John March, Southerner

A SUMMONS FOR THE JUDGE

Baccalaureate Sunday. It was hot, even for Suez. The river seemed to shine with heat. Yet every convenient horse-rack was crowded with horses, more than half of them under side-saddles, and in the square neighing steeds, tied to swinging limbs because too emotionally noble to share their privileges with anything they could kick, pawed, wheeled, and gazed after their vanished riders as if to say, "'Pon my word, if he hasn't gone to church."

The church, Parson Tombs's, was packed. Men were not few, yet the pews and the aisles, choked with chairs from end to end, were one yeast of muslins, lawns, and organdies, while everywhere the fans pulsed and danced a hundred measures at once in fascinating confusion.

In the amen pews on the right sat all Montrose; facing them, on the left, sat all Rosemont, except the principal; Garnet was with the pastor in the pulpit. The Governor of Dixie was present; the first one they of the old régime had actually gotten into the gubernatorial chair since the darkies had begun to vote. Two members of the Governor's staff sat in a front pew in uniform; blue!

"See that second man on the left?" whispered Captain Shotwell to an old army friend from Charleston; "that handsome felleh with the wavy auburn hair, soft mustache, and big, sawt o' pawnderin' eyes?"

"What! that the Governor? He can't be over thirty or thirty-one!"

"Governor, no! he wouldn't take the governorship; that's Jeff-Jack Ravenel, editor of the Courier, a-ablest man in Dixie. No, that's the Governor next to him."

"That old toad? Why, he's a moral hulk; look at his nose!"

"Yes, it's a pity, but we done the best we could—had to keep the alignment, you know. His brother leases and sublets convicts, five stockades of 'em, and ought to be one himself.

"These girls inside the altar-rail, they're the academy chorus. That one? Oh, that's Halliday's daughter. Yass, beautiful, but you should 'a' seen her three years ago. No use talkin', seh—I wouldn't say so to a Yankee, but—ow climate's hard on beauty. Teach in the acad'? Oh! no, seh, she jus' sings with 'em. Magnificent voice. Some Yankees here last week allowed they'd ruther hear her than Adelina Patti—in some sawngs.

"She's an awful man-killeh; repo'ted engaged to five fellehs at once, Jeff-Jack included. I don't know whether it's true or not, but you know how ow Dixie gyirls ah, seh. An' yet, seh, when they marry, as they all do, where'll you find mo' devoted wives? This ain't the lan' o' divo'ces, seh; this is the lan' o' loose engagements an' tight marriages.

"D' you see that gyirl in the second row of Montroses, soft eyes, sawt o' deep-down roguish, round, straight neck, head set so nice on it? That's Gyarnet's daughteh. That gyirl's not as old as she looks, by three years."

He ceased. The chorus under the high pulpit stood up, sang, and sat again. Parson Tombs, above them, rose with extended arms, and the services had begun. The chorus stood again, and the church choir faced them from the gallery and sang with them antiphonally, to the spiritual discomfort of many who counted it the latest agony of modernness. In the long prayer the diversity of sects and fashions showed forth; but a majority tried hard not to resent any posture different from their own, although Miss Martha Salter and many others who buried their faces in their own seats, knew that Mr. Ravenel's eyes were counting the cracks in the plastering.

Barbara knelt forward—the Montrose mode. She heard Parson Tombs confess the Job-like loathsomeness of everyone present; but his long-familiar, chanting monotones fainted and died in the portals of her ears like a nurse's song, while her sinking eyelids shut not out, but in, one tallish Rosemont senior who had risen in prayer visibly heavy with the sleep he had robbed from three successive nights. The chirp of a lone cricket somewhere under the floor led her forth in a half dream beyond the town and the gleaming turnpike, across wide fields whose multitudinous, tiny life rasped and buzzed under the vibrant heat; and so on to Rosemont, dear Rosemont, and the rose mother there.

Her fan stops. An unearthly sweetness, an unconditioned bliss, a heavenly disembodiment too perfect for ecstasy, an oblivion surcharged with light, a blessed rarefaction of self that fills the house, the air, the sky, and ascends full of sweet odors and soothing sounds, wafts her up on the cadenced lullaby of the long, long prayer. Is it finished? No.

"Oh, quicken our drowsy powers!" she hears the pastor cry on a rising wave of monotone, and starts the fan again. Is she in church or in Rosemont? She sees Johanna beckoning in her old, cajoling way, asking, as in fact, not fancy, she had done the evening before, for the latest news of Cornelius, and hearing with pious thankfulness that Leggett has reappeared in his official seat, made a speech that filled the house with laughter and applause, put parties into a better humor with each other than they had been for years, and remains, and, for the present, will remain, unmolested.

Still Parson Tombs is praying. The fan waggles briskly, then more slowly—slowly—slowly, and sinks to rest on her white-robed bosom. The head, heavy with luminous brown hair, careens gently upon one cheek; that ineffably sweet dissolution into all nature and space comes again, and far up among the dream-clouds, just as she is about to recognize certain happy faces, there is a rush of sound, a flood of consternation, a start, a tumbling in of consciousness, the five senses leap to their stations, and she sits upright fluttering her fan and glancing round upon the seated congregation. The pastor has said amen.

Garnet spoke extemporaneously. The majority, who did not know every line of the sermon was written and memorized, marvelled at its facility, and even some who knew admitted it was wonderful for fervor, rhetorical richness and the skill with which it "voiced the times" without so much as touching those matters which Dixie, Rosemont's Dixie, did not want touched. Parson Tombs and others moaned "Amen," "Glory," "Thaynk Gawd," etc., after every great period. Only General Halliday said to his daughter, "He's out of focus again; claiming an exclusive freedom for his own set."

The text was, "But I was born free."

Paul, the speaker said, was as profound a believer in law as in faith. Jealous for every right of his citizenship, he might humble himself, but he never lightly allowed himself to be humbled. Law is essential to every civil order, but the very laying of it upon a man makes it his title-deed to a freedom without which obedience is not obedience, nor citizenship citizenship. No man is entirely free to fill out the full round of his whole manhood who is not in some genuine, generous way an author of the laws he obeys. "At this sacred desk and on this holy day I thank God that Dixie's noble sons and daughters are at last, after great tribulations, freer from laws and government not of their own choice than ever before since war furled its torn and blood-drenched banner! We have taught the world—and it's worth the tribulation to have taught the world—under God, that a people born with freedom in the blood cannot be forced even to do right! 'What you order me to do, alien lawmaker, may be right, but I was born free!' My first duty to God is to be free, and no freedom is freedom till it is purged of all indignity!

