“It is a strange fate,” he wrote, “that should after all these years have arrayed us against each other thus, and have brought our boys face to face in a foreign land.  I hear that your boy behaved with the courage which I knew your son would show.”

General Keith, in turn, expressed his gratitude for the promptness and efficiency with which the other’s son had apprehended the danger and met it.

“My son owes his life to him,” he said.  “As to the flag, it was the fortune of war,” and he thought the incident did credit to both combatants.  He “only wished,” he said, “that in every fight over a flag there were the same ability to restore to life those who defended it.”

Gordon, however, could not participate in this philosophic view of his father’s.  He had lost his flag; he had been defeated in the battle.  And he owed his life to his victorious enemy.

He was but a boy, and his defeat was gall and wormwood to him.  It was but very little sweetened by the knowledge that his victor had come to ask after him.

He was lying in bed one afternoon, lonely and homesick and sad.  His father was away, and no one had been in to him for, perhaps, an hour.  The shrill voices of children and the shouts of boys floated in at the open window from somewhere afar off.  He was not able to join them.  It depressed him, and he began to pine for the old plantation—­a habit that followed him through life in the hours of depression.

Suddenly there was a murmur of voices outside the room, and after a few moments the door softly opened, and a lady put her head in and looked at him.  She was a stranger and was dressed in a travelling-suit.  Gordon gazed at her without moving or uttering a sound.  She came in and closed the door gently behind her, and then walked softly over to the side of the bed and looked down at him with kind eyes.  She was not exactly pretty, but to Gordon she appeared beautiful, and he knew that she was a friend.  Suddenly she dropped down on her knees beside him and put her arm over him caressingly.

“I am Norman’s mother,” she said, “and I have come to look after you and to take you home with me if they will let me have you.”  She stooped over and kissed him.

The boy put up his pinched face and kissed her.

“I will go,” he said in his weak voice.

She kissed him again, and smiled down at him with moist eyes, and talked to him in tender tones, stroking his hair and telling him of Norman’s sorrow for the trouble, of her own unhappiness, and of her regret that the doctors would not let him be moved.  When she left, it was with a promise that she would come back again and see him; and Gordon knew that he had a friend in England of his own kind, and a truth somehow had slipped into his heart which set at odds many opinions which he had thought principles.  He had never thought to feel kindly toward a Yankee.

When Gordon was able to be out again, his father wished him to go and thank his former foe who had rescued him.  But it was too hard an ordeal for the boy to face.  Even the memory of Mrs. Wentworth could not reconcile him to this.