tleman said, might be the last allowed to go through, and he was not engaged in the insurance business. He could truly say that the Colonel's clients had cotton at his depot, that the Federals captured it, and that he saw some cotton burning and some being removed as he vamoosed over the country seeking Confederate company to console him for the loss of his place and his escape from capture. But the Colonel was solidly armed with an official acknowledgment of the confiscation of the cotton, and he mooted the Jew theory only to his friends.

"Oh, Mr. Moran, I'm so glad you have consented to take papa's place," broke in Miss Laura Foley, slamming the sittingroom door behind her, and suspending peremptorily any further explanations between her father and his deputy-attorney.

"You can understand it well enough from that," wound up the Colonel, handing Moran a paper, "taken in connection with all I have said."

"And is that the best compliment you can pay your sire to his face, eh, Beauty?" said the old lawyer.

66

Oh, no! I don't mean I'm glad you are not going, I am only glad Mr. Moran is going. You understand, don't you, Mr. Moran?" nodding towards and shaking hands with that gentleman.

Colonel Foley and daughter then exchanged views with Archie as to routes. Should they go by Atlanta, or should they take the East Tennessee line, and the latter was finally determined upon. Various reminiscences of travel were recalled by the gentlemen to the disadvantage of Miss Laura, who, save a year's schooling in Baltimore and a short visit to Petersburg with a girl friend, had seen very little of the world beyond Dunham; but when the name of the Virginia town was mentioned with favor, she burst out:

"It's the very dearest place in the world. I'm just crazy for you to stop off there with me, Mr. Moran, and meet Ada Cleburne. She is the girl I am going to visit-my old schoolmate at Mrs. Tyler's in Baltimore. She is perfectly beautiful, Mr. Moran. Oh, I know you'll go wild over her. I have given you

to her already in one of my letters. I was trying to get her to come and see me this winter, and I would go to see her next summer, but she had her way as she always does and just exactly reversed it. She is to come here next summer; but what do you think she said about you ?"

"I really can't imagine," rejoined her patient listener, with affected gravity.

"Well, wait a minute, and I'll show you the sweetest letter from her you ever heard read," were the retiring words of the girl as she bounded out of the room, and her feet were heard beating a very "pat-a-cake" on the stair steps.

"I've got some work to do in the office," said the Colonel, rising and reaching for his hat. "I shall rely on your being ready day after to-morrow."

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"Yes, sir; that is if Miss Ann Duvall will stay with mother." Oh, there will be no trouble about that. I'll bet Miss Ann has enough gossip stored away to keep your mother listening till you can go to Patagonia and back-much less to Washington.

6

"Why, she won't be at Crucifix,' as we used to say at school, by the time you return," chuckled the old fellow. "It will take

her that time to tell who has bought new dresses this winter and who has turned old ones. She'll hardly get an audience at your house on the town scandal, but she will give the girls' correspondence better than they can do at the post-office."

“What is that about girls' correspondents?" cried his daughter, passing him in the doorway.

"Oh, nothing, nothing; you young people enjoy yourselves. I must work." And the lawyer left.

It is scarcely necessary to the purposes of this history to give in full Miss Ada Cleburne's letter to Miss Laura Foley. It was neither better nor worse than its kind-that is to say, it was begun like all letters on the first page of the paper, but after that it jumped to the third page and then hopped (latitudinally this time) to the second and thence decorously enough to the fourth, which, however, along with the already unfortunate second, was

very indecorously written across after having once done full duty.

This procedure, which among other bad features, swindled the United States out of three cents extra postage, necessitated the signature"Affy A. C.," coming in at the foot of the next page to the beginning, up to that time the fairly spaced third. We are by no means cynical in saying this. The letter bubbled over with the full expression of that beautiful womanly love bestowed, for lack as yet of a masculine recipient, upon her “schoolfellow" and "chum," as the writer affectionately called her correspondent. It was written in a fair, uniform hand, just as all Mrs. Tyler's girls wrote, Miss Laura said, and portrayed in extravagant adjectives the delights of a Virginia winter.

