rotting in jail--'"

"But Henry G. Surface wasn't rotting in jail in 1875," said William
Klinker, and boldly winked at the little Doctor.

The Major, disconcerted for an instant by his anachronism, recovered
superbly. "My vision, sir, was prophetic. The stain was upon him. The
cloven foot had already been betrayed...."

"And who was Henry G. Surface?" inquired Mr. Queed.

"What! You haven't heard that infamous story!" cried the Major, with
the surprised delight of the inveterate raconteur who has unexpectedly
stumbled upon an audience.

A chair-leg scraped, and Professor Nicolovius was standing, bowing in
his sardonic way to Mrs. Paynter.

"Since I have happened to hear it often, madam, through Major Brooke's
tireless kindness, you will perhaps be so good as to excuse me."

And he stalked out of the room, head up, his auburn goatee stabbing the
atmosphere before him, in rather a heavy silence.

"Pish!" snapped the Major, when the door had safely shut. And tapping
his forehead significantly, he gave his head a few solemn wags and
launched upon the worn biography of Henry G. Surface.

Tattered with much use as the story is, and was, the boarders listened
with a perennial interest while Major Brooke expounded the familiar
details. His wealth of picturesque language we may safely omit, and
briefly remind the student of the byways of history how Henry G. Surface
found himself, during the decade following Appomattox, with his little
world at his feet. He was thirty at the time, handsome, gifted,
high-spirited, a brilliant young man who already stood high in the
councils of the State. But he was also restless in disposition,
arrogant, over-weeningly vain, and ambitious past all belief--"a yellow
streak in him, and we didn't know it!" bellowed the Major. Bitterly
chagrined by his failure to secure, from a legislature of the early
seventies, the United States Senatorship which he had confidently
expected, young Surface, in a burst of anger and resentment, committed
the unforgivable sin. He went over bag and baggage to the other side, to
the "nigger party" whom all his family, friends, and relations, all his
"class," everybody else with his instincts and traditions, were
desperately struggling, by hook and by crook, to crush.

In our mild modern preferences as between presidents, or this governor
and that, we catch no reminiscence of the fierce antagonisms of the
elections of reconstruction days. The idolized young t