John March, Southerner

RAVENEL ASKS

The Garnet carriage, Johanna on the back seat, came smartly up through the town, past Parson Tombs's, the Halliday cottage, and silent Montrose Academy, and was soon parted from the Marches' buggy, which followed with slower dignity and a growing limp.

"Well, Johanna," said Garnet, driving, "had a good time?"

"Yass, seh."

"What's made Miss Barb so quiet all day; doesn't she like our friend?"

The answer was a bashful drawl—"I reckon she like him tol'able, seh."

"If you think Miss Barb would be pleased you can change to this seat beside me, Johanna." The master drew rein and she made the change. He spoke again. "You saw me, just now, talking with Cornelius, didn't you?"

"Yass, seh."

"His wife's dead, at last."

No answer.

"Johanna," he turned a playful eye, "what makes you so hard on Cornelius!"

She replied with a white glance of alarm and turned away. He would have pressed the subject but she murmured,

"Dah Miss Barb."

Barbara sat on a bare ledge of rock above the road-side, platting clovers. Fair stood close below, watching her fingers. She sprang to her feet.

"What did keep you so?" She moved to where Fair had stopped to hand her down, but laughed, turned away, waved good-by to Fannie and Ravenel out in a field full of flowers and western sunlight, and ran around by an easier descent to the carriage. Fair helped her in.

"Homeward bound," she said, and they spun away. As they turned a bend in the pike she glanced back with a carefully careless air, but saw only their own dust.

John, driving beside his mother, with eyes on the infirm wheel, was very silent, and she was very limp. The buggy top was up for privacy. By and by he heard a half-spoken sound at his side, and turning saw her eyes full of tears.

"O thunder!" he thought, but only said, "Why, mother, what's the matter?"

"Ah! my son, that's what I wonder. Why have you shunned me all day? Am I——"

"There are the Tombses waiting at their gate," interrupted the son. The aged pair had hurried away from the train on foot to have their house open for Sister March.

"Yes," said Daphne, sweetly yielding herself to their charge, "John's fierce driving has damaged a wheel, and we wont——"

"Go home till morning," said the delighted pastor with a tickled laugh that drew from his wife a glance of fond disapproval.

John drove alone to a blacksmith shop and left his buggy there and his horse at a stable. For the blacksmith lay across his doorsill "sick." He had been mending rigs and shoeing critters since dawn, and had drunk from a jug something he had thought was water and found—"it wusn't."

March sauntered off lazily to a corner where the lane led westward like the pike, turned into it and ran at full speed.

With a warm face he came again into the main avenue at a point nearly opposite the Halliday's cottage gate. General Halliday and the Englishman were just going through it.

John turned toward the sun-setting at a dignified walk. "I'm a fool to come out here," he thought. "But I must see at once what Jeff-Jack thinks of my plan. Will he tell me the truth, or will he trick me as they say he did Cornelius? O I must ask him, too, if he did that! I can't help it if he is with her; I must see him. I don't want to see her; at least that's not what I'm out here for. I'm done with her—for a while; Heaven bless her!—but I must see him, so's to know what to propose to mother."

The day was dying in exquisite beauty. Long bands of pale green light widened up from the west. Along the hither slope of a ridge someone was burning off his sedge-grass. The slender red lines of fire, beautiful after passion's sort, but dimming the field's fine gold, were just reaching the crest to die by a road-side. The objects of his search were nowhere to be seen.

A short way off, on the left, lay a dense line of young cedars and pines, nearly parallel with the turnpike. A footpath, much haunted in term-time by Montrose girls, and leading ultimately to the rear of the Academy grounds, lay in the clover-field beyond this thicket. John mounted a fence and gazed far and near. Opposite him in the narrow belt of evergreens was a scarcely noticeable opening, so deeply curved that one would get almost through it before the view opened on the opposite side. He leaped into the field, ran to this gap, burst into the open beyond, and stopped, hat in hand—speechless. His quest was ended.

Not ten steps away stood two lovers who had just said that fearfully sweet "mine" and "thine" that keeps the world a-turning. Ravenel's right arm was curved over Fannie's shoulder and about her waist. His left hand smoothed the hair from her uplifted brow, and his kiss was just lighting upon it.

The blood leaped to his face, but the next instant he sunk his free hand into his pocket and smiled. John's face was half-anger, half-anguish.

"Pleasant evening," said Ravenel.

"For you, sir." John bowed austerely. "I will not mar it. My business can wait." He gave Fannie a grief-stricken look and was hurrying off.

"John March," cried Ravenel, in a voice breaking with laughter, "come right back here, sir." But the youth only threw up an arm in tragic disdain and kept on.

"John," called a gentler voice, and he turned. "Don't leave us so," said Fannie. "You'll make me unhappy if you do." She had drawn away from her lover's arm. She put out a hand.

"Come, tell me I haven't lost my best friend."

John ran to her, caught her hand in both his and covered it with kisses, Ravenel stood smiling and breaking a twig slowly into bits.

"There, there, that's extravagant," said Fannie; but she let the youth keep her hand while he looked into her eyes and smiled fondly through his distress. Then she withdrew it, saying:

"There's Mr. Ravenel's hand, hold it. If I didn't know how men hate to be put through forms, I'd insist on your taking it."

"I reckon John thinks we haven't been quite candid," said Ravenel.

"I'm not sure we have," responded Fannie. "And yet I do think we've been real friends. You know John"—she smiled at her hardihood—"this is the only way it could ever be, don't you?" But John turned half away and shook his head bitterly. She spoke again. "Look at me, John." But plainly he could not.

"Are you going to throw us overboard?" she asked. There was a silence; and then—"You mustn't; not even if you feel like it. Don't you know we hadn't ever ought to consult our feelings till we've consulted everything else?"

John looked up with a start, and Fannie, by a grimace, bade him give his hand to his rival. He turned sharply and offered it. Ravenel took it with an air of drollery and John spoke low, Fannie loitering a step aside.

"I offer you my hand with this warning—I love her. I'm going on to love her after she's yours by law. I'll not make love to her; I may be a fool, but I'm not a hound; I love her too well to do that. But she's bound to know it right along. You'll see it. Everybody'll know it. That'll be all of it, I swear. But any man who wants to stop me from it will have to kill me. I believe I have the right, before God, to do it; but I'm going to do it anyhow. I prize your friendship. If I can keep it while you know, and while everybody else knows, that I'm simply hanging round waiting for you to die, I'll do it. If I can't—I can't." The hands parted.

"That's all right, John. That's what I'd do in your place."

March gazed a moment in astonishment. Then Fannie, still drifting away, felt Ravenel at her side and glanced up and around.

