acts against the importation of slaves, which the King vetoed on petition of the Massachusetts slave - traders. Jefferson made these acts of the King one of the grievances of the Declaration of Independence, but a Massachusetts member succeeded in striking it out. The Southern men in the convention which framed the Constitution put into it a clause abolishing the slave-trade, but the Massachusetts men succeeded in adding a clause extending the trade twenty years

He smiled and paused.

"Go on," she said, with impatience.

"In Colonial days a negro woman was publicly burned to death in Boston. The first Abolition paper was published in Tennessee by Embree. Benjamin Lundy, his successor, could not find a single Abolitionist in Boston. In 1828 over half the people of Tennessee favoured Abolition. At this time there were one hundred and forty Abolition Societies in America-one hundred and three in the South, and not one in Massachusetts. It was not until 1836 that Massachusetts led in Abolition—not until all her own slaves had been sold to us at a profit and the slave-trade had been destroyed"

She looked at Ben with anger for a moment and met his tantalising look of good-humour.

"Can you stand any more?"

"Certainly, I enjoy it."

"I'm just breaking down the barriers-so to speak," he said, with the laughter still lurking in his eyes, as he looked steadily ahead.

"By all means, go on," she said, soberly. "I thought

at first you were trying to tease me. I see that you are in

earnest."

"Never more so. This is about the only little path of history I'm at home in-I love to show off in it. I heard a cheerful idiot say the other day that your father meant to carry the civilisation of Massachusetts to the Rio Grande until we had a Democracy in America. I smiled. While Massachusetts was enforcing laws about the dress of the rich and the poor, founding a church with a whipping-post, jail, and gibbet, and limiting the right to vote to a church membership fixed by pew-rents, Carolina was the home of freedom where first the equal rights of men were proclaimed. New England people worth less than one thousand dollars were prohibited by law from wearing the garb of a gentleman, gold or silver lace, buttons on the knees, or to walk in great boots, or their women to wear silk or scarfs, while the Quakers, Maryland Catholics, Baptists, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians were everywhere in the South the heralds of man's equality before the law."

"But barring our ancestors, I have some things against the men of this generation."

"Have I too sinned and come short?" he asked, with mock gravity.

“Our ideals of life are far apart," she firmly declared. "What ails my ideal?"

"Your egotism, for one thing. The air with which you calmly select what pleases your fancy. Northern men are bad enough-the insolence of a Southerner is beyond words!"

"You don't say so!" cried Ben, bursting into a hearty laugh. "Isn't your aunt, Mrs. Farnham, the president of a club?"

"Yes, and she is a very brilliant woman."

"Enlighten me further."

"I deny your heaven-born male kingship. The lord of creation is after all a very inferior animal-nearer the brute creation, weaker in infancy, shorter lived, more imperfectly developed, given to fighting, and addicted to idiocy. I never saw a female idiot in my life-did you?" "Come to think of it, I never did," acknowledged Ben with comic gravity. "What else?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"It's nothing. I agree with everything you say, but it is irrelevant. I'm studying law, you know."

"I have a personality of my own. You and your kind assume the right to absorb all lesser lights."

"Certainly; I'm a man."

"I don't care to be absorbed by a mere man."

"Don't wish to be protected, sheltered, and cared for?" "I dream of a life that shall be larger than the four walls of a home. I have never gone into hysterics over the idea of becoming a cook and housekeeper without wages, and snuffing my life out while another grows, expands, and claims the lordship of the world. I can sing. My voice is to me what eloquence is to man. My ideal is an intellectual companion who will inspire and lead me to develop all that I feel within to its highest reach."

She paused a moment and looked defiantly into Ben's brown eyes, about which a smile was constantly playing.

He looked away, and again the river echoed with his contagious laughter. She had to join in spite of herself. He laughed with boyish gaiety. It danced in his eyes, and gave spring to every movement of his slender wiry body. She felt its contagion infold her.

His laughter melted into a song. In a voice vibrant with joy he sang, "If you get there before I do, tell 'em I'm comin' too!"

As Elsie listened, her anger grew as she recalled the amazing folly that had induced her to tell the secret feelings of her inmost soul to this man almost a stranger. Whence came this miracle of influence about him, this gift of intimacy? She felt a shock as if she had been immodest. She was in an agony of doubt as to what he was thinking of her, and dreaded to meet his gaze.

And yet, when he turned toward her, his whole being a smiling compound of dark Southern blood and bone and fire, at the sound of his voice all doubt and questioning melted.

"Do you know," he said earnestly, "that you are the funniest, most charming girl I ever met?"

"Thanks. I've heard your experience has been large for one of your age."

Ben's eyes danced.

"Perhaps, yes. You appeal to things in me that I didn't know were there-to all the senses of body and soul Your strength of mind, with its conceits, and your quick little temper seem so odd and out of place, clothed in the gentleness of your beauty."

at once.

"I was never more serious in my life. There are other things more personal about you that I do not like."

"What?"

"Your cavalier habits."

"Cavalier fiddlesticks. There are no Cavaliers in my country. We are all Covenanter and Huguenot folks. The idea that Southern boys are lazy loafing dreamers is a myth. I was raised on the catechism."

"You love to fish and hunt and frolic-you flirt with every girl you meet, and you drink sometimes. I often feel that you are cruel and that I do not know you."

Ben's face grew serious, and the red scar in the edge of his hair suddenly became livid with the rush of blood.

"Perhaps I don't mean that you shall know all yet," he said, slowly. "My ideal of a man is one that leads, charms, dominates, and yet eludes. I confess that I'm close kin to an angel and a devil, and that I await a woman's hand to lead me into the ways of peace and life."

The spiritual earnestness of the girl was quick to catch the subtle appeal of his last words. His broad, high forehead, straight, masterly nose, with its mobile nostrils, seemed to her very manly at just that moment and very appealing. A soft answer was on her lips.

He saw it, and leaned toward her in impulsive tenderness. A timid look on her face caused him to sink back in silence.

They had now drifted near the city. The sun was slowly sinking in a smother of fiery splendour that mirrored its changing hues in the still water. The hush of the harvest fullness of autumn life was over all nature.