CHAPTER XXIV--A MODERN MIRACLE

MRS. DURHAM, the Doctor wants you,” said Charlie when McLeod’s footfall

had died away.

“Charlie, dear, why don’t you call me ‘Mama’--surely you love me a

little wee bit, don’t you?” she asked, taking the boy’s hand tenderly in

hers.

“Yes’m,” he replied hanging his head.

“Then do say Mama. You don’t know how good it would be in my ears.”

“I try to but it chokes me,” he half whispered, glancing timidly up at

her. “Let me call you Aunt Margaret, I always wanted an aunt and I think

your name Margaret’s so sweet,” he shyly added.

She kissed him and said, “All right, if that’s all you will give me.”

She passed on into the library where the Preacher waited her.

“My dear, I’ve just given young McLeod a piece of my mind. I wanted to

say to you that you are entirely mistaken in his character. He’s a bad

egg. I know all the facts about his treachery. He’s as smooth a liar as

I’ve met in years.”

“With all his brute nature, there’s some good in him,” she persisted.

“Well, it will stay in him. He will never let it get out.”

“All right, have your way about it for the time. We’ll see who is right

in the long run. Now I’ve a more pressing and tougher problem for your

solution.”

“What is it?”

“Dick.”

“What’s he done this time?”

“He steals everything he can get his hands on.”

“He is a puzzle.”

“He’s the greatest liar I ever saw,” she continued. “He simply will not

tell the truth if he can think up a lie in time. I’d say run him off

the place, but for Charlie. He seems to love the little scoundrel. I’m

afraid his influence over Charlie will be vicious, but it would break

the child’s heart to drive him away. What shall we do with him?”

The Preacher laughed. “I give it up, my dear, you’ve got beyond my

depth now. I don’t know whether he’s got a soul. Certainly the very

rudimentary foundations of morals seem lacking. I believe you could take

a young ape and teach him quicker. I leave him with you. At present it’s

a domestic problem.”

“Thanks, that’s so encouraging.”

Dick was a puzzle and no mistake about it. But to Charlie his rolling

mischievous eyes, his cunning fingers and his wayward imagination were

unfailing fountains of life. He found every bird’s nest within two

miles of town. He could track a rabbit almost as swiftly and surely as

a hound. He could work like fury when he had a mind to, and loaf a half

day over one row of the garden when he didn’t want to work, which was

his chronic condition.

When the revival season set in for the negroes in the summer, the days

of sorrow began for householders. Every negro in the community became

absolutely worthless and remained so until the emotional insanity

attending their meetings wore off.

Aunt Mary, Mrs. Durham’s cook, got salvation over again every summer

with increasing power and increasing degeneration in her work. Some

nights she got home at two o’clock and breakfast was not ready until

nine. Some nights she didn’t get home at all, and Mrs. Durham had to get

breakfast herself.

It was a hard time for Dick who had not yet experienced religion, and

on whom fell the brunt of the extra work and Mrs. Durham’s fretfulness

besides.

“I tell you what less do, Charlie!” he cried one day. “Less go down ter

dat nigger chu’ch, en bus’ up de meetin’! I’se gettin’ tired er dis.”

“How’ll you do it?”

“I show you somefin’?” He reached under his shirt next to his skin, and

pulled out Dr. Graham’s sun glass.

“Where’d you get that, Dick?”

“Foun’ it whar er man lef’ it.” He walled his eyes solemnly.

“Des watch here when I turns ’im in de sun. I kin set dat pile er

straw er fire wid it!”

“You mustn’t set the church afire!” warned Charlie.

“Naw, chile, but I git up in de gallery, en when ole Uncle Josh gins ter

holler en bawl en r’ar en charge, I fling dat blaze er light right on

his bal’ haid, en I set him afire sho’s you bawn!”

“Dick, I wouldn’t do it,” said Charlie, laughing in spite of himself.

Charlie refused to accompany him. But Dick’s mind was set on the

necessity of this work of reform. So in the afternoon he slipped off

without leave and quietly made his way into the gallery of the Negro

Baptist church.

The excitement was running high. Uncle Josh had preached one sermon an

hour in length, and had called up the mourners. At least fifty had come

forward. The benches had been cleared for five rows back from the pulpit

to give plenty of room for the mourners to crawl over the floor, walk

back and forth and shout when they “came through,” and for their friends

to fan them.

This open place was covered with wheat straw to keep the mourners off

the bare floor, and afford some sort of comfort for those far advanced

in mourning, who went into trances and sometimes lay motionless for

hours on their backs or flat on their faces.

The mourners had kicked and shuffled this straw out to the edges and the

floor was bare. Uncle Josh had sent two deacons out for more straw.

In the meantime he was working himself up to another mighty climax of

exhortation to move sinners to come forward.

“Come on ter glory you po, po sinners, en flee ter de Lamb er God befo

de flames er hell swaller you whole! At de last great day de Sperit

’ll flash de light er his shinin’ face on dis ole parch up sinful

worl’, en hit ’ll ketch er fire in er minute, an de yearth ’ll melt

wid furvient heat! Whar ’ll you be den po tremblin’ sinner? Whar ’ll

you be when de flame er de Sperit smites de moon and de stars wid

fire, en dey gin ter drap outen de sky en knock big holes in de burnin’

yearth? Whar ’ll you be when de rocks melt wid dat heat, en de sun

hide his face in de black smoke dat rise fum de pit?”

Moans and groans and shrieks, louder and louder filled the air. Uncle

Josh paused a moment and looked for his deacons with the straw. They

were just coming up the steps with a great armful over their heads.

“What’s de matter wid you breddern! Fetch on dat wheat straw! Here’s

dese tremblin’ souls gwine down inter de flames er hell des fur de lak

er wheat straw!”

The brethren hurried forward with the wheat straw, and just as they

reached Uncle Josh standing perspiring in the midst of his groaning

mourners, Dick flashed from the gallery a stream of dazzling light on

the old man’s face and held it steadily on his bald head. Josh was too

astonished to move at first. He was simply paralysed with fear. It was

all right to talk about the flame of the Spirit, but he wasn’t exactly

ready to run into it. Suddenly he clapped his hands on the top of his

head and sprang straight up in the air yelling in a plain everyday

profane voice, “God-der-mighty! What’s dat?”

The brethren holding the straw saw it and stood dumb with terror. The

light disappeared from Uncle Josh’s head and lit the straw in splendour

on one of the deacon’s shoulders. Aunt Mary’s voice was heard above the

mourners’ din, clear, shrill and soul piercing.

“G-l-o-r-y! G-l-o-r-y ter God! De flame er de Sperit! De judgment day!

Yas Lawd, I’se here! Glory! Halleluyah!”

Suddenly the straw on the deacon’s back burst into flames! And

pandemonium broke loose. A weak-minded sinner screamed, “De flames er

Hell!”

The mourners smelled the smoke and sprang from the floor with white

staring eyes. When they saw the fire and got their bearings they made

for the open,--they jumped on each others’ back and made for the door

like madmen. Those nearest the windows sprang through, and when the

lower part of the window was jammed, big buck negroes jumped on the

backs of the lower crowd and plunged through the two upper sashes with a

crash that added new terror to the panic.

In two minutes the church was empty, and the yard full of crazy,

shouting negroes.

Dick stepped from the gallery into the crowd as the last ones emerged,

ran up to the pulpit and stamped out the fire in the straw with his bare

feet. He looked around to see if they had left anything valuable behind

in the stampede, and sauntered leisurely out of the church.

“Now dog-gone ’em let ’em yell!” he muttered to himself.

When Uncle Josh sufficiently recovered his senses to think, and saw

the church still standing, with not even a whiff of smoke to be seen,

instead of the roaring furnace he had expected, he was amazed. He

called his scattered deacons together and they went cautiously back to

investigate.

“Hit’s no use in talkin’ Bre’r Josh, dey sho wuz er fire!” cried one of

the deacons.

“Sho’s de Lawd’s in heaben. I feel it gittin’ on my fingers fo I drap

dat straw!” said another.

“Hit smite me fust right on top er my haid!” whispered Uncle Josh in

awe.

They cautiously approached the pulpit and there in front of it lay the

charred fragments of the burned straw pile.

They gathered around it in awe-struck wonder. One of them touched it

with his foot.

“Doan do dat!” cried Uncle Josh, lifting his hand with authority.

They drew back, Uncle Josh saw the immense power in that heap of charred

straw. Some of it was a little damp and it had been only partly burned.

“Dar’s de mericle er de Sperit!” he solemnly declared.

“Yas Lawd!” echoed a deacon.

“Fetch de hammer, en de saw, en de nails, en de boards en build right

dar en altar ter de Sperit!” were his prophetic commands.

And they did. They got an old show case of glass, put the charred straw

in it, and built an open box work around it just where it fell in front

of the pulpit.

Then a revival broke out that completely paralysed the industries of

Campbell county. Every negro stopped work and went to that church. Uncle

Josh didn’t have to preach or to plead. They came in troops towards the

magic altar, whose fame and mystery had thrilled every superstitious

soul with its power. The benches were all moved out and the whole church

floor given up to mourners. Uncle Josh had an easy time walking around

just adding a few terrifying hints to trembling sinners, or helping to

hold some strong sister when she had “come through,” with so much glory

in her bones that there was danger she would hurt somebody.

After a week the matter became so serious that the white people set in

motion an investigation of the affair. Dick had thrown out a mysterious

hint that he knew some things that were very funny.

“Doan you tell nobody!” he would solemnly say to Charlie.

And then he would lie down on the grass and roll and laugh. At length

by dint of perseverance, and a bribe of a quarter, the Preacher induced

Dick to explain the mystery. He did, and it broke up the meeting.

Uncle Josh’s fury knew no bounds. He was heartbroken at the sudden

collapse of his revival, chagrined at the recollection of his own terror

at the fire, and fearful of an avalanche of backsliders from the meeting

among those who had professed even with the greatest glory.

He demanded that the Preacher should turn Dick over to him for

correction. The Preacher took a few hours to consider whether he should

whip him himself or turn him over to Uncle Josh. Dick heard Uncle Josh’s

demand. Out behind the stable he and Charlie held a council of war.

“You go see Miss Mar’get fur me, en git up close to her, en tell her

taint right ter ’low no low down black nigger ter whip me!”

“All right Dick, I will,” agreed Charlie.

“Case ef ole Josh beats me I gwine ter run away. I nebber git ober dat.”

Dick had threatened to run away often before when he wanted to force

Charlie to do something for him. Once he had gone a mile out of town

with his clothes tied in a bundle, and Charlie trudging after him

begging him not to leave.

The boy did his best to save Dick the humiliation of a whipping at the

hands of Uncle Josh, but in vain.

When Uncle Josh led him out to the stable lot, his face was not pleasant

to look upon. There was a dangerous gleam in Dick’s eye that boded no

good to his enemy.

“You imp er de debbil!” exclaimed Uncle Josh shaking his switch with

unction.

“I fool you good enough, you ole bal’ headed ape!” answered Dick

gritting his teeth defiantly.

“I make you sing enudder chune fo I’se done wid you.”

“En if you does, nigger, you know what I gwine do fur you?” cried Dick

rolling his eyes up at his enemy.

“What kin you do, honey? asked Uncle Josh, humouring his victim now with

the evident relish of a cat before his meal on a mouse.

