e had said naught amiss. People could not expect their sisters
to escape attracting notice, especially a sister with a remarkable
name and endowed with a face like this one's.

"Narcissa,--that's an odd name," he said, partly in bravado, and
partly in justification of the propriety of his previous mention of
her. "I knew a man once named Narcissus. Must be the feminine of
Narcissus. Good name for her, though." The recollection of the white
flower-like face, the corolla of red-gold hair, came over him. "Looks
just like 'em."

Hanway, albeit all alert now, descried in this naught more poetical
than the fact that Selwyn considered that his sister resembled a man
of his acquaintance. As for that fairest of all spring flowers, it had
never gladdened the backwoods range of his vision.

The exclusive tendency of the human mind is tested by this discovery
of a casual resemblance to a stranger. One invariably sustains an
affront at its mention. Whatever one's exterior may be, it possesses
the unique merit of being one's own, and the aversion to share its
traits with another, and that other a stranger, is universal. In this
instance the objection was enhanced by the fact that the stranger was
a man; _ergo_, in Hanway's opinion, more or less clumsy and burly and
ugly; the masculine type of his acquaintance presenting to his mind
few of the superior elements of beauty. He resented the liberty the
stranger took in resembling Narcissa, and he resented still more
Selwyn's effrontery in discovering the likeness.

"Not ez much alike ez two black-eyed peas, now. I reckon not,--I
reckon not," he sneered, as he rose to bring his visit to an end.

His host's words of incipient surprise were checked as Hanway slowly
drew forth from his pocket a letter.

"Old man Binney war at the Cross-Roads Sad'day, an' he fotched up some
mail fur the neighbors. He lef' this letter fur you-uns at our house,
'lowin' ez I would fetch it over."

Selwyn sat silent for a moment. He felt that severe reprehension and
distrust which a man of business always manifests upon even the most
trifling interference with his vested rights in his own mail matter.
The rural method of aiding in distributing the mail was peculiarly
unpalatable to him. He much preferred that his letters should lie in
the post-office at the Cross-Roads until such time as it suited his
convenience to saddle his horse and ride thither for them. The
postmaster, on the contrary, seized the op