On the whole, however, he enjoyed his freedom from restraint, and very
rapidly fell back into his old loose way of living, bringing his dogs
even into the parlor, and making it a repository for both his hunting
and fishing apparatus.

"It's splendid to do as I'm mind to," he said, one hot August morning,
nearly three weeks after his mother's departure.

"Hello, Mug, what do you want?" he asked, as a very bright-looking
little mulatto girl appeared in the door.

"Claib done buyed you this yer," and the child handed him the letter
from his mother.

The first of it was full of affection for her boy, and Hugh felt his
heart growing very tender as he read, but when he reached the point
where poor, timid Mrs. Worthington tried to explain about Alice, making
a wretched bungle, and showing plainly how much she was swayed by 'Lina,
it began to harden at once.

"What the plague!" he exclaimed as he read on. "Suppose I remember
having heard her speak of her old school friend, Alice Morton? I don't
remember any such thing. Her daughter's name's Alice--Alice Johnson,"
and Hugh for an instant turned white, so powerfully that name always
affected him.

"She is going to Colonel Tiffton's first, though they've all got the
typhoid fever, I hear, and that's no place for her. That fever is
terrible on Northerners--terrible on anybody. I'm afraid of it myself,
and I wish this horrid throbbing I've felt for a few days would leave my
head. It has a fever feel that I don't like," and the young man pressed
his hand against his temples, trying to beat back the pain which so much
annoyed him.

Just then Collonel Tiffton was announced, his face wearing an anxious
look, and his voice trembling as he told how sick his Nell was, how sick
they all were, and then spoke of Alice Johnson.

"She's the same girl I told you about the day I bought Rocket; some
little kin to me, and that makes it queer why her mother should leave
her to you. I knew she would not be happy at Saratoga, and so we wrote
for her to visit us. She is on the road now, will be here day after
to-morrow, and something must be done. She can't come to us without
great inconvenience to ourselves and serious danger to her. Hugh, my
boy, there's no other way--she must come to Spring Bank," and the old
colonel laid his hand on that of Hugh, who looked at him aghast, but
made no immediate reply.

"A pretty state of things, and a pretty place to bring a lady," he
muttered, glancing