"But mark the limitation! Freemen are not made in a day! It was to a man who had bought his freedom that Paul boasted a sort that could not be bought! God's word for it, it takes at least two generations to make true freemen; fathers to buy the freedom and sons and daughters to be born into it! Wherefore let every one to whom race and inheritance have given beauty or talent, and to whom the divine ordering of fortune and social rank has added quality and scholarship, hold it the first of civic virtues to reply to every mandate of law or fate, Law is law, and right is right, but, first of all, I was born free, and, please God, I'll die so!

"Gentlemen of the graduating class:"

Nine trim, gray jackets rose, and John March was the tallest. The speaker proceeded, but he had not spoken many words before he saw the attention of his hearers was gone. A few smiled behind their hands or bit their lips; men kept a frowning show of listening to the address; women's faces exchanged looks of pity, and John turned red to his collar. For, just behind the Governor, the noble head and feeble frame of Judge March had risen unconsciously when his son rose, and now stood among the seated multitude, gazing on the speaker and drinking in his words with a sweet, glad face. The address went on, but no one heard it. Nor did any one move to disturb the standing figure; all Suez, nay, the very girls of Montrose knew that he who seemed to stand there with trembling knees and wabbling hands was in truth not there, but was swallowed up and lost in yonder boy.

Garnet was vexed. He shortened the address, and its last, eloquent sentence was already begun when Ravenel rose and through room swiftly made for him stepped back to Judge March. He was just in time to get an arm under his head and shoulders as he sank limply into the pew, looking up with a smile and trying to say nothing was wrong and to attend again to the speaker. Garnet's hearers were overcome, but the effect was not his. Their gaze was on the fallen man; and when General Halliday cleared his sight with an agitated handkerchief, and one by one from the son's wide open eyes, the hot, salt tears slipped down to the twitching corners of his mouth, and the aged pastor's voice trembled in a hurried benediction, women sobbed and few eyes were dry.

"Father," said John, "can you hear me? Do you know me?"

A glad light overspread the face for reply. But after it came a shadow, and Doctor Coffin said, softly,

"He's trying to ask something."

Fannie Halliday sat fanning the patient. She glanced up to Garnet just at John's back and murmured,

"He probably wants to know if——"

John turned an eager glance to his principal, and Garnet nodded "Yes."

"Father," cried John, "I've passed! I've passed, father; I've passed! Do you hear, dear father?"

The Major touched the bending youth and murmured something more. John turned back upon him a stare of incredulity, but Garnet smiled kindly and said aloud,

"I tell you yes; it will be announced to-morrow."

"Father," cried John, stooping close to the wandering eyes, "can you see me? I'm John! I'm son! Can you hear me, father? Father, I've got first honors—first honors, father! Oh, father, look into my eyes; it will be a sign that you hear me. Father, listen, look; I'm going to be a better son—to you and to mother—Oh, he hears me! He understands—" The physician drew him away.

They carried the sick man to the nearest house. Late in the afternoon Tom Hersey and two or three others were talking together near the post-office.

"Now, f'r instance, what right had he to give that boy first honors! As sho's you're a foot high, that's a piece o' pyo log-rollin'."—Doctor Coffin came by.—"Doctor, I understand Mrs. March has arrived. I hope the Jedge is betteh, seh.—What?—Why—why, you supprise—why, I'm mighty sorry to heah that, seh.—Gentlemen, Jedge March is dead."

THE GOLDEN SPIKE

About a week beyond the middle of June, 1878, when John March had been something like a year out of Rosemont and nine months a teacher of mountain lads and lasses at Widewood, Barbara finished at Montrose. She did not read her graduation essay. Its subject was Time. Its spelling was correct, and it was duly rosetted and streamered, but it was regretfully suppressed because its pages were mainly given to joyous emphasis of the advantages of wasting the hours. Miss Garnet had not been a breaker of rules; yet when she waved farewell and the younger Miss Kinsington turned back indoors saying,

"Dearest, best girl!" the sister added, affectionately—

"That we ever got rid of."

On a day near the middle of the following month there began almost at dawn to be a great stir in and about Suez. The sun came up over Widewood with a shout, hallooing to Rosemont a promise for all Dixie of the most ripening hours, thus far, of the year, and woods, fields, orchards, streams, answered with a morning incense. Johanna stood whispering loudly at Barbara's bedside:

"Week up, honey; sun high an' scoldin'! jess a-fuss-in' an' a-scoldin'!" One dark hand lifted back the white mosquito-net while the other tendered a cup of coffee.

Barbara winked, scowled, laid her wrists on the maid's shoulders and smiled into her black face. Johanna put away a brown wave of hair. "Come on, missie, dat-ah young Yankee gen'leman frien' up an' out."

Barbara bit her lip in mock dismay. "Has he de-part-ed?" She had a droll liking for long words, and often deployed their syllables as skirmishers in the rear for her sentences.

Johanna tittered. "Humph! you know mawnstus well he ain't gone. Miss Barb, dass de onyess maan I even see wear a baang. Wha' fuh he do dat?"

"I must ask him," said Barbara, sipping her coffee. "It's probably in fulfillment of a vow."

The maid tittered again. "You cay n't ast as much as he kin. But dass my notice 'twix Yankees an' ow folks; Dixie man say, Fine daay, seh! Yankee say, You think it a-gwine fo' to raain? Dixie man—Oh, no, seh! hit jiss cayn't rain to-day, seh! Den if it jiss po' down Yankee say, Don't dis-yeh look somepm like raain? An' Dixie man—Yass, seh, hit do; hit look like raain, but Law'! hit ain't raain. You Yankees cayn't un'stan' ow Southe'n weatheh, seh!"

Only Johanna laughed. Presently Barbara asked, "Have you seen pop-a?"

"Yo' paw? Oh, yass'm, he in de wes' grove, oveh whah we 'llowin' to buil' de new dawmontory. He jiss a-po'in' info'mations into de Yankee." Barbara laughed this time—at the Yankee—and Johanna mimicked: "Mr. Fair, yo' come to see a beautiful an' thrivin' town, seh. Suez is change' dat much yo' fatheh wouldn' know it ag'in!"

"Pop-a's right about that, Johanna."

"Oh, yass'm." Johanna was rebuked; but Barbara smiled. By and by—"Miss Barb, kin I ax you a favo'?—Yass'm. Make yo' paw put me som'ers in de crowd to-day whah I ken see you when you draps de hammeh on de golden spike—Law'! dass de dress o' dresses! You looks highly fitt'n' to eat!"

