Brokenly, with many pauses from weakness, he dictated his last letter, and she wrote his words as well as she could see to do so.  “They will be all the sweeter and more soothing for your tears, my dear,” he said.

He kept up with wonderful composure until he came to his message to “little Hal,” his youngest child.  Then the old soldier broke down and reached out his arms in vain yet irrepressible longing.  “Oh, if I could kiss the little fellow just once before—­” he moaned.

For a few moments he and the girl at his side just wept together, and then the old man said almost sternly, “Tell him to honor his mother and his God, to live for the South, for which his father died.  Say, if he will do this he shall have my blessing, not without.  Now, my child, I trust this letter to you.  Good-by and God bless you.  I wish to be alone a little while and face the last enemy calmly.”

As she knelt down and kissed him tears again rushed to his eyes and he murmured, “That was good and sweet of you, my child.  Keep your heart simple and tender as it is now.  Good-by.”

Returning to her room with the portfolio she met her cousin in the upper hall.  He fixed his eyes searchingly upon her and with the air of one who knew very much began, “Cousin Lou, my eyes are not so often blinded with tears as yours, yet they see more perhaps than you are aware of.  I’m willing to woo you as gallantly as can any man, but you’ve got to keep some faith with me as the representative of our house and of the cause which, as a Southern girl, should be first always in its claims.”

Her heart fluttered, for his words suggested both knowledge and a menace.  At the same time the scenes she had passed through, especially the last, lifted her so far above his plane of life that she shrank from him with something very like contempt.

“Do you know what I have been writing?” she asked sternly.

“I neither know nor care.  I only wish you to understand that you cannot trifle with me nor wrong me with impunity.”

“Oh!” she cried, with a strong repellant gesture, “why can’t you see and understand?  You fairly make me loathe the egotism which, in scenes like these, can think only of self.  As if I had either time or inclination to be trifling with you, whatever you mean by that.  Brave men are dying heroically and unselfishly, thinking of others, while ‘I, me and gallant wooing,’ combined with vague threats against one whom you are in honor bound to protect, are the only words on your lips.  How can you be so unmanly?  What are you, compared with that noble old colonel whose last words I have just received?  If you care a straw for my opinion, why are you so foolish as to compel me to draw comparisons?  Do, for manhood’s sake, forget yourself for once.”

He was almost livid from rage as he replied harshly, “You’ll rue these words!”

She looked at him scornfully as she said, “It’s strange, but your words and expression remind me of Perkins.  He might make you a good ally.”