HORACE CHASE

A Novel

by
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
AUTHOR OF "JUPITER LIGHTS" "EAST ANGELS" ETC.
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1894

Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & Brothers.
——
All rights reserved.

HORACE CHASE

CONTENTS

[CHAPTER I, ] [II, ] [III, ] [IV, ] [V, ] [VI, ] [VII, ] [VIII, ] [IX, ] [X, ] [XI, ] [XII, ] [XIII, ] [XIV, ] [XV, ] [XVI, ] [XVII, ] [XVIII, ] [XIX, ] [XX, ] [XXI, ] [XXII, ] [XXIII, ] [XXIV]

CHAPTER I

IN a mountain village of North Carolina, in the year 1873, the spring had opened with its accustomed beauty. But one day there came a pure cold wind which swept through the high valley at tremendous speed from dawn to midnight. People who never succumb to mere comfort did not relight their fires. But to the Franklin family comfort was a goddess, they would never have thought of calling her "mere"; "delightful" was their word, and Ruth would probably have said "delicious." The fire in Mrs. Franklin's parlor, therefore, having been piled with fresh logs at two o'clock as an offering to this deity, was now, at four, sending out a ruddy glow. It was a fire which called forth Ruth's highest approbation when she came in, followed by her dog, Petie Trone, Esq. Not that Ruth had been facing the blast; she never went out from a sense of duty, and for her there was no pleasure in doing battle with things that were disagreeable for the sake merely of conquering them. Ruth had come from her own room, where there was a fire also, but one not so generous as this, for here the old-fashioned hearth was broad and deep. The girl sat down on the rug before the blaze, and then, after a moment, she stretched herself out at full length there, with her head resting on her arm thrown back behind it.

"It's a pity, Ruth, that with all your little ways, you are not little yourself," remarked Dolly Franklin, the elder sister. "Such a whalelike creature sprawled on the floor isn't endearing; it looks like something out of Gulliver."

"It's always so," observed Mrs. Franklin, drowsily. "It's the oddest thing in the world—but people never will stay in character; they want to be something different. Don't you remember that whenever poor Sue Inness was asked to sing, the wee little creature invariably chanted, 'Here's a health to King Charles,' in as martial a voice as she could summon? Whereas Lucia Lewis, who is as big as a grenadier, always warbles softly some such thing as 'Call me pet names, dearest. Call me a bird.' Bird! Mastodon would do better."

"Mastodon?" Ruth commented. "It is evident, His Grand, that you have seen Miss Billy to-day!"

Ruth was not a whale, in spite of Dolly's assertion. But she was tall, her shoulders had a marked breadth, and her arms were long. She was very slender and supple, and this slenderness, together with her small hands and feet, took away all idea of majesty in connection with her, tall though she was; one did not think of majesty, but rather of girlish merriment and girlish activity. And girlish indolence as well. Mrs. Franklin had once said: "Ruth is either running, or jumping, or doing something in such haste that she is breathless; or else she is stretched out at full length on the carpet or the sofa, looking as though she never intended to move again!"

The girl had a dark complexion with a rich color, and hair that was almost black; her face was lighted by blue eyes, with long thick black lashes which made a dark fringe round the blue. The persons who liked Ruth thought her beautiful; they asserted that her countenance had in it something which was captivating. But others replied that though her friends might call her captivating if they pleased, since that word denotes merely a personal charm, they had no right to say that she was beautiful; for as regards beauty, there are well-defined rules, and, with the exception of her wonderful eyes, the face of the second Miss Franklin transgressed every one of these canons. Ruth's features were without doubt irregular. And especially was it true that her mouth was large. But the lips were exquisitely cut, and the teeth very white. Regarding her appearance as a whole, there was a fact which had not as yet been noticed, namely, that no man ever found fault with it; the criticism came always from feminine lips. And these critics spoke the truth; but they forgot, or rather they did not see, some of the compensations. There were people not a few, even in her own small circle, who did not look with favor upon Ruth Franklin; it was not merely, so they asserted, that she was heedless and frivolous, caring only for her own amusement, and sacrificing everything to that, for of many young persons this could be said; but they maintained in addition that hers was a disposition in its essence self-indulgent; she was indolent; she was fond of luxuries; she was even fond of "good eating"—an odd accusation to be brought against a girl of that age. In this case also the charges were made by feminine lips. And again it may be added that while these critics spoke the truth, or part of the truth, they did not, on the other hand, see some of the compensations.

"Why do you say 'poor Sue Inness,' His Grand?" inquired Dolly, in an expostulating tone. "Why do people always say 'poor' so-and-so, of any one who is dead? It is an alarmingly pitying word; as though the unfortunate departed must certainly be in a very bad place!"

"Here is something about the bishop," said Mrs. Franklin, who was reading a Raleigh newspaper in the intervals of conversation. Her tone was now animated. "He has been in Washington, and one of his sermons was—"

But she was interrupted by her daughters, who united their voices in a chant as follows:

Mrs. Franklin made no reply to these Gregorian assertions (which she had often heard before), save the remark, "You have torn your skirt, Ruth."

"Oh, please don't look at me over your glasses, His Grand. It spoils your profile so," answered Ruth; for Mrs. Franklin was surveying the skirt with her head bent forward and her chin drawn sharply in, so that her eyes could be brought to bear upon the rent over her spectacles.

She now drew off these aids to vision impatiently. "Whether I look through them or over them doesn't matter; you and Dolly are never satisfied. I cannot read the paper without my glasses; do you wish me to know nothing of the news of the world?"

"We'll tell you," responded Dolly, going on busily with her knitting. "For instance, to-day: Genevieve has had all the paint cleaned and all the windows washed; she is now breathing that righteous atmosphere of cold, fireless bleakness and soap which she adores. Miss Billy Breeze has admired everything that she can think of, because admiration is so uplifting. And she has written another page about the primeval world; now she—"

Here the door which led to the entrance-hall was opened with a jerk by Linda, a plump negro girl, who bounced in, ejaculated "Lady!" in a congratulatory tone, and then bounced out to act as usher for the incoming guest.

"Billy herself, probably," said Mrs. Franklin. "Ruth, are you stretched out there under the plea that you are not yet fully grown?"

But Ruth did not deem it necessary to leave her couch for Miss Billy Breeze. "Hail, Billy!" she said, as the visitor entered. "Mother thinks that I ought to be seated politely on the sofa; will you please imagine that I am there?"

"Oh, certainly," replied Miss Breeze, in a conciliatory tone. Miss Breeze lived under the impression that the members of this family quarrelled with each other almost incessantly; when she was present, therefore, she did her best to smooth over their asperities. "It is rather good for her, you know," she said reassuringly to Mrs. Franklin; "for it is a windy day, and Ruth is not robust." Then to Ruth: "Your mother naturally wishes you to look your best, my dear."

"Do you, His Grand?" inquired Ruth. "Because if you do, I must certainly stay where I am, so that I can tuck under me, very neatly, this rip in my skirt, which Miss Billy has not yet seen. Petie Trone, Esq., shake hands with the lady." The dog, a small black-and-tan terrier, was reposing on the rug beside Ruth; upon hearing her command, he trotted across to the visitor, and offered a tiny paw.

"Dear little fellow," said Miss Breeze, bending, and shaking it gently. "His Grand must allow that he looks extremely well?"

For the circle of friends had ended by accepting the legend (invented by Ruth) that Mrs. Franklin was Petie Trone's grandmother, or "His Grand." The only person who still held out against this title was Genevieve, the daughter-in-law; Mrs. Franklin the younger thought that the name was ridiculous. Her husband's family seemed to her incomprehensibly silly about their pets.

Miss Wilhelmina Breeze was thirty-five; but no one would have thought so from her fair pink-and-white complexion, and young, innocent eyes. From her earliest years she had longed to hear herself called "Wilhelmina." But the longing was almost never gratified; the boyish name given to her in joke when she was a baby had clung to her with the usual fatal tenacity.

"Miss Billy, have you seen mother to-day?" Dolly inquired.

"Not until now," answered the visitor, surprised.

"Well, then, have you thought of mastodons?"

"Certainly I have; and if you yourself, Dolly, would think more seriously of the whole subject, the primeval world—you would soon be as fascinated with it as I am. Imagine one of those vast extinct animals, Dolly, lifting his neck up a hill to nibble the trees on its top!" said Miss Breeze with enthusiasm. "And birds as large as chapels flying through the air! Probably they sang, those birds. What sort of voices do you suppose they had? The cave-lion was twenty-nine feet high. The horned tryceratops was seventy-five feet long! It elevates the mind even to think of them."

"You see, His Grand, that she has thought of mastodons," commented Dolly. "Your unexpected mention of them, therefore, is plainly the influence of her mind acting upon yours from a distance—the distance of the Old North Hotel."

"Have you really thought of them, dear Mrs. Franklin? And do you believe there can be such a thing as the conscious—I mean, of course, unconscious—influence of one mind upon another?" inquired Miss Billy, her face betraying a delighted excitement.

"No, no; it's only Dolly's nonsense," answered Mrs. Franklin.

"It's easy to say nonsense, His Grand. But how, then, do you account for the utterances of my planchette?" demanded Dolly, wagging her head triumphantly.

Dolly, the second of Mrs. Franklin's three children, was an invalid. The Franklins, as a family, were tall and dark, and Dolly was tall and dark also; her face, owing to the pain which frequently assailed her, was thin, worn, and wrinkled. She sat in a low easy-chair, and beside her was her own especial table, which held what she called her "jibs." These were numerous, for Dolly occupied herself in many ways. She sketched, she carved little knick-knacks, she played the violin; she made lace, she worked out chess problems, and she knitted; she also scribbled rhymes which her family called poetry. The mantel-piece of this parlor was adorned with a hanging which bore one of her verses, stitched in old English text, the work of her mother's needle:

The family thought this beautiful. Dolly's verses, her drawing and wood-carving, her lace-making and chess, were amateurish; her violin-playing was at times spirited, and that was the utmost that could be said of it. But her knitting was remarkable. She knitted nothing but silk stockings, and these, when finished, had a wonderful perfection. Dolly was accustomed to say of herself that in the heels of her stockings was to be found the only bit of conscience which she possessed.

When she mentioned planchette, her mother frowned. "I do not approve of such things."

"Yes, because you are afraid!" chuckled Dolly.

"Oh, anything that dear Mrs. Franklin does not approve of—" murmured Miss Billy.

Mrs. Franklin rose.

"His Grand is fleeing!" Dolly announced, gleefully.

"I must make the salad-dressing, mustn't I? Ruth will not touch Zoe's dressing. Billy, Mr. Chase is to dine with us to-day, informally; don't you want to stay and help us entertain him?" added the mistress of the house as she left the room.

"Dolly," suggested Ruth, from her place on the rug, "set planchette to work, and make it tell us secrets; make it tell us whether Miss Billy understands the true character of Achilles Larue!"

"She does not; I can tell her that without planchette," replied Dolly. "Only one person in the world has ever fully understood Achilles—had the strength to do it; and he died!"

"Yes, I know; I have heard Mr. Larue speak of that one friend," said Miss Billy, regretfully. "How unfortunate that he lost him!"

"Yes, baddish. And the term is quite in his own line," commented Dolly. "With him it is never warm, but warmish; the bluest sky is bluish; a June day, fairish; a twenty-mile walk, longish. In this way he is not committed to extravagant statements. When he is dead, he won't be more than deadish. But he's that now."

Mrs. Franklin, having made the salad-dressing (when she made it, it was always perfection), returned to the parlor. "Ruth, go and change your dress. Take Miss Billy with you, but take her to my room, not yours. For of course you will stay, Billy?"

"I don't think I'd better; I'm not dressed for the evening; and I said I should be back," answered Miss Breeze, hesitatingly.

"To whom did you say it? To the Old North? Run along," said Mrs. Franklin, smiling. "If it is shoes you are thinking of, as yours are muddy, Ruth can lend you a pair."

"That she cannot," remarked Dolly. "Buy Ruth six pairs of new shoes, and in six days all will be shabby. But you can have a pair of mine, Miss Billy."

When she was left alone with her elder daughter, Mrs. Franklin said: "Poor Billy! She is always haunted by the idea that she may possibly meet Achilles Larue here. She certainly will not meet him at the Old North, for he never goes near the place, in spite of her gentle invitations. But here there is always a chance, and I never can resist giving it to her, although in reality it is folly; he has never looked at her, and he never will."

"No. But you need not be anxious about her," replied Dolly; "she has the happy faculty of living in illusions, day after day. She can go on hopefully admiring Achilles to the last moment of her life, and I dare say she even thinks that he has a liking for her, little as he shows it. She has occult reasons for this belief; she would find them in a kick."

"Goose!" said Mrs. Franklin, dismissing Billy's virginal dreams with the matron's disillusioned knowledge. "Aren't you going to change your dress, Dolly?"

"Why? Am I not tidy as I am? I thought you considered me too tidy?" And it was true that the elder Miss Franklin was always a personification of rigid neatness; from the dark hair that shaded her tired face, to the shoes on her feet, all was severely orderly and severely plain.

"Oh, go, go!" answered her mother, impatiently.

Dolly screwed up her mouth, shook her head slowly, and laid her work aside; then she rose, and with her cane walked towards the door. On her way she stopped, and, bending, kissed her mother's forehead. "Some of these days, mother, I shall be beautiful. It will be during one of our future existences somewhere. It must be so, dear; you have earned it for me by your loving pity here." Nothing could exceed the tenderness of her tone as she said this.

Mrs. Franklin made no response beyond a little toss of her head, as though repudiating this account of herself. But after Dolly had left the room, a moisture gathered in the mother's eyes.

Ruth, meanwhile, had conducted Miss Billy to her own chamber.

"But Mrs. Franklin said I was to go to her room?" suggested the guest.

"She doesn't mind; she only meant that Bob is probably here," answered Ruth, as she opened the windows and threw back the blinds; for the afternoon was drawing towards its close.

Miss Billy took off her bonnet, and, after a moment's thought, hung it by its crown on a peg; in that position it did not seem possible that even Bob could make a resting-place within it. Bob was young and very small. He was beautiful or devilish according to one's view of flying-squirrels. But whether you liked him or whether you hated him, there was always a certain amount of interest in connection with the creature, because you could never be sure where he was. Miss Billy, who was greatly afraid of him, had given a quick look towards the tops of the windows and doors. There was no squirrel visible. But that was small comfort; Bob could hide himself behind a curtain-ring when he chose. One of the blinds came swinging to with a bang, and Ruth, reopening the window, struggled with it again. "There is Mr. Hill coming along the back street on Daniel," she said, pausing. "He is beckoning to me! What can he want? You will find shoes in the closet, Miss Billy, and don't wait for me; I am going down to speak to him." Away she flew, running lightly at full speed through the upper hall and down the back stairs, closely followed by Petie Trone, Esq.

Miss Billy closed the window and stood there for a moment looking out. Presently she saw Ruth at the stone wall at the end of the garden. She also recognized (with disapproving eyes) the unclerical hat of the Rev. Malachi Hill, who had stopped his horse in the road outside. He was talking to Ruth, who listened with her chin resting on her hands on the top of the wall, while the wind roughened her hair wildly, and blew out her skirts like a balloon. Miss Billy watched her for a while; then, after making her own preparations for the evening, she seated herself by the fire to wait. For no one could make Ruth come in one moment before she chose to do so; it seemed better, therefore, not to call attention to her absence by returning to the parlor alone, lest Mrs. Franklin should be made uneasy by knowing that the girl was out, bareheaded, in the cold wind. Having made her decision (Billy was always troubled, even upon the smallest occasion, by four or five different theories as to the best course to pursue), she looked about the room with the same wonder and gentle dislike which she had often felt before. The necessary articles of furniture were all set closely back against the wall, in order that the central space of the large chamber should be left entirely free. For Ruth did not like little things—small objects of any kind which required dusting, and which could be easily upset. Miss Billy, who adored little things, and who lived in a grove of them, thought the place dreadfully bare. There were no souvenirs; no photographs of friends in velvet frames; there were no small tables, brackets, screens, hanging shelves, little chairs, little boxes, little baskets, fans, and knick-knacks; there was not even a wall-calendar. With Miss Billy, the removal of the old leaf from her poetical calendar, and the reading of the new one each morning, was a solemn rite. And when her glance reached the toilet-table, her non-comprehension reached its usual climax. The table itself was plain and unadorned, but on its top was spread out a profuse array of toilet articles, all of ivory or crystal. That a girl so wholly careless about everything else should insist upon having so many costly and dainty objects for her personal use in the privacy of her own room seemed remarkable. "Give Ruth her bath in scented water, and all these ivory and crystal things to use when she dresses, and she is perfectly willing to go about in a faded, torn old skirt, a hat entirely out of fashion, shabby gloves, and worn-out shoes; in short, looking anyhow!" mused Billy, perplexed.

Down-stairs Mrs. Franklin was receiving another visitor. After Dolly's departure, Rinda had made a second irruptive entrance, with the announcement, "Gen'lem!" and Mr. Anthony Etheridge came in. Etheridge was a strikingly handsome man, who appeared to be about fifty-eight. He entered with light step and smiling face, and a flower in his coat.

"Ah, commodore, when did you return?" said Mrs. Franklin, giving him her hand.

"Two hours ago," answered Etheridge, bowing over it gallantly. "You are looking remarkably well, my dear madam. Hum-ha!" These last syllables were not distinct; Etheridge often made this little sound, which was not an ahem; it seemed intended to express merely a general enjoyment of existence—a sort of overflow of health and vitality.

"Only two hours ago? You have been all day in that horrible stage, and yet you have strength to pay visits?"

"Not visits; a visit. You are alone?"

"Only for the moment; Dolly and Ruth are dressing. We are expecting some one to dine with us—a new acquaintance, by-the-way, since you left; a Mr. Chase."

"Yes, Horace Chase; I knew he was here. I should like to kick him out!"

"Why so fierce?" said Mrs. Franklin, going on with her lamplighters. For the making of lamplighters from old newspapers was one of her pastimes.

"Of course I am fierce. We don't want fellows of that sort here; he will upset the whole place! What brought him?"

"He has not been well, I believe" ("That's one comfort! They never are," interpolated Etheridge), "and he was advised to try mountain air. In addition, he is said to be looking into the railroad project."

"Good heavens! Already? The one solace I got out of the war was the check it gave to the advance of those horrible rails westward; I have been in hopes that the locomotives would not get beyond Old Fort in my time, at any rate. Why, Dora, this strip of mountain country is the most splendid bit of natural forest, of nature undraped, which exists to-day between the Atlantic Ocean and the Rockies!"

"Save your eloquence for Genevieve, commodore."

"Hum-ha! Mrs. Jared, eh?"

"Yes; she knew Mr. Chase when he was a little boy; she says she used to call him Horrie. As soon as she heard that he was here, she revived the acquaintance; and then she introduced him to us."

"Does she like him?" asked Etheridge, with annoyance in his tone.

"I don't know whether she likes him or not; but she is hoping that he will do something that will increase the value of property here."

"It is intelligent of Mrs. Jared to be thinking of that already," said Etheridge, softening a little. "Perhaps if I owned land here, I should take another view of the subject myself! You too, Dora—you might make something?"

"No; we have no land save the garden, and the house is dreadfully dilapidated. Personally, I may as well confess that I should be glad to see the railroad arrive; I am mortally tired of that long jolting stage-drive from Old Fort; it nearly kills me each time I take it. And I am afraid I don't care for nature undraped so much as you do, commodore; I think I like draperies."

"Of course you do! But when you—and by you I mean the nation at large—when you perceive that your last acre of primitive forest is forever gone, then you will repent. And you will begin to cultivate wildness as they do abroad, poor creatures—plant forests and guard 'em with stone walls and keepers, by Jove! Horace Chase appears here as the pioneer of spoliation. He may not mean it; he does not come with an axe on his shoulder exactly; he comes, in fact, with baking-powder; but that's how it will end. Haven't you heard that it was baking-powder? At least you have heard of the powder itself—the Bubble? I thought so. Well, that's where he made his first money—the Bubble Baking-Powder; and he made a lot of it, too! Now he is in no end of other things. One of them is steamships; some of the Willoughbys of New York have gone in with him, and together they have set up a new company, with steamers running south—the Columbian Line."

"Yes, Genevieve explained it to us. But as he does not travel with his steamers round his neck, there remains for us, inland people as we are, only what he happens to be himself. And that is nothing interesting."

"Not interesting, eh?" said Etheridge, rather gratified.

"To my mind he is not. He is ordinary in appearance and manners; he says 'yes, ma'am,' and 'no, ma'am,' to me, as though I were a great-grandmother! In short, I don't care for him, and it is solely on Genevieve's account that I have invited him. For she keeps urging me to do it; she is very anxious to have him like Asheville. He has already dined with us twice, to meet her. But to-day he comes informally—a chance invitation given only this morning (and again given solely to please her), when I happened to meet him at the Cottage."

"How old is the wretch?"

"I don't know. Forty-four or forty-five."

"Quite impossible, then, that Mrs. Jared should have known him when he was a boy; she was not born at that time," commented Etheridge. "What she means, of course, is that she, as a child herself, called him 'Horrie.'"

Mrs. Franklin did not answer, and at this moment Dolly came in.

"Yes, I am well," she said, in reply to the visitor's greeting; "we are all well, and lazy. The world at large will never be helped much by us, I fear; we are too contented. Have you ever noticed, commodore, that the women who sacrifice their lives so nobly to help humanity seldom sacrifice one small thing, and that is a happy home? Either they do not possess such an article, or else they have spoiled it by quarrelling with every individual member of their families."

"Now, Dolly, no more of your sarcasms. Tell me rather about this new acquaintance of yours, this bubbling capitalist whom you have invented and set up in your midst during my unsuspecting absence," said Etheridge.

"You need not think, commodore, that you can make me say one word about him," answered Dolly, solemnly; "for I read in a book only the other day that a tendency to talk about other persons, instead of one's self, was a sure sign of advancing age. Young people, the book goes on to say, are at heart interested in nothing on earth but themselves and their own affairs; they have not the least curiosity about character or traits in general. As I wish to be considered young, I have made a vow to talk of nothing but myself hereafter. Anything you may wish to hear about me I am ready to tell you." Dolly was now attired in a velvet dress of dark russet hue, like the color of autumn oak leaves; this tint took the eye away somewhat from the worn look of her plain thin face. The dress, however, was eight years old, and the fashion in which it had been made originally had never been altered.

"The being interested in nothing but themselves, and their own doings and feelings, is not confined to young people," said Mrs. Franklin, laughing. "I have known a goodly number of their elders who were quite as bad. When these gentry hold forth, by the hour, about their convictions and their theories, their beliefs and disbeliefs, their likings and dislikings, their tastes and their principles, their souls, their minds, and their bodies—if, in despair, you at last, by way of a change, turn the conversation towards some one else, they become loftily silent. And they go away and tell everybody, with regret of course, that you are hopelessly given to gossip! Gossip, in fact, has become very valuable to me; I keep it on hand, and pour it forth in floods, to drown those egotists out."

"When you gossip, then, I shall know that I bore you," said Etheridge, rising, "I mustn't do so now; I leave you to your Bubble. Mrs. Jared, I suppose, will be with you this evening? I ask because I had thought of paying her a how-do-you-do visit, later."

"Pay it here, commodore," suggested Mrs. Franklin. "Perhaps you would like to see her 'Horrie' yourself?"

"Greatly, greatly. I am always glad to meet any of these driving speculators who come within my reach. For it makes me contented for a month afterwards—contented with my own small means—to see how yellow they are! Not a man jack of them who hasn't a skin like guinea gold." Upon this point the commodore could enlarge safely, for no color could be fresher and finer than his own.

After he had gone, Mrs. Franklin said: "Imagine what he has just told me—that Genevieve could not possibly have known Horace Chase when he was a boy, because she is far too young!" And then mother and daughter joined in a merry laugh.

"It would be fun to tell him that she was forty on her last birthday," said Dolly.

"He would never believe you; he would think that you fibbed from jealousy," answered Mrs. Franklin. "As you are dressed, I may as well go and make ready myself," she added, rising. "I have been waiting for Ruth; I cannot imagine what she is about."

This is what Ruth was about—she was rushing up the back stairs in the dark, breathless. When she reached her room, she lit the candles hastily. "You still here, Miss Billy? I supposed you had gone down long ago." She stirred the fire into a blaze, and knelt to warm her cold hands. "Such fun! I have made an engagement for us all, this evening. You can never think what it is. Nothing less than a fancy-dress procession at the rink for the benefit of the Mission. A man is carrying costumes across the mountains for some tableaux for a soldiers' monument at Knoxville; his wagon has broken down, and he is obliged to stay here until it is mended. Mr. Hill has made use of this for the Mission. Isn't it a splendid idea? He has been rushing about all the afternoon, and he has found twenty persons who are willing to appear in fancy dress, and he himself is to be an Indian chief, in war-paint and feathers."

"In war-paint and feathers? Oh!"

"Yes. It seems that he has a costume of his own. He had it when he was an insurance agent, you know, before he entered the ministry; he was always fond of such things, he says, and the costume is a very handsome one; when he wore it, he called himself Big Moose."

"Big Moose! It must be stopped," said Miss Billy, in a horrified voice. For Miss Billy had the strictest ideas regarding the dignity of the clergy.

"On the contrary, I told him that it would be a great attraction, and that it was his duty to do all he could," declared Ruth, breaking into one of her intense laughs. Her laugh was not loud, but when it had once begun it seemed sometimes as if it would never stop. At present, as soon as she could speak, she announced, "We'll all go."

"Do not include me," said Miss Billy, with dignity. "I think it shocking, Ruth. I do indeed."

"Oh, you'll be there," said Ruth, springing up, and drawing Miss Billy to her feet. "You'll put on roller-skates yourself, and go wheeling off first this way, then that way, with Achilles Larue." And, as she said this, she gleefully forced her visitor across the floor, now in a long sweep to the right, now to the left, with as close an imitation of skating as the circumstances permitted.

While they were thus engaged, Mrs. Franklin opened the door. "What are you doing? Ruth—not dressed yet?"

"I'm all ready, His Grand," responded Ruth, running across the room and pouring water into the basin in a great hurry. "I have only to wash my hands" (here she dashed lavender into the water); "I'll be down directly."

"And we shall all admire you in that torn dress," said her mother.

"Never mind, I'll pin it up. Nobody will see it at dinner, under the table. And after dinner my cloak will cover it—for we are all going out."

"Going out this windy evening? Never! Are you ready, Billy? And Ruth, you must come as you are, for Mr. Chase is already here, and Rinda is bringing in the soup."

"Never fear, His Grand. I'll come."

And come she did, two minutes later, just as she was, save that her wind-roughened hair had been vaguely smoothed, and fastened down hastily with large hair-pins placed at random. Owing to her hurry, she had a brilliant color; and seeing, as she entered, the disapproving expression in her mother's eyes, she was seized with the idea of making, for her own amusement, a stately sweeping courtesy to Horace Chase; this she accordingly did, carrying it off very well, with an air of majesty just tempered at the edges with burlesque.

Chase, who had risen, watched this salutation with great interest. When it was over, he felt it incumbent upon him, however, to go through, in addition, the more commonplace greeting. "How do you do, Miss Ruth?" he said, extending his hand. And he gave the tips of her fingers (all she yielded to him) three careful distinct shakes.

Then they went to dinner.

CHAPTER II

THE meal which followed was good; for Zoe, the cook, was skilful in her old-fashioned way. But the dinner service was ordinary; the only wine was Dry Catawba; Rinda's ideas of waiting, too, were primitive. The Franklins, however, had learned to wait upon themselves. They had the habit of remaining long at the table; for, whether they were alone or whether they had a guest, there was always a soup, there was always a salad, there were always nuts and fruit, followed by coffee—four courses, therefore, in addition to the two which the younger Mrs. Franklin, whose household was managed in a very different way, considered all that was necessary "for the body."

"A serious rice pudding, Genevieve, no doubt is enough for the body, as you call it," Dolly had once said. "But we think of the mind also; we aim at brilliancy. And no one ever scintillated yet on cod-fish and stewed prunes!"

"Mrs. Jared Franklin is well, I hope?" Chase asked, when the last course was reached. He was not fond of nuts or figs, but he was playing his part, according to his conception of it, by eating at intervals one raisin.

"Quite well; thanks. I have never known her to be ill," replied Dolly.

"Mr. Chase, I am going to suggest something: as mother and my sister-in-law are both Mrs. Jared, and as mother has no burning desire to be called 'old Mrs. Franklin' just yet, why don't you say 'Mrs. G. B.' when you mean the younger matron?"

Chase would never have thought of calling either the one or the other a matron, his idea of the word being the female superintendent of a public institution. "G. B.—are those her initials?" he said. "Yes, of course; G. for Genevieve, or Gen, as I used to call her."

"And B. for Beatrice; isn't that lovely? Our own names, unfortunately, are very plain—Ruth, Dolly, and Jared; Genevieve has taken pity upon the Jared, and changed it to Jay. Mother, however, actually likes the name Jared. She is weak enough to be proud of the fact that there have been six Jared Franklins in the direct line, from eldest son to father, going back to colonial days. People are very sorry for this delusion of hers; they have told her repeatedly that the colonial period was unimportant. Genevieve, in particular, has often explained to her that modern times are far more interesting."

"I guess there isn't much question about that, is there?" said Chase. "No doubt they did the best they could in those old days. But they couldn't do much, you see, because they had nothing to work with, no machinery, no capital, no combinations; they couldn't hear anything until long after it had happened, and they couldn't go anywhere except on horseback. I've always been glad I didn't serve my time then. I guess I should have found it slow."

"You must find Asheville rather slow?" remarked Dolly.

"It is more than slow, Miss Franklin; it has stopped entirely. But it has great natural advantages—I have been surprised to see how many. I like new enterprises, and I've been thinking about something." Here he paused and ate one more raisin, balancing it for a moment upon the palm of his hand before he swallowed it. "I've been thinking of picking up that railroad at Old Fort and pushing it right through to this place, and on to Tennessee; a branch, later, to tap South Carolina and Georgia. That isn't all, however." He paused again. Then with a glance which rested for a moment on each face, and finally stopped at Mrs. Franklin's, "What do you say," he added, with an hospitable smile, "to my making a big watering-place of your hilly little village?"

"Asheville watered? What next!" said Dolly.

"The next is that the stock won't be," replied Chase, laughing. "I mean, the stock of the company that undertakes the affair, if it does undertake it. You'd better apply for some right off; all of you. Shall I tell you how the thing strikes me, while you are finishing your nuts? Well, then, this is about it. The whole South is a hot place in summer, ladies; from Baltimore down to the end of Florida and Louisiana they simply swelter from June to October, and always must swelter. If you will look at a map, you can see for yourselves that the only region where the people of all this big section can get fresh air during the heated term, without a long journey for it, is this one line of mountains, called Alleghanies in the lump, but in reality including the Blue Ridge, the Cumberlands, your Smokies and Blacks, and others about here. For a trip to the southern sea-coast isn't much relief; a hot beach is about the hottest place I know! Now, then, what is the best point among these mountains? The Alleghanies lie this way." (He made the Alleghanies with a table-spoon.) "Then there is the Blue Ridge." (A nut-cracker.) "And here you get your Smokies and so forth." (Almonds taken hastily from a dish and arranged in a line.) "And I'll just indicate the Cumberlands with this orange. Very well. Now where are the highest peaks of these lines? Let us follow the range down. Do we find them in Pennsylvania? No, sir. Do we find them in Virginia? We do not. Are they over there among the Cumberlands? Not by a long shot. Where are they, then? Right here, ladies, at your own door; right here, where I make a dot this minute." And taking a pencil from his pocket, he made a small mark on the table-cloth between the spoon and the nut-cracker. "In this neighborhood," he went on, emphasizing his statement by pointing his pencil at Miss Billy, "there are thirteen nearly seven thousand feet high. It seems to me, therefore, that in spite of all the jokes about talking for buncombe, the talk for Buncombe has not been half tall enough yet. For this very Buncombe County is bound to be the favorite watering-place for over twelve millions of people, some day or other."

