over to the National Cemetery across the way and each taking a basket, walked past the long lines of the dead their boys had fought and dropped a single rose on every soldier's grave. They were women whose boys were buried in strange lands in lonely unmarked trenches. They were doing now what they hoped some woman's hand would do for their lost heroes.

The crowd silently gathered around the speakers' stand and took their seats in the benches placed beneath the trees.

Gaston had never seen this ceremony so lavishly and beautifully performed before. He was overwhelmed with emotion. His father's straight soldierly figure rose before him in imagination, and with him all the silent hosts that now bivouacked with the dead. His soul was melted with the infinite pathos and pity of it all.

He had intended to say some sharp epigrammatic things that would cut the chronic moss-backs that cling to the platforms on such occasions. But somehow when he began they were melted out of his speech. He spoke with a tenderness and reverence that stilled the crowd in a moment like low music.

His tribute to the dead was a poem of rhythmic and exalted thoughts. The occasion was to him an inspiration and the people hung breathless on his words. His voice was never strained but was penetrated and thrilled with thought packed until it burst into the flame of speech. He felt with conscious power his mastery of his audience. He was surprised at his own mood of extraordinary tenderness as he felt his being softened by that oldest religion of the ages, the worship of the dead-as old as sorrow and as everlasting as death! He was for the moment clay in the hands of some mightier spirit above him.

He had spoken perhaps fifteen minutes when suddenly,

straight in front of him, he looked into the face of the One Woman of all his dreams!

There she sat as still as death, her beautiful face tense with breathless interest, her fluted red lips parted as if half in wonder, half in joy, over some strange revelation, and her great blue eyes swimming in a mist of tears. He smiled a look of recognition into her soul and she answered with a smile that seemed to say "I've known you always. Why haven't you seen me sooner?" He recognised her instantly from Mrs. Durham's description and his heart gave a cry of joy. From that moment every word that he uttered was spoken to her. Sometimes as he would look straight through her eyes into her soul, she would flush red to the roots of her brown-black hair, but she never lowered her gaze. He closed his speech in a round of applause that was renewed again and again. His old classmate, Bob St. Clare, rushed forward to greet him.

"Old fellow, you've covered yourself with glory. By George, that was great! Come, here's a hundred girls want to meet you."

He was introduced to a host of beauties who showered him with extravagant compliments which he accepted without affectation. He knew he had outdone himself that day, and he knew why. The One Woman he had been searching the world for was there, and inspired him beyond all he had ever dared before.

He was disappointed in not seeing her among the crowd who were shaking his hand. He looked anxiously over the heads of those near by to see if she had gone. He saw her standing talking to two stylishly dressed young

men.

When the crowd had melted away from the rostrum, she walked straight toward him extending her hand with a gracious smile.

He knew he must look like a fool, but to save him he could not help it, he was simply bubbling over with delight as he grasped her hand, and before she could say a word he said,

"You are Miss Sallie Worth, the Secretary of the Association. My foster mother has described you so accurately I should know you among a thousand."”

"Yes, I have been looking forward with pleasure to our trip to the Springs when I knew we should meet you. I am delighted to see you a month earlier." She said this with a simple earnestness that gave it a deeper meaning than a mere commonplace.

"Do you know that you nearly knocked me off my feet when I first saw you in the crowd?"

"Why? How?" she asked.

"You startled me."

"I hope not unpleasantly," she said, looking up at him with her blue eyes twinkling.

"Oh! Heavens no! You are such a perfect image of the girl she described that I was so astonished I came near shouting at the top of my voice, "There she is!" And that would have astonished the audience, wouldn't it ?"

"It would indeed," she replied blushing just a little. "But I'm forgetting my mission, Mr. Gaston. Papa sent me to apologise for his absence to-day. He was called out of the city on some mill business. He told me to bring you home to dine with him. I'm the Secretary, you know and exercise authority in these matters, so I've fixed that programme. You have no choice. The carriage is waiting."

T

CHAPTER V

THE MORNING OF LOVE

O his dying day Gaston will never forget that ride

to her home with Sallie Worth by his side. It

was a perfect May day. The leaves on the trees. were just grown and flashed in their green satin under the Southern sun, and every flower seemed in full bloom.

A great joy filled his heart with a sense of divine restfulness. He was unusually silent. And then she said something that made him open his eyes in new wonder.

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'Don't drive so fast Ben, and go around the longest way, I'm enjoying this." She paused and a mischievous look came into her eyes as she saw his expression. “I've got the lion here by my side. I want to show all the girls in town that I'm the only one here to-day. It isn't often I've a great man tied down fast like this."

"Why did you spoil the first part of that pretty speech with the last?" he said with a frown.

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"It was only your vanity that made me pause."

Could you read me like that?

'Of course, all men are vain, much vainer than women." Again there was a long silence.

They had reached the outskirts of the city now and were driving slowly through the deep shadows of a great forest.

"What beautiful trees!" he exclaimed.

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They are fine. Do you love big trees?"

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'Yes, they always seem to me to have a soul. It used to make me almost cry to watch them fall beneath Nelse's axe. I'd never have the heart to clear a piece of woods if I owned it."

'I'm so glad to hear you say that. Papa laughed at me when I said something of the sort when he wanted to cut these woods. He left them just to please me. They belong to our place. They hide the house till you get right up to the gate, but I love them."

Again he looked into her eyes and was silent.

"Now, I come to think of it, you're the only girl I've met to-day who hasn't mentioned my speech.

strange."

That's

"How do you know that I'm not saving up something very pretty to say to you later about it?"

"Tell me now."

"No, you've spoiled it by your vanity in asking." She said this looking away carelessly.

“Then I'll interpret your silence as the highest compliment you can pay me. When words fail we are deeply moved."

Vanity of vanity, all is vanity saith the preacher!" she exclaimed lifting her pretty hands.

They turned through a high arched iron gateway, across which was written in gold letters, "Oakwood."

On a gently rising hill on the banks of the Catawba river rose a splendid old Southern mansion, its big Greek columns gleaming through the green trees like polished ivory. A wide porch ran across the full width of the house behind the big pillars, and smaller columns supported the full sweep of a great balcony above. The house was built of brick with Portland cement finish, and the whole painted in two shades of old ivory, with moss-green roof and dark rich Pompeian red brick foundations. With its green background of magnolia trees it seemed like a