Young Fair had come to see the last spike driven in the Pulaski City, Suez and Great South Railroad.

At breakfast Mrs. Garnet poured the coffee. Garnet told the New Englander much about New England, touching extenuatingly on the blueness of its laws, the decay of its religion, and the inevitable decline of its industries. The visitor, with only an occasional "Don't you think, however"—seemed edified. It pleased Barbara to see how often, nevertheless, his eye wandered from the speaker to the head of the board to rest on one so lovely it scarce signified that she was pale and wasted; one whose genial dignity perfected the firmness with which she declined her daughter's offer to take her place and task, and smiled her down while Johanna smoothed away a grin.

The hour of nine struck. Fair looked startled. "Were we not to have joined Mr. Ravenel's party in Suez by this time?"

"Yes, but there's no hurry. Still, we'll start. Johanna, get your lunch-baskets. Sorry you don't meet Mr. March, sir; he's a trifle younger than you, but you'd like him. I asked him to go with us, but his mother—why, wa'n't that all right, Barb?"

"Oh, it wasn't wrong." Barbara smiled to her mother. "It was only useless; he always declines if I don't. We're very slightly acquainted. I hope that accounts for it." She arched her brows.

As she and the young visitor stood by the carriage while Johanna and the luncheon were being stowed he said something so graceful about Mrs. Garnet that Barbara looked into his face with delight and the Major had to speak his name twice befor he heard it.—"Ready? Yes, quite so. Shall I sit—oh! pardon; yes—in front, certainly."

The Major drove. The young guest would gladly have talked with Barbara as she sat back of him and behind her father; but Garnet held his attention. Crossing Turkey Creek battle-ground——

"Just look at those oats! See that wheat! Cotton, ah, but you ought to see the cotton down in Blackland!"

When the pike was dusty and the horses walked they were frequently overtaken and passed by cavalcades of lank, hard-faced men in dingy homespun, and cadaverous women with snuff-sticks and slouched sun-bonnets. Major Garnet bowed to them.

"Those are our Sandstone County mountaineers; our yeomanry, sir. Suez holds these three counties in a sort o' triple alliance. You make a great mistake, sir, to go off to-morrow without seeing the Widewood district. You've seen the Alps, and I'd just like to hear you say which of the two is the finer. There's enough mineral wealth in Widewood alone to make Suez a Pittsburg, and water-power enough to make her a Minneapolis, and we're going to make her both, sir!" The monologue became an avalanche of coal, red hematite, marble, mica, manganese, tar, timber, turpentine, lumber, lead, ochre, and barytes, with signs of silver, gold, and diamonds.

"Don't you think, however——"

"No, sir! no-o-o! far from it——"

A stifled laugh came from where Johanna's face darkened the corner it occupied. Barbara looked, but the maid seemed lost in sad reverie.

"Barb, yonder's where Jeff-Jack and I stopped to dine on blackberries the day we got home from the war. Now, there's the railroad cut on the far side of it. There, you see, Mr. Fair, the road skirts the creek westward and then northwestward again, leaving Rosemont a mile to the northeast. See that house, Barb, about half a mile beyond the railroad? There's where the man found his plumbago." The speaker laughed and told the story. The discoverer had stolen off by night, got an expert to come and examine it, and would tell the result only to one friend, and in a whisper. "'You haven't got much plumbago,' the expert had said, 'but you've got dead oodles of silica.' You know, Barb, silica's nothing but flint, ha-ha!"

Fair smiled. In his fortnight's travel through the New Dixie plumbago was the only mineral on which he had not heard the story based.

A military horseman overtook the carriage and slackened to a fox-trot at Garnet's side. "Captain Champion, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Fair. Mr. Fair and his father have put money into our New Dixie, and he's just going around to see where he can put in more. I tell him he can't go amiss. All we want in Dixie is capital."

"Mr. Fair doesn't think so," said Barbara, with great sweetness.

"Ah! I merely asked whether capital doesn't seek its own level. Mustn't its absence be always because of some deeper necessity?"

Champion stood on his guard. "Why, I don't know why capital shouldn't be the fundamental need, seh, of a country that's been impoverished by a great waugh!"

Barbara exulted, but Garnet was for peace. "I suppose you'll find Suez swarming with men, women, and horses."

"Yes," said Champion—Fair was speaking to Barbara—"to say nothing of yahoos, centaurs, and niggehs." The Major's abundant laugh flattered him; he promised to join the party at luncheon, lifted his plumed shako, and galloped away. Garnet drove into the edge of the town at a trot.

"Here's where the reservoir's to be," he said, and spun down the slope into the shaded avenue, and so to the town's centre.

"Laws-a-me! Miss Barb," whispered Johanna, "but dis-yeh town is change'! New hotel! brick! th'ee sto'ies high!" Barbara touched her for silence.

"But look at de new sto'es!" murmured the girl. Negroes—the men in dirty dusters, the women in smart calicoes, girls in dowdy muslins and boy's hats—and mountain whites, coatless men, shoeless women—hung about the counters dawdling away their small change.

"Colored and white treated precisely alike, you notice," said Garnet, and Barbara suppressed a faint grunt from Johanna.

Trade had spread into side-streets. Drinking-houses were gayly bedight and busy.

"That's the new Courier building."

The main crowd had gone down to the railway tracks, and it was midsummer, yet you could see and feel the town's youth.

"Why, the nig—colored people have built themselves a six-hundred dollar church; we white folks helped them," said Garnet, who had given fifty cents. "See that new sidewalk? Our chain-gang did that, sir; made the bricks and laid the pavement."

The court-house was newly painted. Only Hotel Swanee and the two white churches remained untouched, sleeping on in green shade and sweet age.

The Garnet's wheels bickered down the town's southern edge and out upon a low slope of yellow, deep-gullied sand and clay that scarce kept on a few weeds to hide its nakedness while gathering old duds and tins.

"Yonder are the people, and here, sir," Garnet pointed to where the green Swanee lay sweltering like the Nile, "is the stream that makes the tears trickle in every true Southerner's heart when he hears its song."

"Still 'Always longing for the old plantation?'" asked the youth.

"Yes," said Barbara, defiantly.

The carriage stopped; half a dozen black ragamuffins rushed up offering to take it in charge, and its occupants presently stood among the people of three counties. For Blackland, Clearwater, and Sandstone had gathered here a hundred or two of their gentlest under two long sheds on either side of the track, and the sturdier multitude under green booths or out in the sunlight about yonder dazzling gun, to hail the screaming herald of a new destiny; a destiny that openly promised only wealth, yet freighted with profounder changes; changes which, ban or delay them as they might, would still be destiny at last.

