to no such infringement of my
liberty to do as I will with my own."

Elsie's eyes sparkled: she was proud of her husband and father. Rose,
too, smiled approval.

"Sounds very fine," growled Boyd, "but I say you've no right to put up
the price of labor."

"Papa," cried young Horace, straightening himself and casting a
withering look upon Boyd, "I hope neither you nor Brother Edward will
ever give in to them a single inch. Such insolence!"

"Let us change the subject," said old Mr. Dinsmore, "it is not an
agreeable one."

It so happened that a few days after this Messrs. Dinsmore, Travilla and
Leland were talking together just within the entrance to the avenue at
Ion when Wilkins Foster, George Boyd and Calhoun Conly came riding by.

They brought their horses to a walk as they neared the gate, and Foster
called out sneeringly, "Two scalawags and a carpet-bagger! fit company
for each other."

"So we think, sir," returned Travilla coolly, "though we do not accept
the epithets you so generously bestow upon us."

"It is an easy thing to call names; any fool is equal to that," said Mr.
Leland, in a tone of unruffled good-nature.

"True; and the weapon of vituperation is generally used by those who
lack brains for argument or are upon the wrong side," observed Mr.
Dinsmore.

"Is that remark intended to apply to me sir?" asked Foster, drawing
himself up with an air of hauteur and defiance.

"Not particularly: but if you wish to prove yourself skilled in the
other and more manly weapon, we are ready to give you the opportunity."

"Yes; come in, gentlemen, and let us have a free and friendly
discussion," said Mr. Travilla.

Boyd and Conly at once accepted the invitation, but Foster, reining in
his horse in the shade of a tree at the gate, said, "No, thank you; I
don't care to alight, can talk from the saddle as well as anyway. I call
you scalawags, Messrs. Dinsmore and Travilla, because though natives of
the South, you have turned against her."

"Altogether a mistake," observed Travilla.

"I deny the charge and call upon you to prove it," said Mr. Dinsmore.

"Easy task; you kept away and took no part in our struggle for
independence."

"That is we (I speak for Travilla as well as myself) had no share in the
effort to overthrow the best government in the world, the hope of the
down-trodden and oppressed of all the earth a struggle which we foresaw
would prove, as it has, the almost utter destruction of our be