uotation: "'Patience, cousin,
and shuffle the cards.'"

"You may call me cousin--this once--because you have been, really, quite
nice--for a Northerner."

Now we had come to the place where she must understand me.

"Not a Northerner, Miss La Heu."

She became mocking. "Scarcely a Southerner, I presume?"

But I kept my smile and my directness. "No more a Southerner than a
Northerner."

"Pray what, then?"

"An American."

She was silent.

"It's the 'sacred trust'--for me."

She was still silent.

"If my state seceded from the Union tomorrow, I should side with the
Union against her."

She was frankly astonished now. "Would you really?" And I think some
light about me began to reach her. A Northerner willing to side against
a Northern state! I was very glad that I had found that phrase to make
clear to her my American creed.

I proceeded. "I shall help to hand down all the glories and all the
sadnesses; Lee's, Lincoln's, everybody's. But I shall not hand 'it'
down."

This checked her.

"It's easy for me, you know," I hastily explained. "Nothing noble
about it at all. But from noble people"--and I looked hard at her--"one
expects, sooner or later, noble things."

She repressed something she had been going to reply.

"If ever I have children," I finished, "they shall know 'Dixie' and
'Yankee Doodle' by heart, and never know the difference. By that time
I should think they might have a chance of hearing 'Yankee Doodle' in
Kings Port."

Again she checked a rapid retort. "Well," she, after a pause, repeated,
"you have been really quite nice."

"May I tell you what you have been?"

"Certainly not. Have you seen Mr. Mayrant to-day?"

"We have an engagement to walk this afternoon. May I go walking with you
sometime?"

"May he, General?" A wagging tail knocked on the floor behind the
counter. "General says that he will think about it. What makes you like
Mr. Mayrant so much?"

This question struck me as an odd one; nor could I make out the import
of the peculiar tone in which she put it. "Why, I should think everybody
would like him--except, perhaps, his double victim."

"Double?"

"Yes, first of his fist and then of--of his hand!"

But she didn't respond.

"Of his hand--his poker hand," I explained.

"Poker hand?" She remained honestly vague.

It rejoiced me to be the first to tell her. "You haven't heard of
Master John's last performance? Well, finding himself forced by that
immeasurable