Entering a shed Barbara laughed with delight.

"Fannie!"

"Barb!" cried Fannie. A volley of salutations followed: "Good-morning, Major"—"Why, howdy, Doctor.—Howdy, Jeff-Jack.—Shotwell, how are you? Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Fair. Mr. Fair, Captain Shotwell. Mr. Fair and his father, Captain, have put some money into our"—A tall, sallow, youngish man touched the speaker's elbow—"Why, hel-lo, Proudfit! Colonel Proudfit, let me make you," etc.—"I hope you brought—why, Sister Proudfit, I decl'—aha, ha, ha!—You know Barb?"

General Halliday said, "John Wesley, how goes it?"

Garnet sobered. "Good-morning, Launcelot. Mr. Fair, let me make you acquainted with General Halliday. You mustn't believe all he says—ha, ha, ha! Still, when a radical does speak well of us you may know it's so! Launcelot, Mr. Fair and his father have put some money"—Half a dozen voices said "Sh-sh!"

"Ladies and gentlemen!" cried Captain Shotwell. "The first haalf—the fro'—the front haalf of the traain—of the expected traain—is full of people from Pulaaski City! The ster'—the rear haalf is reserved faw the one hundred holdehs of these red tickets." (Applause.) "Ayfter the shor'—brief puffawn'—cerem'—exercises, the traain, bein' filled, will run up to Pulaaski City, leave that section of which, aw toe which, aw at least in which, that is, belonging toe—I mean the people containing the Pulaaski City section (laughter and applause)—or rather the section contained by the Pu—(deafening laughter)—I should saay the city containing the Pulaas'—(roars of laughter)—Well, gentlemen, if you know what I want to say betteh than I do, jest say it yo'se'ves an'——"

His face was red and he added something unintelligible about them all going to a terminus not on that road, while Captain Champion, coming to his rescue, proclaimed that the Suez section would be brought back, "expectin' to arrive hyeh an hou' by sun. An' now, ladies and gentlemen, I propose three cheers faw that gallant an' accomplished gentleman, Cap'm Shotwell—hip-hip—'" And the company gave them, with a tiger.

At that moment, faint and far, the whistle sounded. The great outer crowd ran together, all looking one way. Again it sounded, nearer; and then again, near and loud. The multitude huzzaed; the bell clanged; gay with flags the train came thundering in; out in the blazing sunlight Captain Champion, with sword unsheathed, cried "Fire!" The gun flashed and crashed, the earth shook, the people's long shout went up, the sax-horns sang "Way Down upon the Swanee River"—and the tears of a true Southerner leaped into Barbara's eyes. She turned and caught young Fair smiling at it all, and most of all at her, yet in a way that earned her own smile.

The speeches were short and stirring. When Ravenel began—"Friends and fellow-citizens, this is our Susie's wedding," the people could hardly be done cheering. Then Barbara, by him led forth and followed by Johanna's eager eyes, gave the spike its first wavering tap, the president of the road drove it home, and "Susie" was bound in wedlock to the Age. Married for money, some might say. Yet married, bound—despite all incompatibilities—to be shaped—if not at once by choice, then at last by merciless necessity—to all that Age's lines and standards, to walk wherever it should lead, partner in all its vicissitudes, pains and fates.

The train moved. Mr. Fair sat with Barbara. Major Grant secured a seat beside Sister Proudfit—"aha—ha-ha!"—"t-he-he-he-he!" Fannie gave Shotwell the place beside her, and so on. Even Johanna, by taking a child in her lap, got a seat. But Ravenel and Colonel Proudfit had to stand up beside Fannie and Barbara. Thus it fell out that when everyone laughed at a moonshiner's upsetting on a pile of loose telegraph poles, Ravenel, looking out from over the swarm of heads, saw something which moved him to pull the bell-cord.

"Two people wanting to get on," said Shotwell, as Ravenel went to the coach's rear platform. "They in a buggy. Now they out. Here they—Law', Miss Fannie, who you reckon it is? Guess! You cayn't, miss!"

Barbara, with studied indifference, asked Fair the time of day.

"There," said Shotwell, "they've gone into the cah behind us."

"Sister March and her son," observed Garnet to Mrs. Proudfit and the train moved on.

BY RAIL

Everybody felt playful and nearly everybody coquettish. When Sister Proudfit, in response to some sly gallantry of Garnet's used upon him a pair of black eyes, he gave her the whole wealth of his own. He must have overdone the matter, for the next moment he found Fannie's eyes levelled directly on him. She withdrew them with a casual remark to Barbara, yet not till they had said to him, in solemn silence:

"You villain, that time I saw you!"

Mrs. March had pushed cheerily into the rear Suez coach. Away from home and its satieties no one could be more easily or thoroughly pleased. Her son said the forward coach was better, but in there she had sighted Fannie and Barbara, and so——

"There's more room in here," she insisted with sweet buoyancy.

Hamlet Graves rose. "Here, Cousin Daphne!" His brother Lazarus stood up with him.

"Here, John, your maw'll feel better if you're a-sett'n' by her."

But she urged the seat, with coy temerity, upon Mr. Ravenel.

"How well she looks in mourning," remarked two Blackland County ladies. "Yes, she's pretty yet; what a lovely smile."

"Don't go 'way," she exclaimed, with hostile alarm, as John turned toward the coach's front. He said he would not, and chose a standing-place where he could watch a corner of Fannie's distant hat.

"You won't see many fellows of age staying with their mothers by choice instead o' running off after the girls," commented one of the Blackland matrons, and the other replied:

"They haven't all got such mothers!"

Mrs. March was enjoying herself. "But, Mr. Ravenel," she said, putting off part of her exhilaration, "you've really no right to be a bachelor." She smiled aslant.

"My dear lady," he murmured, "people who live in gla——"

She started and tried to look sour, but grew sweeter. He became more grave. "You're still young," he said, paused, and then—"You're a true Daphne, but you haven't gone all to laurel yet. I wish—I wish I could feel half as young as you look; I might hope"—he hushed, sighed, and nerved himself.

"Why, Mr. Ravenel!" She glanced down with a winsome smile. "I'm at least old enough to—to stay as I am if I choose?"

"Possibly. But you needn't if you don't choose." He folded his arms as if to keep them from doing something rash.

Mrs. March bit her lip. "I can't imagine who would ever"—she bit it again. "Mr. Ravenel, do you remember those lines of mine—

"Yes. But don't call me Mr. Ravenel."

