It was a spring morning, and perhaps it was the influence of it that made

Ruth a little restless, satisfied neither with the out-doors nor the

in-doors. Her sisters had gone to the city to show some country visitors

Independence Hall, Girard College and Fairmount Water Works and Park,

four objects which Americans cannot die peacefully, even in Naples,

without having seen. But Ruth confessed that she was tired of them, and

also of the Mint. She was tired of other things. She tried this morning

an air or two upon the piano, sang a simple song in a sweet but slightly

metallic voice, and then seating herself by the open window, read

Philip's letter. Was she thinking about Philip, as she gazed across the

fresh lawn over the tree tops to the Chelton Hills, or of that world

which his entrance, into her tradition-bound life had been one of the

means of opening to her? Whatever she thought, she was not idly musing,

as one might see by the expression of her face. After a time she took

up a book; it was a medical work, and to all appearance about as

interesting to a girl of eighteen as the statutes at large; but her face

was soon aglow over its pages, and she was so absorbed in it that she did

not notice the entrance of her mother at the open door.

"Ruth?"

"Well, mother," said the young student, looking up, with a shade of

impatience.

"I wanted to talk with thee a little about thy plans."

"Mother; thee knows I couldn't stand it at Westfield; the school stifled

me, it's a place to turn young people into dried fruit."

"I know," said Margaret Bolton, with a half anxious smile, thee chafes

against all the ways of Friends, but what will thee do? Why is thee so

discontented?"

"If I must say it, mother, I want to go away, and get out of this dead

level."

With a look half of pain and half of pity, her mother answered, "I am

sure thee is little interfered with; thee dresses as thee will, and goes

where thee pleases, to any church thee likes, and thee has music. I had

a visit yesterday from the society's committee by way of discipline,

because we have a piano in the house, which is against the rules."

"I hope thee told the elders that father and I are responsible for the

piano, and that, much as thee loves music, thee is never in the room when

it is played. Fortunately father is already out of meeting, so they

can't discipline him. I heard father tell cousin Abner that he was

whipped so often for whistling when he was a boy that he was determined

to have what compensation he could get now."

"Thy ways greatly try me, Ruth, and all thy relations. I desire thy

happiness first of all, but thee is starting out on a dangerous path.

Is thy father willing thee should go away to a school of the world's

people?"

"I have not asked him," Ruth replied with a look that might imply that

she was one of those determined little bodies who first made up her own

mind and then compelled others to make up theirs in accordance with hers.

"And when thee has got the education thee wants, and lost all relish for

the society of thy friends and the ways of thy ancestors, what then?"

Ruth turned square round to her mother, and with an impassive face and

not the slightest change of tone, said,

"Mother, I'm going to study medicine?"

Margaret Bolton almost lost for a moment her habitual placidity.

"Thee, study medicine! A slight frail girl like thee, study medicine!

Does thee think thee could stand it six months? And the lectures,

and the dissecting rooms, has thee thought of the dissecting rooms?"

"Mother," said Ruth calmly, "I have thought it all over. I know I can go

through the whole, clinics, dissecting room and all. Does thee think I

lack nerve? What is there to fear in a person dead more than in a person

living?"

"But thy health and strength, child; thee can never stand the severe

application. And, besides, suppose thee does learn medicine?"

"I will practice it."

"Here?"

"Here."

"Where thee and thy family are known?"

"If I can get patients."

"I hope at least, Ruth, thee will let us know when thee opens an office,"

said her mother, with an approach to sarcasm that she rarely indulged in,

as she rose and left the room.

Ruth sat quite still for a tine, with face intent and flushed. It was

out now. She had begun her open battle.

The sight-seers returned in high spirits from the city. Was there any

building in Greece to compare with Girard College, was there ever such a

magnificent pile of stone devised for the shelter of poor orphans? Think

of the stone shingles of the roof eight inches thick! Ruth asked the

enthusiasts if they would like to live in such a sounding mausoleum, with

its great halls and echoing rooms, and no comfortable place in it for the

accommodation of any body? If they were orphans, would they like to be

brought up in a Grecian temple?

And then there was Broad street! Wasn't it the broadest and the longest

street in the world? There certainly was no end to it, and even Ruth was

Philadelphian enough to believe that a street ought not to have any end,

or architectural point upon which the weary eye could rest.

But neither St. Girard, nor Broad street, neither wonders of the Mint nor

the glories of the Hall where the ghosts of our fathers sit always

signing the Declaration; impressed the visitors so much as the splendors

of the Chestnut street windows, and the bargains on Eighth street.

The truth is that the country cousins had come to town to attend the

Yearly Meeting, and the amount of shopping that preceded that religious

event was scarcely exceeded by the preparations for the opera in more

worldly circles.

"Is thee going to the Yearly Meeting, Ruth?" asked one of the girls.

"I have nothing to wear," replied that demure person. "If thee wants to

see new bonnets, orthodox to a shade and conformed to the letter of the

true form, thee must go to the Arch Street Meeting. Any departure from

either color or shape would be instantly taken note of. It has occupied

mother a long time, to find at the shops the exact shade for her new

bonnet. Oh, thee must go by all means. But thee won't see there a

sweeter woman than mother."

"And thee won't go?"

"Why should I? I've been again and again. If I go to Meeting at all I

like best to sit in the quiet old house in Germantown, where the windows

are all open and I can see the trees, and hear the stir of the leaves.

It's such a crush at the Yearly Meeting at Arch Street, and then there's

the row of sleek-looking young men who line the curbstone and stare at us

as we come out. No, I don't feel at home there."

That evening Ruth and her father sat late by the drawing-room fire, as

they were quite apt to do at night. It was always a time of confidences.

"Thee has another letter from young Sterling," said Eli Bolton.

"Yes. Philip has gone to the far west."

"How far?"

"He doesn't say, but it's on the frontier, and on the map everything

beyond it is marked 'Indians' and 'desert,' and looks as desolate as a

Wednesday Meeting."

"Humph. It was time for him to do something. Is he going to start a

daily newspaper among the Kick-a-poos?"

"Father, thee's unjust to Philip. He's going into business."

"What sort of business can a young man go into without capital?"

"He doesn't say exactly what it is," said Ruth a little dubiously, "but

it's something about land and railroads, and thee knows, father, that

fortunes are made nobody knows exactly how, in a new country."

"I should think so, you innocent puss, and in an old one too. But Philip

is honest, and he has talent enough, if he will stop scribbling, to make

his way. But thee may as well take care of theeself, Ruth, and not go

dawdling along with a young man in his adventures, until thy own mind is

a little more settled what thee wants."

This excellent advice did not seem to impress Ruth greatly, for she was

looking away with that abstraction of vision which often came into her

grey eyes, and at length she exclaimed, with a sort of impatience,

"I wish I could go west, or south, or somewhere. What a box women are

put into, measured for it, and put in young; if we go anywhere it's in a

box, veiled and pinioned and shut in by disabilities. Father, I should

like to break things and get loose!"

What a sweet-voiced little innocent, it was to be sure.

"Thee will no doubt break things enough when thy time comes, child; women

always have; but what does thee want now that thee hasn't?"

"I want to be something, to make myself something, to do something. Why

should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl?

What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What

one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and

the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead a

useless life?"

"Has thy mother led a useless life?"

"Somewhat that depends upon whether her children amount to anything,"

retorted the sharp little disputant. "What's the good, father, of a

series of human beings who don't advance any?"

Friend Eli, who had long ago laid aside the Quaker dress, and was out of

Meeting, and who in fact after a youth of doubt could not yet define his

belief, nevertheless looked with some wonder at this fierce young eagle

of his, hatched in a Friend's dove-cote. But he only said,

"Has thee consulted thy mother about a career, I suppose it is a career

thee wants?"

Ruth did not reply directly; she complained that her mother didn't

understand her. But that wise and placid woman understood the sweet

rebel a great deal better than Ruth understood herself. She also had a

history, possibly, and had sometime beaten her young wings against the

cage of custom, and indulged in dreams of a new social order, and had

passed through that fiery period when it seems possible for one mind,

which has not yet tried its limits, to break up and re-arrange the world.

Ruth replied to Philip's letter in due time and in the most cordial and

unsentimental manner. Philip liked the letter, as he did everything she

did; but he had a dim notion that there was more about herself in the

letter than about him. He took it with him from the Southern Hotel, when

he went to walk, and read it over and again in an unfrequented street as

he stumbled along. The rather common-place and unformed hand-writing

seemed to him peculiar and characteristic, different from that of any

other woman.

Ruth was glad to hear that Philip had made a push into the world, and she

was sure that his talent and courage would make a way for him. She

should pray for his success at any rate, and especially that the Indians,

in St. Louis, would not take his scalp.

Philip looked rather dubious at this sentence, and wished that he had

written nothing about Indians.

CHAPTER XV.

Eli Bolton and his wife talked over Ruth's case, as they had often done

before, with no little anxiety. Alone of all their children she was

impatient of the restraints and monotony of the Friends' Society, and

wholly indisposed to accept the "inner light" as a guide into a life of

acceptance and inaction. When Margaret told her husband of Ruth's newest

project, he did not exhibit so much surprise as she hoped for. In fact

he said that he did not see why a woman should not enter the medical

profession if she felt a call to it.

"But," said Margaret, "consider her total inexperience of the world, and

her frail health. Can such a slight little body endure the ordeal of the

preparation for, or the strain of, the practice of the profession?"

"Did thee ever think, Margaret, whether, she can endure being thwarted in

an, object on which she has so set her heart, as she has on this? Thee

has trained her thyself at home, in her enfeebled childhood, and thee

knows how strong her will is, and what she has been able to accomplish in

self-culture by the simple force of her determination. She never will be

satisfied until she has tried her own strength."

"I wish," said Margaret, with an inconsequence that is not exclusively

feminine, "that she were in the way to fall in love and marry by and by.

I think that would cure her of some of her notions. I am not sure but if

she went away, to some distant school, into an entirely new life, her

thoughts would be diverted."

Eli Bolton almost laughed as he regarded his wife, with eyes that never

looked at her except fondly, and replied,

"Perhaps thee remembers that thee had notions also, before we were

married, and before thee became a member of Meeting. I think Ruth comes

honestly by certain tendencies which thee has hidden under the Friend's

dress."

Margaret could not say no to this, and while she paused, it was evident

that memory was busy with suggestions to shake her present opinions.

"Why not let Ruth try the study for a time," suggested Eli; "there is a

fair beginning of a Woman's Medical College in the city. Quite likely

she will soon find that she needs first a more general culture, and fall,

in with thy wish that she should see more of the world at some large

school."

There really seemed to be nothing else to be done, and Margaret consented

at length without approving. And it was agreed that Ruth, in order to

spare her fatigue, should take lodgings with friends near the college and

make a trial in the pursuit of that science to which we all owe our

lives, and sometimes as by a miracle of escape.

That day Mr. Bolton brought home a stranger to dinner, Mr. Bigler of the

great firm of Pennybacker, Bigler & Small, railroad contractors. He was

always bringing home somebody, who had a scheme; to build a road, or open

a mine, or plant a swamp with cane to grow paper-stock, or found a

hospital, or invest in a patent shad-bone separator, or start a college

somewhere on the frontier, contiguous to a land speculation.

The Bolton house was a sort of hotel for this kind of people. They were

always coming. Ruth had known them from childhood, and she used to say

that her father attracted them as naturally as a sugar hogshead does

flies. Ruth had an idea that a large portion of the world lived by

getting the rest of the world into schemes. Mr. Bolton never could say

"no" to any of them, not even, said Ruth again, to the society for

stamping oyster shells with scripture texts before they were sold at

retail.

Mr. Bigler's plan this time, about which he talked loudly, with his mouth

full, all dinner time, was the building of the Tunkhannock, Rattlesnake

and Young-womans-town railroad, which would not only be a great highway to

the west, but would open to market inexhaustible coal-fields and untold

millions of lumber. The plan of operations was very simple.

"We'll buy the lands," explained he, "on long time, backed by the notes

of good men; and then mortgage them for money enough to get the road well

on. Then get the towns on the line to issue their bonds for stock, and

sell their bonds for enough to complete the road, and partly stock it,

especially if we mortgage each section as we complete it. We can then

sell the rest of the stock on the prospect of the business of the road

through an improved country, and also sell the lands at a big advance,

on the strength of the road. All we want," continued Mr. Bigler in his

frank manner, "is a few thousand dollars to start the surveys, and

arrange things in the legislature. There is some parties will have to be

seen, who might make us trouble."

"It will take a good deal of money to start the enterprise," remarked Mr.

Bolton, who knew very well what "seeing" a Pennsylvania Legislature

meant, but was too polite to tell Mr. Bigler what he thought of him,

while he was his guest; "what security would one have for it?"

Mr. Bigler smiled a hard kind of smile, and said, "You'd be inside, Mr.

Bolton, and you'd have the first chance in the deal."

This was rather unintelligible to Ruth, who was nevertheless somewhat

amused by the study of a type of character she had seen before.

