Emancipated from the counting
room, and ordered South by the doctor, the colonel's thoughts turned
easily and naturally to the old town that had given him birth; and he
felt a twinge of something like remorse at the reflection that never
once since leaving it had he set foot within its borders. For years he
had been too busy. His wife had never manifested any desire to visit
the South, nor was her temperament one to evoke or sympathise with
sentimental reminiscence. He had married, rather late in life, a New
York woman, much younger than himself; and while he had admired her
beauty and they had lived very pleasantly together, there had not
existed between them the entire union of souls essential to perfect
felicity, and the current of his life had not been greatly altered by
her loss.
Toward little Phil, however, the child she had borne him, his feeling
was very different. His young wife had been, after all, but a sweet
and pleasant graft upon a sturdy tree. Little Phil was flesh of his
flesh and bone of his bone. Upon his only child the colonel lavished
all of his affection. Already, to his father's eye, the boy gave
promise of a noble manhood. His frame was graceful and active. His
hair was even more brightly golden than his mother's had been; his
eyes more deeply blue than hers; while his features were a duplicate
of his father's at the same age, as was evidenced by a faded
daguerreotype among the colonel's few souvenirs of his own childhood.
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