She led him along the military road to the juncture of the Smoky Hill and Republican rivers. A lover at the Fort had built a seat against a huge rock that crowned the hill overlooking the fork of the rivers.
Stuart hitched the horses and found the seat. For two hours he played his banjo and they sang old songs together.
"I love a banjo—don't you?" she asked enthusiastically.
"It's my favorite music. There's no sorrow in a banjo. You can make it laugh. You can make it shout. You can make it growl and howl and snarl and fight. But you can't make a banjo cry. There are no tears in it. The joy of living is all a banjo knows. Why should we try to know anything else anyhow?"
"We shouldn't," she answered soberly. "The other things will come without invitation sometime."
For an hour they talked of the deep things of life. He told of his high ambitions of service for his country in the dark days that might come in the future. Of the kind of soldier the nation would need, and the ideal he had set for his soul of truth and honor, of high thinking and clean living in the temptations that come to a soldier's daily life.
And she applauded his ideals. She told him they were big and fine and she was proud of him as a true son of Old Virginia.
The sun was sinking behind the dim smoky hills toward the West when she rose.
"We must be going!"
"I had no idea it was so late," he apologized.