The sound of the horses' hooves heralded the return of Caleb and Rachel. Laurel hurried to let them in.

Caleb was grinning, and Rachel was brimming over with excitement. She held up her hand for Laurel to see. The diamond ring Caleb had placed on her finger was beautiful. All was quiet for a minute. Then Laurel hugged her daughter and said, "Oh honey, I am so happy for you."

George winked at his son. "I suspected you had something like this in mind and that was why you wanted to be alone with her," he said cheerfully.

"I finally got up the nerve to ask her," Caleb confessed.

"I'm so happy and excited I don't know what to do!" Rachel exclaimed. She kept looking at the ring on her finger and beaming.

"Well, come have a seat and tell me all about it, honey," Laurel said with a smile.

Since having his suspicions about Rachel confirmed, George couldn't stop wondering what she had been like as a baby and as a young girl. He knew that Laurel had done her best to be both mother and father to the girl and had succeeded admirably, but there must have been some empty spaces that only the love of a father could have filled. He thought of his mother and how much she would have loved Rachel. How much her death, and that of her husband, had been hastened by stress related to worry about Horace and his misadventures, God only knew. She had never had a daughter and had longed to have a granddaughter someday. George himself would have dearly loved to have had a daughter, but the birth of Caleb had nearly killed Lydia, and she was never able to bear any more children after him. George wouldn't have wanted her to have to go through that again anyway. And all this time he had had a niece whom he had had no idea even existed. He thought about how cruelly ironic life could sometimes be.

That night sleep eluded Laurel. The events of the day just kept repeating themselves in her mind. She prayed,"Oh dear Lord, I thought I was doing the right thing to let her believe that Jack Sommersby was her father. I know it was what he wanted me to do. I had no idea she had an uncle and cousin in Virginia. Everything would have been so different if I had only known that, but I didn't. Please God, forgive me if what I did was wrong. But it's too late now and the damage has already been done. I can't just destroy both her love for the person she thought her father was and her chance for happiness with Caleb. Please tell me what to do." But the heavens seemed silent. Finally Laurel fell into a fitful sleep with disturbing dreams.

The following morning dawned bright and beautiful. It wasn't late enough in the summer for the really hot weather to have set in, but it was warm enough to dress lightly. Laurel had just finished cleaning up from breakfast when she heard a knock on the door.

"Good morning, Laurel. I have some business to take care of at the mercantile and since it's such a beautiful morning I thought that perhaps you would like to walk with me. It's always more interesting when you have someone to talk to."

George Townsend was very smartly dressed, his salt-and-pepper hair was combed back neatly, and his smile was warm and friendly. Laurel's heart skipped a beat. In spite of all the painful memories that had re-surfaced as a result of their conversation the previous day, she felt really happy to see him.

"Certainly," she smiled back. The idea of spending the day alone in the house while Caleb and Rachel took in the sights and visited with friends didn't appeal to her at all.

She fell in step beside him and they set out down the road.

"Well, I can certainly see where your daughter got her good looks from," George remarked pleasantly.

"Thank you." Laurel could feel herself blushing.

"You blush so beautifully too," George said with a laugh, and she joined in.

"So what do you do for a living?" Laurel asked him.

"I'm the editor for the newspaper. Right now I am doing research for a series of articles I plan to write. As you know the War of Northern Aggression ended over twenty years ago. I am visiting various communities to find out how they are faring since the end of the Reconstruction period. Also of course I knew how special Rachel had become to Caleb so I was curious to meet her mother. So I guess you could say I'm combining business with pleasure. And since we are sharing this lovely morning together I thought I could ask you a few questions if you don't mind."

"What would you like to know?"

"Well, perhaps you could tell me about your farm."

"I've been growing burley tobacco for about twenty years now. It grows in a cooler climate than other types do. Rachel's father was the one who first had the idea. He went to Virginia and bought the seeds. Over the years I've had modest success." How much more successful the crop would have been if Rachel's father had lived no one would ever know.

"It must have been quite difficult to be a woman managing a farm alone all these years."

"One of our former slaves, Joseph, has helped me tremendously. I don't know what I would have done without him."

"And Robert?"

"He works in a factory in Ohio. He decided that the farming life wasn't for him." As difficult and unpredictable Laurel's way of life was, she felt that she couldn't blame her son for choosing the industrial life, although she knew that her father would have considered him to be a traitor.

"Raising two children alone must have been quite a challenge as well." George forgot that he was supposed to sound professional.

"Robert was always so self-sufficient. Rachel was a whole different story. She was such a sensitive child. So many times she told me that she wished that she had a father like her friends. I told her that her father was in heaven and that he was looking down on her and would always be with her in her heart. She used to ask me how he could be both in heaven and in her heart at the same time. I told her that if you love someone they are in your heart too even if they are also somewhere else."

"For how long have you been alone?"

"The good Lord took my wife from me eleven years ago. Her name was Lydia. She contracted scarlet fever."

"How terrible for you and Caleb."

"Caleb took it hard. He was only ten years old when she died. For many nights afterward he would awaken at night crying for his mother. As hard as it was I had to try to put aside my own grief and comfort him."

By now they had reached the mercantile. George went inside for a few minutes and then returned and they started the walk home.

George asked, "Is the place where he is buried far from here?"

"I will take you there," Laurel said. She had him up the hill to the spot where the tombstone was. They stood silently for a few minutes. A childhood memory came back to George. He was trudging home from school after having had a difficult day. As he approached the house he saw a small boy with skinned knees, bare feet, and a forlorn look on his smudged face, patiently standing alone waiting for his big brother to get home from school just like he did every day. As soon as he saw George his big brown eyes lit up and a huge grin covered his face. He ran so fast in the direction of his big brother that he stumbled and fell. George grinned himself as he felt his cares for the day instantly swept away. "Let's go look for wiggle worms," he said to Horace, who nodded enthusiastically.

In the presence silence reigned. Then George spoke. "I pray that you have found peace at last, little brother," he said solemnly, gazing at the little white cross.