Westover of Wanalah: A story of love and life in Old Virginia

This is the story of what the wind-storm did at The Oaks, to disturb the usual placidity of life there.

It was Aunt Betsy's custom, as it was that of many or most other women in Virginia, to write a multitude of "notes" each day, some of them filling six or eight sheets of paper, with criss-crossings to make them seem undecipherably interesting, and to despatch them by young negroes on bare-backed horses to their more or less neighborly destination. A statistical economist once made a careful reckoning by which he convinced himself that this practice cost the planter families of Virginia about seven and one-half times the amount they contributed in stamps to the postal revenues of the nation.

It was the practice of the young women of the plantations to write all these letters before breakfast. It was Aunt Betsy's more leisurely practice to write them whenever she pleased, and she usually pleased to write them between ten o'clock in the morning and the one o'clock hour that was sacred to the luncheon known in Virginia as "snack."

On the morning of the happening at The Oaks, the day being sufficiently warm, Aunt Betsy brought out her desk—an oblong box which when opened offered a slanting writing surface, with spaces below its lids for letter paper, envelopes, and papers of every kind. Women usually laid these so-called "desks" upon their laps and managed somehow to write there, as no man ever could have done. But it was Aunt Betsy's habit also to retire into the house now and then upon occasions of real or imagined necessity, and in anticipation of such interruptions she always had a slender-legged stand at hand—a thing "drunkenly artistic," as Boyd Westover had once said—upon which to place her desk whenever she was minded to suspend her writing for a while.

On the morning in question she had a gown in course of construction by her seamstresses, who were working in the back porch with a room opening off it which her modesty used for purposes of "fitting" and "trying on."

She had therefore frequent occasion to suspend her writing.

It was during one of her most exigent fits of trying on that the squall struck the place. As a good deal of thunder and lightning accompanied the weather disturbance, and as Aunt Betsy was possessed of that sort of cowardice concerning thunder and lightning which persons so afflicted call "nervousness," she promptly shut herself up in a dark closet and remained there until the squall had passed away.

But with the first onset of the wind the frail table on which she had left her open desk toppled over; the desk was whirled out into the grounds and dashed against a tree with a force that instantly reduced it to splinters, while its contents—correspondence and curl papers alike—were scattered, if not to the four winds, at least to the one wind which was blowing with demoniacal fury.

Margaret and Millicent who had just returned from a morning stroll rushed frantically, picturesquely and, in an unconscious way, gracefully, to the rescue. The desk was in fragments and far past praying for; but by a deal of scurrying the two girls and some of the house servants managed to collect the scattered papers and place them upon a table within, while Aunt Betsy was still ensconced in her dark closet, waiting for the last rumble of the thunder to cease. As Millicent deposited her share of the spoils upon the table, she looked at Margaret with frightened eyes and said:

"Please send everybody out of the room but you and me."

For Millicent had not yet accustomed herself to talk freely in the presence of servants as if they were deaf, dumb, and blind, incapable of understanding what might be said in their presence and therefore incapable of repeating it. That habit of the Virginians had its origin probably in two facts: they never said anything that they were afraid to stand by; and the negro was not, in law or in fact, permitted to testify against a white person. In the courts his testimony was barred by statute; in social life it was even more absolutely barred by convention. No negro ventured to report anything he had heard white people say, and if he had done so, no white person would for one moment have listened to him. To have done that would have been to invite and incur absolute and eternal ostracism.

But Millicent, brought up in a totally different atmosphere, could never accustom herself to this, and so she asked to have the servants dismissed from the room before saying what she had to say about the papers in her hand. Margaret smiled at the request, but after the revelation was made she rejoiced that it had been preferred and acted upon.

When the servants had left the room, Millicent held out a handful of letters that she had picked up in the wild scramble of rescue.

"There is something wrong here, Margaret," she said in her open, honest way. "Some of these are unopened letters addressed to you—letters that bear stamps and post marks, letters that have come through the mail. These others are sealed letters addressed in your handwriting to Mr. Boyd Westover. They are stamped, but they bear no postmarks. They have never been mailed."

She stood silent for a moment, rigid with an indignation that she knew not how to express in words.

Meanwhile Margaret stood looking at the letters, dazed, pale to the lips, paralyzed. Then she looked from the letters to Millicent and the girl thought she was dying or already dead, so white was her face at first and so livid a moment later.

With the womanly instinct of ministry, reinforced by a passionate impulse of friendship, Millicent passed around the table, threw her arm about the stricken girl and gently forced her to lie upon one of the broad lounges or settees, or whatever else they should be called, that in those days invited repose in every dining room and every hallway of the plantation houses.

With that ready appreciation of necessity which is characteristic of womanhood, she went to the sideboard, poured a thimble glass of sherry and compelled Margaret to drink it. Then she tinkled a bell and when the servant appeared gave quick, concise orders for the summoning of Margaret's maid and other strong-armed servitors.

"You must get your mistress to bed at once," she commanded, "and send some one to summon Dr. Farnsworth quickly. He's at the lower quarters."

But Margaret, rising to a sitting position, promptly negatived all this. Sustained by wrath, indignation, resentment of insult, and by outraged pride, she forced upon herself the calm control that for the moment she had lost, though only for the moment. With that instinct of race, that courage, that self-mastery that had been always a precious possession of the Conways, she dismissed the superfluous servants who had hastened to her upon hearing that she was in trouble, and assumed control of the situation.

"Thank you, Millicent, dear, for bringing those letters to me. They are mine, and I will dispose of them. Diana, bring me my desk, please."

When the desk was placed before her she selected a sheet of paper and an envelope as calmly as if she had meant to send a note to Hallie Harvey or any other girl friend, asking her for the proper count of stitches in a piece of fancy knitting work.

Then she wrote upon the sheet of paper, this note:

"Aunt Betsy:—Your desk was blown out into the grounds and wrecked, during the squall. We have gathered up the fragments of the desk and rescued all the widely scattered papers. I am sending you all of them that in any way belong to you. Those that belong to me I am keeping. I send you this note, instead of seeing you in person, because your maid tells me you have gone to bed.

"Margaret."

She sent the note, sealed, by the hand of a maid, and she sent with it the entire paper contents of the wrecked desk, except the unopened letters of Boyd Westover to herself and her own unopened letters to him. These she gathered together into a bundle which she thrust into her corsage.

Then she turned to a servant and gave the order:

"Send to the stables for saddle horses for your Miss Millicent and me. We are going for a ride."

To Millicent she said under her breath: "You must go with me, dear. I must control myself or I shall not be able to carry this thing through to the end with dignity. I must have a dash on horseback. You don't mind, do you, dear?"

"Mind? I mind, Margaret? Why, you know that I would ride to the ends of the earth with you and for you, even under ordinary circumstances. Now that you're in trouble, of course I am ready. I don't know the facts—though I guess some of them—and I don't understand all that these things mean, but I know you have been wronged, outraged, placed in a false position, humiliated by some trespass upon your privacy or your personality, and I am here to stand by you till the wrong is righted, the outrage undone, and the humiliation lifted from your spirit. I'll do anything, everything—oh, Margaret, you don't know how I love you or how eager I am to help you!"

