with cotton bales,
and there were acres of barrels of resin and pitch and tar and spirits
of turpentine. The market, a long, low, wooden structure, in the middle
of the principal street, was filled with a mass of people of all
shades, from blue-black to Saxon blonde, gabbling and gesticulating
over piles of oysters and clams and freshly caught fish of varied hue.
By ten o'clock the sun was beating down so fiercely that the glitter of
the white, sandy streets dazzled and pained the eyes unaccustomed to
it, and Rena was glad to be driven back to the hotel. The travelers
left together on an early afternoon train.

Thus for the time being was severed the last tie that bound Rena to her
narrow past, and for some time to come the places and the people who
had known her once were to know her no more.

Some few weeks later, Mis' Molly called upon old Judge Straight with
reference to the taxes on her property.

"Your son came in to see me the other day," he remarked. "He seems to
have got along."

"Oh, yes, judge, he's done fine, John has; an' he's took his sister
away with him."

"Ah!" exclaimed the judge. Then after a pause he added, "I hope she
may do as well."

"Thank you, sir," she said, with a curtsy, as she rose to go. "We've
always knowed that you were our friend and wished us well."

The judge looked after her as she walked away. Her bearing had a touch
of timidity, a shade of affectation, and yet a certain pathetic dignity.

"It is a pity," he murmured, with a sigh, "that men cannot select their
mothers. My young friend John has builded, whether wisely or not, very
well; but he has come back into the old life and carried away a part of
it, and I fear that this addition will weaken the structure."

V

THE TOURNAMENT

The annual tournament of the Clarence Social Club was about to begin.
The county fairground, where all was in readiness, sparkled with the
youth and beauty of the town, standing here and there under the trees
in animated groups, or moving toward the seats from which the pageant
might be witnessed. A quarter of a mile of the race track, to right
and left of the judges' stand, had been laid off for the lists.
Opposite the grand stand, which occupied a considerable part of this
distance, a dozen uprights had been erected at measured intervals.
Projecting several feet over the track from each of these uprights was
an iron crossbar, from which an iron hook depended. Between the
uprights