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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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your metropolitan mobs shall knock at the doors of your life and
demand the reason of your existence, from these poverty-stricken
homes, with their old-fashioned, perhaps mediaeval ideas, will come
forth the fierce athletic sons and sweet-voiced daughters in whom
the nation will find a new birth!” The Preacher’s eyes had filled with
tears and his voice dropped into a low dream-like prophecy.
“You can not understand,” he resumed, in a clear voice, “why I
feel so profoundly depressed just now because the Republican party,
which, with you stands for the virtue, wealth and intelligence of the
community, is now in charge of this state. I will tell you why. A
Republican administration in North Carolina simply means a Negro
oligarchy. The state is now being debauched and degraded by this
fact in the innermost depths of its character and life. My place is
here in this fight.”
“But, Doctor, will not your industrial training of the Negro gradually
minimise any danger to your society?”
“No, it will gradually increase it. Industrial training gives power. If
the Negro ever becomes a serious competitor of the white labourer
in the industries of the South, the white man will kill him, just as
your labour Unions do in the North now where the conditions of life
are hard, and men fight with tooth and nail for bread. If you train
the negroes to be scientific farmers they will become a race of
aristocrats, and when five generations removed from the memory of
slavery, a war of races will be inevitable, unless the Anglo-Saxon
grant this trained and wealthy African equal social rights. The Anglo-
Saxon can not do this without suicide. One drop of Negro blood
makes a negro.”
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Doctor, that I can’t persuade you
to become our pastor. But I can understand since this talk something
of the larger views of your duty.”
The deacon sought Mrs. Durham that evening and laid siege to
her resolutely.
 “Ah! deacon, you’re shrewd—you are going to flatter me, but I
can’t let you. I’m an old fogy and out of date. I’m not orthodox on
the Negro from Boston’s point of view.”
“Nonsense!” growled the deacon. “We don’t care what you or the
Doctor either thinks about the Negro, or the Jap, or the Chinaman.
We want a preacher imbued with the power of the Holy Ghost to
preach the Gospel of Christ.”
“Well, you have quite captured me since you have been here. You
are a revelation to me of what a deacon might be to a pastor and his
wife. To be frank with you, I am on your side. I am tired of the
Negro. I don’t want to solve him. He is an impossible job from my
point of view. I should be delighted to go to Boston now and begin
life over again. But I do not figure in the decision. Dr. Durham settles
such questions for himself. And I respect him more for it.”
Encouraged by this decision of his wife the deacon renewed his
efforts to change the Preacher’s mind next day in vain. He stayed
over Sunday, heard him preach two sermons, and sorrowfully bade
him good-bye on Monday. He carried back to Boston his final word
declining this call.
As the deacon stepped on the train, he warmly pressed his hand
and said, “God bless you, Doctor. If you ever need a friend, you
know my name and address.”
 CHAPTER XXII—THE FLESH AND
THE SPIRIT

G
ASTON tried to wait in patience another week for a word from
the woman he loved, and when the last mail came and
brought no letter for him, he found himself face to face with
the deepest soul crisis of his life.
After all, thoughts are things. The report of her social frivolities at
first made little impression on him. But the thought had fallen in his
heart, and it was growing a poisoned weed.
It is possible to kill the human body with an idea. The fairest day
the spring ever sent can be blackened and turned from sunshine into
storm by the flitting of a little cloud of thought no bigger than a
man’s hand.
So Gaston found this report of dancing and flirting in a gay society
by the woman whom he had enthroned in the holy of holies of his
soul to be destroying his strength of character, and like a deadly
cancer eating his heart out.
He sat down by his window that night, unable to work, and tried
to reconcile such a life with his ideal.
“Why should I be so provincial!” he mused. “The thing only shocks
me because I am unused to it. She has grown up in this
atmosphere. To her it is a harmless pastime.”
Then he took out of his desk her picture, lit his lamp and looked
long and tenderly at it, until his soul was drunk again with the
memory of her beauty, the warm touch of her hand, and the thrill of
her full soft lips in the only two kisses he had ever received from the
heart of a woman.
 Then, the vision of a ball-room came to torture him. He could see
her dressed in that delicate creation of French genius he had seen
her wear the memorable night at the Springs. The French know so
deeply the subtle art of draping a woman’s body to tempt the souls
of men. How he cursed them to-night! He could see her bare arms,
white gleaming shoulders, neck, and back, and round full bosom
softly rising and falling with her breathing, as she swept through a
brilliant ball-room to the strains of entrancing music.