Margaret looked at her with loving and teary eyes. Presently she said:

"I know it all, dear. And yet you Yankees are supposed to be cold and calculating and hard. How utterly mistaken people are in their judgments! But here are the horses. We'll have a spin, and then—"

She paused as if in doubt and apprehension. Presently she added:

"And then I must confront my father. He is the proper person and he must set this thing right."

After a brisk gallop of half a mile, Margaret reined her horse down to a walk, and entered into conversation with her friend.

"I feel, Millicent," she began, "that I ought to take you completely into my confidence, and tell you all that this thing means. Your loyalty and your affection deserve that. But there are reasons which I cannot explain that forbid so full a confidence. I am going to tell you all I can, and I want you to believe and know that whatever reserves I practise are practised solely for your sake."

"But how can that be, Margaret? Of course you are to tell me as much or as little as you please, but—"

"I see. I can't explain. I can only say that if I practise reserve at all, it is only because of my tender affection for you. Can you believe that blindly, without explanation? And will you?"

"I believe whatever you tell me, Margaret, and I do not wish to hear anything that for any reason you do not wish me to hear."

"Thank you, dear," said the agitated girl as she again pressed her horse to his paces; "God help me if I'm wrong!"

There was so strong a suggestion of tragedy in the girl's tone that Millicent felt herself called upon to interfere with Margaret's purpose, which she instinctively understood and which seemed to her scarcely less than suicidal. She said nothing so long as the horses were moving swiftly. When they resumed the walk, she turned to her companion and asked:

"Do you believe in my friendship, Margaret, and do you trust its loyalty so far as to forgive an impertinence in its behalf?"

"I certainly do, Millicent. I could never—"

"Listen, then, and don't interrupt. I know far more about this matter than anybody has ever told me. My woman's instinct has instructed me. It may be in error as to details, but I am right as to the essentials, and in such a case it is the essentials alone that need be considered. I'll tell you the story of the situation as I understand it. You are not a woman to love lightly, or lightly to forget."

Margaret well nigh fell from her horse as she heard her own passionately uttered words thus repeated in merely explanatory fashion, but in a moment she realized that this was purely a coincidence. Millicent had chosen the words for herself; she could not have heard them as a quotation.

"There may be many fancies to a woman like you, but there can be only one passionate, self-giving, all-surrendering love. It is commonly said that there is no such thing as self-sacrificing loyalty or friendship between women—that while we may heroically sacrifice ourselves for the love of a man we never sacrifice that love in loyalty to a woman. It is a slander on our sex. I accepted it as true until very recently; indeed I saw many things to confirm it. I know better now."

She paused for a considerable time, but Margaret did not prompt her to go on. Perhaps she foresaw what was coming, and at any rate she saw clearly that there was struggle and disturbance in Millicent's mind.

After awhile the girl resumed:

"The one love of your life, Margaret, is for Mr. Boyd Westover. It began long before you knew it and it will last as long as you live. Now I am going to make a shameful confession," she added. Then she broke into a gallop, but when the horses resumed a moderate pace she did not make the confession. Perhaps she shrank from it. Perhaps she deemed it unnecessary. Perhaps she thought its making might tend rather to complicate than to simplify the problems in hand. However that may be, she made no further reference to the matter, but took up her parable where she had laid it down.

"Something, I don't know what—yes, I do, but I don't know why—has come between you and Mr. Boyd Westover. I am not blind, and I think I am not stupid. There were unopened letters there from him to you, and other unopened letters from you to him. Without asking anybody any questions I know that for some reason somebody has sought to cut off communication between him and you. I see clearly that that purpose has been accomplished, and I see that as a consequence he has been thinking you fickle and treacherous, as women so often are, and you have been thinking him disloyal and dishonorable."

"No, no, no," interrupted Margaret. "I have never accused him of disloyalty or dishonor, even in my wildest moments of perplexity and distress. I have never for one moment doubted his honor. It is only that I have been unable to conjecture why he left me in silence, when in fact he was writing great, manly, loving letters to me every day. Oh, Millicent, it was cruel, and I can never forgive—"

She did not need mention the name.

"You haven't read Mr. Westover's unopened letters," suggested Millicent.

"No, I have no right now. They were written in the past, when he loved and trusted me. He might not wish me to read them now. He might not feel in the same way toward me now that he did then."

"That's stuff and nonsense, I think, Margaret. I really do. If I were you I should read the letters carefully. Then I should sit down and write to Mr. Boyd Westover, enclosing the letters you wrote to him at that time and explaining how all the trouble had come about."

"That would never, never do. It would be throwing myself like a cast-off garment at his feet. It would be asking him to renew relations that he may have been glad to forget."

"You say that, Margaret, but you don't believe it. Neither do I."

"I think, Millicent, you don't understand our conventionalities down here. It would be impossible for any Virginia girl, under such circumstances, to take the initiative in reopening relations. That is the prerogative of the gentleman in the case."

"But when the gentleman doesn't know the facts, and the woman does, what then?"

"That makes no possible difference."

"You are right on one point, Margaret. I do not understand your conventions, nor do I in the least sympathize with them. They are shams and falsities, as all conventionalities are, and they are cruel beyond measure. They decree that where a mistake has been made and the woman discovers it, she must let wreck and ruin overwhelm two lives—her own and that of the man she loves—rather than send to him a simple and easy explanation of the mistake that has made the trouble. No, I do not understand such conventions. What are you going to do?"

"I'll place the whole thing in my father's hands, and he shall do what he will with it."

"And as to the one who has wrought all this mischief?"

"My relations with my Aunt Betsy will be changed. Come! We must hurry back to the house. I want my father to know what has happened."

They trotted on for a space, when suddenly Millicent reined in her horse and Margaret stopped in company, for Millicent had come to a complete halt in the roadway. For a moment the two confronted each other without a word, for Millicent, sitting on her horse with compressed lips and set jaw, did not at first explain herself. After a while she said:

"I cannot sit idly by and see two glorious young lives wrecked when a next to nothing would save both. I am a Yankee, of Boston, but so was Paul Revere. Let me have those letters. Ask me no questions, but let me ride as Paul Revere did!"

For a moment Margaret hesitated. The temptation was very great, but she put it aside.

"That would never do, Millicent," she said. "I understand your loving loyalty and I am grateful for it, but that would never do. To Mr. Westover you would be my emissary, no matter what you might say. It would be the same as if I went to him myself."

"Is your decision final, or may I argue the matter?" Millicent asked.

"It is final," Margaret answered, and not another word was spoken during the remainder of the homeward journey.

That little jaunt on horseback that Margaret, with her friend, took by way of steadying her nerves, was perhaps a mistake. If she had gone to her father at once, while "Aunt Betsy" was making herself comfortable in bed, the impulsive old gentleman would have been off on a journey to Wanalah within five minutes, and his intent to explain and make reparation would have accomplished its purpose instantly.

