"That's fine, we wouldn't need a barometer on life's voyage, would we?"

66

No, but you will be looking for a pilot and a harbour before you've known her a month. Her upper lip is a little fuller and projects slightly over the lower, and they are both beautifully fluted and curved like the petals of a flower, which makes the most tantalising mouth a standing challenge for a kiss."

Oh! Auntie, you're joking! You never saw such a girl. You're breaking into my heart, stealing glances at my ideal."

"All right, sir, wait and see for yourself. She has pretty shell-like ears, her laughter is full, contagious, and like music. She plays divinely on the piano, can't sing a note, but dresses to kill. You might as well wind up your affairs, and get ready for the first serious work of your life. You will have your hands full after you see her."

"But did I understand you to say she's rich? "

66

Yes, they say her father is worth half a million." "Do you think she could be interested in the poor in this county?"

"Yes, she doesn't seem to know she's an heiress. Her father, the General, is a deacon in the Baptist church at Independence, and hates dudes and fops with all his oldfashioned soul. His idea of a man is one of character, and the capacity of achievement, not merely a possessor of money. Still, I imagine he is going to give any man trouble who tries to take his daughter away from him."

"I'm afraid that money lets me out of the race.”

66

Nothing of the sort, when you see her you will never allow a little thing like that to worry you."

"It's not her dollars that will worry me. It's the fact that she's got them and I haven't. But, anyhow, Auntie,

from your description you can book me for one night at least."

"I'm going to book you for her lackey, her slave, devoted to her every whim while she's here. One night— the idea!"

Auntie, you're too generous to others. I've no notion all this rigmarole about your Miss Sallie Worth is true. But I'll do anything to please you."

"Very well, I'll see whom you are trying to please later."

"I must go," said Gaston, hastily rising. I have an engagement to discuss the coming political campaign with the Hon. Allan McLeod, the present Republican boss of the state."

"I didn't know you hobnobbed with the enemy."

"I don't. But as far as I can understand him, he purposes to take me up on an exceeding high mountain and offer me the world and the fulness thereof. We all like to be tempted whether we fall or not. The Doctor hates McLeod. I think he holds some grudge against him. What do you think of him, Auntie? He swears by you. I used to dislike him as a boy, but he seems a pretty decent sort of fellow now, and I can't help liking just a little anybody who loves you. I confess he has a fascination for me."

66

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

"Because I'm not quite sure of his honesty. He talks fairly, but there's something about him that casts a doubt over his fairest words. He says he has the most important proposition of my life to place before me to-day, and I'm at a loss how to meet him-whether as a well-meaning friend or a scheming scoundrel. He's a puzzle to me."

"Well, Charlie, I don't mind telling you that he is a

puzzle to me. I've always been strangely attracted to him, even when he was a big red-headed brute of a boy. The Doctor always disliked him and I thought, misjudged him. He has always paid me the supremest deference, and of late years the most subtle flattery. No woman, who feels her life a failure, as I do mine, can be indifferent to such a compliment from a man of trained mind and masterful character. This is a sore subject between the Doctor and myself. And when I see him shaking hands a little too lingeringly with admiring sisters after his services, I repay him with a chat with my devoted McLeod. Don't ask me. I like him, and I don't like him. I admire him and at the same time I suspect and half fear him.”

"Strange we feel so much alike about him. But your heart has always been very close to mine, since you slipped your arm around me that night my mother died. I know about what he will say, and I know about what I'll do." He stooped and kissed his fostermother tenderly.

"Charlie, I'm in earnest about my pretty girl that's coming. Don't forget it."

66 Bah! You've fooled me before."

M

CHAPTER II

THE VOICE OF THE TEMPTER

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

"Walk in Gaston, you're a little late. However, better late than never." McLeod plunged directly into the purpose of his visit.

"Gaston you're a man of brains, and oratorical genius. I heard your speech in the last Democratic convention in Raleigh, and I don't say it to flatter you, that was the greatest speech made in any assembly in this state since the war."

66 Thanks!" said Gaston with a wave of his arm.

66

I mean it. You know too much to be in sympathy with the old moss-backs who are now running this state. For fourteen years, the South has marched to the polls and struck blindly at the Republican party, and three times it struck to kill. The Southern people have nothing in common with these Northern Democrats who make your platforms and nominate your candidate. You don't ask anything about the platform or the man. You would vote for the devil if the Democrats nominated him, and ask no questions; and what infuriates me is you vote to enforce platforms that mean economic ruin to the South." "Man shall not live by bread alone, McLeod."

Sure, but he can't live on dead men's bones. You vote in solid mass on the Negro question, which you settled by the power of Anglo-Saxon insolence when you destroyed the Reconstruction governments at a blow.

Why should you keep on voting against every interest of the South, merely because you hate the name Republican?

"Why? Simply because so long as the Negro is here with a ballot in his hands he is a menace to civilisation. The Republican party placed him here. The name Republican will stink in the South for a century, not because they beat us in war, but because two years after the war, in profound peace, they inaugurated a second war on the unarmed people of the South, butchering the starving, the wounded, the women and children. God in heaven, will I ever forget that day they murdered my mother! Their attempt to establish with the bayonet an African barbarism on the ruins of Southern society was a conspiracy against human progress. It was the blackest crime of the nineteenth century."

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

"But principles are eternal."

'Principles? I'm not talking about principles. I'm talking about practical politics. The people down here haven't voted on a principle in years. They've been voting on old Simon Legree. He left the state nearly a quarter of a century ago."

"Yes, McLeod, but his soul has gone marching on. The Republican party fought the South because such men as Legree lived in it, and abused the negroes, and the moment they won, turn and make Legree and his breed their pets. Simon Legree is more than a mere man who stole five millions of dollars, alienated the races, and covered the South with the desolation of anarchy. He is an idea. He represents everything that the soul of the South loathes, and that the Republican party has tried to ram down our throats, Negro supremacy in politics, and Negro equality in society."