"Watering-place?" commented Dolly. "Well, we have the two rivers, the French Broad and the Swannanoa. But the Swannanoa is small; if the millions should all drink at once, it would soon go dry."

"I meant summer resort, Miss Franklin, not watering-place," said Chase, inwardly entertained by the quickness bordering on the sharp with which "the sickly one," as he called her, always took him up. "Though there are sulphur springs near by too: I have been out to look at them. And it isn't only the Southerners who will come here," he went on. "Northerners will flock also, when they understand what these mountains are. For, in comparison with them, the Catskills are a suburb; the White Mountains, ornamental rock-work; and the Adirondacks, a wood-lot. Here everything is absolutely wild; you can shoot because there are all sorts of things to shoot, from bears down. And then there's another point—for I haven't got to the bottom of the sack yet. This mountain valley of yours, being 2400 feet above the sea, has a wonderfully pure dry air, and yet, as it is so far south, it is not cold; its winter climate, therefore, is as good as its summer, and even better. So here's the situation: people who live in hot places will come here from June to October, and people who live in cold places will come from October to June." He returned the orange and the almonds to their dishes, replaced the table-spoon and nut-cracker, and then, looking at Mrs. Franklin, he gave her a cheerful nod. "That's it, ma'am; that's the whole in a nutshell."

Ruth gravely offered him an empty almond shell.

"We'll have something better than that, Miss Ruth—a philopena." And taking a nut-cracker, he opened several almonds. Finding a double kernel, he gave her one of the halves. "Now, if I win, I should be much favored if you would make me something of worsted—a tidy is the name, I think?"

Ruth began to laugh.

"Well, then, a picture-frame of cones."

And now the other ladies joined in Ruth's merriment.

"We must decline such rare objects," said Mrs. Franklin. "But we have our own small resources, Mr. Chase." And, leading the way back to the parlor, she showed him the mantel-cover with Dolly's verse.

"Why, that's beautiful, Miss Franklin," said Chase, with sincere admiration, when he had read the lines. "I didn't know you could write poetry."

"Oh yes," answered Dolly. "I think in elegies as a general thing, and I make sonnets as I dress. Epics are nothing to me, and I turn off triolets in no time. But I don't publish, Mr. Chase, because I don't want to be called a minor poet."

Here Rinda came in like a projectile, carrying a large box clasped in her arms. "Jess lef'! 'Spress!" she exclaimed excitedly.

"Express?" repeated Mrs. Franklin, trying to make out the address without her glasses. "Read it, Ruth."

Ruth looked at the label, and then broke into another laugh. She had hardly recovered from the preceding one, and Chase, with amusement, watched her start off again. But he soon found himself surrounded by laughers a second time.

"Why, what's wrong with it?" he asked, seeing that it was the label which excited their mirth. And in his turn he examined it. "Miss Ruth Franklin, Lommy Dew, Asheville? That's right, isn't it? Isn't Lommy Dew the name of your place?"

Rinda meanwhile, wildly curious, had been opening the box by main force with the aid of the poker. She now uncovered a huge cluster of hot-house roses, packed in moss.

"Flowers? Who could have sent them?" said Mrs. Franklin, surprised. She had no suspicion of her present guest; her thoughts had turned towards some of their old friends at the North. But Ruth, happening to catch the look in Horace Chase's eyes as he glanced for an instant at the blossoms, not so much admiringly as critically, exclaimed:

"You sent them, Mr. Chase. How perfectly lovely!"

"I'm afraid they're not much," Chase answered. "I thought they'd send more." He had wished to show that he appreciated the invitations to L'Hommedieu, and as, according to his idea, it was the young lady of the family to whom it was proper to pay such attentions, he had ordered the box to be sent to Ruth rather than to Mrs. Franklin or Dolly.

Ruth's laugh had stopped. She was passionately fond of hot-house flowers, and now both her hands together could hardly encircle even the stems alone of these superb tea-roses, whose gorgeous masses filled her arms as she raised them. With a quick movement she buried her face in the soft petals.

"But, I say, what was wrong with this?" asked Chase a second time, as he again looked at the label.

"L'Hommedieu is a French name—" began Dolly.

But Ruth interrupted her: "It is an ugly old French name, Mr. Chase, and as it is pronounced, in America at least, exactly as you wrote it, I think it might as well be spelled so, too. At present, however, this is the way—the silly way." And holding her flowers with her left arm, she detached her right hand, and scribbled the name on the edge of the Raleigh paper.

"Ah!" said Chase, looking at it. "I don't speak French myself. I thought perhaps it had something to do with dew." And frowning a little, a frown of attention, he spelled the word over.

An old negro woman, her head covered with a red kerchief folded like a turban, now came stiffly in with the coffee-tray, her stiffness being an angry dignity. It was Zoe, the cook, tired of waiting for Rinda, who, still in the parlor, was occupied in gazing with friendly interest at the roses. "Lawdy—ef I ain't clean ferget!" remarked the waitress, genially, to the company in general.

"You clar out, good-fer-nutt'n nigger!" muttered the offended cook, in an undertone to her coadjutor.

With the tray, or rather behind it, a lady came in.

"Just in time for coffee, Genevieve," remarked Dolly, cheerfully.

"Thanks; I do not take it at night," Genevieve answered.

This was a dialogue often repeated in one form or another, for Dolly kept it up. The younger Mrs. Franklin did not like evening dinners, and Dolly even maintained that her sister-in-law thought them wicked. "She sees a close connection between a late dinner with coffee after it, and the devil." The Franklins had always dined at the close of the day, for the elder Jared Franklin, having been the editor of a daily paper, had found that hour the most convenient one. The editor was gone; his family had moved from the North to the South, and life for them was changed in many ways; but his habit of the evening dinner they had never altered.

The younger Mrs. Franklin greeted Chase cordially. Dolly listened, hoping to hear her call him "Horrie." But Genevieve contented herself with giving him her hand, and some frank words of welcome. Genevieve was always frank. And in all she said and did, also, she was absolutely sincere. She was a beautiful woman with golden hair, fair skin, regular features, and ideally lovely eyes; her tall figure was of Juno-like proportions. Chase admired her, that was evident. But Dolly (who was noting this) had long ago discovered that men always admired her sister-in-law. In addition to her beauty, Genevieve had a sweet voice, and an earnest, half-appealing way of speaking. She was appealing to Chase now. "There is to be an entertainment at the rink to-night, Horace, for the benefit of the Mission; won't you go? I hope so. And, mamma, that is what I have come over for; to tell you about it, and beg you to go also." She had seated herself beside Chase; but, as she said these last words, she put out her hand and laid it affectionately on Mrs. Franklin's shoulder.

"I believe I am to have the pleasure of spending the evening here?" Chase answered, making a little bow towards his hostess.

"But if mamma herself goes to the rink, as I am sure she will, then won't you accompany her? The Mission and the Colored Home, Horace, are—"

But here Chase, like a madman, made a sudden bound, and grasped the top of Miss Billy Breeze's head.

Quick as his spring had been, however, Ruth's was quicker. She pulled his hands away. "Don't hurt him! Don't!"

But the squirrel was not under Chase's fingers; he had already escaped, and, running down the front of Miss Billy's dress (to her unspeakable terror), he now made another leap, and landed on Dolly's arm, where Ruth caught him.

"What in creation is it?" said Chase, who had followed. "A bird? Or a mouse?"

"Mouse!" said Ruth, indignantly. "It's Bob, my dear little flying-squirrel; I saw him on the cornice, but I thought he would fly to me. It's amazing that any one can possibly be afraid of the darling," she added, with a reproachful glance towards Miss Billy, who was still cowering. "I had him when he was nothing but a baby, Mr. Chase—he had fallen from his nest—and I have brought him up myself. Now that he is getting to be a big boy, he naturally likes to fly about a little. He cannot be always climbing his one little tree in the dining-room. He is so soft and downy. Look at his bright eyes." Here she opened her hand so that Chase could see her pet. "Would you like to hold him for a moment?"

"Oh, I'll look at you holding him," answered Chase. "Hollo! here's another." For Petie Trone, Esq., his jealousy roused by his mistress's interest in the squirrel, had come out from under the sofa, and was now seated on his hind-legs at the edge of her dress, begging. "Wouldn't you like an owl?" Chase suggested. "Or a 'possum? A 'coon might be tamed, if caught young."

Ruth walked away, offended.

This made him laugh still more as he returned to his place beside Genevieve.

"She is only eighteen," murmured the younger Mrs. Franklin, apologetically. Her words were covered by a rapturous "Gen'lem!" from Rinda at the door. For Rinda was always perfectly delighted to see anybody; when, therefore, there were already two or three guests, and still another appeared, her voice became ecstatic. The new-comer was Anthony Etheridge.

"How fortunate!" said Genevieve. "For it makes another for our little charity party. There is to be an impromptu entertainment at the rink to-night, commodore, for the benefit of the Mission, and mamma is going, I hope. Won't you accompany her? Let me introduce Mr. Chase—a very old friend of mine. Mr. Chase, Commodore Etheridge."

"Happy to meet you," said Chase, rising in order to shake hands.

"Gen'lem!" called Rinda again; this time fairly in a yell.

The last "gen'lem" was a slender man of thirty-five, who came in with his overcoat on. "Thanks; I did not take it off," he said, in answer to Mrs. Franklin, "because I knew that you were all going to the"—(here Ruth gave a deep cough)—"because I thought it possible that you might be going to the rink to-night," he went on, changing the form of his sentence, with a slight smile; "and in that case I hoped to accompany you."

"Yes," said Genevieve, "mamma is going, Mr. Larue. I only wish I could go, also."

The cheeks of Miss Billy Breeze had become flushed with rose-color as the new-comer entered. Noticing instantly the change he had made in his sentence when Ruth coughed, she at once divined that the girl had gone, bareheaded and in the darkness, to his residence during that long absence before dinner, in order to secure his co-operation in the frolic of the evening. Ruth had, in fact, done this very thing; for nothing amused her so much as to watch Billy herself when Larue was present. The girl was now wicked enough to carry on her joke a little longer. "I am so sorry, Miss Billy, that you do not care to go," she said, regretfully.

Miss Billy passed her handkerchief over her mouth and tried to smile. But she was, in fact, winking to keep back tears.

And then Mrs. Franklin, always kind-hearted, came to the rescue. "Did you tell Ruth that you could not go, Billy? Change your mind, my dear; change it to please me."

"Oh, if you care about it, dear Mrs. Franklin," murmured Billy, escaping, and hurrying happily up the stairs to put on her wraps.

The rink was a large, bare structure of wood, with a circular arena for roller-skating. This evening the place was lighted, and the gallery was occupied by the colored band. The members of this band, a new organization, had volunteered their services with the heartiest good-will. It was true that they could play (without mistakes) but one selection, namely, "The lone starry hours give me, love." But they arranged this difficulty by playing it first, softly; then as a solo on the cornet; then fortissimo, with drums; by means of these alterations it lasted bravely throughout the evening. Nearly the whole village was present; the promenade was crowded, and there were many skaters on the floor below. The Rev. Malachi Hill, the originator of the entertainment, was distributing programmes, his face beaming with pleasure as he surveyed the assemblage. Presently he came to the party from L'Hommedieu. "Programmes, Mrs. Franklin? Programmes, gentlemen?" He had written these programmes himself, in his best handwriting. "The performance will soon begin," he explained. "The procession will skate round the arena five times, and afterwards most of the characters will join in a reel—" Here some one called him, and he hastened off.

Chase, who had received a programme, looked at it in a business-like way. "Christopher Columbus," he read aloud; "Romeo and Juliet; the Muses, Calliope, and—and others," he added, glancing down the list.

His Calliope had rhymed with hope, and a gleam of inward entertainment showed itself for one instant in the eyes of Etheridge and Larue. Ruth saw this scintillation; instantly she crossed to Chase's side, as he still studied the programme, and bending to look at it, said, "Please, may I see too?"

"Oh! I thought you had one," said Chase, giving her the sheet of paper.

"The Muses," read Ruth again, aloud. "Cally-ope," she went on, giving the word Chase's pronunciation. "And Terp-si-core." She made this name rhyme with "more." Then, standing beside her new acquaintance, she glared at the remainder of the party, defiantly.

Mrs. Franklin was so much overcome by this performance of her daughter's that she was obliged to turn away to conceal her laughter.

"What possesses her—the witch!" asked Etheridge, following.

"It is only because she thinks I don't like him. He has given her those magnificent roses, and so she intends to stand up for him. I never know whom she will fancy next. Do look at her now!"

"I am afraid you have spoiled her," commented Etheridge, but joining in the mother's laugh himself, as he caught a glimpse of Ruth starting off, with high-held head and firm step, to walk with Chase round the entire promenade.

Owing to this sudden departure, Miss Billy Breeze found herself unexpectedly alone with Larue. She was so much excited by this state of things that at first she could hardly speak. How many times, during this very month, had she arranged with herself exactly what she should say if such an opportunity should be given her. Her most original ideas, her most beautiful thoughts (she kept them written out in her diary), should be summoned to entertain him. The moment had come. And this is what she actually did say: "Oh!" (giggle), "how pretty it is, isn't it?" (Giggle.) "Really a most beautiful sight. So interesting to see so many persons, and all so happy, is it not? I don't know when I've seen anything lovelier. Yes, indeed—lovely. But I hope you won't take cold, Mr. Larue? Really, now, do be careful. One takes cold so easily; and then it is sometimes so hard to recover." With despair she heard herself bringing out these inanities. "I hope you are not in a draught?" she wandered on. "Colds are so tiresome."

And now, with a loud burst from the band, the procession issued from an improvised tent at the end of the building. First came Christopher Columbus at the head; then Romeo and Juliet; the Muses, three and three; George Washington and his wife, accompanied by Plato and a shepherdess; other personages followed, and all were mounted on roller-skates, and were keeping time to the music as well as they could. Then the rear was closed by a single American Indian in a complete costume of copper-colored tights, with tomahawk, war-paint, and feathers.

This Indian, as he was alone, was conspicuous; and when he skated into the brighter light, there came from that part of the audience which was nearest to him, a sound of glee. The sound, however, was instantly suppressed. But it rose again as he sailed majestically onward, in long sweeps to the right and the left, his head erect, his tomahawk brandished; it increased to mirth which could not be stifled. For nature having given to this brave slender legs, the costume-maker had supplied a herculean pair of calves, and these appendages had shifted their position, and were now adorning the front of each limb at the knee, the chieftain meanwhile remaining unconscious of the accident, and continuing to perform his part with stateliness at the end of the skating line. Ruth, with her hands dropping helplessly by her side, laughed until her mother came to her. Mrs. Franklin herself was laughing so that she could hardly speak. But Ruth's laughs sometimes were almost dangerous; they took such complete possession of her.

"Give her your arm and make her walk up and down," said Mrs. Franklin to Etheridge.

And Etheridge took the girl under his charge.

Chase, who had grinned silently each time the unsuspecting Moose came into view (for the procession had passed round the arena three times), now stepped down to the skating-floor as he approached on his fourth circuit, and stopped him. There was a short conference, and then, amid peals of mirth, the Moose looked down, and for the first time discovered the aspect of his knees. Chase signalled to the band to stop.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "this Indian was not aware of his attractions." (Applause.)

"But now that he knows what they are, he will take part in the reel (which he had not intended to do), and he will take part as he is! For the benefit of the Mission, ladies and gentlemen. The hat will be passed immediately afterwards." Signing to the musicians to go on again, he conducted the chief to the space which had been left free for the reel, and then, when the other couples had skated to their places, he led off with his companion in a sort of quickstep (as he had no skates); and it is safe to say that North Carolina had never beheld so original a dance as that which followed (to the inexhaustible "Starry Hours" played as a jig). Chase and the Indian led and reled. Finally Chase, with his hat tilted back on his head, and his face extremely solemn, balanced with his partner, taking so much pains with remarkable fancy steps, which were immediately imitated by the Indian's embossed legs, that the entire audience was weak from its continuous mirth. Then removing his hat, Chase made the rounds, proffering it with cordial invitation to all: "For the Mission, ladies and gentlemen. For Big Moose's Mission."

Big Moose, on his way home later (in his clergyman's attire this time), was so happy that he gave thanks. He would have liked, indeed, to chant a gloria. For the Mission was very near his heart, and from its beginning it had been so painfully fettered by poverty that, several times, he had almost despaired. But now that magic hat had brought to the struggling little fund more than it had ever dreamed of possessing; for underneath the dimes and the quarters of Asheville had laid a fat roll, a veritable Golconda roll of greenbacks. But one person could have given this roll, namely, the one stranger, Horace Chase.

CHAPTER III

MRS. FRANKLIN was a widow, her husband, Jared Franklin, having died in 1860. Franklin, a handsome, hearty man, who had enjoyed every day of his life, had owned and edited a well-known newspaper in one of the large towns on the Hudson River. This paper had brought him in a good income, which he had spent in his liberal way, year after year. The Franklins were not extravagant; but they lived generously, and they all had what they wanted. Their days went on happily, for they were fond of each other, they had the same sense of humor, and they took life easily, one and all. But when Jared Franklin died (after a sudden and short illness), it was found that he at least had taken it too easily; for he had laid aside nothing, and there were large debts to pay. As he had put his only son, the younger Jared, into the navy, the newspaper was sold. But it did not bring in so much as was expected, and the executors were forced in the end to sell the residence also; when the estate was finally cleared, the widow found herself left with no home, and, for income, only the small sum which had come to her from her father, Major Seymour, of the army. In this condition of things her thoughts turned towards the South.

For her mother, Mrs. Seymour, was a Southerner of Huguenot descent, one of the L'Hommedieu family. And Mrs. Seymour's eldest sister, Miss Dora L'Hommedieu, had bequeathed to the niece (now Mrs. Franklin), who had been named after her, all she had to leave. This was not much. But the queer, obstinate old woman did own two houses, one for the summer among the mountains of North Carolina, one for the winter in Florida. For she believed that she owed her remarkable health and longevity to a careful change of climate twice each year; and, accompanied by an old negress as cross-grained as herself, she had arrived in turn at each of these residences for so many seasons that it had seemed as if she would continue to arrive forever. In 1859, however, her migrations ceased.

At that date the Franklins were still enjoying their prosperity, and this legacy of the two ramshackle L'Hommedieu abodes, far away in the South, was a good deal laughed at by Jared Franklin, who laughed often. But when, soon afterwards, the blow came, and his widow found herself homeless and bereft, these houses seemed to beckon to her. They could not be sold while the war lasted, and even after that great struggle was over no purchasers appeared. In the meantime they were her own; they would be a roof, two roofs, over her head; and the milder climate would be excellent for her invalid daughter Dolly. In addition, their reduced income would go much further there than here. As soon after the war, therefore, as it could be arranged, she had made the change, and now for seven years she had been living in old Dora's abodes, very thankful to have them.

Mrs. Franklin herself would have said that they lived in North Carolina; that their visits to Florida were occasional only. It was true that she had made every effort to dispose of the Florida place. "For sale—a good coquina house on the bay," had been a standing advertisement in the St. Augustine Press year after year. But her hopes had been disappointed, and as the house still remained hers, she had only once been able to withstand the temptation of giving Dolly the benefit of the Florida climate in the winter, little as she could afford the additional expense; in reality, therefore, they had divided their year much as Miss L'Hommedieu had divided hers.

The adjective ramshackle, applied at random by Jared Franklin, had proved to be appropriate enough as regarded the North Carolina house, which old Dora had named L'Hommedieu, after herself. L'Hommedieu was a rambling wooden structure surrounded by verandas; it had been built originally by a low-country planter who came up to these mountains in the summer. But old Miss L'Hommedieu had let everything run down; she had, in truth, no money for repairs. When the place, therefore, came into the hands of her niece, it was much dilapidated. And in her turn Mrs. Franklin had done very little in the way of renovation, beyond stopping the leaks of the roof. Her daughter-in-law, Genevieve, was distressed by the aspect of everything, both without and within. "You really ought to have the whole house done over, mamma," she had said more than once. "If you will watch all the details yourself, it need not cost so very much: see what I have accomplished at the Cottage.

"In time, in time," Mrs. Franklin had answered. But in her heart she was not fond of Genevieve's abode; she preferred the low-ceilinged rooms of L'Hommedieu, shabby though they might be. These rooms had, in fact, an air of great cheerfulness. Anthony Etheridge was accustomed to say that he had never seen anywhere a better collection of easy-chairs. "There are at least eight with the long seat which holds a man's body comfortably as far as the knees, as it ought to held; not ending skimpily half-way between the knee and the hip in the usual miserable fashion!" Mrs. Franklin had saved three of these chairs from the wreck of her northern home, and the others had been made, of less expensive materials, under her own eye. Both she and her husband had by nature a strong love of ease, and their children had inherited the same disposition; it could truthfully be said that as a family they made themselves comfortable, and kept themselves comfortable, all day long.

They did this at present in the face of obstacles which would have made some minds forget the very name of comfort. For they were far from their old home; they were cramped as to money; there was Dolly's suffering to reckon with; and there was a load of debt. The children, however, were ignorant in a great measure of this last difficulty; whatever property there was, belonged to Mrs. Franklin personally, and she kept her cares to herself. These fresh debts, made after the estate had finally been cleared, were incurred by the mother's deliberate act—an act of folly or of beauty, according to the point from which one views it; after her husband's death she had borrowed money in order to give to her daughter Dora every possible aid and advantage in her contest with fate—the long struggle which the girl made to ignore illness, to conquer pain. These sums had never been repaid, and when the mother thought of them, she was troubled. But she did not think of them often; when she had succeeded (with difficulty) in paying the interest each year, she was able to dismiss the subject from her mind, and return to her old habit of taking life easily; for neither her father, the army officer, nor her husband, the liberal-handed editor, had ever taught her with any strictness the importance of a well-balanced account. Poor Dolly's health had always been uncertain. But when her childhood was over, her mother's tender help from minute to minute had kept her up in a determined attempt to follow the life led by other girls of her age. A mother's love can do much. But heredity, coming from the past, blind and deaf to all appeal, does more, and the brave effort failed. The elder Miss Franklin had now been for years an invalid, and an invalid for whom no improvement could be expected; sometimes she was able, with the aid of her cane, to take a walk of a mile's length, or more, and often several weeks would pass in tolerable comfort; but sooner or later the pain was sure to come on again, and it was a pain very hard to bear. But although Dolly was an invalid, she was neither sad nor dull. Both she and her mother were talkers by nature, and they never seemed to reach the end of their interest in each other's remarks. Ruth, too, was never tired of listening and laughing over Dolly's sallies. The whole family, in fact, had been born gay-hearted, and they were always sufficiently entertained with their own conversation and their own jokes; on the stormy days, when they could expect no visitors, they enjoyed life on the whole rather more than they did when they had guests—though they were fond of company also.

One evening, a week after the masquerade at the rink, Mrs. Franklin, leaning back in her easy-chair with her feet on a footstool, was peacefully reading a novel, when she was surprised by the entrance of Miss Breeze; she was surprised because Billy had paid her a visit in the afternoon. "Yes, I thought I would come in again," began Billy, vaguely. "I thought perhaps—or rather I thought it would be better—"

"Take off your bonnet and jacket, won't you?" interposed Ruth.

"Why, how smart you are, Billy!" remarked Mrs. Franklin, as she noted her guest's best dress, and the pink ribbon round her throat above the collar.

"Yes," began Billy again; "I thought—it seemed better—"

"Dolly," interrupted Ruth, "get out planchette, and make it write Billy a love letter!" And she gave her sister a glance which said: "Head her off! Or she will let it all out."

Dolly comprehended. She motioned Miss Breeze solemnly to a chair near her table, and taking the planchette from its box, she arranged the paper under it.

"I don't like it! I don't like it!" protested Mrs. Franklin.

"His Grand, if you don't like it, beat it," said Ruth, jumping up. "Give it a question too hard to answer. Go to the dining-room and do something—anything you like. Then planchette shall tell us what it is—aha!"

"A good idea," said Mrs. Franklin, significantly. And with her light step she left the room. The mother was as active as a girl; no one was ever deterred, therefore, from asking her to rise, or to move about, by any idea of age. She was tall, with aquiline features, bright dark eyes, and thick silvery hair. As she was thin, her face showed the lines and fine wrinkles which at middle age offset a slender waist. But, when she was animated, these lines disappeared, for at such moments her color rose, the same beautiful color which Ruth had inherited.

Dolly sat with her hands on the little heart-shaped board, pondering what she should say; for her familiar spirit was simply her own quick invention. But while it would have been easy to mystify Miss Billy, it was not easy to imagine what her mother, a distinctly hostile element, might do for the especial purpose of perplexing the medium; for although Mrs. Franklin knew perfectly well that her daughter invented all of planchette's replies, she remained nevertheless strongly opposed to even this pretended occultism. Dolly therefore pondered. But, as she did so, she was saying to herself that it was useless to ponder, and that she might as well select something at random, when suddenly there sprang into her mind a word, a word apropos of nothing at all, and, obeying an impulse, she wrote it; that is, planchette wrote it under the unseen propelling power of her long fingers. Then Ruth pushed the board aside, and they all read the word; it was "grinning."

"Grinning?" repeated Ruth. "How absurd! Imagine mother grinning!"

She opened the door, and called, "What did you do, His Grand?"

"Wishing to expose that very skilful pretender, Miss Dora Franklin, I did the most unlikely thing I could think of," answered Mrs. Franklin's voice. "I went to the mirror, and standing in front of it, I grinned at my own image; grinned like a Cheshire cat."

Miss Billy looked at Dolly with frightened eyes. Dolly herself was startled; she crumpled the paper and threw it hastily into the waste-basket.

Mrs. Franklin, returning through the hall, was met by Anthony Etheridge, who had entered without ringing, merely giving a preliminary tap on the outer door with his walking-stick. Dolly began to talk as soon as they came in, selecting a subject which had nothing to do with planchette. For the unconscious knowledge which, of late years, she seemed to possess, regarding the thoughts in her mother's mind, troubled them both.

"Commodore, I have something to tell you. It is for you especially, for I have long known your secret attachment! From my window, I can see that field behind the Mackintosh house. Imagine my beholding Maud Muriel opening the gate this afternoon, crossing to the big bush in the centre, seating herself behind it, taking a long clay pipe from her pocket, filling it, lighting it, and smoking it!"

"No!" exclaimed Etheridge, breaking into a resounding laugh. "Could she make it go?"

"Not very well, I think; I took my opera-glass and watched her. Her face, as she puffed away, was exactly as solemn as it is when she models her deadly busts."

"Ho, ho, ho!" roared Etheridge again. "Ladies, excuse me. I have always thought that girl might be a genius if she could only get drunk! Perhaps the pipe is a beginning."

While he was saying this, Horace Chase was ushered in. A moment later there came another ring, and the Rev. Mr. Hill appeared, followed by Achilles Larue.

"Why, I have a party!" said Mrs. Franklin, smiling, as she welcomed the last comer.

"Yes, His Grand, it is a party," said Ruth. "Now you may know, since they are here, and you cannot stop it. I invited them all myself, late this afternoon; and it is a molasses-candy-pulling; Dolly and I have arranged it. We did not tell you beforehand, because we knew you would say it was sticky."

"Sticky it is," replied Mrs. Franklin.

"Vilely sticky!" added Etheridge, emphatically.

"And then we knew, also, that you would say that you could not get up a supper in so short a time," Ruth went on. "But Zoe has had her sister to help her, and ever so many nice things are all ready; chicken salad, for instance; and—listen, His Grand—a long row of macaroon custards, each cup with three macaroons dissolved in madeira!" And then she intoned .ning in from her easy-chair:

"What does she mean by that?" said Chase to Miss Billy.

"Oh, it is only one of their jokes; they have so many! Dear Mrs. Franklin was brought up by her father to admire General Jackson, and Dolly and Ruth pretend that she thinks he is still at the White House. And Jared the Sixth means her son, you know. And they say she is fond of macaroon custards; that is, fondish," added Miss Billy, getting in the "ish" with inward satisfaction. "And she is much attached to Bishop Carew. But, for that matter, so are we all."

"A Roman Catholic?" inquired Chase.

"He is our bishop—the Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina," answered Miss Breeze, surprised.

"Oh! I didn't know. I'm a Baptist myself. Or at least my parents were," explained Chase.

The kitchen of L'Hommedieu was large and low, with the beams showing overhead; it had a huge fireplace with an iron crane. This evening a pot dangled from the crane; it held the boiling molasses, and Zoe, brilliant in a new scarlet turban in honor of the occasion, was stirring the syrup with a long-handled spoon. One of the easy-chairs had been brought from the parlor for Dolly. Malachi Hill seated himself beside her; he seemed uneasy; he kept his hat in his hand. "I did not know that Mr. Chase was to be here, Miss Dolly, or I would not have come," he said to his companion, in an undertone. "I can't think what to make of myself—I'm becoming a regular cormorant! Strange to say, instead of being satisfied with all he has given to the Mission, I want more. I keep thinking of all the good he might do in these mountains if he only knew the facts, and I have fairly to hold myself in when he is present, to keep from flattering him and getting further help. Yes, it's as bad as that! Clergymen, you know, are always accused of paying court to rich men, or rather to liberal men. For the first time in my life I understand the danger! It's a dreadful temptation—it is indeed. I really think, Miss Dolly, that I had better go."

"No, you needn't; I'll see to you," answered Dolly. "If I notice you edging up too near him, I'll give a loud ahem. Stay and amuse yourself; you know you like it."

And Malachi Hill did like it. In his mission-work he was tirelessly energetic, self-sacrificing, devoted; on the other hand, he was as fond of merrymaking as a boy. He pulled the candy with glee, but also with eager industry, covering platter after platter with his braided sticks. His only rival in diligence was Chase, who also showed great energy. Dolly pulled; Mrs. Franklin pulled; even Etheridge helped. Ruth did not accomplish much, for she stopped too often; but when she did work she drew out the fragrant strands to a greater length than any one else attempted, and she made wheels of it, and silhouettes of all the company, including Mr. Trone. Miss Billy had begun with much interest; then, seeing that Larue had done nothing beyond arranging the platters and plates in mathematical order on the table, she stopped, slipped out, and went up-stairs to wash her hands. When she returned, fortune favored her; the only vacant seat was one near him, and, after a short hesitation, she took it. Larue did not speak; he was looking at Ruth, who was now pulling candy with Horace Chase, drawing out the golden rope to a yard's length, and throwing the end back to him gayly.

Finally, when not even the painstaking young missionary could scrape another drop from the exhausted pot, Dolly, taking her violin, played a waltz. The uncarpeted floor was tempting, and after all the sticky hands had been washed, the dancing began—Ruth with Chase, Etheridge with Miss Billy; then Etheridge with Mrs. Franklin, while Miss Billy returned quickly to her precious chair.

"But these dances do not compare with the old ones," said Mrs. Franklin, when they had paused to let Dolly rest. "There was the mazurka; and the varsovienne—how pretty that was! La-la-la, la, la!" And humming the tune, she took a step or two lightly. Etheridge, who knew the varsovienne, joined her.

"Go on," said Ruth. "I'll whistle it for you." And sitting on the edge of a table she whistled the tune, while the two dancers circled round the kitchen, looking extremely well together.

"Whistling girls, you know," said Chase, warningly.

He had joined Ruth, and was watching her as she performed her part. She kept on, undisturbed by his jests, bending her head a little to the right and to the left in time with the music; her whistling was as clear as a flute.

"And then there was the heel-and-toe polka. Surely you remember that, commodore," pursued Mrs. Franklin, with inward malice.

For the heel-and-toe was a very ancient memory. It was considered old when she herself had seen it as a child.

