"Caroline Darrah Brown, look me straight in the eyes," interrupted the
major in a commanding voice. He sat up and bent his keen black eyes that
sparkled under his heavy white brows with absolute luminosity upon the
girl at his side. When aroused the major was a live wire and he was
buckling on his sword to do battle with a woman-trouble, and a dire one.

"Now," he continued, "I'm going to say things to you that you are to
understand and remember, young woman. Your father did come down among us
with what you have heard called a 'carpetbag' in his hands, but it wasn't
an _empty_ one: and while the sums he handed out to each of us might be
considered inadequate, still they were a purchasing power at a time
when things were congested for the lack of any circulating medium
whatever. True, I sold him half my thousand acres for a song; but the
song fenced the other half, bought implements and stock, and made Matilda
possible. She was eighteen and I was twenty-eight when we joined forces
and it was decidedly to the tune of your father's 'song'. It was the same
with the rest of his--friends. You must see that in the painful processes
of reconstructing us the carpetbag had its uses. If it went away
plethoric with coal and iron and lumber, it left a little gold in its
wake. And Peters Brown--"

"Major," said Caroline in a brave voice, "it killed him, the memory of it
and not being able to bring me back to her people. He was changed and he
realized that he left me very much alone in the world. If there had been
any of her immediate family alive we might have felt differently--but
her friends--I didn't know that I would be welcomed. Now--now--I begin
to hope. I want to give some of it back! I have so much--"

"Caroline, child," answered the major with a smile that was infinitely