reunion of Hyndsville. Even Mr. Nicholas Jelnik,
for the first time, put in his decorative appearance, to The
Author's fidgety surprise. He played a highly creditable game of
bridge. And after a while he sang "Believe Me if All Those Endearing
Young Charms," so exquisitely that a hushed and rapturous silence
fell upon everybody, and the old ladies and gentlemen present held
their hands before misty eyes. They used to sing that song when the
old men were boy soldiers marching off to the tune of "The Bonnie
Blue Flag," and the old ladies were ringleted girls in hoop-skirts
bidding them good-by.

"My dear boy," Mrs. Scarboro told him, with great feeling, "you have
been forgetting that you're a cousin of mine. Your mother and I were
girls together. I want you to meet some other old friends of hers
and your grandfather's," and she carried him off to a group of those
wonderful old ladies who grow to purest perfection in South
Carolina--low-voiced lovely old ladies, dressed in black silk, with
cameo brooches at their throats, and lace caps on their white hair.

A little group of old gentlemen immediately foregathered with them.
They knew who was and wasn't kin to Sally Hynds's son, unto the
seventh generation.

"They've begun on the begats," chuckled The Author, "First Book of
Chronicles, Chapters One to Four."

"Jelnik's really kin to them, and he ought to pay for the
privilege," said Mr. Johnson.

The Author looked at the old ladies, on whose delicate withered
hands the wedding-rings hung loosely, and at the erect old gentlemen
with white goatees, and something whimsically tender came into his
clever face.

"It is worth the price," he said, very gently--for him.

"Now, that was your soul speaking!" said Miss Emmeline, warmly.
Instantly The Author wrinkled his nose, bristled his mustache, and
looked like a hyena. Miss Martha Hopkins, worshipfully observant of
the great man, caught his eye at that moment and thought he was
scowling at _her_. She looked so stricken that The Author presently
strolled over and sat down beside her, to her fluttering delight.
But discovering that she was wholly unacquainted with the original
verse of J. Gordon Coogler of Columbia, he first bitterly reproached
her for neglecting home-made talent, and then proceeded to make sure
that she would remember the Bard of the Congaree so long as she
lived.

"Not know Coogler!" cried The Author, shrilly; "ignorant of the bard
raised, so to speak,