"O, you haven't let him go, have you? Why, I wanted to give him this four-leaf clover—as a sort o' pleasant hint. Don't you see?"

"I reckon he'll try what luck there is in odd numbers," said Ravenel, and they quickened their homeward step.

John went to tea at the Tombses in no mood to do himself credit as a guest. His mother was still reminding him of it next day when they alighted at home. "I little thought my son would give me so much trouble."

But his reply struck her dumb. "I've got lots left, mother, and will always have plenty. I make it myself."

ANOTHER ODD NUMBER

Fannie expressed to Barbara one day her annoyance at that kind of men—without implying that she meant any certain one—who will never take no for an answer.

"A lover, Barb, if he's not of the humble sort, is the most self-conceited thing alive. He can no more take in the idea that your objection to him is he than a board can draw a nail into itself. You've got to hammer it in."

"With a brickbat," quoth Barbara, whose notions of carpentry were feminine, and who did not care to discuss the matter. But John March, it seemed, would not take no from fate itself.

"I don't believe yet," he mused, as he rode about his small farm, "that Jeff-Jack will get her. She's playing with him. Why not? She's played with a dozen. And yet, naturally, somebody'll get her, and he'll not be worthy of her. There's hope yet! She loves me far more than she realizes right now. That's a woman's way; they'll go along loving for years and find it out by accident—You, Hector! What the devil are you and Israel over in that melon-patch for instead of the corn-field?

"I've been too young for her. No, not too young for her, but too young to show what I can do and be. She waited to see, for years. The intention may not have been conscious, but I believe it was there! And then she got tired of waiting. Why, it began to look as though I would never do anything or be anybody! Great Cæsar! You can't expect a girl to marry an egg in hopes o' what it'll hatch. O let me make haste and show what I am! what I can—'Evermind, Israel, I see you. Just wait till we get this crop gathered; if I don't kick you two idle, blundering, wasting, pilfering black renters off this farm—as shore's a gun's iron!

"No, she and Jeff-Jack'll never marry. Even if they do he'll not live long. These political editors, if somebody doesn't kill 'em, they break down, all at once. Our difference in age will count for less and less every year. She's the kind that stays young; four years from now I'll look the older of the two—I'll work myself old!"

A vision came to the dreamer's fancy: Widewood's forests filled with thrifty settlers, mines opened, factories humming by the brooksides, the locomotive's whistle piercing the stony ears of the Sleeping Giant; Suez full of iron-ore, coal, and quarried stone, and Fannie a widow, or possibly still unwed, charmed by his successes, touched by his constancy, and realizing at last the true nature of what she had all along felt as only a friendship.

"That's it! If I give men good reason to court me, I'll get the woman I court!"—But he did not, for many weeks, give men any irresistible good reason to court him.

"Ah me! here's November gone. Talk of minutes slipping through the fingers—the months are as bad as the minutes! Lord! what a difference there is between planning a thing and doing it—or even beginning to do it!"

Yet he did begin. There is a season comes, sooner or later, to all of us, when we must love and love must nest. It may fix its choice irrationally on some sweet ineligible Fannie; but having chosen, there it must nest, spite of all. Now, men may begin life not thus moved; but I never knew a man thus moved who still did not begin life. Love being kindled, purpose is generated, and the wheels in us begin to go round. They had gone round, even in John's father; but not only were time, place, and circumstance against the older man, but his love had nested in so narrow a knot-hole that the purposes and activities of his gentle soul died in their prison.

"Yes, that's one thing I've got to look out for," mused John one day, riding about the northwestern limits of his lands where a foaming brook kept saying, "Water-power!—good fishing!—good fishing!—water-power!" He dismounted and leaned against his horse by the brook's Widewood side, we may say, although just beyond here lay the odd sixty acres by which Widewood exceeded an even hundred thousand. The stream came down out of a steeply broken region of jagged rocks, where frequent evergreens and russet oaks studded the purple gray maze of trees that like to go naked in winter. But here it shallowed widely and slipped over a long surface of unbroken bed-rock. On its far side a spring gushed from a rocky cleft, leapt down some natural steps, ran a few yards, and slid into the brook. Behind it a red sun shone through the leafless tree-tops. The still air hinted of frost.

Suddenly his horse listened. In a moment he heard voices, and by an obscure road up and across the brook two riders came briskly to the water's edge, splashed into the smooth shallow and let their horses drink. They were a man and a maid, and the maid was Barbara Garnet. She was speaking.

"We can't get so far out of the way if we can keep this"—she saw John March rise into his saddle, caught a breath, and then cried:

"Why, it's Mr. March. Mr. March, we've missed our road!" Her laugh was anxious. "In fact, we're lost. Oh! Mr. March, Mr. Fair." The young men shook hands. Fair noted a light rifle and a bunch of squirrels at March's saddle-bow.

"You've been busier than we."

"Mighty poor sign of industry. I didn't come out for game, but a man's sure to be sorry if he goes into the woods without a gun. I mean, of course, Miss Garnet, if he's alone!"

Barbara answered with a smile and a wicked drawl, "You've been enjoying both ad-van-tag-es. I used to wish I was a squirrel, they're so en-er-get-ic." She added that she would be satisfied now to remain as she was if she could only get home safe. She reckoned they could find the road if Mr. March would tell them how.

John smiled seriously. "Better let me show you." He moved down the middle of the stream. "This used to be the right road, long time ago. You know, Mr. Fair"—his voice rang in the trees, "our mountain roads just take the bed of the nearest creek whenever they can. Our people are not a very business people. But that's because they've got the rare virtue of contentment. Now—"

"I don't think they're too contented, Mr. March," said Barbara, defensively. "Why, Mr. Fair, how much this creek and road are like ours at Rosemont!"

"It's the same creek," called March.

By and by they left it and rode abreast through woods. There was much badinage, in which Barbara took the aggressive, with frequent hints at Fannie that gave John delicious pain and convinced him that Miss Garnet was, after all, a fine girl. Fair became so quiet that John asked him two or three questions.

"O no!" laughed Fair, he could stay but a day or two. He said he had come this time from "quite a good deal" of a stay in Texas and Mexico, and his father had written him that he was needed at home. "Which is absurd, you know," he added to Barbara.

"Per-fect-ly," she said. But he would not skirmish.

"Yes," he replied. "But all the same I have to go. I'm sorry."

"We're sorry at Rosemont."

"I shall be sorry at Widewood," echoed March.

"I regret it the more," responded Fair, "from having seen Widewood so much and yet so little. Miss Garnet believes in a great future for Widewood. It was in trying to see something of it that we lost——"

But Barbara protested. "Mr. Fair, we rode hap-hazard! We simply chanced that way! What should I know, or care, about lands? You're confusing me with pop-a! Which is doub-ly ab-surd!"

