She kissed him again, and smiled down at him with moist eyes, and talked
to him in tender tones, stroking his hair and telling him of Norman's
sorrow for the trouble, of her own unhappiness, and of her regret that
the doctors would not let him be moved. When she left, it was with a
promise that she would come back again and see him; and Gordon knew that
he had a friend in England of his own kind, and a truth somehow had
slipped into his heart which set at odds many opinions which he had
thought principles. He had never thought to feel kindly toward a Yankee.

When Gordon was able to be out again, his father wished him to go and
thank his former foe who had rescued him. But it was too hard an ordeal
for the boy to face. Even the memory of Mrs. Wentworth could not
reconcile him to this.

"You don't know how hard it is, father," he said, with that assurance
with which boyhood always draws a line between itself and the rest of
the world. "Did you ever have to ask pardon of one who had fought you?"

General Keith's face wore a singular expression. Suddenly he felt a
curious sensation in a spot in his right side, and he was standing in a
dewy glade in a piece of woodland on a Spring morning, looking at a
slim, serious young man standing very straight and still a few paces
off, with a pistol gripped in his hand, and, queerly enough, his name,
too, was Norman Wentworth. But he was not thinking of him. He was
thinking of a tall girl with calm blue eyes, whom he had walked with the
day before, and who had sent him away dazed and half maddened. Then some
one a little to one side spoke a few words and began to count, "One,
two--" There was a simultaneous report of two pistols, two little puffs
of smoke, and when the smoke had cleared away, the other man with the
pistol was sinking slowly to the ground, and he himself was tottering