At length she interrupted the conversation by asking,

"You'd sell the stock, I suppose, Mr. Bigler, to anybody who was

attracted by the prospectus?"

"O, certainly, serve all alike," said Mr. Bigler, now noticing Ruth for

the first time, and a little puzzled by the serene, intelligent face that

was turned towards him.

"Well, what would become of the poor people who had been led to put their

little money into the speculation, when you got out of it and left it

half way?"

It would be no more true to say of Mr. Bigler that he was or could be

embarrassed, than to say that a brass counterfeit dollar-piece would

change color when refused; the question annoyed him a little, in Mr.

Bolton's presence.

"Why, yes, Miss, of course, in a great enterprise for the benefit of the

community there will little things occur, which, which--and, of course,

the poor ought to be looked to; I tell my wife, that the poor must be

looked to; if you can tell who are poor--there's so many impostors. And

then, there's so many poor in the legislature to be looked after," said

the contractor with a sort of a chuckle, "isn't that so, Mr. Bolton?"

Eli Bolton replied that he never had much to do with the legislature.

"Yes," continued this public benefactor, "an uncommon poor lot this year,

uncommon. Consequently an expensive lot. The fact is, Mr. Bolton, that

the price is raised so high on United States Senator now, that it affects

the whole market; you can't get any public improvement through on

reasonable terms. Simony is what I call it, Simony," repeated Mr.

Bigler, as if he had said a good thing.

Mr. Bigler went on and gave some very interesting details of the intimate

connection between railroads and politics, and thoroughly entertained

himself all dinner time, and as much disgusted Ruth, who asked no more

questions, and her father who replied in monosyllables:

"I wish," said Ruth to her father, after the guest had gone, "that you

wouldn't bring home any more such horrid men. Do all men who wear big

diamond breast-pins, flourish their knives at table, and use bad grammar,

and cheat?"

"O, child, thee mustn't be too observing. Mr. Bigler is one of the most

important men in the state; nobody has more influence at Harrisburg.

I don't like him any more than thee does, but I'd better lend him a

little money than to have his ill will."

"Father, I think thee'd better have his ill-will than his company. Is it

true that he gave money to help build the pretty little church of

St. James the Less, and that he is, one of the vestrymen?"

"Yes. He is not such a bad fellow. One of the men in Third street asked

him the other day, whether his was a high church or a low church? Bigler

said he didn't know; he'd been in it once, and he could touch the ceiling

in the side aisle with his hand."

"I think he's just horrid," was Ruth's final summary of him, after the

manner of the swift judgment of women, with no consideration of the

extenuating circumstances. Mr. Bigler had no idea that he had not made a

good impression on the whole family; he certainly intended to be

agreeable. Margaret agreed with her daughter, and though she never said

anything to such people, she was grateful to Ruth for sticking at least

one pin into him.

Such was the serenity of the Bolton household that a stranger in it would

never have suspected there was any opposition to Ruth's going to the

Medical School. And she went quietly to take her residence in town, and

began her attendance of the lectures, as if it were the most natural

thing in the world. She did not heed, if she heard, the busy and

wondering gossip of relations and acquaintances, gossip that has no less

currency among the Friends than elsewhere because it is whispered slyly

and creeps about in an undertone.

Ruth was absorbed, and for the first time in her life thoroughly happy;

happy in the freedom of her life, and in the keen enjoyment of the

investigation that broadened its field day by day. She was in high

spirits when she came home to spend First Days; the house was full of her

gaiety and her merry laugh, and the children wished that Ruth would never

go away again. But her mother noticed, with a little anxiety, the

sometimes flushed face, and the sign of an eager spirit in the kindling

eyes, and, as well, the serious air of determination and endurance in her

face at unguarded moments.

The college was a small one and it sustained itself not without

difficulty in this city, which is so conservative, and is yet the origin

of so many radical movements. There were not more than a dozen

attendants on the lectures all together, so that the enterprise had the

air of an experiment, and the fascination of pioneering for those engaged

in it. There was one woman physician driving about town in her carriage,

attacking the most violent diseases in all quarters with persistent

courage, like a modern Bellona in her war chariot, who was popularly

supposed to gather in fees to the amount ten to twenty thousand dollars a

year. Perhaps some of these students looked forward to the near day when

they would support such a practice and a husband besides, but it is

unknown that any of them ever went further than practice in hospitals and

in their own nurseries, and it is feared that some of them were quite as

ready as their sisters, in emergencies, to "call a man."

If Ruth had any exaggerated expectations of a professional life, she kept

them to herself, and was known to her fellows of the class simply as a

cheerful, sincere student, eager in her investigations, and never

impatient at anything, except an insinuation that women had not as much

mental capacity for science as men.

"They really say," said one young Quaker sprig to another youth of his

age, "that Ruth Bolton is really going to be a saw-bones, attends

lectures, cuts up bodies, and all that. She's cool enough for a surgeon,

anyway." He spoke feelingly, for he had very likely been weighed in

Ruth's calm eyes sometime, and thoroughly scared by the little laugh that

accompanied a puzzling reply to one of his conversational nothings. Such

young gentlemen, at this time, did not come very distinctly into Ruth's

horizon, except as amusing circumstances.

About the details of her student life, Ruth said very little to her

friends, but they had reason to know, afterwards, that it required all

her nerve and the almost complete exhaustion of her physical strength,

to carry her through. She began her anatomical practice upon detached

portions of the human frame, which were brought into the demonstrating

room--dissecting the eye, the ear, and a small tangle of muscles and

nerves--an occupation which had not much more savor of death in it than

the analysis of a portion of a plant out of which the life went when it

was plucked up by the roots. Custom inures the most sensitive persons to

that which is at first most repellant; and in the late war we saw the

most delicate women, who could not at home endure the sight of blood,

become so used to scenes of carnage, that they walked the hospitals and

the margins of battle-fields, amid the poor remnants of torn humanity,

with as perfect self-possession as if they were strolling in a flower

garden.

It happened that Ruth was one evening deep in a line of investigation

which she could not finish or understand without demonstration, and so

eager was she in it, that it seemed as if she could not wait till the

next day. She, therefore, persuaded a fellow student, who was reading

that evening with her, to go down to the dissecting room of the college,

and ascertain what they wanted to know by an hour's work there. Perhaps,

also, Ruth wanted to test her own nerve, and to see whether the power of

association was stronger in her mind than her own will.

The janitor of the shabby and comfortless old building admitted the

girls, not without suspicion, and gave them lighted candles, which they

would need, without other remark than "there's a new one, Miss," as the

girls went up the broad stairs.

They climbed to the third story, and paused before a door, which they

unlocked, and which admitted them into a long apartment, with a row of

windows on one side and one at the end. The room was without light, save

from the stars and the candles the girls carried, which revealed to them

dimly two long and several small tables, a few benches and chairs, a

couple of skeletons hanging on the wall, a sink, and cloth-covered heaps

of something upon the tables here and there.

The windows were open, and the cool night wind came in strong enough to

flutter a white covering now and then, and to shake the loose casements.

But all the sweet odors of the night could not take from the room a faint

suggestion of mortality.

The young ladies paused a moment. The room itself was familiar enough,

but night makes almost any chamber eerie, and especially such a room of

detention as this where the mortal parts of the unburied might--almost be

supposed to be, visited, on the sighing night winds, by the wandering

spirits of their late tenants.

Opposite and at some distance across the roofs of lower buildings, the

girls saw a tall edifice, the long upper story of which seemed to be a

dancing hall. The windows of that were also open, and through them they

heard the scream of the jiggered and tortured violin, and the pump, pump

of the oboe, and saw the moving shapes of men and women in quick

transition, and heard the prompter's drawl.

"I wonder," said Ruth, "what the girls dancing there would think if they

saw us, or knew that there was such a room as this so near them."

She did not speak very loud, and, perhaps unconsciously, the girls drew

near to each other as they approached the long table in the centre of the

room. A straight object lay upon it, covered with a sheet. This was

doubtless "the new one" of which the janitor spoke. Ruth advanced, and

with a not very steady hand lifted the white covering from the upper part

of the figure and turned it down. Both the girls started. It was a

negro. The black face seemed to defy the pallor of death, and asserted

an ugly life-likeness that was frightful.

Ruth was as pale as the white sheet, and her comrade whispered, "Come

away, Ruth, it is awful."

Perhaps it was the wavering light of the candles, perhaps it was only the

agony from a death of pain, but the repulsive black face seemed to wear a

scowl that said, "Haven't you yet done with the outcast, persecuted black

man, but you must now haul him from his grave, and send even your women

to dismember his body?"

Who is this dead man, one of thousands who died yesterday, and will be

dust anon, to protest that science shall not turn his worthless carcass

to some account?

Ruth could have had no such thought, for with a pity in her sweet face,

that for the moment overcame fear and disgust, she reverently replaced

the covering, and went away to her own table, as her companion did to

hers. And there for an hour they worked at their several problems,

without speaking, but not without an awe of the presence there, "the new

one," and not without an awful sense of life itself, as they heard the

pulsations of the music and the light laughter from the dancing-hall.

When, at length, they went away, and locked the dreadful room behind

them, and came out into the street, where people were passing, they, for

the first time, realized, in the relief they felt, what a nervous strain

they had been under.

CHAPTER XVI.

While Ruth was thus absorbed in her new occupation, and the spring was

wearing away, Philip and his friends were still detained at the Southern

Hotel. The great contractors had concluded their business with the state

and railroad officials and with the lesser contractors, and departed for

the East. But the serious illness of one of the engineers kept Philip

and Henry in the city and occupied in alternate watchings.

Philip wrote to Ruth of the new acquaintance they had made, Col. Sellers,

an enthusiastic and hospitable gentleman, very much interested in the

development of the country, and in their success. They had not had an

opportunity to visit at his place "up in the country" yet, but the

Colonel often dined with them, and in confidence, confided to them his

projects, and seemed to take a great liking to them, especially to his

friend Harry. It was true that he never seemed to have ready money,

but he was engaged in very large operations.

The correspondence was not very brisk between these two young persons,

so differently occupied; for though Philip wrote long letters, he got

brief ones in reply, full of sharp little observations however, such as

one concerning Col. Sellers, namely, that such men dined at their house

every week.

Ruth's proposed occupation astonished Philip immensely, but while he

argued it and discussed it, he did not dare hint to her his fear that it

would interfere with his most cherished plans. He too sincerely

respected Ruth's judgment to make any protest, however, and he would have

defended her course against the world.

This enforced waiting at St. Louis was very irksome to Philip. His money

was running away, for one thing, and he longed to get into the field,

and see for himself what chance there was for a fortune or even an

occupation. The contractors had given the young men leave to join the

engineer corps as soon as they could, but otherwise had made no provision

for them, and in fact had left them with only the most indefinite

expectations of something large in the future.

Harry was entirely happy; in his circumstances. He very soon knew

everybody, from the governor of the state down to the waiters at the

hotel. He had the Wall street slang at his tongue's end; he always

talked like a capitalist, and entered with enthusiasm into all the land

and railway schemes with which the air was thick.

Col. Sellers and Harry talked together by the hour and by the day. Harry

informed his new friend that he was going out with the engineer corps of

the Salt Lick Pacific Extension, but that wasn't his real business.

"I'm to have, with another party," said Harry, "a big contract in the

road, as soon as it is let; and, meantime, I'm with the engineers to spy

out the best land and the depot sites."

"It's everything," suggested' the Colonel, "in knowing where to invest.

I've known people throwaway their money because they were too

consequential to take Sellers' advice. Others, again, have made their

pile on taking it. I've looked over the ground; I've been studying it

for twenty years. You can't put your finger on a spot in the map of

Missouri that I don't know as if I'd made it. When you want to place

anything," continued the Colonel, confidently, "just let Beriah Sellers

know. That's all."

"Oh, I haven't got much in ready money I can lay my hands on now, but if

a fellow could do anything with fifteen or twenty thousand dollars,

as a beginning, I shall draw for that when I see the right opening."

"Well, that's something, that's something, fifteen or twenty thousand

dollars, say twenty--as an advance," said the Colonel reflectively, as if

turning over his mind for a project that could be entered on with such a

trifling sum.

"I'll tell you what it is--but only to you Mr. Brierly, only to you,

mind; I've got a little project that I've been keeping. It looks small,

looks small on paper, but it's got a big future. What should you say,

sir, to a city, built up like the rod of Aladdin had touched it, built up

in two years, where now you wouldn't expect it any more than you'd expect

a light-house on the top of Pilot Knob? and you could own the land! It

can be done, sir. It can be done!"

The Colonel hitched up his chair close to Harry, laid his hand on his

knee, and, first looking about him, said in a low voice, "The Salt Lick

Pacific Extension is going to run through Stone's Landing! The Almighty

never laid out a cleaner piece of level prairie for a city; and it's the

natural center of all that region of hemp and tobacco."

"What makes you think the road will go there? It's twenty miles, on the

map, off the straight line of the road?"

