Johnny was ridiculously heavy, but he kept steadily on, the
woman's kiss in the fancy of the foolish boy shining on his forehead and
lighting him onward like a star.

CHAPTER VI.

When the door closed on Rupert the master pulled down the blind, and,
trimming his lamp, tried to compose himself by reading. Outside, the
"Great Day for Indian Spring" was slowly evaporating in pale mists from
the river, and the celebration itself spasmodically taking flight here
and there in Roman candles and rockets. An occasional outbreak from
revellers in the bar-room below, a stumbling straggler along the
planked sidewalk before the hotel, only seemed to intensify the rustic
stillness. For the future of Indian Spring was still so remote that
Nature insensibly re-invested its boundaries on the slightest relaxation
of civic influence, and Mr. Ford lifted his head from the glowing
columns of the "Star" to listen to the far-off yelp of a coyote on the
opposite shore.

He was also conscious of the recurrence of that vague, pleasurable
recollection, so indefinite that, when he sought to identify it with
anything--even the finding of the myrtle sprays on his desk--it evaded
him. He tried to work, with the same interruption. Then an uneasy
sensation that he had not been sufficiently kind to Rupert in his
foolish love-troubles remorsefully seized him. A half pathetic, half
humorous picture of the miserable Rupert staggering under the double
burden of his sleeping brother and a misplaced affection, or possibly
abandoning the one or both in the nearest ditch in a reckless access
of boyish frenzy and fleeing his home forever, rose before his eyes. He
seized his hat with the intention of seeking him--or forgetting him
in some other occupation by the way. For Mr. Ford had the sensitive
conscience of many imaginative people; an unfailing monitor, it was
always calling his whole moral being into play to evade it.

As he crossed the passage he came upon Mrs. Tripp hooded and elaborately
attired in a white ball dress, which however did not, to his own fancy,
become her as well as her ordinary costume. He was passing her with a
bow, when she said, with complacent consciousness of her appearance,
"Aren't you going to the ball to-night?"

He remembered then that "an opening ball" at the Court-house was a part
of the celebration. "No," he said smiling; "but it is a pity that Rupert
couldn't have seen you in your charming array."

"Rupert," said