"Most assuredly!" laughed the young men.

"You know, Mr. March, pop-a's so proud of the Widewood tract that I believe, positively, he's jealous of anyone's seeing it without him for a guide. You'd think it held the key of all our fates."

"Which is triply absurd!"

"Superlatively!" drawled Barbara, and laughing was easy. They came out upon the pike as March was saying to Fair:

"I'd like to show you my lands; they're the key of my fate, anyhow."

"They're only the lock," said Barbara, musingly. "The key is—elsewhere."

John laughed. He thought her witty, and continued with her, though the rest of the way to Rosemont was short and plain. Presently she turned upon the two horsemen a pair of unaggressive but invincible eyes, saying, languorously,

"Mr. March, I want you to show Widewood to Mr. Fair—to-morrow. Pop-a's been talking about showing it to him, but I want him to see it with just you alone."

To Fair there always seemed a reserve of merriment behind Miss Garnet's gravity, and a reserve of gravity behind her brightest gayety. This was one thing that had drawn him back to Rosemont. Her ripples never hid her depths, yet she was never too deep to ripple. I give his impressions for what they may be worth. He did not formulate them; he merely consented to stay a day longer. A half-moon was growing silvery when John said good-by at the gate of the campus.

"Now, in the morning, Mr. Fair, I'll meet you somewhere between here and the pike. I wish I could say you'd meet my mother, but she's in poor health—been so ever since the war."

That night Garnet lingered in his wife's room to ask—

"Do you think Barb really missed the road, or was that——"

"Yes, they took the old creek road by mistake."

"Has Fair—said anything to her?"

"No; she didn't expect or wish it——"

"Well, I don't see why."

—"And he's hardly the sort to do unexpected things."

"They've agreed to ride right after breakfast. What d'you reckon that's for?"

"Not what you wish. But still, for some reason she wants you to leave him entirely to himself."

College being in session breakfast was early.

"Barb, you'll have to take care of Mr. Fair to-day, I reckon. You might take my horse, sir. I'll be too busy indoors to use him."

The girl and her cavalier took but a short gallop. They had nearly got back to the grove gate when he ventured upon a personal speech; but it was only to charge her with the art of blundering cleverly.

She assured him that her blunders were all nature and her art accident. "Whenever I want to be witty I get into a hurry, and haste is the an-ti-dote of wit."

"Miss Garnet," he thought, as her eyes rested calmly in his, "your gaze is too utterly truthful."

"Ah!" said Barbara, "here's Mr. March now."

Fair wished he might find out why Miss Garnet should be out-man[oe]uvring her father.

MR. FAIR VENTURES SOME INTERROGATIONS

The air was full of joy that morning, and John boyishly open and hearty.

"Fact is, Mr. Fair, I don't care for young ladies' company. Half of them are frauds and the rest are a delusion and a snare—ha-ha-ha! Miss Garnet is new goods, as the boys say, and I'm not fashionable. Even our mothers ain't very well acquainted yet; though my mother's always regretted it; their tastes differ. My mother's literary, you know."

"They say Miss Garnet's a great romp—among other girls—and an unmerciful mimic."

"Don't you rather like that?"

"Who, me? Lord, yes! The finest girl I know is that way—dances Spanish dances—alone with other girls, of course. The church folks raised Cain about it once. O I—you think I mean Miss Halliday—well I do. Miss Garnet can tease me about her all she likes—ha, ha! it doesn't faze me! Miss Fannie's nothing to me but a dear friend—never was! Why, she's older than I am—h-though h-you'd never suspect it."

"Well, yes, I think I should have known it."

"O go 'long! Somebody told you! But I swear, Mr. Fair, I wonder, sir, you're not more struck with Miss Halliday. Now, I go in for mind and heart. I don't give a continental for externals; and yet—did you ever see such glorious eyes as Fan—Miss Halliday's? Now, honest Ingin! did you, ever?"

Mr. Fair admitted that Miss Halliday's eyes danced.

"You say they do? You're right! Hah! they dance Spanish dances. I've seen black eyes that went through you like a sword; I've seen blue eyes that drilled through you like an auger; and I've seen gray ones that bit through you like a cold-chisel; and I've seen—now, there's Miss Garnet's, that just see through you without going through you at all—O I don't like any of 'em! but Fannie Halliday's eyes—Miss Fannie, I should say—they seem to say, 'Come out o' that. I'm not looking at all, but I know you're there!' O sir!—Mr. Fair, don't you hate, sir, to see such a creature as that get married to anybody? I say, to anybody! I tell you what it's like, Mr. Fair. It's like chloroforming a butterfly, sir! That's what it's like!"

He meditated and presently resumed—"But, Law' no! She's nothing to me. I've got too much to think of with these lands on my hands. D'you know, sir, I really speak more freely to you than if you belonged here and knew me better? And I confess to you that a girl like F—Miss Halliday—would be enough to keep me from ever marrying!"

"Why, how is that?"

"Why? O well, because!—knowing her, I couldn't ever be content with less, and, of course, I couldn't get her or make her happy if I got her. Torture for one's better than torture for two. Mind, that's a long ways from saying I ever did want her, or ever will. I'm happy as I am—confirmed bachelor—ha-ha-ha! What I do want, Mr. Fair, sir, is to colonize these lands, and to tell you the truth, sir—h—I don't know how to do it!"

"Are your titles good?"

"Perfect."

"Are the lands free from mortgage?"

"Free! ha-ha! they'd be free from mortgage, sir, but for one thing."

"What's that?"

"Why, they're mortgaged till you can't rest! The mortgages ain't so mortal much, but they've been on so long we'd almost be afraid to take them off. They're dried on sir!—grown in! Why, sir, we've paid more interest than the mortgages foot up, sir!"

"What were they made for? improvements?"

"Impr—O yes, sir; most of 'em were given to improve the interior of our smoke-house—sort o' decorate it with meat."

"Ah, you wasted your substance in riotous living!"

"No, sir, we were simply empty in the same old anatomical vicinity and had to fill it. The mortgages wa'n't all made for that; two or three were made to raise money to pay the interest on old ones—interest and taxes. Mr. Fair, if ever a saint on earth lived up to his belief my father did. He believed in citizenship confined to taxpayers, and he'd pay his taxes owing for the pegs in his shoes—he made his own shoes, sir."

"Who hold these mortgages?"

"On paper, Major Garnet, but really Jeff-Jack Ravenal. That's private, sir."

"Yes, very properly, I see."

"Do you? Wha' do you see? Wish I could see something. Seems like I can't."

"O, I only see as you do, no doubt, that any successful scheme to improve your lands will have to be in part a public scheme, and be backed by Mr. Ravenel's newspaper, and he can do that better if he's privately interested and supposed not to be so, can't he?"

