rm went around her and he laid his head against her
shoulder.

"Mary," he said, "I am carving a pedestal."

"You are what?"

He explained. He laughed a great deal as he gave her an account of his
conversation with the Major and Randy that morning.

"You see before you," with a final flourish, "a potential great man. A
Thomas Jefferson, up-to-date; a John Randolph of the present day; the
Lincoln of my own time; the ancestor of Fiddle's great-grandchildren."

She rumpled his hair. "I like you as you are."

He caught her hand and held it. "But you'd like me on--a pedestal?"

"If you'll let me help you carve it."

He kissed the hand that he held. "If I am ever anything more than I am,"
he said, and now he was not laughing, "it will be because of you--my
dearest darling."

CHAPTER XII

INDIAN--INDIAN

I

The Merriweather fortunes had not been affected by the fall of the
Confederacy. There had been money invested in European ventures, and
when peace had come in sixty-five, the old grey stone house had again
flung wide its doors to the distinguished guests who had always honored
it, and had resumed its ancient custom of an annual harvest ball.

The ballroom, built at the back of the main house, was connected with it
by wide curving corridors, which contained the family portraits, and
which had long windows which opened out on little balconies. On the
night of the ball these balconies were lighted by round yellow lanterns,
so that the effect from the outside was that of a succession of full
moons.

The ballroom was octagonal, and canopied with a blue ceiling studded
with silver stars. There were cupids with garlands on the side walls,
and faded blue brocade hangings. Across one end of the ballroom was the
long gallery reserved for those whom the Merriweathers still called "the
tenantry," and it was here that Mary and Mrs. Flippin always sat after
baking cakes.

Mrs. Flippin had not baked the cakes to-day, nor was she in the gallery,
for her daughter, Mary, was among the guests on the ballroom floor, and
her mother's own good sense had kept her at home.

"I shall look after Miss MacVeigh," she had said. "I want Truxton to
bring you over and show you in your pretty new dress."

When they came, Madge, who was sitting up, insisted that she, too, must
see Mary. "My dear, my dear," she said, "what a wonderful frock."

"Yes," Mary said, "it is. It is one of Becky's, and she gave it to me.
And the turquo