"Never heard of it in my life," answered Etheridge. "Hum—ha."

"Oh, I know the heel-and-toe," cried Ruth. "I learned it from mother ages ago, just for fun. Are you rested, Dolly? Play it, please, and mother and I will show them."

Dolly began, and then Mrs. Franklin and Ruth, tall, slender mother, and tall, slender daughter, each with one arm round the other's waist, and the remaining arm held curved above the head, danced down the long room together, taking the steps of the queer Polish dance with charming grace and precision.

"Oh, dear Mrs. Franklin, so young and cheerful! So pleasant to see her, is it not? So lovely! Don't you think so? And dancing is so interesting in so many ways! Though, of course, there are other amusements equally to be desired," murmured Miss Billy, incoherently, to Larue.

"Now we will have a quadrille, and I will improvise the figures," said Ruth. "Mother and the commodore; Miss Billy and Mr. Larue; Mr. Chase with me; and we will take turns in making the fourth couple."

"Unfortunately, I don't dance," observed Larue.

"Spoil-sport!" said Ruth, annihilatingly.

"You got it that time," remarked Chase, condolingly, to the other man.

"Miss Ruth, I can take the senator's place, if you like," said Malachi Hill, springing up, good-naturedly.

Since the termination of the candy-pulling, he had been sitting contentedly beside Dolly, watching her play, and regaling himself meanwhile with a stick of the fresh compound, its end carefully enveloped in a holder of paper.

"Excellent," said Ruth. "Please take Miss Billy, then."

Poor Miss Billy, obliged to dance with a misguided clergyman! This time there was not the excuse of the Mission; it was a real dance. He already smoked; the next step certainly would be cards and horse-racing! While she was taking her place, Rinda ushered in a new guest.

"Maud Muriel—how lucky!" exclaimed Ruth. "You are the very person we need, for we are trying to get up a quadrille, and have not enough persons. I know you like to dance?"

"Yes, I like it very much—for hygienic reasons principally," responded the new-comer.

"Please take my place, then," Ruth went on. "This is Mr. Chase, Miss Maud Mackintosh. Now we will see if our generic geologist and sensational senator will refuse to dance with me." And sinking suddenly on her knees before Larue, Ruth extended her hands in petition.

"What is all that she called him, Miss Maud?" inquired Chase, laughing.

"Miss Mackintosh," said his partner, correctively. "They are only alliterative adjectives, Mr. Chase, rather indiscriminately applied. Ruth is apt to be indiscriminate."

Larue had risen, and Ruth triumphantly led him to his place. He knew that she was laughing at him; in fact, as he went through the figures calmly, his partner mimicked him to his face. But he was indifferent alike to her laughter and her mimicry; what he was noticing was her beauty. If he had been speaking of her, he would have called her "prettyish"; but as he was only thinking, he allowed himself to note the charm of her eyes for the moment, the color in her cheeks and lips. For he was sure that it was only for the moment. "The coloring is evanescent," was his mental criticism. "Her beauty will not last. For she is handsome only when she is happy, and happiness for her means doing exactly as she pleases, and having her own way unchecked. No woman can do that forever. By the time she is thirty she may be absolutely plain."

Maud Muriel had laid aside her hat and jacket. She possessed a wealth of beautiful red hair, whose thick mass was combed so tightly back from her forehead that it made her wink; her much-exposed countenance was not at all handsome, though her hazel eyes were large, calm, and clear. She was a spinster of thirty-six—tall and thin, with large bones. And from her hair to her heels she was abnormally, extraordinarily straight. She danced with much vigor, scrutinizing Chase, and talking to him in the intervals between the figures. These intervals, however, were short, for Ruth improvised with rapidity. Finally she kept them all flying round in a circle so long that Mrs. Franklin, breathless, signalled that she must pause.

"Now we are all hungry," said Ruth. "Zoe, see to the coffee. And, Rinda, you may make ready here. We won't go to the dining-room, His Grand; it's much more fun in the kitchen."

Various inviting dishes were soon arrayed upon a table. And then Ruth, to pass away the time until the coffee should be ready, began to sing. All the Franklins sang; Miss Billy had a sweet soprano, Maud Muriel a resonant contralto, and Malachi Hill a tenor of power; Etheridge, when he chose, could add bass notes.

Horace Chase took no part in the catch song; he sat looking at the others. It was the Franklin family who held his attention—the mother singing with light-hearted animation; Dolly playing her part on her violin, and singing it also; and Ruth, who, with her hands clasped behind her head, was carolling like a bird. To Chase's mind it seemed odd that a woman so old as Mrs. Franklin, a woman with silver hair and grown-up children, should like to dance and sing. Dolly was certainly a very "live" invalid! And Ruth—well, Ruth was enchanting. Horace Chase's nature was always touched by beauty; he was open to its influences, it had been so from boyhood. What he admired was not regularity of feature, but simply the seductive sweetness of womanhood. And, young as she was, Ruth Franklin's face was full of this charm. He looked at her again as she sat singing the chorus:

Then his gaze wandered round the kitchen. From part of the wall the plastering was gone; it had fallen, and had never been replaced. The housewives whom he had hitherto known, so he said to himself, would have preferred to have their walls repaired, and spend less, if necessary, upon dinners. Suppers, too! (Here he noted the rich array on the kitchen table.)

This array was completed presently by the arrival of the coffee, which filled the room with its fragrant aroma, and the supper was consumed amid much merriment. When the clock struck twelve, Maud Muriel rose. "I must be going," she said. "Wilhelmina, I came for you; that is what brought me. When I learned at the hotel that you were here, I followed for the purpose of seeing you home."

"Allow me the pleasure of accompanying you both," said Chase.

"That is not necessary; I always see to Wilhelmina," answered Miss Mackintosh, as she put on her hat.

"Yes; she is so kind," murmured Miss Billy. But Miss Billy in her heart believed that in some way or other Achilles Larue would yet be her escort (though he never had been that, or anything else, in all the years of their acquaintance). He was still in the house, and so was she; something might happen!

What happened was that Larue took leave of Mrs. Franklin, and went off alone.

Then Billy said to herself: "On the whole, I'm glad he didn't suggest it. For it is only five minutes' walk to the hotel, and if he had gone with me it would have counted as a call, and then he needn't have done anything more for a long time. So I'm glad he did not come. Very."

"Maud Muriel," demanded Dolly, "why select a clay pipe?"

"Oh, did you see me?" inquired Miss Mackintosh, composedly. "I use a clay pipe, Dolly, because it is cleaner; I can always have a new one. Smoking is said to insure the night's rest, and so I thought it best to learn it, as my brother's children are singularly active at night. I have been practising for three weeks, and I generally go to the woods, where no one can see me. But to-day I did not have time."

Chase broke into a laugh. Etheridge had emitted another ho, ho, ho! Then he gave Maud a jovial tap. "My dear young lady, don't go to the woods. Let me come, with another clay pipe, and be your protector."

"I have never needed a protector in my life," replied Miss Mackintosh; "I don't know what that feeling is, commodore. I secrete myself simply because people might not understand my motives; they might think that I was secretly given to dissolute courses. Are you ready, Wilhelmina?"

As the two ladies opened the outer door and stepped forth into the darkness, Chase, not deterred by the rebuff he had received from the stalwart virgin, passed her, and offered his arm to the gentler Miss Billy. And then Malachi Hill, feeling that he must, advanced to offer himself as escort for the remaining lady.

"Poor manikin! Do you think I need you?" inquired the sculptress sarcastically, under her breath.

The young clergyman disappeared. He did not actually run. But he was round the corner in an astonishingly short space of time.

Etheridge was the last to take leave. "Well, you made a very merry party for your bubbling friend," he said to Mrs. Franklin.

"It wasn't for him," she answered.

"He is not mother's bubbling friend, and he is not Dolly's, either," said Ruth; "he is mine alone. Mother and Dolly do not in the least appreciate him."

"Is he worth much appreciation?" inquired Etheridge, noting her beauty as Larue had noted it. "How striking she grows!" he thought. And, forgetting for the moment what they were talking about, he looked at her as Chase had looked.

Meanwhile Ruth was answering, girlishly: "Much appreciation? All, commodore—all. Mr. Chase is splendid!"

CHAPTER IV

NOTHING could exceed the charm of the early summer, that year, in this high valley. The amphitheatre of mountains had taken on fresher robes of green, the air was like champagne; it would have been difficult to say which river danced more gayly along its course, the foam-flecked French Broad, its clear water open to the sunshine, or the little Swannanoa, frolicking through the forest in the shade.

One morning, a few days after the candy-pulling at L'Hommedieu, even Maud Muriel was stirred to admiration as she threw open the blinds of her bedroom at her usual early hour. "No humidity. And great rarefaction," she said to herself, as she tried the atmosphere with a tentative snort. Maud Muriel lived with her brother, Thomas Mackintosh; that is, she had a room under his roof and a seat at his table. But she did not spend much time at home, rather to the relief of Mrs. Thomas Mackintosh, an easy-going Southern woman, with several young children, including an obstreperous pair of twins. Maud Muriel, dismissing the landscape, took a conscientious sponge-bath, and went down to breakfast. After breakfast, on her way to her studio, she stopped for a moment to see Miss Billy. "At any rate, I walk well," she had often thought with pride. And to-day, as she approached the hotel, she was so straight that her shoulders tipped backward.

Miss Billy was staying at the inn. This hotel bore the name "The Old North State," the loving title given by native North-Carolinians to their commonwealth—a commonwealth which, in its small long-settled towns, its old farms, and in the names of its people, shows less change in a hundred years than any other portion of the Union. The Old North, as it was called, was a wooden structure painted white, with outside blinds of green; in front of it extended a row of magnificent maple-trees. Miss Billy had a small sitting-room on the second floor; Maud Muriel, paying no attention to the negro servants, went up the uncarpeted stairway to her friend's apartment, and, as she opened the door, she caught sight of this friend carefully rolling a waste bit of string into a small ball.

"Too late—I saw you," she said. (For Miss Billy had nervously tried to hide the ball.) "I know you have at least fifty more little wads of the same sort somewhere, arranged in graded rows! A new ball of string of the largest size—enough to last a year—costs a dime, Wilhelmina. You must have a singularly defective sense of proportion to be willing to give many minutes (for I have even seen you taking out knots!) to a substance whose value really amounts to about the thousandth part of a cent! I have stopped on my way to the barn to tell you two things, Wilhelmina. One is that I do not like your 'Mountain Walk.'" Here she took a roll of delicately written manuscript, tied with blue ribbons, from her pocket, and placed it on the table. "It is supposed to be about trees, isn't it? But you do not describe a single one with the least accuracy; all you do is to impute to them various allegorical sentiments, which no tree—a purely vegetable production—ever had."

"It was only a beginning—leading up to a study of the pre-Adamite trees, which I hope to make, later," Miss Billy answered. "Ruskin, you know—"

"You need not quote Ruskin to me—a man who criticises sculpture without any practical knowledge whatever of human anatomy; a man who subordinates correct drawing in a picture to the virtuous state of mind of the artist! If Ruskin's theory is true, very good persons who visit the poor and go to church, are, if they dabble in water-colors, or pen-and-ink sketches, the greatest of artists, because their piety is sincere. And vice versa. The history of art shows that, doesn't it?" commented Maud, ironically. "I am sorry to see that you sat up so late last night, Wilhelmina."

"Why, how do you know?" said Miss Billy, guiltily conscious of midnight reading.

"By the deep line between your eyebrows. You must see to that, or you will be misjudged by scientific minds. For marked, lined, or wrinkled foreheads indicate criminal tendencies; the statistics of prisons prove it. To-night put on two pieces of strong sticking-plaster at the temples, to draw the skin back. The other thing I had to tell you is that the result of my inquiries of a friend at the North who keeps in touch with the latest investigations of Liébeault and the Germans, is, that there may, after all, be something in the subject you mentioned to me, namely, the possibility of influencing a person, not present, by means of an effort of will. So we will try it now—for five minutes. Fix your eyes steadily upon that figure of the carpet, Wilhelmina"—she indicated a figure with her parasol—"and I will do the same. As subject we will take my sister-in-law. We will will her to whip the twins. Are you ready?" She took out her watch. "Begin, then."

Miss Billy, though secretly disappointed in the choice of subject, tried hard to fix her mind upon the proposed castigation. But in spite of her efforts her thoughts would stray to the carpet itself, to the pattern of the figure, and its reds and greens.

"Time's up," announced Maud, replacing her watch in the strong watch-pocket on the outside of her skirt; "I'll tell you whether the whipping comes off. Do you think it is decent, Wilhelmina, to be dressing and undressing yourself whenever you wish to know what time it is?" (For Miss Billy, who tried to follow the fashions to some extent, was putting her own watch back in her bodice, which she had unbuttoned for the purpose.) "Woman will never be the equal of man until she has grasped the conception that the position of her pockets should be unchangeable," Maud went on.

"I think I will go with you as far as L'Hommedieu," suggested Billy, ignoring the subject of the watch-pocket (an old one). "I have some books to take, so I may as well." She put on her hat, and piled eight dilapidated paper-covered volumes on her arm.

"Are you still collecting vapid literature for that feather-headed woman?" inquired Maud. For Billy went all over Asheville, to every house she knew, and probed in old closets and bookcases in search of novels for Mrs. Franklin. For years she had performed this office. When Mrs. Franklin had finished reading one set of volumes, Billy carried them back to their owners, and then roamed and foraged for more.

"If you do go as far as L'Hommedieu, you must stop there definitely; you must not go on to the barn," Maud Muriel announced, as they went down the stairs. "For if you do, you will stay. And then I shall be going back with you, to see to you. And then you will be coming part way back with me, to talk. And thus we shall be going home with each other all the rest of the day!" She passed out and crossed the street, doing it in the face of the leaders of a team of six horses attached to one of the huge mountain wagons, which are shaped like boats tilted up behind; for two files of these wagons, heavily loaded, were coming slowly up the road. Miss Billy started to cross also, but after three or four steps she turned and hurried back to the curb-stone. Then suddenly she started a second time, running first in one direction, then in another, and finally and unexpectedly in a third, so that the drivers of the wagons nearest to her, and even the very horses themselves, were filled with perplexity as to the course which she wished to pursue. Miss Billy, meanwhile, finding herself hemmed in, began to shriek wildly. The drivers in front stretched their necks round the corners of the canvas hoods erected, like gigantic Shaker bonnets, over their high-piled loads, in order to see what was the matter. And the drivers who were behind stood up and peered forward. But they could make out nothing, and, as Miss Billy continued her yells, the whole procession, and with it the entire traffic of the main street, came slowly to a pause. The pause was not long. The energetic Maud Muriel, jerking up the heads of two of the leaders, made a dive, caught hold of her frightened friend, and drew her out by main strength. The horses whom she had thus attacked, shook themselves. "Hep!" called their driver. "Hep!" called the other drivers, in various keys. And then, one by one, with a jerk and a creak, the great wains started on again.

When the friends reached L'Hommedieu, Billy was still trembling.

"I'd better take them in for you," said Maud Muriel, referring to the load of books which Billy was carrying for her companion. They found Dolly in the parlor, winding silk for her next pair of stockings. "Here are some volumes which Wilhelmina is bringing to Mrs. Franklin," said Maud Muriel, depositing the pile on a table.

"More novels?" said Dolly. "I'm so glad. Thank you, Miss Billy. For mother really has nothing for to-day. The one she had yesterday was very dull; she said she was 'worrying' through it. It was a story about female suffrage—as though any one could care for that!"

"Care for it or not, it is sure to come," declared Miss Mackintosh.

"Yes, in A.D. 5000."

"Sooner, much sooner. We may not see it," pursued Maud Muriel, putting up her finger impressively. "But, mark my words, our children will."

Miss Billy listened to this statement with the deepest interest.

"Well, Maud Muriel—Miss Billy, yourself, and myself as parents—that certainly is a new idea!" Dolly replied.

Ruth came in. At the same moment Maud Muriel turned to go; and, unconsciously, Billy made a motion as if about to follow.

"Wilhelmina, you are to stay," said Maud, sternly, as she departed, straighter than ever.

"Yes, Miss Billy, please stay," said Ruth. "I want you to go with me to see Genevieve."

"Genevieve?" repeated Dolly, surprised.

"Yes. She has bought another new dress for me, and this time she is going to fit it herself, she says, so that there may be no more bagging," answered Ruth, laughing. "I know she intends to squeeze me up. And so I want Miss Billy to come and say it's dangerous!"

Ruth was naturally what is called short-waisted; this gave her the long step which in a tall, slender woman is so enchantingly graceful. Genevieve did not appreciate grace of this sort. In her opinion Ruth's waist was too large. If she had been told that it was the waist of Greek sculpture, the statement would not have altered her criticism; she had no admiration for Greek sculpture; the few life-sized casts from antique statues which she had seen had appeared to her highly unpleasant objects. Her ideas of feminine shape were derived, in fact, from the season's fashion plates. Her own costumes were always of one unbroken tint, the same from head to foot. To men's eyes, therefore, her attire had an air of great simplicity. Women perceived at once that this unvarying effect was not obtained without much thought, and Genevieve herself would have been the last to disclaim such attention. For she believed that it was each woman's duty to dress as becomingly as was possible, because it increased her attraction; and the greater her attraction, the greater her influence. If she had been asked, "influence for what?" she would have replied unhesitatingly, "influence for good!" Her view of dress, therefore, being a serious one, she was disturbed by the entire indifference of her husband's family to the subject, both generally and in detail. She had the most sincere desire to assist them, to improve them; most of all she longed to improve Ruth (she had given up Dolly), and more than once she had denied herself something, and taken the money it would have cost, to buy a new costume for the heedless girl, who generally ruined the gifts (in her sister-in-law's opinion) by careless directions, or no directions at all, to the Asheville dressmaker.

Ruth bore Miss Billy away. But as they crossed the garden towards the cottage she said: "I may as well tell you—there will be no fitting. For Mr. Chase is there; I have just caught a glimpse of him from the upper window."

"Then why go now?" inquired Miss Billy, who at heart was much afraid of Genevieve.

"To see Mr. Chase, of course. I wish to thank him for my philopena, which came late last night. Mother and Dolly are not pleased. But I am, ever so much." She took a morocco case from her pocket, and, opening it, disclosed a ring of very delicate workmanship, the gold circlet hardly more than a thread, and enclosing a diamond, not large, but very pure and bright.

"Oh-ooh!" said Miss Billy, with deep admiration.

"Yes; isn't it lovely? Mother and Dolly say that it is too much. But I have never seen anything in the world yet which I thought too much! I should like to have ever so many rings, each set with one gem only, but that gem perfect. And I should like to have twenty or thirty bracelets, all of odd patterns, to wear on my arms above the elbow. And I should like close rows of jewels to wear round my throat. And clasps of jewels for the belt; and shoe-buckles too. I have never had an ornament, except one dreadful silver thing. Let me see; it's on now!" And feeling under her sleeve, she drew off a thin silver circlet, and threw it as far as she could across the grass.

"Oh, your pretty bracelet!" exclaimed Miss Billy.

"Pretty? Horrid!"

Horace Chase had called at the Cottage in answer to a note from Genevieve, offering to take him to the Colored Home. "As you have shown so much kindly interest in the Mission, I feel sure that this second good work of ours will also please you," she wrote.

"I think I won't go to-day, Gen, if it's all the same to you," said Chase, when he entered. "For my horses have come and I ought not to delay any longer about making some arrangements for them."

"Any other time will do for the Home," answered Genevieve, graciously. "But can't you stay for a little while, Horace? Let me show you my house."

Chase had already seen her parlor, with its velvet carpet, its set of furniture covered with green, its pictures arranged according to the size of the frames, with the largest below on a line with the eye, and the others above in pyramidical gradations, so that the smallest were near the cornice. At that distance the subjects of the smaller pictures were more or less indistinguishable; but at least the arrangement of the frames was full of symmetry. In the second story, at the end of the house, was "Jay's smoking-room." "Jay likes to smoke; it is a habit he acquired in the navy; I have therefore fitted up this room on purpose," said Jay's wife.

It was a small chamber, with a sloping ceiling, a single window overlooking the kitchen roof, oil-cloth on the floor, one table, and one chair.

"Do put in two chairs," suggested Chase, jocularly. For though he thought the husband of Genevieve a fortunate man, he could not say that his smoking-room was a cheerful place.

"Oh, I never sit here," answered Genevieve. "Now come down and take a peep at my kitchen, Horace. I have been kneading the bread; there it is on the table. I prefer to knead it myself, though I hope that in time Susannah will be able to do it according to my method" (with a glance towards the negro servant, who returned no answering smile). "And this is my garden. I can never tell you how glad I am that we have at last a fixed home of our own, Horrie. No more wandering about! Jay is able to spend a large part of his summers here, and, later, when he has made a little more money, he will come for the whole summer—four months. And I go to Raleigh to be with him in the winter; I am hoping that we can have a winter home there too, very soon. We are so much more comfortable in every way than we used to be. And looking at it from another point of view, it is inexpressibly better for Jay himself to be out of the navy. It always disturbed me—such a limited life!"

Jared Franklin, when an ensign, had met Genevieve Gray, fallen in love with her, and married her, in the short space of three months. He had remained in the navy throughout the war, and for two years longer; then, yielding at last to his wife's urgent entreaties, he had resigned. After his resignation he had been for a time a clerk in Atlanta. Now he was in business for himself in a small way at Raleigh; it was upon his establishment there that Genevieve had started this summer home in Asheville. "Our prospects are much brighter," she went on, cheerfully; "for at present we have a future. No one has a future in the navy; no one can make money there. But now there is no reason why Jay should not succeed, as other men have succeeded; that is what I always tell him. And I am not thinking only of ourselves, Horrie, as I say that; when Jay is a rich man, my principal pleasure in it will be the power which we shall have to give more in charity, to do more in all good works." And in saying this, Genevieve Franklin was entirely sincere.

"You must keep me posted about the railroad," she went on, as she led the way across the garden.

"Oh yes; if we decide to take hold of it, you shall be admitted into the ring," answered Chase—"the inside track."

"I could buy land here beforehand—quietly, you know?"

"You've got a capital head for business, haven't you, Gen! Better than any one has at your mother-in-law's, I reckon?"

"They are not clever in that way; I have always regretted it. But they are very amiable."

"Not that Dolly!"

"Oh, Dolly? My principal feeling for poor Dolly, of course, is simply pity. This is my little dairy, Horrie; come in. I have been churning butter this morning."

Ruth and Miss Billy, finding no one in the house, had followed to the dairy; and they entered in time to hear this last phrase.

"She does churning and everything else, Mr. Chase, at three o'clock in the morning," said Ruth, with great seriousness.

"Not quite so early," Genevieve corrected.

The point was not taken up. The younger Mrs. Franklin, a fresh, strong, equable creature, who woke at dawn as a child wakes, liked an early breakfast as a child likes it. She found it difficult, therefore, to understand her mother-in-law's hour of nine, or half-past nine. "But you lose so much time, mamma," she had remarked during the first weeks of her own residence at Asheville.

"Yes," Dolly answered. (It was always Dolly who answered Genevieve; Dolly delighted in it.) "We do lose it at that end of the morning—the raw end, Genevieve. But when we are once up, we remain up, available, fully awake, get-at-able, until midnight; we do not go off and seclude ourselves impregnably for two hours or so in the middle of the day." For Dolly was aware that it was her sister-in-law's habit to retire to her room immediately after her one o'clock dinner, and take a nap; often a long one.

"Do you wish to see something pretty, Genevieve?" said Ruth, giving her the morocco case. "Thank you, Mr. Chase; I have wanted a ring so long; you can't think how long!"

"Have you?" said Chase, smiling.

"Yes. And this is such a beauty."

"Well, to me it seemed rather small. I wrote to a friend of mine to get it; it was my partner, in fact, Mr. Willoughby. I told him that it was for a young lady. That's his taste, I suppose."

"The taste is perfect," said Miss Billy. For poor Miss Billy, browbeaten though she was by almost everybody, possessed a very delicate and true perception in all such matters.

"I have been perfectly happy ever since it came," Ruth declared, as she took the ring, slipped it on her finger, and looked at the effect.

"You make me proud, Miss Ruth."

"Don't you want to be a little prouder?" and she came up to him coaxingly. "I am sure Genevieve has been asking you to go with her to the Colored Home?" This quick guess made Chase laugh. "For it is the weekly reception day, and all her old women have on their clean turbans. The Colored Home is excellent, of course, but it won't fly away; there'll be more clean turbans next week. Meanwhile, I have something very pressing. I have long wanted Miss Mackintosh to make a bust of Petie Trone, Esq. And she won't, because she thinks it is frivolous. But if you will go with me, Mr. Chase, and speak of it as a fine thing to do, she will be impressed, I know; for she has a sort of concealed liking for you." Chase made a grimace. "I don't mean anything fiery," Ruth went on; "it's only a reasonable scientific interest. She is at the barn now: won't you come? For Petie Trone, Esq., is not a young dog any longer. He is more than eight years old," concluded the girl, mournfully.

Genevieve, who had been greatly struck by the ring, glanced at Chase with inward despair, as her sister-in-law made this ineffective conclusion. They had left the dairy, and were standing in the garden, and her despair renewed itself as, in the brighter light, she noted Ruth's faded dress, and the battered garden hat, whose half-detached feather had been temporarily secured with a large white pin.

But Chase was not looking at the hat. "Of course I'll go," he answered. "We'll have the little scamp in bronze, if you like. Don't worry about his age, Miss Ruth; he is so tremendously lively that he will see us all out yet."

"Come, then," said Ruth, exultingly. She linked her arm in Miss Billy's. "You must go, too, Miss Billy, so that you can tell mother that I did not tease Mr. Chase too hard."

Maud Muriel's studio was in an unused hay-barn. Here, ranged on rough shelves, were her "works," as Miss Billy called them—many studies of arms, and hands, and a dozen finished portrait-busts in clay. The subjects of the busts appeared to have been selected, one and all, for their strictly commonplace aspect; they had not even the distinction of ugliness. There were three old men with ordinary features, and no marked expression of any kind; there were six middle-aged women, each with the type of face which one forgets the moment after seeing it; and there were three uncompromisingly uninteresting little boys. The modelling was conscientious, and it was evident in each case that the likeness was faithful.

"But Petie Trone, Esq., is a pretty dog," objected the sculptress, when Ruth had made her request, backed up by Chase, who described the "dogs and animals of all sorts" which he had seen in bronze and marble in the galleries abroad. No one laughed, as the formal title came out from Maud's lips, Asheville had long ago accepted the name; Petie Trone, Esq., was as well known as Mount Pisgah.

"Don't you like pretty things?" Chase asked, gazing at the busts, and then at the studies of arms and hands—scraggy arms with sharp elbows and thin fingers, withered old arms with clawlike phalanges, lean arms of growing boys with hands like paws, hard-worked arms with distorted muscles—every and any human arm and hand save a beautiful one.

"Prettiness is the exception, not the rule," replied Maud, with decision. "I prefer to model the usual, the average; for in that direction, and in that only, lies truth."

"Yes; and I suppose that if I should make a usual cur of Petie Trone, Esq., cover him with average mud, and beat him so that he would cower and slink in his poor little tail, then you would do him?" said Ruth, indignantly.

"See here, Miss Mackintosh, your principles needn't be upset by one small dog. Come, do him; not his bust, but the whole of him. A life-sized statue," added Chase, laughing; "he must be about eleven inches long! Do him for me," he went on, boldly, looking at her with secret amusement; for he had never seen such an oaken bearing as that of this Asheville spinster.

Maud Muriel did not relax the tension of her muscles; in fact, she could not. The condition called "clinched," which with most persons is occasional only, had with her become chronic. Nevertheless, somehow, she consented.

"I'll get the darling this minute," cried Ruth, hurrying out. And Chase followed her.

"Well, here you are again! What did I tell you?" said the sculptress to Miss Billy, when they were left alone.

"I did not mean to come, Maud Muriel. I really did not intend—" Billy began.

"What place, Wilhelmina, is paved with good intentions? Now, of course, we shall be going home with each other all the rest of the day!" declared the sculptress, good-humoredly.

Meanwhile, outside, Ruth was suggesting to Horace Chase, coaxingly, that he should wait until she could find her dog, and bring him to the barn. "Because if you are not with me, Maud Muriel will be sure to change her mind!"

"Not she. She is no more changeable than a telegraph pole. I am afraid I must leave you now, Miss Ruth; for the men are waiting to see me about the horses."

"Whose horses?"

"Mine."

"Did you send for them? Oh, I love horses too. Where are they?"

"At the Old North stables. So you like horses? I'll drive the pair round, then, in a day or two, to show them to you." And after shaking hands with her—Chase always shook hands—he went towards the village; for Maud Muriel's barn was on the outskirts. In figure he was tall, thin, and muscular. He never appeared to be in haste; all his movements were leisurely, even his words coming out with deliberation. His voice was pitched in a low key; his articulation was extremely distinct; sometimes, when amused, he had a slight humorous drawl.

Ruth looked after him for a moment. Then she went in search of her dog.

A little later Anthony Etheridge paid his usual morning visit to the post-office. On his return, when near his own abode, he met Horace Chase.

"A mail in?" inquired Chase, quickly, as he saw the letters.

"No; they came last night. I am never in a hurry about mails," answered Etheridge. "You younger fellows have not learned, as I have, that among every six letters, say, four at least are sure to be more or less disagreeable. Well, have you decided? Are you coming to my place?" For Etheridge had rooms in a private house, where he paid for a whole wing in order that his night's rest should not be disturbed by other tenants, who might perhaps bring in young children; with his usual thriftiness, he had offered his lower floor to Chase.

"Well, no, I guess not; I'm thinking of coming here," Chase answered, indicating the hotel near by with a backward turn of his thumb. "My horses are here; they came last night. I'm making some arrangements for them, now."

Anthony Etheridge cared more for a good horse than for anything else in the world. In spite of his title of Commodore, sailing had only a second place in his list of tastes. He had commanded a holiday squadron only, a fleet of yachts. Some years before, he had resigned his commandership in the Northern club. But he was still a commodore, almost in spite of himself, for he had again been elected, this time by the winter yacht club of St. Augustine. At the word "horses" his face had lighted up. "Can I have a look at them?" he said, eagerly. "Did they stand the journey well?"

"O. K. They're round in the stable, if you want to come."

The three horses were beautiful specimens of their kind. "The pair, I intend to drive; I found that there was nothing in Asheville, and as I'm going to stay awhile longer (for the air is bringing me right up), I had to have something," Chase remarked. "The mare is for riding."

"She looks like a racer?"

"Well, she has taken one prize. But I shall never race her again; I don't care about it. I remember when I thought a race just heaven! When I wasn't more than nineteen, I took a prize with a trotter; 'twas a very small race, to be sure; but a big thing to me. Not long after that, there was another prize offered for a well-matched pair, and by that time I had a pair—temporarily—bays. One of them, however, had a white spot on his nose. Well, sir, I painted his nose, and won the premium!" He broke into a laugh.

"Was that before you invented the Bubble Baking-powder?" inquired Etheridge.

In this question, there was a tinge of superciliousness. Chase did not suspect it; in his estimation, a baking-powder was as good a means as anything else, the sole important point being its success. But even if he had perceived the tinge, it would only have amused him; with his far-stretching plans—plans which extended across a continent—his large interests and broad ambitions, criticism from this obscure old man would have seemed comical. Anthony Etheridge was not so obscure a personage as Chase fancied. But he was not known in the world of business or of speculation, and he had very little money. This last fact Chase had immediately divined. For he recognized in Etheridge a man who would never have denied himself luxury unless forced to do it, a man who would never have been at Asheville if he could have afforded Newport; the talk about "nature undraped" was simply an excuse. And he had discovered also another secret which no one (save Mrs. Franklin) suspected, namely, that the handsome commodore was in reality far older than his gallant bearing would seem to indicate.

