He did not say why, but he gripped the arms of his chair tightly, while drops of sweat stood upon his forehead.  He was in the clearing again with Dora living, instead of dead, and the moon was shining on her face as she stood in the turn of the road and gave him the promise she had kept so faithfully.  Judy belonged to that far-off time, and he’d keep her at any cost.  He called himself a sentimental old fool after Peter left him, and wondered why his eyes grew misty and there was a lump in his throat as his thoughts kept going back to the South he wished he had never seen.

“Poor little Dora!” he said to himself; “but for me she might have been alive and married to some respectable—­No, by George!” he added suddenly, with a start which made his foot jump as he recalled the class into which Dora would probably have married if he had not crossed her path.  “No, by George, I believe I’d rather she died in her youthful beauty, and was buried by Jake in the sand, than to see her the wife of some lout, and rubbing her gums with snuff.”

He was roused from his reverie by wheels crunching on the gravel walk up to a side door, and he heard Sarah’s voice and Cindy’s, the cook’s, and finally Amy’s giving directions, and felt sure some one had come for whatever was to go from the Crompton Place to the sale.  Ruby had not intended sending so soon when she left the house, but chancing to meet a drayman who had just deposited a load in the salesrooms, she bade him go for whatever was ready, thinking, “I’ll strike while the iron is hot, and before Mrs. Amy has time to change her mind.”

There was no danger of that, at least as far as the dresses were concerned.  Like everything connected with her stage life, they had been to her a kind of nightmare whenever she thought of them, and she was glad to be rid of them.  Mandy Ann and Judy did give her a few pangs, and especially the latter, and as she wrapped it in tissue paper she held it for a moment pressed close to her, and began a song she had heard from the negroes as they sat around their light-wood fire after their day’s work was done.  It was a weird melody which Homer Smith had caught up and revised and modernized, with a change of words in some places, and made her sing, knowing it would bring thunders of applause.  She heard the roar now, and saw the audience and the flowers falling around her, and with an expression of disgust she put Judy into Sarah’s hands, and said, “Take her away, and quick, too.  She, or something, brings it back.”

Sarah took poor, discarded Judy, tied her in her chair in the old doll house, which was placed on top of the two trunks containing Amy’s concert dresses, and then the drayman started up his horse, and the Colonel heard the wheels a second time coming past his window.  With a great effort he succeeded in getting upon his well foot, and, dragging the other after him, hobbled on his crutches to the window in time to see the cart as it turned into the avenue.  As far as he could see it he watched it as the doll house swung from side to side, and the drayman held it to keep it from falling off.