Mose Evans: Part Iii

I.

“You are quite poetical!” my wife remarked to me one day after we had reached Brownstown, for I was compelled by pressure of business to bid Evans good-by, at daylight, the morning after the interview with him just described. Perhaps there is some such scant streaking of gold through my quartz, for my dear mother up there in New England had once published a thin volume of poems. Helen’s exclamation, I will explain, followed upon my saying that Agnes Throop was like a pearl set in ebony.

It was suggested to me by a doleful September day we had spent, Helen and myself, at the Throops, after our arrival from Bucksnort, and parting with Archer there, and Evans, the latter going East, the former to go — more rapidly, I supposed, if that were possible — to the bad. My wife and myself were to be in Brownstown but a short time, her presence as well as my own being needed there to certain signatures before a notary public: signatures, on her part, at least, effected just as well in Charleston; but come with me she would. “I want to be with you, Henry. They are so lonely, too, the Throops! ” she said.

Lonely! Neither they nor we thought of it in all the first eager conversation after we arrived; but it was terrible, that last September Wednesday. We sat in their parlor, we tried the front porch, we wandered under the great trees of the yard, and we came back and gave up escaping what, I fear, was nothing but miasma, and so took to our big rocking-chairs upon the front porch, — piazza, rather, as it extended the entire length of the house. It was Mrs. Throop, however, who made the day and the scene positively weird!

“I sit here sometimes for hours,” she said, “gazing upon the river, rolling along its liquid mud, like our turbid lives. Turning a little this way, now a bend toward the other side, now a little more and now a little less overhung by those great live-oaks with their trailing moss; only the muddier when there is a freshet ” —

“A boat now and then, mamma,” Agnes insists, in the quiet but continual protest I had observed in her from the first, against the gloom of the household. Helen said even Mary Martha Washington, their self-sacrificed slave, seemed darker than before. But as to Agnes, there was that in her which showed that something beyond all this had befallen her since we last met; some terrible blow had fallen, was expected to fall—I knew not what. I could not say in what respect, if any, it had affected her outer bearing. The calamity, whatever it was, had smitten deeper than that.

“Yes. A boat!” Mrs. Throop continued, in sentences singularly detached. “Loaded to the water’s edge with cotton. A shower of sparks always falling upon the bales from the smoke-stacks! I often sit at my bedroom window, sometimes wrap myself up and come, while you are all sleeping, and sit for hours watching the steamboats as they pass. It is a striking but most mournful scene, especially at midnight. All the negro crew are then on the bow, singing and dancing, the boat so apt to strike a snag, or catch on fire, or blow up, the next moment! An emblem of the world! ”

But it was the great, sad eyes, the wailing in the tones of her voice, which gave such sepulchral power to what Mrs. Throop said.

“ I blame myself, madam,” I interposed with some emphasis, “for indueing you to leave Charleston. There at least ” —

“Charleston! Charleston!” But how can I give the inflections of the poor lady’s voice as she turned those eyes upon me! Dressed in black for Theodore, and everything else in the world, — emaciated until her eyes seemed all there was of her. “ Charleston! ”

“Mrs. Throop knows,” the General here remarked with his peculiar courtesy of manner when any lady was in question, “ that I have no sympathy with her religious views. While the Creator leaves us in this world I think he means we should care for and be interested in it, as he will desire us to be interested in the existence after this, when he has placed us there. I agree that an accursed military despotism has superseded American freedom; I know that universal corruption reigns in a Congress once adorned with the presence of a Hayne, a Randolph, a Calhoun; I know that free negroes and their baser white allies swarm ’ ’ —

“Dear father!” It was with her hand upon his arm, with imploring eyes in his, that his daughter said it. My wife reminded me afterward how near to him the poor girl seemed to keep, all the time. As to the mother, I had observed her sitting off by herself in the parlor, or upon the porch, her eyes upon the flowing river, remaining for hours as motionless, as far as I could see, as though she were indeed dead. No trace of insanity except in the self-contained isolation of the poor lady from all the world, the lingering of a soul in the frail body long after it had drained to the dregs all the bitterness of death. Had she been indeed a disembodied spirit, she could hardly have been more separate from, as she was sacred to, her daughter. Her father was really all that daughter had left to her, beside her betrothed, on earth; in the absence of Mr. Clammeigh she clung exclusively to him. No wonder. He seemed even more portly of person than before, but there was an ashen something in his face, the whiter for the flushes of red to the very roots of his still whiter hair when he became excited, which he very often did, for he had grown very tremulous since I last saw him.

“ I merely mention what all the world knows,” the General continued. “ It is inevitable to every other nation as it was to Greece and Rome. But to think of a nation living less than a hundred years! The South was the only conservative element. Had it pleased Heaven to spare the South ” —

“You acknowledge the hand of Heaven, in spite of yourself, my dear! ” Mrs. Throop said it in a manner, the deadly calm of which was worse than her husband’s excitement. “ I passed through it all so long, long ago, the lower stages. Agnes will tell you, Mr. Anderson, I have not attended service, have not sung a hymn, have not other than merely heard Scripture read at our family worship, since I came. I am as entirely done with all that as is our Theodore. I cannot plant my feet upon your world again, even with all my effort to do so. My husband is wiser than he thinks. I do not speak of political matters. So far, every nation of history has run its little career, and died, even as each of its people has lived his or her lesser life, and perished. This nation but ripens fast, in the hot summer of its wonderful prosperity, toward a rotting and a ruin more terrible and complete than the race has ever before known. It is the last nation of history. With it. Heaven’s long experiment, under the eyes of a wondering universe, in reference to the human heart, will have been accomplished, and the world itself will end!”

“Dear mother!” her daughter attempted again.

“ I rarely say so much, Agnes,” Mrs. Throop continued, “and I desire merely to add this : God’s purpose with the race before the flood ran through thousands of years; we well know the disaster in which that culminated and closed. So of the patriarchal period which followed. The disastrous ending of the Jewish dispensation I need not mention. The result with the Christian church cannot but be the repetition of the invariable tragedy! Our Maker is eternally the same. From beginning to end of time the human heart, too, is the same.”

“ But that other life, dear mother? ” Agnes says, in the silence which follows upon the calm certainties of this Cassandra.

“ Yes, Agnes. Thank God ! And that better life is eternal. Would God I were there! ! ”

(“It is with Mrs. Throop as it was with Cowper at Olney,” my wife said to me afterward. “ Poor, sick Cowper! As if all the blessed creation were really what it seemed to his sorrowful eyes! ” “ How like Agnes Throop is to her poor mother,” I replied to Helen, “ and how superior! With all her delusion, I do believe the mother acknowledges to herself her own weakness as contrasted with the stronger, happier child,— the weakness, not only of sickness as contrasted with health, of soul, but of a feeble piety to a more vigorous and beautiful, because more genuine! ” )

“ Mother — Helen! ” Agnes Throop exclaimed, as her mother sank again into silence, and with the happy face of a child, her finger lifted, “listen! Did you ever hear such a concert! ”

“Mocking-birds!” Mrs. Throop replied, for all the air was full of their noise. “ Mocking, indeed! They are like so many scoffers! I do not blame you, Mr. Anderson, about our leaving Charleston. You had,” her eyes on mine, and reading me through and through, “ your own objects in making the bargain. But Charleston has no existence. Our Charleston! Our friends are killed, or removed, or bankrupt, or actually taking part in the negro rule. Worse there than here! Our frail bodies still live, Mr. Anderson; really, we are as dead as is Theodore in Sumter! ”

But Agnes had stolen in to her piano, and, not to break too rudely upon the mood of her parents, was singing, in a low voice, the old, old war songs, My Maryland! — The Bonny Blue Flag.