"You can't tell what is the straight line till the engineers have been

over it. Between us, I have talked with Jeff Thompson, the division

engineer. He understands the wants of Stone's Landing, and the claims of

the inhabitants--who are to be there. Jeff says that a railroad is for

--the accommodation of the people and not for the benefit of gophers; and

if, he don't run this to Stone's Landing he'll be damned! You ought to

know Jeff; he's one of the most enthusiastic engineers in this western

country, and one of the best fellows that ever looked through the bottom

of a glass."

The recommendation was not undeserved. There was nothing that Jeff

wouldn't do, to accommodate a friend, from sharing his last dollar with

him, to winging him in a duel. When he understood from Col. Sellers.

how the land lay at Stone's Landing, he cordially shook hands with that

gentleman, asked him to drink, and fairly roared out, "Why, God bless my

soul, Colonel, a word from one Virginia gentleman to another is 'nuff

ced.' There's Stone's Landing been waiting for a railroad more than four

thousand years, and damme if she shan't have it."

Philip had not so much faith as Harry in Stone's Landing, when the latter

opened the project to him, but Harry talked about it as if he already

owned that incipient city.

Harry thoroughly believed in all his projects and inventions, and lived

day by day in their golden atmosphere. Everybody liked the young fellow,

for how could they help liking one of such engaging manners and large

fortune? The waiters at the hotel would do more for him than for any

other guest, and he made a great many acquaintances among the people of

St. Louis, who liked his sensible and liberal views about the development

of the western country, and about St. Louis. He said it ought to be the

national capital. Harry made partial arrangements with several of the

merchants for furnishing supplies for his contract on the Salt Lick

Pacific Extension; consulted the maps with the engineers, and went over

the profiles with the contractors, figuring out estimates for bids.

He was exceedingly busy with those things when he was not at the bedside

of his sick acquaintance, or arranging the details of his speculation

with Col. Sellers.

Meantime the days went along and the weeks, and the money in Harry's

pocket got lower and lower. He was just as liberal with what he had as

before, indeed it was his nature to be free with his money or with that

of others, and he could lend or spend a dollar with an air that made it

seem like ten. At length, at the end of one week, when his hotel bill

was presented, Harry found not a cent in his pocket to meet it. He

carelessly remarked to the landlord that he was not that day in funds,

but he would draw on New York, and he sat down and wrote to the

contractors in that city a glowing letter about the prospects of the

road, and asked them to advance a hundred or two, until he got at work.

No reply came. He wrote again, in an unoffended business like tone,

suggesting that he had better draw at three days. A short answer came to

this, simply saying that money was very tight in Wall street just then,

and that he had better join the engineer corps as soon as he could.

But the bill had to be paid, and Harry took it to Philip, and asked him

if he thought he hadn't better draw on his uncle. Philip had not much

faith in Harry's power of "drawing," and told him that he would pay the

bill himself. Whereupon Harry dismissed the matter then and thereafter

from his thoughts, and, like a light-hearted good fellow as he was, gave

himself no more trouble about his board-bills. Philip paid them, swollen

as they were with a monstrous list of extras; but he seriously counted

the diminishing bulk of his own hoard, which was all the money he had in

the world. Had he not tacitly agreed to share with Harry to the last in

this adventure, and would not the generous fellow divide; with him if he,

Philip, were in want and Harry had anything?

The fever at length got tired of tormenting the stout young engineer, who

lay sick at the hotel, and left him, very thin, a little sallow but an

"acclimated" man. Everybody said he was "acclimated" now, and said it

cheerfully. What it is to be acclimated to western fevers no two persons

exactly agree.

Some say it is a sort of vaccination that renders death by some malignant

type of fever less probable. Some regard it as a sort of initiation,

like that into the Odd Fellows, which renders one liable to his regular

dues thereafter. Others consider it merely the acquisition of a habit of

taking every morning before breakfast a dose of bitters, composed of

whiskey and assafoetida, out of the acclimation jug.

Jeff Thompson afterwards told Philip that he once asked Senator Atchison,

then acting Vice-President: of the United States, about the possibility

of acclimation; he thought the opinion of the second officer of our great

government would be, valuable on this point. They were sitting together

on a bench before a country tavern, in the free converse permitted by our

democratic habits.

"I suppose, Senator, that you have become acclimated to this country?"

"Well," said the Vice-President, crossing his legs, pulling his

wide-awake down over his forehead, causing a passing chicken to hop

quickly one side by the accuracy of his aim, and speaking with senatorial

deliberation, "I think I have. I've been here twenty-five years, and

dash, dash my dash to dash, if I haven't entertained twenty-five separate

and distinct earthquakes, one a year. The niggro is the only person who

can stand the fever and ague of this region."

The convalescence of the engineer was the signal for breaking up quarters

at St. Louis, and the young fortune-hunters started up the river in good

spirits. It was only the second time either of them had been upon a

Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of

novelty. Col. Sellers was at the landing to bid thorn good-bye.

"I shall send you up that basket of champagne by the next boat; no, no;

no thanks; you'll find it not bad in camp," he cried out as the plank was

hauled in. "My respects to Thompson. Tell him to sight for Stone's.

Let me know, Mr. Brierly, when you are ready to locate; I'll come over

from Hawkeye. Goodbye."

And the last the young fellows saw of the Colonel, he was waving his hat,

and beaming prosperity and good luck.

The voyage was delightful, and was not long enough to become monotonous.

The travelers scarcely had time indeed to get accustomed to the splendors

of the great saloon where the tables were spread for meals, a marvel of

paint and gilding, its ceiling hung with fancifully cut tissue-paper of

many colors, festooned and arranged in endless patterns. The whole was

more beautiful than a barber's shop. The printed bill of fare at dinner

was longer and more varied, the proprietors justly boasted, than that of

any hotel in New York. It must have been the work of an author of talent

and imagination, and it surely was not his fault if the dinner itself was

to a certain extent a delusion, and if the guests got something that

tasted pretty much the same whatever dish they ordered; nor was it his

fault if a general flavor of rose in all the dessert dishes suggested

that they hid passed through the barber's saloon on their way from the

kitchen.

The travelers landed at a little settlement on the left bank, and at once

took horses for the camp in the interior, carrying their clothes and

blankets strapped behind the saddles. Harry was dressed as we have seen

him once before, and his long and shining boots attracted not a little

the attention of the few persons they met on the road, and especially of

the bright faced wenches who lightly stepped along the highway,

picturesque in their colored kerchiefs, carrying light baskets, or riding

upon mules and balancing before them a heavier load.

Harry sang fragments of operas and talked abort their fortune. Philip

even was excited by the sense of freedom and adventure, and the beauty of

the landscape. The prairie, with its new grass and unending acres of

brilliant flowers--chiefly the innumerable varieties of phlox-bore the

look of years of cultivation, and the occasional open groves of white

oaks gave it a park-like appearance. It was hardly unreasonable to

expect to see at any moment, the gables and square windows of an

Elizabethan mansion in one of the well kept groves.

Towards sunset of the third day, when the young gentlemen thought they

ought to be near the town of Magnolia, near which they had been directed

to find the engineers' camp, they descried a log house and drew up before

it to enquire the way. Half the building was store, and half was

dwelling house. At the door of the latter stood a regress with a bright

turban on her head, to whom Philip called,

"Can you tell me, auntie, how far it is to the town of Magnolia?"

"Why, bress you chile," laughed the woman, "you's dere now."

It was true. This log horse was the compactly built town, and all

creation was its suburbs. The engineers' camp was only two or three

miles distant.

"You's boun' to find it," directed auntie, "if you don't keah nuffin

'bout de road, and go fo' de sun-down."

A brisk gallop brought the riders in sight of the twinkling light of the

camp, just as the stars came out. It lay in a little hollow, where a

small stream ran through a sparse grove of young white oaks. A half

dozen tents were pitched under the trees, horses and oxen were corraled

at a little distance, and a group of men sat on camp stools or lay on

blankets about a bright fire. The twang of a banjo became audible as

they drew nearer, and they saw a couple of negroes, from some neighboring

plantation, "breaking down" a juba in approved style, amid the "hi, hi's"

of the spectators.

Mr. Jeff Thompson, for it was the camp of this redoubtable engineer, gave

the travelers a hearty welcome, offered them ground room in his own tent,

ordered supper, and set out a small jug, a drop from which he declared

necessary on account of the chill of the evening.

"I never saw an Eastern man," said Jeff, "who knew how to drink from a

jug with one hand. It's as easy as lying. So." He grasped the handle

with the right hand, threw the jug back upon his arm, and applied his

lips to the nozzle. It was an act as graceful as it was simple.

"Besides," said Mr. Thompson, setting it down, "it puts every man on his

honor as to quantity."

Early to turn in was the rule of the camp, and by nine o'clock everybody

was under his blanket, except Jeff himself, who worked awhile at his

table over his field-book, and then arose, stepped outside the tent door

and sang, in a strong and not unmelodious tenor, the Star Spangled Banner

from beginning to end. It proved to be his nightly practice to let off

the unexpended seam of his conversational powers, in the words of this

stirring song.

It was a long time before Philip got to sleep. He saw the fire light,

he saw the clear stars through the tree-tops, he heard the gurgle of the

stream, the stamp of the horses, the occasional barking of the dog which

followed the cook's wagon, the hooting of an owl; and when these failed

he saw Jeff, standing on a battlement, mid the rocket's red glare, and

heard him sing, "Oh, say, can you see?", It was the first time he had

ever slept on the ground.

CHAPTER XVII.

----"We have view'd it,

And measur'd it within all, by the scale

The richest tract of land, love, in the kingdom!

There will be made seventeen or eighteeen millions,

Or more, as't may be handled!"

The Devil is an Ass.

Nobody dressed more like an engineer than Mr. Henry Brierly. The

completeness of his appointments was the envy of the corps, and the gay

fellow himself was the admiration of the camp servants, axemen, teamsters

and cooks.

"I reckon you didn't git them boots no wher's this side o' Sent Louis?"

queried the tall Missouri youth who acted as commissariy's assistant.

"No, New York."

"Yas, I've heern o' New York," continued the butternut lad, attentively

studying each item of Harry's dress, and endeavoring to cover his design

with interesting conversation. "'N there's Massachusetts.",

"It's not far off."

"I've heern Massachusetts was a-----of a place. Les, see, what state's

Massachusetts in?"

"Massachusetts," kindly replied Harry, "is in the state of Boston."

"Abolish'n wan't it? They must a cost right smart," referring to the

boots.

Harry shouldered his rod and went to the field, tramped over the prairie

by day, and figured up results at night, with the utmost cheerfulness and

industry, and plotted the line on the profile paper, without, however,

the least idea of engineering practical or theoretical. Perhaps there

was not a great deal of scientific knowledge in the entire corps, nor was

very much needed. They were making, what is called a preliminary survey,

and the chief object of a preliminary survey was to get up an excitement

about the road, to interest every town in that part of the state in it,

under the belief that the road would run through it, and to get the aid

of every planter upon the prospect that a station would be on his land.

Mr. Jeff Thompson was the most popular engineer who could be found for

this work. He did not bother himself much about details or

practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the

top of one divide to the top of another, and striking "plumb" every town

site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In

his own language he "just went booming."

This course gave Harry an opportunity, as he said, to learn the practical

details of engineering, and it gave Philip a chance to see the country,

and to judge for himself what prospect of a fortune it offered. Both he

and Harry got the "refusal" of more than one plantation as they went

along, and wrote urgent letters to their eastern correspondents, upon the

beauty of the land and the certainty that it would quadruple in value as

soon as the road was finally located. It seemed strange to them that

capitalists did not flock out there and secure this land.

They had not been in the field over two weeks when Harry wrote to his

friend Col. Sellers that he'd better be on the move, for the line was

certain to go to Stone's Landing. Any one who looked at the line on the

map, as it was laid down from day to day, would have been uncertain which

way it was going; but Jeff had declared that in his judgment the only

practicable route from the point they then stood on was to follow the

divide to Stone's Landing, and it was generally understood that that town

would be the next one hit.

"We'll make it, boys," said the chief, "if we have to go in a balloon."

And make it they did In less than a week, this indomitable engineer had

carried his moving caravan over slues and branches, across bottoms and

along divides, and pitched his tents in the very heart of the city of

Stone's Landing.

"Well, I'll be dashed," was heard the cheery voice of Mr. Thompson, as he

stepped outside the tent door at sunrise next morning. "If this don't

get me. I say, yon, Grayson, get out your sighting iron and see if you

can find old Sellers' town. Blame me if we wouldn't have run plumb by it

if twilight had held on a little longer. Oh! Sterling, Brierly, get up

and see the city. There's a steamboat just coming round the bend." And

Jeff roared with laughter. "The mayor'll be round here to breakfast."

The fellows turned out of the tents, rubbing their eyes, and stared about

them. They were camped on the second bench of the narrow bottom of a

crooked, sluggish stream, that was some five rods wide in the present

good stage of water. Before them were a dozen log cabins, with stick and

mud chimneys, irregularly disposed on either side of a not very well

defined road, which did not seem to know its own mind exactly, and, after

straggling through the town, wandered off over the rolling prairie in an

uncertain way, as if it had started for nowhere and was quite likely to

reach its destination. Just as it left the town, however, it was cheered

and assisted by a guide-board, upon which was the legend "10 Mils to

Hawkeye."

