waiting until the closing of
the draw should allow them to continue upon their way. From these most
of the occupants had descended, and were staring with avidity at us all;
the great glass eyes and the great refulgent cars held them in timidity
and fascination, and the poor lifeless white body of General, stretched
beside the way, heightened the hypnotic mystery; one or two of the
boldest had touched him, and found no outward injury upon him; and this
had sent their eyes back to the automobile with increased awe. Eliza La
Heu summoned one of the onlookers, an old negro; at some word she said
to him he hurried back and returned, leading his horse and empty cart,
and General was lifted into this. The girl took her seat beside the old
driver.

"No," she said to John Mayrant, "certainly not."

I wondered at the needless severity with which she declined his offer to
accompany her and help her.

He stood by the wheel of the cart, looking up at her and protesting, and
I joined him.

"Thank you," she returned, "I need no one. You will both oblige me by
saying no more about it."

"John!" It was the slow, well-calculated utterance of Hortense Rieppe.
Did I hear in it the caressing note of love?

John turned.

The draw had swung to, the mast and sail of the vessel were separating
away from the bridge with a stealthy motion, men with iron bars were at
work fastening the draw secure, and horses' hoofs knocked nervously upon
the wooden flooring as the internal churning of the automobiles burst
upon their innocent ears.

"John, if Mr. Rodgers is really not going with us--"

Thus Hortense; and at that Miss La Heu:--

"Why do you keep them waiting?" There was no caress in that note! It was
polished granite.

He looked up at her on her high seat by the extremely dilapidated negro,
and then he walked forward and took his place beside his veiled
fiancee, among the glass eyes. A hiss of sharp noise spurted from the
automobiles, horses danced, and then, smoothly, the two huge engines
were gone with their cargo of large, distorted shapes, leaving behind
them--quite as our present epoch will leave behind it--a trail of power,
of ingenuity, of ruthlessness, and a bad smell.

"Hold hard, old boy!" chuckled Beverly, to whom I communicated this
sentiment. "How do you know the stink of one generation does not become
the perfume of the next?" Beverly, when he troubled to put a thing
at all (which was seldom--for he kept his quite go