d to
express the way in which the duet between the president and secretary
was being performed. As a matter of fact they were in full wrangle
with an energy born of their old rivalry.

"No, Sir, no," said Phil Evans. "If I had had the honor of being
president of the Weldon Institute, there never, no, never, would have
been such a scandal."

"And what would you have done, if you had had the honor?" demanded
Uncle Prudent.

"I would have stopped the insulter before he had opened his mouth."

"It seems to me it would have been impossible to stop him until he
had opened his mouth," replied Uncle Prudent.

"Not in America, Sir; not in America."

And exchanging such observations, increasing in bitterness as they
went, they walked on through the streets farther and farther from
their homes, until they reached a part of the city whence they had to
go a long way round to get back.

Frycollin followed, by no means at ease to see his master plunging
into such deserted spots. He did not like deserted spots,
particularly after midnight. In fact the darkness was profound, and
the moon was only a thin crescent just beginning its monthly life.
Frycollin kept a lookout to the left and right of him to see if he
was followed. And he fancied he could see five or six hulking follows
dogging his footsteps. Instinctively he drew nearer to his master,
but not for the world would he have dared to break in on the
conversation of which the fragments reached him.

In short it so chanced that the president and secretary of the Weldon
Institute found themselves on the road to Fairmount Park. In the full
heat of their dispute they crossed the Schuyllkill river by the
famous iron bridge. They met only a few belated wayfarers, and
pressed on across a wide open tract where the immense prairie was
broken every now and then by the patches of thick woodland--which
make the park different to any other in the world.

There Frycollin's terror became acute, particularly as he saw the
five or six shadows gliding after him across the Schuyllkill bridge.
The pupils of his eyes broadened out to the circumference of his
iris, and his limbs seemed to diminish as if endowed with the
contractility peculiar to the mollusca and certain of the articulate;
for Frycollin, the valet, was an egregious coward.

He was a pure South Carolina Negro, with the head of a fool and the
carcass of an imbecile. Being only one and twenty, he had never been
a slave, not eve