The road had never been made except by the travel over it, and at this

season--the rainy June--it was a way of ruts cut in the black soil, and

of fathomless mud-holes. In the principal street of the city, it had

received more attention; for hogs; great and small, rooted about in it

and wallowed in it, turning the street into a liquid quagmire which could

only be crossed on pieces of plank thrown here and there.

About the chief cabin, which was the store and grocery of this mart of

trade, the mud was more liquid than elsewhere, and the rude platform in

front of it and the dry-goods boxes mounted thereon were places of refuge

for all the loafers of the place. Down by the stream was a dilapidated

building which served for a hemp warehouse, and a shaky wharf extended

out from it, into the water. In fact a flat-boat was there moored by it,

it's setting poles lying across the gunwales. Above the town the stream

was crossed by a crazy wooden bridge, the supports of which leaned all

ways in the soggy soil; the absence of a plank here and there in the

flooring made the crossing of the bridge faster than a walk an offense

not necessary to be prohibited by law.

"This, gentlemen," said Jeff, "is Columbus River, alias Goose Run. If it

was widened, and deepened, and straightened, and made, long enough, it

would be one of the finest rivers in the western country."

As the sun rose and sent his level beams along the stream, the thin

stratum of mist, or malaria, rose also and dispersed, but the light was

not able to enliven the dull water nor give any hint of its apparently

fathomless depth. Venerable mud-turtles crawled up and roosted upon the

old logs in the stream, their backs glistening in the sun, the first

inhabitants of the metropolis to begin the active business of the day.

It was not long, however, before smoke began to issue from the city

chimneys; and before the engineers, had finished their breakfast they

were the object of the curious inspection of six or eight boys and men,

who lounged into the camp and gazed about them with languid interest,

their hands in their pockets every one.

"Good morning; gentlemen," called out the chief engineer, from the table.

"Good mawning," drawled out the spokesman of the party. "I allow

thish-yers the railroad, I heern it was a-comin'."

"Yes, this is the railroad; all but the rails and the ironhorse."

"I reckon you kin git all the rails you want oaten my white oak timber

over, thar," replied the first speaker, who appeared to be a man of

property and willing to strike up a trade.

"You'll have to negotiate with the contractors about the rails, sir,"

said Jeff; "here's Mr. Brierly, I've no doubt would like to buy your

rails when the time comes."

"O," said the man, "I thought maybe you'd fetch the whole bilin along

with you. But if you want rails, I've got em, haint I Eph."

"Heaps," said Eph, without taking his eyes off the group at the table.

"Well," said Mr. Thompson, rising from his seat and moving towards his

tent, "the railroad has come to Stone's Landing, sure; I move we take a

drink on it all round."

The proposal met with universal favor. Jeff gave prosperity to Stone's

Landing and navigation to Goose Run, and the toast was washed down with

gusto, in the simple fluid of corn; and with the return compliment that a

rail road was a good thing, and that Jeff Thompson was no slouch.

About ten o'clock a horse and wagon was descried making a slow approach

to the camp over the prairie. As it drew near, the wagon was seen to

contain a portly gentleman, who hitched impatiently forward on his seat,

shook the reins and gently touched up his horse, in the vain attempt to

communicate his own energy to that dull beast, and looked eagerly at the

tents. When the conveyance at length drew up to Mr. Thompson's door,

the gentleman descended with great deliberation, straightened himself up,

rubbed his hands, and beaming satisfaction from every part of his radiant

frame, advanced to the group that was gathered to welcome him, and which

had saluted him by name as soon as he came within hearing.

"Welcome to Napoleon, gentlemen, welcome. I am proud to see you here

Mr. Thompson. You are, looking well Mr. Sterling. This is the country,

sir. Right glad to see you Mr. Brierly. You got that basket of

champagne? No? Those blasted river thieves! I'll never send anything

more by 'em. The best brand, Roederer. The last I had in my cellar,

from a lot sent me by Sir George Gore--took him out on a buffalo hunt,

when he visited our, country. Is always sending me some trifle. You

haven't looked about any yet, gentlemen? It's in the rough yet, in the

rough. Those buildings will all have to come down. That's the place for

the public square, Court House, hotels, churches, jail--all that sort of

thing. About where we stand, the deepo. How does that strike your

engineering eye, Mr. Thompson? Down yonder the business streets, running

to the wharves. The University up there, on rising ground, sightly

place, see the river for miles. That's Columbus river, only forty-nine

miles to the Missouri. You see what it is, placid, steady, no current to

interfere with navigation, wants widening in places and dredging, dredge

out the harbor and raise a levee in front of the town; made by nature on

purpose for a mart. Look at all this country, not another building

within ten miles, no other navigable stream, lay of the land points right

here; hemp, tobacco, corn, must come here. The railroad will do it,

Napoleon won't know itself in a year."

"Don't now evidently," said Philip aside to Harry. "Have you breakfasted

Colonel?"

"Hastily. Cup of coffee. Can't trust any coffee I don't import myself.

But I put up a basket of provisions,--wife would put in a few delicacies,

women always will, and a half dozen of that Burgundy, I was telling you

of Mr. Briefly. By the way, you never got to dine with me." And the

Colonel strode away to the wagon and looked under the seat for the

basket.

Apparently it was not there. For the Colonel raised up the flap, looked

in front and behind, and then exclaimed,

"Confound it. That comes of not doing a thing yourself. I trusted to

the women folks to set that basket in the wagon, and it ain't there."

The camp cook speedily prepared a savory breakfast for the Colonel,

broiled chicken, eggs, corn-bread, and coffee, to which he did ample

justice, and topped off with a drop of Old Bourbon, from Mr. Thompson's

private store, a brand which he said he knew well, he should think it

came from his own sideboard.

While the engineer corps went to the field, to run back a couple of miles

and ascertain, approximately, if a road could ever get down to the

Landing, and to sight ahead across the Run, and see if it could ever get

out again, Col. Sellers and Harry sat down and began to roughly map out

the city of Napoleon on a large piece of drawing paper.

"I've got the refusal of a mile square here," said the Colonel, "in our

names, for a year, with a quarter interest reserved for the four owners."

They laid out the town liberally, not lacking room, leaving space for the

railroad to come in, and for the river as it was to be when improved.

The engineers reported that the railroad could come in, by taking a

little sweep and crossing the stream on a high bridge, but the grades

would be steep. Col. Sellers said he didn't care so much about the

grades, if the road could only be made to reach the elevators on the

river. The next day Mr. Thompson made a hasty survey of the stream for a

mile or two, so that the Colonel and Harry were enabled to show on their

map how nobly that would accommodate the city. Jeff took a little

writing from the Colonel and Harry for a prospective share but Philip

declined to join in, saying that he had no money, and didn't want to make

engagements he couldn't fulfill.

The next morning the camp moved on, followed till it was out of sight by

the listless eyes of the group in front of the store, one of whom

remarked that, "he'd be doggoned if he ever expected to see that railroad

any mo'."

Harry went with the Colonel to Hawkeye to complete their arrangements, a

part of which was the preparation of a petition to congress for the

improvement of the navigation of Columbus River.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Eight years have passed since the death of Mr. Hawkins. Eight years are

not many in the life of a nation or the history of a state, but they

maybe years of destiny that shall fix the current of the century

following. Such years were those that followed the little scrimmage on

Lexington Common. Such years were those that followed the double-shotted

demand for the surrender of Fort Sumter. History is never done with

inquiring of these years, and summoning witnesses about them, and trying

to understand their significance.

The eight years in America from 1860 to 1868 uprooted institutions that

were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the

social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the

entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of

two or three generations.

As we are accustomed to interpret the economy of providence, the life of

the individual is as nothing to that of the nation or the race; but who

can say, in the broader view and the more intelligent weight of values,

that the life of one man is not more than that of a nationality, and that

there is not a tribunal where the tragedy of one human soul shall not

seem more significant than the overturning of any human institution

whatever?

When one thinks of the tremendous forces of the upper and the nether

world which play for the mastery of the soul of a woman during the few

years in which she passes from plastic girlhood to the ripe maturity of

womanhood, he may well stand in awe before the momentous drama.

What capacities she has of purity, tenderness, goodness; what capacities

of vileness, bitterness and evil. Nature must needs be lavish with the

mother and creator of men, and centre in her all the possibilities of

life. And a few critical years can decide whether her life is to be full

of sweetness and light, whether she is to be the vestal of a holy temple,

or whether she will be the fallen priestess of a desecrated shrine.

There are women, it is true, who seem to be capable neither of rising

much nor of falling much, and whom a conventional life saves from any

special development of character.

But Laura was not one of them. She had the fatal gift of beauty, and

that more fatal gift which does not always accompany mere beauty, the

power of fascination, a power that may, indeed, exist without beauty.

She had will, and pride and courage and ambition, and she was left to be

very much her own guide at the age when romance comes to the aid of

passion, and when the awakening powers of her vigorous mind had little

object on which to discipline themselves.

The tremendous conflict that was fought in this girl's soul none of those

about her knew, and very few knew that her life had in it anything

unusual or romantic or strange.

Those were troublous days in Hawkeye as well as in most other Missouri

towns, days of confusion, when between Unionist and Confederate

occupations, sudden maraudings and bush-whackings and raids, individuals

escaped observation or comment in actions that would have filled the town

with scandal in quiet times.

Fortunately we only need to deal with Laura's life at this period

historically, and look back upon such portions of it as will serve to

reveal the woman as she was at the time of the arrival of Mr. Harry

Brierly in Hawkeye.

The Hawkins family were settled there, and had a hard enough struggle

with poverty and the necessity of keeping up appearances in accord with

their own family pride and the large expectations they secretly cherished

of a fortune in the Knobs of East Tennessee. How pinched they were

perhaps no one knew but Clay, to whom they looked for almost their whole

support. Washington had been in Hawkeye off and on, attracted away

occasionally by some tremendous speculation, from which he invariably

returned to Gen. Boswell's office as poor as he went. He was the

inventor of no one knew how many useless contrivances, which were not

worth patenting, and his years had been passed in dreaming and planning

to no purpose; until he was now a man of about thirty, without a

profession or a permanent occupation, a tall, brown-haired, dreamy person

of the best intentions and the frailest resolution. Probably however

the, eight years had been happier to him than to any others in his

circle, for the time had been mostly spent in a blissful dream of the

coming of enormous wealth.

He went out with a company from Hawkeye to the war, and was not wanting

in courage, but he would have been a better soldier if he had been less

engaged in contrivances for circumventing the enemy by strategy unknown

to the books.

It happened to him to be captured in one of his self-appointed

expeditions, but the federal colonel released him, after a short

examination, satisfied that he could most injure the confederate forces

opposed to the Unionists by returning him to his regiment. Col. Sellers

was of course a prominent man during the war. He was captain of the home

guards in Hawkeye, and he never left home except upon one occasion, when

on the strength of a rumor, he executed a flank movement and fortified

Stone's Landing, a place which no one unacquainted with the country would

be likely to find.

"Gad," said the Colonel afterwards, "the Landing is the key to upper

Missouri, and it is the only place the enemy never captured. If other

places had been defended as well as that was, the result would have been

different, sir."

The Colonel had his own theories about war as he had in other things.

If everybody had stayed at home as he did, he said, the South never would

have been conquered. For what would there have been to conquer? Mr.

Jeff Davis was constantly writing him to take command of a corps in the

confederate army, but Col. Sellers said, no, his duty was at home. And

he was by no means idle. He was the inventor of the famous air torpedo,

which came very near destroying the Union armies in Missouri, and the

city of St. Louis itself.

His plan was to fill a torpedo with Greek fire and poisonous and deadly

missiles, attach it to a balloon, and then let it sail away over the

hostile camp and explode at the right moment, when the time-fuse burned

out. He intended to use this invention in the capture of St. Louis,

exploding his torpedoes over the city, and raining destruction upon it

until the army of occupation would gladly capitulate. He was unable to

procure the Greek fire, but he constructed a vicious torpedo which would

have answered the purpose, but the first one prematurely exploded in his

wood-house, blowing it clean away, and setting fire to his house. The

neighbors helped him put out the conflagration, but they discouraged any

more experiments of that sort.

The patriotic old gentleman, however, planted so much powder and so many

explosive contrivances in the roads leading into Hawkeye, and then forgot

the exact spots of danger, that people were afraid to travel the

highways, and used to come to town across the fields, The Colonel's motto

was, "Millions for defence but not one cent for tribute."

When Laura came to Hawkeye she might have forgotten the annoyances of the

gossips of Murpheysburg and have out lived the bitterness that was

growing in her heart, if she had been thrown less upon herself, or if the

surroundings of her life had been more congenial and helpful. But she

had little society, less and less as she grew older that was congenial to

her, and her mind preyed upon itself; and the mystery of her birth at

once chagrined her and raised in her the most extravagant expectations.

She was proud and she felt the sting of poverty. She could not but be

conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and came to take

a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations upon the rather

loutish young men who came in her way and whom she despised.