"I didn't invent the Bubble," he had said, explanatorily. "I only bought it. Then the inventor and I ran it together, in a sort of partnership, as long as he lived. 'Twas as good as a silver mine for a while. Nothing could stand against it, sir—nothing."

But Etheridge was not interested in the Bubble. "I should like greatly to see your mare go," he said. "Here, boy, isn't that track in the field in pretty fair condition still?"

"Yes, boss," answered the negro, whom he had addressed.

"Why not let her go round it, Chase? It will do her good to stretch her legs this fine morning."

Here a shadow in the doorway caused them both to turn their heads. It was Ruth Franklin.

"Good heavens, Ruth, what are you doing here in the stables?" asked Etheridge, astonished.

"I have come to see the horses," replied Ruth, confidently. She addressed Chase. She had already learned that she could count upon indulgence from him, no matter what fancies might seize her.

"Here they are, then," Chase answered. "Come closer. This is Peter, and that is Piper. And here is the mare, Kentucky Belle. Your friend, the commodore, was urging me, as you came in, to send Kentucky round a race-course you have here somewhere."

"Yes, I know; the old ring," said Ruth. "Oh, please do! Please have a real race."

"But there's nothing to run against her, Miss Ruth. The pair are not racers."

"You go to Cyrus Jaycox," said Etheridge to the negro, "and ask him for—for" (he could not remember the name)—"for the colt," he concluded, in an enraged voice.

"Fer Tipkinoo, sah? Yassah."

"Tell him to come himself."

"Yassah." The negro started off on a run.

"It's the landlord of the Old North," Etheridge explained. "He has a promising colt, Tippecanoe" (he brought it out this time sonorously). "No match, of course, for your mare, Chase. Still, it will make a little sport." His color had risen; his face was young with anticipation. "Now, Ruth, go home; you have seen the horses, and that is enough. Your mother would be much displeased if she knew you were here."

For answer, Ruth looked at Chase. "I won't be the least trouble," she said, winningly.

"Oh, do be! I like trouble—feel all the better for lots of it," he answered. "Come along with me. And make all the trouble you can!"

Three little negro boys, highly excited, had already started off to act as pilots to the field. Ruth put her hand in Chase's arm; for if the owner of Kentucky Belle wished to have her with him, or at least if he had the appearance of wishing it, there was less to be said against her presence. They led the way, therefore. Then came Chase's man with the mare, Etheridge keeping close to the beautiful beast, and watching her gait with critical eyes. All the hangers-on of the stable brought up the rear. The field, where an amateur race had been held during the preceding year, was not far distant; its course was a small one. Some minutes later their group was completed by the arrival of Cyrus Jaycox with his colt, Tippecanoe.

"But where is Groves?" said Chase to his men. "Groves is the only one of you who can ride her properly." It turned out, however, that Groves had gone to bed ill; he had taken a chill on the journey.

"I didn't observe that he wasn't here," said Chase. (This was because he had been talking to Ruth.) "We shall have to postpone it, commodore."

"Let her go round with one of the other men just once, to show her action," Etheridge urged.

"Yes, please, please," said Ruth.

The mare, therefore, went round the course with the groom Cartright, followed by the Asheville colt, ridden by a little negro boy, who clung on with grins and goggling eyes.

"There is Mr. Hill, watching us over the fence," said Ruth. "How astonished he looks!" And she beckoned to the distant figure.

Malachi Hill, who had been up the mountain to pay a visit to a family in bereavement, had recognized them, and stopped his horse in the road to see what was going on. In response to Ruth's invitation, he found a gate, opened it by leaning from his saddle, and came across to join them. As he rode up, Etheridge was urging another round. "If I were not such a heavy weight, I'd ride the mare myself!" he declared, with enthusiasm. Cyrus Jaycox offered a second little negro, as jockey. But Chase preferred to trust Cartright, unfitted though he was. In reality he consented not on account of the urgency of Etheridge, but solely to please the girl by his side.

There was trouble about this second start; the colt, not having been trained, boggled and balked. Kentucky Belle, on her side, could not comprehend such awkwardness. "I'll go a few paces with them, just to get them well off," suggested Malachi Hill. And, touching Daniel with his whip, he rode forward, coming up behind the other two.

Mr. Hill's Daniel was the laughing-stock of the irreverent; he was a very tall, ancient horse, lean and rawboned, with a rat tail. But he must have had a spark of youthful fire left in him somewhere, or else a long-thwarted ambition, for he made more than the start which his rider had intended; breaking into a pounding pace, he went round the entire course, in spite of the clergyman's efforts to pull him up. The mare, hearing the thundering sound of his advance behind her, began to go faster. Old Daniel passed the Asheville colt as though he were nothing at all; then, stretching out his gaunt head, he went in pursuit of the steed in front like a mad creature, the dust of the ring rising in clouds behind him. Nothing could now stop either horse. Cartright was powerless with Kentucky Belle, and Daniel paid no heed to his rider. But, the second time round, it was not quite clear whether the clergyman was trying to stop or not. The third time there was no question—he would not have stopped for the world; his flushed face showed the deepest delight.

Meanwhile people had collected as flies collect round honey; the negroes who lived in the shanties behind the Old North had come running to the scene in a body, the big children "toting" the little ones; and down the lane which led from the main street had rushed all the whites within call, led by the postmaster himself, a veteran of the Mexican War. After the fourth round, Kentucky Belle decided to stop of her own accord. She was, of course, ahead. But not very far behind her, still thundering along with his rat tail held stiffly out, came old Daniel, in his turn ahead of Tippecanoe.

As Daniel drew near, exhausted but still ardent, there rose loud laughter and cheers. "Good gracious!" murmured the missionary, as he quickly dismounted, pulled his hat straight, and involuntarily tried to hide himself between Etheridge and Chase. "What have I done!"

His perturbation was genuine. "Come along," said Chase, who had been laughing uproariously himself; "we'll protect you." He gave his arm to Mr. Hill, and with Ruth (who still kept her hold tightly) on his left, he made with his two companions a stately progress back to the hotel, followed by the mare led by Cartright, with Etheridge as body-guard; then by Cyrus Jaycox, with Tippecanoe; and finally by all the spectators, who now numbered nearly a hundred. But at the head of the whole file (Chase insisted upon this) marched old Daniel, led by the other groom.

"Go round to the front," called Chase. And round they all went to the main street, amid the hurrahs of the accompanying crowd, white and black. At the door of the Old North, Ruth escaped and took refuge within, accompanied by the troubled clergyman; and a moment later Chase and Etheridge followed. Ruth had led the way to Miss Billy's sitting-room. Miss Billy received her guests with wonder; Maud Muriel was with her (for her prophecy had come true; the two had already begun the "going home" with each other).

"We have had the most exciting race, Miss Billy," explained Ruth. "A real horse-race round the old track out in the field. And Mr. Hill came in second on Daniel!"

The eyes of Miss Billy, turning to the clergyman with horror, moved Chase to fresh laughter. "I say—why not all stay and dine with me?" he suggested. "To celebrate Daniel's triumph, you know? I am coming here to stay, so I might as well begin. The dinner hour is two o'clock, and it is almost that now. We can have a table to ourselves, and perhaps they can find us some champagne."

"That will be great fun; I'll stay," said Ruth. "And the commodore will, I'm sure. Mr. Hill, too."

"Thanks, no. I must go. Good-day," said the missionary, hastening out.

Chase pursued him. "Why, you are the hero of the whole thing," he said; "the man of the hour! We can't bring old Daniel into the dining-room. So we must have you, Hill."

"I am sorry to spoil it; but you will have to excuse me," answered the other man, hurriedly. Then, with an outburst of confidence: "It is impossible for me to remain where Miss Mackintosh is present. There is something perfectly awful to me, Mr. Chase, in that woman's eye!"

"Is that all? Come back; I'll see to her," responded Chase. And see to her he did. Aided by Etheridge, who liked nothing better than to assail the sculptress with lovelorn compliments, Chase paid Maud Muriel such devoted attention that for the moment she forgot poor Hill, or rather she left him to himself. He was able, therefore, to eat his dinner. But he still said, mutely, "Good gracious!" and, taking out his handkerchief, he furtively wiped his brow.

The Old North had provided for its patrons that day roast beef, spring chickens, new potatoes, and apple puddings. All the diners at the other tables asked for "a dish of gravy." A saucer containing gravy was then brought and placed by the side of each plate. Small hot buscuits were offered instead of bread, and eaten with the golden mountain butter. Mrs. Jaycox, stimulated by the liberal order for champagne, sent to Chase's table the additional splendors of three kinds of fresh cake, peach preserves, and a glass jug of cream.

CHAPTER V

THE spring deepened into summer, and July opened. On the 10th, the sojourners at the Warm Springs, the beautiful pools that well up in the valley of the French Broad River, were assembled on the veranda of the rambling wooden hotel, after their six o'clock supper, when they saw two carriages approaching. "Phew! who can they be?" "What horses!"

The horses were indeed remarkably handsome—two bays and a lighter-limbed pair of sorrels; in addition there was a mounted groom. The housekeeper, who had come out on the veranda, mentioned in a low tone that a second groom had arrived, three hours earlier, to engage rooms for the party, and make preparations. "They are to have supper by themselves, later; we're to do our best. Extras have been ordered, and they've sent all sorts of supplies. And champagne!"

"Chase, did you say the name was? That's a hoax. It's General Grant himself, I reckon, coming along yere like a conqueror in disguise," said a wag.

The bays were Horace Chase's Peter and Piper, attached to a two-seated carriage which was a model as regarded comfort; Anthony Etheridge was driving, and with him were Mrs. Franklin, Dolly, and Ruth. Horace Chase himself, in a light vehicle for two, which he called his cart, had the sorrels. His companion was a gaunt, dark man, who looked as though he had been ill. This man was Mrs. Franklin's son Jared.

Franklin had been stricken by that disheartening malady which is formed by the union of fever and ague. After bearing it for several weeks, and sending no tidings of his condition to his family (for he considered it a rather unmasculine ailment), he had journeyed to Asheville with the last remnants of his strength, and arriving by stage, and finding no one at the cottage (for it was his wife's day at the Colored Home), he had come with uncertain steps across the field to L'Hommedieu, entering the parlor like a yellow spectre, his eyes sunken, his mind slightly wandering. "Ye-es, here I am," he said, vaguely. "I was coming next week, you know. But I—I didn't feel well. And so I've—come now."

His mother had given a cry; then, with an instinctive movement, her tall figure looking taller than ever, she had rushed forward and clasped her dazed, fever-stricken son in her arms.

The mountain air, prompt remedies, and the vigilant nursing of Genevieve, soon routed the insidious foes. Routed them, that is, for the moment; for their strength lies in stealthy returns; as Jared said (he made jokes even at the worst stages), they never know when they are beaten. But as soon as there was even a truce, their victim, though still yellow and weak, announced that he must return to his business immediately.

"But I thought you spent your summers here, Mr. Franklin?" remarked Horace Chase, inquiringly.

"Yes, that is the plan, and I have been here a good deal for the past three seasons. But this year I can't stay," Jared answered.

This was said at L'Hommedieu. Ruth was sitting beside her brother on the sofa, her arm in his. "But you must stay," she protested. "You are not strong yet; you are not strong at all." She put her other arm across his breast, as if to keep him. "I shall not let you go!"

Jared Franklin was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark eyes whose expression was always sad. In spite of this sadness, he had Dolly's habit of making jocular remarks. But he had not Dolly's sharpness; where she was sarcastic, the brother was only ironical. In looks Jared did not resemble his mother or Dolly. But there was a strong likeness between his face and Ruth's; they had the same contours, the same mouth.

While Ruth was protesting, Mrs. Franklin, making no pretence of busying herself with anything, not even with lamplighters, sat looking at her son with eyes which seemed to have grown larger, owing to the depth of love within them. Chase, who had happened to be at L'Hommedieu when Jared arrived, had never forgotten that rush of the mother—the mother whose easy indolence he had, up to that moment, condemned. So now he said, with his slight drawl: "Oh, you want to give the fever another round of shot before you go back, Mr. Franklin. Why not take a few days more, and drive with me over the Great Smokies into Tennessee?" And the result was the party already described.

The evening before the start, Ruth had come out on the veranda of L'Hommedieu. Chase and her brother had been smoking there (for Jared had not shown any deep attachment to his smoking-room), and Dolly, who loved the aroma of cigars, had seated herself near them. Jared had now strolled off with his mother, and Genevieve, coming over from the cottage, had taken her husband's place. As she approached, Chase had extinguished his cigar and tossed it into the grass; for tobacco smoke always gave the younger Mrs. Franklin a headache.

Ruth had walked up to Chase's chair. "No, please don't rise; I am only looking at you, Mr. Chase. You are so wonderful!"

"Now don't be too hard on me!" interposed the visitor, humorously.

"First, you are making my brother take this long drive," Ruth went on; "the very thing of all others that will do him good—and I could go down on my knees to you just for that! Then you have sent for that easy carriage, so that Dolly can go, too. Then you are taking me. The commodore also, who would rather drive Peter and Piper than go to heaven! I have always wanted to see somebody who could do everything. It must be very nice to have money," she concluded, reflectively.

"And to do so much good with it," added Genevieve. Genevieve had insisted that her mother-in-law should take the fourth place in the carriage; for the drive would be excellent for Mrs. Franklin, who was far from strong; whereas, for herself, as she was in perfect health, no change was necessary. Genevieve might have mentioned, also, that she had had change enough for her whole life, and to spare, during the years which her husband had spent in the navy; for the younger Mrs. Franklin did not enjoy varying scenes. A house of her own and everything in it hers; prearranged occupations, all useful or beneficent, following each other regularly in an unbroken round; a leading place in the management of charitable institutions; the writing and despatching of letters, asking for contributions to these institutions; the general supervision of the clergy, with an eye to dangerous ritualistic tendencies; the conscientious endeavor to tell her friends on all occasions what they ought to do (Genevieve was never angry when they disagreed with her, she only pitied them. There was, in fact, no one she knew whom she had not felt herself competent, at one time or another, to pity)—all this gave her the sense of doing good. And to Genevieve that was more precious than all else—the feeling that she was doing good. "Ruth is right; it must be enchanting to have money," she went on. "I have often planned what I should do myself if I had a fortune. I think I may say that I can direct, administer; I have never seen or read of any charitable institution, refuge, hospital, home, asylum, or whatever it may be, which seemed too large or too complicated for me to undertake. On the contrary, I know I should like it; I feel that I have that sort of capacity." Her face kindled as she spoke; her genius (for she had a genius, that of directorship) was stirring within her.

"You certainly have one part of the capacity, and that is the despotism," remarked Dolly, laughing. "The other members of your Board of Managers for the Colored Home, for instance—Mrs. Baxter, Miss Wynne, Miss Kent—they haven't a voice in even the smallest matter, poor souls! You rule them with a rod of iron—all for their good, no doubt."

"As it is," continued the younger Mrs. Franklin, combating not Dolly's sarcasms (to which she had paid no attention), but her own sincere longings—"as it is, I cannot build a hospital at present, though I don't give up hope for the future. But I can at least give my prayers to all, and that I do; I never ring a door-bell without offering an inward petition that something I may say will help those whom I shall see when I go in."

"Now that's generous," commented Dolly. "But don't be too unselfish, Genevieve; think of yourself occasionally; why not pray that something they may say will be a help to you?"

After the arrival of his party at the Warm Springs, Chase devoted a half-hour to a brief but exhaustive examination of the site, the pool, and the buildings. "When we have made a Tyrol of Buncombe, we'll annex this place as a sort of Baden-Baden," he said. "Thirty-five miles from Asheville—that will just do. Ever tried the baths, commodore?"

"You must apply to somebody who has rheumatism, Mr. Chase," answered Etheridge, loftily.

"The pool has an abundant supply at a temperature of 104 Fahrenheit," Chase went on, with the gleam of a smile showing itself in his eyes for a moment (for the commodore's air of youth always amused him; it was so determined). "Baden-Baden was one of the prettiest little places I saw over there, on the other side of the big pond. They've taken lots of pains to lay out a promenade along a stream, and the stream is about as big as one from a garden-hose! But here there could be a walk worth something—along this French Broad."

They were strolling near the river in the red light of the sunset. "Their forest that they talk about, their Black Forest, is all guarded and patrolled," Chase continued; "every tree counted! I don't call that a forest at all. Now these woods are perfectly wild. Why—they're as wild as Noah!"

"Don't you mean old as Noah?" inquired Ruth, laughing.

"Certainly not," commented Jared. "Noah was extremely wild. And not in his youth only; in his age as well."

"The first thing, however, would be the roads," Chase went on. "I never thought I should have to take a back seat about the United States of America! But I returned from Europe singing small, I can tell you, about our roads. Talk about the difficulty of making 'em? Go and look at Switzerland!"

"By all means," said Ruth, promptly. "Only tell us how, Mr. Chase. We'll go at once." She was walking with her brother, her hat dangling by its elastic cord from her arm.

Chase came out of his plans. "So you want to see Switzerland, do you?" he said, in an indulgent tone.

Ruth lifted her hat, and made with it a gesture which took in the entire horizon. "I wish to see everything in the world!" Jared took her hat away from her, put it on her head and secured it, or tried to secure it. "Will you take me, Jared? I mean some day?" she said, as he bungled with the cord, endeavoring to get it over her hair. "That's not the way." She unbuttoned the loop and adjusted it. It was a straw hat (thanks to Genevieve, a new one), which shaded her face, but left free, behind, the thick braids which covered her small head from crown to throat.

"Once, pussy, I might have answered yes. But now I'm not so sure," replied Jared, rather gloomily.

"I don't want to go, I wasn't in earnest; I only want to stay where you are," exclaimed his young sister, her mood changing. "But if only you had never left the navy! If only you were not tied down in that horrid, horrid Raleigh!"

"Is Raleigh so very horrid?" inquired Chase.

"Any place is horrid that keeps Jared shut up in a warehouse all day," announced Ruth, indignantly.

Mrs. Franklin, who was behind with Etheridge, came forward, took Ruth's arm, and led her back.

"She is sorry that you left the service?" Chase inquired of the brother.

Ruth overheard this question. "Jared was always well when he was in the navy," she called out. "No, His Grand, I will say it: he was always well, and he was happy too; Dolly has told me so. Now he is never well; he is growing so thin that I can't bear to see it. And as for happiness—he is miserable!" Her voice broke; she stood still, her breast heaving.

Jared strolled on, his hands in the pockets of his flannel coat. "It's nothing," he said to Chase, who was looking back; "she'll get over it in a moment. She says whatever comes into her head; we have spoiled her, I suppose. She was so much younger, you see; the last of my mother's six children. And the three who came before her had died in infancy, so there was a great to-do when this one lived."

Chase glanced back a second time. Ruth, Mrs. Franklin, and Etheridge had turned, and were going towards the hotel. "She appears to wish that you had remained in the navy; isn't that rather odd?" he inquired, the idea in his mind being simply the facilities that existed for seeing this idolized brother, now that Raleigh was his home instead of the ocean.

"Odd?" repeated Jared. And his tone had such a strange vibration that his companion turned and looked at him.

They continued their walk for an hour longer. When they came back, they found the commodore seated on the veranda of the cottage which had been arranged for their use by Chase's courier. Ruth and Mrs. Franklin were his companions, and Dolly was also there, resting on a sofa which had been rolled out from the room behind. Chase and Jared lighted cigars; Etheridge took out a cigarette.

"Now if we only had Maud Muriel with her long clay pipe!" said Ruth. There was no trace of trouble left in her voice; she had drawn her chair close to her brother's, and seated herself contentedly.

"It's to the pipe you owe the very clever likeness she has made of your scamp of a dog," remarked Etheridge. "The smoking relaxed her a little, without her knowing it, and so she didn't confine herself, as she usually does, to the purely commonplace side."

"Petie! A commonplace side!" protested Ruth.

"She now wishes me to sit to her," said Mrs. Franklin; "for my wrinkles have grown so deep lately that she is sure she can make something satisfactorily hideous. Oh, I don't mind the wrinkles, Mr. Chase!" (for Chase had begun to say, "Not at all, ma'am"). "I received my quietus long ago. When I was not quite forty, there was some question about a particular dress-maker whom I wished to see at McCreery's. 'Was she an old woman?' inquired an assistant. 'We have only one old fitter.' It proved to be the person I meant. She was of my own age. The same year I asked a young friend about a party which he had attended the night before. 'Dreadfully dull,' he answered. 'Nobody there but old frumps.' And the old frumps (as I happened to know) were simply twenty or thirty of my contemporaries."

"Yes, it's hard; I have often thought so!" said Etheridge, with conviction. "Men, you see, have no age. But nothing saves a woman."

"Yes, one thing—namely, to look like a sheep," replied Mrs. Franklin. "If a woman wishes her face to remain young, she must cultivate calm, and even stolidity; she must banish changing expressions; she must give her facial muscles many hours, daily, of absolute repose. Most of my wrinkles have been caused by my wretched habit of contorting my poor thin slave of a face, partly of course to show my intelligence and appreciation, but really, also, in a large measure from sympathy. I have smiled unflinchingly at other people's jokes, looked sad for their griefs, angry for their injuries; I have raised my eyebrows to my hair over their surprises, and knitted my forehead into knots over their mysteries; in short, I have never ceased to grimace. However, even to the sheep-women there comes the fatal moment when their cheeks begin to look like those of an old baby," she concluded, laughing.

Dolly, for once untalkative, had not paid attention to this conversation; the moon had risen, and she had been watching its radiance descend slowly and make a silver path across the river. It was so beautiful! And (a rare occurrence with Dolly) it led her to think of herself. "How I should have enjoyed, enjoyed, enjoyed everything if I had only been well!" Even the tenderly loving mother could not have comprehended fully her daughter's heart at that moment. For Mrs. Franklin had had her part, such as it was, on the stage of human existence, and had played it. But Dolly's regret was for a life unlived. "How enchantingly lovely!" she murmured aloud, looking at the moonlit water.

"Yes," said Etheridge; "and its greatest beauty is that it's primeval. Larue, I suppose, would call it primevalish!"

"I had thought of asking the senator to come along with us," observed Chase.

"In a sedan-chair?" inquired Etheridge. "I don't think you know what a petrified squam-doodle he is!"

"No, I can't say I do. I only know he's a senator, and we want some senators. To boom our Tyrol, you know. Generals, too. Cottages might be put up at pleasant points near Asheville—on Beaucatcher, for instance—and presented to half a dozen of the best-known Southern generals? What do you say to that?"

"Generals as much as you like; but when you and the Willoughbys spread your nets for senators, do select better specimens than Achilles Larue! He is only in the place temporarily at best; he'll be kicked out soon. He succeeded the celebrated old senator who had represented this state for years, and was as well known here, he and his trunk, as the mountains themselves. When he resigned, there happened to be no one of the right sort ready in the political field. Larue was here, he was a college-bred man, and he had some reputation as an author (he has written a dreadfully dull book, The Blue Ridge in the Glacial Period). He had a little money, too, and that was in his favor. So they put him in; and now they wish they hadn't! He has no magnetism, no go; nothing but his tiresome drawing-copy profile and his good clothes. You say you don't know what sort of a person he is? He is a decrier, sir; nothing ever fully pleases him. His opinions on all subjects are so clipped to the bone, so closely shaved and denuded, that they are like the plucked chickens, blue and skinny, that one sees for sale at a stall. Achilles Larue never smokes. On the hottest day Achilles Larue remains clammily cold. He has no appreciation of a good dinner; he lives on salt mackerel and digestive crackers. Finally, to sum him up, he is a man, sir, who can neither ride nor drive—a man who knows nothing whatever about a horse! What do you suppose he asked me, when I was looking at a Blue-Grass pacer last year? 'Does he possess endurance?' Yes—actually those words of a horse! 'Does he possess endurance?'" repeated Etheridge, pursing up his lips and pronouncing the syllables in a mincing tone.

"You say he has nothing but his drawing-copy profile and his good clothes," remarked Dolly. "But he has something more, commodore: the devotion of Mrs. Kip and Miss Billy Breeze."

Etheridge looked discomfited.

"Two ladies?" said Chase. "Why, he's in luck! Bachelor, I suppose?"

"He is a widower," answered Mrs. Franklin. "His wife happened to have been a fool. He now believes that all women are idiots."

"He is a man who has never written, and who never will write, a book that stands on its own feet, whether good or bad; but only books about books," grumbled Etheridge. "He has merely the commentator's mind. His views on the Glacial Period are all borrowed. He can't be original even about an iceberg!"

"The ladies I have mentioned think that his originality is his strongest point," objected Dolly. "He produces great effects by describing some one in this way, for instance: 'He had small eyes and a grin. He was remarkably handsome.' This leaves them open-mouthed. But Miss Billy herself, as she stands, is his greatest effect; she was never outlined in very vivid hues, and now she has so effaced herself, rubbed herself out, as it were (from fear lest he should call her 'sensational'), that she is like a skeleton leaf. She has the greatest desire to be 'delicate,' extremely delicate, in everything that she does; and she tries to sing, therefore, with so much expression that it's all expression and very little singing! 'Coarse!'—that is to her the most terrible word in the whole vocabulary. I asked her once whether her horned tryceratops, with his seventy-five feet of length, might not have been a little coarse in his manners."

"I declare I'll never go to see the woman again; she is such a goose!" exclaimed Etheridge, angrily.

Jared laughed. And then his mother laughed also, happy to see him amused. But at the same time she was thinking: "You may not go to see Billy. But, dear me! you will come to see us forever and forever!" And she had a weary vision of Etheridge, entering with his "hum-ha," and his air of youth, five or six times a week as long as she lived.

"Commodore," said Dolly, "you may not go to see Miss Breeze. But I am sure you will come to see us, with your cheerful hum-ha, and your youthful face, as long as we live."

Mrs. Franklin passed her hand over her forehead. "There it is again!" she thought. For, strangely often, Dolly would give voice to the very ideas that were passing through her mother's mind at the moment. At L'Hommedieu the two would fall into silence sometimes, and remain silent for a half-hour, one with her embroidery, the other with her knitting. And then when Dolly spoke at last, it would be of the exact subject which was in her mother's mind. Mrs. Franklin no longer exclaimed: "How could you know I was thinking of that!" It happened too often. She herself never divined Dolly's thoughts. It was Dolly who divined hers, most of the time unconsciously.

Meanwhile Etheridge had replied, in a reassuring voice: "Well, Dolly, I'll do my best; you may count upon that." And then Ruth, leaning her head against her brother's arm so that her face was hidden, laughed silently.

From the Warm Springs they drove over the Great Smoky Mountains into Tennessee. Then returning, making no haste, they climbed slowly up again among the peaks. At the top of the pass they paused to gaze at the far-stretching view—Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; on the west, the Cumberland ranges sloping towards Chattanooga; in the east, the crowded summits of the Blue Ridge, their hue an unchanging azure; the Black Mountains with Mitchell, the Cat-tail Peak, the Balsams, the Hairy Bear, the Big Craggy, Great Pisgah, the Grandfather, and many more. The brilliant sunshine and the crystalline atmosphere revealed every detail—the golden and red tints of the gigantic bald cliffs near them, the foliage of every tree; the farm-houses like white dots thousands of feet below. Up here at the top of the pass there were no clearings visible; for long miles in every direction the forest held unbroken sway, filling the gorges like a leafy ocean, and sweeping up to the surrounding summits in the darker tints of the black balsams. The air was filled with delicate wild odors, a fragrance which is like no other—the breath of a virgin forest.

"And you want to put a railroad here?" broke out Dolly, suddenly. She addressed Horace Chase, who had drawn up his sorrels beside the carriage.

"Oh no, Miss Dolly; it can't get up so high, you know," he answered, not comprehending her dislike. "It will have to go through down below; tunnels."

"The principal objection I have to your railroad, Chase, is that it will bring railroad good-byes to this uncorrupted neighborhood," said Jared. "For there will be, of course, a station. And people will have to go there to see their friends off. The train will always be late in starting; then the heretofore sincere Ashevillians will be driven to all the usual exaggerations and falsities to fill the eternal time; they will have to repeat the same things over and over, stand first on one leg and then on the other, and smile until they are absolute clowns. Meanwhile their departing friends will be obliged to lean out of the car-windows in return, and repeat inanities and grin, until they too are perfectly haggard." Jared was now seated beside Etheridge; he had given up his place in the cart to Ruth for an hour or two. Several times Mrs. Franklin herself had tried the cart. She was very happy, for Jared had undoubtedly gained strength; there was a faint color in his cheeks, and his face looked less worn, his eyes a little less dreary.

"How I should like to see all the mountains!" exclaimed Ruth, suddenly, looking at the crowded circle of peaks.

"Well—I suppose there are some sort of roads?" Chase answered.

"Put the two pairs together and make a four-in-hand," suggested Etheridge, eagerly. "Then we might drive down Transylvania way. When I wasn't more than eighteen I often drove a four-in-hand over the—the—the range up there where I was born," he concluded, with fresh inward disgust over the forgotten name.

"The Green Mountains," said Mrs. Franklin.

"Not at all. The Catskills," Etheridge answered, curtly. His birthplace was Rutland, Vermont. But on principle he never acknowledged a forgotten title.

"This is the country of the moonshiners, isn't it?" asked Chase, his keen eyes glancing down a wild gorge.

"The young lady beside you can tell about that," Etheridge answered.

Chase turned to Ruth, surprised. The color was leaving her face. "Yes, I did see; I saw a man shot!" she said, her dark-fringed blue eyes lifted to his with an awe-struck expression. "It was at Crumb's, the house where we stayed the first night, you know. I was standing at the door. A man came running along the road, trying to reach the house. Behind him, not more than ten feet distant, came another man, also running. He held a pistol at arm's-length. He fired twice. After the first shot, the man in front still ran. After the second, he staggered along for a step or two, and then fell. And the other man disappeared." These short sentences came out in whispered tones; when she finished, her face was blanched.

"You ought not to have seen it. You ought not to have told me," said Chase, giving an indignant glance towards the carriage; he thought they should have prevented the narration.

"Oh, don't be disturbed, Mr. Chase," said Dolly, looking at him from her cushions with an amused smile. "The balls were extracted, and the man is now in excellent health. Ruth has a way of turning perfectly white and then enormously red on all occasions. She was much whiter last week when it was supposed that Petie Trone, Esq., had inflammation of the lungs."

And Ruth herself was already laughing again, and the red had returned.

"It was a revenue detective," explained Mrs. Franklin; "I mean the man who was shot. The mountaineers have always made whiskey, and they think that they have a right to make it; they look upon the detectives as spies."

But Chase had no sympathy for moonshiners; he was on the side of law and order. "The government should send up troops," he said. "What else are they for?"

"It is not the business of the army to hunt out illicit stills," replied Jared Franklin, all the ex-officer in his haughty tone.

"Well, maybe not; you see I'm only a civilian myself," remarked Chase, in a pacific voice. "Shall we go on?"

They started down the eastern slope. When the cart was at some distance in front, Ruth said: "Oh, Mr. Chase, thank you for answering so good-naturedly. My brother has in reality a sweet temper. But lately he has been so out of sorts, so unhappy."

"Yes, I am beginning to understand about that, Miss Ruth; I didn't at first. It's a great pity. Perhaps something can be done?"

"No; he can't get back into the navy now," said Ruth, sadly.

"But a change of some kind might be arranged," answered Chase, touching the off horse.

At the base of the mountains they followed the river road again, a rocky track, sometimes almost in the water, under towering cliffs that rose steeply, their summits leaning forward a little as though they would soon topple over. At many points it was a veritable cañon, and the swift current of the stream foamed so whitely over the scattered rocks of its bed that it was like the rapids of Niagara. Here and there were bold islands; the forest on both sides was splendid with the rich tints of the Rhododendron maximum in full bloom; not patches or single bushes, but high thickets, a solid wall of blazing color.

