thick veil. The perfect mould of her shoulders, the attractiveness of
her wealth of black hair massed at the back of her head--these things
were demanding, the porter noticed, many an admiring glance from the
darker of the two young men.

The porter seemed about to forget his note in observing with what
regularity the young man's eyes would wander off and straightway return
to rest upon the beautiful form of the young woman, but an incident
occurred that brought his mind back very forcibly to the note. The door
from the section for the whites opened and two white men entered.

The porter's hand in which the note was held cautiously crept toward the
open window, while he eyed the two white men whom he feared had come to
accuse him of an attempted flirtation with a young white woman. One of
the men reached behind to his hip pocket and the porter half arose in
his seat, throwing up his hands in alarm, expecting a pistol to appear
to cover him. The white man was simply drawing out a flask of whiskey to
offer his companion a drink.

Ensal Ellwood, the dark young man, looking around to see if the parties
who had entered had closed the door behind them (for the adjoining
section was the white people's smoking apartment, and care had to be
exercised to keep smoke and tobacco fumes out), saw the two white men
about to take a drink. He arose quickly and advancing to the two men,
said quietly, urbanely and yet with an air of firmness,

"Gentlemen, the law prescribes that this coach shall be used exclusively
by Negro passengers and we must ask that you do not make our first-class
apartment a drinking room for the whites."

The two men stared at Ensal and he looked them frankly in the face that
they might see that in a dignified manner he would insist to the last
upon the rights of the Negro passengers. The justness of Ensal's
request, his unostentatious, manly bearing had the desired effect. The
two men quietly turned about and left the car.

The porter who had been standing during this little scene now sat down,
opened the note and read as follows:

"MR. PORTER: When this train is within a fifteen minutes' run
of Almaville please pass through this coach and so announce.
Then stand on the platform leading from this coach to the
coach in which the Negroes have their section.

"FROM THE GIRL THAT LOOKED AT YOU."

The first part of this request the porter concluded to comply with, but
he reg