There was another world opened to her--a world of books. But it was not

the best world of that sort, for the small libraries she had access to in

Hawkeye were decidedly miscellaneous, and largely made up of romances and

fictions which fed her imagination with the most exaggerated notions of

life, and showed her men and women in a very false sort of heroism. From

these stories she learned what a woman of keen intellect and some culture

joined to beauty and fascination of manner, might expect to accomplish in

society as she read of it; and along with these ideas she imbibed other

very crude ones in regard to the emancipation of woman.

There were also other books-histories, biographies of distinguished

people, travels in far lands, poems, especially those of Byron, Scott and

Shelley and Moore, which she eagerly absorbed, and appropriated therefrom

what was to her liking. Nobody in Hawkeye had read so much or, after a

fashion, studied so diligently as Laura. She passed for an accomplished

girl, and no doubt thought herself one, as she was, judged by any

standard near her.

During the war there came to Hawkeye a confederate officer, Col. Selby,

who was stationed there for a time, in command of that district. He was

a handsome, soldierly man of thirty years, a graduate of the University

of Virginia, and of distinguished family, if his story might be believed,

and, it was evident, a man of the world and of extensive travel and

adventure.

To find in such an out of the way country place a woman like Laura was a

piece of good luck upon which Col. Selby congratulated himself. He was

studiously polite to her and treated her with a consideration to which

she was unaccustomed. She had read of such men, but she had never seen

one before, one so high-bred, so noble in sentiment, so entertaining in

conversation, so engaging in manner.

It is a long story; unfortunately it is an old story, and it need not be

dwelt on. Laura loved him, and believed that his love for her was as

pure and deep as her own. She worshipped him and would have counted her

life a little thing to give him, if he would only love her and let her

feed the hunger of her heart upon him.

The passion possessed her whole being, and lifted her up, till she seemed

to walk on air. It was all true, then, the romances she had read, the

bliss of love she had dreamed of. Why had she never noticed before how

blithesome the world was, how jocund with love; the birds sang it, the

trees whispered it to her as she passed, the very flowers beneath her

feet strewed the way as for a bridal march.

When the Colonel went away they were engaged to be married, as soon as he

could make certain arrangements which he represented to be necessary, and

quit the army. He wrote to her from Harding, a small town in the

southwest corner of the state, saying that he should be held in the

service longer than he had expected, but that it would not be more than a

few months, then he should be at liberty to take her to Chicago where he

had property, and should have business, either now or as soon as the war

was over, which he thought could not last long. Meantime why should they

be separated? He was established in comfortable quarters, and if she

could find company and join him, they would be married, and gain so many

more months of happiness.

Was woman ever prudent when she loved? Laura went to Harding, the

neighbors supposed to nurse Washington who had fallen ill there.

Her engagement was, of course, known in Hawkeye, and was indeed a matter

of pride to her family. Mrs. Hawkins would have told the first inquirer

that. Laura had gone to be married; but Laura had cautioned her; she did

not want to be thought of, she said, as going in search of a husband; let

the news come back after she was married.

So she traveled to Harding on the pretence we have mentioned, and was

married. She was married, but something must have happened on that very

day or the next that alarmed her. Washington did not know then or after

what it was, but Laura bound him not to send news of her marriage to

Hawkeye yet, and to enjoin her mother not to speak of it. Whatever cruel

suspicion or nameless dread this was, Laura tried bravely to put it away,

and not let it cloud her happiness.

Communication that summer, as may be imagined, was neither regular nor

frequent between the remote confederate camp at Harding and Hawkeye, and

Laura was in a measure lost sight of--indeed, everyone had troubles

enough of his own without borrowing from his neighbors.

Laura had given herself utterly to her husband, and if he had faults, if

he was selfish, if he was sometimes coarse, if he was dissipated, she did

not or would not see it. It was the passion of her life, the time when

her whole nature went to flood tide and swept away all barriers. Was her

husband ever cold or indifferent? She shut her eyes to everything but

her sense of possession of her idol.

Three months passed. One morning her husband informed her that he had

been ordered South, and must go within two hours.

"I can be ready," said Laura, cheerfully.

"But I can't take you. You must go back to Hawkeye."

"Can't-take-me?" Laura asked, with wonder in her eyes. "I can't live

without you. You said-----"

"O bother what I said,"--and the Colonel took up his sword to buckle it

on, and then continued coolly, "the fact is Laura, our romance is played

out."

Laura heard, but she did not comprehend. She caught his arm and cried,

"George, how can you joke so cruelly? I will go any where with you.

I will wait any where. I can't go back to Hawkeye."

"Well, go where you like. Perhaps," continued he with a sneer, "you

would do as well to wait here, for another colonel."

Laura's brain whirled. She did not yet comprehend. "What does this

mean? Where are you going?"

"It means," said the officer, in measured words, "that you haven't

anything to show for a legal marriage, and that I am going to New

Orleans."

"It's a lie, George, it's a lie. I am your wife. I shall go. I shall

follow you to New Orleans."

"Perhaps my wife might not like it!"

Laura raised her head, her eyes flamed with fire, she tried to utter a

cry, and fell senseless on the floor.

When she came to herself the Colonel was gone. Washington Hawkins stood

at her bedside. Did she come to herself? Was there anything left in her

heart but hate and bitterness, a sense of an infamous wrong at the hands

of the only man she had ever loved?

She returned to Hawkeye. With the exception of Washington and his

mother, no one knew what had happened. The neighbors supposed that the

engagement with Col. Selby had fallen through. Laura was ill for a long

time, but she recovered; she had that resolution in her that could

conquer death almost. And with her health came back her beauty, and an

added fascination, a something that might be mistaken for sadness. Is

there a beauty in the knowledge of evil, a beauty that shines out in the

face of a person whose inward life is transformed by some terrible

experience? Is the pathos in the eyes of the Beatrice Cenci from her

guilt or her innocence?

Laura was not much changed. The lovely woman had a devil in her heart.

That was all.

CHAPTER XIX.

Mr. Harry Brierly drew his pay as an engineer while he was living at the

City Hotel in Hawkeye. Mr. Thompson had been kind enough to say that it

didn't make any difference whether he was with the corps or not; and

although Harry protested to the Colonel daily and to Washington Hawkins

that he must go back at once to the line and superintend the lay-out with

reference to his contract, yet he did not go, but wrote instead long

letters to Philip, instructing him to keep his eye out, and to let him

know when any difficulty occurred that required his presence.

Meantime Harry blossomed out in the society of Hawkeye, as he did in any

society where fortune cast him and he had the slightest opportunity to

expand. Indeed the talents of a rich and accomplished young fellow like

Harry were not likely to go unappreciated in such a place. A land

operator, engaged in vast speculations, a favorite in the select circles

of New York, in correspondence with brokers and bankers, intimate with

public men at Washington, one who could play the guitar and touch the

banjo lightly, and who had an eye for a pretty girl, and knew the

language of flattery, was welcome everywhere in Hawkeye. Even Miss Laura

Hawkins thought it worth while to use her fascinations upon him, and to

endeavor to entangle the volatile fellow in the meshes of her

attractions.

"Gad," says Harry to the Colonel, "she's a superb creature, she'd make a

stir in New York, money or no money. There are men I know would give her

a railroad or an opera house, or whatever she wanted--at least they'd

promise."

Harry had a way of looking at women as he looked at anything else in the

world he wanted, and he half resolved to appropriate Miss Laura, during

his stay in Hawkeye. Perhaps the Colonel divined his thoughts, or was

offended at Harry's talk, for he replied,

"No nonsense, Mr. Brierly. Nonsense won't do in Hawkeye, not with my

friends. The Hawkins' blood is good blood, all the way from Tennessee.

The Hawkinses are under the weather now, but their Tennessee property is

millions when it comes into market."

"Of course, Colonel. Not the least offense intended. But you can see

she is a fascinating woman. I was only thinking, as to this

appropriation, now, what such a woman could do in Washington. All

correct, too, all correct. Common thing, I assure you in Washington; the

wives of senators, representatives, cabinet officers, all sorts of wives,

and some who are not wives, use their influence. You want an

appointment? Do you go to Senator X? Not much. You get on the right

side of his wife. Is it an appropriation? You'd go 'straight to the

Committee, or to the Interior office, I suppose? You'd learn better than

that. It takes a woman to get any thing through the Land Office: I tell

you, Miss Laura would fascinate an appropriation right through the Senate

and the House of Representatives in one session, if she was in

Washington, as your friend, Colonel, of course as your friend."

"Would you have her sign our petition?" asked the Colonel, innocently.

Harry laughed. "Women don't get anything by petitioning Congress; nobody

does, that's for form. Petitions are referred somewhere, and that's the

last of them; you can't refer a handsome woman so easily, when she is

present. They prefer 'em mostly."

The petition however was elaborately drawn up, with a glowing description

of Napoleon and the adjacent country, and a statement of the absolute

necessity to the prosperity of that region and of one of the stations on

the great through route to the Pacific, of the, immediate improvement of

Columbus River; to this was appended a map of the city and a survey of

the river. It was signed by all the people at Stone's Landing who could

write their names, by Col. Beriah Sellers, and the Colonel agreed to have

the names headed by all the senators and representatives from the state

and by a sprinkling of ex-governors and ex-members of congress. When

completed it was a formidable document. Its preparation and that of more

minute plots of the new city consumed the valuable time of Sellers and

Harry for many weeks, and served to keep them both in the highest

spirits.

In the eyes of Washington Hawkins, Harry was a superior being, a man who

was able to bring things to pass in a way that excited his enthusiasm.

He never tired of listening to his stories of what he had done and of

what he was going to do. As for Washington, Harry thought he was a man

of ability and comprehension, but "too visionary," he told the Colonel.

The Colonel said he might be right, but he had never noticed anything

visionary about him.

"He's got his plans, sir. God bless my soul, at his age, I was full of

plans. But experience sobers a man, I never touch any thing now that

hasn't been weighed in my judgment; and when Beriah Sellers puts his

judgment on a thing, there it is."

Whatever might have been Harry's intentions with regard to Laura, he saw

more and more of her every day, until he got to be restless and nervous

when he was not with her.

That consummate artist in passion allowed him to believe that the

fascination was mainly on his side, and so worked upon his vanity, while

inflaming his ardor, that he scarcely knew what he was about. Her

coolness and coyness were even made to appear the simple precautions of a

modest timidity, and attracted him even more than the little tendernesses

into which she was occasionally surprised. He could never be away from

her long, day or evening; and in a short time their intimacy was the town

talk. She played with him so adroitly that Harry thought she was

absorbed in love for him, and yet he was amazed that he did not get on

faster in his conquest.

And when he thought of it, he was piqued as well. A country girl, poor

enough, that was evident; living with her family in a cheap and most

unattractive frame house, such as carpenters build in America, scantily

furnished and unadorned; without the adventitious aids of dress or jewels

or the fine manners of society--Harry couldn't understand it. But she

fascinated him, and held him just beyond the line of absolute familiarity

at the same time. While he was with her she made him forget that the

Hawkins' house was nothing but a wooden tenement, with four small square

rooms on the ground floor and a half story; it might have been a palace

for aught he knew.

Perhaps Laura was older than Harry. She was, at any rate, at that ripe

age when beauty in woman seems more solid than in the budding period of

girlhood, and she had come to understand her powers perfectly, and to

know exactly how much of the susceptibility and archness of the girl it

was profitable to retain. She saw that many women, with the best

intentions, make a mistake of carrying too much girlishness into

womanhood. Such a woman would have attracted Harry at any time, but only

a woman with a cool brain and exquisite art could have made him lose his

head in this way; for Harry thought himself a man of the world. The

young fellow never dreamed that he was merely being experimented on; he

was to her a man of another society and another culture, different from

that she had any knowledge of except in books, and she was not unwilling

to try on him the fascinations of her mind and person.

For Laura had her dreams. She detested the narrow limits in which her

lot was cast, she hated poverty. Much of her reading had been of modern

works of fiction, written by her own sex, which had revealed to her

something of her own powers and given her indeed, an exaggerated notion

of the influence, the wealth, the position a woman may attain who has

beauty and talent and ambition and a little culture, and is not too

scrupulous in the use of them. She wanted to be rich, she wanted luxury,

she wanted men at her feet, her slaves, and she had not--thanks to some

of the novels she had read--the nicest discrimination between notoriety

and reputation; perhaps she did not know how fatal notoriety usually is

to the bloom of womanhood.

With the other Hawkins children Laura had been brought up in the belief

that they had inherited a fortune in the Tennessee Lands. She did not by

any means share all the delusion of the family; but her brain was not

seldom busy with schemes about it. Washington seemed to her only to

dream of it and to be willing to wait for its riches to fall upon him in

a golden shower; but she was impatient, and wished she were a man to take

hold of the business.

"You men must enjoy your schemes and your activity and liberty to go

about the world," she said to Harry one day, when he had been talking of

New York and Washington and his incessant engagements.

"Oh, yes," replied that martyr to business, "it's all well enough, if you

don't have too much of it, but it only has one object."

