engagement. Corona Haught, in charge of her grandmother and her
Uncle Clarence, went West to enter the Young Ladies' Institute, in the
capital, and Master Sylvanus Haught went North, in the care of his Uncle
Fabian, to enter a boy's school.

CHAPTER IV.

A RETROSPECT.

It was near the close of a cold, bright day early in January, that Mrs.
Rockharrt and Corona Haught, escorted by Mr. Clarence, stepped from the
train at the depot of the capital city of their State--which must, for
obvious reason, be nameless--and were driven to the Young Ladies'
Institute, where the girl was left, and as the adieus were being said it
was explained to Cora that discretion and social conventionality
dictated that her correspondence with young Rothsay should cease.
Clarence stated that he would write to the youth and explain that the
rules of the school, also, forbade such a correspondence.

"I will also tell him that he can continue to send the _Watch_ to you,
with his own paragraphs marked as before," said Corona's uncle. "There
can be no law against that. I will correspond with Rule occasionally,
and keep you posted up as to how he is getting on. There can be no
school law against your uncle writing to you."

Cora Haught graduated when she was eighteen. In all these years she had
not seen Rule Rothsay. She only heard from him through his letters to
her Uncle Clarence, reported second hand to herself. She knew that in
these five years Rule had risen, step by step, in the office where he
had begun his apprenticeship; that he had risen to be foreman, then
sub-editor, and now he was part proprietor and one of the most powerful
political writers on the paper.

The workingmen's party wished to put him up as a candidate for the State
legislature. What a power he would have been for their cause in that
place! but when the subject was proposed to him, he admonished the
spokesman that he was, as yet, a little less than of legal age for an
office that required its holder to be at least twenty-five years old.

After Cora's graduation the Rockharrt family spent a week in their town
house, preparatory to a summer tour through the Northern States and
Canada.

One morning, while the whole family were sitting around the breakfast
table, old Aaron Rockharrt suddenly spoke:

"Fabian! Now that my granddaughter has left school, she will want a
companion near her own age. Miss Rose Flowers would suit very well. Have
you any idea where she