"Why, why not?"

"It sounds so cold." He shuddered.

"It isn't meant so. It's not in my nature to be cold. It's you who are cold." She hushed as abruptly as a locust. A large man, wet with the heat, stood saluting. Mr. Ravenel rose and introduced Mr. Gamble, president of the road, a palpable, rank Westerner; whereupon it was she who was cold. Mr. Gamble praised the "panorama gliding by."

"Yes." She glanced out over the wide, hot, veering landscape that rose and sank in green and yellow slopes of corn, cotton, and wheat. The president fanned his soaking shirt-collar and Mrs. March with a palm-leaf fan.

"Mercury ninety-nine in Pulaski City," he said to Ravenel, and showed a telegram. Mr. Ravenel began to ask if he might introduce——

"Mr. March! Well, you have changed since the day you took Major Garnet and Mr. Fair and I to see that view in the mountains! If anybody'd a-told me that I'd ever be president of—Thanks, no sir." He wouldn't sit. He'd just been sitting and talking, he said, "with the two beauties, Miss Halliday and Miss Garnet." Didn't Mrs. March think them such?

She confessed they looked strong and well, and sighed an unresentful envy.

"Yes," said he, "they do, and I wouldn't give two cents on the dollar for such as don't."

Mrs. March smiled dyingly on John, and said she feared her son wouldn't either. John looked distressed and then laughed; but the president declared her the picture of robust health. This did not seem to please her entirely, and so he added,

"You've got to be, to write good poetry. It must be lots of fun, Mrs. March, to dash off a rhyme just to while away the time—ha, ha, ha! My wife often writes poetry when she feels tired and lazy. I know that whirling this way through this beautiful country is inspiring you right now to write half a dozen poems. I'd like to see you on one of those lovely hillsides in fine frenzy rolling"—He said he meant her eye.

The poetess blushed. A whimper of laughter came from somewhere, but one man put his head quickly out of a window, and another stooped for something very hard to pick up, while John explained that crowds and dust were no inspiration to his mother, who was here to-day purely for his sake. She sat in limp revery with that faint shade on her face which her son believed meant patience. He and the president moved a reverent step aside.

"I hear," said Gamble, in a business undertone, "that your school's a success."

"Not financially," replied John, gazing into the forward coach.

"Mr. March, why don't you colonize your lands? You can do it, now the railroad's here."

"I would, sir, if I had the capital."

"Form a company! They furnish the money, you furnish the land. How'd I build this road? I hadn't either money or lands. Why, if your lands were out West"——the speaker turned to an eavesdropper, saying sweetly, "This conversation is private, sir," but with a look as if he would swallow him without sauce or salt, John mused. "My mother has such a dislike,"—he hesitated.

"I know," the president smiled, "the ladies are all that way. If a thing's theirs it just makes 'em sick to see anybody else make anything out of it. I speak from experience. They'll die poor, keeping property enough idle to make a dozen men rich. What's a man to do? Now, you"—a long pause, eye to eye—"your lands won't colonize themselves."

"Of course not," mused John.

The president showed two cigars. "Would you like to go to the smoking-car?"

March glanced toward his mother. She was looking at her two kinsmen with such sweet sprightliness that he had trouble to make her see his uplifted cigar. She met his parting smile with a gleam of terror and distrust, but he shook his head and reddened as Hamlet winked at Lazarus.

"It means some girl," observed one of the Blackland matrons.

"Well, I hope it does," responded the other.

"Wait," said the giver of the cigar, "we're stopping for wood and water. It'll be safer to go round this front coach than through it." John thought it would not, but yielded.

"Now, Mr. March," they stood near the water-tank—"if you could persuade your mother to give you full control, and let you get a few strong men to go in with you—see? They could make you—well—secretary!—with a salary; for, of course, you'd have to go into the thing, hot, yourself. You'd have to push like smoke!"

"Of course," said John, squaring his handsome figure; as if he always went in hot, and as if smoke was the very thing he had pushed like, for years.

"I shouldn't wonder if you and I"—Gamble began again, but the train started, they took the smoker and found themselves with Halliday, Shotwell, Proudfit, and a huge Englishman, round whom the other three were laughing.

JOHN INSULTS THE BRITISH FLAG

The Briton had seen, on the far edge of Suez, as they were leaving the town, a large building.

"A nahsty brick thing on top a dirty yellow hill," he said; what was it?

"That?" said Shotwell, "that's faw ow colo'ed youth o' both sexes. That's Suez University."

"Univer—what bloody nonsense!"

All but March ha-haed. "We didn't name it!" laughed the Captain.

John became aware that some one in a remote seat had bowed to him. He looked, and the salute came again, unctuous and obsequious. He coldly responded and frowned, for the men he was with had seen it.

Proudfit touched the Briton. "In the last seat behind you you'll see the University's spawnsor; that's Leggett, the most dangerous demagogue in Dixie."

"Is that your worst?" said the Englishman; "ye should know some of ours!"

"O, yes, seh," exclaimed Shotwell, "of co'se ev'y country's got 'em bad enough. But here, seh, we've not on'y the dabkey's natu'al-bawn rascality to deal with, but they natu'l-bawn stupidity to boot. Evm Gen'l Halliday'll tell you that, seh."

"Yes," said the General, with superior cheerfulness, "though sometimes the honors are easy."

"O, I allow we don't always outwit 'em"—everybody laughed—"but sometimes we just haf to."

"To save out-shooting them," suggested the General.

"O, I hope we about done with that."

"But you're not sure," came the quick retort.

"No, seh," replied the sturdy Captain, "we're not shore. It rests with them." He smoked.

"Go on, Shot," said the General, "you were going to give an instance."

"Yes, seh. Take Leggett, in the case o' this so-called University."

"That's hardly a good example," remarked Proudfit, who, for Dixie's and Susie's sake, regretted that Shotwell was talking so much and he so little.

"Let him alone," said Halliday, thoroughly pleased, and Shotwell went on stoutly.

"The concern was started by Leggett an' his gang—excuse my careless terms, Gen'l—as the public high-school. They made it ve'y odious to ow people by throwin' it wide open to both raaces instead o' havin' a' sep'ate one faw whites. So of co'se none but dahkeys went to it, an' they jest filled it jam up."

"What did the whites do?" asked the Briton.

"Why, what could they do, seh? You know how ow people ah. That's right where the infernal outrage come in. Such as couldn't affode to go to Rosemont aw Montrose jest had to stay at home!" The speaker looked at John, who colored and bit his cigar.

