in a tidy dress, and with her hair in a Grecian knot,
gracefully secured by a leather string and a wooden peg. "Weak creepings"
were her main reliance in the way of disease. She was also troubled, at
times, with a "fullness of the head." In addition, there were other times
when her right side "felt separate." But she seldom complained of anything
belonging to herself. Even her maladies, she took pleasure in knowing,
were very different from those enjoyed by certain other women. Unwilling
to be too familiar with any one baser than a Ruggles, she usually dined,
as she lived, alone with her noble son.

On a certain summer evening she stirred her tea a long time in silence.
She stirred it vigorously, creating a maelstrom inside her cup, where,
very like a whale in the story-books, a little crust of bread disappeared
and reappeared, and sailed round and round as if very much perplexed. Then
she unconsciously reversed the current of the maelstrom, sending the baked
and buttered whale to the bottom.

[Illustration: "She smilingly waited a moment for the composure of the
young naturalist's feelings."]

"I never see that air Miller, no odds how well I be," she remarked
mechanically to the tea-pot, "but what I feel weak creepin's come over me.
He puts dye-stuff on his baird. An' when a man's whiskers is gray an' his
head keeps black, it's a sign he uses his jaw more'n he does his brains.
An' that yaller-headed doll-baby o' his'n--the peert thing:--I'll lay
fifty cents she never washed a dish. To think o' her sayin' a thing like
that about Markis-dee!--an' there's more o' the Peables in him to-day--But
I s'pose she don't know no better." And Mrs. Ruggles rose from the table,
while the corner of her apron made a sudden journey to the corner of her
eye. It was evident her moral nature had received a wound that rankled.

A year before this time the marquis and his playmates had watched several
vigorous fellows plant a theodolite on the bank of Crawfish Creek, very
much as the natives must have watched the Spaniards plant their first
cross on San Salvador. The contract for grading the new railway bed was in
the hands of a stranger named Miller, who was said to have known better
days, and in the time of his prosperity had been thought a proper person
to be called Colonel. He was a bluff man of forty years, who appeared to
have known both the ups and downs of life, and whose determination to wear
a black beard was equaled only by its