a general to be underrated, and never so little as when beaten. I don't like these cats in a corner. We shall have to make up our minds to lose man for man until we, who are numerically better off, have enough men left to win with."

"Did thee ever play poker very much, Fox?" inquired Mr. Wilmington without looking up from his plate. Like many of the descendants of Friends, he was apt to talk to those still of the society in Friends' language.

The soldier looked up at Mrs. Westerley, and replied demurely, "I have some dim memory of having heard it described when I was well, rather young; but as a rule, thee knows it is not largely cultivated in Twelfth Street ¡meeting."

"Well," continued the old gentleman, still pecking at the minutest amount of dinner on which life could be sustained,

"well, when thee gets some one in command who can play poker, I think Mr. Lee will have to go home and go to work."

"How much better," said Wendell, gayly, "to have a competitive examination on poker, open to grays and blues, and accept the result as ending the war. General Lee"

"Pardon me, doctor, Mr. Lee," said Wilmington gravely.

Wendell did not care much whether Robert Lee was given his titular rank or not, and on the whole hated war talk; but he returned, smiling, "Thanks! Mr. Lee will be beaten, as Colonel Fox said, when we make up our minds to lose enough men in drawn battles to leave us at last with more men than he can meet."

"Do you have all these theories in camp, colonel?" asked the widow.

“Oh, enough, and too many of them; less now than we had. But camp life is monotonous, and even Mr. Wilmington's educational resource gets played out, literally I may say, at times."

"Do you remember," said Wendell, "what one of Marlborough's generals told the London alderman when he asked if fighting was n't hard work?”

"No," replied Fox. "What was it?" "The general declared it was n't very hard, because they fought every morning, and had all the rest of the day to themselves."

"Delightful!" cried Mrs. Westerley. Her doctor was clearly coming on.

"Who can help wondering," said the colonel," what the alderman answered!" "That is the defect of most good stories," replied Wendell.

"I wish that general could regulate our little affair," returned Fox. "It is one day's fighting and six weeks of chasséing east and west. Still, it can end only one way, and it would n't be worth while betting on as a matter of chance."

"I rather think we have all bet pretty heavily," said Wilmington. "I've bet a good deal before in my day, but this time I bet more than I liked."

"Indeed?" exclaimed Wendell, with indiscretion, and rather astonished.

Wilmington looked up, with a little of the tremulousness of age in his face. "My boy Jack," he said. Then he looked down at his plate, and there was a brief but perceptible silence, which the widow broke.

"The illustration is faultless," laughed Fox, "but it is n't war."

"No," answered Wendell; "but it is the only war a race like ours can wage, when it is fighting against itself."

friend Jack Wilmington."

Wilmington looked up at her with a faint smile of pleasure. He smiled often, but never laughed.

"What I fear most," said Wendell, "is that when we have conquered the

"Oh, no, no,” replied Fox; "the American common sense will stop that. I don't fear guerrilla warfare. The negroes will be the great question."

"Yes," assented Mrs. Westerley. "It is hideous to think of. One can't but pity the South.”

"But no one believes your abuse," asserted the colonel.

"And it was n't true, then?" asked Wilmington, peering under his lazy

Unluckily," said Wendell, "it will be quite as much our business as theirs.'

"Yes, exactly," answered the hostess. "Oh, there is one of those horrid newsboys! 'Great battle on the Potomac,' of course. Shall I send for a paper?"

No, don't, my dear Mrs. Westerley," exclaimed Wilmington. "I try to think as little as I can of it all. In fact, I read the papers but once a week, on Sunday."

"I wish," said Fox, "that all the editors could be sent to the front."

"With all my heart," returned the widow; "and no doubt you would send the copperheads to reinforce Lee, and so give me a chance of seeing it all."

"No, indeed! A brigade of Mrs. Westerleys at the rebel front would be fatal," cried Fox, laughing.

val at the very comfortable dinner the Quaker colonel was making.

"I did not say it was n't true," retorted Mrs. Westerley, "and New York always is a temptation to me."

"Then why do you stay here?" said Wendell. "To be able to go where you will, and to live where you wish to live, seems to me the most desirable of human liberties."

"Why do I live here? Oh, because I am better here."

Morally better?" asked the colonel. "I decline to be catechised!" she returned. "If I were as good as Mr. Wilmington," she continued, with malice in her eyes," I would n't have to escape temptation by change of residence."

"I knew my time would come," murmured that little old gentleman, remembering with sly satisfaction that he had been rather agreeably naughty in his time, in many localities.

"As to Gettysburg," she resumed, "you were all of you badly enough scared, men and women. For my part, I never believed Lee would get to Philadelphia, - never!"

"No, no," she said, "I like it, and it suits me; but now and then I do incline to go somewhere else, just, you know, to recover a little my belief in the possibility of the unexpected."

"Oh, that is too outrageous!" laughed Fox. "As to New York, it is a pleasant casino, supported by stock gambling."

"And is it true, Mrs. Westerley," said Wilmington, "that you told Morton that bad New Yorkers, when they die, go to Philadelphia."