Their stopping-place for the last evening was the farm-house called Crumb's, where they had also spent the first night of their journey on their way westward. Crumb's was one of the old farms; the grandfather of David Crumb had tilled the same acres. It was a pleasant place near the river, the house comparatively large and comfortable. The Crumbs were well-to-do in the limited mountain sense of the term, though they had probably never had a hundred dollars in cash in their lives. Mrs. Crumb, a lank woman with stooping shoulders and a soft, flat voice, received them without excitement. Nothing that life had to offer, for good or for ill, could ever bring excitement again to Portia Crumb. Her four sons had been killed in battle in Virginia, one after the other, and the mother lived on patiently. David Crumb was more rebellious against what he called their "bad luck." Once a week, and sometimes twice, he went to Asheville, making the journey a pretext for forgetting troubles according to the ancient way. He was at Asheville now, his wife explained, "with a load of wood." She did not add that he would probably return with a load of another sort—namely, a mixture of whiskey and repentance. The two never spoke of their lost boys; when they talked together it was always about "the craps."

Porshy, as her friends called her, having been warned by Chase's courier that her former guests were returning, had set her supper-table with care. People stopped at Crumb's perforce; for, save at Warm Springs, there were no inns in the French Broad Valley. Ruth had been there often. For the girl, who was a fearless horsewoman, was extravagantly fond of riding; at one time or another she had ridden almost every horse in Asheville, including old Daniel himself. Of late years the Crumbs would have been glad to be relieved of all visitors. But the mountain farmers of the South are invariably hospitable—hospitable even with their last slice of corn-bread, their last cup of coffee. Porshy, therefore, had brought out her best table-cloth (homespun, like her sheets), her six thin silver teaspoons, her three china teacups and saucers. "Yes, rale chiny, you bet," she had said, in her gentle, lifeless voice, when Mrs. Franklin, who knew the tragedy of the house, was benevolently admiring the painstaking effort. The inevitable hot biscuits were waiting in a flat pan, together with fried bacon and potatoes and coffee. Chase's supplies of potted meats, hot-house fruit, and excellent champagne made the meal an extraordinary combination. The table was set in the kitchen, which was also the living-room. One end of the large, low-browed apartment was blocked by the loom, for Portia had been accustomed to spin, weave, dye, and fashion all the garments worn by herself and her family.

As they left the table, the sinking sun sent his horizontal beams through the open windows in a flood of golden light. "Let us go up to the terrace," said Ruth.

The terrace was a plateau on the mountain-side at some distance above; a winding path led thither through the thick forest. "It is too far," said Mrs. Franklin. "It is at least a mile from here, and a steep climb all the way; and, besides, it will soon be dark."

"Oh, but I want to go immensely, His Grand. Mr. Chase liked it so much when we were up there on our way out that he says it shall be named after me. And perhaps they will put up a cottage."

"Yes, Ruth's Terrace, ma'am. That is the name I propose," said Chase.

"There will be light enough to go up; and then we can wait there until the moon rises," continued Ruth. "The moon is full to-night, and the view will be lovely. You will go, Jared, won't you? Oh, please!"

She had her way, as usual. Chase and Jared, lighting cigars, prepared to accompany her.

"You'll stay here, I suppose, commodore?" said Chase.

"Stay here! By no means. There is nothing I like better than an evening stroll," answered Etheridge, heroically. And, lighting a cigarette, he walked on in advance, swinging his cane with an air of meditative enjoyment.

Dolly and Mrs. Franklin, meanwhile, sat beside the small fire which Portia had made on the broad hearth of her "best room." The fire, of aromatic "fat-pine" splinters only, without large sticks, had been kindled more on account of the light than from any need of its warmth; for the evening, though cool, was not cold. The best room, however, was large, and the great forest and cliffs outside, and the wild river, made the little blaze seem cheerful. Portia had been proud of this apartment in the old days before the war. In one corner there was a bed covered with a brilliant patch-work quilt; on the mantel-piece there was an old accordion, and a vase for flowers whose design was a hand holding a cornucopia; the floor was covered by a rag carpet; and tacked on the walls in a long row were colored fashion plates from Godey's Lady's Book for 1858. At ten o'clock Ruth and the commodore came in. But long after midnight, when the others were asleep, Chase and Jared Franklin still strolled to and fro along the river road in the moonlight, talking. The next day they all returned to Asheville.

At the end of the week, when Jared went back to his business, Chase accompanied him. "I thought I might as well take a look at that horrid Raleigh," he said to Ruth, with solemn humor. "You see, I have been laboring under the impression that it was a very pretty place—a mistake which evidently wants to be cleared up."

Ten days later the mud-bespattered Blue Ridge stage came slowly into Asheville at its accustomed hour. The mail-bags were thrown out, and then the postmaster, in his shirt-sleeves, with his spectacles on his nose and his straw hat tilted back on his head, began the distribution of their contents, assisted (through the open windows) by the usual group of loungers. This friendly audience had its elbows on the sill. It made accompanying comments as follows: "Hurry up, you veteran of the Mexican war!" "That letter ain't for Johnny Monroe. It's for Jem Morse; I can see the direction from here. Where's your eyes?" "Six for General Cyarter? Lucky reb, he is!"

Twenty minutes later Genevieve Franklin entered the parlor of L'Hommedieu, a flush of deep rose-color in each cheek, her eyes lustrous. "Mamma, a letter from Jay! It is too good—I cannot tell you—" Her words came out pantingly, for she had been running; she sat down with her hand over her breast as if to help herself breathe.

"From Jared? Oh, where are my glasses?" said Mrs. Franklin, searching vainly in her pocket and then on the table. "Here, Dolly. Quick! Read it!"

And then Dolly, also excited, read Jared's letter aloud.

Ruth came in in time to hear this sentence: "I am to have charge of their Charleston office (the office of the Columbian Line), at a salary of three thousand dollars a year."

"Who? What? Not Jared? And at Charleston?" cried the girl, clapping her hands. "Oh, how splendid! For it's the water, you know; the salt-water at last. With the ships coming and going, and the ocean, it won't be so awfully inland to him, poor fellow, as Raleigh and Atlanta."

"And the large salary," said Genevieve, still breathless. "That's Horrie! I have felt sure, from the first, that he would do something for us. Such an old friend of mine. Dear, dear Horrie!"

A week later Chase returned. "Yes, he'll get off to Charleston, ma'am, in a few days," he said to Mrs. Franklin. "When he is settled there, you must pay him a visit. I guess you'll end by going there to live."

"Oh, we can't; we have this house, and no house there. If I could only sell that place in Florida! However, we can stop in Charleston when we go to Florida this winter. That is, if we go," added the mother, remembering her load of debts. But she soon forgot it again; she forgot everything save her joy in the brighter life for her son. "How can I thank you?" she said to Chase, gratefully.

"Oh, it's no favor, ma'am. We have always needed a first-class man at Charleston, and we've never had it; we think ourselves very lucky in being able to secure Mr. Franklin."

As he went back to the Old North with Etheridge, whom he had met at L'Hommedieu (as Mrs. Franklin would have said, "of course!"), Chase added some further particulars. "You never saw such a mess as he'd made of it, commodore. He told me—we had a good deal of talk when we took that French Broad drive—that his business wasn't what he had hoped it would be when he went into it; that he was afraid it was running down. Running down? It was at a standstill; six months more, and he would have been utterly swamped. The truth is, he didn't know how to manage it. How should he? What does a navy man know about leather? He saw that it was all wrong, yet he didn't know how to help it; that took the heart out of him, you see. There was no use in going on with it a day longer; and so I told him, as soon as I had looked into the thing a little. He has, therefore, made an arrangement—sold out. And now he is going to take a place at Charleston—our Columbian Line."

"To the tune of three thousand dollars a year, I understand?"

"He'll be worth it to us. A navy officer as agent will be a feather in our caps. It's a pity he couldn't take command of one of our steamers—with his hankering for the sea. Our steamer officers wear uniforms, you know?"

"Take care that he doesn't knock you down," said Etheridge, dryly.

"Oh, I haven't suggested it. I see he's cranky," Chase answered.

When Jared Franklin reached Charleston, he went to the office of the Columbian Company. It faced a wharf or dock, and from its windows he could see the broad harbor, the most beautiful port of the South Atlantic coast. He looked at Fort Sumter, then off towards the low white beaches of Morris Island; he knew the region well; his ship had lain outside during the war. Deliciously sweet to him was the salt tang of the sea; already, miles inland, he had perceived it, and had put his head out of the car window; the salt marshes had been to him like a tonic, as the train rushed past. The ocean out there in the east, too, that was rather better than a clattering street! Words could never express how he loathed the remembrance of the hides and the leather. A steamer of the Columbian Line came in. He went on board, contemptuous of everything, of course, but enjoying that especial species of contempt. Ascending to the upper deck, he glanced at the rigging and smoke-stacks. They were not what he approved of; but, oh! the solace of abusing any sort of rigging outlined against the sky! He went down and looked at the engines; he spoke to the engineer; he prowled all over the ship, from stem to stern, his feet enjoying the sensation of something underneath them that floated. That evening, seated on a bench at the Battery, with his arms on the railing, he looked out to sea. His beloved old life came back to him; all his cruises—the Mediterranean ports, Villefranche and the Bay of Naples; the harbors of China, Rio Janeiro, Alexandria; tropical islands; the color of the Pacific—while the wash of the water below sounded in his ears. At last, long after midnight, he rose; he came back to reality again. "Well, even this is a great windfall. And I must certainly do the best I can for that long-legged fellow"—so he said to himself as he went up Meeting Street towards his hotel. He liked Chase after a fashion; he appreciated his friendliness and his genius for business. But this was the way he thought of him—"that long-legged fellow." Chase's fortune made no impression upon him. At heart he had the sailor's chronic indifference to money-making. But at heart he had also something else—Genevieve; Genevieve and her principles and plans, Genevieve and her rules.

CHAPTER VI

ONE afternoon early in September, Miss Billy Breeze, her cheeks pink, her gentle eyes excited, entered the principal store of Asheville, the establishment of Messrs. Pinkham & Bebb. "Kid gloves, if you please, Mr. Bebb. Delicate shades. No. 6." The box of gloves having been produced, Miss Billy selected quickly twelve pairs. "I will take these. And please add twelve pairs of white."

Mr. Bebb was astounded, the order seemed to him reckless. Everybody in Asheville knew that Miss Billy's income was six hundred dollars a year. He made up the parcel slowly, in order to give her time to change her mind. But Miss Billy paid for the twenty-four pairs without a quiver, and, with the same excited look, took the package and went out. She walked down the main street to its last houses; she came back on the other side. Turning to the right, she traversed all the cross-roads in that direction. When this was done, she re-entered the main street again, and passed through its entire length a second time. It was Saturday, the day when the country people came to town. Ten mountaineers in a row were sitting on their heels in front of the post-office. Mountain women on horseback, wearing deep sun-bonnets, rode up and down the street, bartering. Wagons passed along, loaded with peaches heaped together as though they were potatoes. Miss Billy was now traversing all the cross-roads to the left. When this was accomplished she came back to the main street, and began over again. It took about an hour to make the entire circuit. At half-past five, on her fourth round, still walking quickly and always with an air of being bound to some especial point, she met Achilles Larue. "Oh—really—is this you, Mr. Larue? Such a surprise to see you! Lovely day, isn't it? I've been buying gloves." She opened the package and turned over the gloves hastily. "Light shades, you see. I—I thought I'd better."

Larue, slightly lifting his hat, was about to pass on.

But Miss Billy detained him. "Of course you are interested in the news, Mr. Larue? Weren't you surprised? I was. I am afraid she is a little too young for him. I think it is rather better when they are of about the same age—don't you?" She had no idea that she had been walking, and at twice her usual speed, for more than four hours. But her slender body knew; it trembled from fatigue.

Larue made another move, as if about to continue his course.

"But do tell me—weren't you surprised?" Billy repeated, hastily. (For, oh! he must not go so soon.)

"I don't think I am ever surprised, Miss Breeze."

Here Anthony Etheridge came by, and stopped. He looked sternly at Miss Billy. "But what do you think of it, Mr. Larue?" Billy was inquiring.

"I have not thought of it," Larue responded, coldly.

"Are you selling gloves?" inquired Etheridge. For the paper having fallen to the ground, the two dozen pairs were visible, lying in confusion over Billy's arm.

"To Mr. Larue?" (Giggle.) "Oh, I couldn't." (Giggle.) "They're only No. 6." For poor Billy had one humble little pride—her pretty hand.

There was a sound of horses' feet, and Ruth Franklin rode round the corner, on Kentucky Belle, giving them a gay nod as she passed. Horace Chase and Malachi Hill were with her, both mounted on beautiful horses—one black, one chestnut; and at some distance behind followed Chase's groom. "How happy she looks!" murmured Miss Billy, with an involuntary sigh.

"Yes. She has obtained what she likes," commented Larue. "Hers is a frivolous nature; she requires gayety, change, luxury, and now she will have them. Her family are very wise to consent. For they have, I suspect, but little money. Her good looks will soon disappear; at thirty she will be plain." And this time, decidedly, he walked away.

Miss Billy, her eyes dimmed by unshed tears, looked after him. "Such a—such a worldly view of marriage!" she managed to articulate.

"What can you expect from a fish?" answered Etheridge, secretly glad of his opportunity. "Achilles Larue is as cold-blooded as a mackerel, and always was. I don't say he will never marry again; but if he does, the woman he selects will have to go down on her knees and stay there" (Miss Billy's eyes looked hopeful); "and bring him, also, a good big sum of money in her hand." Here, noticing that one of the pairs of gloves had slipped down so far that it was held by the tips of its fingers only, he turned away with a sudden "Good-afternoon." For he had had rheumatism all night in the small of his back; he could walk, but he could not stoop.

Miss Billy went home much depressed. The night before, after her usual devotions and an hour's perusal of The Blue Ridge in the Glacial Period (she read the volume through regularly once a month), she had attempted a thought-transferrence. She had, indeed, made many such experiments since Maud Muriel's explanation of the process. But last night she had for the first time succeeded in keeping her mind strictly to the subject; for nearly ten minutes, with her face screwed up by the intensity of the effort, she had willed continuously, "Like me, Achilles, like me!" (She was too modest even to think "love" instead of "like.") "You must! You shall!" And now, when at last she had succeeded in meeting him, this was the result! She put away the gloves mechanically: she had bought them not from any need, but simply because she had felt the wish to go out and do something when the exciting news of Ruth Franklin's engagement had reached her at noon. Stirred as she already was by her own private experiment of the previous night, the thought in her heart was: "Well, it isn't extravagance, for light gloves are always useful. And then in case of—of anything happening to me, they'd be all ready."

When Anthony Etheridge left her, he went to L'Hommedieu, where he found Dolly in the parlor with Petie Trone, Esq. Trone's basket had been established by Ruth under the pedestal which now held his own likeness. For Chase had kept his word; Maud Muriel's clever work had been reproduced in bronze. The squirrel also was present; he was climbing up the window-curtain. "So you have to see to the pets, do you?" remarked the visitor as he seated himself. He had known of the engagement for several days; he had already made what he called "the proper speeches" to Mrs. Franklin and Ruth, and to Chase himself. "I have just seen her—on Kentucky Belle," he went on. "Well, he will give her everything, that's one certainty. On the whole, she's a lucky girl."

"It is Mr. Chase who is lucky," answered Dolly, stiffly. She was finishing off the toe of a stocking, and did not look up. "I consider Mr. Chase a miraculously fortunate man."

"Miraculously? How do you mean? Because she is young? The good-fortune, as regards that, is for the wife, not the husband; for she will always be so much his junior that he will have to consider her—he will never dare to neglect her. Well, Dolly, all Asheville has heard the news this morning; the town is ringing with it. And it is such an amiable community that it has immediately given its benediction in the most optimistic way. Of course, though, there are some who maintain that she is marrying him for his money."

Dolly knitted more rapidly.

"And so she is," Etheridge added. "Though not in their sense, for she has never reflected, never thought about it, never made a plan. All the same, it is his wealth, you know, which has fascinated her—his wealth and his liberality. She has never seen anything like it. No one she knows has ever done such things—flowers, jewels, journeys, her brother lifted out of his troubles as if by magic, a future sparkling and splendid opening before her; no wonder she is dazzled. In addition, she herself has an ingrained love of ease—"

Dolly dropped her stocking. "Do you think I intend to sit here and listen to you?" she demanded, with flashing eyes.

"Wait, wait," answered Etheridge, putting out his hand as if to explain; "you don't see what I am driving at, Dolly. As Mrs. Chase, your sister will have everything she wishes for; all her tastes and fancies gratified to the full; and that is no small affair! Chase will be fond of her; in addition, he will be excessively indulgent to her in every way. With her nature and disposition, her training, too (for you have spoiled her, all of you), it is really an ideal marriage for the girl, and that is what I am trying to tell you. You might search the world over, and you could not find a better one."

"I don't like it; I never shall like it," answered Dolly, implacably. "And mother in her heart agrees with me, though she has, somehow, a higher idea of the man than I have. As for Ruth—Ruth is simply swept away—"

"Exactly; swept into her proper sphere," interrupted Etheridge. "Don't interfere with the process."

"She doesn't understand—" Dolly began.

"She understands immensely well what she likes! Give Ruth indulgence, amusement, pleasure, and she will be kind-hearted, amiable, generous; in short, good and happy. On the other hand, there might be another story. Come, I am going to be brutal; I don't know how much money your mother has; but I suspect very little, with the possibility, perhaps, of less. And I can't imagine, Dolly, any one more unhappy than your sister would be, ten years hence, say, if shut up here in Asheville, poor, her good looks gone, to face a life of dull sameness forever. I think it would kill her! She is not at all the girl to accept monotony with resignation or heroism; to settle down to mending and reading, book-clubs and whist-clubs, puddings and embroidery, gossip and good works."

Here the house-door opened; Mrs. Franklin and Genevieve came in together, and entered the parlor. When Dolly heard Genevieve's step, she rose. Obliged to walk slowly, she could not slip out; but she made a progress which was almost stately, as, without speaking to her sister-in-law, or looking at her, she left the room.

Genevieve, however, required no notice from Dolly. Her face was radiant with satisfaction. She shook hands with Etheridge warmly. "I have not seen you since it happened, commodore. I know you are with us in our pleasure? I know you congratulate us?"

Etheridge had always thought the younger Mrs. Franklin a beautiful woman; she reminded him of the Madonna del Granduca at Florence. Now she held his hand so long, and looked at him with such cordial friendliness, that he came out with the gallant exclamation, "Chase is the one I congratulate, by Jove!—on getting such a sister-in-law!"

"Think of all Ruth will now be able to do—all the good! I seem to see even my hospital," added Genevieve, gayly.

"Hum—yes," added Etheridge. Walking away a step or two, he put his hands in the pockets of his trousers and looked towards his legs reflectively for a moment, as though surveying the pattern of the garments—a convenient gesture to which a (slender) man can resort when he wishes to cover a silence.

"For dear mamma, too, it is so delightful," continued Genevieve. She had seated herself, and she now drew her mother-in-law down beside her. "Ruth will never permit mamma to have another care."

"Yes—I think I'll just run up and take off my bonnet," said Mrs. Franklin, disengaging herself. And she left the room.

Genevieve was not disturbed by this second departure; she was never disturbed by any of the actions or the speeches of her husband's family. She did her own duty regarding them regularly and steadily, month after month; it was part of her rule of conduct. But what they did or said to her in return was less important. "Ruth is a fortunate girl," she went on, as she drew off her gloves with careful touches. "And she appreciates it, commodore—I am glad to tell you that; I have been talking to her. She is very happy. Horace is such an able and splendidly successful man—a man whom every one must respect and admire most warmly."

"Yes, a clever speculator indeed!" commented Etheridge, ungratefully, throwing over his drive with the bays.

"Speculator? Oh no; it is all genuine business; I can assure you of that," answered Genevieve, seriously. "And now perhaps you can help us a little. Horace is anxious to have the marriage take place this fall. And I am on his side. For why, indeed, should they wait? The usual delays are prudential, or for the purpose of making preparations. But in this case there are no such conditions; he already has a house in New York, for he has always preferred home life. Ruth is willing to have it so. But mamma decidedly, almost obstinately, opposes it."

"Dolly too, I suppose?"

"Oh, I never count Dolly; her temper is so uncertain. But it is very natural that it should be so, and one always excuses her, poor dear! Couldn't you say a word or two to mamma, commodore? You have known her so long; I am sure you have influence. But my chief dependence, of course, is upon Jay. Mamma always yields to Jay."

"Franklin, then, is pleased with the engagement?" said Etheridge, walking about the room, taking up books, looking at them vaguely, and laying them down again.

"How could he not be! As it happens, however, we have not yet heard from him, for when our letters reached Charleston he had just started for New York on one of their steamers; some business errand. But he was to return by train, and I am expecting to hear from him to-morrow."

There was a sound outside. "Here they come," said Etheridge, looking out.

Genevieve rose quickly to join him at the window. Chase and Malachi Hill were dismounting. Then Chase lifted Ruth from Kentucky Belle. "Those are two new horses, you know," explained Genevieve, in a low tone; "Horrie sent for them. And he lets Mr. Hill ride one of them every day."

"Yes; horses enough!" grumbled Etheridge, discontentedly.

Ruth, holding up the skirt of her habit, was coming towards the house, talking to her two escorts. When she entered the parlor, Genevieve went forward and put her arm round her. "I know you have enjoyed your ride, dear?"

"Of course I have. How do you do, commodore? I have just been planning another excursion with Horace." (The name came out happily and securely.) "To Cæsar's Head this time; you to drive the four-in-hand, and I to ride Kentucky Belle."

"Yes, that's right; arrange it with him," said Chase. "For I must go; I have letters to write which can be postponed no longer. You have had enough of me for to-day, I guess? May I come in to-morrow afternoon—early?"

"Come to lunch," said Ruth, giving him her hand. He held it out for a moment, looking at her with kindly eyes. "You don't know how much I enjoyed my ride," said the girl, heartily. "It is such a joy to be on Kentucky Belle; she is so beautiful, and she moves so lightly! It was the nicest ride I have ever had in my life!"

This seemed to please Chase. He took leave of the others and went away.

"I will wait here, if you will allow it, Miss Ruth, until he is out of sight," said Malachi Hill. "For I may as well confess to you—I have already told Miss Dolly—that I seem fairly to lose my head when I find myself with Mr. Chase alone! I am so haunted by the idea of all he could do for the Church in these mountains that in spite of the generous gifts he has already made, I keep hankering after more—like a regular gorilla of covetousness!"

"I shall have to see that he is never left alone with you," said Ruth, laughing.

"There! he has turned the corner. Now I'll go the other way," continued the missionary, his seriousness unbroken.

"Mr. Hill is such a good man," remarked Genevieve as she closed the window.

"Miss Billy thinks him full of the darkest evil," commented Ruth. "Why do you shut the window?"

"You were in a draught. After your ride you must be warm."

"I'm a precious object, am I?"

"Yes, dear, you certainly are," replied Genevieve, with all the seriousness of Malachi Hill.

"If that simpleton of a Billy could see the parson eat apples, she would change her opinion about him," remarked Etheridge. "A man who can devour with relish four, five, and even six, cold raw apples (and the Asheville apples are sixteen inches round) late in the evening, cores, seeds, and all, must be virtuous—as virtuous as mutton!" He was looking at Ruth as he spoke. The girl was leaning back in an easy-chair; Petie Trone, Esq., had lost no time, he was already established in her lap, and the squirrel had flown to her shoulder. She had taken off her gauntlets, and as she lifted her hands to remove her hat, he saw a flash. "Trinkets?" he said.

"Oh—you haven't seen it?" She drew off a ring and tossed it across to him.

"Take care!" said Genevieve.

But Etheridge had already caught it. It was a solitaire diamond ring, the stone of splendid beauty, large, pure, brilliant.

"It came yesterday," Genevieve explained. Then she folded her hands—this with Genevieve was always a deliberate motion. "There will be diamonds—yes. But there will be other things also; surely our dear Ruth will remember the duties of wealth as well as its pleasures."

Ruth paid no heed to this; put on her ring again, using the philopena circlet as a guard; then she said, "Petie Trone, Esq., there will be just time before dinner for your Saturday scrubbing."

Half an hour later when she returned, the little dog trotting behind her, his small body pinned up in a hot towel, Genevieve cried in alarm, "Where are your rings?"

"Oh," said Ruth, looking at her hands, "I didn't miss them; they must have come off in the tub. Since then I have been in my room, dressing."

"And Rinda may have thrown away the water!" exclaimed her sister-in-law, rushing up the stairs in breathless haste.

But Rinda was never in a hurry to perform any of her duties, and the wooden tub devoted to Mr. Trone still stood in its place. Genevieve, baring her white arms, plunged both her hands into the water, her heart beating with anxiety. But the rings, very soapy, were there.

That evening, at nine o'clock, Mrs. Franklin was galloping through the latest tale of Anthony Trollope. For she always read a novel with racing speed to get at the story, skipping every description; then, if she had been interested, she went back and reperused it in more leisurely fashion. It was unusual to have a book fresh from the press; the well-fingered volumes which Miss Billy borrowed for her so industriously were generally two or three years old. Horace Chase, learning from Ruth the mother's liking for novels, had sent a note to New York, ordering in his large way "all the latest articles in fiction;" a package to be sent to L'Hommedieu once a month. The first parcel had just arrived, and Mrs. Franklin, opening it, much surprised, had surveyed the gift with mixed feelings. She was alone; Dolly was upstairs. Ruth, seized with a sudden fancy for a glass of cream, had gone, with Rinda as protector, to a house at some distance, where cream was sold; for with Ruth fancies were so vivid that it always seemed to her absolutely necessary to follow them instantly. The mother turned over the volumes. "It doesn't make me like him a bit better!" she said to herself. But her easy-chair was comfortable; the reading-lamp was burning brightly at her elbow. For fourteen years novels had been her opiates; she put on her glasses, took up the Trollope, and began. She had not been reading long, when her attention suddenly jumped back to the present, owing to a sound outside. For the window was open, somebody was coming up the path from the gate, and she recognized—yes, she recognized the step. Letting the book drop, she ran to the house-door. "Jared! Why—how did you get here? The stage came in long ago."

"I drove over from Old Fort," answered her son as he entered.

"And you did not find Genevieve? She has gone with Mr. Hill to—"

"I haven't been to the Cottage yet; I came directly here. Where is Ruth?"

"Out. But she will be in soon. Dolly isn't well to-night; she has gone to bed."

"The coast is clear, then, and we can talk," said Jared. "So much the better." They were now in the parlor; before seating himself he closed the door. "I have come up, mother, about this affair of Ruth's. As soon as I got back to Charleston and read your letters, I started at once. You have been careless, I fear; but at least I hope that nothing has been said, that no one knows?"

"Everybody knows, Jared. At least, everybody in Asheville."

"Who has told? Chase?" asked Jared, angrily.

"Oh no; he left that to us. I have said nothing, and Dolly has said nothing. But—but—"

"But what?"

"Genevieve has announced it everywhere," answered Mrs. Franklin, her inward feeling against her daughter-in-law for once getting the better of her.

"I will speak to Genevieve. But she is not the one most in fault, mother; she could not have announced it unless you had given your consent. And how came you to do that?"

"I don't think I have consented. I have been waiting for you."

"Very well, then; we can act together. Now that I have come, Horace Chase will find that there's some one on hand to look after you; he will no longer be able to do as he pleases!"

"Our difficulty is, Jared, that it is not so much a question of his doing as he pleases as it is of Ruth's doing as she pleases; she thinks it is all enchanting; and she is headstrong, you know."

"Yes. That is the very reason why I think you have been careless, mother. You were here and I was not; you, therefore, were the one to act. You should have taken Ruth out of town at once; you should have taken her north, if necessary, and kept her there; you should have done this at any sacrifice."

"It is not so easy—" began his mother. Then she stopped. For she was living on credit; she owed money everywhere, and there were still ten days to elapse before any remittances could reach her. But she would have borne anything, and resorted to everything, rather than let Jared know this. "It took me so completely by surprise," she said, beginning again. "I am sure that you yourself had no suspicion of any such possibility when we took that French Broad drive?"

"No, I had not. And it enrages me to think how blind I was! He was laying his plans even then; the whole trip, and all those costly things he did—that was simply part of it." And leaving his chair, the brother walked up and down the room, his face darkly flushed with anger. "Ruth—a child! And he—thirty years older!"

"Not that, dear. He is thirty-eight; and she was nineteen last week."

"He looks much more than thirty-eight. But that isn't the point. You don't seem to see, mother, what makes it so insufferable; he has bribed her about me, bribed her with that place in Charleston; that's the whole story! She is so happy about that, that she forgets all else."

"I don't like the idea of an engagement between them any better than you do, Jared. But I ought to say two things. One is, that I don't believe he made any plot as to the Charleston place; I think he likes to help people—"

"Yes, our family!" interrupted the son, hotly. "No, mother, you don't understand him in the least. Horace Chase is purely a business man, a long-headed, driving, money-making fellow; all his ambition (and he has plenty of it) is along that one line. It's the only line, in fact, which he thinks important. But the idea of his being a philanthropist would make any one who has ever had business dealings with him laugh for a week!"

"Well, have that as you like. But even if he first gave you the place on Ruth's account (for he has fallen very much in love with her, there is no doubt of that), I don't see that he has any need to be a benefactor in keeping you there. They are no doubt delighted to have you; he says so himself, in fact. A navy officer, a gentleman—they may well be!" added Mrs. Franklin, looking for the moment very much like her father, old Major Seymour, with his aristocratic notions.

"Why, mother, don't you know that people with that brutal amount of money—Chaise and the Willoughbys, for instance—don't you know that they look upon the salaries of army and navy officers simply as genteel poverty?" said Jared, forgetting for the moment his anger in amusement over her old-fashioned mistake.

But he could not have made Mrs. Franklin believe this in ten years of repetition, much less in ten minutes. "And the other thing I had to say," she went on, "is that I don't think Ruth is marrying him on your account solely."

"Oh yes, she is, though she may not be conscious of it. But when I have given up the Charleston place, which I shall do to-morrow, then she will be free again. The moment she sees that she can do me no good, all will look different to her. I'd rather do anything—sell the Cottage, and live on a crust all the rest of my days—than have a sister of mine help me along in that way!"

His mother watched him as he paced to and fro. He looked ill; there were hollows at his temples and dark circles under his eyes; his tall figure had begun to stoop. He was the dearest of all her children; his incurable, unspoken regrets, his broken life, were like a dagger in her heart at all times. He would give up his place, and then he would have nothing; and she, his mother, could not help him with a penny. He would give up his place and sell the Cottage, and then—Genevieve! It all came back to that; it would always come back to that—Genevieve! She swallowed hard to keep down the sob in her throat. "He is very much in love with her," she repeated, vaguely, in order to say something.

"Who cares if he is! I almost begin to think you like it, after all?"

"No, dear, no; neither Dolly nor I like it in the least. But Ruth is not easy to manage. And Genevieve was sure that you—"

"This is not Genevieve's affair. It is mine!" thundered Jared.

His mother jumped up, ran to him, and gave him a kiss. For the moment she forgot his illness, his uncertain future, her own debts, all her troubles, in the joy of hearing him at last assert his will against that of his wife. But it was only for a moment; she knew—knew far better than he did—that the even-tempered feminine pertinacity would always in the end have its way. Jared, impulsive, generous, affectionate, was no match for Genevieve. In a contest of this sort it is the nobler nature, always, that yields; the self-satisfied, limited mind has an obstinacy that never gives way. She leaned her head against her son's breast, and all the bitterness of his marriage came over her afresh like a flood.

"Why, mother, what is it?" asked Jared, feeling her tremble. He put his arm round her, and smoothed her hair tenderly. "Tell me what it is that troubles you so?"

