dear sir, there
_is_ another trouble; serious, imminent, and almost sure to involve our
friend Hugh in a vital mistake--Why, general, I thought you, at least,
was asleep."

"Sss-enator, I was. I mmm-erely had not und-ressed. Have you fff-ound
that young man?"

"Not yet, general. Let's go see him together. I want to see you, too,
for just a moment, if these gentlemen will excuse me that long."

"Mr. Hugh's with the first clerk, yonder by the bell," said the gold
hunter. "We'll wait here, eh?"

The general wanted to reply, but "I wish you would," responded the
senator and hurried him away.

XLIX

KANGAROO POINT

Aboard the _Votaress_ was a gentle, retiring lady, large and fair, whom
both Hugh and Ramsey had liked from the first, yet whose acquaintance
they had made very slowly and quite separately. She was a parson's wife,
who had never seen a play, a game of cards, or a ball, danced a dance,
read a novel, tasted wine, or worn a jewel. She had four handsome,
decorous, well-freckled children, two boys, two girls.

At table, until the married pairs of Vicksburg, Yazoo, and Milliken's
Bend had gone ashore, she had not sat with the foremost dozen, although
she and the bishop spoke often together and were always "sister" and
"brother." Her near neighbors at the board had been the Carthaginians
and Napoleonites, and it was through them that she had met the Gilmores.
To Ramsey and Hugh she had been made known by her children, one boy and
girl having fallen wildly in love with the young lady's red curls, and
the other two with Hugh and his frown.

The Gilmores' hearts she had won largely by the way in which her talks
with them revealed the sweet charities of a soul unwarped by the
tyrannous prohibitions under which she had been "born and raised" and to
which she was still loyal; and she had crowned the conquest by a gentle,
inflexible refusal to "brother" John the Baptist. In their lively minds
she reawakened the age-old issue between artist and pietist. Said the
amused Gilmore:

"Humiliate me? Not in the least. She only humbles me; she's such a
beautiful example of----"

"Yes, but, goodness, don't say it here!" said his wife. "Harriet" and
the exhorter were already trouble enough.

Nevertheless, "What lovely types of character," insisted Gilmore, "come
often, _so_ often, from ugly types of faith!"

The wife flinched and looked about but he persisted: "So much better, my
love--this is only my humble t