"What is that?"

"If a woman doesn't know, it's useless to tell her. What do you suppose

I am staying in Hawkeye for, week after week, when I ought to be with my

corps?"

"I suppose it's your business with Col. Sellers about Napoleon, you've

always told me so," answered Laura, with a look intended to contradict

her words.

"And now I tell you that is all arranged, I suppose you'll tell me I

ought to go?"

"Harry!" exclaimed Laura, touching his arm and letting her pretty hand

rest there a moment. "Why should I want you to go away? The only person

in Hawkeye who understands me."

"But you refuse to understand me," replied Harry, flattered but still

petulant. "You are like an iceberg, when we are alone."

Laura looked up with wonder in her great eyes, and something like a blush

suffusing her face, followed by a look of langour that penetrated Harry's

heart as if it had been longing.

"Did I ever show any want of confidence in you, Harry?" And she gave him

her hand, which Harry pressed with effusion--something in her manner told

him that he must be content with that favor.

It was always so. She excited his hopes and denied him, inflamed his

passion and restrained it, and wound him in her toils day by day. To

what purpose? It was keen delight to Laura to prove that she had power

over men.

Laura liked to hear about life at the east, and especially about the

luxurious society in which Mr. Brierly moved when he was at home. It

pleased her imagination to fancy herself a queen in it.

"You should be a winter in Washington," Harry said.

"But I have no acquaintances there."

"Don't know any of the families of the congressmen? They like to have a

pretty woman staying with them."

"Not one."

"Suppose Col. Sellers should, have business there; say, about this

Columbus River appropriation?"

"Sellers!" and Laura laughed.

"You needn't laugh. Queerer things have happened. Sellers knows

everybody from Missouri, and from the West, too, for that matter. He'd

introduce you to Washington life quick enough. It doesn't need a crowbar

to break your way into society there as it does in Philadelphia. It's

democratic, Washington is. Money or beauty will open any door. If I

were a handsome woman, I shouldn't want any better place than the capital

to pick up a prince or a fortune."

"Thank you," replied Laura. "But I prefer the quiet of home, and the

love of those I know;" and her face wore a look of sweet contentment and

unworldliness that finished Mr. Harry Brierly for the day.

Nevertheless, the hint that Harry had dropped fell upon good ground, and

bore fruit an hundred fold; it worked in her mind until she had built up

a plan on it, and almost a career for herself. Why not, she said, why

shouldn't I do as other women have done? She took the first opportunity

to see Col. Sellers, and to sound him about the Washington visit. How

was he getting on with his navigation scheme, would it be likely to take

him from home to Jefferson City; or to Washington, perhaps?

"Well, maybe. If the people of Napoleon want me to go to Washington, and

look after that matter, I might tear myself from my home. It's been

suggested to me, but--not a word of it to Mrs. Sellers and the children.

Maybe they wouldn't like to think of their father in Washington. But

Dilworthy, Senator Dilworthy, says to me, 'Colonel, you are the man, you

could influence more votes than any one else on such a measure, an old

settler, a man of the people, you know the wants of Missouri; you've a

respect for religion too, says he, and know how the cause of the gospel

goes with improvements: Which is true enough, Miss Laura, and hasn't been

enough thought of in connection with Napoleon. He's an able man,

Dilworthy, and a good man. A man has got to be good to succeed as he

has. He's only been in Congress a few years, and he must be worth a

million. First thing in the morning when he stayed with me he asked

about family prayers, whether we had 'em before or after breakfast.

I hated to disappoint the Senator, but I had to out with it, tell him we

didn't have 'em, not steady. He said he understood, business

interruptions and all that, some men were well enough without, but as for

him he never neglected the ordinances of religion. He doubted if the

Columbus River appropriation would succeed if we did not invoke the

Divine Blessing on it."

Perhaps it is unnecessary to say to the reader that Senator Dilworthy had

not stayed with Col. Sellers while he was in Hawkeye; this visit to his

house being only one of the Colonel's hallucinations--one of those

instant creations of his fertile fancy, which were always flashing into

his brain and out of his mouth in the course of any conversation and

without interrupting the flow of it.

During the summer Philip rode across the country and made a short visit

in Hawkeye, giving Harry an opportunity to show him the progress that he

and the Colonel had made in their operation at Stone's Landing, to

introduce him also to Laura, and to borrow a little money when he

departed. Harry bragged about his conquest, as was his habit, and took

Philip round to see his western prize.

Laura received Mr. Philip with a courtesy and a slight hauteur that

rather surprised and not a little interested him. He saw at once that

she was older than Harry, and soon made up his mind that she was leading

his friend a country dance to which he was unaccustomed. At least he

thought he saw that, and half hinted as much to Harry, who flared up at

once; but on a second visit Philip was not so sure, the young lady was

certainly kind and friendly and almost confiding with Harry, and treated

Philip with the greatest consideration. She deferred to his opinions,

and listened attentively when he talked, and in time met his frank manner

with an equal frankness, so that he was quite convinced that whatever she

might feel towards Harry, she was sincere with him. Perhaps his manly

way did win her liking. Perhaps in her mind, she compared him with

Harry, and recognized in him a man to whom a woman might give her whole

soul, recklessly and with little care if she lost it. Philip was not

invincible to her beauty nor to the intellectual charm of her presence.

The week seemed very short that he passed in Hawkeye, and when he bade

Laura good by, he seemed to have known her a year.

"We shall see you again, Mr. Sterling," she said as she gave him her

hand, with just a shade of sadness in her handsome eyes.

And when he turned away she followed him with a look that might have

disturbed his serenity, if he had not at the moment had a little square

letter in his breast pocket, dated at Philadelphia, and signed "Ruth."

CHAPTER XX.

The visit of Senator Abner Dilworthy was an event in Hawkeye. When a

Senator, whose place is in Washington moving among the Great and guiding

the destinies of the nation, condescends to mingle among the people and

accept the hospitalities of such a place as Hawkeye, the honor is not

considered a light one. All, parties are flattered by it and politics

are forgotten in the presence of one so distinguished among his fellows.

Senator Dilworthy, who was from a neighboring state, had been a Unionist

in the darkest days of his country, and had thriven by it, but was that

any reason why Col. Sellers, who had been a confederate and had not

thriven by it, should give him the cold shoulder?

The Senator was the guest of his old friend Gen. Boswell, but it almost

appeared that he was indebted to Col. Sellers for the unreserved

hospitalities of the town. It was the large hearted Colonel who, in a

manner, gave him the freedom of the city.

"You are known here, sir," said the Colonel, "and Hawkeye is proud of

you. You will find every door open, and a welcome at every hearthstone.

I should insist upon your going to my house, if you were not claimed by

your older friend Gen. Boswell. But you will mingle with our people, and

you will see here developments that will surprise you."

The Colonel was so profuse in his hospitality that he must have made the

impression upon himself that he had entertained the Senator at his own

mansion during his stay; at any rate, he afterwards always spoke of him

as his guest, and not seldom referred to the Senator's relish of certain

viands on his table. He did, in fact, press him to dine upon the morning

of the day the Senator was going away.

Senator Dilworthy was large and portly, though not tall--a pleasant

spoken man, a popular man with the people.

He took a lively interest in the town and all the surrounding country,

and made many inquiries as to the progress of agriculture, of education,

and of religion, and especially as to the condition of the emancipated

race.

"Providence," he said, "has placed them in our hands, and although you

and I, General, might have chosen a different destiny for them, under the

Constitution, yet Providence knows best."

"You can't do much with 'em," interrupted Col. Sellers. "They are a

speculating race, sir, disinclined to work for white folks without

security, planning how to live by only working for themselves. Idle,

sir, there's my garden just a ruin of weeds. Nothing practical in 'em."

"There is some truth in your observation, Colonel, but you must educate

them."

"You educate the niggro and you make him more speculating than he was

before. If he won't stick to any industry except for himself now, what

will he do then?"

"But, Colonel, the negro when educated will be more able to make his

speculations fruitful."

"Never, sir, never. He would only have a wider scope to injure himself.

A niggro has no grasp, sir. Now, a white man can conceive great

operations, and carry them out; a niggro can't."

"Still," replied the Senator, "granting that he might injure himself in a

worldly point of view, his elevation through education would multiply his

chances for the hereafter--which is the important thing after all,

Colonel. And no matter what the result is, we must fulfill our duty by

this being."

"I'd elevate his soul," promptly responded the Colonel; "that's just it;

you can't make his soul too immortal, but I wouldn't touch him, himself.

Yes, sir! make his soul immortal, but don't disturb the niggro as he

is."

Of course one of the entertainments offered the Senator was a public

reception, held in the court house, at which he made a speech to his

fellow citizens. Col. Sellers was master of ceremonies. He escorted the

band from the city hotel to Gen. Boswell's; he marshalled the procession

of Masons, of Odd Fellows, and of Firemen, the Good Templars, the Sons of

Temperance, the Cadets of Temperance, the Daughters of Rebecca, the

Sunday School children, and citizens generally, which followed the

Senator to the court house; he bustled about the room long after every

one else was seated, and loudly cried "Order!" in the dead silence which

preceded the introduction of the Senator by Gen. Boswell. The occasion

was one to call out his finest powers of personal appearance, and one he

long dwelt on with pleasure.

This not being an edition of the Congressional Globe it is impossible to

give Senator Dilworthy's speech in full. He began somewhat as follows:

"Fellow citizens: It gives me great pleasure to thus meet and mingle with

you, to lay aside for a moment the heavy duties of an official and

burdensome station, and confer in familiar converse with my friends in

your great state. The good opinion of my fellow citizens of all sections

is the sweetest solace in all my anxieties. I look forward with longing

to the time when I can lay aside the cares of office--" ["dam sight,"

shouted a tipsy fellow near the door. Cries of "put him out."]

"My friends, do not remove him. Let the misguided man stay. I see that

he is a victim of that evil which is swallowing up public virtue and

sapping the foundation of society. As I was saying, when I can lay down

the cares of office and retire to the sweets of private life in some such

sweet, peaceful, intelligent, wide-awake and patriotic place as Hawkeye

(applause). I have traveled much, I have seen all parts of our glorious

union, but I have never seen a lovelier village than yours, or one that

has more signs of commercial and industrial and religious prosperity

--(more applause)."

The Senator then launched into a sketch of our great country, and dwelt

for an hour or more upon its prosperity and the dangers which threatened

it.

He then touched reverently upon the institutions of religion, and upon

the necessity of private purity, if we were to have any public morality.

"I trust," he said, "that there are children within the sound of my

voice," and after some remarks to them, the Senator closed with an

apostrophe to "the genius of American Liberty, walking with the Sunday

School in one hand and Temperance in the other up the glorified steps of

the National Capitol."

Col. Sellers did not of course lose the opportunity to impress upon so

influential a person as the Senator the desirability of improving the

navigation of Columbus river. He and Mr. Brierly took the Senator over

to Napoleon and opened to him their plan. It was a plan that the Senator

could understand without a great deal of explanation, for he seemed to be

familiar with the like improvements elsewhere. When, however, they

reached Stone's Landing the Senator looked about him and inquired,

"Is this Napoleon?"

"This is the nucleus, the nucleus," said the Colonel, unrolling his map.

"Here is the deepo, the church, the City Hall and so on."

"Ah, I see. How far from here is Columbus River? Does that stream

empty----"

"That, why, that's Goose Run. Thar ain't no Columbus, thout'n it's over

to Hawkeye," interrupted one of the citizens, who had come out to stare

at the strangers. "A railroad come here last summer, but it haint been

here no mo'."

"Yes, sir," the Colonel hastened to explain, "in the old records

Columbus River is called Goose Run. You see how it sweeps round the

town--forty-nine miles to the Missouri; sloop navigation all the way

pretty much, drains this whole country; when it's improved steamboats

will run right up here. It's got to be enlarged, deepened. You see by

the map. Columbus River. This country must have water communication!"

"You'll want a considerable appropriation, Col. Sellers.

"I should say a million; is that your figure Mr. Brierly."

"According to our surveys," said Harry, "a million would do it; a million

spent on the river would make Napoleon worth two millions at least."

"I see," nodded the Senator. "But you'd better begin by asking only for

two or three hundred thousand, the usual way. You can begin to sell town

lots on that appropriation you know."

The Senator, himself, to do him justice, was not very much interested in

the country or the stream, but he favored the appropriation, and he gave

the Colonel and Mr. Brierly to and understand that he would endeavor to

get it through. Harry, who thought he was shrewd and understood

Washington, suggested an interest.

But he saw that the Senator was wounded by the suggestion.

"You will offend me by repeating such an observation," he said.

"Whatever I do will be for the public interest. It will require a

portion of the appropriation for necessary expenses, and I am sorry to

say that there are members who will have to be seen. But you can reckon

upon my humble services."

This aspect of the subject was not again alluded to. The Senator

possessed himself of the facts, not from his observation of the ground,

but from the lips of Col. Sellers, and laid the appropriation scheme away

among his other plans for benefiting the public.

It was on this visit also that the Senator made the acquaintance of Mr.