"So as soon as ow crowd got control of affairs we'd a shut the thing up, on'y faw Jeff-Jack. Some Yankee missiona'y teachers come to him an' offe'd to make it a college an' spend ten thousand dollahs on it if the State would on'y go on givin' it hafe o' the three counties' annual high-school funds."

The Englishman frowned perplexedly and Proudfit put in—

"That is, three thousand a year from our three counties' share of the scrip on public lands granted Dixie by the Federal Government."

"Expressly for the support of public schools," said General Halliday, and March listened closer than the foreigner, for these facts were newest to John.

"Still," said March, "the State furnishes the main support of public education."

"No," responded Shotwell, "you're wrong there, John; we changed that. The main suppote o' the schools is left to the counties an' townships."

"That's stupid, all round," promptly spoke the Briton.

"I thought," exclaimed John, resentfully, "we'd changed our State constitution so's to forbid the levy of any school tax by a county or township except on special permission of the legislature."

"So you have," laughed the General.

"The devil!" exclaimed the Englishman.

"O, we had to do that," interposed Proudfit again, and Gamble testified,

"You see, it's the property-holder's only protection."

"Then Heaven help his children's children," observed the traveler. John showed open disgust, but the General touched him and said, "Go on, Shotwell."

"Well, seh, we didn't like the missiona'y's proposition. We consid'ed it fah betteh to transfeh oveh that three thousan' a year to Rosemont, entire; which we did so. Pub—? No, seh, Rosemont's not public, but it really rep'esents ow people, which, o' co'se, the otheh don't."

"Public funds to a private concern," quietly commented the Englishman—"that's a steal." John March's blood began to boil.

"O," cried Shot well—"ow people—who pay the taxes—infinitely rather Rosemont should have it."

"I see," responded the Briton, in such a tone that John itched to kick him.

"Well, seh," persisted the narrator, "you should 'a' heard Leggett howl faw a divvy!" All smiled. "Worst of it was—what? Wha'd you say, Gen'l?"

"He had the constitution of the State to back him."

"He hasn't now! Well, seh, the bill faw this ve'y raailroad was in the house. Leggett swo' it shouldn't even so much as go to the gove'neh to sign aw to veto till that fund—seh? annual, yes, seh—was divided at least evm, betwix Rosemont an' the Suez high school."

"Hear, hear!"

"Well, seh"—the Captain became blithe—"Jeff-Jack sent faw him—you remembeh that night, President Gamble—this was the second bill—ayfteh the first hed been vetoed—an' said, s'e, 'Leggett, if I give you my own word that you'll get yo' fifteen hund'ed a year as soon as this new bill passes, will you vote faw it?'—'Yass, seh,' says Leggett—an' he did!"

Proudfit laughed with manly glee, and offered no other interruption.

"Well, seh, then it come Jeff-Jack's turn to keep his word the best he could."

"Which he's done," said Gamble.

"Yes, Jeff-Jack got still anotheh bill brought in an' paassed. It give the three thousan' to Rosemont entieh, an' authorized the three counties to raise the fifteen hund'ed a year by county tax." The Captain laughed.

"Silly trick," said the Englishman, grimly.

"Why, the dahkeys got they fifteen hund'ed!"

"Don't they claim twenty-two fifty?"

"Well, they jess betteh not!"

"Rascally trick!"

"Sir," said John, "Mr. Ravenel is my personal friend. If you make another such comment on his actions I shall treat it as if made on mine."

"Come, Come!" exclaimed Gamble, commandingly; "we can't have——"

"You'll have whatever I give, sir!"

Three or four men half rose, smiling excitedly, but sank down again.

"You think, sir," insisted John, to the Englishman's calmly averted face, "that being in a free country—" he dashed off Shotwell's remonstrant hand.

"'Tain't a free country at all," said the Briton to the outer landscape. "There's hardly a corner in Europe but's freer."

"Ireland, for instance," sneered John.

"Ireland be damned," responded the foreigner, still still looking out the window. "Go tell your nurse to give you some bread and butter."

John leaped and swept the air with his open palm. Gamble's clutch half arrested it in front, Shotwell hindered it from behind, neither quite stopped it.

"Did he slap him?" eagerly asked a dozen men standing on the seats.

"He barely touched him," was the disappointed reply of one.

"Thank the Lawd faw evm that little!" responded another.

Shotwell pulled March away, Halliday following. Near the rear door——

"Johnnie," began the General, with an air of complete digression, but at the woebegone look that came into the young man's face, the old soldier burst into a laugh. John whisked around to the door and stood looking out, though seeing nothing, bitter in the thought that not for the Englishman's own sake, but for the sake of the British capital coveted by Suez, a gentleman and a Rosemonter was forbidden to pay him the price of his insolence.

"I'd like to pass," presently said someone behind him. He started, and Gamble went by.

"May I detain you a moment, sir?" said John.

The president frowned. "What is it?"

"In our passage of words just now—I was wrong."

"Yes, you were. What of it?"

"I regret it."

"I can't use your regrets," said the railroad man. He moved to go. "If you want to see me about——"

John smiled. "No, sir, I'd rather never set eyes on you again."

As the Westerner's fat back passed into the farther coach his response came——

"What you want ain't manners, it's gumption." The door slammed for emphasis.

March presently followed, full of shame and indignation and those unutterable wailings with which youth, so often, has to be born again into manhood. Gamble had rejoined the Garnet group. John bowed affably to all, smiled to Fannie and passed. Garnet still sat with Mrs. Proudfit behind the others, and John, as he went by, was, for some cause supplied by this pair, startled, angered anew, and for the time being benumbed by conflicting emotions. He found his mother still talking joyously with the Graveses, who were unfamiliar with the graceful art of getting away. He found a seat in front of them, and sat stiff beside a man who drowsed.

"I'm a hopeless fool," he thought, "a fool in anger, a fool in love. A fool even in the eyes of that idiot of a railroad president in yonder smirking around Fannie.

"They'll laugh at me together, I suppose. O, Fannie, why can't I give you up? I know you're a flirt. Jeff-Jack knows it. I solemnly believe that's why he doesn't ask you to marry him!

"Yes, they're probably all laughing at me by now. O, was ever mortal man so utterly alone! And these people think what makes me so is this silly temper. They say it! Mother assures me they say it! I believe I could colonize our lands if it wa'n't for that. O, I will colonize them! I'll do it all alone. If that jackanapes could open this road I can open our lands. Whatever he used I can use; whatever he did I can do!"