The gate swung to. Mrs. Franklin lifted her head. "Ruth is coming," she whispered. "Say what you like to her. But, under all circumstances, remember to be kind. I will come back presently." She hurried out.

Rinda and Ruth entered. Rinda went to the kitchen, and Ruth, after taking off her hat, came into the parlor, carrying her glass of cream. "Jared!" She put down the glass on the table, and threw her arms round her brother's neck. "Oh, I am so glad you have come!"

"Sit down. Here, by me. I wish to speak to you, Ruth."

"Yes—about my engagement. It's very good of you to come so soon;" and she put her hand through his arm in her old affectionate way.

"I do not call it an engagement when you have neither your mother's consent nor mine," answered her brother. "Whatever it is, however, you must make an end of it."

"An end of it? Why?"

"Because we all dislike the idea. You are too young to comprehend what you are doing."

"I am nineteen; that is not so very young. I comprehend that I am going to be happy. And I love to be happy! I have never seen any one half so kind as Mr. Chase. If there is anything I want to do, he arranges it. He doesn't wait, and hesitate, and consider; he does it. He thinks of everything; it is perfectly beautiful! Why, Jared—what he did for you, wasn't that kind?"

"Exactly. That is what he has bribed you with!"

"Bribed?" repeated Ruth, surprised, as she saw the indignation in his eyes. Then comprehending what he meant, she laughed, coloring a little also. "But I am not marrying him on your account; I am marrying him on my own. I am marrying because I like it, because I want to. You don't believe it? Why—look at me." She rose and stood before him. "I am the happiest girl in the world as I stand here! I should think you could see it for yourself?" And in truth her face was radiant. "If I have ever had any dreams of what I should like my life to be (and I have had plenty), they have all come true," she went on, with her hands behind her, looking at him reflectively. "Think of all I shall have! And of where I can go! And of what I can do! Why—there's no end of it!"

"That is not the way to talk of marriage."

"How one talks of it is not important. The important point is to be happy in it, and that I shall be to the full—yes, to the full. His Grand shall have whatever she likes; and Dolly too. First of all, Dolly shall have a phaeton, so that she can drive to the woods every day. The house shall be put in order from top to bottom. And—oh, everything!"

"Is that the way you talk to him?"

But the sarcasm fell to the ground. "Precisely. Word for word," answered Ruth, lightly. And he saw that she spoke the truth.

"He is much too old for you. If there were no other—"

But Ruth interrupted him with a sort of sweet obstinacy. "That is for me to judge, isn't it?"

"He is not at all the person you fancy he is."

"I don't care what he is generally, what he is to other people; all I care for is what he is to me. And about that you know nothing; I am the one to know. He is nicer to me, and he always will be nicer, than Genevieve has ever been to you!" And turning, the girl walked across the room.

"If I have been unhappy, that is the very reason I don't want you to be," answered her brother, after a moment's pause.

His tone touched her. She ran back to him, and seated herself on his knee, with her cheek against his. "I didn't mean it, dear; forgive me," she whispered, softly. "But please don't be cross. You are angry because you believe I am marrying to help you. But you are mistaken; I am marrying for myself. You might be back in the navy, and mother and Dolly might have more money, and I should still marry him. It would be because I want to, because I like him. If you had anything to say against him personally, it would be different, but you haven't. He is waiting to tell you about himself, to introduce you to his family (he has only sisters), and to his partners, the Willoughbys. Your only objections appear to be that I am marrying him on your account, and I have told you that I am not; and that he is older than I am, and that I like; and that he has money, while we are poor. But he gets something in getting me," she added, in a lighter tone, as she raised her head and looked at him gayly. "Wait till you see how pretty I shall be in fine clothes."

The door opened, and Mrs. Franklin came in.

Ruth rose. "Here is mother. Now I must say the whole. Listen, mother; and you too, Jared. I intend to marry Horace Chase. If not with your consent, then without it. If you will not let me be married at home, then I shall walk out of the house, go to Horace, and the first clergyman or minister he can find shall marry us. There! I have said it. But why should you treat me so? Don't make me so dreadfully unhappy."

She had spoken wilfully, determinedly. But now she was pleading—though it was pleading to have her own way. Into her beautiful eyes came two big tears as she gazed at them. Neither Mrs. Franklin nor Jared could withstand those drops.

CHAPTER VII

THE wedding was over. Pretty little Trinity Church was left alone with its decorations of flowers and vines, the work of Miss Billy Breeze. Miss Billy, much excited, was now standing beside Ruth in the parlor at L'Hommedieu; for Miss Billy and Maud Muriel were the bridesmaids. Maud Muriel had consented with solemnity. "It is strange that such a man as Horace Chase, a man of sense and importance, should be taken with a child like Ruth Franklin," she confided to Miss Billy. "However, I won't desert him at such a moment. I'll stand by him." She was in reality not so much bridesmaid as groomsman.

L'Hommedieu was decked with flowers. It was a warm autumn day, the windows and doors were open. All Asheville was in attendance, if not in the house and on the verandas, then gazing over the fence, and waiting outside the gate. For there were many things to engage its attention. First, there was Mrs. Franklin, looking very distinguished; then Genevieve, the most beautiful woman present. Then there was Bishop Carew, who had come from Wilmington to officiate. All Asheville admired the bishop—the handsome, kindly, noble old man, full of dignity, full of sweetness as well; they were proud that he had come to "their" wedding. For that was the way they thought of it. Even the negroes—those who had flocked to old Daniel's race—had a sense of ownership in the affair.

A third point of interest was the general surprise over Maud. As Ruth had selected the costumes of her bridesmaids, Miss Mackintosh was attired for the first time in her life in ample soft draperies. Her hair, too, arranged by Miss Billy, had no longer the look of the penitentiary, and the result was that (to the amazement of the town) the sculptress was almost handsome.

Anthony Etheridge, much struck by this (and haunted by his old idea), pressed upon her a glass of punch.

"Take it," he urged, in a low tone, "take two or three. Then, as soon as this is over, hurry to your studio and let yourself go. You'll do wonders!"

Two of Chase's partners were present, Nicholas Willoughby, a quiet-looking man of fifty-eight, and his nephew Walter of the same name; Walter was acting as "best man." The elder Willoughby had made use of the occasion to take a general look at this mountain country, with reference to Chase's ideas concerning it, in order to make a report to his brother Richard. For Nicholas and Richard were millionaires many times over; their business in life was investment. Asheville itself, meanwhile, hardly comprehended the importance of such an event as the presence within its borders of a New York capitalist; it knew very little about New York, still less about capitalists. Mrs. Franklin, however, possessed a wider knowledge; she understood what was represented by the name of Willoughby. And it had solaced her unspeakably also to note that the uncle had a genuine liking for her future son-in-law. "They have a real regard for him," she said to her son, in private. "And I myself like him rather better than I once thought I should."

Jared had come from Charleston on the preceding day. "Oh, that's far too guarded, mother," he answered. "The only way for us now is to like Horace Chase with enthusiasm, to cling to him with the deepest affection. We must admire unflinchingly everything he says and everything he does—swallow him whole, as it were; it isn't difficult to swallow things whole! Just watch me." And, in truth, it was Jared's jocularity that enlivened the reception, and made it so gay; it reached even Dolly, who (to aid him) became herself a veritable Catherine-wheel of jokes, so that every one noticed how happy all the Franklins were—how delighted with the marriage.

Chase himself appeared well. His rather ordinary face was lighted by an expression of deep inward happiness which was touching; its set lines were relaxed; his eyes, which were usually too keen, had a softness that was new to them. He was very silent; he let his best man talk for him. Walter Willoughby performed this part admirably; standing beside the bridegroom, he "supported" him gayly through the two hours which were given up to the outside friends.

Ruth looked happy, but not particularly pretty. The excitement had given her a deep flush; even her throat was red.

At three o'clock Peter and Piper were brought round to the door; Chase was to drive his wife over the mountains, through the magnificent forest, now gorgeous with the tints of autumn, and at Old Fort a special train was waiting to take them eastward.

A few more minutes and then they were gone. There was nothing left but the scattered rice on the ground, and Petie Trone, Esq., barking his little heart out at the gate.

CHAPTER VIII

EARLY on a moonlit evening in January, 1875, Mr. and Mrs. Horace Chase were approaching St. Augustine. They had come by steamer up the broad St. Johns, the beautiful river of Florida, to the lonely little landing called Tocoi; here they had intrusted themselves to the Atlantic Ocean Railroad. This railroad undertook to convey travellers across the peninsula to the sea-coast, fifteen miles distant; and the promise was kept. But it was kept in a manner so leisurely that more than once Horace Chase had risen and walked to and fro, as though, somehow, that would serve to increase the speed. The rolling-stock possessed by the Atlantic Ocean Railroad at that date consisted of two small street-cars, one for passengers, one for luggage; Chase's promenade, therefore, confined as it was to the first car, had a range of about four steps. "I'm ridiculously fidgety, and that's a fact," he said to his wife, laughing at himself. "I can be lazy enough in a Pullman, for then I can either read the papers or go to sleep. But down here there are no papers to read. And who can sleep in this jolting? I believe I'll ask that darky to let me drive the mules!"

"Do," said Ruth. "Then I can be out there with you on the front platform."

As there were no other passengers (save Petie Trone, Esq., asleep in his travelling basket), Abram, the negro driver, gave up the reins with a grin. Taking his station on the step, he then admonished the volunteer from time to time as follows: "Dish yere's a bad bit; take keer, boss." "Jess ahead de rail am splayed out on de lef'. Yank 'em hard to de right, or we'll sut'ny run off de track. We ginerally do run off de track 'bout yere." On each side was a dense forest veiled in the gray long moss. Could that be snow between the two black lines of track ahead? No snow, however, was possible in this warm atmosphere; it was but the spectral effect of the moonlight, blanching to an even paler whiteness the silvery sand which formed the road-bed between the rails. This sand covered the sleepers to such a depth that the mules could not step quickly; there was always a pailful of it on each foot to lift and throw off. They moved on, therefore, in a sluggish trot, the cow-bells attached to their collars keeping up a regular tink-tank, tink-tank.

The tableau of her husband driving these spirited steeds struck Ruth as comical. She was seated on a camp-stool by his side, and presently she broke into a laugh. "Oh, you do look so funny, Horace! If you could only see yourself! You, so particular about horses that you won't drive anything that is not absolutely perfect, there you stand taking the greatest pains, and watching solemnly every quiver of the ear of those old mules!"

They were alone, Abram having gone to the baggage-car to get his tin horn. "Come, now, are you never going to stop making fun of me?" inquired Chase. "How do you expect to hit St. Augustine to-night if this fast express runs off the track?" But in spite of his protest, it was easy to see that he liked to hear her laugh.

Abram, coming back, put the horn to his lips and blew a resounding blast; and presently, round a curve, the half-way station came into view—namely, a hut of palmetto boughs on the barren, with a bonfire before it. The negro station-men, beguiling their evening leisure by dancing on the track to their own singing and the music of a banjo, did not think it necessary to stop their gyrations until the heads of the mules actually touched their shoulders. Even then they made no haste in bringing out the fresh team which was to serve as motive power to St. Augustine, and Mr. and Mrs. Chase, leaving the car, strolled up and down near by. The veiled forest had been left behind; the rest of the way lay over the open pine-barrens. The leaping bonfire, the singing negroes, and the little train on its elevated snow-like track contrasted with the wild, lonely, silent, tree-dotted plain, stretching away limitlessly in the moonlight on all sides.

"Perhaps Petie Trone, Esq., would like to take a run," said Ruth. Hastening into the car with her usual heedlessness, she tripped and nearly fell, Chase, who had followed, catching her arm just in time to save her.

"Some of these days, Ruthie, you will break your neck. Why are you always in such a desperate hurry?"

"Talk about hurry!" answered Ruth, as she unstrapped the basket and woke the lazy Mr. Trone. "Who saw the whole of Switzerland in five days? and found it slow at that?" And then they both laughed.

After a stretch, Petie Trone decided to make a foray over the barren; his little black figure was soon out of sight. "Horace, now that we are here, I wish you would promise to stay. Can't we stay at least until the middle of March? It's lovely in Florida in the winter," Ruth declared, as they resumed their walk.

"Well, I'll stay as long as I can. But I must go to California on business between this and spring," Chase answered.

"Why don't you make one of the Willoughbys do that? They never do anything!"

"That's all right; I'm the working partner of the firm; it was so understood from the beginning. The Willoughbys only put in capital; all but Walter, of course, who hasn't got much. But Walter's a knowing young chap, who will put in brains. My California business, however, has nothing to do with the Willoughbys, Ruthie; it's my own private affair, that is. If I succeed, and I think I shall, it'll about double my pile. Come, you know you like money." He drew her hand through his arm and held it. "How many more rings do you want? How many more houses? How many more French maids and flounces? How many more carriages?"

"Oh, leave out the carriages, do," interrupted Ruth. "When it comes to anything connected with a horse, who spends money—you or I?"

"My one small spree compared to your fifty!"

"Small!" she repeated. "Wherever we go, whole troops of horses appear by magic!" Then, after a moment, she let her head rest against his shoulder as they strolled slowly on. "You are only too good to me," she added, in another tone.

"Well, I guess that's about what I want to be," Chase answered, covering, as he often did, the deep tenderness in his heart with a vein of jocularity.

The Atlantic Ocean Railroad's terminal station at St. Augustine consisted of a platform in the sand and another flaring bonfire. At half-past six Mrs. Franklin, Dolly, and Anthony Etheridge were waiting on this platform for the evening train. With them was a fourth person—Mrs. Lilian Kip. "Oh, I can scarcely wait to see her!" exclaimed this lady, excitedly. "Will she be the same? But no. Impossible!"

"She is exactly the same," answered Dolly, who, seated on an empty dry-goods box, was watching the bonfire.

"But you must remember that Ruth did not come to Florida last winter after her marriage. And this summer, when I was in Asheville, she was abroad. And as none of you came south winter before last—don't you see that it makes nearly two years since I have seen her?" Mrs. Kip went on. "In addition, marriage changes a woman's face so—deepens its expression and makes it so much more beautiful. I am sure, commodore, that you agree with me there?" And she turned to the only man present.

"Yes, yes," answered Etheridge, gallantly. In his heart he added: "And therefore the more marriage the better? Is that what you are thinking of, you idiot?"

The presence of Mrs. Kip always tore Etheridge to pieces. He had never had any intention of marrying, and he certainly had no such intention now. Yet he could not help admiring this doubly widowed Lilian very deeply, after a fashion. And he knew, too—jealously and angrily he knew it—that before long she would inevitably be led to the altar a third time; so extremely marriageable a woman would never lack for leaders.

"Ruth is handsomer," remarked Mrs. Franklin; "otherwise she is unchanged. You will see it for yourself, Lilian, when she comes."

The mother's tone was placid. All her forebodings had faded away, and she had watched them disappear with thankful eyes. For Ruth was happy; there could be no doubt about that. In the year that had passed since her marriage, she had returned twice to Asheville, and Mrs. Franklin also had spent a month at her son-in-law's home in New York. On all these occasions it had been evident that the girl was enjoying greatly her new life; that she was delightedly, exultantly, and gleefully contented, and all in a natural way, without analyzing it. She delighted in the boundless gratification of her taste for personal ease and luxury; she exulted in all that she was able to do for her own family; she was full of glee over the amusements, the entertainments, and especially the change, that surrounded her like a boundless horizon. For her husband denied her nothing; she had only to choose. He was not what is known as set in his ways; he had no fixed habits (save the habit of making money); in everything, therefore, except his business affairs, he allowed his young wife to arrange their life according to her fancy. This freedom, this power, and the wealth, had not yet become an old story to Ruth, and, with the enjoyment which she found in all three, it seemed as if they never would become that. It had been an immense delight to her, for instance, to put L'Hommedieu in order for her mother. A month after her marriage, on returning to Asheville for a short visit, she had described her plan to Dolly. "And think what fun it will be, Dolly, to have the whole house done over, not counting each cent in Genevieve's deadly way, but just recklessly! And then to see her squirm, and say 'surely!' And you and mother must pretend not to care much about it; you must hardly know what is going on, while they are actually putting in steam-heaters, and hard-wood floors, and bath-rooms with porcelain tubs—hurrah!" And, with Petie Trone barking in her arms, she whirled round in a dance of glee.

Chase happening to come in at this moment, she immediately repeated to him all that she had been saying.

He agreed; then added, with his humorous deliberation, "But you don't seem to think quite so much of my old school-mate as I supposed you did?"

"Sisters-in-law, Mr. Chase, are seldom very devoted friends," explained Dolly, going on with her embroidery. Dolly always did something that required her close attention whenever Horace Chase was present. "How, indeed, can they be? A sister sees one side of her brother's nature, and sees it correctly; a wife sees another side, and with equal accuracy. Each honestly believes that the other is entirely wrong. Their point of view, you see, is so different!"

The waiting group at the St. Augustine station on this January evening heard at last the blast of Abram's horn, and presently the train came in, the mules for the last few yards galloping madly, their tin bells giving out a clattering peal, and Chase still acting as driver, with Ruth beside him. Affectionate greetings followed, for all the Franklins were warmly attached to each other. Mrs. Kip was not a Franklin, but she was by nature largely affectionate; she was probably the most affectionate person in Florida. To the present occasion she contributed several tears of joy. Then she signalled to Juniper, her colored waiter; for, being not only affectionate, but romantic as well, she had brought in her phaeton a bridal ornament, a heart three feet high, made of roses reposing upon myrtle, and this symbol, amid the admiration of all the bystanders, black and white, was now borne forward in the arms of Juniper (who, being a slender lad, staggered under its weight). Ruth laughed and laughed as this edifice was presented to her. But as, amid her mirth, she had kissed the donor and thanked her very prettily, Mrs. Kip was satisfied. For Ruth might laugh—Ruth, in fact, always laughed—but marriage was marriage none the less; the most beautiful human relation; and it was certainly fit that the first visit of a happily wedded pair to the land of flowers should be commemorated florally. Mrs. Kip volunteered to carry her heart to Mrs. Franklin's residence; she drove away, therefore, Etheridge accompanying her, and Juniper behind, balancing the structure as well as he could on his knees, with his arms stretched upward to their fullest extent in order to grasp its top.

In a rickety barouche drawn by two lean horses the others followed, laughing and talking gayly. Chase got on very well with his mother-in-law; and he supposed, also, that he got on fairly well with Dolly: he had not divined Dolly's mental attitude towards him, which was that simply of an armed neutrality. Dolly would have been wildly happy if, for herself and her mother at least, she could have refused every cent of his money. This had not been possible. Chase had settled upon his wife a sum which gave her a large income for her personal use, independent of all their common expenses; it was upon this income that Ruth had drawn for the restoration of L'Hommedieu, and also for the refurnishing of her mother's house at St. Augustine. "I can't be happy, His Grand, I can't enjoy New York, or our trip to Europe, or anything, unless I feel certain that you are perfectly comfortable in every way," she had said during that first visit at home. "All this money is mine; I am not asked what I do with it, and I never shall be asked; you don't know Horace if you think he will ever even allude to the subject. He intends it for my ownest own, and of course he knows what I care the most for, and that is you and Jared and Dolly. I have always suspected that something troubled you every now and then, though I didn't know what. And if it was money, His Grand, you must take some from me, now that I have it; you must take it, and make your little girl really happy. For she can't be happy until you do."

This youngest child really was still, in the mother's eyes, her "baby." And when the baby, sitting down in her lap, put her arms round her neck and pleaded so lovingly, the mother yielded. Her debts were now all paid; it was a secret between herself and Ruth. The disappearance of the burden was a great relief to the mother, though not so much so as it would have been to some women; for it was characteristic of Mrs. Franklin that she had never thought there was anything wrong in being in debt; she had only thought that it was unfortunate. It would not have occurred to her, even in her worst anxieties, to reduce sternly her expenses until they accorded with her means, no matter how low that might lead her; there was a point, so she believed, beyond which a Mrs. Franklin could not descend with justice to her children. And justice to her children was certainly a mother's first duty; justice to creditors must take a second place.

To Dolly, unaware of the payment of the debts, the acceptance even of the restoration of the two houses had been bitter enough; for though the money came through Ruth's hands, it was nevertheless provided by this stranger. "If I had only been well, I could have worked and saved mother from this," she thought. "But I am helpless. Not only that, but a care! Nobody stops to think how dreary a lot it is to be always a care. And how hard, hard, never to be able to give, but always to have to accept, accept, and be thankful!" But Dolly, at heart, had a generous nature; she would not cloud even by a look her mother's contentment or the happiness of Ruth. So when Chase said, as the barouche swayed crazily through the deep mud-hole which for years formed the junction between the station lane and the main road, "This old rattletrap isn't safe, ma'am. Is it the best St. Augustine can do? You ought to have something better!"—when Chase said this to her mother, Dolly even brought forward a smile.

The rattletrap followed the long causeway which crossed the salt-marsh and the San Sebastian River. Entering the town beneath an archway of foliage, this causeway broadened into a sandy street under huge pride-of-India trees, whose branches met overhead. Old Miss L'Hommedieu's winter residence was not far from St. Francis Barracks, at the south end of the town. It was an old coquina house which rose directly from a little-travelled roadway. An open space on the other side of this roadway, and the absence of houses, gave it the air of being "on the bay," as it was called. Chase had taken, for a term of years, another house not far distant, which really was on the bay. He had done this to please Ruth. It was not probable that they should spend many winters in Florida; but in case they should wish to come occasionally, it would be convenient to have a house ready. "And when we don't want it, Jared could stay here now and then," Ruth had suggested.

"Your brother? I guess he isn't going to be a very easy chap to arrange for, here or anywhere," Chase had answered, laughing. "We've already slipped up once pretty well—Charleston, you know." Then, seeing her face grow troubled, "But he'll take another view of something else I have in mind," he went on. "If my California project turns out as I hope, it will be absolutely necessary for me to have a confidential man to see to the New York part of it—some one whom I can trust. And I shall be able to convince Franklin that this time, at any rate, instead of its being a favor to him, it'll be a favor to me. He won't kick at that, I reckon."

For Jared was now again at Raleigh, working as a clerk for the man who had bought his former business; he had resigned his Charleston place in spite of Ruth, in spite even of Genevieve. He had waited until the wedding was over, in order that Ruth might not be made unhappy at the moment; and then he had done it.

Notwithstanding this, his wife had never had so much money in her life as she had now. For she and Ruth, with the perfectly good conscience which women have in such matters, had combined together, as it were, to circumvent secretly the obstinate naval officer. Ruth was warmly attached to her brother; he was the one person who had been able to control her when she was a child; his good opinion had been a hundred times more important to her than that of her mother and Dolly. Now that she was rich, she was bent upon helping him; and having found that she could not do it directly, she had turned all her intelligence towards doing it indirectly, through the capable, the willing Genevieve. Mrs. Jared Franklin, Junior, had quietly and skilfully bought land in Asheville (in readiness for the coming railroad); she had an account at the bank; she had come into the possession of bonds and stock; she had enlarged her house, and she had also given herself the pleasure (she called it the benediction) of laying the foundations of an addition to the Colored Home. As she kept up a private correspondence with Ruth, she had heard of the proposed place in New York for Jared, the place where his services would be of value. She was not surprised; it was what she had been counting upon. Jared's obstinacy would give way, must give way, before this new opportunity; and in the meanwhile, here at Asheville, all was going splendidly well.

Amid these various transactions Jared Franklin's mother had been obliged to make up her mind as to what her own attitude should be. It had been to her a relief unspeakable, an overmastering joy, to know that her son would not, after all, sink to harassing poverty. Soothed by this, lulled also by the hope that before very long he would of his own accord consent to give up what was so distasteful to him, she had virtually condoned the underhand partnership between Ruth and Genevieve, arranging the matter with her conscience after her own fashion, by simply turning her head away from the subject entirely. As she had plenty of imagination, she had ended by really convincing herself that she was not aware of what was going on, because she had not heard any of the details. (She had, in fact, refused to hear them.) This left her free to say to Jared (if necessary) that she had known nothing. But she hoped that no actual words of this sort would be required. Her temperament, indeed, had always been largely made up of hope.

It was true that Jared for the present was still at Raleigh, drudging away at a very small salary. That, however, would not last forever. And in the meantime (and this was also extraordinarily agreeable to the mother) Madame Genevieve was learning that she could not lead her husband quite so easily as she had supposed she could. In her enjoyment of this fact, Mrs. Franklin, in certain moods, almost hoped that (as his affairs were in reality going on so well) her son would continue to hold out for some time longer.

The house which Horace Chase had taken at St. Augustine was much larger than old Miss L'Hommedieu's abode; it was built of coquina, like hers, but it faced the sea-wall directly, commanding the inlet; from its upper windows one could see over Anastasia Island opposite, and follow miles of the blue southern sea. Ruth's French maid, Félicité, had arrived at this brown mansion the day before, with the heavy luggage; to-night, however, new-comers were to remain with the mother in the smaller house.

When the barouche reached Mrs. Franklin's door, Etheridge, Mrs. Kip, and the heart were already there. "I won't stay now," said Mrs. Kip. "But may I look in later? Evangeline Taylor is perfectly wild to come."

When she returned, a little after eight, Chase was still in the dining-room with Anthony Etheridge, who had dined there. The heart had been suspended from a stout hook on the parlor wall, and Ruth happened a moment before to have placed herself under it, when, having discovered her old guitar in a closet, she had seated herself to tune it. "It's so sweet, Ruth, your sitting there under my flowers," said the visitor, tearfully. "And yet, for me, such an—such an association!"

"I thought your daughter was coming?" said Mrs. Franklin, peering towards the door over her glasses.

"Evangeline Taylor will be here in a moment," answered her mother; "her governess is bringing her." And presently there entered a tall, a gigantically tall girl, with a long, solemn, pale face. As she was barely twelve, she was dressed youthfully in a short school-girl frock with a blue sash. Advancing, she kissed Ruth; then, retiring to a corner, she seated herself, arranged her feet in an appropriate pose, and crossed her hands in her lap. A little later, when no one was looking, she furtively altered the position of her feet. Then she changed once or twice the arrangement of her hands. This being settled at last to her satisfaction, she turned her attention to her features, trying several different contortions, and finally settling upon a drawing in of the lips and a slight dilatation of the nostrils. And all this not in the least from vanity, but simply from an intense personal conscientiousness.

"The dear child longed to see you, Ruth. She danced for joy when she heard you had come," explained the mother.

"Yes, Evangeline and I have always been great chums," answered Ruth, good-naturedly.

The room was brightly lighted, and the light showed that the young wife's face was more beautiful than ever; the grace of her figure also was now heightened by all the aids that dress can bestow. Ruth had said to Jared, jokingly, "Wait till you see how pretty I shall be in fine clothes!" The fine clothes had been purchased in profusion, and, what was better, Félicité knew how to adapt them perfectly to her slender young mistress.

Mrs. Kip, having paid her tribute to "the association" (she did not say whether the feeling was connected with Andrew Taylor, her first husband, or with the equally departed John Kip, her second), now seated herself beside Ruth, and, with the freedom of old friendship, examined her costume. "I know you had that made in Paris!" she said. "Simple as it is, it has a sort of something or other! And, oh, what a beautiful bracelet! What splendid rings!"

Ruth wore no ornaments save that on her right wrist was a band of sapphires, and on her right hand three of the same gems, all the stones being of great beauty. On her left hand she wore the wedding circlet, with her engagement-ring and the philopena guard over it. In answer to the exclamation, she had taken off the jewels and tossed them all into Mrs. Kip's lap. Mrs. Kip looked at them, her red lips open.

To some persons, Lilian Kip seemed beautiful, in spite of the fact that the outline of her features, from certain points of view, was almost grotesque; she had a short nose, a wide mouth, a broad face, and a receding chin. Her dark-brown eyes were neither large nor bright, but they had a soft, dove-like expression; her curling hair was of a mahogany-red tint, and she had the exquisitely beautiful skin which sometimes accompanies hair of this hue; her cheeks really had the coloring of peaches and cream; her lips were like strawberries; her neck, arms, and hands were as fair as the inner petals of a tea-rose. With the exception of her imperfect facial outlines, she was as faultlessly modelled as a Venus. A short Venus, it is true, and a well-fed one; still a Venus. No one would ever have imagined her to be the mother of that light-house of a daughter; it was necessary to recall the fact that the height of the late Andrew Taylor had been six feet four inches. Andrew Taylor having married Lilian Howard when she was but seventeen, Lilian Kip, in spite of two husbands and her embarrassingly overtopping child, found herself even now but thirty.

She had put Ruth's rings on her hands and the bracelet on her wrist; now she surveyed the effect with her head on one side, consideringly. While she was thus engaged, Mrs. Franklin's little negro boy, Samp, ushered in another visitor—Walter Willoughby.

"Welcome to Florida, Mrs. Chase," he said, as he shook hands with Ruth. "As you are an old resident, however, it's really your husband whom I have come to greet; he is here, isn't he?"

"Yes; he is in the dining-room with Commodore Etheridge," Ruth answered. "Will you go out?" For it was literally out; the old house was built in the Spanish fashion round an interior court, and to reach the dining-room one traversed a long veranda.

"Thanks; I'll wait here," Walter answered. In reality he would have preferred to go and have a cigar with Chase. But as he had not seen his partner's wife since she returned from Europe, it was only courtesy as well as good policy to remain where he was. For Mrs. Chase was a power. She was a power because her husband would always wish to please her; this desire would come next to his money-making, and would even, in Walter's opinion (in case there should ever be a contest between the two influences), "run in close!"

Mrs. Kip had hastily divested herself of the jewels, and replaced them on Ruth's wrist and hands, with many caressing touches. "Aren't they lovely?" she said to Walter.

"That little one, the guard, was my selection," he replied, indicating the philopena circlet.

"And not this also?" said Ruth, touching her engagement ring.

"No; that was my uncle Richard's choice; Chase wrote to him the second time, not to me," Walter answered. "I'm afraid he didn't like my taste." He laughed; then turned to another subject. "You were playing the guitar when I came in, Mrs. Chase; won't you sing something?"

"I neither play nor sing in a civilized way," Ruth answered. "None of us do. In music we are all awful barbarians."

"How can you say so," protested Mrs. Kip, "when, as a family, you are so musical?" Then, summoning to her eyes an expression of great intelligence, she added: "And I should know that you were, all of you, from your thick eyebrows and very thick hair. You have heard of that theory, haven't you, Mr. Willoughby? That all true musicians have very thick hair?"

"Also murderers; I mean the women—the murderesses," remarked Dolly.

"Oh, Dolly, what ideas you do have! Who would ever think of associating murderesses with music? Music is so uplifting," protested the rosy widow.

"We should take care that it is not too much so," Dolly answered. "Lots of us are ridiculously uplifted. We know one thing perhaps, and like it. But we remain flatly ignorant about almost everything else. In a busy world this would do no harm, if we could only be conscious of it. But no; on we go, deeply conceited about the one thing we know and like, and loftily severe as to the ignorance of other persons concerning it. It doesn't occur to us that upon other subjects save our own, we ourselves are presenting precisely the same spectacle. A Beethoven, when it comes to pictures, may find something very taking in a daub representing a plump child with a skipping-rope, and the legend: 'See me jump!' A painter of the highest power may think 'The Sweet By-and-By' on the cornet the acme of musical expression. A distinguished sculptor may appreciate on the stage only negro minstrels or a tenth-rate farce. A great historian may see nothing to choose, in the way of beauty, between a fine etching and a chromo. It is well known that the most celebrated, and deservedly celebrated, scientific man of our day devours regularly the weakest fiction that we have. And people who love the best classical music and can endure nothing else, have no idea, very often, whether they belong to the mammalia or the crustacea, or whether the Cologne cathedral is Doric or late Tudor."

