r."

"You never know when I'm going to speed them. The night is as good as
the day when I want a tonic."

They had reached the big stone posts which marked the boundary of
Westmoreland. A little farther on the mares wheeled into the gate,
for it was open and lay, half on the ground, hanging by one hinge. It
had not been painted for years. The driveway, too, had been
neglected. The old home, beautiful even in its decay, sat in a fine
beech grove on the slope of a hill. A wide veranda, with marble
flag-stones as a base, ran across the front. Eight Corinthian pillars
sentineled it, resting on a marble base which seemed to spring up out
of the flag-stones themselves, and towering to the projecting
entablature above.

On one side an ell could be seen, covered with ivy. On the other the
roof of a hot-house, with the glass broken out.

It touched even Richard Travis--this decay. He had known the place in
the days of its glory before its proprietor, Colonel Theodore
Westmore, broken by the war, in spirit and in pocket, had sent a
bullet into his brain and ended the bitter fight with debt. Since
then, no one but the widow and her daughter knew what the fight had
been, for Clay Westmore, the brother, was but a boy and in college at
the time. He had graduated only a few months before, and was now at
home, wrapped up, as Richard Travis had heard, in what to him was a
visionary scheme of some sort for discovering a large area of coal
and iron thereabouts. He had heard, too, that the young man had taken
hold of what had been left, and that often he had been seen following
the plough himself.

Travis drove through the driveway--then he pulled up the mares very
gently, got out and felt of their flanks.

"Take them to the barn and rub them off," he said, "while you wait.
And for a half hour bandage their hind legs--I don't want any wind
puffs from road work."

He started into the house. Then he turned and said: "Be here at the
door, Jim, by ten o'clock, sharp. I shall make another call after
this. Mind you now, ten o'clock, sharp."

At the library he knocked and walked in.

Mrs. Westmore sat by the fire. She was a small, daintily-made woman,
and beautiful even at fifty-five. She had keen, black eyes and
nervous, flighty ways. A smile, half cynical, half inviting, lit up
continuously her face.

"Richard?" she said, rising and taking his hand.

"Cousin Alethea--I thought you were Alice and I was going to surprise
her."