Crittenden climbed out slowly and slowly mounted the stiles.  On the top step he sat down, looking at the old homestead and the barn and the stubble wheat-fields beyond, and at the servants coming from the quarters to welcome him, while his mother stood watching and fondly humouring him.

“Uncle Ephraim,” he said to a respectful old white-haired man, “where’s my buggy?”

“Right where you left it, suh.”

“Well, hitch up—­” Raincrow, he was about to say, and then he remembered that Raincrow was dead.  “Have you got anything to drive?”

“Yessuh; we got Mr. Basil’s little mare.”

“Hitch her up to my buggy, then, right away.  I want you to drive me.”

The old darky looked puzzled, but Mrs. Crittenden, still with the idea of humouring him, nodded for him to obey, and the old man turned toward the stable.

“Yessuh—­right away, suh.”

“Where’s Basil, mother?”

Phyllis turned her face quickly.

“He’ll be here soon,” said his mother, with a smile.

The doctor looked at his flushed face.

“Come on, my boy,” he said, firmly.  “You must get out of the sun.”

Crittenden shook his head.

“Mother, have I ever done anything that you asked me not to do?”

“No, my son.”

“Please don’t make me begin now,” he said, gently.  “Is—­is she at home?”

“Yes; but she is not very well.  She has been ill a long while,” she added, but she did not tell him that Judith had been nursing at Tampa, and that she had been sent home, stricken with fever.

The doctor had been counting his pulse, and now, with a grave look, pulled a thermometer from his pocket; but Crittenden waved him away.

“Not yet, Doctor; not yet,” he said, and stopped a moment to control his voice before he went on.

“I know what’s the matter better than you do.  I’m going to have the fever again; but I’ve got something to do before I go to bed, or I’ll never get up again.  I have come up from Tampa just this way, and I can go on like this for two more hours; and I’m going.”

The doctor started to speak, but Mrs. Crittenden shook her head at him, and Phyllis’s face, too, was pleading for him.

“Mother, I’ll be back in two hours, and then I’ll do just what you and the doctor say; but not now.”

* * * * *

Judith sat bare-headed on the porch with a white shawl drawn closely about her neck and about her half-bare arms.  Behind her, on the floor of the porch, was, where she had thrown it, a paper in which there was a column about the home-coming of Crittenden—­plain Sergeant Crittenden.  And there was a long editorial comment, full of national spirit, and a plain statement to the effect that the next vacant seat in Congress was his without the asking.