There were a few moments of embarrassing silence.

“Do you intend to give that package to Mr. Falkner yourself, Colonel?” asked Mrs. Scott.

“I shall hand it over to the Excelsior Company,” said the Colonel, “but I shall inform Ned of what I have done.”

“Then,” said Mrs. Scott, “will you kindly take a message from us to him?”

“If you wish it.”

“You will be doing me a great favor, Colonel,” said Hale, politely.

Whatever the message was, six months later it brought Edward Falkner, the reestablished superintendent of the Excelsior Ditch, to Eagle’s Court.  As he and Kate stood again on the plateau, looking towards the distant slopes once more green with verdure, Falkner said—­

“Everything here looks as it did the first day I saw it, except your sister.”

“The place does not agree with her,” said Kate hurriedly.  “That is why my brother thinks of leaving it before the winter sets in.”

“It seems so sad,” said Falkner, “for the last words poor George said to me, as he left to join his cousin’s corps at Richmond, were:  ’If I’m not killed, Ned, I hope some day to stand again beside Mrs. Hale, at the window in Eagle’s Court, and watch you and Kate coming home!’”