e rescue freed him.

"Good dog!" he screamed, diving headlong from his own side of the pool;
and between them Ardea was dragged ashore, a limp little heap of
saturation, conscious, but with her teeth chattering and great, dark
circles around the big blue eyes.

Thomas Jefferson's first word was masculinely selfish.

"I'm awful sorry!" he stammered. "If you can't make out to forgive me,
I'm going to have a miser'ble time of it after I get home. God will whip
me worse for this than He did for the other."

It was here, again, that she gave him the feeling that she was older
than he.

"It will serve you quite right. Now you'd better get me home as quick as
ever you can. I expect I'll be sick again, after this."

He held his peace and walked her as fast as he could across the fields
and out on the pike. But at the Dabney gates he paused. It was not in
human courage to face the Major under existing conditions.

"I reckon you'll go and tell your gran'paw on me," he said hopelessly.

She turned on him with anger ablaze.

"Why should I not tell him? And I never want to see you or hear of you
again, you cruel, hateful boy!"

Thomas Jefferson hung about the gate while she went stumbling up the
driveway, leaning heavily on the great dog. When she had safely reached
the house he went slowly homeward, wading in trouble even as he waded in
the white dust of the pike. For when one drinks too deeply of the cup of
tyranny the lees are apt to be like the little book the Revelator
ate--sweet as honey in the mouth and bitter in the belly.

That evening at the supper-table he had one nerve-racking fear
dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a question put
by his father.

"Yes; the Major sent for me again this afternoon. That child is back in
bed again with a high fever. It seems she was out playing with that
great dog of hers and fell into the creek. I wanted to tell the Major he
is just tempting Providence, the way he makes over her and indulges her,
but I didn't dare to."

And again Thomas Jefferson knew that he was the one who had tempted
Providence.

IX

THE RACE TO THE SWIFT

From the grave and thoughtful vantage-ground of thirteen, Thomas
Jefferson could look back on the second illness of Ardea Dabney as the
closing incident of his childhood.

The industrial changes which were then beginning, not only for the city
beyond the mountain, but for all the region round about, had rushed
swiftl