But Margaret went riding instead, and no sooner did "Aunt Betsy" learn of the fact than she made a quick recovery from her illness, and almost before the two young women were out of sight of the house, "Aunt Betsy," tearful and in every other way appealing, was closeted with Colonel Conway. She thus gained the distinct advantage of being first on the ground. Her tears and her agitation appealed strongly to the protective instinct of the chivalric old soldier. She told him in her own way what had happened, diverting his attention from her own misconduct by lamentations and copious weepings and protestations that in all she had done she had sought only to protect the honor and dignity of the family and to prevent Margaret—"an unformed girl"—from compromising herself in her ignorance of the world.

It would be too much to say that she convinced her brother of the righteousness of her conduct. Tampering with letters—even without reading them—was to him a point of special sensitiveness, and there were other matters involved which he could in no wise reconcile with his conceptions of honorable conduct. But he recognized the weakness of women as a palliation of misconduct, and his sister's tearful appeals to him for the protection of her dignity affected him in the tenderest part of his nature.

He was profoundly displeased with her, but she was his sister, nevertheless, and he was her natural protector. It was his duty and his desire to spare her, so far as might be possible, but he felt also the obligation to censure and correct her.

"You have done a gravely improper thing, Betsy," he said, with sternness and tenderness struggling for mastery in his tone. "Indeed what you have done is unpardonable, inexcusable,—except that as a woman you did not know the enormity of your act."

"That is the main point, Robert," she interrupted, "and I beg you to bear it in mind. All I did was done with good intentions. I am naturally solicitous for the honor of our family, and I—"

"And you did a dishonorable thing in that behalf," he said with severity in his tone. "In your desire to protect the family name you did a thing that would forever subject it to shame, if it should become known."

"That is it, Robert. It mustn't become known. I depend upon you, as the head of the family, to prevent that. Blame me as severely as you will, but don't expose me, don't subject me to criticism and scorn! Oh, Robert, I beg you to protect me!"

"I'll protect you of course," he replied, "but you have made it difficult and exceedingly embarrassing for me to do so. I have my own conscience to reckon with. You have made me do things, in ignorance of the facts—I may as well be frank and say you have deliberately deceived me into the doing of wrongs for which I know not how to atone or even apologize. If you were not my sister, if you were not under my protection, if I could be indifferent to your feelings—my course would be simple and easy. A frank, manly statement of the facts would exonerate me. As it is—"

"As it is, Robert, you cannot subject your sister to humiliation. You must protect me from shame. You must take pains that what has happened shall never be known outside this house!"

It was at this stage of the conversation that Margaret entered. "Aunt Betsy," confident that she had secured herself, said:

"I will leave you to talk with your father, Margaret, if you desire."

"No," the young woman answered; "I prefer that you should remain. I, at least, have nothing to conceal, and I do not seek, as you do, to get my father's ear in private. Besides, I have some things to say to you, and I prefer to say them in my father's presence. I am mistress of The Oaks. Hitherto, out of a respect which you have not justified, I have permitted you to exercise certain functions that belong to me. I shall do so no longer. I have given directions that hereafter I will make up the outgoing mail bag and open the incoming one."

"But, my dear child—"

"I am not a child, Aunt Betsy. You have made some grievous mistakes in forgetfulness of that fact. It shall not be forgotten again while I remain mistress of this plantation. What was it you were going to say, Aunt Betsy? I beg pardon for interrupting, but it seemed necessary."

"I was going to ask what the servants will think."

"I do not know what they will think, Aunt Betsy."

"On that point I must appeal to your father," "Aunt Betsy" replied.

"On that point it is very dangerous for you to appeal," answered the younger woman, still preserving an extraordinary calm that was at once astonishing and alarming to her aunt, but speaking with a degree of emphasis that suggested something behind the words.

"What do you mean? Explain yourself," said "Aunt Betsy," in that authoritative tone which she had all her life employed in addressing her niece.

"I will explain if you wish," Margaret answered; "but I'd rather spare you the explanation."

"I insist upon knowing what you mean," the elder woman unwisely replied.

"Very well, then; you shall hear. In addition to the wrong you have done me, wrecking my life and placing me in a grievously false position; in addition to the wrong you have done to another, you have been guilty of the crime of robbing the United States mails, Aunt Betsy, and as the minimum penalty of that crime is a long term in prison, I do not think it wise of you to suggest appeals in this case. It will be better, I think, to accept my decision as final."

The old lady rose in wrath, alarm, indignation and all the other emotions of an exciting sort, and demanded to know what her niece meant by such an accusation of infamy. At the same time Colonel Conway exclaimed:

"Oh, daughter, daughter, you do not mean what you say. Take it back! You are excited. You are beside yourself!"

"I am not in the least excited," the young woman answered. "I did not wish or intend to mention that aspect of the matter, but Aunt Betsy insisted upon it. I have no desire to emphasize it or to insist upon it, if only my authority as mistress at The Oaks is properly recognized. As your daughter, Father, I am entitled to that dignity which you yourself have been fond of insisting upon; and as your daughter I intend to exercise the authority and maintain the dignity of that position so long as you permit me to hold it. When you cease to permit that, I shall leave The Oaks and go to my own plantation of Tye, which my mother left me. You must remember that I am a grown woman of twenty-one, and that I am not a dependent upon anybody."

"Now, daughter," interrupted Colonel Conway with affection, "you are talking nonsense. You know that you are mistress of The Oaks, and—"

"That is quite all I am insisting upon. As mistress of The Oaks I do not intend to have my authority questioned or my affairs interfered with by anybody. I'm sorry I have this occasion to assert myself, but the circumstances are not of my making."

"But what do you mean, you—you—you ill-regulated girl,—in charging me with a crime?" almost shrieked the elder woman as she confronted her niece in an attitude that suggested a desire to shake her. "What do you mean? What do you mean?"

"You'd better let that phase of the affair drop, Aunt Betsy," answered the girl with a calm that additionally exasperated her aunt.

"No, I will not let it drop. You have uttered an accusation that I cannot and will not let pass. You must say what you meant by it."

"I will say it if you insist," answered Margaret, still preserving her exasperating calm.

"I do insist. I will not rest under such an accusation. Go on! Tell me what you meant."

"I will," said Margaret. "You remember that five years ago an attempt was made to open our mail bag in some political interest. Father appealed to the Government for its protection, and from that day to this it has gone back and forth under a United States mail lock. In tampering with its contents—in abstracting from it letters addressed to me, you—I don't like to put the matter into plain words. Let me say instead that you violated the law which renders the United States mail sacred. I'm sorry I have had to call your attention to such a matter, but you forced the necessity upon me."

By this time it was necessary to summon maids and get "Aunt Betsy" back to bed again,—genuinely ill this time.

It was not until she was made as comfortable as circumstances permitted, that Colonel Conway and his daughter returned to the library and resumed their conversation.