March stared, and then mused. "Well, I'll be—doggoned!"

"Of course, Mr. March, that needn't be unfair to you. Is it to accommodate you, or him, that Major Garnet lends his name?"

"O me!—At least—O! they're always accommodating each other."

"My father told me of these lands before I came here. He thinks that the fortunes of Suez, and consequently of Rosemont, in degree, not to speak"—the speaker smiled—"of individual fates, is locked up in them."

"I know! I know! The fact grows on me, sir, every day and hour! But, sir, the lands are my lawful inheritance, and although I admit that the public——"

"You quite misunderstand me! Miss Garnet said—in play, I know—that the key of this lock isn't far off, or words to that effect. Was she not right? And doesn't Mr. Ravenel hold it? In fact—pardon my freedom—is it not best that he should?"

"Good heavens, sir! why, Miss Garnet didn't mean—you say, does Jeff-Jack hold that key? He was holding it the last time I saw him! O yes. Even according to your meaning he thinks he holds it, and he thinks he ought to. I don't think he ought to, and incline to believe he won't! Lift your miserable head!" he cried to his horse, spurred fiercely, and jerked the curb till the animal reared and plunged. When he laughed again, in apology, Fair asked,

"Do you propose to organize a company yourself to—eh—boom your lands?"

"Well, I don't—Yes, I reckon I shall. I reckon I'll have to. Wha' do you think?"

"Might not Mr. Ravenel let you pay off your mortgages in stock?"

"I—he might. But could I do that and still control the thing? For, Mr. Fair, I've got to control! There's a private reason why I mustn't let Jeff-Jack manage me. I've got to show myself the better man. He knows why. O! we're good friends. I can't explain it to you, and you'd never guess it in the world! But there's a heavy prize up between us, and I believe that if I can show myself more than a match for him in these lists—this land business—I'll stand a chance for that prize. There, sir, I tell you that much. It's only proper that I should. I've got to be the master."

"Is your policy, then, to gain time—to put the thing off while you——"

"Good Lord, no! I haven't a day to spare! I'll show you these lands, Mr. Fair, and then if you'll accept the transfer of these mortgages, I'll begin the work of opening these lands, somehow, before the sun goes down. But if I let Ravenel or Garnet in, I—" John pondered.

"Haven't you let them in already, Mr. March? I don't see clearly why it isn't your best place for them."

March was silent.

JORDAN

Barbara lay on a rug in her room, reading before the fragrant ashes of a perished fire. She heard her father's angry step, and his stern rap on her door. Before she could more than lift her brow he entered.

"Barb!—O what sort of posture—" She started, and sat coiled on the rug.

"Barb, how is it you're not with your mother?"

"Mom-a sent me out, pop-a. She thought if I'd leave her she might drop asleep."

He smiled contemptuously. "How long ago was that?"

"About fifteen minutes."

"It was an hour ago! Barb, you've got hold of another novel. Haven't you learned yet that you can't tell time by that sort of watch?"

"Is mom-a awake?" asked the girl, starting from the mantel-piece.

"Yes—stop!" He extended his large hand, and she knew, as she saw its tremor, that he was in the same kind of transport in which he had flogged Cornelius. In the same instant she was frightened and glad.

"I've headed him off," she thought.

"Barb, your mother's very ill—stop! Johanna's with her. Barb"—his tones sank and hardened—"why did that black hussy try to avoid telling me you were home and Fair had gone off with that whelp, John March? What? Why don't you speak so I can hear? What are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid we'll disturb mom-a. Johanna should have told you plainly."

"Oh! indeed! I tell you, if it hadn't been for your mother's presence I'd have thrown her out of the window." An unintentional murmur from Barbara exasperated him to the point of ecstasy. He paled and smiled.

"Barb, did you want to keep me from knowing that Fair was going to Widewood?" They looked steadily into each others' eyes. "Which of us is it you don't trust, that Yankee, or your own father? Don't—" he lifted his palm, but let it sink again. "Don't move your lips that way again; I won't endure it. Barbara Garnet, this is Fannie Halliday's work! So help me, God, I'd rather I'd taken your little white coffin in my arms eighteen years ago and laid it in the ground than that you should have learned from that poisonous creature the effrontry to suspect me of dishonest—Silence! You ungrateful brat, if you were a son, I'd shake the breath out of you. Have you ever trusted me? Say!"—he stepped close up—"Stop gazing at me like a fool and answer my question! Have you?"

"Don't speak so loud."

"Don't tell me that, you little minx; you who have never half noticed how sick your mother is. Barb"—the speaker's words came through his closed teeth—"Mr. John March can distrust me and leave me out of his precious company as much as he damn pleases—if you like his favorite forms of speech—and so may your tomtit Yankee. But you—sha'n't! You sha'n't repay a father's careful plans with suspicions of underhanded rascality, you unregenerate—see here! Do those two pups know you didn't want me to go? Answer me!"

She could not. Her lips moved as he had forbidden, and she was still looking steadily into his blazing eyes, when, as if lightning had struck, she flinched almost off her feet, her brain rang and roared, her sight failed, and she knew she had been slapped in the face.

He turned his back, but the next instant had wheeled again, his face drawn with pain and alarm. "I didn't mean to do that! Oh, good Lord! it wa'n't I! Forgive me, Barb. Oh, Barb, my child, as God's my witness, I didn't do it of my own free will. He let the devil use me. All my troubles are coming together; your suspicions maddened me."

Her eyes were again in his. She shook her head and passed to her mirror, saying, slowly, "God shall smite thee, thou whited wall." She glanced at the glass, but the redness of its fellow matched the smitten cheek, and she hurried to the door.

"Barb"—the tone was a deep whine—she stopped without looking back. "Don't say anything to your mother to startle her. The slightest shock may kill her."

Barbara entered the mother's chamber. Johanna was standing by a window. The daughter beamed on the maid, and turned to the bed; but consternation quenched the smile when she beheld her mother's face.

"Why, mom-a, sweet."

A thin hand closed weakly on her own, and two sunken blue eyes, bright with distress, looked into hers. "Where is he?" came a feeble whisper.

"Pop-a? Oh, he's coming. If he doesn't come in a moment, I'll bring him." The daughter's glance rested for refuge on the white forehead. "Shall I go call him?"

The pallid lips made no reply, the sunken eyes still lay in wait. Barbara racked her mind for disguise of words, but found none. There was no escape. Even to avoid any longer the waiting eyes would confess too much. She met them and they gazed up into hers in still anguish. Barbara's answered, with a sweet, full serenity. Then without a word or motion came the silent question,

"Did he strike you?"

