“I say, Margey, Will tells me you’ve sold the russet harness. I reckon he’s lying, but I couldn’t see it anywhere in the stable.”

Phillip paused in his work of carving a second slice of lamb for John—the morning’s gunning had been more productive of hunger than partridges, although six brace of birds had rewarded them—and looked anxiously at Margaret.

“Will is right, Phil,” she answered evenly. “You know, dear, we’re not quite so well off as we were before father died and it seemed best to get rid of some of the extra things. We didn’t really need the russet harness. Judge Pottinger took that and two heavy work harnesses.”

“But—but——!” Phillip stared in surprise. “We are surely not so poor that we have to sell things like that to the neighbours, Margey! Great Scott, what do they think of us? And, besides, the russet harness was the best of the lot, and a heap sweller than the black leather. Don’t you think so, John?”

[248]

“Russet’s rather out of style, isn’t it?” asked the other.

“Well, I like it better, anyhow,” asserted Phillip, completing his carving with a vicious hack of the knife. “And—what else is gone, Margey? I’d like to know so that when I see the neighbours using our things I won’t charge them with stealing them.”

Margaret’s cheeks flushed a little, but she answered as calmly as before:

“I reckon that’s about all, Phil. I’m sorry you care so much; I didn’t think you would.”

Phillip made no reply, and a moment later the conversation at the dinner table started afresh on other lines. But constraint was visible. Margaret felt hurt that Phillip should have found fault with her before John North; Phillip was plainly out of temper, although he strove not to show it; and John was secretly angry at his friend for wounding Margaret. Of the four, only Mrs. Ryerson maintained her equanimity. She chatted on to John in her quiet, grande-dame fashion of life and customs before the war, and John answered perfunctorily and wished the repast over with.

When they arose Phillip excused himself and John wandered into the library and filled a pipe.[249] Mrs. Ryerson, as was her invariable custom, ascended to her room again on the arm of Uncle Casper, and Margaret disappeared toward the kitchen. John took down a book at random and settled himself in an easy chair to read. But it proved to be an ancient volume of Hudibras, and it soon lay forgotten on his knee. From where he sat he commanded a view of some fifty yards of gravel drive and terrace. Presently into his range of vision came two figures. They were Phillip and Margaret. Phillip, with head slightly bent and a good deal of colour in his cheeks, was evidently still nursing his displeasure. Margaret walked beside him, one hand on his shoulder, looking gravely into his face. As they passed outside the library window her voice, low, sweet and persuasive, reached the watcher in the chair and suddenly imbued him with a great longing to take Phillip by the neck and dip his head into the brook beyond in the hollow.

Then something incongruous in the girl’s attire awakened his attention, and with a strange throb at his heart he saw that she wore a man’s felt hat; that the hat, a battered, soiled and altogether disreputable affair, was adorned with cabalistic designs and figures; that it bore the initials J. N.,[250] and that, in short, it was his own! Presumably, Margaret believed it to be one of her brother’s; or perhaps she had simply picked it up from the hall table in a hurry without looking at it. John could not for an instant deceive himself into believing that there was any coquetry in the incident. But even viewed purely as an accident, the fact that Margaret wore his shabby sombrero perched at the back of her head pleased him vastly. The hat had already been one of his most precious possessions, but now it was sacred—no longer an article of headgear, but an object to be treasured and kept inviolate. John wondered if it were possible to frame hats.

Phillip and Margaret had passed from sight, and he relighted his pipe and, clasping one broad knee with his hands, leaned back and watched the purple smoke-clouds writhe and dance in the sunlight. Their convolutions must have amused him, for he grinned broadly from time to time like a good-natured and thoroughly prepossessing giant.

A quarter of an hour passed. Then the sound of footsteps on the gravel aroused him and he looked out. Phillip and Margaret were returning. But now Phillip’s arm was about his sister’s waist and the two were laughing contentedly. Margaret’s[251] eyes under the broad brim of the hat, which she had pulled forward to keep the sun from her face, were dancing and glowing. Phillip caught sight of John and beckoned him outside. The latter nodded and knocked the ashes from his pipe. Then he sighed.