“Ef you hits me hard, I gwine ter burn you house down on you haid some

night, en run erway des es sho es I kin stick er match to it,” said

Dick.

“You is, is you?” thundered Josh with wrath.

“Dat I is. En I burn yo ole chu’ch de same night.”

Uncle Josh was silent a moment. Dick’s words had chilled his heart.

He was afraid of him, but he was afraid to back down from what was now

evidently his duty. So without further words he whipped him. Yet to save

his life he could not hit him as hard as he thought he deserved.

That night Dick disappeared from Hambright, and for weeks every evening

at dusk the wistful face of Charlie Gaston could be seen on the big hill

to the south of town vainly watching for somebody. He would always take

something to eat in his pockets, and when he gave up his vigil he would

place the food under a big shelving rock where they had often played

together. But the birds and ground squirrels ate it. He would slip back

the next day hoping to see Dick jump out of the cave and surprise him.

And then at last he gave it up, sat down under the rock and cried. He

knew Dick would grow to be a man somewhere out in the big world and

never come back.

BOOK TWO--LOVE’S DREAM

CHAPTER I--BLUE EYES AND BLACK HAIR

SHE’S coming next month, Charlie,” said Mrs. Durham, looking up from a

letter.

“Who is it now. Auntie, another divinity with which you are going to

overwhelm me?” asked Gaston smiling as he laid his book down and leaned

back in his chair.

“Some one I’ve been telling you about for the last month.”

“Which one?”

“Oh, you wretch! You don’t think about anything except your books. I’ve

been dinning that girl’s praises into your ears for fully five weeks,

and you look at me in that innocent way and ask which one?”

“Honestly, Aunt Margaret, you’re always telling me about some beautiful

girl, I get them mixed. And then when I see them, they don’t come up to

the advance notices you’ve sent out. To tell you the truth, you are

such a beautiful woman, and I’ve got so used to your standard, the girls

can’t measure up to it.”

“You flatterer. A woman of forty-two a standard of beauty! Well, it’s

sweet to hear you say it, you handsome young rascal.”

“It’s the honest truth. You are one of the women who never show the

addition of a year. You have spoiled my eyesight for ordinary girls.”

“Hush, sir, you don’t dare to talk to any girl like you talk to me. They

all say you’re afraid of them.”

“Well, I am, in a sense. I’ve been disappointed so many times.”

“Oh! you ’ll find her yet and when you do!”--

“What do you think will happen?”

“I’m certain you will be the biggest fool in the state.”

“That will make it nice for the girl, won’t it?”

“Yes, and I shall enjoy your antics. You who have dissected love with

your brutal German philosophy, and found every girl’s faults with such

ease,--it will be fun to watch you flounder in the meshes at last.”

“Auntie, seriously, it will be the happiest day of my life. For four

years my dreams have been growing more and more impossible. Who is this

one?”

“She is the most beautiful girl I know, and the brightest and the best,

and if she gets hold of you she will clip your wings and bring you down

to earth. I ’ll watch you with interest,” said Mrs. Durham looking

over the letter again and laughing.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Just a little joke she gets off in this letter.”

“But who is she? You haven’t told me.”

“I did tell you--she’s General Worth’s daughter, Miss Sallie. She writes

she is coming up to spend a month at the Springs, with her friend Helen

Lowell, of Boston, and wants me to corral all the young men in the

community and have them fed and in fine condition for work when they

arrive.”

“She evidently intends to have a good time.”

“Yes, and she will.”

“Fortunately my law practice is not rushing me at this season. My total

receipts for June last year were two dollars and twenty-five cents. It

will hardly go over two-fifty this year.”

“I’ve told her you’re a rising young lawyer.”

“I have plenty of room to rise, Auntie. If you will just keep on letting

me board with you, I hope to work my practice up to ten dollars a month

in the course of time.”

“Don’t you want to hear something about Miss Sallie?”

“Of course, I was just going to ask you if she’s as homely as that last

one you tried to get off on me.”

“I’ve told you she’s a beauty. She made a sensation at her finishing

school in Baltimore. It’s funny that she was there the last year you

were at the Johns Hopkins University. She’s the belle of Independence,

rich, petted, and the only child of old General Worth, who thinks the

sun rises and sets in her pretty blue eyes.”

“So she has blue eyes?”

“Yes, blue eyes and black hair.”

“What a funny combination! I never saw a girl with blue eyes and black

hair.”

“It’s often seen in the far South. I expect you to be drowned in those

blue eyes. They are big, round and child-like, and look out of their

black lashes as though surprised at their dark setting. This contrast

accents their dreamy beauty, and her eyes seem to swim in a dim blue

mist like the point where the sea and sky meet on the horizon far out on

the ocean. She is bright, witty, romantic and full of coquetry. She is

determined to live her girl’s life to its full limit. She is fond of

society and dances divinely.”

“That’s bad. I never even cut the pigeon’s wing in my life--and I’m too

old to learn.”

“She has a full queenly figure, small hands and feet, delicate wrists, a

dimple in one cheek only, and a mass of brown-black hair that curls when

it’s going to rain.”

“That’s fine, we wouldn’t need a barometer on life’s voyage, would we?”

“No, but you will be looking for a pilot and a harbour before you’ve

known her a month. Her upper lip is a little fuller and projects

slightly over the lower, and they are both beautifully fluted and curved

like the petals of a flower, which makes the most tantalising mouth a

standing challenge for a kiss.”

“Oh! Auntie, you’re joking! You never saw such a girl. You’re breaking

into my heart, stealing glances at my ideal.”

“All right, sir, wait and see for yourself. She has pretty shell-like

ears, her laughter is full, contagious, and like music. She plays

divinely on the piano, can’t sing a note, but dresses to kill. You might

as well wind up your affairs, and get ready for the first serious work

of your life. You will have your hands full after you see her.”

“But did I understand you to say she’s rich?”

“Yes, they say her father is worth half a million.”

“Do you think she could be interested in the poor in this county?”

“Yes, she doesn’t seem to know she’s an heiress. Her father, the

General, is a deacon in the Baptist church at Independence, and hates

dudes and fops with all his old-fashioned soul. His idea of a man is one

of character, and the capacity of achievement, not merely a possessor of

money. Still, I imagine he is going to give any man trouble who tries to

take his daughter away from him.”

“I’m afraid that money lets me out of the race.”

“Nothing of the sort, when you see her you will never allow a little

thing like that to worry you.”

“It’s not her dollars that will worry me. It’s the fact that she’s got

them and I haven’t. But, anyhow, Auntie, from your description you can

book me for one night at least.”

“I’m going to book you for her lackey, her slave, devoted to her every

whim while she’s here. One night--the idea!”

“Auntie, you’re too generous to others. I’ve no notion all this

rigmarole about your Miss Sallie Worth is true. But I ’ll do anything

to please you.”

“Very well, I ’ll see whom you are trying to please later.”

“I must go,” said Gaston, hastily rising. “I have an engagement to

discuss the coming political campaign with the Hon. Allan McLeod, the

present Republican boss of the state.”

“I didn’t know you hobnobbed with the enemy.”

“I don’t. But as far as I can understand him, he purposes to take me

up on an exceeding high mountain and offer me the world and the fulness

thereof. We all like to be tempted whether we fall or not. The Doctor

hates McLeod. I think he holds some grudge against him. What do you

think of him, Auntie? He swears by you. I used to dislike him as a boy,

but he seems a pretty decent sort of fellow now, and I can’t help liking

just a little anybody who loves you. I confess he has a fascination for

me.”

“Why do you ask my opinion of him?” slowly asked Mrs. Durham.

“Because I’m not quite sure of his honesty. He talks fairly, but there’s

something about him that casts a doubt over his fairest words. He says

he has the most important proposition of my life to place before me

to-day, and I’m at a loss how to meet him--whether as a well-meaning

friend or a scheming scoundrel. He’s a puzzle to me.”

“Well Charlie, I don’t mind telling you that he is a puzzle to me.

I’ve always been strangely attracted to him, even when he was a big

red-headed brute of a boy. The Doctor always disliked him and I thought,

misjudged him. He has always paid me the supremest deference, and of

late years the most subtle flattery. No woman, who feels her life a

failure, as I do mine, can be indifferent to such a compliment from

a man of trained mind and masterful character. This is a sore subject

between the Doctor and myself. And when I see him shaking hands a little

too lingeringly with admiring sisters after his services, I repay him

with a chat with my devoted McLeod. Don’t ask me. I like him, and I

don’t like him. I admire him and at the same time I suspect and half

fear him.”

“Strange we feel so much alike about him. But your heart has always been

very close to mine, since you slipped your arm around me that night

my mother died. I know about what he will say, and I know about what I

’ll do.” He stooped and kissed his fostermother tenderly.

“Charlie, I’m in earnest about my pretty girl that’s coming. Don’t

forget it.”

“Bah! You’ve fooled me before.”

CHAPTER II--THE VOICE OF THE TEMPTER

McLEOD was waiting with some impatience in his room at the hotel.

“Walk in Gaston, you’re a little late. However, better late than never.”

McLeod plunged directly into the purpose of his visit.

“Gaston you’re a man of brains, and oratorical genius. I heard your

speech in the last Democratic convention in Raleigh, and I don’t say

it to flatter you, that was the greatest speech made in any assembly in

this state since the war.”

“Thanks!” said Gaston with a wave of his arm.

“I mean it. You know too much to be in sympathy with the old moss-backs

who are now running this state. For fourteen years, the South has

marched to the polls and struck blindly at the Republican party, and

three times it struck to kill. The Southern people have nothing in

common with these Northern Democrats who make your platforms and

nominate your candidate. You don’t ask anything about the platform or

the man. You would vote for the devil if the Democrats nominated him,

and ask no questions; and what infuriates me is you vote to enforce

platforms that mean economic ruin to the South.”

“Man shall not live by bread alone, McLeod.”

“Sure, but he can’t live on dead men’s bones. You vote in solid mass

on the Negro question, which you settled by the power of Anglo-Saxon

insolence when you destroyed the Reconstruction governments at a blow.

Why should you keep on voting against every interest of the South,

merely because you hate the name Republican?”

“Why? Simply because so long as the Negro is here with a ballot in his

hands he is a menace to civilisation. The Republican party placed him

here. The name Republican will stink in the South for a century, not

because they beat us in war, but because two years after the war, in

profound peace, they inaugurated a second war on the unarmed people of

the South, butchering the starving, the wounded, the women and children.

God in heaven, will I ever forget that day they murdered my mother!

Their attempt to establish with the bayonet an African barbarism on the

ruins of Southern society was a conspiracy against human progress. It

was the blackest crime of the nineteenth century.”

“You are talking in a dead language. We are living in a new world.”

“But principles are eternal.”

“Principles? I’m not talking about principles. I’m talking about

practical politics. The people down here haven’t voted on a principle in

years. They’ve been voting on old Simon Legree. He left the state nearly

a quarter of a century ago.”

“Yes, McLeod, but his soul has gone marching on. The Republican party

fought the South because such men as Legree lived in it, and abused the

negroes, and the moment they won, turn and make Legree and his breed

their pets. Simon Legree is more than a mere man who stole five

millions of dollars, alienated the races, and covered the South with the

desolation of anarchy. He is an idea. He represents everything that the

soul of the South loathes, and that the Republican party has tried to

ram down our throats, Negro supremacy in politics, and Negro equality in

society.”