Far be it therefore from me to fling a sneer at such honest virgin exhilaration as the writer evidenced.

It is to the manner of the writing and not to the matter of it that my ugly criticism (of which I am now half ashamed) applied.

Something like this, covering the pages above described and as described, Miss Foley read with bright eyes and catching breath (for she had run up stairs and back in the very briefest space of time) to Mr. Moran, who proved himself a patient and interested listener.

"Does n't she write a splendid letter?" inquired the recipient of it, with her imagination hard at work calling up the promised pleasures of Petersburg one by one.

"Very good letter, indeed," said Moran, "but where is there any reference to your humble servant in it. I thought it was for something of that kind you chiefly desired me to hear it."

"What a stupid thing I am! I beg your pardon. It is in the postscript that Your Majesty is mentioned. Pray forgive me just this once, won't you?”

"Pardon is signed. Great seal in red morocco. Proceed!" Miss Laura's little lip took on a very sweet affectation of a curl in answer to this command as it read the following:

"P. S. I forgot to mention that I received a letter from Cor

She is

She

nelia Renfrew yesterday—the girl who took your place in the dormitory at Mrs. Tyler's. the session after you left. coming to pay me a visit and may be here before you are. lives in the western part of the State and knows your Mr. Moran as well, I reckon, as you do. I had written to her about your giving him to me and she congratulates me ever so much, and says he stood very high at College. What sort of hair and eyes has he? The wretch would n't say a word else except what I tell you." "ADA."

And this the young lady had written (crosswise again) on the wide margin above and including the place the paper-maker left for "Petersburg" and "My dear Laura."

"I have heard," said Moran, "that the meat of a lady's letter is always in the postscript, and I believe it now. Won't we have a jolly time? I'll stop over as I come back from Washington." And then he told her all he knew about Miss Renfrew-some of which she already knew in a vague way from casual mention made of his stay in Virginia by Mrs. Moran.

"Well," said Moran, “I'll bid you good evening, or afternoon rather. It will be on the edge of dark when I get home. You are certain to be ready day after to-morrow. I'm so glad to hear your postscript that I could almost shake hands with your friend Mr. Holt, who took such pains to advertise me as a Radical when we came back from College, and is so anxious now to convert me from the error of my ways by the Ku Klux Catechism."

"I'll have him to call you out," said Miss Laura, "if you abuse him any more. He likes you very much, or rather he would like you, if you would meet him half way. We have so few genteel young men in Dunham that I feel as if your ears ought to be boxed when you don't get along well with each other. Good-bye," as Archie held out his hand and smiled. "Give my love to Mrs. Moran, and tell Miss Ann Duvall that I will never speak to her again in the world if she don't go to Ravenscroft while you are gone."

But this threat was needless.

Miss Ann very cheerfully

promised her company as a substitute for Archie's, and Moran rode home very happy in heart—rather a rare feeling with him of late-and wondering whether Cornelia Renfrew would be of Laura Foley's opinion that he was no more a Radical than her esteemed papa was.

The next day's train but one whisked him and his law instructor's daughter towards Virginia and the white dome of the Capitol.

Let another chapter tell of his life in those places. This one the reader doubtless thinks already long enough.

CHAPTER XIII.

A LITTLE OF LOVE AND MORE OF LOYALTY.

The Virginia State fair was going on as our young friends sped through that State, and their train was crowded with young men and maidens, old men and widows, bound for that pleasant exhibition.

Moran thought he had never seen so many pretty women at one time as occupied his car. The train would stop at a depot in an "old field." One or more old rumbling carriages would drive up and out of them would leap four, six or a dozen young women with great brown eyes, long, luxuriant auburn or gold hair and cheeks like the sunny halves of peaches. There was a bewildering uniformity about this car-load of beauty, which overpowered him and smote his Alabama pride into the very dust. He lived to see prouder dames gathered in the proudest of the world's Capitals; but he has mentioned frequently his opinion that no equal area of civilization can compete with Southside Virginia in the production of pretty women.

The Austro-Hungarian about Pesth he thought the nearest