The girl was breathing fast and deep.

"I cal'late you despise me, don't you?" he went on, as if that, too, gave him pleasure. "But I tell you the Colonel's a beggar but for me. Go and ask him if I'm lying. All you've got to do is to say you'll be my wife, and I tear these notes in two. They go over the bluff." (He made the motion with his hands.) "Carvel & Company's an old firm,—a respected firm. You wouldn't care to see it go out of the family, I cal'late."

He paused again, triumphant. But she did none of the things he expected.
She said, simply:—"Will you please follow me, Mr. Hopper."

And he followed her,—his shrewdness gone, for once.

Save for the rise and fall of her shoulders she seemed calm. The path wound through a jungle of waving sunflowers and led into the shade in front of the house. There was the Colonel sitting on the porch. His pipe lay with its scattered ashes on the boards, and his head was bent forward, as though listening. When he saw the two, he rose expectantly, and went forward to meet them. Virginia stopped before him.

"Pa," she said, "is it true that you have borrowed money from this man?"

Eliphalet had seen Mr. Carvel angry once, and his soul had quivered. Terror, abject terror, seized him now, so that his knees smote together. As well stare into the sun as into the Colonel's face. In one stride he had a hand in the collar of Eliphalet's new coat, the other pointing down the path.

"It takes just a minute to walk to that fence, sir," he said sternly. "If you are any longer about it, I reckon you'll never get past it. You're a cowardly hound, sir!" Mr. Hopper's gait down the flagstones was an invention of his own. It was neither a walk, nor a trot, nor a run, but a sort of sliding amble, such as is executed in nightmares. Singing in his head was the famous example of the eviction of Babcock from the store, —the only time that the Colonel's bullet had gone wide. And down in the small of his back Eliphalet listened for the crack of a pistol, and feared that a clean hole might be bored there any minute. Once outside, he took to the white road, leaving a trail of dust behind him that a wagon might have raised. Fear lent him wings, but neglected to lift his feet.

The Colonel passed his arm around his daughter, and pulled his goatee thoughtfully. And Virginia, glancing shyly upward, saw a smile in the creases about his mouth: She smiled, too, and then the tears hid him from her.

Strange that the face which in anger withered cowards and made men look grave, was capable of such infinite tenderness,—tenderness and sorrow. The Colonel took Virginia in his arms, and she sobbed against his shoulder, as of old.

"Jinny, did he—?"

"Yes—"

"Lige was right, and—and you, Jinny—I should never have trusted him.
The sneak!"

Virginia raised her head. The sun was slanting in yellow bars through the branches of the great trees, and a robin's note rose above the bass chorus of the frogs. In the pauses, as she listened, it seemed as if she could hear the silver sound of the river over the pebbles far below.

"Honey," said the Colonel,—"I reckon we're just as poor as white trash."

Virginia smiled through her tears.

"Honey," he said again, after a pause, "I must keep my word and let him have the business."

She did not reproach him.

"There is a little left, a very little," he continued slowly, painfully.
"I thank God that it is yours. It was left you by Becky—by your mother.
It is in a railroad company in New York, and safe, Jinny."

"Oh, Pa, you know that I do not care," she cried. "It shall be yours and mine together. And we shall live out here and be happy."

But she glanced anxiously at him nevertheless. He was in his familiar posture of thought, his legs slightly apart, his felt hat pushed back, stroking his goatee. But his clear gray eyes were troubled as they sought hers, and she put her hand to her breast.

"Virginia," he said, "I fought for my country once, and I reckon I'm some use yet awhile. It isn't right that I should idle here, while the South needs me, Your Uncle Daniel is fifty-eight, and Colonel of a Pennsylvania regiment.—Jinny, I have to go."

Virginia said nothing. It was in her blood as well as his. The Colonel had left his young wife, to fight in Mexico; he had come home to lay flowers on her grave. She knew that he thought of this; and, too, that his heart was rent at leaving her. She put her hands on his shoulders, and he stooped to kiss her trembling lips.

They walked out together to the summer-house, and stood watching the glory of the light on the western hills. "Jinn," said the Colonel, "I reckon you will have to go to your Aunt Lillian. It—it will be hard. But I know that my girl can take care of herself. In case—in case I do not come back, or occasion should arise, find Lige. Let him take you to your Uncle Daniel. He is fond of you, and will be all alone in Calvert House when the war is over. And I reckon that is all I have to say. I won't pry into your heart, honey. If you love Clarence, marry him. I like the boy, and I believe he will quiet down into a good man."

Virginia did not answer, but reached out for her father's hand and held its fingers locked tight in her own. From the kitchen the sound of Ned's voice rose in the still evening air.

     "Sposin' I was to go to N' Orleans an' take sick and die,
     Laik a bird into de country ma spirit would fly."

And after a while down the path the red and yellow of Mammy Easter's bandanna was seen.

"Supper, Miss Jinny. Laws, if I ain't ramshacked de premises fo' you bof.
De co'n bread's gittin' cold."

That evening the Colonel and Virginia thrust a few things into her little leather bag they had chosen together in London. Virginia had found a cigar, which she hid until they went down to the porch, and there she gave it to him; when he lighted the match she saw that his hand shook.

Half an hour later he held her in his arms at the gate, and she heard his firm tread die in the dust of the road. The South had claimed him at last.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Crisis, Volume 6, by Winston Churchill