rightened at this friendly encouragement.

"She is a nasty little creature! You shall not play with her," cried the
governess, angrily.

"She is not nasty! I like her, and I will play with her," declared the
child, defiantly.

"What is your name?" asked the boy, much amused by such sturdiness in so
small a tot.

"Lois Huntington. What is your name?" She looked up at him with her big
brown eyes.

"Gordon Keith."

"How do you do, Gordon Keith?" She held out her hand.

"How do you do, Lois Huntington?"

She shook hands with him solemnly.

A day or two later, as Gordon was passing through one of the streets in
the lower part of the village, he came upon a hurdy-gurdy playing a
livelier tune than most of them usually gave. A crowd of children had
gathered in the street. Among them was a little barelegged girl who,
inspired by the music, was dancing and keeping perfect time as she
tripped back and forth, pirouetted and swayed on the tips of her bare
toes, flirting her little ragged frock, and kicking with quite the air
of a ballet-dancer. She divided the honors with the dismal Savoyard, who
ground away at his organ, and she brought a flicker of admiration into
his bronzed and grimy face, for he played for her the same tune over and
over, encouraging her with nods and bravas. She was enjoying her triumph
quite as much as any prima donna who ever tripped it on a more
ambitious stage.

Gordon recognized in the little dancer the tangled-haired child who had
run away with the little girl's doll a few days before.

CHAPTER II

GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN OVERSEER

When the war closed, though it was not recognized at first, the old
civilization of the South passed away. Fragments of the structure that
had once risen so fair and imposing still stood for a time, even after
the foundations were undermined: a bastion here, a tower there; but in
time they followed the general overthrow, and crumbled gradually to
their fall, leaving only ruins and decay.

For a time it was hoped that the dilapidation might be repaired and the
old life be lived again. General Keith, like many others, though broken
and wasted in body, undertook to rebuild with borrowed money, but with
disastrous results. The conditions were all against him.

Three or four years' effort to repair his fallen fortunes only plunged
him deeper in debt. General Keith, like most of his neighbors and
friends, found himself facing the fact that he was hopelessly