the Confederate army to Frankfort, in Kentucky. There could, at any rate, be no easy or safe coming up for such a one as General Tom, seeing that, being a soldier, he would be regarded as a spy, and certainly treated as a prisoner if found within the Northern lines. Nevertheless, General as he was, he kept his engagement with Ada, and made his way into the gardens of his father’s house on the night of Christmas Eve. And Ada was the first who knew that he was there. Her ear first caught the sound of his footsteps, and her hand raised for him the latch of the garden door.

“Oh, Tom, it is not you?”

“But it is though, Ada, my darling!” Then there was a little pause in his speech. “Did I not tell you that I should see you to-day?”

“Hush! Do you know who is here? Your brother came across to us from the Green River yesterday.”

“The mischief he did! Then I shall never find my way back again. If you knew what I have gone through for this!”

Ada immediately stepped out through the door and on to the snow, standing close up against him as she whispered to him, “I don’t think Frank would betray you,” she said. “I don’t think he would.”

“I doubt him, doubt him hugely. But I suppose I must trust him. I got through the pickets close to Cumberland Gap, and I left my horse at Stoneley’s, half-way between this and Lexington. I cannot go back to-night, now that I have come so far!”

“Wait, Tom; wait a minute, and I will go in and tell your mother. But you must be hungry. Shall I bring you food?”

“Hungry enough, but I will not eat my father’s victuals out here in the snow.”

“Wait a moment, dearest, till I speak to my aunt.”

Then Ada slipped back into the house, and soon managed to get Mrs Reckenthorpe away from the room, in which the Major and his second son were sitting.

“Tom is here,” she said, “in the garden. He has encountered all this danger to pay us a visit because it is Christmas. Oh, aunt, what are we to do? He says that Frank would certainly give him up!”

Mrs Reckenthorpe was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, but even with this advantage on her side, Ada’s tidings were almost too much for her. She, however, at last managed to consult the Major, and he resolved upon appealing to the generosity of his younger son. By this time, the Confederate general was warming himself in the kitchen, having declared that his brother might do as he pleased;—he would not skulk away from his father’s house in the night.

“Frank,” said the father, as his younger son sat silently thinking of what had been told him, “it cannot be your duty to be false to your father in his own house.”

“It is not always easy, sir, for a man to see what is his duty. I wish that either he or I had not come here.”

“But he is here; and you, his brother, would not take advantage of his coming to his father’s house?” said the old man.

“Do you remember, sir, how he told me last year that, if ever he met me on the field, he would shoot me like a dog?”

“But, Frank, you know that he is the last man in the world to carry out such a threat. Now he has come here with great danger.”