"Now, daughter," said the old soldier, "I am ready to do anything to right this wrong—anything, of course, that will not compromise your aunt."

"Father," responded the girl with a world of tenderness in her voice, "you ought not to have anything to do in the matter. It is Aunt Betsy who has wrought all the mischief. She has deceived you; she has deceived me; she has deceived Mr. Westover. It should be her duty, not yours, to undo the wrong she has done."

"But, my dear daughter, how can she? She is a woman."

"I know that, Father, and I know our Virginian view of such things. But it is all wrong. You men of Virginia have granted to us women a license that ought not to be. If one of us utters a slander, you hold yourselves responsible for it even unto death. If one of us lies—it isn't a ladylike term, I know, but it is what I mean—if one of us lies you hold yourselves bound to maintain the lie and answer for it, even at the pistol's point. You Virginia gentlemen insist upon only one point of honor for women. So long as we observe that, we may lie and cheat and slander at will and you sustain us in it. It is all wrong. If a woman does mischief, she should herself atone for it. In this case it is Aunt Betsy who has wrought the wrong and it is Aunt Betsy who should undo it."

"But how can she, dear?"

"By going to Mr. Westover, or writing to him, and saying frankly: 'I robbed the post bag of your letters to Margaret and her letters to you.' That is what a brave man would do. Why should not a brave woman do the same?"

"But, daughter, your aunt is a lady and excessively sensitive."

"She forgot to be a lady when she did this infamous thing, and her sensitiveness is mainly a pretence assumed to play upon your chivalry and to deceive you and others. If she were honest in mind, a real, genuine, conscientious sensitiveness would prompt her to make precisely the reparation I have suggested. As she is utterly dishonest and dishonorable instead, I quite understand that no force, moral or physical, could ever compel her to an act of reparation like that."

"My dear, you are very hard upon your poor old aunt."

"Not at all, Father. Truth is as much an obligation of women as of men. So is courage of the moral sort. But it is idle to expect that after generations in which you gentlemen of Virginia have excused us from all obligations except that of chastity. You have assumed our protection, and you have met that obligation bravely; but—well, I have thought much on that subject, and what I have thought is of no consequence. What are you going to do by way of righting the wrong Aunt Betsy has done, as you excuse her from the obligation of herself righting it?"

"I'll do anything you suggest—anything that will not compromise your aunt. You see I must protect her."

"I understand. The one who has wrought the wrong must be spared the consequences. The victims of it must bear them. I have nothing whatever to suggest, Father."

And with that she advanced, kissed him tenderly, said:

"Poor, dear old Dad!" and quietly left the room.

Then it was that Colonel Conway set himself to satisfy his daughter's conscience and his own by writing a letter to Boyd Westover. Then it was that, after repeated failures, he compromised with his conscience by writing to Dr. Carley Farnsworth instead.

Then it was that under Dr. Carley Farnsworth's instructions Millicent Danvers sent Colonel Conway and Margaret to bed.

"Aunt Betsy" was already sleeping the sleep of one who feels that she has adroitly escaped uncomfortable consequences.

The days were growing short, and so when Jack Towns approached The Oaks that afternoon, the sun was setting and Millicent was watching it from a little hilltop just beyond the orchard and perhaps half a mile from the house.

Jack came upon her there and was fascinated with the picture she presented. With her head bare and her hair in some disorder as a result of facing the west wind too fearlessly, she wore upon her shoulders a voluminous mass of fleecy knitted work known in those days as a "nubia," or, by those who preferred good English to very bad dog-Latin, a "cloud." As he approached from the east he saw her figure silhouetted against the glowing western sky, and the grace of it fascinated him. It was like a great picture—suggesting one of Turner's interpretations of Venice, with an absorbing human interest added to the glow and glory of it.

For to Jack Towns the girl who turned to greet him as he rode up was a very absorbing human interest indeed. The hour he had passed in converse with her on the day before, had left him with a glamor upon him which even his jaunty indifference to permanent impressions could not dismiss. He had been moved to make this special visit to The Oaks by an irresistible desire to see more of a young woman whose superiority of mind and character was strongly impressed upon him, and whose very peculiarities—mainly due to differences of environment and education—were strangely appealing to his imagination.

Upon approaching her there upon the little, sun illumined hilltop, he dismounted, and, with bridle rein over his arm, joined her in admiration of the glowing sunset.

After the first greetings were over she said:

"Do you know, Mr. Towns, I think that is where your chivalry comes from?" And as she said it, she waved her hand toward the horizon with its gold and purple, intermingled with pinks and blues and exquisite greens that the dyer's art has never matched.

"I mean," she added without waiting to be asked for an explanation, "that you Virginians are inspired with gentleness and chivalry by the quality of the climate in which you live, and that your sunsets give color to your imaginings of courage, optimism, and high endeavor."

"I doff my hat in acknowledgement of the double compliment," he said, "to our climate and to our manhood. But surely fine sunsets are not our exclusive possession. You must have such at the North?"

"Sometimes—not often. They are so rare indeed that we make note of them and recall them afterwards as pleasant memories."

"But isn't that because you live in a large city where the vapors of industry cloud the sky and shut out nature's displays?"

"I do not live in a large city, Mr. Towns, except for the two or three worst months of the year, and not always even then. I live on the 'blue hills of Milton.' My father has a country place there, and since he has grown old enough to relax a little in his business enterprises, we live there almost all the year round. So you see I know our climate quite irrespective of the factory chimneys and their fumes. The sunset is dying out. I don't like to see the death of beauty or grandeur or glory of any kind. Let's turn our faces toward the house."

As they turned Jack Towns in his own mind formulated his impressions in this wise:

"Here is a young woman who can think for herself and without any regard whatever for the conventions of thought; she is inspired with an appreciation of truth and beauty, which is only another way of saying that she is a poet in her soul—thank God she is not a poet in the magazines, for that would be dreadful. She has common sense, too, in an uncommon abundance. Jack Towns, you are falling in love in a way you never dreamed of before, and the fact doesn't alarm you in the least."

As his meditations kept him silent for a longer time than is usual when youth and beauty walk together in the gloaming, Millicent was the first to speak.

"I wish you could know our 'blue hills of Milton.' They have some attractions of their own."

"They certainly have," he answered. "I know them—at least in a small way."

"Why, how did that come about?" she asked in surprise. "I understood you to say you were never in Boston but once."

"'And that same is thrue for you,' as my Irish office attendant would say. I was never in Boston until a few weeks ago, when I went thither to arrange some financial affairs for a client of mine"—he did not mention Westover's name. "I had some negotiations with a banking firm there, and the head of the establishment was exceedingly courteous to me. He took me to his country place to spend the Sunday. By a curious coincidence, his surname is the same as yours—Danvers. He's the head of the banking house of Danvers, Appleton and Wentworth. I wonder if by any chance he's a relative of yours. At any rate he deserves to be. For a more courtly gentleman I have never met. He's the sort of educated, refined, polished, considerate person that only three States in this Union produce, so far as I have been able to observe."