"Sir?" said the neighbor at his elbow, "O excu—I thought you spoke."

"Hem! No, I was merely clearing my throat.

"I can do it. I'll do it alone. She shall see me do it—they shall all see. I'll do it alone—all alone——"

He caught the steel-shod rhythm of the train and said over and over with ever bigger and more bitter resolution, "I'll do it alone—I'll do it alone!"

Then he remembered Garnet.

TO SUSIE—FROM PUSSIE

ON the return trip Garnet sat on the arm of almost every seat except Fannie's.

"No, sir; no, keep your seat!" He wouldn't let anybody be "disfurnished" for him! Proudfit had got the place next his wife and thought best to keep it.

"Mr. Fair," said Garnet, "I'd like you to notice how all this region was made in ages past. You see how the rocks have been broken and tossed,"—etc.

"Mr. Fair"—the same speaker—"I wish you'd change your mind and stay a week with us. Come, spend it at Rosemont. It's vacation, you know, and Barb and I shan't have a thing to do but give you a good time; shall we, Barb?"

"It will give us a good time," said Barb. Her slow, cadenced voice, steady eye, and unchallenging smile charmed the young Northerner. He had talked about her to Fannie at luncheon and pronounced her "unusual."

"Why, really"—he began, looked up at Garnet and back again to Barbara. Garnet bent over him confidentially.

"Just between us I'd like to advise with you about something I've never mentioned to a soul. That is about sending Barb to some place North to sort o' round out her education and character in a way that—it's no use denying it, though it would never do for me to say so—a way that's just impossible in Dixie, sir."

The young man remembered Barbara's mother and was silent.

"Well, Barb, Mr. Fair will go home with us for a day or two, anyhow," Garnet was presently authorized to say. "I must go into the next car a moment——"

John March, meditating on this very speaker with growing anger, saw him approach. Garnet entered, beaming.

"Howdy, John, my son; I couldn't let you and Sister March——"

March had stepped before his mother: He spoke in a deep murmur.

"I'm not your son, sir. My mother's not your sister."

"Why, what in thun—why, John, I don't know whether to be angry or to laugh."

"Don't you dare to do either. Go back to that other man's——"

"Speak more softly for heaven's sake, Mr. March, and don't look so, or you'll do me a wrong that may cost us both our lives!"

"Cheap enough," said the youth, with a smile.

"You've made a ridiculous mistake, John. Before God I'm as innocent of any——"

"Before God, Major Garnet, you lie. If you deny it again I'll accuse you publicly. Go back and fondle the hand of that other man's wife; but don't ever speak to my mother again. If you do, I—I'll shoot you on sight."

"I'll call you to account for this, sir," said Garnet, moving to go.

"You're lying again," was John's bland reply, and he turned to his seat.

"Why, John," came the mother's sweet complaint, "I wanted to see Brother Garnet."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said the complaisant son.

Garnet paused on the coach's platform to get rid of his tremors. "He'll not tell," he said aloud, the uproar of wheels drowning his voice. "He's too good a Rosemonter to tattle. At first I thought he'd got on the same scent as Cornelius.

"Thank God, that's one thing there's no woman in, anyhow. O me, O me! If that tipsy nigger would only fall off this train and break his neck!

"And now here's this calf to live in daily dread of. O dear, O dear, I ought to a-had more sense. It's all her fault; she's pure brass. They call youth the time of temptation—Good Lord! Why youth's armored from head to heel in its invincible ignorance. O me! Well—I'll pay him for it if it takes me ten years."

John's complacency had faded with the white heat of his anger, and he sat chafing in spirit while his elbow neighbor slept in the shape of an N. Across the car he heard Parson Tombs explaining to the Graves brethren and Sister March that Satan—though sometimes corporeal—and in that case he might be either unicorporeal or multicorporeal—and at other times unicorporeal—as he might choose and providence permit—and, mark you, he might be both at once on occasion—was by no means omnipresent, but only ubiquitous.

Lazarus supposed a case: "He might be in both these cahs at once an' yet not on the platfawm between 'em."

"It's mo' than likely!" said the aged pastor, no one meaning anything sly. Yet to some people a parson's smiling mention of the devil is always a good joke, and the Graves laughed, as we may say. Not so, Sister March; she never laughed at the prince of darkness, nor took his name in vain. She spoke, now, of his "darts."

"No, Sister March, I reckon his darts, fifty times to one, ah turned aside fum us by the providence that's round us, not by the po' little patchin' o' grace that's in us."

John's heart jumped. Garnet looked in and beckoned him out. He went.

"John "—the voice was tearful—"I offer my hand in penitent gratitude." John took it. "Yes, my dear boy, my feet had well-nigh slipped."

"I oughtn't to have spoken as I did, Major Garnet."

"It was the word of the Lord, John. It saved me and my spotless name! The mistake had just begun, in mere play, but it might have grown into actual sin—of impulse, I mean, of course—not of action; my lifelong correctness of——"

"Oh, I'm sure of that sir! I only wish I——"

"God bless you! I've a good notion to tell your mother this whole thing, John, just to make her still prouder of you." He squeezed the young man's hand. "But I reckon for others' sakes we'd better not breathe it."

"O, I think so, sir! I promise——"

"You needn't have promised, John. Your think-so was promise enough. And a mighty good thing for us all it's so. For, John March, you're the hope of Suez!

"You've got the key of all our fates in your pocket, John—you and your mother now, and you when you come into full charge of the estate next year. That's why Jeff-Jack's always been so willing to help me to help you on. But never mind that, only—beware of new friends. When they come fawning on you with offers to help you develop the resources of Widewood, you tell 'em——"

"That I'm going to develop them myself, alone."

"N-n-no—not quite that. O, you couldn't! You've no idea what a—why, I couldn't do it with you, without Jeff-Jack's help, nor he without mine! Why, just see what a failure the effort to build this road was, until"—the locomotive bellowed.

"Half-an-hour late, and slowing up again!" exclaimed John. He knew the parson's wife was pressing his mother to spend the night with them, and he was afraid of having his soul asked after. "Why do we stop here, hardly a mile from town?"

"It's to let my folks off. They're going to walk over to the pike while I go on for the carriage and drive out; they and Jeff-Jack and the Hallidays."

The train stopped where a beautiful lane crossed the track between two fenced fields. Fair and Barbara alighted and stood on a flowery bank with the sun glowing in some distant tree-tops behind them. Fannie leaned from the train, took both Jeff-Jack's uplifted hands and fluttered down upon rebounding tiptoes; the bell sounded, the scene changed, and John murmured to himself in heavy agony,

"He's going to ask her! O, Fannie, Fannie, if you'd only refuse to say yes, and give me three years to show what I can do! But he's going to ask her before that sun goes down, and what's she going to say?"