“ You Northern people must make allowance,” she said to me standing beside her as she finished Dixie, with a curious twitching about the lips even while she smiled. I suppose it was because she had seen no one to whom she could talk for so long; possibly it was to interest and entertain me as she best could. I never knew her to speak so freely.

“We at the South had our enthusiasm, Mr. Anderson, too! You forget we believed in our side as much as you did in yours! Oh, the banners we ladies made, the music we practiced, the sewing of uniforms, the rush and hurry and pride! I remember all my life the drum beating every night when St, Michael struck nine, and the patrol marching the street to arrest any negroes without a pass ; it was nothing but the roll of the drum and the march of soldiers now, to defend all we had ever known and loved! How it would thrill us, on Sunday, the calm, solemn, convincing, most eloquent sermon! My father would say afterward at dinner,

‘ Oh, yes, the doctor was able and eloquent, as usual, but it was like demonstrating the noonday sun.’ How can a person be more positively certain of anything than we were of the righteousness of our cause, so clearly based upon the very Word of God! And, then, the prayers, deep, humble, confident, for the blessing of Heaven upon our efforts to defend our homes against the godless infidelity of agrarianism and abolitionism! We never could understand the North, Mr. Anderson; you ought to remember you never could understand us! To this very day — but I am wearying you so! ”

“Not at all, I like to hear you; besides, I will want you to hear me about another matter after awhile,” I said.

She looked at me and colored, seemed vexed, even. She continued, more eagerly because of that very thing, too absurd to think of for a moment.

“I cannot speak about the siege and fall of Charleston, it would take too much time. And I cannot speak of my brother, Theodore Throop, my only brother, my noble and brave brother, so full of promise! Ah, those days he would hurry in from duty, all brown and dusty and hungry! He was in Sumter from the first, you know. He would kiss us all round, tell us how the Yankees kept pounding away in vain, assure us they could never take Sumter! And so he would laugh, cram his haversack with everything to eat he could lay his hands on, kiss us good-by, and run to catch his boat. And you people of the North never did take Sumter! Nor ever would, if the war had lasted till now! Nor ever would have taken Charleston, if there had been a South Carolinian at Atlanta! I could tell you the opinion we in Charleston always had of that poor Davis ” —

“ We won’t differ about him,” I said. “I was speaking,” she continued, “ of my brother. We used to lie awake all night, it seems to me, until we got so used to it, all of every night listening to the storm breaking upon Sumter, remembering he was there! At first we would wince and shudder at every peal, knowing about whom the shot struck, never thinking, hardly, in comparison, of the shot and shell and crashing houses in the city. We wore into being used to it, Mr. Anderson. But never one moment would we have had him elsewhere! We were glad we had son and brother to he there! The cause is lost; I sometimes fear we may have been mistaken about it But we were not so sad as you may think, Mr. Anderson, that terrible Thursday when my brother’s shattered body was laid in the sacred dust in Sumter. To this day there is a glory and a beauty about his gallant death which is to us a halo around his memory forever.”

“You remember,” I said, “the lines, —

although, of course, I am compelled ” — “To say,” she finished my protest for me, “ that you regard our cause as being, really, the reverse of the truth. Well, it was the truth to us! ”

“ I have sometimes given money to objects which I thought at the time were deserving,” I said, “and I could not wish the same back again in my pocket even when I had learned that I was mistaken; the intent on my part was none the less sacred from recall or regret for that! ”

“ And we would not take back Theodore if we could! ” she replied. “ The truth is, I never took the interest in the Confederacy as a political question that most of our ladies did. It was Theodore, all Theodore to me. Oh, Mr. Anderson, if you had but known him, so beautiful, noble, full of enthusiasm ! He cared for our independence, was ready to die for it; I cared only for him! He was but a little older than myself; we loved each other so much; besides my parents, he was all I had in the world! I cannot speak of him; but I will say, Mr. Anderson, never on earth, never, did men and women more thoroughly believe in the righteousness of their cause. Surely none have ever proved their belief more perfectly by struggle and suffering! One great republic is better, but it will never be at its greatest, sir, until it is not afraid to remember with regret, even with honor, the gallant youth who gave to their mistake, if it be mistake, their all of conscience and blood and soul! I have not talked of all this to any one,” she added, “ since we left Charleston. It is what was said on the porch that caused me to do so. Let us talk about something else. But I do think, Mr. Anderson, our country is a poor republic so long as it is afraid to weep for its Southern sons too; afraid to drop flowers even upon their dust. Yet what do I care for it all! I’m miserably selfish, and it is my dead brother I think about.” With an instant alteration of manner, “It is our music has melted me so. Let us change the subject.” Saying which she turned to her piano, and calling out, “ Don’t be angry with me, pa! ” to her father seated outside, played and sang, a little mockingly, a verse or two of the Star Spangled Banner.

Helen had the excellent sense to help her to the utmost. They played together a duet of the old school days, with plenty of breaking down and laughter. One or the other playing or singing, we had all the absurd, sentimental songs, grave and gay. Even Helen, who knew of other accomplishments of mine, but not at all of this, was electrified when I took my seat at the piano, and, to the jingle of its chords, gave them The Fine old German Gentleman! If Mrs. Throop did not laugh, the General certainly did, for I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he sat smoking without. When we had seated ourselves to supper, at last, we were all in better spirits than that cemetery of a home had known since it became a home at all.

“I do not object to being happy,” Mrs. Throop explained from her seat at the table. “ We will be happy in heaven forever. But not here. It will be very soon. If it were not that the idea was held by low people elsewhere, I would believe that this world not only ends, as I said, but is soon to end. We have nearly done with it! ”

“ I have not, mamma! ” It was Agnes, with all of her old days in her face, who said it. “ I love you and pa, as you are now, dearly. I love flowers,” her eyes sparkling as she spoke. “ The singing of a little bird exhilarates me like an opera; at the first burst of sunshine after days of darkness, I waltz around the room as if I was at a ball. I love music with all my soul! ”

“No wonder,” I interjected; “you would make your fortune in opera! ” and felt, the instant I said it, how eternally I did think, as Helen says I do, about the money value of everything.

“ I love — thank you, Mr. Anderson,” she said —horses and cows. A brilliant moonlight puts me beside myself.

I love housekeeping and scolding. I don't care for company as I used to, but see how these friends being with us has set me talking. It is foolish, but I do love fine laces and cashmere shawls, beautiful dresses and diamonds. I love — love — everything and everybody! ”

“ I saw you looking at her, Mr. Anderson,” my spouse remarked to me in the first instant of our being alone together afterward, “as if she was something wonderful.”

And so she is! Beautiful as an angel, but not at all in the sense wherein the comparison is commonly used! I did not say this aloud, but Helen spoke for us both:—

“ Could anything be more simple than her dress, manner, whole bearing? She is as transparent as a child, but such depths, too! She is saved by what there is in her of her father, from the excess of sensitiveness inherited from her mother; yet she is so utterly alone in the world, and thrown upon herself! It is almost a pity she has given herself to such a thing as music for recreation — music exclusively. And her long, long suffering since the war began, no wonder it has so intensified her. Do you not think, Henry ” —

“Think what?” I ask, Helen pausing so long before saying more. She added at last, —

“I do not like to speak of such things. She never, of course, alludes to the subject with me. But do you not think a person can go to extremes in devotion, even? She is, never mind how I came to know, as simple, as earnest, as trustful in her religion as in all else. No one could be more silent as to such matters, yet I do know that Mary never sat, in her home at Bethany, more — can I say really ? — at the feet of Christ! In these late years I am satisfied he is to her the most actual friend living. Is there no such thing as too much faith? Coleridge says there is as much danger of other-worldliness in some Christians as of this-worldliness in the case of people generally.”

