humorously. It came over him--his failure there, as one
who, sweeping with his knights the pawns of an opponent, suddenly
finds himself confronting a queen--and checkmated.

He walked to the window again and looked toward the northern end of
the valley. There the gables of an old and somewhat weather-beaten
home sat in a group of beech on a rise among the foothills.

"Westmoreland"--he said--"how dilapidated it is getting to be!
Something must be done there, and Alice--Alice,"--he repeated the
name softly--reverently--"I feel--I know it--she--even she shall be
mine--after all these years--she shall come to me yet."

He smiled again: "Then I shall have won all around. Fate? Destiny?
Tush! It's living and surviving weaker things, such for instance as
my cousin Tom."

He smiled satisfactorily. He flecked some cotton lint from his coat
sleeve.

"I have had a hard time in the mill to-day. It's a beastly business
robbing the poor little half-made-up devils."

He rang for Aunt Charity. She knew what he wished, and soon came in
bringing him his cocktail--his night-cap as she always called
it,--only of late he had required several in an evening,--a thing
that set the old woman to quarreling with him, for she knew the limit
of a gentleman. And, in truth, she was proud of her cocktails. They
were made from a recipe given by Andrew Jackson. For fifty years
Cook-mother Charity had made one every night and brought it to "old
marster" before he retired. Now she proudly brought it to his
grandson.

"Oh, say Mammy," he said as the old woman started out--"Carpenter
will be here directly with his report. Bring another pair of these
in--we will want them."

The old woman bristled up. "To be sure, I'll fix 'em, honey. He'll
not know the difference. But the licker he gits in his'n will come
outen the bottle we keep for the hosses when they have the colic. The
bran' we keep for gem'men would stick in his th'oat."

Travis laughed: "Well--be sure you don't get that horse brand in
mine."

CHAPTER III

JUD CARPENTER

An hour afterwards, Travis heard a well-known walk in the hall and
opened the door.

He stepped back astonished. He released the knob and gazed half
angry, half smiling.

A large dog, brindled and lean, walked complacently and
condescendingly in, followed by his master. At a glance, the least
imaginative could see that Jud Carpenter, the Whipper-in of the Acme
Cotton Mills, and Bonaparte, his dog, were w