“You are talking about the dead past, Gaston. I’m surprised at a man

of your brain living under such a delusion. How can there be Negro

supremacy when they are in a minority?”

“Supremacy under a party system is always held by a minority. The

dominant faction of a party rules the party, and the successful party

rules the state. If the Negro only numbered one-fifth the population and

they all belonged to one party, they could dictate the policy of that

party.”

“You know that a few white brains really rule that black mob.”

“Yes, but the black mob defines the limits within which you live and

have your being.”

“Gaston, the time has come to shake off this nightmare, and face the

issues of our day and generation. We are going to win in this campaign,

but I want you. I like you. You are the kind of man we need now to take

the field and lead in this campaign.”

“How are you going to win?”

“We are going to form a contract with the Farmer’s Alliance and break

the backbone of the Bourbon Democracy of the South. The farmers have now

a compact body of 50,000 voters, thoroughly organised, and combined with

the negro vote we can hold this state until Gabriel blows his trumpet.”

“That’s a pretty scheme. Our farmers are crazy now with all sorts of

fool ideas,” said Gaston thoughtfully.

“Exactly, my boy, and we’ve got them by the nose.”

“If you can carry through that programme, you’ve got us in a hole.”

“In a hole? I should say we’ve got you in the bottomless pit with the

lid bolted down. You ’ll not even rise at the day of judgment. It

won’t be necessary!” laughed McLeod, and as he laughed changed his tone

in the midst of his laughter.

“And what is the great proposition you have to make to me?” asked

Gaston.

“Join with us in this new coalition, and stump the state for us.

Your fortune will be made, win or lose. I ’ll see that the National

Republican Committee pays you a thousand dollars a week for your

speeches, at least five a week, two hundred dollars apiece. If we lose,

you will make ten thousand dollars in the canvass, and stand in line for

a good office under the National Administration. If we win, I ’ll

put you in the Governor’s Palace for four years. There’s a tide in the

affairs of men, you know. It’s at the flood at this moment for you.”

Gaston was silent a moment and looked thoughtfully out of the window.

The offer was a tremendous temptation. A group of old fogies had

dominated the Democratic party for ten years, and had kept the younger

men down with their war cries and old soldier candidates, until he had

been more than once disgusted. He felt as sure of McLeod’s success as if

he already saw it. It was precisely the movement he had warned the old

pudding-head set against in the preceding campaign in which they had

deliberately alienated the Farmer’s Alliance. They had pooh poohed his

warning and blundered on to their ruin.

It was the dream of his life to have money enough to buy back his

mother’s old home, beautify it, and live there in comfort with a great

library of books he would gather. The possibility of a career at the

state Capital and then at Washington for so young a man was one of

dazzling splendour to his youthful mind. For the moment it seemed almost

impossible to say no.

McLeod saw his hesitation and already smiled with the certainty of

triumph. A cloud overspread his face when Gaston at length said, “I

’ll give you my answer to-morrow.”

“All right, you’re a gentleman. I can trust you. Our conversation is of

course only between you and me.”

“Certainly, I understand that.”

All that day and night he was alone fighting out the battle in his soul.

It was an easy solution of life that opened before him. The attainment

of his proudest ambitions lay within his grasp almost without a

struggle. Such a campaign, with his name on the lips of surging

thousands around those speaker’s stands, was an idea that fascinated him

with a serpent charm.

All that he had to do was to give up his prejudices on the Negro

question. His own party stood for no principle except the supremacy of

the Anglo-Saxon. On the issue of the party platforms, he was in accord

with the modern Republican utterances at almost every issue, and so were

his associates in the Southern Democracy. The Negro was the point.

What was the use now of persisting in the stupid reiteration of the old

slogan of white supremacy? The Negro had the ballot. He was still the

ward of the nation, and likely to be for all time, so far as he could

see. The Negro was the one pet superstition of the millions who

lived where no negro dwelt. His person and his ballot were held more

peculiarly sacred and inviolate in the South than that of any white man

elsewhere.

The possibility of a reunion in friendly understanding and sympathy

between the masses of the North and the masses of the South seemed

remote and impossible in his day and generation.

He asked himself the question, could such a revolution toward universal

suffrage ever go backward, no matter how base the motive which gave it

birth? Why not give up impracticable dreams, accept things as they are,

and succeed?

He did not confer with the Rev. John Durham on this question, because

he knew what his answer would be without asking. A thousand times he

had said to him, with the emphasis he could give to words, “_My boy, the

future American must be an Anglo-Saxon or a Mulatto! We are now deciding

which it shall be. The future of the world depends on the future of this

Republic. This Republic can have no future if racial lines are broken,

and its proud citizenship sinks to the level of a mongrel breed of

Mulattoes. The South must tight this battle to a finish. Two thousand

years look down upon the struggle, and Two thousand years of the future

bend low to catch the message of life or death!_”

He could see now his drawn face with its deep lines and his eyes

flashing with passion as he said this. These words haunted Gaston now

with strange power as he walked along the silent streets.

He walked down past his old home, stopped and leaned on the gate, and

looked at it long and lovingly. What a flood of tender and sorrowful

memories swept his soul! He lived over again the days of despair when

his mother was an invalid. He recalled their awful poverty, and then the

last terrible day with that mob of negroes trampling over the lawn and

overrunning the house. He saw the white face of his mother whose memory

he loved as he loved life. And now he recalled a sentence from her dying

lips. He had all but lost its meaning.

“You will grow to be a brave strong man. You will fight this battle out,

and win back our home, and bring your own bride here in the far away

days of sunshine and success I see for you.”

_You will fight this battle out_--he had almost lost that sentence in

his hunger for that which followed. It came to his soul now ringing like

a trumpet call to honour and duty.

He turned on his heel and walked rapidly home. He looked at his watch.

It was two o’clock in the morning.

“We will fight it out on the old lines,” he said to McLeod next day.

“You will find me a pretty good fighter.”

“Unto death, let it be,” answered Gaston firmly setting his lips.

“I admire your pluck, but I’m sorry for your judgment. You know you’re

beaten before you begin.”

“Defeat that’s seen has lost its bitterness before it comes.”

“Then get ready the flowers for the funeral. I hoped you would have

better sense. You are one of the men now I ’ll have to crush first,

thoroughly, and for all time. I’m not afraid of the old fools. I ’ll

be fair enough to tell you this,” said McLeod.

“Not since Legree’s day has the Republican party had so dangerous a man

at its head,” said Gaston thoughtfully to himself as McLeod strode away

across the square. “He has ten times the brains of his older master, and

none of his superstitions. He will give me a hard fight.”

CHAPTER III--FLORA

HAMBRIGHT had changed but little in the eighteen years of peace that

had followed the terrors of Legree’s régime. The population had doubled,

though but few houses had been built. The town had not grown from the

development of industry, but for a very simple reason--the country

people had moved into the town, seeking refuge from a new terror that

was growing of late more and more a menace to a country home, the roving

criminal negro.

The birth of a girl baby was sure to make a father restless, and when

the baby looked up into his face one day with the soft light of a

maiden, he gave up his farm and moved to town.

The most important development of these eighteen years was the complete

alienation of the white and black races as compared with the old

familiar trust of domestic life.

When Legree finished his work as the master artificer of the

Reconstruction Policy, he had dug a gulf between the races as deep

as hell. It had never been bridged. The deed was done and it had

crystallised into the solid rock that lies at the basis of society. It

was done at a formative period, and it could no more be undone now than

you could roll the universe back in its course.

The younger generation of white men only knew the Negro as an enemy of

his people in politics and society.

He never came in contact with him except in menial service, in which

the service rendered was becoming more and more trifling, and his habits

more insolent. He had his separate schools, churches, preachers and

teachers, and his political leaders were the beneficiaries of Legree’s

legacies.

With the Anglo-Saxon race guarding the door of marriage with fire and

sword, the effort was being made to build a nation inside a nation of

two antagonistic races. No such thing had ever been done in the history

of the human race, even under the development of the monarchial and

aristocratic forms of society. How could it be done under the formulas

of Democracy with Equality as the fundamental basis of law? And yet this

was the programme of the age.

Gaston was feeling blue from the reaction which followed his temptation

by McLeod. His duty was clear the night before as he walked firmly

homeward, recalling the tragedy of the past. Now in the cold light

of day, the past seemed far away and unreal. The present was near,

pressing, vital. He laid down a book he was trying to read, locked his

office and strolled down town to see Tom Camp.

This old soldier had come to be a sort of oracle to him. His affection

for the son of his Colonel was deep and abiding, and his extravagant

flattery of his talents and future were so evidently sincere they always

acted as a tonic. And he needed a tonic to-day.

Tom was seated in a chair in his yard under a big cedar, working on a

basket, and a little golden-haired girl was playing at his feet. It was

his old home he had lost in Legree’s day, but had got back through the

help of General Worth, who came up one day and paid back Tom’s gift of

lightwood in gleaming yellow metal. His long hair and full beard were

white now, and his eyes had a soft deep look that told of sorrows borne

in patience and faith beyond the ken of the younger man. It was this

look on Tom’s face that held Gaston like a magnet when he was in

trouble.

“Tom, I’m blue and heartsick. I’ve come down to have you cheer me up a

little.”

“You’ve got the blues? Well that is a joke!” cried Tom. “You, young and

handsome, the best educated man in the county, the finest orator in

the state, life all before you, and God fillin’ the world to-day with

sunshine and spring flowers, and all for you! You blue! That is a joke.”

And Tom’s voice rang in hearty laughter.

“Come here, Flora, and kiss me, you won’t laugh at me, will you?”

The child climbed up into his lap, slipped her little arms around his

neck and hugged and kissed him.

“Now, once more, dearie, long and close and hard--oh! That’s worth a

pound of candy!” Again she squeezed his neck and kissed him, looking

into his face with a smile.

“I love you, Charlie,” she said with quaint seriousness.

“Do you, dear? Well, that makes me glad. If I can win the love of as

pretty a little girl as you I’m not a failure, am I?” And he smoothed

her curls.

“Ain’t she sweet?” cried Tom with pride as he laid aside his basket and

looked at her with moistened eyes.

“Tom, she’s the sweetest child I ever saw.”

“Yes, she’s God’s last and best gift to me, to show me He still loved

me. Talk about trouble. Man, you’re a baby. You ain’t cut your teeth

yet. Wait till you’ve seen some things I’ve seen. Wait till you’ve seen

the light of the world go out, and staggerin’ in the dark met the devil

face to face, and looked him in the eye, and smelled the pit. And then

feel him knock you down in it, and the red waves roll over you and

smother you. I’ve been there.”

Tom paused and looked at Gaston. “You weren’t here when I come to the

end of the world, the time when that baby was born, and Annie died

with the little red bundle sleepin’ on her breast. The oldest girl was

murdered by Legree’s nigger soldiers. Then Annie give me that little

gal. Lord, I was the happiest old fool that ever lived that day! And

then when I looked into Annie’s dead face, I went down, down, down! But

I looked up from the bottom of the pit and I saw the light of them

blue eyes and I heard her callin’ me to take her. How I watched her and

nursed her, a mother and a father to her, day and night, through the

long years, and how them little fingers of hers got hold of my heart!

