ting it
in his pocket. The handwriting was the same as that of the telegram
abstracted from Operator Carter's sending-book.

"I don't see anything to laugh at," he objected.

"No? First the Rajah sends the sheriff's posse packing without
striking a blow, and now he invites us to dinner."

"You make me exceedingly tired at odd moments, Morty. Why can't you
give Mr. Darrah the credit of being what he really is at bottom--a
right-hearted Virginia gentleman of the old school?"

"You don't mean that you are going to accept!" said Adams, aghast.

"Certainly; and so are you."

There was no more to be said, and Adams held his peace while Winton
scribbled a line of acceptance on a leaf of his note-book and sent it
across to the Rosemary by the hand of the water-boy.

Their reception at the steps of the Rosemary was a generous proof of
the aptness of that aphorism which sums up the status _post bellum_ in
the terse phrase, "After war, peace." Mr. Darrah met them; was
evidently waiting for them.

"Come in, gentlemen; come in and be at home,"--this with a hand for
each. "Virginia allowed you wouldn't faveh us, but I assured her she
didn't rightly know men of the world: told her that a picayune
business affair in which we are all acting as corporation proxies
needn't spell out anything like a blood feud between gentlemen."

For another man the informal table gathering might have been easily
prohibitive of confidences _a deux_, even with a Virginia Carteret to
help, but Winton was far above the trammelings of time and place. He
had eyes and ears only for the sweet-faced, low-voiced young woman
beside him, and some of his replies to the others were irrelevant
enough to send a smile around the board.

"How very absent-minded Mr. Winton seems to be this evening!" murmured
Bessie from her niche between Adams and the Reverend Billy at the
farther end of the table. "He isn't quite at his best, is he, Mr.
Adams?"

"No, indeed," said Adams, matching her undertone, "very far from it.
He has been a bit off all day: touch of mountain fever, I'm afraid."

"But he doesn't look at all ill," objected Miss Bessie. "I should say
he is a perfect picture of rude health."

The coffee was served, and Mrs. Carteret was rising. Whereupon Miss
Virginia handed her cup to Adams, and so had him for her companion in
the tete-a-tete chair, leaving Winton to shift for himself.

The shifting process carried him over to the Rajah and the Reverend