“Hid he?” I reply. “Well, I know this. It is merely through a certain peculiar period she is passing. If she is to live, and live to be a wholesome wife and mother, Heaven will see to it that there shall be, in due time, enough of earth, enough of the purely human, to balance matters. This is merely, I say, a particular period, such as in some form we all pass through, although it leaves us the better for it forever! ”

“My mother wrote no poems,”Helen said with a smile, “but I will venture to say this: A diamond is no more selfluminous than any other clod. The difference lies, I suppose, in the transparency, that is, the power of receiving and transmitting light; and in the keeping one’s self in connection — is it not so? —with the One who is the Light! ”

II.

Helen and myself were, of course, the guests of the Throops during our stay in Brown County, and it was, as well as I can now remember, the morning after our music, that Mary Martha Washington had succeeded at last in getting my wife off to one side, to communicate something she had evidently been eager to say to her from the moment we came. Yielding to some pretext of the old woman in regard to a hatching out of thirty-six chickens by a guinea-fowl, Helen had gone with her after breakfast to a remote poultry yard, to find and admire—nothing of the kind.

“ De best way is to wait in dis place till we hear dat old guinea’s potrack! ” the faithful servant said when they were safely out of sight and hearing from the house. “ And oh, Miss Helen, I must talk to you! What is we goin' to do? Marster General he can't hold out much longer. Old missis is clean crossed over Jordan already, ’cept her poor body. I’m mighty ’fraid somethin’ gone wrong about dat Mars’ Clammeigh. I nebber thought he was one of us born at de Souf anyhow. Dat Mr. Parkinson, he is in love so he’s lost flesh. He’s too flimsy like. He a minister an’ dar’s n’t preach one sermon against dis fool freedom de debbil an’ de abolitionists set up. Phew!” Strong contempt. “ It’s a man, a strong, loving man, Miss Agnes needs. I thought Mars’ Evans was too low down once, but bress your heart, Miss Helen, dey moved from de East, Car’line, I believe. How dat great, strong man loves her! At de first of his coming on de place he loved her so he could n’t look her in de face, got pale, trembled when she spoke to him.”

“ I ’m sorry to hear it,” Helen said.

“ You wait, Miss Helen. I do wonder whar dat guinea-fowl gone; hear her potrack, potrack torectly. You see he overseed de hands. De men hands. You would n’t believe it, Miss Helen, but dem fool women say dey ain’t hands, dey is ladies, ladies ob color! Refuse to go into de field! O my hebbenly Marster, de folly ob dis freedom! What wid dem fool niggers, and what wid me after dem, Miss Agnes has had a time ! ”

“ I thought Mr. Evans was overseer,” Helen said.

“ So he was, so he was, Miss Helen,” the woman eagerly replied. “ De men never worked better in dere lives. I mean till dose fool women broke off work, stayed at de quarter, breshim' dere heads all day wid dere wool-cards; de men did n’t half work after dat. Even dat Mr. Evans was put out, it was so new to him. One night he was in de ' gret house ’ after supper, talkin’ wid Mars’ General about it, we was all so put out what to do.

“ ‘ You manage de men, Mr. Evans,’ my Miss Agnes said, laughin’ as she used to do in Charleston, ' I ’ll manage de ladies.’ Ladies! You see, Miss Helen, de crop had to be picked, right away, heaviest crop of cotton I ever see.. Well, Mars’ Evans he was at de quarters when she come. It was de berry next mornin’. See? Bell just rung to go to de field. Dat young missis of mine! she had put on an ole straw hat, had a woolsey dress on, all gathered up in de skirt, cotton basket, an’ her dinner in it! All de fool women came out to see. ‘Now, women,’ she said, laughin’,

' we’s all free, free as de air, but dat cotton’s got to be picked. I 'm goin’. Who’ll go with me?’ You see, Miss Helen, it was de way she said it! Lor’ bress you, I shook both fists at dose niggers, snatched basket out ob de band ob de foreman ob de crop, an’ followed my young missis. Better believe dey did! Dat Mars’ Evans, I thought de man would hab — would hab! He took off his coat, folded it up carefully, laid it on de top rail ob de fence— an’ picked? I should t’ink so! But he kept wid de men on dere side ob de held, he dar’sn’t come near us. And dose women picked as Hebben made um to pick! I ’clare before Hebben, Miss Helen, what wid her talkin’ and laughin’ an’ pickin’ ahead of de field, an’ bettin’ me she’d hab de heaviest pick! — I’ve fixed her up for many a ball, say nothin’ of church, in Charleston, but she nebber looked so hebbenly pretty! An’ she slipped me off home to hab extra supper for dose niggers! No trouble after dat! Whar can be dat guinea? You hear a potrack? ”

“ If I was in your Miss Agnes’ place, I would be very angry at you if you thought I could love a Brown County overseer! ” Helen said. “ I ’m ashamed of you, aunty! ’ ’

The old woman had reference to a power superior to that of General Throop, when she replied solemnly, “ Ole Marster has fixed who she shall marry! I don’t know anything about it, more dan you, honey. When dis world was made dere was no woman for Adam, de first man you remember, an’ so He had to make a woman for Adam. I nebber saw de man yet was good enough for my Miss Agnes; my young Mars’ Theodore said dat a thousand times before he was killed. But God can make somebody ’pressly for her! I nebber ’low myself to t’ink it can be dis Mr. Evans, ’cept dat he is bein’ made out ob de berry dust ob de ground for somethin’. You can’t tell how he has changed under Miss Agnes, like linen bleaches in de sun. Ebberybody respects an’ loves him. An’,” continued the woman, " dat man is marster, if she is mistress! Lor’, Miss Helen, we broke down in de deep mud, Miss Agnes and I, drivin’ back in de ole buggy one day, long ago, from Brownstown. In de deepest part ob de cypress swamp. Mars’ Mose Evans be come along on his horse, — he nebber was near her, but then he nebber was very far away from her, somehow, — jumped down, an’ begged her to let him take her out. She got angry, tossed her head dis way, turned as red! Refused, said I could help her, she could wait till her pa could come. ' Mr. Evans, remember your place, sir; you shall not do it! ’ she said, proud as could be! She was drippin' wet, night was failin’. Mars’ Evans never said one word, put his strong arms around her like a baby, carried her to de side ob de road where his horse was, put her on behind de saddle on his overcoat, managed some way to get on before her, she had to hold on him; left me to follow after dem on de buggy horse. Bress your soul, Miss Helen, she’s mistress, but he’s marster, sure! ”

Helen told me all this, in substance, out at the front fence, as I was mending a martingale before mounting my horse, the same day, to ride over to Harry Peters’, now living, as 1 believe I have said, at Mrs. Evans’ old place near by, and acting as General Throop’s overseer.

“ Did you ever know such a lonely house, Captain Anderson?” he asked me after we had finished business that day. “ I go over and am as funny as I know how to be. Miss Agnes laughs, but it is a terrible strain upon her, the situation. Puss — I mean my wife— makes butter expressly to take over. Mrs. Throop is a ghost. Actually a ghost, sir, lingering out of the grave a little; but my wife, afraid of her mother, loves Miss Agnes as if she was her own child! Oh, I know Evans is out of the question, perfectly ridiculous of course. Not even may be so; May bees of that sort don’t fly any month of the year. But I do wish! You know he boarded with us. Why, sir, he was at it from before day to breakfast, soon as supper was over till I don’t know when, for my wife and I go to bed at dark almost.”