"Which are the three States, please,—that is to say, if you are free to designate them?"

"Massachusetts, Virginia, and South Carolina. Mind, I don't say that such gentlemen are not found in other States. It is only that those of them whom I have personally met have happened to be sons of one or other of the three States mentioned."

"I suppose there is a reason for that," answered Millicent.

"What is it?" he inquired in answer.

"They are the three oldest commonwealths," she answered, "and the three most conservative. You have a saying here in Virginia—a true saying, I think—that 'it takes three generations to make a gentleman.' The three States you have named have lived their own lives for a good many more than three generations, and so they have had time to make gentlemen. Still—"

She did not continue her sentence, till Towns urged her to do so. Then she said:

"I was going to say that about the most perfect gentleman I ever met was Jake Greenfield, a Vermonter, without education beyond what he called the 'rujimenteries,' whom I met in the Rocky Mountains."

"Tell me about him," implored Jack, saying nothing of his own acquaintance with Jake, who had been his companion and shrewd adviser during his stay in the Rocky Mountains in Boyd Westover's interest. "Tell me about him."

"I will," she answered. "I am always pleased to celebrate his virtues. Jake is ignorant, unfamiliar with the ways of society, and wholly unformed as to his manners, but he is instinctively a gentleman. He habitually eats with his knife—a dirk-like thing that he carries in his belt. He has no hesitation about sitting at table and picking his teeth with a fork. It never occurs to him to apologize for lighting his pipe at table or quitting the company before the others have done. None of the conventions of civilized life have dawned upon his intelligence as matters worthy of attention. When I knew him, if a single pie sat before him he would carefully count noses and divide it equally; but if the table were well dotted with pies he would seize upon the one nearest him and devour it from his hand without enlisting the services of knife or fork in aid of the process.

"I met him in the Rocky Mountains where my father had some mining interests, and I was a good deal distressed and disgusted by his lack of manners until I came to know the real man who lived under so rough an exterior."

"How did that come about? Tell me, please," said Jack Towns as he handed his companion up the two or three steps that led to the porch.

"It was a rather thrilling experience," she answered, "at least in its beginning. I was only a girl then of eighteen or nineteen. I had gone to the Rockies with my father for the sake of 'roughing it,' as they say out there, and enjoying the out-of-door life. I was in the habit of riding alone, anywhere I pleased, for the region was a wilderness and nobody lived in it except a few surface miners. One day I rode away till I came to a little stream, a few inches deep, which was crossed by a ford. The road to and from the stream had been cut by nature or by man, through bluff banks, twenty feet high. I crossed the stream, scarcely wetting the fetlocks of my horse. I rode up through the cut on the other side to the high ground above, and thence on through a delightfully wild region, until presently it began to rain in that sudden and torrential way that belongs to the Rocky Mountains. I turned my horse about and trotted him somewhat hurriedly toward the ford I had crossed. When I got there I found the trickling little brook swollen to a mountain torrent, but I did not recognize the change as a matter of consequence. I saw that the water had risen, but to me that meant only that where I had had to make my horse wade fetlock deep before, I must make him wade knee deep now. I pushed him into the stream and almost instantly he was swept from his footing. The depth required swimming, and the onrush of the waters was so great that swimming across the stream was impossible. The horse made a gallant struggle to reach the other side within the roadway space, but he was swept away down stream. I was afloat on his back, imprisoned as it were between two perpendicular bluffs that offered no point of possible landing or rescue.

"Just as I fully realized my situation Jake Greenfield, mounted upon a strong horse, appeared on the bank above.

"'Hold on for your life!' he cried to me, 'an' I'll be with you in half a minute.' With that he turned his horse's head and rode away for thirty or forty paces. Then, suddenly turning about, he rode straight toward the bluff, digging spurs into his horse's flanks at every step, and lashing his rumps with a black snake whip by way of making sure that he should not refuse the leap. A moment later there was a splash and a struggle in the water. Jake Greenfield's horse had leaped into the stream from the bluff twenty feet or more above, with Jake Greenfield on his back, and the two had sunk beneath the flood within a few feet of me as I clung to my horse.

"After a few moments both came to the surface, and the snortings of the horse indicated that his breathing capacity was impaired. By way of sparing him Jake slipped off the saddle and took hold of a stirrup strap as a towing line. But his poor horse's powers were exhausted and he could sustain himself no longer. He gave up the struggle and sank beneath the flood, a martyr to the duty he owed to his master—man. Pardon me, I'm making a long story of this, but the details interest me so."

"They interest me, too," quickly responded her companion. "You cannot narrate them in too minute detail to please me. I could listen all night to the story. Go on, please."

"Well, Jake continued to swim until presently he caught my horse's tail and used it as a means of keeping up with me. Then he said:

"'Turn him to the right! Keep close in shore. There's a little break in the bluffs just ahead, and may be we can make it! More to the right! Closer in shore! There! There's the break. Make him catch bottom there if you can,' You see, Mr. Towns, every word spoken at that time was burned into my memory, and I recall every detail as vividly as if the thing had happened yesterday, or even to-day.

"I succeeded in 'beaching' my horse at that little break in the bank. It was literally like beaching him, for no sooner had he taken three or four steps through shoaling water toward the land, than he lay down, utterly exhausted."

Here the girl stopped in her narrative, as if it had been done. Jack Towns had no mind thus to lose the climax.

"You haven't told me yet in what way Jake proved himself a gentleman."

"That is true," she answered, "and it was that that I set out to tell you. Somehow heroism always appeals to me, and in telling you of Jake's heroism I forgot the other end of the story. I was soaked through, of course, and chilled to the bone. So Jake took me by the arm—he wanted to take me on his back but I wouldn't let him—and hurried me to one of his cabins. You see, as caretaker of the mining lands, he had several cabins, scattered about over them. He told me there was a motherly old squaw there who would look after me, but when we got there the squaw, after the manner of her race, had wandered away somewhere and was not likely to return. Jake built a big fire in the cabin chimney, and then went outside, telling me to 'shuck off them soakin' clothes' and wrap myself up in the quilts that covered the sole orderly bed in the place. As I did so I bethought me of the conventionalities, and when Jake came back to cook my supper and dry my clothes, I protested that I could not consent to stay there alone, and without even a squaw to sustain my dignity. I simply must go to my father, I said, and when he objected that the mountain torrent lay between and was by this time twenty-fold fiercer in its fury than when I had dared it before, I declared that it made no difference; that at all hazards I must make my way to my father's quarters that night. By way of making the matter impersonal and in that way sparing his feelings, I dwelt upon the anxiety my father must feel for me. I think Jake understood my real objection to the situation. Indeed I know he did, for by way of reply he said:

"'Ef you only could rest quiet here an' not worrit overmuch, I've been a-plannin' to go up the mountain to where the stream don't 'mount to nothin', an' cross it an' go down an' tell Mr. Danvers as how you is safe an' sound nevertheless of your bein' tired out an' chilly an' all that. Ef you kin spare me, I'd like to do that.'

