Mebbe I'm a fool, I don't know. But, anyway, go ahead an' tell us
about your mother."

"Well, you see, when she was only a young woman she and Captain
Brown fell in love. He was a soldier then, before the war. And he
was ordered East for the war when she was away nursing her sister
Laura. And then came the news that he was killed at Shiloh. And
she married a man who had loved her for years and years. He was a
boy in the same wagon-train coming across the plains. She liked
him, but she didn't love him. And afterwerd came the news that my
father wasn't killed after all. So it made her very sad, but it
did not spoil her life. She was a good mother end a good wife and
all that, but she was always sad, and sweet, and gentle, and I
think her voice was the most beautiful in the world."

"She was game, all right," Billy approved.

"And my father never married. He loved her all the time. I've got
a lovely poem home that she wrote to him. It's just wonderful,
and it sings like music. Well, long, long afterward her husband
died, and then she and my father made their love marriage. They
didn't get married until 1882, and she was pretty well along."

More she told him, as they stood by the gate, and Saxon tried to
think that the good-bye kiss was a trifle longer than just
ordinary,

"How about nine o'clock?" he queried across the gate. "Don't
bother about lunch or anything. I'll fix all that up. You just be
ready at nine."