ten him
concerning the one of immediate importance. It would be much easier to
discuss the subject in all its bearings, and clean up the whole matter,
in one comprehensive personal interview.

The importance of this business, then, seemed very urgent for the first
few hours of Tryon's journey. Ordinarily a careful driver and merciful
to his beast, his eagerness to reach Patesville increased gradually
until it became necessary to exercise some self-restraint in order not
to urge his faithful mare beyond her powers; and soon he could no
longer pretend obliviousness of the fact that some attraction stronger
than the whole amount of Duncan McSwayne's note was urging him
irresistibly toward his destination. The old town beyond the distant
river, his heart told him clamorously, held the object in all the world
to him most dear. Memory brought up in vivid detail every moment of
his brief and joyous courtship, each tender word, each enchanting
smile, every fond caress. He lived his past happiness over again down
to the moment of that fatal discovery. What horrible fate was it that
had involved him--nay, that had caught this sweet delicate girl in such
a blind alley? A wild hope flashed across his mind: perhaps the
ghastly story might not be true; perhaps, after all, the girl was no
more a negro than she seemed. He had heard sad stories of white
children, born out of wedlock, abandoned by sinful parents to the care
or adoption of colored women, who had reared them as their own, the
children's future basely sacrificed to hide the parents' shame. He
would confront this reputed mother of his darling and wring the truth
from her. He was in a state of mind where any sort of a fairy tale
would have seemed reasonable. He would almost have bribed some one to
tell him that the woman he had loved, the woman he still loved (he felt
a thrill of lawless pleasure in the confession), was not the descendant
of slaves,--that he might marry her, and not have before his eyes the
gruesome fear that some one of their children might show even the
faintest mark of the despised race.

At noon he halted at a convenient hamlet, fed and watered his mare, and
resumed his journey after an hour's rest. By this time he had
well-nigh forgotten about the legal business that formed the ostensible
occasion for his journey, and was conscious only of a wild desire to
see the woman whose image was beckoning him on to Patesville as fast as
his horse coul