Mr. Bolling laughed heartily.
“And I am quite as brave as Milicent,” I insisted.
“Well, I am surprised at you both. It is a dangerous undertaking.”
Our wagoner was invited to take supper with us. He was rough and ill-clad, and he felt out of place, but Mr. Bolling charmed him into ease and talked over our prospective journey with him.
“It is well for you to be on good terms with your wagoner,” he said to us privately, when he sent out the invitation.
Mr. Bolling was old and gray-haired, or he would have been in the field. His home was one of the most celebrated country-seats in Fauquier, and he himself full of honors and one of the best-known men in the State.
The night we spent at this old Virginia homestead was repetition of a night previously described, with variations. Here were the same old-fashioned mahogany furniture with claw feet and spindle legs, and wax lights in brass and silver candelabra, and rare old china, and some heirlooms whose history we were interested in. Several of these had come with the first Bollings from England. There was a sword which had come down from the War of the Roses, and on the wall, in a place of special honor, hung the sword of a Bolling who had distinguished himself in the Revolution. Mr. Bolling took it down and laid it in Milicent’s outstretched hands with a smile.
“I am a believer in State’s rights, and I am a Secessionist, I suppose,” said the old man with a sigh, as he hung the sword back in its place. “But—I hate to fight the old flag. I hate that.”
Above the sword was the portrait of the Bolling who had worn the sword, a soldierly looking fellow in the uniform of a Revolutionary colonel.
“He saved the old flag once at the cost of his life,” the aged man said, sighing again. “He is buried out yonder in the graveyard, wrapped in the folds of the very flag he snatched from the hands of the British. If we were to open his grave to-night, we would find his bones and ashes wrapped in that flag he died to save. Yes, I am sorry to fight the old flag.”