Now, I bless the Lord for all His goodness and mercy to me. She will

make it all right. She’s going to be a lady and such a beauty! She’s

goin’ to school now, and me and the General’s goin’ to take her ter

college bye and bye, and she’s goin’ to marry some big handsome fellow

like you, and her crippled grey haired daddy ’ll live in her house in

his old age. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.”

“Tom, you make me ashamed.”

“You ought to be, man, a youngster like you to talk about gettin’ the

blues. What’s all your education for?”

“Sometimes I think that only men like you have ever been educated.”

“G’long with your foolishness, boy. I ain’t never had a show in this

world. The nigger’s been on my back since I first toddled into the

world, and I reckon he ’ll ride me into the grave. They are my only

rivals now making them baskets and they always undersell me.”

Gaston started as Tom uttered the last sentence.

“With you, boy, it’s all plain sailin’. You’re the best looking chap in

the county. I was a dandy when I was young. It does me good to look at

you if you don’t care nothin’ about fine clothes. Then you’re as sharp

as a razor. There ain’t a man in No’th Caliny that can stand up agin you

on the stump. I’ve heard ’em all. You ’ll be the Governor of this

state.”

That was always the climax of Tom’s prophetic flattery. He could think

of no grander end of a human life than to crown it in the Governor’s

Palace of North Carolina. He belonged to the old days when it was a

bigger thing to be the Governor of a great state than to hold any office

short of the Presidency,--when men resigned seats in the United States

Senate to run for Governor, and when the national government was so

puny a thing that the bankers of Europe refused to loan money on United

States bonds unless countersigned by the State of Virginia. And that was

not so long ago. The bankers sent that answer to Buchanan’s Secretary of

the Treasury.

“Tom, you’ve lifted me out of the dumps. I owe you a doctor’s fee,”

cried Gaston with enthusiasm as he placed Flora back on the grass and

started to his office.

“All I charge you is to come again. The old man’s proud of his young

friend. You make me feel like I’m somebody in the old world after all.

And some day when you’re great and rich and famous and the world’s full

of your name, I ’ll tell folks I know you like my own boy, and I ’ll

brag about how many times you used to come to see me.”

“Hush, Tom, you make me feel silly,” said Gaston as he warmly pressed

the old fellow’s hand. He went back toward his office with lighter step

and more buoyant heart. His mind was as clear as the noonday sun that

was now flooding the green fresh world with its splendour. He would

stand by his own people. He would sink or swim with them. If poverty and

failure were the result, let it be so. If success came, all the better.

There were things more to be desired than gold.

CHAPTER IV--THE ONE WOMAN

GASTON called at the post-office to get his mail.

One relief the Cleveland administration had brought Hambright--a decent

citizen in charge of the post-office. Dave Haley had given place to

a Democrat and was now scheming and working with McLeod for the

“salvation” of it the state, which of course meant for the old slave

trader the restoration of his office under a Republican administration.

If the South had held no other reason for hating the Republican party,

the character of the men appointed to Federal office was enough to send

every honest man hurrying into the opposite party without asking any

questions as to its principles.

Sam Love, the new postmaster was a jovial, honest, lazy, good-natured

Democrat whose ideal of a luxurious life was attained in his office. He

handed Gaston his mail with a giggle.

“What’s the matter with you, Sam?”

“Nuthin’ ‘tall. I just thought I’d tell you that I like her

handwriting,” he laughed.

“How dare you study the handwriting on my letters, sir!”

“What’s the use of being postmaster? There ain’t no big money in it. I

just take pride in the office,” said Sam genially. “That’s a new one,

ain’t it?”

Gaston looked at the letter incredulously. It was a new one,--a big

square envelope with a seal on the back of it, addressed to him in the

most delicate feminine hand, and postmarked “Independence.”

“Great Scott, this is interesting,” he cried, breaking the seal.

When the postmaster saw he was going to open it right there in the

office, he stepped around in front and looking over his shoulder said,

“What is it, Charlie?”

“It’s an invitation from the Ladies’ Memorial Association to deliver the

Memorial day oration at Independence the 10th of May. That’s great. No

money in it, but scores of pretty girls, big speech, congratulations,

the lion of the hour! Don’t you wish you were really a man of brains,

Sam?”

“No, no, I’m married. It would be a waste now.”

“Sam, I ’ll be there. Got the biggest speech of my life all cocked and

primed, full of pathos and eloquence,--been working on it at odd times

for four years. They ’ll think it a sudden inspiration.”

“What’s the name of it?”

“The Message of the New South to the Glorious Old.”

“That sounds bully, that ought to fetch ’em.”

“It will, my boy, and when Dave Haley gets this postoffice away from you

in the dark days coming, I ’ll publish that speech in a pamphlet,

and you can peddle it at a quarter and make a good living for your

children.”

“Don’t talk like that, Gaston, that isn’t funny at all. You don’t think

the Radicals have got any chance?”

“Chance! Between you and me they ’ll win.”

Sam went back to the desk without another word, a great fear suddenly

darkening the future. McLeod had gotten off the same joke on him the day

before. It sounded ominous coming from both sides like that. He took up

his party paper, “The Old Timer’s Gazette” and read over again the sure

prophecies of victory and felt better.

Gaston accepted the invitation with feverish haste. He had it all ready

to put in the office for the return mail to Independence. But he was

ashamed to appear in such a hurry, so he held the letter over until the

next day. He proudly showed the invitation to Mrs. Durham.

“What do you think of that, Auntie?”

“Immense. You will meet Miss Sallie sure. That letter is in her

handwriting. She’s the Secretary of the Association and signed the

Committee’s names.”

“You don’t say that’s the great and only one’s handwriting!”

“Couldn’t be mistaken. It has a delicate distinction about it. I’d know

it anywhere.”

“It is beautiful,” acknowledged Gaston looking thoughtfully at the

letter.

“I wish you had a new suit, Charlie.”

“I wouldn’t mind it myself, if I had the money. But clothes don’t

interest me much, just so I’m fairly decent.”

“I ’ll loan you the money, if you will promise me to devote yourself

faithfully to Sallie.”

“Never. I ’ll not sell my interest in all those acres of pretty girls

just for one I never saw and a suit of clothes. No thanks. I’m going

down there with a premonition I may find Her of whom I’ve dreamed. They

say that town is full of beauties.”

“You’re so conceited. That’s all the more reason you should look your

best.”

“I don’t care so much about looks. I’m going to do my best, whatever I

look.”

“Oh, you know you’re good looking and you don’t care,” said his foster

mother with pride.

On the 10th of May Independence was in gala robes. The long rows of

beautiful houses, with dark blue grass lawns on which giant oaks spread

their cool arms, were gay with bunting, and with flowers, flowers

everywhere! Every urchin on the street and every man, woman and child

wore or carried flowers.

The reception committee met Gaston at the depot on the arrival of the

excursion train that ran from Ham-bright. He was placed in an open

carriage beside a handsome chattering society woman, and drawn by two

prancing horses, was escorted to the hotel, where he was introduced to

the distinguished old soldiers of the Confederacy.

At ten o’clock the procession was formed. What a sight! It stretched

from the hotel down the shaded pavements a mile toward the cemetery,

two long rows of beautiful girls holding great bouquets of flowers. This

long double line of beauty and sweetness opened, and escorted gravely

by the oldest General of the Confederacy present, he walked through this

mile of smiling girls and flowers. Behind him tramped the veterans, some

with one arm, some with wooden legs.

When they passed through, the double line closed, and two and two the

hundreds of girls carried their flowers in solemn procession. Here was

the throbbing soul of the South, keeping fresh the love of her heroic

dead.

They spread out over the great cemetery like a host of ministering

angels. There was a bugle call. They bent low a moment, and flowers were

smiling over every grave from the greatest to the lowliest.

And then to a stone altar marked “To the Unknown Dead,” they came and

heaped up roses. Then a group of sad-faced women dressed in black, with

quaint little bonnets wreathing their brows like nuns, went silently

over to the National Cemetery across the way and each taking a basket,

walked past the long lines of the dead their boys had fought and dropped

a single rose on every soldier’s grave. They were women whose boys were

buried in strange lands in lonely unmarked trenches. They were doing now

what they hoped some woman’s hand would do for their lost heroes.

The crowd silently gathered around the speakers’ stand and took their

seats in the benches placed beneath the trees.

Gaston had never seen this ceremony so lavishly and beautifully

performed before. He was overwhelmed with emotion. His father’s straight

soldierly figure rose before him in imagination, and with him all the

silent hosts that now bivouacked with the dead. His soul was melted with

the infinite pathos and pity of it all.

He had intended to say some sharp epigrammatic things that would cut the

chronic moss-backs that cling to the platforms on such occasions. But

somehow when he began they were melted out of his speech. He spoke with

a tenderness and reverence that stilled the crowd in a moment like low

music.

His tribute to the dead was a poem of rhythmic and exalted thoughts. The

occasion was to him an inspiration and the people hung breathless on his

words. His voice was never strained but was penetrated and thrilled with

thought packed until it burst into the flame of speech. He felt with

conscious power his mastery of his audience. He was surprised at his own

mood of extraordinary tenderness as he felt his being softened by that

oldest religion of the ages, the worship of the dead--as old as sorrow

and as everlasting as death! He was for the moment clay in the hands of

some mightier spirit above him.

He had spoken perhaps fifteen minutes when suddenly, straight in front

of him, he looked into the face of the One Woman of all his dreams!

There she sat as still as death, her beautiful face tense with

breathless interest, her fluted red lips parted as if half in wonder,

half in joy, over some strange revelation, and her great blue eyes

swimming in a mist of tears. He smiled a look of recognition into her

soul and she answered with a smile that seemed to say “I’ve known you

always. Why haven’t you seen me sooner?” He recognised her instantly

from Mrs. Durham’s description and his heart gave a cry of joy. From

that moment every word that he uttered was spoken to her. Sometimes as

he would look straight through her eyes into her soul, she would flush

red to the roots of her brown-black hair, but she never lowered her

gaze. He closed his speech in a round of applause that was renewed again

and again.

His old classmate, Bob St. Clare, rushed forward to greet him.

“Old fellow, you’ve covered yourself with glory. By George, that was

great! Come, here’s a hundred girls want to meet you.”

He was introduced to a host of beauties who showered him with

extravagant compliments which he accepted without affectation. He knew

he had outdone himself that day, and he knew why. The One Woman he had

been searching the world for was there, and inspired him beyond all he

had ever dared before.

He was disappointed in not seeing her among the crowd who were shaking

his hand. He looked anxiously over the heads of those near by to see if

she had gone. He saw her standing talking to two stylishly dressed young

men.

When the crowd had melted away from the rostrum, she walked straight

toward him extending her hand with a gracious smile.

He knew he must look like a fool, but to save him he could not help it,

he was simply bubbling over with delight as he grasped her hand, and

before she could say a word he said, “You are Miss Sallie Worth, the

Secretary of the Association. My foster mother has described you so

accurately I should know you among a thousand.”

“Yes, I have been looking forward with pleasure to our trip to the

Springs when I knew we should meet you. I am delighted to see you a

month earlier.” She said this with a simple earnestness that gave it a

deeper meaning than a mere commonplace.

“Do you know that you nearly knocked me off my feet when I first saw you

in the crowd?”

“Why? How?” she asked.

“You startled me.”