“ At what? ” I demand; “ you were speaking of Miss Throop.”

‘‘ And so I am now! ” Harry Peters continues, with as much heat as a man who was always “ in fun ” could feel.

“ At it? At all of it. Studying, Major Anderson, studying! He kept himself supplied by mail, I suppose, through old New Hampshire in some way, with books. It was like feeding wheat into a threshing machine,—kept the mail busy! I’ve heard of school-marms before, but Miss Throop’s the most powerful one I ever came up with. You see how crazy these poor, deluded negroes are to learn to read; and what freedom is to them, that lady is to him. None of us ever joke him about her; Job tried that. He never mentions her, nor speaks to her, hardly, so far as I know. But she is to him like a bright spring day to a planted field; the soil’s deep, you can hear the corn grow! ” And thereupon Harry Peters gives me the story of the revolt of the women, not at all as a joke, for it was the great trouble of the day over the entire South.

I rode over the General’s plantation with Harry, the General too feeble to accompany us, that day. I was glad to do so. The fact is, I was becoming seriously uneasy as to matters. One thing I resolved upon, and that was to see Mr. Clammeigh upon the subject, delicate as it was, the day I reached Charleston. But I was glad to learn all I could from the overseer. Distrusting Miss Throop’s betrothed as I did, I confess I derived some comfort from what Harry Peters told me about Mr. Parkinson. " He comes to see me every few days,” that gentleman said, while we were having a smoke upon his front porch after a good dinner. “ I had supposed Mose Evans was the most desperately in love of any man I ever knew, until I came to see how Mr. Parkinson suffered. It is worse for the minister, because he sees her every few days; besides, they are nearer to each other, Miss Throop and himself, than poor Evans can ever dream of being. He is her minister, too, and has her respect and confidence, as he has that of us all. I suppose it is because of his being sliglit-built and high-strung that he loves her so. My wife —you know how full women are of their mischief — always brings in her name when he is here, just to see how pale he gets, and how eager he is. But I don't think,” my host adds, as he fills another pipe, “ that he is her equal, either! ”

“ Why not? ” I demand.

“ I like Mr. Parkinson as a man and as a minister,” Harry Peters adds, ‘‘and nothing is more important than religion. But, the fault of his training, I suppose, the man runs too much in that; knows nothing, cares nothing for politics, farming, country gossip, men, women, and children. He’s too narrow, too one-sided. It makes his religion loo spiritual. He’d have more practical influence upon every-day people if he ate more pork and corn bread, and talked more about cotton and cattle. And then he is too much like Miss Throop! ”

“ Like Miss Throop? ” I ask.

“ I mean he is too nice and slight, too fine and lady-like. A woman likes a man to be a man, just as a man likes a woman the more she is a woman. For a man of his make pretty Molly Robinson is the very wife. Plenty of land, too, and it’s just what he hasn’t got. If he owned a thousand acres or so of good bottom land, he would light down on it out of the air, don’t you see! But he would no more look at little Molly Robinson, than Miss Agnes would think of Mose Evans; he ’s determined to have her or die. They say she is to marry a gentleman from Charleston, or he will get her yet; see if he does n’t.”

At this juncture, my host branched off into one of his funniest stories, his nice wife seated knitting, and, I had almost said, purring in her little rockingchair close to his side, she was so gentle and kitten-like and loving — “Puss” being her name, and continually used. I liked Harry Peters, thoroughly enjoyed the oxygen of the man, if I may so speak, but I forget what it was we all laughed so heartily about that day. I want to add here, however out of place, what Mr. Parkinson said to me when he was East soliciting funds for their church, afterward. Circumstances had thrown us into very confidential intimacy then, or he never could have said, as he did, “It seems a singular remark to make, sir, but I have come to believe that a man can cast himself too passively upon the bosom even of his God! Our Creator wants a man to be manly! Of course you will understand. One thing I do know, there are cases where he refuses to answer importunate prayer by anyLliing in return, outer or inner,— repels, casts off the suppliant. Not only because that suppliant is selfish in his seeking, but whining and whimpering and indulging in a sickly sort of dependence, when he ought to stand up like a man, bear terrible trouble silently, and do known duty stoutly, whatever the duty may be! ”

But I never dreamed of mentioning that remark a moment ago; certainly the maker thereof had improved into a sturdier and far more happy and effective man than he had promised to be before, when he thus opened his heart to me; that being itself, however, a lingering of his former weakness. For my part, I am perfectly willing to be the friend confided in: but not the friend, of the two, who confides, not if I can help it. f know the world, unfortunately, too well!

It was hard work to get away from Harry Peters’ fun, and, more pleasant to me still, his wife’s perfect enjoyment of it. I was just in time for supper at General Throop’s, and went to bed as soon after as I politely could. Not that I was unusually fatigued after my ride about the plantation, talking with the hands here and there over the same all day, as well as with Peters; the fact is, I was seriously perplexed. You observe, I had a hundred other matters besides, pressing upon me for decision; many thousands of dollars involved. I was glad to get to bed.

It was as natural, under the circumstances, that Helen and Agnes should have sat far into the night, all the rest of the household wrapped in sleep.

“ My heart yearns over her as if she were my own and my only sister,” my wife said to me when at last she came into our room. “ My knowledge of the world, as compared with hers at least, makes me feel much older. I do so desire to help her; and how can I, unless I know how matters stand in regard to that — Clammeigh ? I heard many hints before I left Charleston of a new flame of his, a certain Cuban heiress. One thing I know: his handsome mansion there is being remodeled and made ready for—something. Agnes well knows it is my sincere affection for her, not mere curiosity, which makes me anxious to find out when we are to have her in Charleston as Mrs. Clammeigh, or whether there is any possibility of her becoming — the idea! — Mrs. Parkinson, instead.”

“ Or whether,” I interposed, “ there is any chance for poor Evans.”

“Nonsense!” my wife replied, with such energy that I will stand aside and let her take my place as narrator of all that occurred between Agnes and herself. Understand distinctly, it is not myself, but Mrs. Anderson, who thus proceeds: —

“I would so dearly love to see you married, Agnes,” I said at last. “In certain senses of the word your betrothed—may I speak of him, dear? — is a superior man ” —

“ There is the most singular weakness in me, Helen dear,” she replied. “ That word ' superior ’ brings it to mind. I never told a soul before; it is a species of hallucination. Do you know, I cannot remember when I did not consider myself, I am ashamed to say it, somehow a being superior to those around me. It is an odd deficiency in me, but I have always felt as I suppose a princess born to a throne does. It is in my blood. Except towards my parents, dearly as I love every one, conscious as I am of my folly, even when I feel most humble I have an absurd sense of condescension! I dare say I am to be empress of a star in the other world. If I were married to a king today, I would wear crown and robe and hold my court as if I were, for the first time, in my true place. A singular fancy, is n’t it? ”

‘ ‘ And you would make a most gracious majesty, dear,” I said. “But to be a queen there must be — unless you are of the vixenish sort, like Elizabeth — a king. Your parents, Agnes, are not as strong as they were, Theodore is gone, and they may be taken, dear. Persons of your sensitive nature, so tenderly shielded all your life from the world, need a protector. And, Agnes dear, we will be so glad to see you married.”

