afternoon and sat uncomforted
for hours before the dead hearth.

His eyes went to the closet wherein was locked the sword which Victor
McCalloway had entrusted to his keeping, but he did not take it out. In
the black dejection of his mood he seemed to himself to have no business
with a blade that gallant hands had wielded. He could see only that he
had messed things and proven recreant to the strong faith of a
chivalrous gentleman and the love of two girls.

On the mantle-shelf was a small bust of Napoleon Bonaparte in
marble--the trifle that Anne had brought across the "ocean-sea" to be an
altar-effigy in his conquest of life! Boone looked at it, and laughed
bitterly.

"That's my pattern--Napoleon!" he said, under his breath. "I'm a right
fine and handsome imitation of _him_. The first fight I get into is my
Waterloo!"

He met Happy in the road a few days later, and she stopped to say that
she was sorry. She had heard, of course, of how decisively he had been
beaten, but he drew a tepid solace from reading in her eyes that she did
not know the part her father had played in his undoing. He hoped that
she would never learn of it.

It was early in September when Boone set the log house in order, nailed
up its windows and put a padlock on the door. He carried the key over to
Aunt Judy's, and then on his return he sat silently on the fence gazing
at its square front for a long while in the twilight.

Before him lay new battles in the first large city he had yet seen--a
city which until now he had seen only once when he went there to visit
its jail. But his preternaturally solemn face at length brightened.
Anne was there, and Colonel Wallifarro had said, "A warm welcome awaits
you."

In due course Boone presented himself at the office door in Louisville
with the three names etched upon its frosted glass, and was conducted by
a somewhat supercilious attendant to the Colonel's sanctum.

The Colonel came promptly from his chair with an outstretched hand.

"Well, my boy," he exclaimed heartily, "I'm right glad to see you."

Morgan sat across the desk from his father. Some matter of consultation
had brought him there, and the fact that the Colonel had permitted young
Wellver's arrival to interrupt it annoyed him.

"So you lost your race up there, didn't you?" Colonel Wallifarro
laughed. "I wouldn't take it too seriously if I were you. After all,
it's not the only campaign you'll ever make."

But the eyes of the yo