“I hope not unpleasantly,” she said, looking up at him with her blue

eyes twinkling.

“Oh! Heavens no! You are such a perfect image of the girl she described

that I was so astonished I came near shouting at the top of my voice,

‘There she is!’ And that would have astonished the audience, wouldn’t

it?”

“It would indeed,” she replied blushing just a little.

“But I’m forgetting my mission, Mr. Gaston. Papa sent me to apologise

for his absence to-day. He was called out of the city on some mill

business. He told me to bring you home to dine with him. I’m the

Secretary, you know and exercise authority in these matters, so I’ve

fixed that programme. You have no choice. The carriage is waiting.”

CHAPTER V--THE MORNING OF LOVE

TO his dying day Gaston will never forget that ride to her home with

Sallie Worth by his side. It was a perfect May day. The leaves on

the trees were just grown and flashed in their green satin under the

Southern sun, and every flower seemed in full bloom.

A great joy filled his heart with a sense of divine restfulness. He was

unusually silent. And then she said something that made him open his

eyes in new wonder.

“Don’t drive so fast Ben, and go around the longest way, I’m enjoying

this.” She paused and a mischievous look came into her eyes as she saw

his expression. “I’ve got the lion here by my side. I want to show all

the girls in town that I’m the only one here to-day. It isn’t often I’ve

a great man tied down fast like this.”

“Why did you spoil the first part of that pretty speech with the last?”

he said with a frown.

“It was only your vanity that made me pause.”

“Could you read me like that?”

“Of course, all men are vain, much vainer than women.” Again there was a

long silence.

They had reached the outskirts of the city now and were driving slowly

through the deep shadows of a great forest.

“What beautiful trees!” he exclaimed.

“They are fine. Do you love big trees?”

“Yes, they always seem to me to have a soul. It used to make me almost

cry to watch them fall beneath Nelse’s axe. I’d never have the heart to

clear a piece of woods if I owned it.”

“I’m so glad to hear you say that. Papa laughed at me when I said

something of the sort when he wanted to cut these woods. He left them

just to please me. They belong to our place. They hide the house till

you get right up to the gate, but I love them.”

Again he looked into her eyes and was silent.

“Now, I come to think of it, you’re the only girl I’ve met to-day who

hasn’t mentioned my speech. That’s strange.”

“How do you know that I’m not saving up something very pretty to say to

you later about it?”

“Tell me now.”

“No, you’ve spoiled it by your vanity in asking.” She said this looking

away carelessly.

“Then I ’ll interpret your silence as the highest compliment you can

pay me. When words fail we are deeply moved.”

“Vanity of vanity, all is vanity saith the preacher!” she exclaimed

lifting her pretty hands.

They turned through a high arched iron gateway, across which was written

in gold letters, “Oakwood.”

On a gently rising hill on the banks of the Catawba river rose a

splendid old Southern mansion, its big Greek columns gleaming through

the green trees like polished ivory. A wide porch ran across the full

width of the house behind the big pillars, and smaller columns supported

the full sweep of a great balcony above. The house was built of brick

with Portland cement finish, and the whole painted in two shades of

old ivory, with moss-green roof and dark rich Pompeian red brick

foundations. With its green background of magnolia trees it seemed like

a huge block of solid ivory flashing in splendour from its throne on the

hill. The drive wound down a little dale, around a great circle filled

with shrubbery and flowers and up to the pillared porte-cochere.

“Oh! what a beautiful home!” Gaston exclaimed with feeling.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” she said with delight. “I love every brick

in its walls, every tree and flower and blade of grass.”

“I’ve always dreamed of a home like that. Those big columns seem to link

one to the past and add dignity and meaning to life.”

“Then you can understand how I love it, when I was born here and every

nook and corner has its love message for me from the past that I have

lived, as well as its wider meaning which you see.”

“The old South built beautiful homes, didn’t they? And that was one of

the finest things about the proud old days,” he said.

“Yes, and the new South of which you spoke to-day will not forget this

heritage of the old, when it comes to itself and shakes off its long

suffering and poverty!”

Strange to hear that sort of a speech from a girl who loves society,

dances divinely and dresses to kill. He thought of the words of his

foster mother with a pang. He hoped she was joking about those things.

But he had a strong suspicion from the consciousness of power with which

she had tried once or twice to tease him that they were going to prove

fatally true.

“Mother tells me you were in Baltimore, in that swell girls’ school on

North Charles Street when I was a student at the University?”

“Yes, and we gave reception after reception to the Hopkins men and you

never once honoured us with your presence.”

“But I didn’t know you were there, Miss Sallie.”

“Of course not. If you had, I wouldn’t speak to you now. They said you

were a recluse. That you never went into society and didn’t speak to a

woman for four years.”

“How did you hear that?”

“Bob St. Clare told me after I came home by way of apology for your bad

manners in so shamefully neglecting a young woman from your own state.”

“I ’ll make amends, now.”

“Oh! I’m not suffering from loneliness as I did then. You know Bob put

us up to inviting you to deliver the address. He said you were the only

orator in North Carolina.”

“Bob’s the best friend I ever had. We entered college together at

fifteen, and became inseparable friends.”

He helped her from the carriage and she ran lightly up the high stoop.

“Now come here and look at the view of the river before Papa comes and

begins to talk about the tremendous water power in the falls.”

He followed her to the end of the long porch overlooking the river.

Behind the house the hill abruptly plunged downward to the waters’

edge in a mountainous cliff. The river wound around this cliff past the

house, emerging into a valley where it described a graceful curve almost

doubling on itself and rolled softly away amid green overhanging willows

and towering sycamores till lost in the distance toward the blue spurs

of King’s Mountain.

“A glorious view!” said Gaston, looking long and lovingly at the silver

surface of the river.

“Do you love the water, Mr. Gaston?”

“Passionately. I was born among the hills, but the first time I saw

the ocean sweeping over five miles of sand reefs and breaking in white

thundering spray at my feet, I stood there on a sand dune on our wild

coast and gazed entranced for an hour without moving. Of all the things

God ever made on this earth I love the waters of the sea, and all moving

water suggests it to me. That river says, I must hurry to the sea!”

“It is strange we should have such similar tastes, she said seriously.

But it did not seem strange to him. Somehow he expected to find her

agree with every whim and fancy of his nature.

“Now we will find Mama. She is such an invalid she rarely goes out. Papa

will be home any minute.”

“We are glad to welcome you Mr. Gaston,” said her mother in a kindly

manner. “I’m sure you’ve enjoyed the drive this beautiful day if Sallie

hasn’t been trying to tease you. The boys say she’s very tiresome at

times.”

“Why Mama, I’m surprised at you. The idea of such a thing! There’s not a

word of truth in it, is there, Mr. Gaston?”

“Certainly not, Miss Sallie. I ’ll testify, Mrs. Worth, that your

daughter has been simply charming.”

She ran to meet her father at the door. There was the sound of a hearty

kiss, a little whispering, and the General stepped briskly into the

parlour where she had left her guest.

“Pleased to welcome you to our home, young man. They say down town that

you made the greatest speech ever heard in Independence. Sorry I missed

it. We ’ll have you to dinner anyway. I knew your brave father in the

army. And now I come, to think of it, I saw you once when you were a

boy. I was struck with your resemblance to your father then, as now. You

showed me the way down to Tom Camp’s house. Don’t you remember?”

“Certainly General, but I didn’t flatter myself that you would recall

it.”

“I never forget a face. I hope you have been enjoying yourself?”

“More than I can express, sir.”

“I ’ll join you bye and bye,” said the General, taking leave.

“Now isn’t he a dear old Papa?” she said demurely.

“He certainly knows how to make a timid young man feel at home.”

“Are you timid?”

“Hadn’t you noticed it?”

“Well, hardly.” She shook her head and closed her eyes in the most

tantalising way. “To see the cool insolence of conscious power with

which you looked that great crowd in the face when you arose on that

platform, I shouldn’t say I was struck with your timidity.”

“I was really trembling from head to foot.”

“I wonder how you would look if really cool!”

“Honestly, Miss Sallie, I never speak to any crowd without the intensest

nervous excitement. I may put on a brave front, but it’s all on the

surface.”

“I can’t believe it,” she said shaking her head.

She looked at his serious face a moment and was silent.

“It’s queer how we run out of something to say, isn’t it?” she asked at

length.

“I hadn’t thought of it.”

“Come up to the observatory and I’ll show you Lord Cornwallis’ look-out

when he had his headquarters here during the Revolution.”

She lifted her soft white skirts and led the way up the winding mahogany

stairs into the observatory from which the surrounding country could be

seen for miles.

“Here Lord Cornwallis waited in vain for Colonel Ferguson to join him

with his regiment from King’s Mountain.”

“Where my great-grandfather was drawing around him his cordon of death

with his fierce mountain men!” interrupted Gaston.

“Was your great-grandfather in that battle?”

“Yes, it was fought on his land, and his two-story log house with the

rifle holes cut in the chimney jambs still stands.”

“Then we will shake hands again,” she cried with enthusiasm, “for we are

both children of the Revolution!”

Gaston took her beautiful hand in his and held it lingeringly. Never in

all his life had the mere touch of a human hand thrilled him with such

strange power, How long he held it he could not tell but it was with a

sort of hurt surprise he felt her gently withdraw it at last.

They had reached the parlour again, and he slowly fell into an easy

chair.

“Do you dance, Miss Sallie?”

“Why yes, don’t you dance?”

“Never tried in my life.”

“Don’t you approve of dancing?”

“I never had time to think about it. It always seemed silly to me.”

“It’s great fun.”

“I’d take lessons if you would agree to teach me, and I could dance with

you all the time, and keep all the other fellows away.”

“Well, I must say that’s doing fairly well for a timid young man’s

first day’s acquaintance. What will you say when you once become fully

self-possessed?” She lifted her high arched eyebrows and looked at him

with those blue eyes full of tantalising fun until he had to look down

at the floor to keep from saying more than he dared. When he looked up

again he changed the subject.

“Miss Sallie, I feel like I’ve known you ever since I was born.” She

blushed and made no reply.

Dinner was announced, and Gaston was amazed to see Allan McLeod enter

chattering familiarly with the General. He seemed on the most intimate

terms with the family and his eye lingered fondly on Sallie’s face in a

way that somehow Gaston resented as an impertinence.

“I didn’t even know you were acquainted with the Hon. Allan McLeod, Miss

Sallie,” said Gaston as they entered the parlour alone.

“Yes, he was a sort of ward of Papa’s when he was a boy. Papa hates

his politics, but he has always been in and out almost like one of the

family since I can remember. I think he’s’ a fascinating man, don’t

you?”

“I do, but I don’t like him.”

“Well, he’s a great friend of mine, you mustn’t quarrel.”

Gaston went to the hotel with his brain in a whirl wondering just what

she meant. It was nearly twelve o’clock before he left the General’s

house. How he had passed these eleven hours he could not imagine. They

seemed like eleven minutes in one way. In another he seemed to have

lived a lifetime that day.

“By George, she’s an angel!” he kept saying over and over to himself as

he climbed to his room forgetting the elevator.

CHAPTER VI--BESIDE BEAUTIFUL WATERS

WHEN Gaston tried to sleep, he found it impossible. His brain was

on fire, every nerve quivering with some new mysterious power and his

imagination soaring on tireless wings. He rolled and tossed an hour,

then got up, and sat by his open window looking out over the city

sleeping in the still white moonlight. He looked into the mirror and

grinned.