And Barbara answered, audibly. "No."

She rose, adding, "Let me go and bring him." Conscience rose also and went with her. Just outside the closed door she covered her face in her hands and sank to the floor, moaning under her breath,

"What have I done? What shall I do? Oh God! why couldn't—why didn't I lie to him?" She ran down-stairs on tiptoe.

Her father, with Pettigrew at his side, was offering enthusiasm to a Geometry class. "Young gentlemen, a swift, perfect demonstration of a pure abstract truth is as beautiful and delightful to me—to any uncorrupted mind—as perfect music to a perfect ear."

But hearing that his daughter was seeking him, he withdrew.

The two had half mounted the stairs, when a hurried step sounded in the upper hall, and Johanna leaned wildly over the rail, her eyes streaming.

"Miss Barb! Miss Barb! run here! run! come quick, fo' de love of God! Oh, de chariots of Israel! de chariots of Israel! De gates o' glory lif'n up dey head!"

Barbara flew up the stairs and into her mother's room. Mr. Pettigrew stood silent among the crystalline beauties of mathematical truth, and a dozen students leaped to their feet as the daughter's long wail came ringing through the house mingled with the cry of Johanna.

"Too late! Too late! De daughteh o' Zion done gone in unbeseen!"

Through two days more Fair lingered, quartered at the Swanee Hotel, and conferred twice more with John March. In the procession that moved up the cedar avenue of the old Suez burying-ground, he stepped beside General Halliday, near its end. Among the headstones of the Montgomeries the long line stopped and sang,

In the midst of the refrain, each time, there trembled up in tearful ecstasy, above the common wave of song, the voices of Leviticus Wisdom and his wife. But only once, after the last stanza, Johanna's yet clearer tone answered them from close beside black-veiled Barbara, singing in vibrant triumph,

THE OPPORTUNE MOMENT

Coming from the grave Fair walked with March.

"Yes, I go to-night; I shall see my father within three days. He may think better of your ideas than I do. Don't you suppose really—" etc. "You think you'll push it anyhow?"

"Yes, sir. In fact, I've got to."

After all others were gone one man still loitered furtively in the cemetery. He came, now, from an alley of arborvitæs with that fantastic elasticity of step which skilled drunkards learn. He had in hand a bunch of limp flowers of an unusual kind, which he had that day ridden all the way to Pulaski City to buy. He stood at the new grave's foot, sank to one knee, wiped true tears from his eyes, pressed apart the evergreens and chrysanthemums piled there, and laid in the midst his own bruised and wilted offering of lilies.

As he reached the graveyard gate in departing his mood lightened.

"An' now gen'lemen," he said to himself, "is come to pa-ass the ve-y nick an' keno o' time faw a fresh staht. Frien' Gyarnit, we may be happy yit."

He came up behind Fair and March. Fair was speaking of Fannie.

"But where was she? I didn't see her."

"Oh, she stayed at Rosemont to look after the house."

"The General tells me his daughter is to be married to Mr. Ravenel in March."

John gave an inward start, but was silent for a moment. Then he said, absently,

"So that's out, is it?" But a few steps farther on he touched Fair's arm.

"Let's go—slower." His smile was ashen. "I—h—I don't know why in the devil I have these sickish feelings come on me at f-funerals." They stopped. "Humph! Wha'd' you reckon can be the cause of it—indigestion?"

Mr. Fair thought it very likely, and March said it was passing off already.

"Humph! it's ridiculous. Come on, I'm all right now."

The man behind them passed, looked back, stopped and returned. "Gen'lemen, sirs, to you. Mr. Mahch, escuse me by pyo accident earwhilin' yo' colloquial terms. I know e'zacly what cause yo' sick transit. Yass, seh. Thass the imagination. I've had it, myseff."

March stopped haughtily, Fair moved out of hearing, and Cornelius spoke low, with a sweet smile. "Yass, seh. You see the imagination o' yo' head is evil. You imaginin' somepm what ain't happm yit an' jiss like as not won't happm at all. But thass not why I seeks to interrup' you at this junction.

"Mr. Mahch, I'm impudize to espress to you in behalfs o' a vas' colo'ed constituency—but speakin' th'oo a small ban' o' they magnates with me as they sawt o' janizary chairman—that Gen'l Halliday seem to be ti-ud o' us an' done paass his bes' dotage, an' likewise the groun's an' debasements on an' faw which we be proud to help you depopulate yo' lan's, yass, seh, with all conceivable ligislation thereunto."

"What business is it of yours or your Blackland darkies what I do with my woods?"

"Why, thass jess it! Whass nobody's business is ev'ybody's business, you know."

March smiled and moved toward Fair. "I've no time to talk with you now, Leggett."

"Oh! no, seh, I knowed you wouldn't have. But bein' the talk' o' the town that you an' this young gen'leman"—dipping low to Fair—"is projeckin' said depopulation I has cawdially engross ow meaju' in writin' faw yo' conjint an' confidential consideration. Yass, seh, aw in default whereof then to compote it in like manneh to the nex' mos' interested."

"And, pray, who is the next most interested in my private property?"

"Why, Majo' Gyarnit, I reck'n—an' Mr. Ravenel, seein' he's the Djuke o' Suez—p-he!"

March let his hand accept a soiled document, saying, "Well, he's not Duke of me. Just leave me this. I'll either mail it to you or see you again. Good-by."

The title of the document as indorsed on it was: "The Suez and Three Counties Transportation, Immigration, Education, Navigation, and Construction Co."

DAPHNE AND DINWIDDIE: A PASTEL IN PROSE

"Professor" Pettigrew had always been coldly indifferent to many things commonly counted chief matters of life. One of these was religion; another was woman. His punctuality at church at the head of Rosemont's cadets was so obviously perfunctory as to be without a stain of hypocrisy. Yet he never vaunted his scepticism, but only let it exhale from him in interrogative insinuations that the premises and maxims of religion were refuted by the outcome of the war. To woman his heart was as hard, cold, and polished as celluloid. Only when pressed did he admit that he regarded her as an insipid necessity. One has to have a female parent in order to get into this world—no gentleman admitted without a lady; and when one goes out of it again, it is good to leave children so as to keep the great unwashed from getting one's property. Property!—humph! he or his father, at least—he became silent.

He often saw Mrs. March in church, yet kept his heart. But one night a stereoptican lecture was given in Suez. In Mrs. March's opinion such things, unlike the deadly theatre, were harmful only when carried to excess. To keep John from carrying this one to excess—that is, from going to it with anybody else—she went with him, and they "happened"—I suppose an agnostic would say—to sit next to Dinwiddie Pettigrew. John being in a silent mood Daphne and Dinwiddie found time for much conversation. The hour fixed for the lecture was half-past seven. Promptly about half-past eight the audience began to arrive. At a quarter of nine it was growing numerous.

