me warn you, Peter--she's a negress."

The mulatto stared at the strange objection.

"A negress!"

The old man paused and made that queer movement with his wrinkled lips
as if he tasted some salty flavor.

"I--I don't mean exactly a--a negress," stammered the old gentleman; "I
mean she's not a--a good girl, Peter; she's a--a thief, in fact--she's a
thief--a thief, Peter. I couldn't endure for you to marry a thief,
Peter."

It seemed to Peter Siner that some horrible compulsion kept the old
Captain repeating over and over the fact that Cissie Dildine was a
thief, a thief, a thief. The word cut the very viscera in the brown man.
At last, when it seemed the old gentleman would never cease, Peter
lifted a hand.

"Yes, yes," he gasped, with a sickly face, "I--I've heard that before."

He drew a shaken breath and moistened his lips. The two stood looking at
each other, each profoundly at a loss as to what the other meant. Old
Captain Renfrew collected himself first.

"That is all, Peter." He tried to lighten his tones. "I think I'll get
to work. Let me see, where do I keep my manuscript?"

Peter pointed mechanically at a drawer as he walked out at the library
door. Once outside, he ran to the front piazza, then to the front gate,
and with a racing heart stood looking up and down the sleepy
thoroughfare. The street was quite empty.

CHAPTER XI

Old Captain Renfrew was a trustful, credulous soul, as, indeed, most
gentleman who lead a bachelor's life are. Such men lack that moral
hardening and whetting which is obtained only amid the vicissitudes of a
home; they are not actively and continuously engaged in the employment
and detection of chicane; want of intimate association with a woman and
some children begets in them a soft and simple way of believing what is
said to them. And their faith, easily raised, is just as easily
shattered. Their judgment lacks training.

Peter Siner's simple assertion to the old Captain that he was not going
to marry Cissie Dildine completely allayed the old gentleman's
uneasiness. Even the further information that Peter had had such a
marriage under advisement, but had rejected it, did not put him on his
guard.

From long non-intimacy with any human creature, the old legislator had
forgotten that human life is one long succession of doing the things one
is not going to do; he had forgotten, if he ever knew, that the human
brain is primarily no