“I suppose suffering has made me too sensitive,” she replied. “ And, at last, it lies so much in the individual who suffers, Helen, not in the sort or degree of the trouble. There is Mr. Harry Peters, our overseer,” she said, evading me still, and she seemed resolved to keep as far off as she could from not only speaking but thinking upon the subject. I was the more resolved to know certainly if I could. And therefore I listened but in part to her as she continued about Mr. Peters. “ The funniest man I ever knew,” she said. " Papa and I dined there one day by special invitation, and it was all very grand. They had soup and fish first. As their girl was bringing in afterward an enormous turkey, she tripped and fell, and dashed it full in Mr. Peters’ face. I thought — suppose it had been papa at the head of his table! how I trembled! But Mr. Peters only laughed; laughed and made us laugh by his funny ways, till it seemed the best joke in the world! His dear little wife thinks it is all so amusing, and you could n’t help enjoying their enjoyment. He has done papa good like medicine; I never knew him to laugh so since secession. When we were threatened with cotton worms, Mr. Peters turned that into a joke. When his children were lost in the swamp, he was, his wife told me, certain of finding them, keeping the household and all the searchers in high spirits till they were found, and then he cried like a woman, even while he was laughing more than before. He is the brightest, most joyous person I ever knew, and nothing but a poor, lame, sickly overseer! That Mr. Archer is so happy because he drinks, but Mr. Peters is ” —

“ What kind of a person, Agnes, was that Mr. Moses Evans? ” I began,

“ In a moment, Helen. I think I am exactly like Mr. Peters. By nature. But, Helen dear, God alone knows how I have suffered. It was not merely our long and terrible time in Charleston through the siege. I do not believe we had one night of sound sleep during all those terrible — centuries they seem to me now. Nor was it the loss of property and the breaking up of the largest, certainly the most refined, at least the dearest, circle of friends heart could desire. It is such a strange feeling, too, to have lost your country. Papa feels that everything one calls country is as utterly lost as if it had been swallowed up in the sea; he is the resident to-day — not citizen — of that nation in all the world which he likes least. There is our removing, too, to such a region as this! And then, do I not know, my father and mother must soon go, and leave me alone in the world! So far as this life is concerned there never was a person more entirely without a future! Oh, Helen, if God had but spared Theodore! Did you know him, Helen? It was my being his own sister made me fancy myself a princess; I worshiped him as my king, for he was a king. The most beautiful, the noblest! — and, oh how glad I am, for his dear sake, that he is dead! I wake, dear, and lie and listen to the great river flowing by, and the heavy breathing of the wind rising and falling, as in sleep, among the live-oaks, lifting and letting fall their long gray moss; so far away, alone, alone! ”

After some silence she added, “I saw a lovely little flower by the roadside as I got out of the buggy at our gate, coming hack from church last Sunday, and I put a stick of wood on either side of it to protect it. When I went on Monday to transplant it, I found the poor little flower, crushed down in the print of a mule’s hoof! Oh, Helen, does n’t it seem sometimes as if God did n’t care what trod upon you! I am tempted at times to think I’m no more to him than a jamestown weed, any vile thing that chance wheel or hoof may trample into the mire! It does me good, Helen, to know it is a Father who strikes me so hard. But when I know that God is also a man, who allowed himself to be trodden down under wicked feet, his greatest glory and happiness afterward and forever because of that, I have only to feel that he is with me in all that happens, and I am singing again like a bird! ”

As I kiss her cheek, down which the tears are silently flowing, I whisper, “ I asked you about Mr. Evans, dear, because we met him as we came here,” and, drawing her closer to me as we sat in the dimly lighted room, trying to put her in my place when at the hotel, I told her the whole story of our meeting Mose Evans on that occasion. I did not leave out one thing! I do not know how I worded it, but I told her that there was no saying what such a person as Evans might become. And I told her of the quiet, silent, desperate determination of that foolish, foolish man ! Once or twice she tried to turn the conversation, but I can be as selfwilled as anybody, when I exert myself. I left nothing unsaid. When there was nothing more to be said, she only kissed me and replied, “ You must be so tired, Helen dear. It is after midnight. What a shame in me to keep you up so! You will find a lighted candle and a cross husband in your room. Good night, dear. May you have pleasant dreams, — during the night, too! ”

I could but return her good-night kiss and leave her. What else could I do, Henry? She is the most complete combination of opposites I ever knew. She is more dependent upon others, yet more self-reliant, than any other person I ever met; so impulsive and unreserved in temperament, yet so silent where her inmost heart is concerned. These years of bitter trouble have intensified all that is beautiful in her nature. Her passion for music, too, —spending whole days at her piano, Aunty Washington tells me,— has had the same effect. Perhaps, too, if I had her child-like temperament and her terrible trouble, I might have the same simple faith. I do believe her deepest wants are so entirely satisfied by it that she feels far less than she otherwise would the need of any other, but trusts Him as an actual, living, real Friend, the wisest, strongest, most sympathizing Person in the universe,—all the world, all her future, completely in his hands!

III.

Many a month had passed since the visit of Helen and myself to the Throops in their home out West. I was engrossed, meanwhile, in business so extensive, increasing, and pressing, as to keep me almost continually upon the wing between Charleston, New York, St. Louis, and San Francisco. Even during my periods of rest in Charleston, it was rarely I could get home from our office to Helen until near midnight. Very often my wife would wake up only enough to say, “ And here you are at last, are you! You are killing yourself, Henry. But I have not been thinking about you. Oh, Henry, how lonely, how very lonely Agnes must be!” Generally I was too tired to do more than assent to this, and go to sleep. Even when Helen read to me, as I ate at table, Agnes Throop’s letters, I did not listen as I should, especially as some letter in reference to land was sure to be pressing upon me for an answer just then. The fact is, I was making hay while the sun shone, knowing that the market was sure to slacken; and slacken it did, or I never could have found time for these pages, I assure you. It was the same with my correspondence so far as Evans was concerned. All these days he was studying at a certain venerable college at the East. Every time I saw the tops of its buildings from the car windows, when journeying in that region, I would say to myself, “ The next time I come this way I will certainly stop! ” Yet I never did. Because I never could. Perhaps it was because I was compelled to write such telegrammic letters in reply, that his were so brief. About all I could get from them was, that what time he was not upon horseback there, or in the gymnasium, he was in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia. I had a sense of keen regret at this, until we got as clerk a graduate from the institution, perfectly unfitted, I am obliged to say, by his books and dyspepsia, for business, who explained matters. It was only the exercise Evans took, coupled, I suppose, with his power of profound sleep, which enabled him to master his amazing amount of study, and keep up, in all, I had almost written, its splendor, his vigorous constitution. “ I had no personal acquaintance with him,” Parker, our clerk, told me. “He is a man of fine presence, but somewhat reserved, and he was simply one among several hundreds of us there.” Parker added that he, Parker himself, was, — and I feel satisfied it was so much the worse for him in a business point of view, — a student taking the regular course, while Evans took an optional and irregular one, Parker being a “ Clio ” too, whatever that means, while my friend was a “Whig.” Very soon I turned over, not the letters merely, but tlie entire correspondence with Evans, to my wife, whose interest in him seemed to have wonderfully increased of late. Although she gave me items now and then from his letters while he was at the college mentioned, and after he went to Europe, she never had one at hand when I did have time to read it. My general impression was that she slipped them into the envelope conveying her own epistles to Agnes Throop. To this day I do not know whether Evans made allusions in them to Agnes or not. My wife was quite silent upon the subject. And so months, and months upon months, fled away; it is impossible for me, without referring to memoranda, to say how many. Which prepares my way to tell of what comes next in order among the events of this statement of facts.

It is very singular! — I mean how persons come upon each other, compelled unconsciously the one toward the other by some secret magnetism. The first time I was in New York, for instance, the one man, of all the million there, who knew me, slapped me upon the shoulder as I stood at the window of a broker’s office in Nassau Street. Since I became superintendent of a Sabbath - seliool iu Charleston, I have never entered a theatre but once. I was in Boston, and 1 dropped in to see the Black Crook, solely to be able intelligently to warn our young people against such tilings. Only one person was North from our school, a young man, and I had not taken my seat before he rose from tlie next chair, exclaiming, “ Why, Mr. Anderson, how did you know I was here?” I merely took his arm and led him sorrowfully out, and he cannot understand it to this day.