INFORMATION FOR SALE

"Hope of Suez!" Garnet felt he had spoken just these three words too many. "Overtalked myself again," he said to himself while chatting with others; "a liar always does. But he shall pay for this. Ah me!"

He was right. The young man would have sucked down all his flattery but for those three words. Yet on one side they were true, and March guiltily felt them so as, looking at his mother, he thought again of that deep store of the earth's largess lying under their unfruitful custody. Suez and her three counties would have jeered the gaudy name from Lover's Leap to Libertyville though had they guessed better the meaning of the change into which a world's progress was irresistibly pushing them, whoever owned Widewood must have stood for some of their largest wishes and hopes, and they would have ceased to deride the blessed mutation and to hobble it with that root of so many world-wide evils—the calling still private what the common need has made public. The ghost of this thought flitted in John's mind, but would not be grasped or beckoned to the light.

"I wish I could think," he sighed, but he could only think of Fannie. The train stopped. The excursionists swarmed forth. The cannon belched out its thunderous good-byes, and John went for his horse and buggy, promising to give word for Garnet's equipage to be sent to him.

"I must mind Johanna and her plunder," said the Major; "but I'll look after your mother, too." And he did so, though he found time to part fondly with the Proudfits.

"He won't do," thought John, as he glanced back from a rise of ground. "Fannie's right. And she's right about me, too; the only way to get her is to keep away till I've shown myself fit for her; that's what she means; of course she can't say so; but I'm satisfied that's what she means!"

He passed two drunken men. Here in town at the end of Suez's wedding so many had toasted it so often, it was as if Susie's own eyes were blood-shot and her steps uncertain. "It's my wedding, too," he soliloquized. "This Widewood business and I are married this day; it alone, to me alone, till it's finished. Garnet shall see whether—humph!—Jake, my horse and buggy!" And soon he was rattling back down the stony slopes toward his mother.

"Hope of Suez!" he grimly laughed. "We'll be its despair if we don't get something done. And I've got to do it alone. Why shouldn't I? Yes, it's true, times have changed; and yet if this was ever rightly a private matter in my father's hands, I can't see why it has or why it should become a public matter in mine!"

He said this to himself the more emphatically because he felt, somehow, very uncertain about it. He wished his problem was as simple as a railroad question. A railroad can ask for public aid; but fancy him asking public aid to open and settle up his private lands! He could almost hear Susie's horse-laugh in reply. Why should she not laugh? He recalled with what sweet unboastful tone his father had always condemned every scheme and symptom of riding on public shoulders into private fortune. In the dear old Dixie there had been virtually no public, and every gentleman was by choice his own and only public aid, no matter what—"Look out!"

He hauled up his horse. A man pressed close to the side of the halted buggy, to avoid a huge telegraph pole that came by quivering between two timber wheels. He offered John a freckled, yellow hand, and a smile of maudlin fondness.

"Mr. Mahch, I admiah to salute you ag'in, seh. Hasn't we had a glo'ious day? It's the mos' obtainable day Susie eveh see, seh!"

"Well, 'pon my soul!" said John, ignoring the proffered hand. "If I'd seen who it was, I'd 'a' driven straight over you." Both laughed. "Cornelius, did you see my mother waiting for me down by the tracks?"

"I did, seh. Thah she a-set'n' on a pile o' ceda'-tree poles, lookin' like the las' o' pea-time—p-he-he-he!

"Majo' Gyarnit? O yass, seh, he thah, too. Thass how come I lingud thah, seh, yass, seh, in espiration o' Johanna. Mr. Mahch, I loves that creatu' yit, seh!—I means Johanna."

"Oh!—not Major Garnet," laughed John, gathering the reins.

Cornelius sputtered with delight, and kept between the wheels. "Mr. Mahch,"—he straightened, solemnly, and held himself sober—"I was jess about to tell you what I jess evise Majo' Gyarnit espressin' to yo' maw—jess accidental as I was earwhilin' aroun' Johanna, you know."

"What was it? What did he say?"

"O, it wan't much, what he say. He say, 'Sis' Mahch, you e'zac'ly right. Don't you on no accounts paht with so much's a' acre o' them lan's lessn——"

"Lord!—the lands—take care for the wheel."

But Mr. Leggett leaned heavily on the buggy. "Mr. Mahch, I evince an' repose you in confidence to wit: that long as you do like Gyarnit say——"

John gave a stare of menace. "Major Garnet, if you please."

"Yass, seh, o' co'se; Majo' Gyarnit. I say, long as you do like he say, Widewood stay jess like it is, an' which it suit him like grapes suit a coon!" The informant's booziness had returned. One foot kept slipping from a spoke of the fore-wheel. With pretence of perplexity he examined the wheel. "Mr. Mahch, this wheel sick; she mighty sick; got to see blacksmiff befo' she can eveh see Widewood."

John looked. The word was true. He swore. The mulatto snickered, sagged against it and cocked his face importantly.

"Mr. Mahch, if you an' me was on'y in cahoots! En we kin be, seh, we kin—why, hafe o' yo' lan's 'u'd be public lan's in no time, an' the res' 'u'd belong to a stawk comp'ny, an' me'n' you 'u'd be a-cuttin' off kewponds an' a-drivin' fas' hawses an' a-drinkin' champagne suppuz, an' champagne faw ow real frien's an' real pain faw ow sham frien's, an' plenty o' both kine—thah goes Majo' Gyarnit's kerrige to him." It passed.

"But, why, Cornelius, should it suit Major Garnet for my lands to lie idle?"

"Mr. Mahch, has you neveh inspec' the absence o' green in my eye? It suit him faw a reason known on'y to yo's truly, yit which the said yo's truly would accede to transfawm to you, seh; yass, seh; in considerations o' us goin' in cahoots, aw else a call loan, an' yit mo' stric'ly a call-ag'in loan, a sawt o' continial fee, yass, seh; an' the on'y question, now much kin you make it?"

John looked into the upturned face for some seconds before he said, slowly and pleasantly, "Why, you dirty dog!" He gave the horse a cut of the whip. Leggett smiling and staggering, called after him, to the delight of all the street,

"Mr. Mahch, thass confidential, you know! An' Mr. Mahch! Woe! Mr. Mahch." John glanced fiercely back—"You betteh 'zamine that hine wheel! caze it jess now pa-ass oveh my foot!"