creases about his mouth: She smiled, too, and then the tears hid him from
her.

Strange that the face which in anger withered cowards and made men look
grave, was capable of such infinite tenderness,--tenderness and sorrow.
The Colonel took Virginia in his arms, and she sobbed against his
shoulder, as of old.

"Jinny, did he--?"

"Yes--"

"Lige was right, and--and you, Jinny--I should never have trusted him.
The sneak!"

Virginia raised her head. The sun was slanting in yellow bars through the
branches of the great trees, and a robin's note rose above the bass
chorus of the frogs. In the pauses, as she listened, it seemed as if she
could hear the silver sound of the river over the pebbles far below.

"Honey," said the Colonel,--"I reckon we're just as poor as white trash."

Virginia smiled through her tears.

"Honey," he said again, after a pause, "I must keep my word and let him
have the business."

She did not reproach him.

"There is a little left, a very little," he continued slowly, painfully.