“What is the matter with me!” he exclaimed. “I believe I’m going crazy.”

He sat down and tried to work the thing out by the formulas of cold

reason. “It’s perfectly absurd to say I’m in love. My wild romancing

about a passion that will grasp all life in its torrent sweep is only a

boy’s day dream. The world is too prosy for that now.”

Yet in spite of this argument the room seemed as bright as day, and the

moon was only a pale sister light to the radiance from the face of the

girl he had seen that day. Her face seemed to him smiling close into

his now. The light of her eyes was tender and soothing like the far away

memory of his mother’s voice.

“It’s a passing fancy,” he said at last, after he had sat an hour

dreaming and dreaming of scenes he dared not frame in words even alone.

He stood by the window again.

“What a beautiful old world this is after all!” he thought as he gazed

out on the tops of the oaks whose young leaves were softly sighing at

the touch of the night winds. Turning his eye downward to the street

he saw the men loading the morning papers into the wagons for the early

mail.

“I wonder what sort of report of my speech they put in?” he exclaimed.

Unable to sleep he hastily dressed, went down and bought a paper.

On the front page was a flattering portrait, two columns in width, with

a report of his speech filling the entire page, and an editorial review

of a column and a half. He was hailed as the coming man of the state in

this editorial, which contained the most extravagant praise. He knew it

was the best thing he had ever done, and he felt for the minute proud

of himself and his achievement. This contemplation of his own greatness

quieted his nerves and he fell asleep. He was awakened by the first

rolling of carts on the pavements at dawn. He knew he had not slept more

than two hours but he was as wide awake as though he had slept soundly

all night.

“I must be threatened with that spell of fever Auntie has been worrying

about since I was a boy!” he laughed as he slowly dressed.

“It’s now six o’clock, and my train don’t leave till nine,” he mused.

“But am I going on that train, that’s the question?”

The fact was, now he came to think of it, there was no need of hurrying

home. He would stay a while and look this mystery in the face until he

was disillusioned. Besides he wanted to find out what McLeod’s visit

meant. He had a vague feeling of uneasiness when he recalled the way

McLeod had assumed about the General’s house. He had told Sallie he must

hurry home on the morning’s train for no earthly reason than that he had

intended to do so when he came.

So after breakfast he wrote her a little note.

“_My Dear Miss Worth,_

“_My train left me. Will you have compassion on a stranger in a strange

city and let me call to see you again to-day? Charles Gaston._”

He waited impatiently until he heard his train leave, and then told the

boy to make tracks for the General’s house.

A peal of laughter rang through the hall when Sallie’s dancing eyes read

that note.

“Oh! the storyteller!” she cried.

And this was the answer she sent back.

“_Certainly. Come out at once. I ’ll take you buggy driving all by

myself over a lovely road up the river. I do this in acknowledgment of

the gracious flattery you pay me in the story you told about the train.

Of course I know you waited till the train left before you sent the

note. Sallie Worth._”

“Now I wonder if that young rascal of a boy told her I wrote that note

an hour ago? I ’ll wring his neck if he did. Come here boy!”

The negro came up grinning in hopes of another quarter.

“Did you tell that young lady anything about when I wrote that note?”

“Na-sah! Nebber tole her nuffin. She des laugh and laugh fit ter kill

herse’f des quick es she reads de note.”

Gaston smiled and threw him another tip.

“Yassah, she’s a knowin’ lady, sho’s you bawn, I been dar lots er times

fo’ dis!”

Gaston was tempted to ask him for whom he carried those former messages.

He walked with bounding steps, his being tingling to his finger tips

with the joy of living. The avenue leading the full length of the city

toward the General’s house was two miles long before it reached the

woods at the gate. It seemed only a step this morning.

As he passed through the cool shade of the woods a squirrel was playing

hide and seek with his mate on the old crooked fence beside the road.

His little nimble mistress flew up a great tree to its topmost bough and

chattered and laughed at her lover as he scrambled swiftly after her.

She waited until he was just reaching out his arm to grasp her, and

then with another scream of laughter leaped straight out into the air to

another tree top, and then another and another until lost in the heart

of the forest.

“I wonder if that’s going to be my fate!” he mused as he turned into the

gateway.

Again the majestic beauty of that gleaming mass of ivory on the hill

with its green background swept his soul with its power. It seemed a

different shade of colour now that he saw it with the sun at another

angle. Its surface seemed to have the soft sheen of creamy velvet.

He paused and sighed, “Why should I be so poor! If I only had a house

like that I’d turn that big banquet hall on the left wing into a

library, and I’d ask no higher heaven.”

And he fell to wondering if it would really be worth the having without

the face and voice of the girl who was there within waiting for him.

No, he was sure of it this morning for the first time in his life.

The certainty of this conviction brought to his heart a feeling of

loneliness and despair. When he thought of his abject poverty and the

long years of struggle before him, and of that beautiful accomplished

young woman rich, petted, the belle of the city, the gulf that separated

their lives seemed impassable.

“I’m playing with fire!” he said to himself as he looked up at the

graceful pillars with their carved and fluted capitals. “Well, let it be

so. Let me live life to its deepest depths and its highest reach. It is

better to love and lose than never to love at all.” And he walked into

the cool hall with the ease and assurance of its master.

Sallie greeted him with the kindliest grace.

“I’m so glad you stayed to-day, Mr. Gaston. I should have been really

chagrined to think I made so slight an impression on you that you could

walk deliberately away on a pre-arranged schedule. I am not used to

being treated so lightly.”

He tried to make some answer to this half serious banter, but was so

absorbed in just looking at her he said nothing.

She was dressed in a morning gown of a soft red material, trimmed with

old cream lace. The material of a woman’s dress had never interested him

before. He knew calico from silk, but beyond that he never ventured an

opinion. To colour alone he was responsive. This combination of red and

creamy white, with the bodice cut low showing the lines of her beautiful

white shoulders and the great mass of dark hair rising in graceful

curves from her full round neck heightened her beauty to an

extraordinary degree. As she walked, the clinging folds of her dress,

outlining her queenly figure, seemed part of her very being and to be

imbued with her soul. He was dazzled with the new revelation of her

power over him.

“Have you no apology, sir, for pretending that you were going home this

morning?” she said seating herself by his side.

“You didn’t ask me to stay with fervour.”

“It ought not to have been necessary.”

“Didn’t you really know I was not going?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad.”

“Yes, you see I’m twenty-one years old, and I’ve seen such things happen

before!” she purred this slowly and burst into laughter.

“Now, Miss Sallie, that’s cruel to throw me down in a heap of dead dogs

I don’t even know.”

“Don’t you like dogs?”

“Four legged ones, yes. But I like my friends alive.”

“Oh! It didn’t kill any of them. They are all strong and hearty. But if

you’re so domestic in your tastes why haven’t you settled in life?”

“Been waiting to find the woman of my dreams.”

“And you haven’t found her?”

“Not up to yesterday.”

“Oh! I forgot,” she said archly, “you’re so timid.”

“Honestly, I was.”

“Up to yesterday!” she murmured. “Well, tell me what your dreams

demanded? What kind of a creature must she be?”

“I have forgotten.”

“What! Forgotten the dreams of your ideal woman?”

“Yes.”

“Since when?”

“Yesterday.”

“Thanks. We are getting on beautifully, aren’t we? You will get over

your timidity in time, I’m sure.”

He smiled, looked down at the pattern of the carpet and did not speak

for some minutes. His soul was thrilled and satisfied in her presence.

As he lifted his eyes from the floor they rested on the piano.

“Will you play for me, Miss Sallie? Auntie says you play delightfully.”

“Auntie? Who is Auntie?”

“Mrs. Durham, my foster mother, of course. Excuse my unconscious

assumption of your familiarity with all my antecedents. I can’t get over

the impression that I have known you all my life.”

“And that reminds me that I started to say something to you yesterday

that was perfectly ridiculous, but caught myself in time.”

“I wish you had said it.”

“Mrs. Durham is a great flatterer of those she loves. She thinks I can

play. But I’m the veriest amateur.”

“Let me be the judge.”

She was looking over her music, and he had opened the piano.

“I ’ll play for you with pleasure. Sit there in that big arm chair.

I’m sorry I tired you so early in the day with my chatter.”

And before he could protest her fingers were touching the piano with the

ease of the born musician.

He sat enraptured as he watched the sinuous grace with which her fingers

touched the ivory keys and heard their answering cry which seemed the

breath of her own soul in echo.

She had an easy apparently careless touch. To old familiar music

she gave a charm that was new, adding something indefinable to the

musician’s thought that gave luminous power to its interpretation. He

had no knowledge of the technique of music, but now he knew that she was

improvising. The piano was the voice of her own beautiful soul, and it

was pulsing with a tenderness that melted him to tears.

Suddenly the music ceased, and she turned her face full on his before

he could brush away a big tear that rolled down. She flushed, closed the

piano, and quietly resumed her place by his side.

“And, now, you haven’t told me how well I played. You’re the first young

man so careless.”

“I have told you.”

“How?”

“The way you told me yesterday that you understood me--with a tear.”

“I appreciate it more than words.”

“So did I,” he slowly said. Again there was a long silence.

“But we do love to hear folks say in words what they think sometimes. I

confess I was immensely elated over the fine things the paper said about

me this morning.”

“It’s a wonder too. Our editor is a cranky sort of fellow. I was afraid

he’d say a lot of mean things about you. But Papa says you swallowed him

whole.”

“Did you wish him to say kind things about me?”

“Of course,” she said, and then the look of mischief came back in her

eye. “Were you not our guest? I should have felt like whipping him if he

hadn’t said nice things.”

“Then I ’ll tell you what I think about your playing. You gave those

strings a soul for the first time for me, beautiful, living, throbbing,

that spoke a message of its own. The piece you improvised, I shall never

forget. Such music seems to me the grasping of the infinite by hands

that touch the impalpable and bringing it for a moment within the sphere

of matter that a kindred soul may hear and see and feel.”

She started to make some reply but her lips quivered and she looked away

across the valley at the river and made no answer.

At dinner the General was in his most genial mood, laughing and joking,

and drawing out Gaston on politics and cotton-mill developments, and

trying with all his might to tease his daughter.

As he took his departure for the mills, he said, “Young man, I’d ask you

to go with me and look at the machinery, but I see it’s no use. I heard

her twisting you around her fingers with that piano a while ago.”

“Papa, don’t be so silly!’ cried Sallie, slipping her arm around him,

putting one hand over his mouth, and kissing him.

“Go on to your work. I ’ll entertain Mr. Gaston.”

“Indeed you will!” he shouted, throwing her another kiss as he left.

“He’s the dearest father any girl ever had in this world. I know you

loved yours, didn’t you, Mr. Gaston?”

“Mine was killed in battle, Miss Sallie. I never knew him. But I had the

most beautiful mother that ever lived. I lost her when a mere boy. And

the world has never been the same since. I envy you.”

“I forgot. Forgive me,” she softly said, looking up into his face with

tenderness.

“If I had only had a sister! How my heart used to ache when I’d see

other boys playing with a sister! My poor little starved soul was so

hungry, I would go off in the woods sometimes and cry for hours.”