It was such an accident in regard to the Scotia. I happened to be spending three days at our office on Wall Street. Our treasurer had remarked casually, “ I see the Scotia is signaled,” and his remark came back to me as, many hours later, I was crossing to Jersey City. Our ferry-boat was passing under the stern of the great steamship; I was envying the passengers clustered along the railing, saying to myself, Please Heaven, a little more money made, and Helen and T will take the children with us and see how the Old World looks these days!

At the instant one of the gentlemen on board, standing with a lady beside him apart from the rest, leaned over the railing, lifted his traveling cap to me, calling down at the same time, “Good evening, sir. All well?” and pointed me out to the lady, doubtless his wife, as he replaced his cap. I knew immediately that it was some officer in the Confederate service who had known me during the war. As many of them as could do so had gone across the Atlantic. I have no time to talk about that just now, but certainly their mistaken rebellion was the most magnificent mistake in point of dimension, desperation, and utterness of disaster, history has ever known, and I have a hearty liking for the men, greatly as I rejoice in their defeat. So I said to myself of this instance, Glad enough you are to get back, I ’ll be bound; glad and proud by this time in your inmost soul, that your foolish swords failed to hew this continent into miserable fragments! I suppose I had the eternal instinct — surely it is of God in us all — toward the returning prodigal as the crowd rushed ashore pell-mell from the ferry-boat. I acknowledge it did occur to me that my friend, whoever it was, might want a home upon some of our lands, like General Throop, for instance. But my chief reason, thank Heaven, was to have again in my own one of those cordial hands! There is Helen, too, and Agnes Throop, they may know his wife; at least there will be an item for to-night’s letter home. I need not, however, have made such short work, on my way to the Scotia’s dock, of the business that brought me over from New York. When I got to the picket paling, I had no card of admittance and had to wait without while the steamer was slowly warped ashore by cable and capstan. But my friend was as eager, if less demonstrative. His wife still beside him, he stood upon a coil of rope on the quarter-deck, searching for me with his eyes among the struggling crowd outside the pickets. It took him but a few moments to succeed in that. Now, I firmly believe if you were to see an inhabitant of Mars through a telescope, you could tell his culture and breeding on the instant. Certainly you would have had no trouble as to decision in this case, — something in the very gesture and bearing of the person, Heaven knows what! As he sees me he lifts his cap and waves it, which I acknowledge by lifting my hat upon the end of my umbrella and bobbing it to him above the heads of the crowd about me.

And now followed the deliberate bringing ashore of the trunks and the ranging of them on the floor within the pickets, in lines and by the hundreds, for the inspection of the custom-house people. I was diverted from all this, however, by a party of well-dressed Frenchmen waiting within the inclosure, near the fence dividing me from them, for a passenger aboard. Before their friend could come ashore they laughed, gesticulated, chattered, as I had previously supposed impossible to man; but when that friend climbed down to them in some wholly impossible way from the vessel, freshly charged with the peculiar electricity of Paris, the kissing, shrugging of shoulders, chattering all at once, indescribable to-do, was painfully suggestive of Darwin!

My attention, however, was called off by my Confederate officer, whom I had forgotten, but who had come ashore unseen and now very quietly put his hand through the pickets.

“ Mr. Anderson, glad to see you! ”

The words were spoken with genial warmth, yet as quietly as if we had parted only the day before.

“How are you, general — colonel” —

1 actually stammered and hesitated, blushed I dare say, as I gave my hand through the bars. A large man, military bearing, plaid cap, gray overcoat, magnificent beard of golden hair, glad to see me, with all his soul in his noble eyes, yet so entirely self-possessed, in contrast, at least, with those Frenchmen making such fools of themselves!

“Why, I never dreamed ” — I began.

“ And you had my letters from Germany? ” So cordial, yet so quiet!

Mose Evans! But why should I have been so completely taken aback? Possibly because I bad not the least idea of meeting him. It was so sudden. The man was so utterly changed, yet so entirely the same! But, I demand of myself, even then, why should I have that instant sense of being so many inches shorter, so many pounds lighter, than my friend? Such a queer fancy of being quicksilver in contrast with bullion ? I am so frank with Helen, I told her even this, weeks after. “ You are of wholly different build and birth, Henry,” she said. “ You certainly had the part of mercury toward him, if you say so, separating him from his dirt!” Married people grow to think together, and I had made the same reflection. Only it was not true. It was Miss Agnes Throop. I have made Helen a Yankee girl, and Helen says she has made me into a Southerner. Why, the power of the Founder of our faith is but the influence upon you, sir or madam, of one person upon another; only that his is infinite influence!

I had spent so much time of late among the hurried inhabitants of Wall Street, that the contrast of Mose Evans to them was the more refreshing, the immediate comparison of my friend with those effervescing Frenchmen making his quiet of manner, I suppose, the more striking. His trunk was entangled among hundreds of others nearly, yet, conversing with me meanwhile almost as undisturbedly as if we were alone together in some secluded spot, he stood like a statue amid the hurry and fuss and confusion until his turn came, and nothing more easy and smooth than his management of matters during the search of his trunk by the officials. I think it was by reason of his steady mastery of himself. Besides, he was so perfectly well, so exceedingly strong and happy! “ And, now, if you please, this one; it is a lady’s,” he said to the custom-house officer, producing the key of a very cathedral of a trunk, next his, as he spoke, avoiding casting his eyes for a moment in that direction as the lid was being lifted.

“ I saw her beside you on deck, Mrs. Evans, I suppose. Allow me to congrat— ” but I think he could not have heard me, those Frenchmen were so noisy, as he merely paused in mid act from stroking his beard with the palm of his left hand, and looked at me. Under sudden impulse I appointed to meet him that evening at a hotel in the city, and, elbowing my way out of the crowd, I left; my feeling was exactly as when great Confederate news arrived where I was in the South during the war, and I kept from knowing it as long as I could.

“I am so very glad,” he said, “to see you,” and he took my hand in both of his, yet once more, when we met again in the parlor of the hotel. It was unnatural or natural in me, as you please; I suppose my business has made it my instinct; but how sharply I watched him as he took off his orange peel of a cap, for he had just come in, laid off his gray coat, passed his hands over his head, face, voluminous beard, and then took my palm in his own again.

“ Oh, over Germany, the Alps, Italy, France, England, of course, Scotland, Ireland,” he answered to a question of mine about his travels. If there had been the least affectation in him! The smallest beginning of boastfulness, even the shade of an uneasy feeling! There was disquiet on my part. I am satisfied he must have observed it; even that did not disturb his childlike calm. He was so entirely certain, so profoundly happy! At least, if one’s outer man is any reliable evidence thereof.

“ Now for a bath,” he said, after we had chattered for some time about everything the world around except what I was mainly interested to know, “ and then, dinner.”