“It’s sheer poppycock to imagine that a girl like that can ever care for me,” he thought ruefully. He picked up the volume which had fallen unnoticed to the floor and carried it back to the shelf. As he did so a line caught his eye and he paused and read it:
“He that is valiant, and dares fight, Though drubb’d, can lose no honour by’t.”

“By jove,” he muttered, “Butler had some sense, after all!”

Phillip and his sister were awaiting him before the porch.

“Put your hat on and come along,” Phillip commanded. “We’re going over to the stable.”

“All right, but I don’t need a hat,” John answered evasively as he joined them.

“Oh, but I really think you’d better put one on,” Margaret said. “It’s so easy to take cold these days.”

[252]

“Why, of course, I’ll get one.” John returned to the hall. But the choice was limited, and he finally selected a ridiculously small woolen cap which didn’t begin to go onto the back of his head. Phillip laughed loudly when he saw it.

“You’re a sight!” he said. “Look just like Tommy Dutton of our class. He has a head like a big cannon ball and always wears a funny little green cap at the back of it. You can’t see the cap until Tommy has gone by. That’s Margaret’s, isn’t it, Margey? And, I say, you’ve got his!”

“It’s of no consequence,” murmured John. “I can wear this beautifully if you don’t mind.”

Margaret removed the sombrero and viewed it in astonishment that speedily gave place to dismay. The colour flooded into her face as she held the hat toward John.

“I didn’t notice,” she said. “I’m very sorry. Will you change with me, please?”

John did so.

“I’m sure you didn’t know,” he answered gravely, taking pity on her confusion and forbearing to utter any one of the numerous gallant things that came into his mind.

“There’s a penalty, isn’t there?” laughed Phillip.

[253]

Margaret pretended that she had not heard, and John smiled at her brother ferociously and ranged himself alongside.

“I’ll break your neck if you don’t shut up, Phil!” he muttered pleasantly.

Phillip grinned back. “I wish I could blush the way you can, John,” he whispered.

Later they rode; and John decided that if Margaret was captivating in the simple gowns he had seen her wear she was adorable in her close-fitting black habit. The way in which she managed the unruly Cardinal was marvelous, and John, trotting alongside on his staid mare, Ruby, experienced a vast contempt for his own horsemanship. They went westward, around the “hog-back,” over a broad, well-traveled highway which Phillip explained had been built during the war by the Northern army, past smiling, sunlit fields and comfortable, broad-porched houses. As they swept abreast up a hill Phillip reined in and listened intently with hand at ear.

“What is it, Phil?” Margaret turned her horse and joined him.

“I thought I heard a whistle,” he answered. John listened but caught only the stirring of the[254] wind in the trees beside them. Phillip pointed to the roadway.

“It’s been by here not very long ago,” he said. Margaret nodded. John looked perplexedly from the road to Phillip.

“What is it,” he asked; “Injuns?”

“No; engine,” answered Margaret.

“It’s a traction engine,” Phillip explained. “It’s been up along here, and I thought I heard a whistle. Ruby can’t stand traction engines and I reckon Cardinal would simply throw a fit if we met one. I reckon we’d better turn back.”

“But it’s just as likely to have gone toward town as this way, Phil,” Margaret objected; “and I did want Mr. North to see the view from Pine Top.”

“All right,” Phillip assented doubtfully. “When we get to the top we can see what’s doing.”

“‘Tracking the Traction Engine, or Wild Life in Virginia,’” laughed John. “I’ll write it up for the Advocate.”

“No, send it to the Illustrated,” answered Phillip, “with our photographs.”

They went on up the hill, which was long but of easy ascent, and which at the summit turned abruptly to the right around a wooded promontory. Cardinal[255] broke impatiently into a canter and John&rsqu............