Washington Hawkins, and was greatly taken with his innocence, his

guileless manner and perhaps with his ready adaptability to enter upon

any plan proposed.

Col. Sellers was pleased to see this interest that Washington had

awakened, especially since it was likely to further his expectations with

regard to the Tennessee lands; the Senator having remarked to the

Colonel, that he delighted to help any deserving young man, when the

promotion of a private advantage could at the same time be made to

contribute to the general good. And he did not doubt that this was an

opportunity of that kind.

The result of several conferences with Washington was that the Senator

proposed that he should go to Washington with him and become his private

secretary and the secretary of his committee; a proposal which was

eagerly accepted.

The Senator spent Sunday in Hawkeye and attended church. He cheered the

heart of the worthy and zealous minister by an expression of his sympathy

in his labors, and by many inquiries in regard to the religious state of

the region. It was not a very promising state, and the good man felt how

much lighter his task would be, if he had the aid of such a man as

Senator Dilworthy.

"I am glad to see, my dear sir," said the Senator, "that you give them

the doctrines. It is owing to a neglect of the doctrines, that there is

such a fearful falling away in the country. I wish that we might have

you in Washington--as chaplain, now, in the senate."

The good man could not but be a little flattered, and if sometimes,

thereafter, in his discouraging work, he allowed the thought that he

might perhaps be called to Washington as chaplain of the Senate, to cheer

him, who can wonder. The Senator's commendation at least did one service

for him, it elevated him in the opinion of Hawkeye.

Laura was at church alone that day, and Mr. Brierly walked home with her.

A part of their way lay with that of General Boswell and Senator

Dilworthy, and introductions were made. Laura had her own reasons for

wishing to know the Senator, and the Senator was not a man who could be

called indifferent to charms such as hers. That meek young lady so

commended herself to him in the short walk, that he announced his

intentions of paying his respects to her the next day, an intention which

Harry received glumly; and when the Senator was out of hearing he called

him "an old fool."

"Fie," said Laura, "I do believe you are jealous, Harry. He is a very

pleasant man. He said you were a young man of great promise."

The Senator did call next day, and the result of his visit was that he

was confirmed in his impression that there was something about him very

attractive to ladies. He saw Laura again and again daring his stay, and

felt more and more the subtle influence of her feminine beauty, which

every man felt who came near her.

Harry was beside himself with rage while the Senator remained in town;

he declared that women were always ready to drop any man for higher game;

and he attributed his own ill-luck to the Senator's appearance. The

fellow was in fact crazy about her beauty and ready to beat his brains

out in chagrin. Perhaps Laura enjoyed his torment, but she soothed him

with blandishments that increased his ardor, and she smiled to herself to

think that he had, with all his protestations of love, never spoken of

marriage. Probably the vivacious fellow never had thought of it. At any

rate when he at length went away from Hawkeye he was no nearer it. But

there was no telling to what desperate lengths his passion might not

carry him.

Laura bade him good bye with tender regret, which, however, did not

disturb her peace or interfere with her plans. The visit of Senator

Dilworthy had become of more importance to her, and it by and by bore the

fruit she longed for, in an invitation to visit his family in the

National Capital during the winter session of Congress.

CHAPTER XXI.

O lift your natures up:

Embrace our aims: work out your freedom. Girls,

Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed;

Drink deep until the habits of the slave,

The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite

And slander, die.

The Princess.

Whether medicine is a science, or only an empirical method of getting a

living out of the ignorance of the human race, Ruth found before her

first term was over at the medical school that there were other things

she needed to know quite as much as that which is taught in medical

books, and that she could never satisfy her aspirations without more

general culture.

"Does your doctor know any thing--I don't mean about medicine, but about

things in general, is he a man of information and good sense?" once asked

an old practitioner. "If he doesn't know any thing but medicine the

chance is he doesn't know that:"

The close application to her special study was beginning to tell upon

Ruth's delicate health also, and the summer brought with it only

weariness and indisposition for any mental effort.

In this condition of mind and body the quiet of her home and the

unexciting companionship of those about her were more than ever tiresome.

She followed with more interest Philip's sparkling account of his life

in the west, and longed for his experiences, and to know some of those

people of a world so different from here, who alternately amused and

displeased him. He at least was learning the world, the good and the bad

of it, as must happen to every one who accomplishes anything in it.

But what, Ruth wrote, could a woman do, tied up by custom, and cast into

particular circumstances out of which it was almost impossible to

extricate herself? Philip thought that he would go some day and

extricate Ruth, but he did not write that, for he had the instinct to

know that this was not the extrication she dreamed of, and that she must

find out by her own experience what her heart really wanted.

Philip was not a philosopher, to be sure, but he had the old fashioned

notion, that whatever a woman's theories of life might be, she would come

round to matrimony, only give her time. He could indeed recall to mind

one woman--and he never knew a nobler--whose whole soul was devoted and

who believed that her life was consecrated to a certain benevolent

project in singleness of life, who yielded to the touch of matrimony, as

an icicle yields to a sunbeam.

Neither at home nor elsewhere did Ruth utter any complaint, or admit any

weariness or doubt of her ability to pursue the path she had marked out

for herself. But her mother saw clearly enough her struggle with

infirmity, and was not deceived by either her gaiety or by the cheerful

composure which she carried into all the ordinary duties that fell to

her. She saw plainly enough that Ruth needed an entire change of scene

and of occupation, and perhaps she believed that such a change, with the

knowledge of the world it would bring, would divert Ruth from a course

for which she felt she was physically entirely unfitted.

It therefore suited the wishes of all concerned, when autumn came, that

Ruth should go away to school. She selected a large New England

Seminary, of which she had often heard Philip speak, which was attended

by both sexes and offered almost collegiate advantages of education.

Thither she went in September, and began for the second time in the year

a life new to her.

The Seminary was the chief feature of Fallkill, a village of two to three

thousand inhabitants. It was a prosperous school, with three hundred

students, a large corps of teachers, men and women, and with a venerable

rusty row of academic buildings on the shaded square of the town. The

students lodged and boarded in private families in the place, and so it

came about that while the school did a great deal to support the town,

the town gave the students society and the sweet influences of home life.

It is at least respectful to say that the influences of home life are

sweet.

Ruth's home, by the intervention of Philip, was in a family--one of the

rare exceptions in life or in fiction--that had never known better days.

The Montagues, it is perhaps well to say, had intended to come over in

the Mayflower, but were detained at Delft Haven by the illness of a

child. They came over to Massachusetts Bay in another vessel, and thus

escaped the onus of that brevet nobility under which the successors of

the Mayflower Pilgrims have descended. Having no factitious weight of

dignity to carry, the Montagues steadily improved their condition from

the day they landed, and they were never more vigorous or prosperous than

at the date of this narrative. With character compacted by the rigid

Puritan discipline of more than two centuries, they had retained its

strength and purity and thrown off its narrowness, and were now

blossoming under the generous modern influences. Squire Oliver Montague,

a lawyer who had retired from the practice of his profession except in

rare cases, dwelt in a square old fashioned New England mansion a quarter

of a mile away from the green. It was called a mansion because it stood

alone with ample fields about it, and had an avenue of trees leading to

it from the road, and on the west commanded a view of a pretty little

lake with gentle slopes and nodding were now blossoming under the

generous modern influences. Squire Oliver Montague, a lawyer who

had retired from the practice of his profession except in rare cases,

dwelt in a square old fashioned New England groves. But it was just

a plain, roomy house, capable of extending to many guests an

unpretending hospitality.

The family consisted of the Squire and his wife, a son and a daughter

married and not at home, a son in college at Cambridge, another son at

the Seminary, and a daughter Alice, who was a year or more older than

Ruth. Having only riches enough to be able to gratify reasonable

desires, and yet make their gratifications always a novelty and a

pleasure, the family occupied that just mean in life which is so rarely

attained, and still more rarely enjoyed without discontent.

If Ruth did not find so much luxury in the house as in her own home,

there were evidences of culture, of intellectual activity and of a zest

in the affairs of all the world, which greatly impressed her. Every room

had its book-cases or book-shelves, and was more or less a library; upon

every table was liable to be a litter of new books, fresh periodicals and

daily newspapers. There were plants in the sunny windows and some choice

engravings on the walls, with bits of color in oil or water-colors;

the piano was sure to be open and strewn with music; and there were

photographs and little souvenirs here and there of foreign travel.

An absence of any "what-pots" in the corners with rows of cheerful

shells, and Hindoo gods, and Chinese idols, and nests of use less boxes

of lacquered wood, might be taken as denoting a languidness in the family

concerning foreign missions, but perhaps unjustly.

At any rate the life of the world flowed freely into this hospitable

house, and there was always so much talk there of the news of the day,

of the new books and of authors, of Boston radicalism and New York

civilization, and the virtue of Congress, that small gossip stood a very

poor chance.

All this was in many ways so new to Ruth that she seemed to have passed

into another world, in which she experienced a freedom and a mental

exhilaration unknown to her before. Under this influence she entered

upon her studies with keen enjoyment, finding for a time all the

relaxation she needed, in the charming social life at the Montague house.

It is strange, she wrote to Philip, in one of her occasional letters,

that you never told me more about this delightful family, and scarcely

mentioned Alice who is the life of it, just the noblest girl, unselfish,

knows how to do so many things, with lots of talent, with a dry humor,

and an odd way of looking at things, and yet quiet and even serious

often--one of your "capable" New England girls. We shall be great

friends. It had never occurred to Philip that there was any thing

extraordinary about the family that needed mention. He knew dozens of

girls like Alice, he thought to himself, but only one like Ruth.

Good friends the two girls were from the beginning. Ruth was a study to

Alice; the product of a culture entirely foreign to her experience, so

much a child in some things, so much a woman in others; and Ruth in turn,

it must be confessed, probing Alice sometimes with her serious grey eyes,

wondered what her object in life was, and whether she had any purpose

beyond living as she now saw her. For she could scarcely conceive of a

life that should not be devoted to the accomplishment of some definite

work, and she had-no doubt that in her own case everything else would

yield to the professional career she had marked out.

"So you know Philip Sterling," said Ruth one day as the girls sat at

their sewing. Ruth never embroidered, and never sewed when she could

avoid it. Bless her.

"Oh yes, we are old friends. Philip used to come to Fallkill often while

he was in college. He was once rusticated here for a term."

"Rusticated?"

"Suspended for some College scrape. He was a great favorite here.

Father and he were famous friends. Father said that Philip had no end of

nonsense in him and was always blundering into something, but he was a

royal good fellow and would come out all right."

"Did you think he was fickle?"

"Why, I never thought whether he was or not," replied Alice looking up.

"I suppose he was always in love with some girl or another, as college

boys are. He used to make me his confidant now and then, and be terribly

in the dumps."

"Why did he come to you?" pursued Ruth you were younger than he."

"I'm sure I don't know. He was at our house a good deal. Once at a

picnic by the lake, at the risk of his own life, he saved sister Millie

from drowning, and we all liked to have him here. Perhaps he thought as

he had saved one sister, the other ought to help him when he was in

trouble. I don't know."

The fact was that Alice was a person who invited confidences, because she

never betrayed them, and gave abundant sympathy in return. There are

persons, whom we all know, to whom human confidences, troubles and

heart-aches flow as naturally its streams to a placid lake.

This is not a history of Fallkill, nor of the Montague family, worthy as

both are of that honor, and this narrative cannot be diverted into long

loitering with them. If the reader visits the village to-day, he will

doubtless be pointed out the Montague dwelling, where Ruth lived, the

cross-lots path she traversed to the Seminary, and the venerable chapel

with its cracked bell.

In the little society of the place, the Quaker girl was a favorite, and

no considerable social gathering or pleasure party was thought complete

without her. There was something in this seemingly transparent and yet

deep character, in her childlike gaiety and enjoyment of the society

about her, and in her not seldom absorption in herself, that would have

made her long remembered there if no events had subsequently occurred to

recall her to mind.

To the surprise of Alice, Ruth took to the small gaieties of the village

with a zest of enjoyment that seemed foreign to one who had devoted her

life to a serious profession from the highest motives. Alice liked

society well enough, she thought, but there was nothing exciting in that

of Fallkill, nor anything novel in the attentions of the well-bred young

gentlemen one met in it. It must have worn a different aspect to Ruth,

for she entered into its pleasures at first with curiosity, and then with

interest and finally with a kind of staid abandon that no one would have

deemed possible for her. Parties, picnics, rowing-matches, moonlight

strolls, nutting expeditions in the October woods,--Alice declared that

it was a whirl of dissipation. The fondness of Ruth, which was scarcely

disguised, for the company of agreeable young fellows, who talked

nothings, gave Alice opportunity for no end of banter.

"Do you look upon them as I subjects, dear?" she would ask.

And Ruth laughed her merriest laugh, and then looked sober again.

Perhaps she was thinking, after all, whether she knew herself.

If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would

swim if you brought it to the Nile.