I almost blushed at myself in my mirror in the act of dressing with unusual care. Why should I not keep on my business suit of Scotch gray, since it was merely with Mose Evans I was to dine? He was not in the parlor of the hotel when I came down, for there is something of the slowness of General Throop in every Southerner I ever knew, and I was glad that I had no demoralizing suspicion of being ill dressed, when I found in my corner of the parlor several of the passengers by the steamer, evidently from among the best people! What a transforming power in leisure and money, clothing, education, travel, freedom from consuming care, I said to myself of the gentlemen and ladies present, recalling to mind that I had never seen in the House of Lords when in London, or out of it, a superior if equal type of people. My attention was, however, immediately fastened upon the person who was, as naturally as Victoria in her drawing-room, the queen of this assembly. And it was a lady so much of the English style of beauty, such impressiveness of size, contour, bearing, as that it was impossible to say whether she was matron or maid; little over twenty in either case. There was something in her perfect repose as she sat upon the sofa amid her volumes of silk — lavender color, I believe it was — and lace, her hands lying in mutual embrace upon her lap, the cool gray of her singularly open eyes, the motionless poise of her erect head, — something that reminded one of an Egyptian statue. Impressive is the word, and a more impressive woman I never saw in my life. Had he been Prince Albert in the queen’s drawingroom, my friend could not have been more completely at home with all when he entered, well dressed, but without the least reminder of courtier or fop. Were it not that there was no least intention of the sort on his part, there was the graciousness of blood in the cordial way in which he came first to me to shake hands and then turned with me, as I rose, to her Majesty, the queen upon the sofa.

“ I have often spoken of you to her. It is at her request,” he whispered, as he led me forward. “ Allow me ” —

It was the sudden and insufferable nuisance of the gong in the corridor, and not any embarrassment upon my part, which prevented my catching one syllable of what followed. “ If you will accept Mr. Anderson’s arm,” he was saying, as the gastronomic thunder rolled away down the valleys, so to speak, of the hotel, “ I will assist your father; he is used to me, you know,” and I observed that the old gentleman upon the sofa beside her seemed a confirmed invalid.

“ You cannot think how kind he has been to my father,” my companion said, as we took our seats at the table set apart in the dining-hall for our company, to whom, as we were seating ourselves, Mr. Evans introduced me.

“ We met in Egypt. My father had a passion to ascend the pyramids,” the lady continued. “Mr. Evans would hardly suffer the Arabs to touch him; he almost carried him up in his arms. Mr. Evans is very strong.” And well I knew she intended to say “large,” but was withheld by her social tact, although I am not considered what is usually styled a small man, I hope. A higher instance of social poise, yet power, I never met in a woman; besides, I was wondering, as we sat, if the diamond ring upon her finger meant marriage or not. Just then her father said, in a querulous way, from the other side of her, “Edith, my dear!” and my companion had to listen to certain remarks from a spectacled, and, I dare say, quite distinguished German across the table, and translate them, not worth uttering in the first place, to her father. When that father interrupted us in the parlor after dinner, in the same way, in reference to a French and copiously moustached politician present, I began to fear it was a weakness of the old gentleman, the more so as he seized speedy occasion to tell me that his daughter was equally conversant with Spanish and Italian. Certainly she was as unconscious of possessing any special accomplishment in the matter as she seemed to be during the music she favored us with that night. I am not myself fond of brilliant performance either with the piano keys or the voice, yet I do admire all along the subtle and exquisite mechanism of the effort, not the result at all; it is the marvelous machinery producing the result which I encore.

“You cannot think how embarrassed I was all the evening,” I said to Evans when he was in my room next day.

“ At what? ” my friend demanded in his even way. Now I was not afraid of Mose Evans at all; preposterous indeed if I should be! “ Because the gong,”

I said, “drowned somewhat my introduction to the lady. I could not well ask her if she was your wife. To this moment I do not know ” —

I was surprised at the sudden and strong color suffusing my friend’s whole face as I rattled on; less of modesty it seemed than of anger. He sat looking at me, as the color died away from his face, almost curiously, as if he doubted his ears or my sanity; at last he replied,

“ I had hardly expected it of you, Mr. Anderson. Of you, — knowing the facts of my history as you do! ”

There was quite a silence. I was nettled by the tone and manner of the man; angry, I suppose, chiefly at myself. ‘'The lady, Miss Edith Livingstone,” he said after a while, “lives near this city. We met in Cairo, afterward at St. Petersburg. She was traveling with her invalid father, and I had the opportunity of being of some small service in Paris and London. She has no more idea of anything of the kind,” color rising again, “ than myself.” I hardly thought it wise to tell him so, but if that thoroughly accomplished woman of the world did not have some thought of the kind, I am mistaken. Nothing in the least unmaidenly, of course; but there was a certain something in the cool gray eyes and in the movement of those clasped hands, when my friend came and went during our few days at that hotel! I have mentioned the matter to Helen, yet we may both, it is true, be mistaken.

Strange to say, my new friend, so thoroughly my old friend, also, was far more at ease with me than I was with him. I rejoiced in and yet resented the culture of the man. There was, in comparison with myself, a size, a steadiness, an absolute confidence, a measure of youth yet seniority, which amazed, at least impressed me almost to irritation. Yet, as we sat late into the night over our dessert that day, dining together in my parlor at the hotel, he was, for all his perfectly cut broadcloth and snowy linen, and easy use of napkin and fork and waiter, merely — Mose Evans! When I say that he was utterly changed, and was not altered in the least degree, I suppose the explanation lies in his being a simple development of the inner man along the lines of his nature, which I knew before. I do wonder if it was because be was born South? — such a singular reminder he was of General Throop. Our waiter, colored, took for granted that he was the chief of the two; certainly from no assumption upon my friend’s side. It is a trilling thing to mention, but, as we sat down to dinner, he had glanced inquiringly at me, and, as I was about to ask what he wished, he bowed his head and said grace. Up to that moment I think our waiter had regarded him as a person of distinction, a millionaire most likely; not so certain of it after that, I fear.

My having been over the same ground myself made it more easy and interesting,— our talk of his travels, — but he had taken Europe more slowly and thoroughly than I; every edifice, picture, opera, king, queen, peasant almost. And all along he had asked me after but one person by name,—‘=my wife. I suppose he rested upon my assurance at the outset that “ all are well.”

I like chess, — that is, I like to make moves in matters generally, so I ventured to ask, as we conversed, about the beauty of women over the water; in Italy, for instance.

“ I had letters of introduction from Boston, partly through our old friend the postmaster, partly from acquaintance made while studying,” he told me,

“ to people in London, and one or two in Paris. I was fortunate in making friends. I liked the ladies, but the men more; it merely happened so, I suppose.”

“You do not ask about Miss Throop,”

I said, almost irritated; abruptly, in fact.

“ No. Because I know already. Perfectly,” he said immediately, with the face of a child. “ I always knew. At least, after the first moment in that old barn of a church.” Was this — insolence? I have to do some singular things in land matters — so, I dared it.

“Have you heard of Mr. Clammeigh’s marriage? ” I asked, in a low, sympathizing, impressive manner, very seriously indeed.

“No! And he is married, is he? But you know I never knew much of him.” Entire unconcern. I looked at mv friend with pain and surprise in every lineament of my face. “You knew Mr. Clammeigh was engaged to Miss Throop. I had supposed the news of his marriage would — would ’ — and how keenly I watched him!

“ Ah, yes! ” he answered on the instant, the gladness all over his face only brightening as he spoke, and with a motion of his right hand to his inner breast pocket. “ It reminds me, I want to show you, Mr. Anderson! I could not find it in Paris; found it, at last, in Vienna; the very thing I knew must be somewhere. Our ring. But it is going through the custom-house.”

“ And you think I deceive you! ” I hesitated at the familiarity, but went on. “My poor, poor fellow!” The exclamation jarred us both a little, and Mr. Evans colored, but added, not the shadow of a fleeting doubt on his face, “ Oh, excuse me! I did not catch your meaning. I was thinking of that ring. You did it very well. What a comedian you would make. But, not exactly! It is with me about that as it is, if you will excuse me, about smuggling. I am no better than other people, but it is so thoroughly against one’s self to try to cheat and lie — I mean with those officials. They would have seen it in ray eyes, all over me! And a something for her. I would as soon have dipped the diamond in mire.”

