scarcely
have expected a different reception in these conditions. The great
river being at the stage known as "dead low water," steamboat travel
was practically suspended for the season, or he could have reached his
destination more directly than by rail. An accident had delayed the
train some seven hours, and although the gasoline launch sent to meet
him at the nearest way-station had been withdrawn at nightfall, since
he did not arrive, as his sable attendant informed him, the dug-out had
been substituted, with instructions to wait all night, on the remote
chance that he might come, after all.

Nevertheless, it was with an averse, disaffected gaze that he silently
watched the summit-line of foliage on either bank of the river glide
slowly along the sky, responsive to the motion of the boat. It seemed
a long monotony of this experience, as he sat listless in the canoe,
before a dim whiteness began to appear in a great, unbroken expanse in
the gradually enlarging riparian view--the glister of the moon on the
open cotton-bolls in the fields. The forests were giving way, the region
of swamp and bayou. The habitations of man were at hand, and when at
last the dug-out was run in to a plantation landing, and Kenneth Gordon
was released from his cramped posture in that plebeian craft, he felt
so averse to his mission, such a frivolous, reluctant distaste that he
marvelled how he was to go through with it at all, as he took his way
along the serpentine curves of the "dirt road," preceded by his guide,
still with eyes averted and sullen mien, silently bearing his suit-case.

A few turns, and suddenly a large house came into view, rearing its
white facade to the moonlight in the midst of a grove of magnolia trees,
immense of growth, the glossy leaves seeming a-drip with lustre as with
dew. The flight of steps and the wide veranda were here cumbered
with potted ferns and foliage plants as elsewhere, and gave the first
suggestion of conformity to the ways of the world that the adventure
had yet borne. The long, broad, silent hall into which he was ushered,
lighted only by a kerosene hand-lamp which the servant carried as he led
the way, the stairs which the guest ascended in a mansion of unconscious
strangers, all had teerie intimations, and the comfort and seclusion of
the room assigned to Gordon was welcome indeed to him; for, argue as he
might, he was conscious of a continuous and acute nervous strain. He had
had a shock, he w