"Carry it a little further, Miss Franklin," said Walter Willoughby; "it has often been noted that criminals delight in the most sentimental tales."

"That isn't the same thing," Dolly answered. "However, to take up your idea, Mr. Willoughby, it is certainly true that it is often the good women who read with the most breathless interest the newspaper reports of crimes."

"Oh no!" exclaimed Mrs. Kip.

"Yes, they do, Lilian," Dolly responded. "And when it comes to tales, they like dreadful events, with plenty of moral reflections thrown in; the moral reflections make it all right. A plain narrative of an even much less degree of evil, given impartially, and without a word of comment by the author—that seems to them the unpardonable thing."

"Well, and isn't it?" said Mrs. Kip. "Shouldn't people be taught—counselled?"

"And it's for the sake of the counsel that they read such stories?" inquired Dolly.

During this conversation, Chase, in the dining-room, had risen and given a stretch, with his long arms out horizontally. He was beginning to feel bored by the talk of Anthony Etheridge, "the ancient swell," as he called him. In addition, he had a vision of finishing this second cigar in a comfortable chair in the parlor (for Mrs. Franklin had no objection to cigar smoke), with Ruth near by; for it always amused him to hear his wife laugh and talk. The commodore, meanwhile, having assigned to himself from the day of the wedding the task of "helping to civilize the Bubble," never lost an opportunity to tell him stories from his own more cultivated experience—"stories that will give him ideas, and, by Jove! phrases, too. He needs 'em!" He had risen also. But he now detained his companion until he had finished what he was saying. "So there you have the reason, Mr. Chase, why I didn't marry. I simply couldn't endure the idea of an old woman's face opposite mine at table year after year; for our women grow old so soon! Now you, sir, have shown the highest wisdom in this respect. I congratulate you."

"I don't know about that," answered Chase, as he turned towards the door. "Ruth will have an old man's face opposite her before very long, won't she?"

"Not at all, my good friend; not at all. Men have no age. At least, they need not have it," answered Etheridge, bringing forward with joviality his favorite axiom.

Cordial greetings took place between Chase and Walter Willoughby. "Your uncles weren't sure you would still be here," Chase remarked. "They thought perhaps you wouldn't stay."

"I shall stay awhile—outstay you, probably," answered Walter, smiling. "I can't imagine that you'll stand it long."

"Doing nothing, you mean? Well, it's true I have never loafed much," Chase admitted.

"You loafed all summer in Europe," the younger man replied, and his voice had almost an intonation of complaint. He perceived this himself, and smiled a little over it.

"So that was loafing, was it," commented Ruth, in a musing tone—"catching trains and coaches on a full run, seeing three or four cantons, half a dozen towns, two passes, and several ranges of mountains every day?"

All laughed, and Mrs. Kip said: "Did you rush along at that rate? That was baddish. There's no hurry here; that's one good thing. The laziest place! We must get up a boat-ride soon, Ruth. Boat-drive, I mean."

Mrs. Franklin meanwhile, rising to get something, knocked over accidentally the lamplighters which she had just completed, and Chase, who saw it, jumped up to help her collect them.

"Why, how many you have made!" he said, gallantly.

She was not pleased by this innocent speech; she had no desire to be patted on the back, as it were, about her curled strips of paper; she curled them to please herself. She made no reply, save that her nose looked unusually aquiline.

"Yes, mother is tremendously industrious in lamplighters," remarked Dolly. "Her only grief is that she cannot send them to the Indian missions. You can send almost everything to the Indian missions; but somehow lamplighters fill no void."

"Do you mean the new mission we are to have here—the Indians at the fort?" asked Walter Willoughby. "They are having a big dance to-night."

Ruth looked up.

"Should you like to see it?" he went on, instantly taking advantage of an opportunity to please her. "Nothing easier. We could watch it quite comfortably, you know, from the ramparts."

"I should like it ever so much! Let us go at once, before it is over!" exclaimed Ruth, eagerly.

"Ruth! Ruth!" said her mother. "After travelling all day, Mr. Chase may be tired."

"Not at all, ma'am," said Chase. "I don't take much stock in Indians myself," he went on, to his wife. "Do you really want to go?"

"Oh yes, Horace. Please."

"And the commodore will go with me," said Mrs. Kip, turning her soft eyes towards Etheridge, who went down before the glance like a house of cards.

"But we must take Evangeline Taylor home first," said Mrs. Kip. "We'll go round by way of Andalusia, commodore. It would never do to let her see an Indian dance at her age," she added, affectionately, lifting her hand high to pat her daughter's aerial cheek. "It would make her tremble like a babe."

"Oh, did you hear her 'baddish'!" said Dolly, as, a few minutes later, they went up the steps that led to the sea-wall, Chase and Walter Willoughby, Ruth and herself. "And did you hear her 'boat-drive'? She has become so densely confused by hearing Achilles Larue inveigh against the use of 'ride' for 'drive' that now she thinks everything must be drive."

Chase and Walter Willoughby smiled; but not unkindly. There are some things which the Dolly Franklins of the world are incapable, with all their cleverness, of comprehending; one of them is the attraction of a sweet fool.

The sea-wall of St. Augustine stretches, with its smooth granite coping, along the entire front of the old town, nearly a mile in length. On the land side its top is but four or five feet above the roadway; towards the water it presents a high, dark, wet surface, against which comes the wash of the ocean, or rather of the inlet; for the harbor is protected by a long, low island lying outside. It is this island, called Anastasia, that has the ocean beach. The walk on top of the wall is just wide enough for two. Walter Willoughby led the way with Dolly, and Chase and his wife followed, a short distance behind.

Walter thought Miss Franklin tiresome. With the impatience of a young fellow, he did not care for her clever talk. He was interested in clever men; in woman he admired other qualities. He had spent ten days in Asheville during the preceding summer in connection with Chase's plans for investment there, and he had been often at L'Hommedieu during his stay; but he had found Genevieve more attractive than Dolly—Genevieve and Mrs. Kip. For Mrs. Kip, since her second widowhood, had spent her summers at Asheville, for the sake of "the mountain atmosphere;" ("which means Achilles atmosphere," Mrs. Franklin declared). This evening Walter had felt a distinct sense of annoyance when Dolly had announced her intention of going with them to see the Indian dance, for this would arrange their party in twos. He had no desire for a tête-à-tête with Dolly, and neither did he care for a tête-à-tête with Ruth; his idea had been to accompany Mr. and Mrs. Chase as a third. However, he made the best of it; Walter always did that. He had the happy faculty of getting all the enjoyment possible out of the present, whatever it might be. Postponing, therefore, to the next day his plan for making himself agreeable to the Chases, he led the way gayly enough to the fort.

Fort San Marco is the most imposing ancient structure which the United States can show. Begun in the seventeenth century, when Florida was a province of Spain, it has turrets, ramparts, and bastions, a portcullis and barbacan, a moat and drawbridge. Its water-battery, where once stood the Spanish cannon, looks out to sea. Having outlived its use as a fortification, it was now sheltering temporarily a band of Indians from the far West, most of whom had been sentenced to imprisonment for crime. With the captives had come their families, for this imprisonment was to serve also as an experiment; the red men were to be instructed, influenced, helped. At present the education had not had time to progress far.

The large square interior court, open to the sky, was to-night lighted by torches of pine, which were thrust into the iron rings that had served the Spaniards for the same purpose long before. The Indians, adorned with paint and feathers, were going through their wild evolutions, now moving round a large circle in a strange squatting attitude, now bounding aloft. Their dark faces, either from their actual feelings or from the simulated ferocity appropriate to a war-dance, were very savage, and with their half-naked bodies, their whoops and yells, they made a picture that was terribly realistic to the whites who looked on from the ramparts above, for it needed but little imagination to fancy a bona fide attack—the surprise of the lonely frontier farm-house, with the following massacre and dreadful shrieks.

Ruth, half frightened, clung to her husband's arm. Mrs. Kip, after a while, began to sob a little.

"I'm thinking—of the wo-women they have probably scalped on the pla-ains" she said to Etheridge.

"What?" he asked, unable to hear.

"Never mind; we'll convert them," she went on, drying her eyes hopefully. For a Sunday-school was to be established at the fort, and she had already promised to take a class.

But Dolly was on the side of the Indians. "The crimes for which these poor creatures are imprisoned here are nothing but virtues upside down," she shouted. "They killed white men? Of course they did. Haven't the white men stolen all their land?"

"But we're going to Christianize them," yelled Mrs. Kip, in reply. They were obliged to yell, amid the deafening noise of the dance and the whoopings below.

Ruth had a humorous remark ready, when suddenly her husband, to Walter's amusement, put his hand over her lips. She looked up at him, laughing. She understood.

"Funniest thing in the world," he had once said to her, "but the more noise there is, the more incessantly women will talk. Ever noticed? They are capable of carrying on a shrieking conversation in the cars all day long."

The atmosphere grew dense with the smoke from the pitch-pine torches, and suddenly, ten minutes later, Dolly fainted. This in itself was not alarming; with Dolly it happened not infrequently. But under the present circumstances it was awkward.

"Why did you let her come? I was amazed when I saw her here," said Etheridge, testily.

For Etheridge was dead tired. He hated the Indians; he detested the choking smoke; he loathed open ramparts at this time of night. Ruth and Mrs. Franklin had themselves been surprised by Dolly's desire to see the dance. But they always encouraged any wish of hers to go anywhere; such inclinations were so few.

Walter Willoughby, meanwhile, prompt as ever, had already found a vehicle—namely, the phaeton of Captain March, the army officer in charge of the Indians; it was waiting outside to take Mrs. March back to the Magnolia Hotel. "The captain lends it with pleasure; as soon, therefore, as Miss Franklin is able, I can drive her home," suggested Walter.

But Chase, who knew through his wife some of the secrets of Dolly's suffering, feared lest she might now be attacked by pain; he would not trust her to a careless young fellow like Walter. "I'll take her myself," he said. "And Ruth, you can come back with the others, along the sea-wall."

Dolly, who had recovered consciousness, protested against this arrangement. But her voice was only a whisper; Chase, paying no attention to it, lifted her and helped her down to the phaeton. He was certainly the one to do it, so he thought; his wife's sister was his sister as well. It was a pity that she was not rather more amiable. But that made no difference regarding one's duty towards her.

The others also left the ramparts, and started homeward, following the sea-wall.

This granite pathway is not straight; it curves a little here and there, adapting itself to the line of the shore. To-night it glittered in the moonlight. It was high tide, and the water also glittered as it came lapping against the stones waveringly, so that the granite somehow seemed to waver, too. Etheridge was last, behind Mrs. Kip. He did not wish to make her dizzy by walking beside her, he said. Suddenly he descended. On the land side.

Mrs. Kip, hearing the thud of his jump, turned her head, surprised. And then the commodore (though he was still staggering) held out his hand, saying, "We get off here, of course; it is much our nearest way. That's the reason I stepped down," he carelessly added.

Mrs. Kip had intended to follow the wall as far as the Basin. But she always instinctively obeyed directions given in a masculine voice. If there were two masculine voices, she obeyed the younger. In this case the younger man did not speak. She acquiesced, therefore, in the elder's sharp "Come!" For poor Etheridge had been so jarred by his fall that his voice had become for the moment falsetto.

Mrs. Chase and Walter Willoughby, thus deserted, continued on their way alone.

It was a beautiful night. The moon lighted the water so brilliantly that the flash of the light-house on Anastasia seemed superfluous; the dark fort loomed up in massive outlines; a narrow black boat was coming across from the island, and, as there was a breeze, the two Minorcans it carried had put up a rag of a sail, which shone like silver. "How fast they go!" said Ruth.

"Would you like to sail home?" asked Walter. He did not wait for her answer, for, quick at divination, he had caught the wish in her voice. He hailed the Minorcans; they brought their boat up to the next flight of water-steps; in two minutes from the time she had first spoken, Ruth, much amused by this unexpected adventure, was sailing down the inlet. "Oh, how wet! I didn't think of that," Walter had exclaimed as he saw the water in the bottom of the boat; and with a quick movement he had divested himself of his coat, and made a seat of it for her in the driest place. She had had no time to object, they were already off; she must sit down, and sit still, for their tottlish craft was only a dugout. Walter, squatting opposite, made jocular remarks about his appearance as he sat there in his shirt-sleeves.

It was never difficult for Ruth to laugh, and presently, as the water gained on her companion in spite of all his efforts, she gave way to mirth. She laughed so long that Walter began to feel that he knew her better, that he even knew her well. He laughed himself. But he also took the greatest pains at the same time to guard her pretty dress from injury.

The breeze and the tide were both in their favor; they glided rapidly past the bathing-house, the Plaza, the Basin, and the old mansion which Chase had taken. Then Walter directed the Minorcans towards another flight of water-steps. "Here we are," he said. "And in half the time it would have taken us if we had walked. We have come like a shot."

He took her to her mother's door. Then, pretty wet, with his ruined coat over his arm, he walked back along the sea-wall to the St. Augustine Hotel.

CHAPTER IX

TWO weeks later Mrs. Kip gave an afternoon party for the Indians. Captain March had not been struck by her idea that the sight of "a lady's quiet home" would have a soothing effect upon these children of the plains. Mrs. Kip had invited the whole band, but the captain had sent only a carefully selected half-dozen in charge of the interpreter. And he had also added, uninvited, several soldiers from the small force at his disposal. Mrs. Kip was sure that these soldiers were present "merely for form." There are various kinds of form. Captain March, having confided to the colonel who commanded at the other end of the sea-wall, that he could answer for the decorum of his six "unless the young ladies get hold of them," a further detachment of men had arrived from St. Francis Barracks; for the colonel was aware that the party was to be largely feminine. The festivities, therefore, went on with double brilliancy, owing to the many uniforms visible under the trees.

These trees were magnificent. Mrs. Kip occupied, as tenant, the old Buckingham Smith place, which she had named Andalusia. Here, in addition to the majestic live-oaks, were date-palms, palmettoes, magnolias, crape-myrtles, figs, and bananas, hedges of Spanish-bayonet, and a half-mile of orange walks, which resembled tunnels through a glossy-green foliage, the daylight at each end looking like a far-away yellow spot. All this superb vegetation rose, strangely enough to Northern eyes, from a silver-white soil. It was a beautiful day, warm and bright. Above, the sky seemed very near; it closed down over the flat land like a soft blue cover. The air was full of fragrance, for both here and in the neighboring grove of Dr. Carrington the orange-trees were in bloom. Andalusia was near the San Sebastian border of the town, and to reach it on foot one was obliged to toil through a lane so deep in sand that it was practically bottomless.

There was no toil, however, for Mrs. Horace Chase; on the day of the party she arrived at Andalusia in a phaeton drawn by two pretty ponies. She was driving, for the ponies were hers. Her husband was beside her, and, in the little seat behind, Walter Willoughby had perched himself. It was a very early party, having begun with a dinner for the Indians at one o'clock; Mr. and Mrs. Chase arrived at half-past two. Dressed in white, Mrs. Kip was hovering round her dark-skinned guests. When she could not think of anything else to do, she shook hands with them; she had already been through this ceremony eight times. "If I could only speak to them in their own tongue!" she said, yearningly. And the long sentences, expressive of friendship, which she begged the interpreter to translate to them, would have filled a volume. The interpreter, a very intelligent young man, obeyed all her requests with much politeness. "Tell them that we love them," said Mrs. Kip. "Tell them that we think of their souls."

The interpreter bowed; then he translated as follows: "The white squaw says that you have had enough to eat, and more than enough; and she hopes that you won't make pigs of yourselves if anything else is offered—especially Drowning Raven!"

The Chases and Walter Willoughby had come to the Indian party for a particular purpose, or rather Walter had asked the assistance of the other two in carrying out a purpose of his own, which was to make Mrs. Kip give them a ball. For Andalusia possessed a capital room for dancing. The room was, in fact, an old gymnasium—a one-story building near the house. Mrs. Kip was in the habit of lending this gymnasium for tableaux and Sunday-school festivals; to-day it had served as a dining-room for the Indians. Walter declared that with the aid of flags and flowers the gymnasium would make an excellent ball-room; and as the regimental band had arrived at St. Francis Barracks that morning for a short stay, the mistress of Andalusia must be attacked at once.

"We'll go to her Indian party, and compliment her out of her shoes," he suggested. "You, Mrs. Chase, must be struck with her dress. I shall simply make love to her. And let me see—what can you do?" he went on, addressing Chase. "I have it; you can admire her chiefs."

"Dirty lot!" Chase answered. "I'd rather admire the hostess."

But the six Indians were not at all dirty; they had never been half so clean since they were born; they fairly shone with soap and ablutions. Dressed in trousers and calico shirts, with moccasins on their feet, and their black hair carefully anointed, they walked, stood, or sat in a straight row all together, according to the strongly emphasized instructions which they had received before setting out. Two old warriors, one of them the gluttonous Drowning Raven reproved by the interpreter, grinned affably at everything. The others preserved the dignified Indian impassiveness.

Soon after his arrival, Walter, who had paid his greetings upon entering, returned to his fair hostess. "I hear you have a rose-tree that is a wonder, Mrs. Kip; where is it?"

Mrs. Kip began to explain. "Go through the first orange-walk. Then turn to the right. Then—"

"I am afraid I can't remember. Take me there yourself," said Walter, calmly.

"Oh, I ought to be here, I think. People are still coming, you know," answered the lady. Then, as he did not withdraw his order, "Well," she said, assentingly.

They were absent twenty minutes.

When they returned, the soft brown eyes of the widow had a partly pleased, partly deprecatory expression. Another young man in love with her! What could she do to prevent these occurrences?

Walter, meanwhile, had returned to Mr. and Mrs. Chase. "It's all right," he said to Ruth. "The ball will come off to-morrow night. Impromptu."

"Well, you have got cheek!" commented Chase.

Mrs. Kip herself soon came up. "Ruth, dear, do you know that the artillery band is only to stay a short time? My gymnasium has a capital floor; what do you say to an impromptu dance there to-morrow night? I've just thought of it; it's my own idea entirely."

"Now what made her lug in that unnecessary lie at the end?" inquired Chase, in a reasoning tone, when their hostess, after a few minutes more of conversation, had returned to her duties. "It's of no importance to anybody whose idea it was. That's what I call taking trouble for nothing!"

"If you believe your lie, it's no longer a lie," answered Walter; "and she believes hers. A quarter of a minute after a thing has happened, a woman can often succeed in convincing herself that it happened not quite in that way, but in another. Then she tells it in her way forever after."

Chase gave a yawn. "Well, haven't you had about enough of this fool business?" he said to his wife, using the words humorously.

"I am ready to go whenever you like," she answered. For if he allowed her to arrange their days as she pleased, she, on her side, always yielded to his wishes whenever he expressed them.

"I'll go and see if the ponies have come," he suggested, and he made his way towards the gate.

"You don't give us a very nice character," Ruth went on to Walter.

"About fibs, do you mean? I only said that you ladies have very powerful beliefs. Proof is nothing to you; faith is all. There is another odd fact connected with the subject, Mrs. Chase, and that is that an absolutely veracious woman, one who tells the exact, bare, cold truth on all occasions and nothing more; who never exaggerates or is tempted to exaggerate, by even a hair's-breadth—who is never conscious that she is coloring things too rosily—such a woman is somehow a very uninteresting person to men! I can't explain it, and it doesn't seem just. But it's so. Women of that sort (for they exist—a few of them) move through life very admirably; but quite without masculine adorers." Then he stopped himself. "I'm not here, however, to discuss problems with her," he thought. "Several hours more of daylight; let me see, what can I suggest next to amuse her?"

This young man—he was twenty-seven—had had an intention in seeking St. Augustine at this time; he wished to become well acquainted, if possible intimate, with the enterprising member of his uncle's firm. He had some money, but not much. His father, the elder Walter, had been the one black sheep of the Willoughby flock, the one spendthrift of that prudent family circle. After the death of the prodigal, Richard and Nicholas had befriended the son; the younger Walter was a graduate of Columbia; he had spent eighteen months in Europe; and when not at college or abroad, he had lived with his rich uncles. But this did not satisfy him, he was intensely ambitious; the other Willoughbys had no suspicion of the reach of this nephew's plans. For his ambitions extended in half a dozen different directions, whereas what might have been called the family idea had moved always along one line. Walter had more taste than his uncles; he knew a good picture when he saw it; he liked good architecture; he admired a well-bound book. But these things were subordinate; his first wish was to be rich; that was the stepping-stone to all the rest. As his uncles had children, he could not expect to be their heir; but he had the advantage of the name and the relationship, and they had already done much by making him, nominally at least, a junior partner in this new (comparatively new) firm—a firm which was, however, but one of their interests. The very first time that Walter had met the Chase of Willoughby & Chase he had made up his mind that this was the person he needed, the person to give him a lift. Richard and Nicholas were too cautious, too conservative, for daring enterprises, for outside speculations; in addition, they had no need to turn to things of that sort. Their nephew, however, was in a hurry, and here, ready to his hand, appeared a man of resources; a man who had made one fortune in a baking-powder, another by the bold purchase of three-quarters of an uncertain silver mine, a third by speculation on a large scale in lumber, while a fourth was now in progress, founded (more regularly) in steamers. At present also there was a rumor that he had something new on foot, something in California; Walter had an ardent desire to be admitted to a part in this Californian enterprise, whatever it might be. But Chase's trip to Europe had delayed any progress he might have hoped for in this direction, just as it had delayed the carrying out of the Asheville speculation. The Chases had returned to New York in November. But immediately (for it had seemed immediately to the impatient junior partner) Chase had been hurried off again, this time to Florida, by his silly wife. Walter did not really mean that Ruth was silly; he thought her pretty and amiable. But as she was gay, restless, fond of change, she had interfered (unconsciously of course) with his plans and his hopes for nearly a year; to call her silly, therefore, was, in comparison, a mild revenge. "What under heaven is the use of her dragging poor Chase 'away down South to the land of the cotton,' when she has already kept him a whole summer wandering about Europe," he had said to himself, discomfited, when he first heard of the proposed Florida journey. The next day an idea came to him: "Why shouldn't I go also? Chase will be sure to bore himself to death down there, with nothing in the world to do. And then I shall be on hand to help him through the eternal sunshiny days! In addition, I may as well try to make myself agreeable to his gadding wife; for, whether she knows it as yet or not, it is evident that she rules the roost." He followed, therefore. But as he came straight to Florida, and as Mr. and Mrs. Chase had stopped en route at Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah, Walter had been in St. Augustine nearly two weeks before they arrived.

So far, all had turned out as he had hoped it would. This was not surprising; for young Willoughby was, not merely in manner, but also in reality, a good-natured, agreeable fellow, full of life, fond of amusement. He was ambitious, it is true. But he was as far as possible from being a drudging money-maker. He meant to carry out his plans, but he also meant to enjoy life as he went along. He had noticed, even as far back as the time of the wedding, that the girl whom Horace Chase was to marry had in her temperament both indolence and activity; now one of these moods predominated, now the other. As soon, therefore, as Mr. and Mrs. Chase were established in their St. Augustine house, he let himself go. Whenever the young wife's mood for activity appeared to be uppermost, he opened a door for it; he proposed an excursion, an entertainment of some sort. Already, under his leadership, they had sailed down the Matanzas River (as the inlet is called) to see the old Spanish lookout; they had rowed up Moultrie Creek; they had sent horses across to Anastasia Island and had galloped for miles southward down the hard ocean beach. They had explored the barrens; they had had a bear-hunt; they had camped out; they had caught sharks. On these occasions they had always been a party of at least four, and often of seven, when Mrs. Franklin and Dolly, Mrs. Kip and Commodore Etheridge joined in the excursion. Dolly in particular had surprised everybody by her unexpected strength; she had accompanied them whenever it had been possible. When it was not, she had urged her mother to take the vacant place. "Do go, His Grand, so that you can tell me about it. For it does amuse me so!"

Walter's latest inspiration, the ball at Andalusia, having been arranged, he now suggested that they should slip out unobserved and finish the afternoon with a sail. "I noticed the Owl and the Pussycat moored at the pier as we came by," he said. "If she is still there, Paul Archer is at the club, probably, and I can easily borrow her."

"Anything to get away from these Apaches," Chase answered. "And I'm a good deal afraid, too, of that Evangeline Taylor! She has asked me three times, with such a voice from the tombs, if I feel well to-day, that she has turned me stiff."

"Why on earth does that girl make such awful face?" inquired Walter.

Ruth gave way to laughter. "I can never make you two believe it, but it is really her deep sense of duty. She thinks that she ought to look earnest, or intelligent, or grateful, or whatever it may be, and so she constantly tries new ways to do it."

"What way is it when she glares at a fellow's collar for fifteen minutes steadily," said Walter; "at close range?"

"She never did!" protested Ruth.

"Yes—in the tea-room; my collar. And every now and then she gave a ghastly smile."

"She didn't know it was your collar; she was simply fixing her eyes upon a point in space, as less embarrassing than looking about. And she smiled because she thought she ought to, as it is a party."

"A point in space! My collar!" grumbled Walter.

At the gate they looked back for a moment. The guests, nearly a hundred in number, had gathered in a semicircle under a live-oak; they were gazing with fresh interest at the Indians, who had been drawn up before them. The six redskins were still in as close a row as though they had been handcuffed together; the serious spinsters had failed entirely in their attempts to break the rank, and have a gentle word with one or two of them, apart. The Rev. Mr. Harrison, who was to make an address, now advanced and began to speak; the listeners at the gate could hear his voice, though they were too far off to catch the words. The voice would go on for a minute or two, and pause. Then would follow the more staccato accents of the interpreter.

"The horse-joke comes in, Walter, when that interpreter begins," said Chase. "Who knows what he is saying?"

The interpreter, however, made a very good speech. It was, perhaps, less spiritual than Mr. Harrison's.

It turned out afterwards that the thing which had made the deepest impression upon the Apaches was not the "lady's quiet home," nor the Sunday-school teachers, nor the cabinet-organ, nor even the dinner; it was the extraordinary length of "the young-squaw-with-her-head-in-the-sky," as they designated Evangeline Taylor.

Ruth drove her ponies down to the Basin. The little yacht called the Owl and the Pussycat was still moored at the pier; but Paul Archer, her owner, was not at the club, as Walter had supposed; he had gone to the Florida House to call upon some friends. Commodore Etheridge was in the club-room; he was forcing himself to stay away from Andalusia, for he had an alarming vision of its mistress, dressed in white, with the sunshine lighting up her sea-shell complexion and bringing out, amorously, the rich tints of her hair. Delighted to have something to do, he immediately took charge of Walter.

"Write a line, Mr. Willoughby; write a line on your card, and our porter shall take it to the Florida House at once. In the meanwhile Mr. and Mrs. Chase can wait here. Not a bad place to wait in, Mrs. Chase? Simple, you see. Close to nature. And nature's great restorer" (for two of the club-men were asleep).

The room was close to restorers of all sorts, for the land front was let to a druggist. The house stood on the wooden pier facing the little Plaza, across whose grassy space the old Spanish cathedral and the more modern Episcopal church eyed each other without rancour. The Plaza's third side was occupied by the post-office, which had once been the residence of the Spanish governor.

The club-room was a large, pleasant apartment, with windows and verandas overlooking the water. There was a general straightening up of lounging attitudes when Mrs. Chase came in. Etheridge had already introduced Horace Chase to everybody at the club, and Chase, in his turn, had introduced almost everybody to his wife. The club, to a man, admired Mrs. Chase; while she waited, therefore, she held a little court. The commodore, meanwhile, kindly took upon himself, as usual, the duty of entertaining the Bubble.

"Mr. Willoughby need not have gone to the Florida House in person; our porter could perfectly well have taken a note, as I suggested. Capital fellow, our porter; I never come South, Mr. Chase, without being struck afresh with the excellence of the negroes as servants; they are the best in the world; they're born for it!"

"That's all right, if they're willing," Chase answered. "But not to force 'em, you know. That slave-market in the Plaza, now—"

"Oh Lord! Slave-market! Have you got hold of that story too?" interposed Etheridge, irritably. "It was never anything but a fish-market in its life! But I'm tired of explaining it; that, and the full-length skeleton hanging by its neck in an iron cage in the underground dungeon at the fort—if they're not true, they ought to be; that's what people appear to think! 'Si non ee veero, ee ben trovatoro,' as the Italians say. And speaking of the fort, I suppose you have been to that ridiculous Indian party at Andalusia to-day? Mrs. Kip must have looked grotesque, out-of-doors? In white too, I dare say?"

"Grotesque? Why, she's pretty," answered Chase.

"Not to my eye," responded Etheridge, determinedly. "She has the facial outlines of a frog. Do you know the real reason why I didn't marry? I couldn't endure, sir, the prospect of an old woman's face opposite mine at table year after year. For our women grow old so soon—"

As he brought this out, a dim remembrance of having said it to Horace Chase before came into his mind. Had he, or had he not? Chase's face betrayed nothing. If he had, what the devil did the fellow mean by not answering naturally, "Yes, you told me?" Could it be possible that he, Anthony Etheridge, had fallen into a habit of repeating?—So that people were accustomed—? He went off and pretended to look at a file of porpoises, who were going out to sea in a long line, like so many fat dark wheels rolling through the water.

Chase, left alone, took up a newspaper. But almost immediately he threw it down, saying, "Well, I didn't expect to see you here!"

The person whom he addressed was a stranger, who came in at this moment, brought by a member of the club. He shook hands with Chase, and they talked together for a while. Then Chase crossed the room, and, smiling a little as he noted the semicircle round his wife, he asked her to come out and walk up and down the pier while they waited for Willoughby. Once outside, he said:

"Ruthie, I want to have a talk with Patterson, that man you saw come in just now. I'm not very keen about sailing, anyhow. Will you let me off this time?"

"Oh yes; I don't care about going," Ruth answered.

"You needn't give it up because I do," said her husband, kindly; "you like to sail. Take the ancient swell in my place. He will be delighted to go, for it will make him appear so young. Just Ruth, Anthony, and Walter—three gay little chums together!"

As Chase had predicted, the commodore professed himself "enchanted." He went off smilingly in Paul Archer's yacht, whose device of an owl and pussycat confounded the practically minded, while to the initiated—the admirers of those immortal honey-mooners who "ate with a runcible spoon"—it gave delight; a glee which was increased by the delicate pea-green hue of the pretty little craft.

But in spite of his enchantment, the commodore soon brought the boat back. He had taken the helm, and, when he had shown himself and his young companions to everybody on the sea-wall; when he had dashed past the old fort; and then, putting about, had gone beating across the inlet to the barracks, he turned the prow towards the yacht club again. It was the hour for his afternoon whist, and he never let anything interfere with that.

The excursion, therefore, had been a short one, and, as Walter walked home with Mrs. Chase, she lingered a little. "It's too early to go in," she declared. As they passed the second pier, a dilapidated construction with its flooring gone, she espied a boat she knew. "There is the Shearwater just coming in. I am sure Mr. Kean would lend it to us. Don't you want to go out again?"

The Shearwater was an odd little craft, flat on the water, with a long, pointed, covered prow and one large sail. Ruth knew it well, for Mr. Kean was an old friend of the Franklin's, and, in former winters, he had often taken her out.

"My object certainly is to please her," Walter said to himself. "But she does keep one busy. Well, here goes!"

Mr. Kean lent his boat, and presently they were off again.

"Take me as far as the old light-house," Ruth suggested.

"Easy enough going; but the getting back will be another matter," Walter answered. "We should have to tack."

"I like tacking. I insist upon the light-house," Mrs. Chase replied, gayly.

The little boat glided rapidly past the town and San Marco; then turned towards the sea. For the old light-house, an ancient Spanish beacon, was on the ocean side of Anastasia.

"We can see it now. Isn't this far enough?" Walter asked, after a while.

"No; take me to the very door; I've made a vow to go," Ruth declared.