"Not at all realizing the fact that that torrent had its beginning twenty miles away and in mountains so precipitous that no man could scale them, I gave eager consent to his proposal, and after preparing such supper as he could for me, the devoted fellow—no, the chivalric gentleman, I mean—set forth in the torrential rain. I learned afterwards that he toiled up the stream for six miles, plunged into it and the darkness, breasted his way across it as it swept him down its resistless current, and with difficulty effected a landing on the opposite side four miles below his starting point. Thence he trudged through the darkness and the rain to my father's quarters, where rescue parties were forming to hunt for me. That's the story. Don't you agree with me that Jake's a gentleman in the true sense of the word?"

"All that is what I should have expected of Jake," answered the young man. "You see I've just returned from that region, and during my stay there I was closely associated with him."

The girl uttered a little exclamation of astonishment; then, with that perfect self-possession which Jack Towns had found to be the most fascinating thing about her, she added:

"Confidence deserves confidence in return, and before you go," for Jack had risen and the two were advancing toward his restless, pawing horse, "it seems only fair to tell you that what you have said of the Boston banker who entertained you over Sunday has been very gratifying to me, for the reason that the gentleman concerned is my father, and the house you found so hospitable is my home. I sincerely hope you'll have other occasions to visit us there."

Jack's instant thought was:

"I'll make the occasions, and I'll do it pretty soon too," but he confined his speech to the courtesies of the moment, and a minute later he was riding at half speed toward Wanalah, wondering if his absence had kept supper waiting, and not caring in the least whether it had done so or not.

In Virginia in the late fifties there was no question of principle or policy or anything else at issue between the Whig and Democratic parties. Even in national politics there was none. The Whigs were supposed to represent tariff protection and internal improvements. The Democrats stood for free trade and sailors' rights, but neither the one nor the other of these cries represented anything vital, any policy that was pending.

In Virginia the instinct of self-preservation, awakened by hostility at the North to the institution of slavery, had stimulated both parties to an intemperate, uncompromising, relentless advocacy of slavery as a system right in itself,—a thing that nobody really believed,—and whenever Whig and Democrat met in debate, the only question between them was which could go to the greatest extreme in that direction. There were the old antagonisms between the two parties. They were still remembered with bitterness, and men grew excited and even violent in their discussion; but nobody on either side could have said what they meant, for the sufficient reason that they meant just nothing at all. There was a new, Free Soil party rapidly gaining strength at the North, and by both Whigs and Democrats in Virginia that party was regarded as the common enemy, to be fought to the death. But while waiting for that, the Whigs and Democrats fought each other for precedence and place.

Political speaking under such conditions was apt to be uninteresting to others than the speakers, unless it involved something of accidental and unusual moment. If any speaker under the excitement of perfervid oratory happened to use terms which his adversary could construe to be offensive to himself, there was instantly awakened the interest that pertains to a quarrel which may presently ripen into a duel or a street fight.

Nothing of that kind occurred at Fighting Creek on the day after Jack Towns's visit to Millicent, but some other things occurred that gave peculiar interest to the occasion. Carley Farnsworth read from the platform the note in which Colonel Conway pledged himself to the support of Westover's nomination. That in itself was a staggering blow to Webb's candidacy. As Foggy, whose phrases were apt to be picturesque, put the matter:

"It knocks the underpinnin' out of our campaign, and it looks to me, Webb, as if it might knock the stuffin' out'n you."

But staggering as the announcement was, there was far worse to come.

When Sam Butler, the Democratic candidate for Senator, had emptied his mind and mouth of all the florid rhetorical phrases he had sat up of nights to construct, he brought a matter of practical political importance to the front.

"I have endeavored to show you, my fellow citizens, that Democratic principles ought to triumph in this election; but neither you nor I can fail to see that there is no chance of that in this senatorial district. After consultation with my friends and political advisers, I have decided that the issue lies solely between the regular and the independent Whig candidates; and as between these two I think no Democrat can hesitate to choose Mr. Boyd Westover as the fittest man to represent us. I therefore resign my own candidacy in Mr. Westover's behalf, and I urge all my friends, all loyal Democrats in the district, to vote for him. I have been moved to this decision by impulses of patriotism and by a sense of duty to the district and to my fellow citizens."

This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, and for a full minute the crowd stood paralyzed with astonishment. Then Butler's most active supporter—by prearrangement of course—leaped to the platform and cried out:

"Friends, Democrats, patriots! It occurs to me that our party in this county has named no candidate for the lower house of the Legislature. In order that the Democratic vote shall not be completely unrecorded, I move that we now name Samuel Butler, Esq., for that honorable place. His candidacy for that will in no way interfere with his self-sacrificing decision to take himself out of the senatorial campaign. I ask all Democrats here present to gather in the prize barn across the road, to consider this suggestion."

A "prize barn" was one in which there were appliances for pressing leaf tobacco into hogsheads.

Ten minutes later it was announced that the late Democratic candidate for Senator had been unanimously nominated for the House of Delegates.

"Now I know," said Carley Farnsworth to himself, "what Edgar Coffey's message from Judy to Butler meant. It's the shrewdest bit of play I ever heard of. By securing his withdrawal from the senatorial contest, the Queen of the Mountains has enormously swelled Boyd's planter vote. And by way of accomplishing that she has promised the mountain vote to Butler for the lower office, and it will elect him beyond a doubt. On the whole, I reckon I won't explain the matter to Westover. He's quixotic, and he knows nothing of politics. But, by Jove, it was a master stroke on Judy's part."

That night when Edgar Coffey made his report to Judy, telling her of the adroit and graceful way in which the program had been carried out by Butler, her comment was:

"Some folks has more sense'n you'd think."

When he had told her of the confidence with which Webb was reckoning upon the mountain vote to offset the loss, she added:

"An' some folks ain't got the sense the law allows 'em."

But if Webb had less political sense "than the law allowed him," there were certain of his followers who were better endowed. Foggy, in particular, realized the situation, and, by way of meeting it, summoned Webb and a dozen or so of his immediate supporters to a conference in the hostelry of a neighboring county seat.

There Foggy laid down the law to the optimistic candidate.

"These here two happenings," he said, "mean trouble. All the swell Whig planters who were holding back because of Colonel Conway's stand will now vote for Westover, and use their influence to make their overseers and others do the same. Every Democrat in the district will vote for him as a matter of course. They want to beat the regular Whig nominee, and now that they haven't a candidate of their own, they'll vote for Westover. Now what have we got to meet all this with?"

Webb suggested the mountain vote, and Foggy instantly replied:

"So far as I can see, we ain't got no mortgage on that, and if we are to carry it we've got to go after it."

So they went on discussing the situation, ending by ordering a vigorous campaign in the mountains with Webb for leader and Judy Peters as the Dominant Power to be approached with negotiations.