"Oh! no," said General Halliday to the lecturer, "don't you fret about them going home; they'll stay like the yellow fever"—and punctually somewhere about nine "The Great Love Stories of History" began to be told, and luminously pictured on a white cotton full moon.

With lights turned low and everybody enjoined to converse only in softest whispers, the conditions for spontaneous combustion were complete in many bosoms, and at the close of the entertainment Daphne Dalrymple, her own asbestos affections warmed, but not ignited, walked away with the celluloid heart of Dinwiddie Pettigrew in a light blaze.

A WIDOW'S ULTIMATUM

At the time of which we would here speak the lover had made one call at Widewood, but had not met sufficient encouragement to embolden him to ask that the lovee would give, oh, give him back a heart so damaged by fire, as to be worthless except to the thief; though his manner was rank with hints that she might keep it now and take the rest.

Mrs. March was altogether too sacred in her own eyes to be in haste at such a juncture. Her truly shrinking spirit was a stranger to all manner of auctioning, but she believed in fair play, and could not in conscience quite forget her exhilarating skirmish with Mr. Ravenel on the day of Susie's wedding.

It had not brought on a war of roses. Something kept him away from Widewood. Was it, she wondered, the noble fear that he might subject her to those social rumors that are so often all the more annoying because only premature? Ah, if he could but know how lightly she regarded such prattle! But she would not tell him, even in impersonal verse. On the contrary, she contributed to the Presbyterian Monthly—a non-sectarian publication—those lines—which caught one glance of so many of her friends and escaped any subsequent notice—entitled,

But the simple fact is that Mr. Ravenel's flatteries, when rare chance brought him and the poetess together, were without purpose, and justified in his liberal mind by the right of every Southern gentleman to treat as irresistible any and every woman in her turn.—"Got to do something pleasant, Miss Fannie; can't buy her poetry."

On the evening when March received from Leggett the draft of An Act Entitled, etc., the mother and son sat silent through their supper, though John was longing to speak. At last, as they were going into the front room he managed to say:

"Well, mother, Fair's gone—goes to-night."

He dropped an arm about her shoulders.

"Oh!—when I can scarcely bear my own weight!" She sank into her favorite chair and turned away from his regrets, sighing,

"Oh, no, youth and health never do think."

The son sat down and leaned thoughtfully on the centre-table.

"That's so! They don't think; they're too busy feeling."

"Ah, John, you don't feel! I wish you could."

"Humph! I wish I couldn't." He smoothed off a frown and let his palm fall so flat upon the bare mahogany that a woman of less fortitude than Mrs. March would certainly have squeaked. "Mother, dear, I believe I'll try to see how little I can feel and how much I can think."

"Providence permitting, my reckless boy."

"Oh, bless your dear soul, mother, Providence'll be only too glad! yes, I've a notion to try thinking. Fact is, I've begun already. Now, you love solitude——"

"Ah, John!"

"Well, at any rate, you can think best when you're alone."

"O John!"

"Well, father could. I can't. I need to rub against men. You don't."

"Oh!—h—h—John!" But when Mrs. March saw the intent was only figurative she drew her lips close and dropped her eyes.

Her son reflected a minute and spoke again. "Why, mother, just that Yankee's being here peeping around and asking his scared-to-death questions has pulled my wits together till I wonder where they've been. Oh, it's so! It's not because he's a Yankee. It's simply because he's in with the times. He knows what's got to come and what's got to go, and how to help them do it so's to make them count! He belongs—pshaw—he belongs to a live world. Now, here in this sleepy old Dixie——"

"Has it come to that, John?"

"Yes, it has, and it's cost a heap sight more than it's come to, because I didn't let it come long ago. I wouldn't look plain truth in the face for fear of going back on Rosemont and Suez, and all the time I've been going back on Widewood!" The speaker smote the family Bible with Leggett's document. His mother wept.

"Oh! golly," mumbled John.

"Oh! my son!"

"Why, what's the trouble, mother?"

Mrs. March could not tell him. It was not merely his blasphemies. There seemed to be more hope of sympathy from the damaged ceiling, and she moaned up to it,

"My son a Radical!"

He sprang to his feet. "Mother, take that insult back! For your own sake, take it back! I hadn't a thought of politics. If my words implied it they played me false!"

Mrs. March was anguished wonder. "Why, what else could they mean?"

"Anything! I don't know! I was only trying to blurt out what I've been thinking out, concerning our private interests. For I've thought out and found out—these last few days—more things that can be done, and must be done, and done right off with these lands of ours——"

"O John! Is that your swift revenge?"

"Why, mother, dear! Revenge for what? Who on?"

"For nothing, John; on widowed, helpless me!"

"Great Scott! mother, as I've begged you fifty times, I beg you now again, just tell me what to do or undo."

"Please don't mock me, John. You're the dictator now, by the terms of the will. They give you the legal rights, and the legal rights are all that count—with men. I'm in your power."

John laughed. "I wish you'd tell the dictator what to do."

"Too late, my son, you've taken the counsel of your country's enemies." She rose to leave the room. The son slapped his thigh.

"'Pon my soul, mother, you must excuse me. Here's a letter.

"Has Jeff-Jack accepted another poem?" he asked, as she read. "I wish he'd pay for it."

She did not say, though the missive must have ended very kindly, for in spite of herself she smiled.

"Ah, John! your vanity is so large it can include even your mother. I wish I had some of it; I might believe what my friends tell me. But maybe it's vanity in me not to think they know best." She let John press her hand upon his forehead.

"I wish I could know," she continued. "I yearn for wise counsel. O son! why do we, both of us, so distrust and shun our one only common friend? He could tell us what to do, son; and, oh, how we need some one to tell us!"

John dropped the hand. "I don't need Jeff-Jack. He's got to need me."

"Oh, presumptuous boy! John, you might say Mr. Ravenel. He's old enough to be your father."

"No, he's not! At any rate, that's one thing he'll never be!"

The widow flared up. "I can say that, sir, without your prompting."

"Why, mother! Why, I no more intended——"

"John, spare me! Oh, no, you were brutal merely by accident! I thank you! I must thank you for pointing your unfeeling hints at the most invincib—I mean inveterate—bachelor in the three counties."

"Inveterate lover, you'd better say. He marries Fannie Halliday next March. The General's telling every Tom, Dick and Harry to-day."

"John, I don't believe it! It can't be! I know better!"

"I wish you did, but they told me themselves, away last July, standing hand in hand. Mother, he's got no more right to marry her——"

"Than you have! And he knows it! For John, John! There never was a more pitiful or needless mismatch! Why, he could have—but it's none of my business, only—" she choked.