"But at this rate we shall never get back. And when we do, your husband, powerfully hungry for his delayed dinner, will be sharpening the carving-knife on the sea-wall!"

"He is more likely to be sharpening pencils at the Magnolia. He is sure to be late himself; in fact, he told me so; for he has business matters to talk over with that Mr. Patterson."

Walter had not known, until now, the name of the person who had carried off Chase; he had supposed that it was some ordinary acquaintance; he had no idea that it was the Chicago man whose name he had heard mentioned in connection with Chase's California interests. "David Patterson, of Chicago?" he asked. "Is he going to stay?"

"No; he leaves to-morrow morning, I believe," replied Ruth, in an uninterested tone.

"And here I am, sailing all over creation with this insatiable girl, when, if I had remained at the club, perhaps Chase would have introduced me; perhaps I might even have been with them now at the Magnolia," Walter reflected, with intense annoyance.

At last she allowed him to put about. The sun was sinking out of sight. Presently the after-glow gave a second daylight of deep gold. Down in the south the dark line of the dense forest rose like a range of hills. The perfume from the orange groves floated seaward and filled the air.

"I used to believe that I liked riding better than anything," remarked Ruth. "But ever since that little rush we had together in the dugout—do you remember? the night we arrived?—ever since then, somehow, sailing has seemed more delicious! For one thing, it's lazier."

They were seated opposite each other in the small open space, Walter holding the helm with one hand, while with the other he managed the sail, and Ruth leaning back against the miniature deck. Presently she began to sing, softly, Schubert's music set to Shakespeare's words:

"Not the lark already?" asked Walter.

He was exerting all his skill, but their progress was slow; the Shearwater crossed and recrossed, crossed and recrossed, gaining but a few feet in each transit.

sang Ruth.

"Do you think I could get a rise out of those Minorcans?" suggested her companion, indicating a fishing-boat at a little distance. "Perhaps they could lend me some oars. I was a great fool to come out without them!"

"Oh, don't get oars; that would spoil it. The tide has turned, and the wind is dying down; we can float slowly in. Everything is exactly right, and I am perfectly happy!"

Walter, his mind haunted by that vision of Chase and Patterson at the Magnolia, did not at first take in what she had said. Then, a minute or two afterwards, her phrase returned to him, and he smiled; it seemed so naïve. "It's delightful, in a discontented world, to hear you say that, Mrs. Chase. Is it generally, or in particular, that you are so blissful? St. Augustine? or life as a whole?"

"Both," replied Ruth, promptly. "For I have everything I like—and I like so many things! And everybody does whatever I want them to do. Why, you yourself, Mr. Willoughby! Because I love to dance, you have arranged that ball for to-morrow night. And when I asked you to take me out this second time in the Shearwater, you did it at once."

"Ah, my lady, with your blue eyes and dark lashes, you little know why!" thought Walter, with an inward laugh.

At last he got the boat up to the dilapidated pier again. It was long after dark. He took her to her door, and left her; she must explain her late arrival in her own way. Women, fortunately, are excellent at explanations.

But Chase was not there.

Twenty minutes afterwards he came in, late in his turn. "You didn't have dinner, Ruthie? I'm sorry you waited; I was detained."

"I was very late myself," Ruth answered.

"Even now I can't stay," Chase went on, hurriedly; "I came back to tell you, and to get a few things. I am going up to Savannah with Patterson for three or four days, on business. We are to have a special—a mule special—this evening, and hit a steamer. You'd better have your mother to stay with you while I'm away."

"Yes. To-morrow."

"She could come to-night, couldn't she?"

"Yes; but it's late; I won't make her turn out to-night. With seven servants in the house, I am not afraid," Ruth answered.

"I only thought you might be lonely?"

"I'll sing all my songs to Petie Trone, Esq."

He laughed and kissed her.

"You must come back soon," she said.

When he had gone she went up-stairs and changed her dress for a long, loose costume of pale pink tint, covered with lace; then, returning, she rang for dinner. Here, as in New York, there was a housekeeper, who relieved the young wife of all care. The dinner, in spite of the long postponement, was excellent; it was also dainty, for the housekeeper had learned Mrs. Chase's tastes. Mrs. Chase enjoyed it. She drank a glass of wine, and dallied over the sweets and the fruit. Afterwards, in the softly lighted drawing-room, she amused herself by singing half a dozen songs. Petie Trone, Esq., the supposed audience, was not fond of music, though the songs were sweet; he slinked out, and going softly up the stairs, deposited himself of his own accord in his basket behind the cheval-glass in the dressing-room. At eleven his mistress came up; she let Félicité undress her, and brush with skilful touch the long, thick mass of her hair. When the maid had gone, she read a little, leaning back in an easy-chair, with a shaded lamp beside her; then, letting the novel slip down on her lap, she sat there, looking about the room. Miss Billy Breeze had marvelled over the luxurious toilet table at L'Hommedieu; here the whole room was like that table. Presently its occupant put out her hand, and drew towards her a small stand which held her jewel-box. For she already had jewels, as Chase liked to buy them for her. He would have covered his wife with diamonds if Mrs. Franklin had not said (during that first visit at Asheville after the marriage), "Ruth is too young to wear diamonds, Mr. Chase; don't you think so?" Chase did not think so; but he had deferred to her opinion—at least, he supposed himself to be deferring to it when he bought only rubies and sapphires and pearls. His wife now turned over these ornaments. She put on the pearl necklace; then she took it off, and held it against her cheek. But she did not spend as much time as usual over the jewels. Often she entertained herself with them for an hour; it had been one of her husband's amusements to watch her. To-night, putting the case aside, she strolled to the window, opened it and looked out. The stars were shining brilliantly overhead; she could hear the soft lapping of the water against the sea-wall. From Anastasia came at intervals the flash of the light-house. "I was over there at sunset," she said to herself as she watched the gleam. Then closing the window, she walked idly to and fro, with her hands clasped behind her. "How happy I am!" she thought; or rather she did not think it, she felt it. She had no desire to sleep; the door of the bedroom stood open behind her, but she did not go in. She sat down on the divan, and let her head fall back among the cushions: "Everything is perfect—perfect. How delightful it is to live!"

CHAPTER X

TWO days after the Indian party at Andalusia, the excursion which Mrs. Kip had called a "boat-drive" came off. Horace Chase was still absent; he had telegraphed to his wife that he could not return before the last of the week. As all the preparations had been made, the excursion was not postponed on his account. Nor was there any reason why it should be. It was not given in honor of his wife, especially; Ruth, after sixteen months of marriage, could hardly be called a bride. In addition, the little winter colony had learned that an hour or two of their leisurely pleasure-making was about as much as this man of affairs could enjoy (some persons said "could endure"); after that his face was apt to betray a vague boredom, although it was evident that (with his usual careful politeness) he was trying to conceal it.

Walter Willoughby, meanwhile, was making the best of an annoying situation. He had lost the chance of being introduced to David Patterson, and with it the opportunity of learning something definite, at last, about Chase's Californian interests, and this seemed to him a great misfortune. But there was no use in moaning over it; the course to follow was not still further to lose the five days of Chase's absence in sulking, but to employ them in the only profitable way that was left open (small profit, but better than nothing)—namely, in cementing still further a friendly feeling between himself and Chase's wife, that butterfly young wife who had been the cause of so many of his disappointments. "Every little helps, I suppose," he said to himself, philosophically. "And as the thing she likes best, apparently, is to go and keep going, why, I'll take her own pace and outrace her—the little gad-about!" For, to Walter's eyes, Ruth appeared very young; mentally unformed as yet, child-like. His adjective "little" could, in truth, only be applied to her in this sense, for in actual inches Mrs. Chase was almost as tall as he was. Walter was of medium height, robust and compact. He had a well-shaped, well-poised head, which joined his strong neck behind with no hollow and scarcely a curve. His thick, dark hair was kept very short; but, with his full temples and facial outlines, this curt fashion became him well. He was not called handsome, though his features were clearly cut and firm. His gray eyes were ordinarily rather cold. But when he was animated—and he was usually very animated—young Willoughby looked full of life. He was fond of pleasure, fond of amusement. But this did not prevent his possessing, underneath the surface, a resolute will, which he could enforce against himself as well as against others. He intended to enjoy life. And as, according to his idea, there could be no lasting enjoyment without freedom from the pinch of anxiety about material things, he also intended to get money—first of all to get money. "For a few years, while one is young, to have small means doesn't so much matter," he had told himself. "But when one reaches middle age, or passes it, then, if one has children, care inevitably steps in. There are anxieties, of course, which cannot be prevented. But this particular one can be—with a certain amount of energy, and also of resolute self-control in the beginning. The 'have-a-good-time-while-you-are-young' policy doesn't compensate for having a bad time when you are old, in my opinion. And it's care that makes one old!"

Horace Chase had left St. Augustine on Monday. The next evening, at Mrs. Kip's impromptu ball in the gymnasium, the junior partner of Willoughby, Chase, & Company devoted his time to Mrs. Chase with much skill. His attentions remained unobtrusive; he did not dance with her often. The latter, indeed, would not have been possible in any case; for Mrs. Chase was surrounded, from first to last, by all that St. Augustine could offer. Graceful as she was in all her movements, Ruth's dancing was particularly charming. And it was also striking; for, sinuous, lithe, soon excited, she danced because she loved it, danced with unconscious abandon. That night, her slender figure in the white ball dress, that floated backward in the rapid motion, her happy face with the starry eyes and beautiful color coming and going—this made a picture which those who were present remembered long. At ten o'clock she had begun to dance; at two, when many persons were taking leave, she was still on the floor; with her circle of admirers, it was now Mrs. Chase who was keeping up the ball. Her mother, who was staying with her during her husband's absence, had accompanied her to Andalusia. But there was no need to ask whether Mrs. Franklin was tired; Mrs. Franklin was never tired in scenes of gayety; she was as well entertained as her daughter. Walter had danced but twice with Mrs. Chase during the four hours. But always between her dances he had been on hand. If she had a fancy for spending a few moments on the veranda, he had her white cloak ready; if she wished for an ice, it appeared by magic; if there was any one she did not care to dance with, she could always say that she was engaged to Mr. Willoughby. It was in this way, in fact, that Mr. Willoughby had obtained his two dances. The last dance, however, was all his own. It was three o'clock; even the most good-natured chaperons had collected their charges, and the music had ceased. "How sorry I am! I do so long for just one waltz more," said Ruth.

She spoke to her mother, but Walter overheard the words. He went across to the musicians (in reality he bribed them); then returning, he said: "I've arranged it, Mrs. Chase. You are to have that one waltz more." A few of the young people, tempted by the revived strains, threw aside their wraps and joined them, but practically they had the floor to themselves. Walter was an expert dancer, skilful and strong; he bore his partner down the long room, guiding her so securely that she was not obliged to think of their course; she could leave that entirely to him, and give herself up to the enjoyment of the motion. As they returned towards the music for the third time, she supposed that he would stop. But he did not; he swept her down again, and in shorter circles that made her, light as she was on her feet, a little giddy. "Isn't this enough?" she asked. But apparently he did not hear her. The floor began to spin. "Please stop," she murmured, her eyes half closing from the increasing dizziness. But her partner kept on until he felt that she was faltering; then, with a final bewildering whirl, he deposited her safely on a bench, and stood beside her, laughing a little.

There was no one near them; Mrs. Franklin, Mrs. Kip, and the few who still remained, were at the other end of the room. Ruth, after a moment, began to laugh also, while she pressed her hands over her eyes to help herself see more clearly. "What possessed you?" she said. "Another instant and I should certainly have fallen; I couldn't see a thing!"

"No, you wouldn't have fallen, Mrs. Chase; I could have held you up under any circumstances. But I wanted to make you for once acknowledge that we are not all so lethargic as you constantly accuse us of being."

"Accuse?" said Ruth, surprised. She was still panting.

"Yes, you accuse the whole world; you do nothing but accuse. You are never preoccupied yourself, and so preoccupation in others seems to you stupidity. You are never tired; so the rest of us strike you as owlish and lazy."

"Oh, but I'm often lazy myself," protested Ruth.

"Precisely. No doubt when you go in for being lazy at all, you carry it further than any poor, dull, reasonable man would ever dream of doing," Walter went on. "I dare say you are capable of lying motionless on a sofa, with a novel, for ten hours at a stretch!"

"Ten hours? That's nothing. Ten days," answered Ruth. "I have spent ten days at L'Hommedieu in that way many a time; Maud Muriel used to call it 'lucid stupor.'"

"Lucid?" said Walter, doubtfully. "Do you think you can walk?" he went on, as her mirth still continued. "Because the music really has stopped this time, and I see your mother's eyes turning this way. Your laughs are perfectly beautiful, of course. But do they leave you your walking powers?"

The musicians, seeing them rise, began suddenly to play again (for his bribe had been a generous one), and he took her back to her mother in a rapid deux temps.

"Splendid! I like dancing better than anything else in the world," Ruth declared.

"I thought it was sailing? However, whatever it is, please make use of me often, Mrs. Chase. When I've nothing to do I become terribly low-spirited: for my uncles are bent upon marrying me!"

"Have they selected any special person?" inquired Mrs. Franklin, laughing, as he helped her to put on her cloak.

"I think they have their eye on a widow, a widow of thirty-seven with a fortune," answered Walter, with exaggerated gloom.

"Will she have you?"

"Never in the world!" Walter declared; "that's just it! Why, therefore, should my uncles force me forward—such a tender flower as I am—to certain defeat? It is on that account that I have run away. I have come to hide in Florida—under your protection, Mrs. Chase."

The meeting-place for the water-party the next day was St. Francis Barracks—the long, brown structure with pointed gables and deep shady verandas, which stood on the site of an old Spanish monastery, at the south end of the sea-wall. The troops stationed at St. Francis that winter belonged to the First Artillery; to-day the colonel and his family, the captain and his wife, and the two handsome lieutenants took part in the excursion; there were fifty people in all, and many yachts, from the big Seminole down to the little Shearwater. Walter had The Owl and the Pussycat, and with him embarked Mrs. Franklin with her two daughters, Miss Franklin and Mrs. Chase; Mrs. Lilian Kip; and Commodore Etheridge. At two o'clock the little fleet sped gayly down the Matanzas.

"Matanzas, Sebastian, St. Augustine," said Walter; "these names are all in character. It's an awful misfortune for your husband's budding summer resort in the North Carolina mountains, Mrs. Chase, that its name happens to be Asheville, after that stupid custom of tacking the French 'ville' to some man's name; (for I take it that Ashe is a name, and not cinders). In this case, the first settlers were more than usually asinine; for they had the beautiful Indian 'Swannanoa' ready to their hands."

"Oh, but first settlers have no love for Indian names," commented Dolly. "How can they have? The Indians and the great forest—these are their enemies. To me there is something touching in our Higgsvilles and Slatervilles. I see the first log cabins in the little clearing; then a short, stump-bedecked street; then two or three streets and a court-house. The Higgs or the Slater was their best man, their leader, the one they looked up to. In North Carolina alone there are one hundred and ten towns or villages with names ending in 'ville.'"

"North Carolina? Oh yes, I dare say!" remarked Etheridge.

"And two hundred and forty-one in New York," added Dolly.

"Well, we make up for it in other ways," said Mrs. Franklin. "If the men name the towns, the women name the children; I have known mothers to produce simply from their own imaginations such titles as Merilla, and Idelusia, for their daughters. I once knew a girl who had even been baptized Damask Rose."

"What did they call her for short?" inquired Walter.

"Oh, Mr. Willoughby!" said Lilian Kip, shocked.

"Damask's mother was trying to solace herself with names, I fancy," Mrs. Franklin went on, "because by the terms of her husband's will (she was a widow), she forfeited all she had if she married again."

"How outrageous?" exclaimed Mrs. Kip, bristling into vehemence. "If a woman has been a good wife to one man, is that any reason why she should be denied the privilege of being a good wife to another?"

"Privilege?" repeated Dolly.

"Surely there is no greater one," said Mrs. Kip, with a sigh. "Love is so beautiful! And it is such a benefit! The more one loves, the better, I think. And the more persons one loves, the more sweet and generous one's nature becomes. If any one has been bereaved, I am always so glad to hear that they are in love again. Even if the love is unreturned" (here she gave a little swallow), "I still think it in itself the greatest blessing we have; and the most improving."

After a friendly race towards the south, the fleet turned and came back; the company disembarked and walked across the narrow breadth of Anastasia Island to the ocean beach, where, at the Spanish light-house, the collation was to be served later in the day. The old beacon stood, at high tide, almost in the water; for, in two hundred years, the ocean had encroached largely upon the shore. Its square stone tower, which had been topped in the Spanish days with an iron grating and a bonfire, now displayed a revolving light, which flashed and then faded, flashed and faded, signalling out to sea the harbor of St. Augustine. Under the tower stood a coquina house for the keeper, and the whole was fortified, having a defensive wall, with angles and loop-holes. Nothing could have been more beautiful than the soft sapphire tint of the ocean, whose long rollers, coming smoothly in, broke with a musical wash upon the broad white beach which, firm as a pavement, stretched towards the south in long curves. Not a ship was in sight. Overhead sailed an eagle. "Oh, why did we land so soon?" said Ruth, regretfully. "We might have stayed out two hours longer. For we are not to have the supper—or is it the dinner?—at any rate, it's chowder—until sunset."

"We can go out again, if you like," said Walter.

Here Etheridge came up. The implacably clear light which comes from a broad expanse of sea was revealing every minute line in Mrs. Franklin's delicate face. "How wrinkled she looks!" was his self-congratulatory thought. "Even fifteen years ago she was finished—done!" Then he added, aloud: "I think I'll accompany you, if you are going out again. The afternoon promises to be endlessly long here, with nothing to do but gawp for sea-beans, or squawk poetry!" This strenuous description of some of the amusements already in progress on the beach showed that, in the commodore's plans, something had gone wrong.

"Are you really going, commodore?" asked Mrs. Franklin. "Then I'll put Ruth in your charge."

"Put me in it, too," said Dolly. "I should much rather sail than sit here."

"Oh no, Dolly. You never can take that walk to the landing a second time so soon," said the mother.

And so it proved. Dolly started. But, after a few steps, she had to give it up. "I should think you would like to go, His Grand?" she suggested.

"I can't. I have promised to see to the chowder," answered Mrs. Franklin. "Sailing and sea-beans and poetry are all very well. But I have noticed that every one grows gloomy when the chowder is bad!"

Etheridge, Ruth, and Walter Willoughby, therefore, recrossed the island and embarked. The commodore took the helm.

"What boat is that ahead of us?" asked Walter. "Some of our people? Has any one else deserted the sea-beans?"

"I dare say," replied Etheridge, carelessly.

The commodore could manage a boat extremely well; the Owl and the Pussycat flew after that sail ahead, in a line as straight as a plummet.

"Why, it's Mrs. Kip," said Ruth, as they drew nearer. She had recognized the gypsy hat in the other boat.

"Yes, with Albert Tillotson," added Walter.

"What, that donkey?" inquired Etheridge, with well-feigned surprise (and an anger that required no feigning). "He can no more manage a boat than I can manage a comet! Poor Mrs. Kip is in actual danger of her life. The idea of that Tom Noddy of a Tillotson daring to take her out! I must run this boat up alongside, Mr. Willoughby, and get on board immediately. Common humanity requires it."

"The commodore's common humanity is uncommonly like jealousy," said Walter to Ruth when the Owl had dropped behind again after this manœuvre had been successfully executed. "He is a clever old fellow! Of course he knew she was out, and he came with us on purpose. We'll keep near them, Mrs. Chase, and watch their faces; it will be as good as a play."

To his surprise, Ruth, who was generally so ready to laugh, did not pay heed to this. "I am glad he has gone," she said; "for now we need not talk—just sail and sail! Let us go over so far—straight down towards the south." Her eyes had a dreamy expression which was new to him.

"What next!" thought her companion. He glanced furtively at his watch. "I can keep on for half an hour more, I suppose."

But when, at the end of that time, he put about, Ruth, who had scarcely spoken, straightened herself (she had been lying back indolently, with one hand behind her head), and watched the turning prow with regret. "Must we go back so soon? Why?"

"To look for sea-beans," answered Walter. "Are you aware, Mrs. Chase, of the awful significance of that New England phrase of condemnation, 'You don't know beans'? It will be said that I don't know if I take you any farther. For the tide will soon turn, and the wind is already against us."

But his tasks were not yet at an end; another idea soon took possession of his companion's imagination.

"How wild Anastasia looks from here! I have never landed at this point. Can't we land now, just for a few moments? It would be such fun."

"Won't it be more than fun, Mrs. Horace? A wild-goose—? Forgive the pun."

On Anastasia there are ancient trails running north and south. Ruth, discovering one of these paths, followed it inland. "I wish we could meet something, I wish we could have an adventure!" she said. "There are bears over here; and there are alligators too at the pools. Perhaps this trail leads to a pool?" The surmise was correct; the path soon brought them within sight of a dark-looking pond, partly covered with lily leaves. Ruth, who was first (for the old Indian trail was so narrow that they could not walk side by side), turned back suddenly. "There really is an alligator," she whispered. "He is half in and half out of the water. I am going to run round through the thicket, so as to have a nearer view of him." And hurrying with noiseless steps along the trail, she turned into the forest.

He followed. "Don't be foolhardy," he urged. For she seemed to him so fearless that there was no telling what she might do.

But when they reached the opposite side of the pool no alligator was visible, and Ruth, seating herself in the loop of a vine, which formed a natural swing, laughed her merriest.

"You are an excellent actress," he said. "I really believed that you had seen the creature."

"And if I had? They don't attack people; they are great cowards."

"I have an admirable air of being more timid than she is!" he thought, annoyed.

They returned towards the shore along a low ridge. On their way he saw something cross this ridge about thirty feet ahead of them—a slender dark line. He ran forward and looked down (for the ridge was four feet high).

"Come quickly!" he called back to Ruth. "Your alligator was a base invention. But here is something real. He is hardly more than an infant," he continued, his eyes still fixed on the lower slope. "But he is of the blood royal, I can tell by the shape of his neck. I'll get a long branch, Mrs. Chase, and then, as you like adventures, you can see him strike." Where they stood, they were safe, for the snake (it was a young rattlesnake) would not come up the ascent; when he moved, he would glide the other way into the thicket. Hastily cutting a long wand from a bush, he gave it to her. "Touch him," he directed; "on the body, not on the head. Then you will see him coil!" He himself kept his eyes meanwhile on the snake; he did not look at her. But the wand did not descend. "Make haste," he urged, "or he will be off!"

The wand came down slowly, paused, and then touched the reptile, who instantly coiled himself, reared his flat head, and struck at it with his fangs exposed. Walter, excited and interested, waited to see him strike again. But there was no opportunity, for the wand itself was dropping. He turned. Ruth, her face covered with her hands, was shuddering convulsively.

"The snake has gone," he said, reassuringly; "he went off like a shot into the thicket, he is a quarter of a mile away by this time." For he was alarmed by the violence of the tremor that had taken possession of her.

In spite of her tremor, she began to run; she hurried like a wild creature along the ridge until she came to a broad open space of white sand, over which no dark object could approach unseen; here she sank down, sobbing aloud.

He was at his wits' end. Why should a girl, who apparently had no fear of bears or alligators, be frightened out of her senses by one small snake?

"Supposing she should faint—that Dolly is always fainting! What on earth could I do?" he thought.

Ruth, however, did not faint. But she sobbed and sobbed as if she could not stop.

"It's just like her laughing," thought Walter, in despair. "Dear Mrs. Chase," he said aloud, "I am distracted to see how I have made you suffer. These Florida snakes do very little harm, unless one happens to step on them unawares. I did not imagine, I did not dream, that the mere sight—But that makes no difference; I shall never forgive myself; never!"

Ruth looked up, catching her breath. "It was so dreadful!" she murmured, brokenly. "Did you see its—its mouth?" She was so white that even her lips were colorless; her blue eyes were dilated strangely.

He grew more and more alarmed. Apparently she saw it, for she tried to control herself; and, after two or three minutes, she succeeded. "You must not mind if I happen to look rather pale," she said, timidly. "I am sometimes very pale for a moment or two. And then I get dreadfully red in the same way. Dolly often speaks of it. But it doesn't mean anything. I can go now," she added, still timidly.

"She thinks I am vexed," he said to himself, surprised. He was not vexed; on the contrary, in her pallor and this new shyness she was more interesting to him than she had ever been before. As he knew that they ought to be on their way back, he accepted her offer to start, in spite of her white cheeks. But her steps were so weak, and she still trembled so convulsively, that he drew her hand through his arm and held it. Giving her in this way all the help he could, he took her towards the shore, choosing a route through open spaces, so that there should be no vision of any gliding thing in the underbrush near by. When they were off again, crossing the Matanzas on a long tack, she was still very pallid. "I haven't been clever," he thought. "At present she is unnerved by fright. But by to-morrow it will be anger, and she will say that it was my fault." While thinking of this, he talked on various subjects. But it was a monologue; for a long time Ruth made no answer. Then suddenly the color came rushing back to her cheeks. "Please don't tell—don't tell any one how dreadfully frightened I was," she pleaded.

"I never tell anything; I have no talent for narrative," he answered, much relieved to see the returning red. "But I am dreadfully cut up and wretched about that fright I was stupid enough to give you. I wish I could make you forget it, Mrs. Chase; forget it forever."

"On the contrary, I am afraid I shall remember it forever," Ruth answered. Then she added, still timidly, "But you were so kind—It won't be all unpleasant."

"What a school-girl it is!" thought Walter. "And above all things, what a creature of extremes! She must lead Horace Chase a life! However, she is certainly seductively lovely."

CHAPTER XI

AT the end of this week Horace Chase returned. And the next morning he paid a visit to his mother-in-law. He still used his "ma'am" when talking to her; she still called him "Mr. Chase." In mentioning him to others, she sometimes succeeded in bringing out a "Horace." But when the tall, grave-looking business man was before her in person, she never got beyond the more formal title.

"My trip to Savannah, ma'am, was connected with business," Chase began, after he had gone through his usual elaborate inquiries about her health and "the health of Miss Dolly." "One of my friends, David Patterson by name, and myself, have been engaged for some time in arranging a new enterprise in which we are about to embark in California. Matters are now sufficiently advanced for me to mention that about May next we shall need a confidential man in New York to attend to the Eastern part of it. It is highly important to me, ma'am, to have for that position some one I know, some one I can trust. Mr. Patterson will go himself to California, and remain there, probably, a year or more. Meanwhile I, at the East, shall need just the right man under me; for I have other things to see to; I cannot give all my time to this new concern. Do you think, ma'am, that Mr. Franklin could be induced to take this place? Under the circumstances, I should esteem it a favor." And here he made Jared's mother a little bow.

"You are very kind," answered Mrs. Franklin. Having refused to know anything of the correspondence between Ruth and Genevieve, she had had until now no knowledge of the proposed New York place. "Jared's present position is certainly most wretched drudgery," she went on; "far beneath his abilities—which are really great."

"Just so. And what should you recommend, ma'am, as the best way to open the subject? Shall I take a run up to Raleigh? Or shall I drop him a line? Perhaps you yourself would like to write?"

The mother reflected. "If I do," she thought, "Jared will fancy that I have begged the place for him. If Ruth writes, he will be sure of it. If Mr. Chase writes, Jared will answer within the hour—a letter full of jokes and friendliness, but—declining. If Chase goes to Raleigh in person, Jared will decline verbally, and with even more unassailable good-humor. No, there is only one person in the world who could perhaps make him yield, and that person is Genevieve!" At this thought, her face, which always showed like a barometer her inward feelings, changed so markedly that her son-in-law hastened to interpose. "Don't bother about the ways and means, ma'am; I guess I can fix it all right." He spoke in a confident tone, in order to reassure her; for he had a liking for the "limber old lady," as he mentally called her. His confidence, however, was in a large measure assumed; where business matters were in question, the "offishness," as he termed it, of this ex-naval officer had seemed to him such a queer trait that he hardly knew how to grapple with it.

"I was only thinking that my daughter-in-law would perhaps be the best person to speak to Jared," replied Mrs. Franklin at last. (The words came out with an effort.)

"Gen? So she would; she is very clear-headed. But if she is to be the one, I must first let her know just what the place is, and all about it, and how can that be done, ma'am? Wouldn't Mr. Franklin see my letter?"

"No. For she isn't in Raleigh with her husband; she is at Asheville."

"Why, how's that?" inquired Chase, who had seen, from the first, Jared's deep attachment to his wife.

"How indeed!" thought the mother. Her lips quivered. She compressed them in order to conceal it. The satisfaction which she had, for a time, felt in the idea that Genevieve was learning, at last, that she could not always control her husband—this had now vanished in the sense of her son's long and dreary solitude. For the wife had not been in Raleigh during the entire winter; Jared had been left to endure existence as best he could in his comfortless boarding-house. "My daughter-in-law has been very closely occupied at Asheville," she explained, after a moment. "They are improving their house there, you know, and she can superintend work of that sort remarkably well."

"That's so," said Chase, agreeingly.

"She is also much interested in a new wing for the Colored Home," pursued Mrs. Franklin; and this time a little of her deep inward bitterness showed itself in her tone.

"Gen's pretty cute!" thought Chase. "She's not only feathering her own nest up there in Asheville, but at the same time she is starving out that wrong-headed husband of hers." Then he went on aloud: "Well, ma'am, if it's to be Mrs. Jared who is to attend to the matter for me, I guess I'll wait until I can put the whole thing before her in a nutshell, with the details arranged. That will be pretty soon now—as soon as I come back from California. For I must go to California myself before long."

"Are you going to take Ruth? How I shall miss her!" said the mother, dispiritedly.

"We shall not be gone a great while—only five or six weeks. On second thoughts, why shouldn't you come along, ma'am?—come along with us? I guess I could fix it so as you'd be pretty comfortable."

"You are very kind. But I could not leave Dolly."

"Of course not. I didn't mean that, ma'am; I meant that Miss Dolly should come along too. That French woman of Ruth's—Felicity—she's capital when travelling. Or we could have a trained nurse? They have very attractive nurses now, ma'am; real ladies; and good-looking too, and sprightly."

"You are always thoughtful," answered Mrs. Franklin, amused by this description. "But it is impossible. Dolly can travel for two or three days, if we take great precautions; but a longer time makes her ill. Ruth is coming to lunch, isn't she? With Malachi? I am so glad you brought him; he doesn't have many holidays."

"Well, ma'am, he was there in Savannah, buying a bell, or, rather, getting prices. A church bell, as I understood. He'd about got through, and was going back to Asheville, when I suggested to him to come along down to St. Augustine for three or four days. 'Come and look up your wandering flock'—that is what I remarked to him. For you know, ma'am, that with yourself and Miss Dolly, the commodore and Mrs. Kip, you make four—four of his sheep in Florida; including Miss Evangeline Taylor, four sheep and a first-prize lamb."

Mrs. Franklin smiled. But she felt herself called upon to explain a little. "We are not of his flock, exactly; Mr. Hill has a mission charge. But though he is not our rector, we are all much attached to him."

"He's a capital little fellow, and works hard; I've great respect for him. But somehow, ma'am, he's taken a queer way lately of stopping short when he is talking. Almost as though he had choked!"

"So he has—choked himself off," answered Mrs. Franklin, breaking into a laugh. "When with you, he is constantly tempted to ask for money for the Mission, he says. He knows, however, that the clergy are always accused of paying court to rich men for begging purposes, and he is determined to be an exception. But he finds it uncommonly difficult."

"How much does he want?" inquired Chase. Then he paused. "Perhaps his notions take the form of a church?" he went on. "I've been thinking a little of building a church, ma'am. You see, my mother was a great church-goer; she found her principal comfort in it. I've been very far from steady myself, I'm sorry to say; I haven't done much credit to her bringing-up. And so I've thought that I'd put up a church some day, as a sort of memory of her. Because, if she'd lived, she would have liked that better than anything else."