When Jack Towns heard of this program, he went to Carley Farnsworth in some alarm, to suggest some counter move.

"I am conducting this campaign," answered the little doctor, "and I am in confidential relations with Judy. I'll tell you, Jack, but you must keep the secret, that it was Judy herself who conceived and planned and organized Boyd's candidacy. She made one of the best diagnoses I ever heard of in his case, and her therapeutics is matchless. Let her alone. She has made up her mind to elect Westover with such a majority as shall be convincing even to him, and she will do it you may be sure. If she wants to see any of us she'll have Edgar Coffey whisper a hint of her desire into our ears. Until she does that we mustn't interfere. She might resent it as a reflection on her skill in political management. Now let me drop a hint into your ear. I said just now that I was managing this campaign. That was a vainglorious boast. I didn't persuade Butler to retire in Westover's favor, but somebody arranged that. Have you any idea who it was? And if at the end of the campaign Butler should find himself elected to the lower house of the Legislature by virtue of the entire mountain vote added to the regular Democratic poll down here, do you imagine for an instant that the result would take him by surprise? Now keep mum about all these things. I am only making suggestions by way of preventing you from making mistakes. Don't say a word to Boyd about it."

Jack Towns was particularly pleased with the reassurance that Farnsworth gave him respecting the campaign. It set him free. In his loyalty to Boyd Westover he would have ridden all night and all day in aid of his friend's election; but he greatly preferred to go to Dr. Carver's and dance all night with Millicent.

In fact he did very nearly that. He put his name down on her card for every set that wasn't taken in advance, and he danced all of them but three or four which she elected to "sit out." If she had been accompanied by a chaperon, she would have had to restrict Mr. Towns's allowance of sets, but chaperons were not deemed necessary for well-bred young women in Virginia. Such young women were supposed to know how to behave properly, and as for protection, was not the entire adult male population ready and eager to render it upon occasion?

Moreover, Jack Towns did not in fact secure an undue proportion of Millicent's sets, for the reason that all the young men in the company, who managed to get possession of her card in time, put their names on it, for one dance each. She rigidly restricted them to one. Perhaps she considered Jack. But she put no restriction on Jack Towns in the matter, and Jack was so ill-mannered in his infatuation that he asked no other young woman for her card, except in the case of Charlotte Deane. Charlotte was no longer as young as she could have wished, and she was distinctly not beautiful or brilliant. So Jack, observing that there were no throngs of young men about her, asked for her card and put his name down for two dances.

For the rest, he devoted his attention to Millicent Danvers until everybody was set wondering if at last Jack Towns had really and truly fallen in love. The same question arose in Jack's own mind, but he, at least, was able to answer it. "Yes," he admitted to himself, "I have had many fleeting fancies before, but none that resembled this. I am determined to win Millicent Danvers if devotion can accomplish it. I never felt in that way before. Always I have felt, that while one young woman pleased me, there were others who might be equally pleasing. I don't feel so now. It is Millicent Danvers now, or nobody with me. I wonder what she will think of my big, disorderly bachelor establishment if she ever consents to be its mistress? I'll wager something handsome that she'll—well, it will be time enough to speculate on that when I have won her. By the way, she would say that differently—'when I shall have won her.' Anyhow my present task is to win her. If I do that she will take care of the rest. And after all a bachelor establishment isn't a home. Just think of the difference between my big house, where everything is in chaos, and that home of hers among the blue hills of Milton."

So he went on, thinking, wondering, speculating, so long as she was fulfilling an engagement to dance with somebody else whom he hated and held in unmerited contempt without any assignable reason. And when his own turn came and he danced with her, his fancies floated before his eyes as a dream pervades the mind, a dream that so rejoices as to make of waking a calamity.

Millicent did well whatever she did at all. In dancing with her, Jack felt that she simply lifted herself half an inch or so from the floor and floated about without again touching it. It was a delight to dance with her, as every young man who had enjoyed the experience stood ready to testify, but Jack Towns rejoiced even more in "sitting out" a set. For then, with her arm in his he could promenade the porches, or the pair could stroll out into the grounds where common prudence and courtesy required him frequently to readjust the wrappings that protected her otherwise bare arms and shoulders, or, better still, he could seek out a secluded nook in the porch or elsewhere, where they two might talk of things that held interest for both of them in common.

It was during one of these confabs, when they sat out two dances in succession, that Jack Towns invited himself to Boston and to Millicent's home in the blue hills of Milton. It came about in this way. Jack was really and earnestly in love, for the first time in his life, and the impulse to tell Millicent so was well nigh irresistible. But Jack was a Virginian, and he recognized the right of a young woman to be courted in her own home. He restrained his impulse of speech, therefore, so far as open avowals were concerned, but his utterances, short of a declaration, were such as to leave the young woman in no doubt as to his attitude and purpose.

When she spoke of her prospective home-going, he asked, a little eagerly perhaps, when that was to occur. She answered:

"It must be very soon—as soon as I shall have done a duty that rests upon me. I'm sorry Mr. Boyd Westover isn't here to-night. He told me, when I met him casually this afternoon, that he was obliged to return to Wanalah."

"I suppose he was," answered Jack Towns in a peculiarly inscrutable tone that he adopted upon occasion. "But why? Do you particularly want to see him?"

"Yes, not only particularly but peremptorily. It is a part of the duty I have set myself. I cannot go back to Boston till I do."

"I see," he answered. "If you like I'll call at The Oaks and ask you to ride with me. We can ride over to Wanalah, and I'll see to it that he shall be there at the time."

"Oh, no, no, no! That would never do. There are reasons which I cannot explain, if you'll excuse me. I must meet Mr. Westover casually, quite by accident as it were."

"Very well, then," answered Jack, with all the confidence he was accustomed to assume at a court trial when his case was an uncertain one. "I'll arrange the accident and create the 'casualty.' You have only to respond favorably to the invitations you receive during the next few days. I'll take care of the rest."

There was a certain masterful self-confidence in his words and tone that was somehow exceedingly pleasing to Millicent. She felt that Jack Towns was a man of limitless resource, a man accustomed to do things and to get others to do things, a man to be leant upon with confidence, and the feeling was altogether comforting. The thought that floated vaguely through her mind, though she shrank from formulating it, was that if ever Jack Towns should love a woman, that woman would be exceedingly comfortable in the certainty that his care of her would be always tenderly solicitous in its impulse, aggressively masterful in its manifestation, and measurelessly ingenious in its devices of safety for her against every ill. If she had permitted her thought to frame itself, as she resolutely refused to do, it would have been to the effect that he was a man into whose arms the woman he loved might throw herself in full assurance of a welcome and in trustful confidence of all-loving, all-daring protection. She did not let the thought formulate itself, but it floated nebulously in her mind, which was perhaps even more dangerous—if indeed there was any danger involved.

In answer to his words she said:

"You are certainly very good. I'll leave it to you to arrange for me, and as soon as I know definitely that my duty is done, I shall go back to Boston,—or at least as soon after that as my brother can come down here to escort me. You know the journey is a trying one."

