Gordon Keith | Page 9

stored elsewhere until
after the war, now went to the purchaser of the place for less than the
price of their frames. Among them was the portrait of the man in the
steel coat and hat, who had the General's face.
What General Keith felt during this transition no one, perhaps, ever
knew; certainly his son did not know it, and did not dream of it until
later in life.
It was, however, not only in the South that fortunes were lost by the
war. As vast as was the increase of riches at the North among those
who stayed at home, it did not extend to those who took the field.
Among these was a young officer named Huntington, from Brookford,
a little town on the sunny slope that stretches eastwardly from the
Alleghanies to the Delaware. Captain Huntington, having entered the
army on the outbreak of the war, like Colonel Keith rose to the rank of
general, and, like General Keith, received a wound that incapacitated
him for service. His wife was a Southern woman, and had died abroad,
just at the close of the war, leaving him a little girl, who was the idol of
his heart. He was interested in the South, and came South to try and
recuperate from the effects of his wound and of exposure during the
war.
The handsomest place in the neighborhood of Elphinstone was

"Rosedale," the family-seat of the Berkeleys. Mr. Berkeley had been
killed in the war, and the plantation went, like Elphinstone and most of
the other old estates, for debt. And General Huntington purchased it.
As soon as General Keith heard of his arrival in the neighborhood, he
called on him and invited him to stay at his house until Rosedale should
be refurnished and made comfortable again. The two gentlemen soon
became great friends, and though many of the neighbors looked
askance at the Federal officer and grumbled at his possessing the old
family-seat of the Berkeleys, the urbanity and real kindness of the
dignified, soldierly young officer soon made his way easier and won
him respect if not friendship. When a man had been a general at the age
of twenty-six, it meant that he was a man, and when General Keith
pronounced that he was a gentleman, it meant that he was a gentleman.
Thus reasoned the neighbors.
His only child was a pretty little girl of five or six years, with great
brown eyes, yellow curls, and a rosebud face that dimpled adorably
when she laughed. When Gordon saw her he recognized her instantly
as the tot who had given her doll to the little dancer two years before.
Her eyes could not be mistaken. She used to drive about in the tiniest of
village carts, drawn by the most Liliputian of ponies, and Gordon used
to call her "Cindy,"--short for Cinderella,--which amused and pleased
her. She in turn called him her sweetheart; tyrannized over him, and
finally declared that she was going to marry him.
"Why, you are not going to have a rebel for a sweetheart?" said her
father.
"Yes, I am. I am going to make him Union," she declared gravely.
"Well, that is a good way. I fancy that is about the best system of
Reconstruction that has yet been tried."
He told the story to General Keith, who rode over very soon afterwards
to see the child, and thenceforth called her his fairy daughter.
One day she had a tiff with Gordon, and she announced to him that she

was not going to kiss him any more.
"Oh, yes, you are," said he, teasing her.
"I am not." Her eyes flashed. And although he often teased her
afterwards, and used to draw a circle on his cheek which, he said, was
her especial reservation, she kept her word, even in spite of the
temptation which he held out to her to take her to ride if she would
relent.
One Spring General Huntington's cough suddenly increased, and he
began to go downhill so rapidly as to cause much uneasiness to his
friends. General Keith urged him to go up to a little place on the side of
the mountains which had been quite a health-resort before the war.
"Ridgely is one of the most salubrious places I know for such trouble as
yours. And Dr. Theophilus Balsam is one of the best doctors in the
State. He was my regimental surgeon during the war. He is a Northern
man who came South before the war. I think he had an unfortunate
love-affair."
"There is no place for such trouble as mine," said the younger man,
gravely. "That bullet went a little too deep." Still, he went to Ridgely.
Under the charge of Dr. Balsam the young officer for a time