“I wish I had known you when you were a little boy,--I can’t conceive of

a dignified orator swaying thousands running around as a barefooted boy.

But you must have gone barefooted for I think Papa said so, didn’t he?”

“Indeed I did, and sometimes I am afraid for the very good reason I

didn’t have any shoes.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have worn them if you had. I always wanted to be a

boy just to go barefooted. I think girls lose so much of a child’s life

by having to wear shoes.”

“But you never knew what it meant to want shoes and not be able to have

them,” he said, looking at the shining tips of her slippers peeping from

the edge of her dress.

“No, but I never thought these things made a great difference in our

lives after all. I believe it is what we are, not what we have, that

gives life meaning.”

He looked at her intently.

“I must get ready now for our drive. The horse will be here in ten

minutes. Enjoy the view on the porch until I am ready,” and she bounded

up the stairs to her room.

In a few minutes she was by his side again dressed in spotless white as

he had seen her first. She lifted the lines over the sleek horse, and he

dashed swiftly down the drive.

Oh! the peace and bliss of that drive along the lonely river road by its

cool green banks!

How he poured out to her his inmost thoughts--things he had not dared to

whisper alone with himself and God! And then he wondered why he had thus

laid bare his secret dreams to this girl he had known but twenty-four

hours. Nonsense, down in his soul he knew he had known her forever.

Before the world was made, ages and ages ago in eternity he had known

her. He turned to her now drawn by a resistless force as a plant turns

toward the sunlight for its life. How he could talk that day! All he had

ever known of art and beauty, all he knew of the deep truths of life,

were on his lips leaping forth in simple but impassioned words. For

hours he lay at her feet where she sat on a rock, high up on the cliffs

overlooking the river and poured out his heart like a child. And she

listened with a dreamy look as though to the music of a master.

At last she sprang to her feet and looked at her watch.

“Oh! Mama will be furious. It will be after sundown before we can get

home. We must hurry.”

“I ’ll make it all right with your Mama,” he replied as though he were

skilled in meeting such emergencies.

“Don’t you speak to her. It ’ll be all I can do to manage her.”

The twilight was gathering when they reached the house, and an angry

anxious mother was waiting high up on the stoop.

“Watch me smooth every wrinkle out of her brow now!” she whispered as

she flew up the steps.

Before her mother could say a word, a white hand was on her mouth and

pretty lips were whispering something in her ears she had never heard

before. There was the sound of a kiss and he heard Sallie say, “Not a

word!” And the mother greeted him with a smile and a curiously searching

look. She chatted pleasantly until her daughter returned from her room,

and then left her. Again it was nearly twelve o’clock before he reached

the hotel.

The next morning Bob St. Clare broke in on him before he was out of bed.

“Look here, you sly dog, what are you doing slipping and sliding around

here yet?”

“Bob, you’re the man I want to see. Tell me all you know about the

Worths.”

“The Worths? Which one?”

“There’s only one so far as I can see.”

“Well, you may find out there’s two if you should happen to collide with

the General.”

“Does he cut up at times?”

“He’s all right till he turns on you, and then you want to find

shelter.”

“Did you ever run up against him?”

“No, I never got that far. He’s hail-fellow-well-met with every

youngster in town. He will laugh and joke about his daughter until he

thinks she is in earnest about a fellow, and then he swoops down on him

like a hawk. I ’ll bet a hundred dollars he’s playing you now for all

you’re worth against the latest favourite. But Miss Sallie--she’s an

angel!”

“Look here, Bob, you’re not in love with her?”

“Well, I’m convalescing at present my boy. Every boy in the town has

been there, but I don’t believe she cares a snap for a man of us unless

it’s that big redheaded McLeod. I can’t make his position out exactly.”

“Did she jolt you hard when you hit the ground?”

“Easiest thing you ever saw. She has a supreme genius for painless

cruelty. When the time comes she can pull your eye-tooth out in such a

delicate friendly way you will have to swear she hasn’t hurt you.”

“You still go?”

“Lord yes, we all do,--sort of a congress of the lost meet down there.

They all hang on. She keeps the friendship of every poor devil she

kills.”

“You know you make the cold chills run down my back when you talk like

that.”

“Are you in love with her, Gaston?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”

“Then what in the thunder have you been doing out there two days and

nights, if you haven’t made love to her?”

“Just basking in the sun.”

“Well, you are a fool. Eleven hours the first day, and fifteen hours

yesterday. Confound you, don’t you know a dozen fellows in town are

cursing you for all they can think of?”

“What about?”

“Why for trying to hog the whole time, day and night. She won’t let a

mother’s son of them come near till you’re gone.”

“Well, that’s immense!” exclaimed Gaston slapping his friend on the

back.

233

“Don’t be too sure. She’s just sizing you up. She’s done the same thing

a dozen times before.”

“I don’t believe it.”

And he didn’t go home until the end of the week when the last cent of

his money was gone.

CHAPTER VII--DREAMS AND FEARS

HE was on the train at last homeward bound. Gazing out of the window

of the car he was trying to find where he stood. He must be in love. He

faced the remarkable fact that he had spent a whole week in Independence

at an expensive hotel, and squandered every cent of the small fee he

had received for his address in what would be otherwise a perfectly

senseless manner.

Yet he felt rich. He was sure he had never spent money so wisely

and economically in his life. Beyond the shadow of a doubt he was in

love,--desperately and hopelessly committed to this one girl for life.

He said it in his heart with a shout of triumph. Life was not a sterile

desert of brute work. It was true. Love the magician of the ages, lived

in this world of lost faiths and dead religions.

Now that he was leaving he felt a tingling impulse to leap off the

train, cut across the fields and run back to her--and he laughed aloud,

just as the train came to a sudden stop, and everybody looked at him and

smiled.

A drummer looked up from a novel he was reading and said, “It is a fine

day, partner, isn’t it?”

“Never saw a finer,” answered Gaston with another laugh.

He dwelt long and greedily on the consciousness of this new vitalising

secret he felt for the first time throbbing in his soul. He bathed his

heart in its warmth until he could feel the red blood rush to the ends

of his fingers with its new fever. He breathed its perfume until every

nerve quivered. “I have never lived before. No matter now if I die, I

have lived!” he said slowly and reverently.

He wondered long and wistfully what was in her heart while this wild

tumult was going on in him. He wondered if it were possible she loved

him. It seemed too good to be true. He was afraid to believe it. And yet

his whole soul with every power of his being cried out that she did. He

could not have been mistaken in the message he read in the liquid depths

of her eyes, and the delicate tenderness of her voice. Words may say

nothing, but these signs are the language of the universal. Still,

others had been equally sure, and been deceived. Might not he too make

the fatal mistake? It was possible. And there was the pain.

She had not uttered a single word in all the hours they spent together

that might not be interpreted in a conventional meaningless way.

Yet he had given to every one of these words a soul meaning that spoke

directly to his inner being and not his ear.

He had never spoken a word of shallow love-making to a woman in his

life. To him love was too holy a mystery. It would have been the

blasphemy of the Holy Ghost--a sin that would not be forgiven in this

world or the world to come. His college mates had called him a crank

on this subject. But he shut his lips in a way that always closed the

argument, and they let him alone with his Idol.

“I am afraid yet to put it to the test!” he said at last. “I must have

time to reveal my best self to her. I must see her again, live close to

her day by day, and bring to bear on her every power of body and soul

I possess.” Mrs. Durham met him with dancing eyes. “Oh, I’ve heard from

you, sir!”

“Kiss me Auntie, and be kind. I’m in the last stages of delirium!”

He took her hands both in his and looked at her long. “How good you’ve

been to me, Auntie, in all the past. You never looked so beautiful as

to-day. I want to thank you for every word you’ve said to Miss Sallie

for me. It may have helped just a little anyway.”

“Well you are in the last stages!” she exclaimed gleefully.

“And you are glad of it?”

“Of course, I am, it will make a man of you.”

“But suppose I lose?”

She was silent a moment and then slipped her arm gently about him, drew

down his ear and whispered, “You shall not lose--I’ve set my heart on

it.”

He pressed her hands and said, “How like my sweet mother’s voice was

that!”

And then they fell to discussing plans for giving Miss Sallie and her

friend a jolly time at the Springs.

“But Auntie, these plans don’t seem to me exactly what I’d like. You see

I want to be the whole thing. It may be hopelessly selfish, but I can’t

help it.”

“Well that isn’t best.”

“Say Auntie, what do I look like anyway? How would you describe my make

up? Let’s get at the weak spots and splint them up a little. You know, I

never seriously cared a rap before about my looks.”

“Well”--she answered, slowly regarding him, “I ’ll be perfectly frank

with you.

“You are tall--at least two inches taller than the average man, and your

muscular body gives one the impression of power. You have black hair,

dark-brown eyes that look out from your shaggy straight eye-brows with a

piercing light.”

“You think the brows too shaggy?”

“No, I like them. They suggest reserve power and brain capacity.”

“Good, I never thought of that.”

“You have a face that is massive, almost leonine, and a square-cut

determined mouth, that always clean shaven, sometimes looks too grim.”

“I ’ll remember that and look pleasant.”

“You have a big hand and sometimes shake hands too strongly. You have

a handsome aristocratic foot when you wear decent shoes. You often walk

humpshouldered, and sit so too.”

“I ’ll brace up.”

“You have deep vertical wrinkles between your eyes just where your

straight eyebrows meet.”

“Heavens, I didn’t know I had wrinkles!”

“Yes, but they mean habits of thought like your stooping shoulders, I

don’t object to such wrinkles in a man’s face. But the best feature

of all your stock is your eye. Your big brown eyes are about the only

perfect thing about you. There’s infinite tenderness in them. Now and

then they gleam with a hidden fire that tells of enthusiasm, thought,

will, character, and dauntless courage.”

She looked and they were misty with tears.

He pressed her hand. “Auntie, I didn’t know how much you’ve loved me all

these years. How love opens one’s eyes!”

“You have a high temper, plenty of pride, and are given to looking on

the dark side of things too quickly. You lack poise of character and

sureness of touch yet, but with it all, yours is a masterful nature.”

“One you think that a perfect woman could love?”

“There are no perfect women; but I ’ll match you against any woman I

know. So there, now, take courage.”

“I will,” he gravely answered.

He hurried to his office and read his mail. There were two letters

retaining his services for jury work in important cases. His heart

leaped at the sign of coming success. What a new meaning love gave to

every event in life.

He turned to his books, and began immediately a searching study of every

question involved in these cases. He would carry the court by storm. He

would lead the jury spellbound by his eloquence to a certain verdict.

How clear his brain! He felt he was alive to his finger-tips, and

argus-eyed.

He worked hour after hour without the slightest fatigue or knowledge of

the flight of time. He looked up at last with surprise to find it was

night, and was startled by the voice of the Preacher calling him from

below.

“What’s the matter with you? Mrs. Durham sent me to find you. She was

afraid you had gone up on the roof and walked off.”

“I ’ll be ready in a minute, Doctor,” he called from the window.

“I haven’t known you to take to law so violently in four years. What’s

up? Got a capital case?”

“Yes, I believe I have. It’s a matter of life and death to one poor soul

anyhow.”

“Now, honour bright haven’t you been working all this afternoon on a

love-letter that you’ve just finished and addressed to Independence?”