Surely no one would have predicted when Ruth left Philadelphia that she

would become absorbed to this extent, and so happy, in a life so unlike

that she thought she desired. But no one can tell how a woman will act

under any circumstances. The reason novelists nearly always fail in

depicting women when they make them act, is that they let them do what

they have observed some woman has done at sometime or another. And that

is where they make a mistake; for a woman will never do again what has

been done before. It is this uncertainty that causes women, considered

as materials for fiction, to be so interesting to themselves and to

others.

As the fall went on and the winter, Ruth did not distinguish herself

greatly at the Fallkill Seminary as a student, a fact that apparently

gave her no anxiety, and did not diminish her enjoyment of a new sort of

power which had awakened within her.

CHAPTER XXII.

In mid-winter, an event occurred of unusual interest to the inhabitants

of the Montague house, and to the friends of the young ladies who sought

their society.

This was the arrival at the Sassacua Hotel of two young gentlemen from

the west.

It is the fashion in New England to give Indian names to the public

houses, not that the late lamented savage knew how to keep a hotel, but

that his warlike name may impress the traveler who humbly craves shelter

there, and make him grateful to the noble and gentlemanly clerk if he is

allowed to depart with his scalp safe.

The two young gentlemen were neither students for the Fallkill Seminary,

nor lecturers on physiology, nor yet life assurance solicitors, three

suppositions that almost exhausted the guessing power of the people at

the hotel in respect to the names of "Philip Sterling and Henry Brierly,

Missouri," on the register. They were handsome enough fellows, that was

evident, browned by out-door exposure, and with a free and lordly way

about them that almost awed the hotel clerk himself. Indeed, he very

soon set down Mr. Brierly as a gentleman of large fortune, with enormous

interests on his shoulders. Harry had a way of casually mentioning

western investments, through lines, the freighting business, and the

route through the Indian territory to Lower California, which was

calculated to give an importance to his lightest word.

"You've a pleasant town here, sir, and the most comfortable looking hotel

I've seen out of New York," said Harry to the clerk; "we shall stay here

a few days if you can give us a roomy suite of apartments."

Harry usually had the best of everything, wherever he went, as such

fellows always do have in this accommodating world. Philip would have

been quite content with less expensive quarters, but there was no

resisting Harry's generosity in such matters.

Railroad surveying and real-estate operations were at a standstill during

the winter in Missouri, and the young men had taken advantage of the lull

to come east, Philip to see if there was any disposition in his friends,

the railway contractors, to give him a share in the Salt Lick Union

Pacific Extension, and Harry to open out to his uncle the prospects of

the new city at Stone's Landing, and to procure congressional

appropriations for the harbor and for making Goose Run navigable. Harry

had with him a map of that noble stream and of the harbor, with a perfect

net-work of railroads centering in it, pictures of wharves, crowded with

steamboats, and of huge grain-elevators on the bank, all of which grew

out of the combined imaginations of Col. Sellers and Mr. Brierly. The

Colonel had entire confidence in Harry's influence with Wall street, and

with congressmen, to bring about the consummation of their scheme, and he

waited his return in the empty house at Hawkeye, feeding his pinched

family upon the most gorgeous expectations with a reckless prodigality.

"Don't let 'em into the thing more than is necessary," says the Colonel

to Harry; "give 'em a small interest; a lot apiece in the suburbs of the

Landing ought to do a congressman, but I reckon you'll have to mortgage a

part of the city itself to the brokers."

Harry did not find that eagerness to lend money on Stone's Landing in

Wall street which Col. Sellers had expected, (it had seen too many such

maps as he exhibited), although his uncle and some of the brokers looked

with more favor on the appropriation for improving the navigation of

Columbus River, and were not disinclined to form a company for that

purpose. An appropriation was a tangible thing, if you could get hold of

it, and it made little difference what it was appropriated for, so long

as you got hold of it.

Pending these weighty negotiations, Philip has persuaded Harry to take a

little run up to Fallkill, a not difficult task, for that young man would

at any time have turned his back upon all the land in the West at sight

of a new and pretty face, and he had, it must be confessed, a facility in

love making which made it not at all an interference with the more

serious business of life. He could not, to be sure, conceive how Philip

could be interested in a young lady who was studying medicine, but he had

no objection to going, for he did not doubt that there were other girls

in Fallkill who were worth a week's attention.

The young men were received at the house of the Montagues with the

hospitality which never failed there.

"We are glad to see you again," exclaimed the Squire heartily, "you are

welcome Mr. Brierly, any friend of Phil's is welcome at our house"

"It's more like home to me, than any place except my own home," cried

Philip, as he looked about the cheerful house and went through a general

hand-shaking.

"It's a long time, though, since you have been here to say so," Alice

said, with her father's frankness of manner; "and I suspect we owe the

visit now to your sudden interest in the Fallkill Seminary."

Philip's color came, as it had an awkward way of doing in his tell-tale

face, but before he could stammer a reply, Harry came in with,

"That accounts for Phil's wish to build a Seminary at Stone's Landing,

our place in Missouri, when Col. Sellers insisted it should be a

University. Phil appears to have a weakness for Seminaries."

"It would have been better for your friend Sellers," retorted Philip,

"if he had had a weakness for district schools. Col. Sellers, Miss

Alice, is a great friend of Harry's, who is always trying to build a

house by beginning at the top."

"I suppose it's as easy to build a University on paper as a Seminary, and

it looks better," was Harry's reflection; at which the Squire laughed,

and said he quite agreed with him. The old gentleman understood Stone's

Landing a good deal better than he would have done after an hour's talk

with either of it's expectant proprietors.

At this moment, and while Philip was trying to frame a question that he

found it exceedingly difficult to put into words, the door opened

quietly, and Ruth entered. Taking in the, group with a quick glance, her

eye lighted up, and with a merry smile she advanced and shook hands with

Philip. She was so unconstrained and sincerely cordial, that it made

that hero of the west feel somehow young, and very ill at ease.

For months and months he had thought of this meeting and pictured it to

himself a hundred times, but he had never imagined it would be like this.

He should meet Ruth unexpectedly, as she was walking alone from the

school, perhaps, or entering the room where he was waiting for her, and

she would cry "Oh! Phil," and then check herself, and perhaps blush, and

Philip calm but eager and enthusiastic, would reassure her by his warm

manner, and he would take her hand impressively, and she would look up

timidly, and, after his' long absence, perhaps he would be permitted to

Good heavens, how many times he had come to this point, and wondered if

it could happen so. Well, well; he had never supposed that he should be

the one embarrassed, and above all by a sincere and cordial welcome.

"We heard you were at the Sassacus House," were Ruth's first words; "and

this I suppose is your friend?"

"I beg your pardon," Philip at length blundered out, "this is Mr. Brierly

of whom I have written you."

And Ruth welcomed Harry with a friendliness that Philip thought was due

to his friend, to be sure, but which seemed to him too level with her

reception of himself, but which Harry received as his due from the other

sex.

Questions were asked about the journey and about the West, and the

conversation became a general one, until Philip at length found himself

talking with the Squire in relation to land and railroads and things he

couldn't keep his mind on especially as he heard Ruth and Harry in an

animated discourse, and caught the words "New York," and "opera," and

"reception," and knew that Harry was giving his imagination full range in

the world of fashion.

Harry knew all about the opera, green room and all (at least he said so)

and knew a good many of the operas and could make very entertaining

stories of their plots, telling how the soprano came in here, and the

basso here, humming the beginning of their airs--tum-ti-tum-ti-ti

--suggesting the profound dissatisfaction of the basso recitative--down

--among--the--dead--men--and touching off the whole with an airy grace

quite captivating; though he couldn't have sung a single air through to

save himself, and he hadn't an ear to know whether it was sung correctly.

All the same he doted on the opera, and kept a box there, into which he

lounged occasionally to hear a favorite scene and meet his society

friends.

If Ruth was ever in the city he should be happy to place his box at the

disposal of Ruth and her friends. Needless to say that she was delighted

with the offer.

When she told Philip of it, that discreet young fellow only smiled, and

said that he hoped she would be fortunate enough to be in New York some

evening when Harry had not already given the use of his private box to

some other friend.

The Squire pressed the visitors to let him send for their trunks and

urged them to stay at his house, and Alice joined in the invitation, but

Philip had reasons for declining. They staid to supper, however, and in;

the evening Philip had a long talk apart with Ruth, a delightful hour to

him, in which she spoke freely of herself as of old, of her studies at

Philadelphia and of her plans, and she entered into his adventures and

prospects in the West with a genuine and almost sisterly interest; an

interest, however, which did not exactly satisfy Philip--it was too

general and not personal enough to suit him. And with all her freedom in

speaking of her own hopes, Philip could not, detect any reference to

himself in them; whereas he never undertook anything that he did not

think of Ruth in connection with it, he never made a plan that had not

reference to her, and he never thought of anything as complete if she

could not share it. Fortune, reputation these had no value to him except

in Ruth's eyes, and there were times when it seemed to him that if Ruth

was not on this earth, he should plunge off into some remote wilderness

and live in a purposeless seclusion.

"I hoped," said Philip; "to get a little start in connection with this

new railroad, and make a little money, so that I could came east and

engage in something more suited to my tastes. I shouldn't like to live

in the West. Would you?

"It never occurred to me whether I would or not," was the unembarrassed

reply. "One of our graduates went to Chicago, and has a nice practice

there. I don't know where I shall go. It would mortify mother

dreadfully to have me driving about Philadelphia in a doctor's gig."

Philip laughed at the idea of it. "And does it seem as necessary to you

to do it as it did before you came to Fallkill?"

It was a home question, and went deeper than Philip knew, for Ruth at

once thought of practicing her profession among the young gentlemen and

ladies of her acquaintance in the village; but she was reluctant to admit

to herself that her notions of a career had undergone any change.

"Oh, I don't think I should come to Fallkill to practice, but I must do

something when I am through school; and why not medicine?"

Philip would like to have explained why not, but the explanation would be

of no use if it were not already obvious to Ruth.

Harry was equally in his element whether instructing Squire Montague

about the investment of capital in Missouri, the improvement of Columbus

River, the project he and some gentlemen in New York had for making a

shorter Pacific connection with the Mississippi than the present one; or

diverting Mrs. Montague with his experience in cooking in camp; or

drawing for Miss Alice an amusing picture of the social contrasts of New

England and the border where he had been. Harry was a very entertaining

fellow, having his imagination to help his memory, and telling his

stories as if he believed them--as perhaps he did. Alice was greatly

amused with Harry and listened so seriously to his romancing that he

exceeded his usual limits. Chance allusions to his bachelor

establishment in town and the place of his family on the Hudson, could

not have been made by a millionaire, more naturally.

"I should think," queried Alice, "you would rather stay in New York than

to try the rough life at the West you have been speaking of."

"Oh, adventure," says Harry, "I get tired of New York. And besides I

got involved in some operations that I had to see through. Parties in

New York only last week wanted me to go down into Arizona in a big

diamond interest. I told them, no, no speculation for me. I've got my

interests in Missouri; and I wouldn't leave Philip, as long as he stays

there."

When the young gentlemen were on their way back to the hotel, Mr. Philip,

who was not in very good humor, broke out,

"What the deuce, Harry, did you go on in that style to the Montagues

for?"

"Go on?" cried Harry. "Why shouldn't I try to make a pleasant evening?

And besides, ain't I going to do those things? What difference does it

make about the mood and tense of a mere verb? Didn't uncle tell me only

last Saturday, that I might as well go down to Arizona and hunt for

diamonds? A fellow might as well make a good impression as a poor one."

"Nonsense. You'll get to believing your own romancing by and by."

"Well, you'll see. When Sellers and I get that appropriation, I'll show

you an establishment in town and another on the Hudson and a box at the

opera."

"Yes, it will be like Col. Sellers' plantation at Hawkeye. Did you ever

see that?"

"Now, don't be cross, Phil. She's just superb, that little woman. You

never told me."

"Who's just superb?" growled Philip, fancying this turn of the

conversation less than the other.

"Well, Mrs. Montague, if you must know." And Harry stopped to light a

cigar, and then puffed on in silence. The little quarrel didn't last

over night, for Harry never appeared to cherish any ill-will half a

second, and Philip was too sensible to continue a row about nothing; and

he had invited Harry to come with him.

The young gentlemen stayed in Fallkill a week, and were every day at the

Montagues, and took part in the winter gaieties of the village. There

were parties here and there to which the friends of Ruth and the

Montagues were of course invited, and Harry in the generosity of his

nature, gave in return a little supper at the hotel, very simple indeed,

with dancing in the hall, and some refreshments passed round. And Philip

found the whole thing in the bill when he came to pay it.

Before the week was over Philip thought he had a new light on the

character of Ruth. Her absorption in the small gaieties of the society

there surprised him. He had few opportunities for serious conversation

with her. There was always some butterfly or another flitting about,

and when Philip showed by his manner that he was not pleased, Ruth

laughed merrily enough and rallied him on his soberness--she declared he

was getting to be grim and unsocial. He talked indeed more with Alice

than with Ruth, and scarcely concealed from her the trouble that was in

his mind. It needed, in fact, no word from him, for she saw clearly

enough what was going forward, and knew her sex well enough to know there

was no remedy for it but time.