“ And you do — not —believe — that — Miss Throop — is married! ” I gazed pityingly upon my friend as I said it. If there had been but a doubt, merely the least questioning in his eyes whether I was jesting! Not a bit of it! Nothing but sunny and entire certainty there! And so we left the question; he was not interested in it. “You seem to be so happy,” I said in a turn of our conversation, and with ominous accent.

“ Am I? I never thought of it. It is my thorough health, I suppose,” he replied, “caused by perpetual change of scene and air. I think, too, I have more faith and the repose of faith than some persons.”

“ Faith? ”

“ I hesitate to speak of it even to you. But, over there,” with a gesture toward the Atlantic, “they are chattering, in all languages, about there being nothing at last but law and force. Now I believe,” he added with the candor of a child, “ there is a Person to match this universe. He was a revelation as wholly new to me as was Miss Throop; and I rest in her as I do in him.”

“ It was a vast change for you, from your cabin to — the whole world!” I remarked, I remember, during the evening.

“ Not so much as you would think,” he replied. “ Certainly, not so very great a change as I had anticipated; and really it is but a small globe at last, is it not, Mr. Anderson? You can sail about it in three months, can flash your telegram around it in a minute. Smaller than I thought. Apart from their houses and clothing, people, too, are very much alike; don’t you think so? ” “ There is something singular in the matter of inheritance,” my companion remarked after a turn in the conversation. “My poor father was a very bookish man, I was told, as well as a person of great refinement. Now I do believe that intuition is merely inherited experience. I have been reading a great deal, very rapidly because every volume seemed oddly familiar from the first, as if I had certainly read it before. So of painting, music, science, even, as far, at least, as my limited knowledge of them extends. It is as if it all was already lying dormant in me, easily wakened. Singular, isn’t it? ”

And so we drifted this way and that; talked Brownstown thoroughly over. Hah, — I think of it only as I now write, — the Confederate officer of my imagination did want land at last! “ What. I fully hope she will consent to,” he had casually observed, “is to leave Brown County. I do not care to live there because I think she will prefer to go where I was not known before. I have thought of the northwest, of our spending our new life in a new world. What do you think, Mr. Anderson? ” There is nothing in luck, nothing outside of experience and readiness to handle whatever material you have. I am sure nothing could have been more natural in this case. I represented large bodies of land in California, and Mr. Evans owned land like a Texan Empressario, in Brown County. Affairs were put in train then that resulted in exchanges of lands with which we are not dissatisfied so far. All this has slipped from me without my intending it, but if the reader imagines that he can now anticipate all that is to follow, let him not be too sure; events do not befall in sober narration like this as they do in fiction.

“ You know what a long infancy I had,’’my friend said in connection with our land talk that night. “ And I have been reading, seeing, hearing, growing, I hope, of late. Well, I am young, strong, eager for work. I will find what I can do, so that it is work and plenty of it! ” And I can say this, at least, that Mr. Evans is to-day second to no man in our land company. Frankly, as a " man of affairs ” I never met his superior; and why not say so?

I had him down on Wall Street next day. Our people thought, at first, he was an English capitalist. I was a little annoyed, amused, gratified, and perplexed at it, but my being his friend was considered as a sort of feather in my cap. Mose Evans! As I used to know him in Brown County! Miss Throop’s influence, of course, —I heartily assent to that, knowing her so well, even though failing so painfully in making her known to the reader. Yet I ask of the reader, even if a lady, could anything have been made of this man if it was not in him from the first? It is not out of a cockle-burr that an oak grows; now does it? I wish somebody, not a divine, would write an argument, as I have said before, for the resurrection, based upon a man’s capacity for the same, illustrated by facts, on this side death!

We had some singular talk together that night, which I would like to detail, but I feel it is not proper. My friend assumed all along the influence upon himself, modest as he was in speaking about it, of two persons, the one being as real to him as the other. The first was simply a man, who, he heartily believed, is also God. The other was a woman. Say he mistook actual facts as to the one and the other, — if I do not add that they were living persons, both, to him, I fail of the truth. Certainly, real or unreal, they made him all he was!

I suppose it is sheer force of association, but this reminds me — I am glad I did not forget it — of a letter my friend found waiting him in New York. He read it to me the day he went West, a week after his arrival from Europe, compelled sorely against his will to remain as long as that arranging exchange of land. In looking over it then I inadvertently, from force of habit when a document was in my hand, put it into my breast pocket. It was memoranda rather than letter from old New Hampshire, the Brown County postmaster. I found it yesterday among my papers, looking for a deed. I transcribe only the last part.

“ You will have heard of Mrs. Throop’s death. Her husband always sends for his mail, is very feeble and broken. Wife’s death, I suppose. Miss Throop in deep mourning as usual at church, looks very worn, yet helps our singing.

“Dick Frazier is dead of drink, which reminds me that you ask after Mr. Archer. I infer that Mr. Anderson when here had serious conversation with him, as at Bucksnort. Also, Mr. Parkinson. From the fact that he took to drink more desperately afterwards. He was in my store since then, upon New Year’s Eve. Bought a box of caps. ‘ Hunting? ’ I asked. He never uses a gun except when he is expecting a difficulty. ‘Would you like to know? ’ he asked. His manner was unlike what I ever saw before. Pale. Haggard. Desperate. I told him I would. His manner of cursing me was singular. There was no one else in the store, it was so very late. I attempted to reason with him. He renewed his profanity, including his Maker and his parents in the same. I am but a small man, quite old and feeble since we parted. I placed myself between Mr. Archer and the door. He attempted to force his way by. Struck me violently. I grappled with him. He is not strong. Had the door locked and him in my back room. He blasphemed and broke down in an agony of weeping. He had intended to shoot himself, as I supposed. Had he intimated it I knew he would not, I am satisfied that the residence here of General Throop and family has had much influence on him. I will not detail our conversation. I did not speak of his father or mother. Nor of church. I spoke, as well as I could, of another Person. I am satisfied that other Person was in the room and helped me. And helped him. He spent the night with me. We have had much conversation since, He has ceased from evil courses. Seems changed. I do not know. Has never even pretended to stop before. He intends to study for the ministry. I suggested Andover. He said the grace of God might enable him to endure the Yankees since the war. He feared not, however. Thought it safest not to risk it! He studies instead at Columbia. If he holds fast to his Helper he will stand. If he does not he will not. I have great fears as to the result, but cannot tell. Good-by.”

As to myself I had not sufficient belief in the possibility of the lawyer’s reformation to give it a second thought, and hasten to record my parting with Evans at the office of the hotel.

“ You are exposing yourself, my friend,” I said with all sincerity as we shook hands, “to a terrible disappointment. Your very certainty of success will make it more disastrous! ”

“ I will take the risk,” he added with hearty assurance as he held my hand.

Could there have been, I asked myself as I stood there, any engagement before he left Brown County? Could anything have resulted from his correspondence with my wife while away? Nothing of the kind so far as I knew, nothing whatever! I was seriously offended on Miss Throop’s behalf. “ Unless she has pledged herself, do you think your confidence of success wholly respectful to Miss Throop? ” I began.

“You could not doubt my deepest respect for her, to save your life,” he replied. “ As to my confidence, as I told you the other night, it resets in her as it does in my Maker. She will understand me, perfectly!” And, with another cordial shake of the hand, he was gone. Upon the whole, I would have said nothing of all this to him, had I known he was such a — what is the word!

William M. Baker.