“‘No sir. To tell you the fact, I didn’t dare to ask her to write to me.

I knew I couldn’t control a pen.”

“My boy, I wish you success with all my heart. It makes me young again

to look into your face. I’ve had my supper, when you’ve finished your

confab with your Auntie, come out here in the square to the seat under

the old oak, I want to talk to you on some important business.”

“What have you been doing,” asked Mrs. Durham.

“Building a home for her!” he cried in a whisper. He went behind the

chair where his foster mother sat pouring his tea, bent low and kissed

her high white forehead. “My own Mother! I ’ll never call you Auntie

again!”

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she kissed his hand, tenderly holding it

to her lips.

“Ah! Love is a wonder worker, isn’t he Charlie?”

“Yes, and I can’t realise the joy that lifts and inspires me when I

think that I am one of the elect. It’s too good to be true. I have been

initiated into the great secret. I have tasted the water of Life. I

shall not see Death.”

She looked at him with pride. “I knew you would make a matchless lover.

I envy Sallie her young eyes and ears!”

“You need not envy her. You will never grow old.”

“So much the worse if we miss the dreams that fill the souls of the

young,” she said with an accent of sorrowful pride.

CHAPTER VIII--THE UNSOLVED RIDDLE

GASTON found the Preacher quietly smoking, seated on the rustic under a

giant oak that stood in the corner of the square.

Under this tree the speakers’ stand had always been built for joint

debates in political campaigns.

Here, when a boy he had heard the great debate between Zebulon B.

Vance and Judge Thomas Settle in the fierce campaign which followed the

overthrow of Le-gree when the Republican party, under the leadership of

Judge Settle made its desperate effort for life. Settle, who was a man

of masterful personality, eloquent, and in dead earnest in his appeal

for a new South, had made a speech of great power to a crowd that were

hostile to every idea for which he stood; and yet he dazzled or stunned

them into sullen silence.

And then he recalled with flashes of memory vivid as lightning, the

miracle that had followed. He could see Vance now as he slowly lifted

his big lion-like head, and calmly looked over the sea of faces with

eagle eyes that could flash with resistless humour or blaze with the

fury of elemental passion. He reviewed the terrible past in which he had

played the tragic role of their war Governor, and tore into tatters with

the facts of history the logic of his opponent. And then he opened his

batteries of wit and ridicule,--wit that cut to the heart’s red blood,

and yet convulsed the hearer with its unexpected turn. Ridicule that

withered and scorched what it touched into ashes. Five thousand people

now in breathless suspense as he swung them into heaven on the wings of

deathless words, now screaming with laughter, and now hushed in tears!

The scene that followed this triumph! Two stalwart mountain men snatched

him from the rostrum and bore him on their shoulders through the

shouting, weeping crowd. Women pressed close and kissed his hands, and

old men reached forward their hands to touch his garments. Ah! if he

could inherit the power of this king among men! To-night as Gaston

walked under that tree with his heart beating with the ecstasy of a

new-found source of life, he felt that he could do, and that he would

do, what the master had done before him!

“Charlie, I’ve heard some startling news since you left home, and I

can’t sleep nights thinking about it.”

“You’ve heard of McLeod’s scheme.”

“Exactly. And it means the ruin of this state and the ruin of the South

unless it can be defeated.”

“How are you going to do it?”

“It’s a puzzle but it’s got to be done. Half the farmers in the

strongholds of Democracy are crazy over their fool Sub-Treasury

and a hundred other fakir dreams. McLeod has promised them

everything--Sub-Treasury, pumpkin leaves for money,--anything they want

if they will join forces with his niggers and carry the state. You are

the man to begin now a quiet but thorough organisation of the young men,

and oust the fools from control of the party.

“When the white race begin to hobnob with the Negro and seek his favour,

they must grant him absolute equality. That means ultimately social as

well as political equality. You can’t ask a man to vote for you and kick

him down your front doorstep and tell him to come around the back way.”

“I think you exaggerate the social danger, but I see the political end

of it.”

“I don’t exaggerate in the least. I am looking into the future. This

racial instinct is the ordinance of our life. Lose it and we have

no future. One drop of Negro blood makes a negro. It kinks the hair,

flattens the nose, thickens the lip, puts out the light of intellect,

and lights the fires of brutal passions. The beginning of Negro equality

as a vital fact is the beginning of the end of this nation’s life. There

is enough negro blood here to make mulatto the whole Republic.”

“Such a danger seems too remote for serious alarm to me,” replied the

younger man.

“Ah! there’s the tragedy,” passionately cried the Preacher. “You younger

men are growing careless and indifferent to this terrible problem. It’s

the one unsolved and unsolvable riddle of the coming century. _Can you

build, in a Democracy, a nation inside a nation of two hostile races?_

We must do this or become mulatto, and that is death. Every inch in

the approach of these races across the barriers that separate them is a

movement toward death. You cannot seek the Negro vote without asking

him to your home sooner or later. If you ask him to your house, he will

break bread with you at last. And if you seat him at your table, he has

the right to ask your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

“It seems to me a far cry to that. But I see the political crisis. What

is your plan?”

“This,--organise the young Democracy in every township in the state, and

put yourself at its head, control the primaries and down the old crowd.

They’ve got to follow you. Fight the campaign with the desperation of

despair. If you are defeated, God have mercy on us, but you will be

ready for the next battle.”

“I ’ll do it,” said Gaston with emphasis.

“Then I want you to go on a mission to Col. Duke, the President of the

National Farmer’s Alliance. He’s a good Baptist. He means well, but

he’s crazy. He dreams of the Presidency when he has established the

Sub-Treasury for the farmers. He’s afraid of the Negro, and is nervous

about using him. He knows I am the most influential Baptist preacher in

the state. Tell him I say you will win, and that we will give him the

nomination for Governor, and put him in line for the Presidency.”

“When shall I go to see him?”

“Immediately. Get ready to-night.”

The next week McLeod was seated in his office at Hambright receiving

reports from his political henchmen at Raleigh.

“I tell you, McLeod, there’s a hitch. Something’s dropped. Duke’s as

coy as a maid of sixteen. He says no decision can be made now until

he submits a lot of rot to all the lodges of the Alliance and the

‘Referendum’ decides these points. You’d better get hold of him and comb

the kinks out of him quick.”

McLeod’s eyes flashed with anger, as he twisted the points of his red

moustache.

“It’s that damned Baptist Preacher,” he said. “I ’ll get even with him

yet if it’s the only thorough job I do on this earth.”

CHAPTER IX--THE RHYTHM OF THE DANCE

BEFORE boarding the train he was to take for Raleigh, he lingered with

Mrs. Durham talking, talking, talking about the wonder of his love. As

he arose to leave he said, “Now, Mother dear”----

“Charlie, you just say that so beautifully to make me your slave.”

“Of course I do. What I was going to say is, I can’t write to her. I

don’t dare. You can. Tell her all about me won’t you? Everything that

you think will interest and please her, and that will be discreet. Your

intuitions will tell you how far to go. Tell her how hard I’m working

and what an important mission I’ve undertaken, and the tremendous things

that hang on its outcome. And tell her how impatiently I’m waiting for

her to come to the Springs. Be sure to tell her that.”

“All right. I ’ll act as your attorney in your absence. But hurry

back, she must not get here first. I want you to be on the spot.”

“I ’ll be here if I have to give up politics and go into business--and

you know how I hate that word ‘business.’”

“I ’ll telegraph you if she comes.”

“Don’t let her come till I get back. Tell her the hotel isn’t fit to

receive guests yet--it never is for that matter--but anything to give me

time to get here.”

He worked with indomitable courage for two weeks, visiting the principal

towns in the state, and everywhere arousing intense enthusiasm. There

was something contagious in his spirit. The young fellows were charmed

by his eager intense way of looking at things, they caught the infection

and he made hundreds of staunch friends.

“You’re just in time!” cried his mother greeting him with radiant face

on his return. “She is coming tomorrow. I’ve a beautiful letter from

her. I think one of the sweetest letters a girl ever wrote.”

“Let me see it!”

“No.”

“Why, Mother, I thought you were all on my side!”

“But I’m not. I’m a woman, and you can’t see some things she says.”

“Then it’s something awfully nice about me.”

“Maybe the opposite.”

“Then you’d resent it for me.”

“I love her too, sir.”

“Let me see the tip end of it where she signs her name!”

“You can see that much, there”----

“Doesn’t she write a lovely hand!” He looked long and lovingly. “That

pretty name!--Sallie! So old-fashioned, and so homelike. It’s music,

isn’t it?”

“I didn’t know you could be so silly, Charlie.”

“It is funny, isn’t it? You know I think after all, we are made out of

the same stuff, saint and sinner, philosopher and fool. The differences

are only skin deep.”

“You don’t think she is made out of ordinary clay?”

“Oh! Lord, no, I meant the men. Every woman is something divine to me.

I think of God as a woman, not a man--a great loving Mother of all Life.

If I ever saw the face of God it was in my mother’s face.”

“Hush! you will make me do anything you wish.”

“No, no, I don’t want to see that letter unless you think it best.”

“Well, you will not see any more of it, sir.”

When Gaston met them at the depot with a carriage to take Sallie, her

mother, and Helen Lowell, her Boston schoolmate, to the Springs, the

first passenger to alight was Bob St. Clare.

“What in the thunder are you doing here! This town is quarantined

against you!” said Gaston.

“Hush!” said Bob in a stage whisper. “She’s here. There’s her valise.”

“That’s why you can’t land. Two’s company, three’s a crowd. I like you,

Bob. But I won’t stand for this.”

The crowd were pouring off the train and had cut off Sallie’s party in

the centre of the car.

“Gaston, I just came up for your sake. I’m looking after Miss Lowell.

I’m lost, ruined. Scared to say a word. I thought maybe, you’d help me

out. We ’ll pool chances. I ’ll talk for you and you talk for me.”

“It’s a bargain, St. Clare.”

“I want a separate carriage,--get me one quick.”

In a few moments, the brief introduction over, Gaston was seated in the

carriage facing Sallie and her mother whirling along the road, over the

long hills toward the Campbell Sulphur Springs in the woods, two miles

from the town.

How beautiful and fresh she looked to him even in a dusty travelling

dress! He was drinking the nectar from the depths of her eyes.

“Now don’t you think Helen the prettiest girl you ever saw, Mr. Gaston?”

she asked.

“I hadn’t noticed it.”

“Where were your eyes?”

“Elsewhere. I’m so glad you are going to spend a month at the Springs,

Miss Sallie. I used to go to school there when a little boy. They had a

girl’s school there in the winter and boys under twelve were admitted. I

know every nook and corner of the big forest back of the hotel. I ’ll

see that you don’t get lost.”

“That will be fine. But you must bring every goodlooking boy in the

county and make him bow down and worship Helen. She is not used to it,

but she is tickled to death over these Southern boys, and I’m going to

give her the best time she ever had in her life.”

“I ’ll do everything you command--except bow down myself. Bob’s agreed

to do that.”

She smiled in spite of her effort to look serious, and her mother

pinched her arm. She laughed.

“So you and Bob St. Clare were out there plotting before we could get

out of the train?”

“Nothing unlawful, I assure you.”

The first day she allowed Gaston to monopolise, and then began his

torture. She declared there were others with whom she must be friendly.

She determined to give a ball to Helen the next week, and began

preparations.