h if he wanted a handkerchief.

Stephen said it was not a diary. Mr. Colfax was too well bred to inquire
further; so he never found out that Mr. Brice was writing an account of
the Convention and the speechmaking for the Missouri Democrat.

"Brice," said the Southerner, "I want to apologize for things I've done
to you and said about you. I hated you for a long time after you beat me
out of Hester, and--" he hesitated.

Stephen looked up. For the first time he actually liked Colfax. He had
been long enough among Colfax's people to understand how difficult it was
for him to say the thing he wished.

"You may remember a night at my uncle's, Colonel Carvel's, on the
occasion of my cousin's birthday?"

"Yes," said Stephen, in surprise.

"Well," blurted Clarence, boyishly, "I was rude to you in my uncle's
house, and I have since been sorry."

"He held out his hand, and Stephen took it warmly.

"I was younger then, Mr. Colfax," he said, "and I didn't understand your
point of view as well as I do now. Not that I have changed my ideas," he
added quickly, "but the notion of the girl's going South angered me. I
was bidding against the dealer rather than against you. Had I then known
Miss Carvel--" he stopped abruptly.

The winning expression died from the face of the other.

He turned away, and leaning across the rail, stared at the high bluffs,
red-bronzed by the autumn sun. A score of miles beyond that precipice was
a long low building of stone, surrounded by spreading trees,--the school
for young ladies, celebrated throughout the West, where our mothers and
grandmothers were taught,--Monticello. Hither Miss Virginia Carvel had
gone, some thirty days since, for her second winter.

Perhaps Stephen guessed the thought in the mind of his companion, for he
stared also. The music in the cabin came to an abrupt pause, and only the
tumbling of waters through the planks of the great wheels broke the
silence. They were both startled by laughter at their shoulders. There
stood Miss Russell, the picture of merriment, her arm locked in Anne
Brinsmade's.

"It is the hour when all devout worshippers turn towards the East," she
said. "The goddess is enshrined at Monticello."

Both young men, as they got to their feet, were crimson. Whereupon Miss
Russell laughed again. Anne, however, blushed for them. But this was not
the first time Miss Russell had gone too far. Young Mr. Colfax, with the
excess of manner which was his at such