by hedges and shaded by an almost primeval growth of elms or maples.  The whole hamlet might be mistaken for a lordly park or an old-fashioned German Spa.  Family marketing was mostly done in Warchester; hence the village shops were like Arabian bazaars, few but all-supplying.  The most pregnant evidence of the approach of modern ways that tinged the primitive color of the village life, was the then new railway skirting furtively through the meadows on the northern limits, as if decently ashamed of intruding upon such idyllic tranquillity.  The little Gothic station, cunningly hidden behind a clustering grove of oaks at a respectful distance from the Corners, like the lodge of a great estate, reconciled those who had at first fought the iron mischief-maker.

The public edifices of the town—­the Episcopal church, the free academy, the bank, the young ladies’ seminary—­were very unlike such institutions in the bustling, treeless towns of to-day.  Corinthian columns and Greek friezes adorned these architectural evidences of Acredale’s affluence and taste.  The village had grown up on private grounds, conceded to the public year by year as the children and dependents of the founders increased.  The Spragues were the founders, and they had never been anxious to alienate their patrimony.  Acredale is not now the sylvan sanctuary of rural simplicity it was thirty years ago—­before the war.  The febrile tentacles of Warchester had not yet reached out to make its vernal recesses the court quarter for the “new rich.”  In Jack Sprague’s young warrior days the village was three miles from the most suburban limits of the city.  There was not even a horse-car, or, as fashionable Warchesterians have it, a “tram,” to remind the tranquil villagers that life had any need more pressing than a jaunt to the post twice a day.  Some “city folks” did hold villas on the outskirts, but they used them only for short seasons in the late summer, when the air at the lake began to grow too sharp for outdoor pleasures.

Society in the place was patriarchal as an English shire town.  The large Sprague mansion, about which the village clustered at a respectful distance, was the “Castle” of local phrase.  Much of the glory of early days had departed, however, when the Senator—­Jack’s papa—­died.  The widow found herself unable to maintain the affluent state her lord had loved.  His legal practice, rather than the wide acres of his domain, had supported a hospitality famous from Bucephalo to Washington.  But with prudent management the family had abundance, and, as Jack often said, he was a fortune in himself.  When the time came he would revive the splendors his father loved to associate with the home of his ancestors.

“But where are we to get this splendor now, Jack?” Olympia inquired, as the youth was dilating to his mother on the wonders to come.  “Private soldiers get just thirteen dollars a month; and if you continue smoking—­as I am informed all men do in the army—­I expect to have to stint my pin-money expenses to eke out your tobacco bills.”