"No, of course not," said the son, emotionally, "and it's none of mine, either, only—humph!" He rose and strode about. "Why she could just as easily——Oh, me!" He jostled a chair. Mrs. March flinched and burst into tears.

"Oh, good heavens! mother, what have I done now? I know I'm coarse and irreverent and wilful and surly and healthy, and have got the big-head and the Lord knows what! But I swear I'll stop everything bad and be everything good if you'll just quit off sniv—weeping!"

Strange to say, this reasonable and practicable proposition did not calm either of them.

"I'll even go with you to Jeff-Jack and ask his advice—oh! Jane-Anne-Maria! now what's broke?"

"Only a mother's heart!" She looked up from her handkerchief. "Go seek his advice if you still covet it; I never trusted him; I only feared I might doubt him unjustly. But now I know his intelligence, no less than his integrity, is beneath the contempt of a Christian woman. I leave you to your books. My bed——"

"O mother, I wasn't reading! Come, stay; I'll be as entertaining as a circus."

"I can't; I'm all unstrung. Let me go while I can still drag——"

John rose. A horse's tread sounded. "Now, who can that be?"

He listened again, then rolled up his fists and growled between his teeth.

"Cawnsound that foo'—mother, go on up stairs, I'll tell him you've retired."

"I shall do nothing so dishonorable. Why should you bury me alive? Is it because one friend still comes with no scheme for the devastation of our sylvan home?"

Before John could reply sunshine lighted the inquirer's face and she stepped forward elastically to give her hand to Mr. Dinwiddie Pettigrew.

When he was gone, Daphne was still as bland as May, for a moment, and even John's gravity was of a pleasant sort. "Mother, you're just too sweet and modest to see what that man's up to. I'm not. I'd like to tell him to stay away from here. Why, mother, he's—he's courting!"

The mother smiled lovingly. "My son, I'll attend to that. Ah me! suitors! They come in vain—unless I should be goaded by the sight of these dear Widewood acres invaded by the alien." She sweetened like a bride.

The son stood aghast. She lifted a fond hand to his shoulder. "John, do you know what heart hunger is? You're too young. I am ready to sacrifice anything for you, as I always was for your father. Only, I must reign alone in at least one home, one heart! Fear not; there is but one thing that will certainly drive me again into marriage."

"What's that, mother?"

"A daughter-in-law. If my son marries, I have no choice—I must!" She floated upstairs.

A NEW SHINGLE IN SUEZ

Next day—"John, didn't you rise very early this morning?"

"No, ma'am."

He had not gone to bed. Yet there was a new repose in his face and energy in his voice. He ate breakfast enough for two.

"Millie, hasn't Israel brought my horse yet?"

He came to where his mother sat, kissed her forehead, and passed; but her languorous eyes read, written all over him, the fact that she had drawn her cords one degree too tight, and that in the night something had snapped; she had a new force to deal with.

"John"—there was alarm in her voice—he had the door half open—"are you so cruel and foolish as to take last evening's words literally?"

"That's all gay, mother; 'tain't the parson I'm going after, it's the surveyor."

He shut the door on the last word and went away whistling. Not that he was merry; as his horse started he set his teeth, smote in the spurs, and cleared the paling fence at a bound.

The surveyors were Champion and Shotwell. John worked with them. To his own surprise he was the life of the party. Some nights they camped. They sang jolly songs together; but often Shotwell would say:

"O Champion, I'll hush if you will; we're scaring the wolves. Now, if you had such a voice as John's—Go on, March, sing 'Queen o' my Soul.'"

John would sing; Shotwell would lie back on the pine-needles with his eyes shut, and each time the singer reached the refrain, "Mary, Mary, queen of my soul," the impassioned listener would fetch a whoop and cry, "That's her!" although everybody had known that for years the only "her" who had queened it over Shotwell's soul was John's own Fannie Halliday.

"Now, March, sing, 'Thou wert the first, thou aht the layst,' an' th'ow yo' whole soul into it like you did last night!"

"John," said Champion once, after March had sung this lament, "You're a plumb fraud. If you wa'n't you couldn't sing that thing an' then turn round and sing, 'They laughed, ha-ha! and they quaffed, ha-ha!'"

"Let's have it!" cried Shotwell. "Paass tin cups once mo', gen'lemen!"—tink—tink—

"March," said Champion, "if you'll excuse the personality, what's changed you so?"

John laughed and said he didn't think he was changed, but if he was he reckoned it was evolution. Which did not satisfy Shotwell, who had "quaffed, ha-ha!" till he was argumentative.

"Don't you 'scuse personal'ty 't all, March. I know wha's change' you. 'Tain't no 'sperience. You ain't been converted. You're gettin' ripe! 'S all is about it. Wha' changes green persimmons? 's nature; 'tain't 'sperience."

"Well, I'd like to know if sunshine an' frost ain't experiences," retorted Champion.

"Some experiences," laughed John, "are mighty hot sunshine, and some are mighty hard frosts." To which the two old soldiers assented with more than one sentimental sigh as the three rolled themselves in their blankets and closed their eyes.

When the survey was done they made a large colored map of everything, and John kept it in a long tin tube—what rare times he was not looking at it.

"How short-sighted most men are! They'll have lands to dispose of and yet not have maps made! How the devil do they expect ever"—etc. Sometimes he smiled to himself as he rolled the gorgeous thing up, but only as we smile at the oddities of one whom we admire.

He opened an office. It contained a mantel-piece, a desk, four chairs, a Winchester rifle, and a box of cigars. The hearth and mantel-piece were crowded with specimens of earths, ores, and building stones, and of woods precious to the dyer, the manufacturer, the joiner and the cabinet-maker. Inside the desk lay the map whenever he was, and a revolver whenever he was not—"Out. Will be back in a few minutes."

On the desk's top were more specimens, three or four fat old books from Widewood, and on one corner, by the hour, his own feet, in tight boots, when he read Washington's Letters, Story on the Constitution, or the Geology of Dixie. What interested Suez most of all was his sign. It professed no occupation. "John March." That was all it proclaimed, for a time, in gilt, on a field of blue smalts. But one afternoon when he was—"Out of town. Will be back Friday"—some Rosemont boys scratched in the smalts the tin word, Gentleman.

"Let it alone, John," said the next day's Courier. "It's a good ad., and you can live up to it." It stayed.