"Yes, I know. But why trouble your brother needlessly? I shall be obliged to go to Boston sometime soon, and if you permit, I shall be glad to be your escort."

Jack was not fibbing. It is true that he had no business that required him to visit Boston, and yet he really felt it necessary for him to go thither. He had fully decided to ask Millicent Danvers to become his wife, and he must go to Boston for that.

Millicent was right in saying that the journey was a trying one. In that infant age of railroad service the trip from Richmond to Boston involved eight or ten changes of cars, some of them at midnight. There were no sleeping cars, no parlor cars, no dining cars, no buffet cars—nothing in fact but rattletrap coaches, linked together with chains and pins and controlled only by hand brakes. No car ran through, or further than its own railway terminus. The connections were never close, and for the waiting times between there were no accommodations other than those which an open and often rain-drenched railway platform afforded.

But there was the question of chaperonage to be considered. Boston notions on that subject were different from Virginia notions. In Virginia it was held that a man in escort of a woman was in honor bound to protect her not only against all others but against himself as well. He must not, under such circumstances, permit his conversation even remotely to approach the confines of courtship. He must maintain, from beginning to end of the escorting, the attitude of one performing a duty with absolutely unemotional and impersonal temper. The man escorting was supposed to be a gentleman who would suffer no harm to come to the woman under his escort, even if his life should be the forfeit.

But Jack Towns understood the difference between Northern and Southern manners in that respect, and so, to his offer of escort, he promptly added:

"My good old negro Mammy will go with you, of course. She'll see that you have all the comforts that are possible on such a trip."

"But if you take her to Massachusetts she will be free, will she not?" asked Millicent.

"Free? Yes. She is free now to do as she pleases, and she regulates me with the high hand, just as she did when I was a baby. Why she even dominates my dress. Not long ago I came to breakfast with a blue cravat on, and she made me change it on the ground that I had a murder case to defend that day and she thought black would be more appropriate. When I get ready to go to the club in the afternoon, she inspects me, and if any detail of my costume fails to meet the exigent requirements of her code, I have to make a change, no matter how hurried I am. Oh, she's free. Why, she took away the breakfast I had ordered the cook to prepare for me the other day because it included fried eggs, and she was persuaded that fried eggs didn't agree with me. She is absolute mistress in my establishment, and every darkey there recognizes the fact. Her authority is supreme; mine is utterly subordinate. If I want any change made in the household arrangements, I must appeal to her to order it. Fortunately she always gives the order because she still regards me as her 'precious chile,' for whom everything must be done, and whose uttermost whim is to be gratified, regardless of the convenience of other folk, high or low."

"But she is a slave," answered Millicent, "and—"

"In a way, I suppose she is," he interrupted, "but all the eloquence of all the orators of Boston could not convince her that her condition in life could be improved. She is absolute mistress of an establishment and of the poor fellow who owns it. She has everything that her heart desires, everything that her imagination can conjure up as a want. Her present is provided for, and her old age is secure. I don't know any device of freedom that can match that."

"Neither do I," Millicent answered; "but I cannot approve slavery as an institution. I am prejudiced, perhaps, but—"

"I am not prejudiced," he answered, "but I thoroughly agree with your dislike of slavery as an institution. All our great Virginians, Thomas Jefferson, John Randolph, George Wythe, Henry Clay, and the rest, have regarded the institution as an inherited evil to be got rid of in any way that might be practicable, in any way that might give to the negroes a chance to become self-supporting citizens. Thomas Jefferson put the Virginian thought into an apt phrase when he said that in freeing the negroes we must not 'arm them with freedom and a dagger.' He might have added, as many Virginians have done in practice, that we must arm them with a hoe and a plow."

"I see," she said, "and history teaches us that Virginia has done more for the restriction of slavery than any other State. It was in her cession of the Northwest territory that a clause was written forever excluding slavery from that region; and we cannot forget that in the convention which framed the constitution, the Virginia delegates fought vigorously for a provision to stop the African slave trade in the year 1800, and the New England delegates fought to continue it for eight years longer. I think these things are not understood, and I think I sympathize with your Virginian resentment of outside interference by people who do not understand. At any rate I shall carry back to Boston with me a very different impression of your attitude from that which I had before. I shall be honored to have you for my escort, Mr. Towns, and delighted to be coddled all the way home by your dear old Mammy."

At that moment one of the young men who had secured a place on Millicent's card came to claim his dance, and the conversation was at an end.

But Jack Towns had a problem to solve. He had promised to bring Millicent and Westover together without seeming intention, and he did not know how he was to do it. Suddenly a thought came to him, and, as he had exhausted his claim upon Millicent's dancing card, he took French leave, mounted his mare and set off for Chinquapin Knob, whither Carley Farnsworth had preceded him many hours before. He arrived there about breakfast time and entered at once into negotiations.

Carley Farnsworth, as Jack Towns knew, was in close touch with Judy Peters; for these two friends of Boyd Westover had many confidences with respect to the campaign, of which Westover himself knew nothing, and Towns had learned all about Judy's attitude and initiative in Boyd's campaign.

"Of course Boyd's election is secure," said Jack, as he buttered a slice of the hot breakfast bread; "and now that Butler has withdrawn and Colonel Conway has endorsed his candidacy, his support will include a large majority of the vote down here."

"Yes, and that is what Judy and I have been working for. Her influence in the mountains, when she gets ready to give the word, will settle the question of election. But Judy is practising psychological therapeutics. She wouldn't recognize the words, but they represent the facts. Her sole interest in this thing is to brace Boyd up by showing him that his fellow men believe in him. To that end she has planned to secure as heavy a vote for him as possible down here among the planter people. To that end she has held back all intimations of her purpose in the mountains. To that end she arranged with Butler to withdraw from the senatorial contest and run for the lower house instead. Of course you understand that she means to elect him to that."

"No, does she?" asked Towns in astonishment. "I hadn't thought of that. How astonishing!"

"Well, it is only a conjecture of mine, but it is what is going to happen. Judy always pays her debts to the last cent. In this case, by his own withdrawal Butler throws every Democratic vote in the district to Boyd, and you don't imagine, do you, that he did that without prospect of a recompense? Of course Judy negotiated it, and it is my conjecture that the price she is to pay is the mountain vote for Butler's election to the House of Delegates, which, with the Democratic vote down here, will elect him. Of course I know nothing about the matter. It is only that I can see through a millstone if there is a hole in it. And besides I know Judy's ways. She doesn't care a fig for this election except to make it serve her purpose of setting Boyd up again and making him feel that he is Westover of Wanalah."

"I see," answered Jack; "and the old woman would do anything in reason, I suppose, to aid in the accomplishment of that purpose?"

"Anything in reason? Yes. And anything out of reason too. What is it you have in mind?"

"Well, I want Judy to give a frolic of some kind, and I'll take Miss Danvers to it. Can you arrange that?"