at the foot of the hill, and just across it, you will see the white
palings, and the big gate with stone pillars, and two tremendous
brass dogs on top, showing their teeth and ready to spring. There's
no mistaking the place, because it is the only one left in the
country that looks like the good old times before the war; and the
Yankees would not have spared it, had it not been such comfortable
bombproof headquarters for their officers. It's our show place now,
and General Darrington keeps it up in better style, than any other
estate I know."

"Thank you. I will find it."

Beryl walked away in the direction indicated, and the agent of the
railway station, leaning against the door of the baggage room,
looked with curious scrutiny after her.

"I should like to know who she is. No ordinary person, that is
clear. Such a grand figure and walk, and such a steady look in her
big solemn eyes, as if she saw straight through a person, clothes,
flesh and all. Wonder what her business can be with the old
general?"

From early childhood Beryl had listened so intently to her mother's
glowing descriptions of the beauty and elegance of her old home "Elm
Bluff," that she soon began to identify the land-marks along the
road, alter passing the cemetery, where so many generations of
Darringtons slept in one corner, enclosed by a lofty iron railing;
exclusive in death as in life; jealously guarded and locked from
contact with the surrounding dwellers in "God's Acre."