months--twisted and tangled the path to mastership! Through what
thickets of contradiction, what morasses of bafflement, what unimperial
acceptance of help and counsel did that path now lead! And this was no
merely personal fate of his. It was all Dixie's. He would never change
his politics; O no! But how if men's politics, asking no leave of their
owners, change themselves, and he who does not change ceases to be
steadfast?

Behold! All the way down the Swanee River, spite of what big levees of
prevention and draining wheels of antiquated cure, how invincibly were
the waters of a new order sweeping in upon the "old plantation."

And still the old plantation slumbered on below the level of the world's
great risen floods of emancipations and enfranchisements whereon party
platforms, measures, triumphs, and defeats only floated and eddied, mere
drift-logs of a current from which they might be cast up, but could not
turn back.

He bent over the desk. "Jove!" was all he said; but it stood for the
realization of the mighty difference between the map under his eyes and
what he was under oath to himself to make it. What "lots" of men--not
mountaineers only, but Blacklanders, too--had got to change their
notions--notions stuck as fast in their belief as his mountains were
stuck in the ground--before that map could suit him. To think harder, he
covered his face with his hands. The gale rattled his window. He failed
to hear Enos just outside his door, alone and very drunk, prying off the
tin sign of John March, Gentleman. He did not hear even the soft click
of the latch or the yet softer footsteps that brought the drunkard close
before his desk; but at the first word he glanced up and found himself
covered with a revolver.

"Set still," drawled Enos. In his left hand was the tin sign. "This yeh
trick looked ti-ud a-tellin' lies, so I fotch it in."

Without change of color--for despair stood too close for fear to come
between--John fixed his eyes upon the drunken man's and began to rise.
The weapon followed his face up.

"Enos, point that thing another way or I'll kill you." He took a slow
step outward from the desk, the pistol following with a drunken waver
more terrible than a steady aim. Enos spoke along its barrel, still
holding up the sign.

"Is this little trick gwine to stay fetch in? Say 'yass, mawsteh,' aw I
blow yo' head off."

But John still held the drunkard's eye. As he took up from his desk a
large piece of