his chair. "Lige,
I want that girl to have every advantage. She ought to go to Europe and
see the world. That trip East last summer did her a heap of good. When
we were at Calvert House, Dan read her something that my grandfather had
written about London, and she was regularly fired. First I must take
her to the Eastern Shore to see Carvel Hall. Dan still owns it. Now it's
London and Paris."

The Captain walked over to the window, and said nothing. He did not see
the searching gray eyes of his old friend upon him.

"Lige!" said the Colonel.

The Captain turned.

"Lige, why don't you give up steamboating and come along to Europe?
You're not forty yet, and you have a heap of money laid by."

The Captain shook his head with the vigor that characterized him.

"This ain't no time for me to leave," he said. "Colonel; I tell you
there's a storm comin'."

The Colonel pulled his goatee uneasily. Here, at last, was a man in whom
there was no guile.

"Lige," he said, "isn't it about time you got married?"

Upon which the Captain shook his head again, even with more vigor. He
could not trust himself to speak. After the Christmas holidays he had
driven Virginia across the frozen river, all the way to Monticello, in a
sleigh. It was night when they had reached the school, the light of its
many windows casting long streaks on the snow under the trees. He had
helped her out, and had taken her hand as she stood on the step.

"Be good, Jinny," he had said. "Remember what a short time it will be
until June. And your Pa will come over to see you."

She had seized him by the buttons of his great coat, and said tearfully:
"O Captain Lige! I shall be so lonely when you are away. Aren't you
going to kiss me?"

He had put his lips to her forehead, driven madly back to Alton, and
spent the night. The first thing he did the next day when he reached
St. Louis was to go straight to the Colonel and tell him bluntly of the
circumstance.

"Lige, I'd hate to give her up," Mr. Carvel said; "but I'd rather you'd
marry her than any man I can think of."

CHAPTER IX. SIGNS OF THE TIMES

In that spring of 1860 the time was come for the South to make her
final stand. And as the noise of gathering conventions shook the ground,
Stephen Brice was not the only one who thought of the Question at
Freeport. The hour was now at hand for it to bear fruit.

Meanwhile, his hero, the hewer of rails and forger of homely speech,
Abraham Lincoln,