“I wasn’t expecting you,” said Theodora; “but now that you’ve come you may sit on the step.  Didn’t you get my letter?”

“I did,” said the Captain; “and that’s why I came.  I say, now, Theo, reconsider your answer, won’t you?”

Theodora smiled softly upon him.  He carried his years well.  She was really fond of his strength, his wholesome looks, his manliness—­perhaps, if—­

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head, positively; “it’s out of the question.  I like you a whole lot, but marrying won’t do.  My age and yours are—­but don’t make me say it again—­I told you in my letter.”

The Captain flushed a little through the bronze on his face.  He was silent for a while, gazing sadly into the twilight.  Beyond a line of woods that he could see was a field where the boys in blue had once bivouacked on their march toward the sea.  How long ago it seemed now!  Truly, Fate and Father Time had tricked him sorely.  Just a few years interposed between himself and happiness!

Theodora’s hand crept down and rested in the clasp of his firm, brown one.  She felt, at least, that sentiment that is akin to love.

“Don’t take it so hard, please,” she said, gently.  “It’s all for the best.  I’ve reasoned it out very wisely all by myself.  Some day you’ll be glad I didn’t marry you.  It would be very nice and lovely for a while—­but, just think!  In only a few short years what different tastes we would have!  One of us would want to sit by the fireside and read, and maybe nurse neuralgia or rheumatism of evenings, while the other would be crazy for balls and theatres and late suppers.  No, my dear friend.  While it isn’t exactly January and May, it’s a clear case of October and pretty early in June.”

“I’d always do what you wanted me to do, Theo.  If you wanted to—­”

“No, you wouldn’t.  You think now that you would, but you wouldn’t.  Please don’t ask me any more.”

The Captain had lost his battle.  But he was a gallant warrior, and when he rose to make his final adieu his mouth was grimly set and his shoulders were squared.

He took the train for the North that night.  On the next evening he was back in his room, where his sword was hanging against the wall.  He was dressing for dinner, tying his white tie into a very careful bow.  And at the same time he was indulging in a pensive soliloquy.

“’Pon my honour, I believe Theo was right, after all.  Nobody can deny that she’s a peach, but she must be twenty-eight, at the very kindest calculation.”

For you see, the Captain was only nineteen, and his sword had never been drawn except on the parade ground at Chattanooga, which was as near as he ever got to the Spanish-American War.

XVI

THE CHURCH WITH AN OVERSHOT-WHEEL

Lakelands is not to be found in the catalogues of fashionable summer resorts.  It lies on a low spur of the Cumberland range of mountains on a little tributary of the Clinch River.  Lakelands proper is a contented village of two dozen houses situated on a forlorn, narrow-gauge railroad line.  You wonder whether the railroad lost itself in the pine woods and ran into Lakelands from fright and loneliness, or whether Lakelands got lost and huddled itself along the railroad to wait for the cars to carry it home.