WISDOM AND FAITH KISS EACH OTHER

It came to pass in those days that an effort to start a religious revival issued from Suez "University." It seems the "Black-and-Tannery," as the Rosemont boys called it, was having such increase in numbers that its president had thought well to give the national thanks-giving day special emphasis on the devotional side. Prayer for gifts of grace to crown these temporal good fortunes extended over into a second and third evening, black young women and tan young men asked to be prayed for, the president "wired" glad news to the board in New York, the board "wired" back, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward!"—just ten words, economy is the road to commendation—meetings were continued, and the gray-headed black janitor, richest man in the institution, leading in prayer, promised that if the Lord would "come down" then and there, "right thoo de roof," he himself would pay for the shingles!

Since corner-stone day the shabby-coated president had not known such joy. In the chapel, Sunday morning, he read the story of the two lepers who found the Syrian camp deserted in the siege of Samaria; and preached from the text, "We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace.... So they came and called unto the porter of the city." That afternoon he went to Parson Tombs. The pastor was cordial, brotherly; full of tender gladness to hear of the "manifestations." They talked a great while, were pleased with each other, and came to several kind and unexpected agreements. They even knelt and prayed together. As to the president's specific errand—his proposal for a week of union revival meetings in Parson Tomb's church, with or without the town congregation, the "university students" offering to occupy only the gallery—the pastor said that as far as he was concerned, he was much disposed to favor it.

"Why, befo' the wa' ow slaves used to worship with us; I've seen ow gallery half full of 'm! And we'd be only too glad to see it so again—for we love 'em yet, seh—if they wouldn't insist so on mixin' religion an' politics. I'll consult some o' my people an' let you know."

When he consulted his church officers that evening only two replied approvingly. One of them was the oldest, whitest haired man in the church. "Faw my part," he said, "I don't think the churches air a-behavin' theyse'ves like Christians to the niggehs anywheres. I jest know ef my Lawd an' Master was here in Dixie now he'd not bless a single one of all these separations between churches, aw in churches, unless it's the separation o' the sexes, which I'm pow'ful sorry to see that broke up. I'm faw invitin' them people, dry-so, an' I don't give a cent whether they set upstairs aw down"—which was true.

The other approving voice was young Doctor Grace.

"Brethren, I believe in separating worshippers by race. But when, as now, this is so fully and amicably provided for, I would have all come together, joined, yet separated, to cry with one shout, 'Lord, revive us!' And he'll do it, brethren! I feel it right here!" He put his hand on the exact spot.

Garnet spoke. "Brother Grace, you say the separation is fully provided for—where'll the white teachers of our colored brethren sit? If they sit down-stairs we run the risk of offending some of our own folks; if they sit in the gallery that's a direct insult to the whole community. It'll not be stood. When colored mourners come up to the front—h-they'll come in troops—where'll you put 'em?"

"I'd put them wherever there's room for them," was the heroic reply.

"Oh, there'd be room for them everywhere," laughed Garnet, "for as far as our young folks are concerned, the whole thing would be a complete frazzle. Why, you take a graceless young fellow, say like John March. How are you going to get him to come up here and kneel down amongst a lot of black and saddle-colored bucks and wenches?—I word it his way, you understand. No, sir, as sure as we try this thing, we'll create dissension—in a church where everything now is as sweet and peaceful as the grave."

"Of course we mustn't have dissensions," said Parson Tombs.

Mr. Usher, who spoke last and very slowly, said but a word or two. He agreed with Brother Garnet. And yet he believed this was a message from on high to be up and a-doin'. "This church, brethren, has jest got to be replaastered, an' I don't see how we goin' to do it 'ithout we have a outpourin' o' the spirit that'll give us mo' church membehs."

So the good parson dropped the matter, and saw how rightly he had followed the divine guidance when only a day or two later the "university" insulted and exasperated all Suez by enrolling three young white women from Sandstone. The Courier, regretting to state that this infringed no statute, deprecated all violence, and while it extolled the forbearance of the people, yet declared that an education which educated backward, and an institution which sought to elevate an inferior race by degrading a superior, would compel the people to make laws they would rather not enact. The Black-and-Tannery's effort for a union revival meeting lay at the door of "our church," said Garnet smilingly to Sister Proudfit, "as dead as Ananias." The kind pastor was troubled.

Yet he was gladdened again when Barbara, on horseback, brought word from "pop-a" that he had found half a dozen of his students praying together for the conversion of their fellows, and that the merest hint of revival meetings in Suez had been met by them with such zeal that he saw they were divinely moved. "Get thee up, brother," the Major's note ended, "for there is a sound of abundance of rain."

"Is it good news?" asked Barbara. The white-haired man handed her the note, joyfully, and stood at her saddle-bow watching her face as she gravely read it.

"Bless the Lord," he said, "and bless you, too, my daughter, faw yo' glad tidin's. I'll see Mary and Martha Salter and Doctor Grace right off, and get ready to ketch the blessed shower. May the very first droppin's fall on you, my beautiful child. I've heard what a wise an' blessed help you've been to yo' father since yo'—here lately. Ain't you a-goin' to give yo' heart to Jesus, daughter?"

She met his longing look with the same face as before; not blankly, yet denying, asking, confessing nothing. Truth there, but no fact.

"Well, good-by," said the old man, "I believe you're nearer the kingdom now than you know." His awkward kindness brought her nearer still.

Thus the revival began at Rosemont. The two congregations joined counsel, and decided to hold the meetings in Parson Tombs's church.

"I'm proud, Brother Tombs—or, rather, I'm grateful," said Garnet. "I look on this as a divine vindication against the missionary solicitude of an alien institution's ambitious zeal. My brethren, it's a heavenly proof of the superior vitality of Southern Christianity."

But they decided not to begin at once. Mary Salter thought they should, and so did the unmarried pastor of the other church, who, they said, was "sweet on her."

"All we need is faith!" said Miss Mary.

"No, it's not," was Miss Martha's calm response, "we need a little common sense." She said the two pastors ought to preach at least two Sunday sermons, each "pointed toward the projected—that is to say expected—showers of blessing."

"Sort o' take the people's temperature," put in Doctor Grace, but she ignored him. By that time, she said, it would be too near Christmas to start anything of the kind before——

"Why, Christmas, Sister Martha, think what Christmas is? It ought to be just the time!"

"Yes, but it isn't."

"I think Miss Martha's right," said Parson Tombs, very sweetly to Mary; "and I think," turning as affectionately to Martha, "that Miss Mary's right, too. We need faith and wisdom. The Lord promises both, and so we must use all we can uv both. Now, if we can begin a couple of days before New Year, so's to have things agoin' by New Year's eve, I think we'll find that wisdom and faith have kissed each other."

Miss Martha and Sister Tombs smiled softly at the startling figure. Miss Mary and the unmarried pastor dropped their eyes. But when Doctor Grace said, fervently, "That sounds good!" all admitted the excellence of Parson Tombs's suggestion.