"I!" retorted the widow. "Impossible! Somebody in Boston said something like that about Paris. But I always am maligned."

conceived for a moment the idea that nothing less than a thankful prayer for a good dinner could be in the old man's mind; but presently he drank off his wine, and remarked, "A good grape juice. '28, I think. I did n't suppose there was any of it left."

Wendell certainly found it good. The second wine was dismissed with, "I would n't advise you to take that. It wants a good fining, Colonel Fox." The colonel was of like opinion.

"There is no label on this; but women take no care of their wines. Hem," he said, as he set down his glass, "I remember that wine well. It is pre

"And did it take you long to think of it?" inquired the old gentleman.

"Oh, really," complained the widow, "I see it is full time for me to leave you. I was never so abused in my life!" and while speaking she arose, saying to Mr. Wilmington, as the old gentleman, bowing low, held the door open, "You will take my place, please; and there are, I think, some madeiras you may like. At least, I have done my best for you! John, the cigars are in the sideboard. I will give you your coffee in the drawing-room."

Then Mr. Wilmington shifted his seat to the place she had left, and the servant put in front of him, on silver coasters, four or five tall, slender, antique decanters.

The old gentleman, with his head on one side, looked through massive gold eyeglasses at the silver labels, and very deliberately rearranging the bottles filled his glass, and passed the wine to Wendell." With the sun, if you please," he said. "A little cold, John, this wine," upon which, to Wendell's amazement, he clasped the wine-glass in both hands, and shut his eyes with a tranquil expression of such utter satisfaction at the coming pleasure, and with so much of a look of devotion, that the doctor

"I can't say that I do," said Wendell, rather puzzled at the appellation. "I know little or nothing of wines."

"Well," remarked Fox, "Mr. Wilmington is a good instructor. I advise you to begin your education."

"But what on earth is smoke?" asked the doctor.

"Don't you taste it?" returned Wilmington. "There is no better madeira. I don't know many as good. A little eggshell would help it."

"Yes, a little eggshell," repeated Fox, with equal gravity.

"I am glad you still like it," exclaimed the old gentleman; "the taste is going out. I don't know five lads who can tell sherry from a fine madeira. My Jack says he likes cider. 'Likes cider,'-good heavens! Will you take another glass, doctor, or a cigar?

"Unless you want to be excommunicated vinously," said Fox, laughing, "you can't drink after you smoke; and so the cigars were brought and there was more war talk, during which Fox slipped away to chat with Mrs. Westerley, and the doctor was left alone with Mr. Wilmington.

Wendell very soon found that any discussion which did not involve wine talk was, at this stage of the dinner, quite out of the question, and he therefore wisely yielded, and as a consequence rose many degrees in the old gentleman's favor. What he learned as to wines it is perhaps not worth while to inquire." And when I say wines," said Mr. Wilmington, "I mean madeiras, sir. There are other drinks; but excepting now and then a rare claret, a very rare claret, there are no wines except madeira. None, sir!" said the old gentleman, with unusual warmth, 66 none, sir!"

He talked of wines as people talk of other people, of their vices or virtues, their births and decays. His dinners were gossips about wines. Such was the fashion of his day, and he and a very few old friends held to it with the tenacity of age. The friends were dropping fast, but the wines remained, and through them more than in any other way were aroused his pleasantest memories of departed feasts and the comrades at whom he had smiled above some golden south side vintage, in days when manners were more courtly and healths were drunk.

At last, when Wendell timidly remarked that all this care about wines must take up a good deal of time, Mr. Wilmington said, "Yes. It was quite true; they were like women and needed a good deal of attention, and that was just why Morton's wines had all gone to the devil. And a very pretty cellar he might have had, too, if he had only looked after it."

Sunday afternoon, he added, he himself had found a good quiet time to see to his madeiras ; and, as Wendell learned later, any Sunday the old gentleman was to be found in his wine garret, contem

plative and surrounded by demijohns, and eggshells, and what not.

At last, in despair, Wendell suggested that, as the afternoon was wearing on, they might as well have their coffee; upon which Mr. Wilmington reluctantly finished his glass, saying, "Well, I shall get you to dine with me, when Morton mends. I would like you to taste my pale heriot. That is very high up, sir, - very high up."

Just before they joined Mrs. Westerley, the colonel had said, "I do not believe you were really afraid."

"No, I was not afraid. I suppose I am like your raw recruits: want of experience makes them courageous. I can't realize the horrors of war. Were you ever afraid, Colonel Fox? A stupid question, I suppose; but were you ever, now, really?"

"Yes," he replied softly, "once or twice of you."

The widow flushed a little, and was glad as she heard the coming steps of her other guests.

"I mean

you know what I mean, in war," she said.

"Yes," he answered, quietly, "I have been so afraid, Mrs. Westerley, I have prayed God to help me."

"Oh," she murmured, under her breath, "you are a brave man to say it." "There are things a man will say to to some women which he will say to no man," he rejoined. "And you go back to-morrow?" she exclaimed, hastily.

a woman

"Yes."