She asked him, her eager eyes uplifted to his face, her small hands clasped, wondering and hope bursting into instant full dawn.  A way hope has of doing in youth.

The old man went through his accustomed facial pantomime, slapped himself on the thigh, and blurted out: 

“In town wid de Unions.  He is Kyurnel Robert Marsden now.”

“Who told you, Uncle Squire?” Her eyes were filled with sudden gathered tears, and her scarlet lips trembled.

“Jim, dat is Kyurnel Tadlock’s man, telled me.  He seed him en know’d him.  But he is mity sick, honey, mity sick.”

“O, Uncle Squire,” cried the delighted child, “won’t mamma go right straight in town and take me?”

“Well, now, dat’s er gray hoss ob ernuther color.  Mebbe she mout, en mebbe she mouten.”

The child’s countenance fell, her sensitive nature touched.  Already a womanly intuition, wonderful in one so childlike and ignorant of the world’s ways, begun to stir faintly.

“If mamma can’t leave Aunt Betsy, don’t you reckon she will let me go with you in town to see him, Uncle Squire?”

“You en your mar fur dat, honey.  But Squire’s your man.”

That night after Aunt Betsy had been given her medicine and tucked away, the child climbed to her mamma’s lap and coddled down to her.  Instinctively she wanted the magnetism of touch to help her.  And then, with her warm breath playing about her mamma’s cheek, and her little hand nestling in hers, she told her what Squire had heard.  Mrs. Marsden was not especially startled.  She had suffered so much it seemed to her sometimes that her feelings were numb.

“Aren’t you going in town to see him, Mamma?” the child asked.

“Me!  Oh, no; I couldn’t.  You don’t know what you ask, darling.”  Tears gathered in the beautiful sad eyes.

“Then, may I go, Mamma?  May I?  Squire will take good care of me.”

The mother-arms tightened around the childish form.  An unwonted jealousy sprung up in the mother-heart.  Hitherto she had had her all to herself.

“Would you leave me, darling,” she asked, “my one comfort?  Suppose he should take you away from me, and carry you off where I could seldom see you, what would become of me?”

The child looked up in the beautiful, agitated face with surprise.

“He would never do that.  Mamma, never.  In the first place, nobody on earth could take me away from my darling mamma.  Then he wouldn’t take me away if he could.  That would be too mean for any thing, and Squire says my papa is a splendid gentleman.”

Mrs. Marsden made no reply to this.  She sat gazing dreamily into the glowing fire.  Splendid?  Yes, that was what she thought him before the hard feeling came between them.  She recalled his eyes, glowing—­tender.  Her little daughter had them exactly.  Those ardent glances had so bewitched her she could have followed them to the ends of the earth.