He knew the dance was a social convention, of course. But its
deep Nature significance he knew also. He knew that it was as old
as human society, and full of a thousand subtle suggestions,—that it
was the actual touch of the human body, with rhythmic movement,
set to the passionate music of love. This music spoke in quivering
melody what the lips did not dare to say. This he knew was the deep
secret of the fascination of the dance for the boy and the girl, the
man and the woman. How he cursed it to-night!
His imagination leaped the centuries that separate us from the
great races of the past who scorned humbug and hypocrisy, and
held their dances in the deep shadows of great forests, without the
draperies of tailors. These men and women looked Nature in the
face and were not afraid, and did not try to apologise or lie about it.
He felt humiliated and betrayed.
He thought too of her wealth with a feeling of resentment and
isolation. Taken with this social nightmare it seemed to raise an
impossible barrier between them. He knew that in the terrible
quarrel she had with her father on their first clash, he had sworn if
she disobeyed him to disinherit her. She had answered him in bitter
defiance. And yet time often changes these noble visions of poverty
and strenuous faith in high ideals. Wealth and all its good things
becomes with us at last habit. And habit is life.
Could it be possible she had weakened in resolution of loyalty
when brought face to face with the actual breaking of the habits of a
lifetime? Might not the three forces combined, the habit of social
conventions, the habit of luxury, and the habit of obedience to a
masterful and lovable father, be sufficient to crush her love at last? It
seemed to him to-night, not only a possibility, but almost an
accomplished fact.
At one o’clock he went to bed and tried to sleep. He tossed for an
hour. His brain was on fire, and his imagination lit with its glare. He
could sweep the world with his vision in the silence and the
darkness. Yes, the world that is, and that which was, and is to come!
He arose and dressed. It was half-past two o’clock. He knew that
this was to be the first night in all his life when he could not sleep.
He was shocked and sobered by the tremendous import of such an
event in the development of his character. He had never been swept
off his feet before. He knew now that before the sun rose he would
fight with the powers and princes of the air for the mastery of life.
He left his room and walked out on the road to the Springs over
which he had gone so many times in childhood. The moon was
obscured by fleeting clouds, and the air had the sharp touch of
autumn in its breath. He walked slowly past the darkened silent
houses and felt his brain begin to cool in the sweet air.
The last note he had received from her weeks ago was the brief
one announcing the new break in the poor little correspondence she
had promised him. The last paragraph of that note now took on a
sinister meaning. He recalled it word by word:
“I feel like I can not trifle with you in this way again. It is
humiliating to me and to you. I can see no light in our future. I
release you from any tie I may have imposed on your life. I feel I
have fallen short of what you deserve, but I am so situated between
my mother’s failing health and my father’s will, and my love for them
both, I can not help it. I will love you always, but you are free.”
Was not this a kindly and final breaking of their pledge to one
another? Yet she had not returned the little medal he had given her
with that exchange of eternal love and faith. Could she keep this and
really mean to break with him finally? He could not believe it.
 His whole life had been dominated by this dream of an ideal love.
For it he had denied himself the indulgences that his college mates
and young associates had taken as a matter of course. He had never
touched wine. He had never smoked. He had never learned the
difference between a queen and jack in cards. He had kept away
from women. He had given his body and soul to the service of his
Ideal, and bent every energy to the development of his mind that he
might grasp with more power its sweetness and beauty when
realised.
Did it pay? The Flesh was shrieking this question now into the face
of the Spirit?
He had met the One Woman his soul had desired above all others.
There could be no mistake about that. And now she was failing him
when he had laid at her feet his life. It made him sick to recall how
utter had been his surrender.
Why should he longer deny the flesh, when the soul’s dream failed
the test of pain and struggle?
Was it possible that he had been a fool and was missing the full
expression of life, which is both flesh and spirit?
The world was full of sweet odours. He had delicate and powerful
nostrils. Why not enjoy them? The world was full of beauty ravishing
to the eye. He had keen eyes trained to see. Why should he not
open his eyes and gaze on it all? The world was full of entrancing
music. He had ears trained to hear. Why should he stuff them with
dreams of a doubtful future, and not hear it all? The world was full
of things soft and good to the touch. Why should he not grasp
them? His hands were cunning, and every finger tingled with
sensitive nerve tips. The world was full of good things sweet to the
taste, why should he not eat and drink as others, as old and wise
perhaps?
Was a man full-grown until he had seen, felt, smelled, tasted, and
heard all life? Was there anything after all, in good or bad? Were
these things not names? If not, how could we know unless we tried
them? What was the good of good things?
“Am I not a narrow-minded fool, instead of a wise man, to throttle
my impulses and deny the flesh for an imaginary gain?” he asked
himself aloud.
She had written he was free.
“Well, by the eternal, I will be free!” he exclaimed, “I will sweep
the whole gamut of human passion and human emotion. I will drink
life to the deepest dregs of its red wine. I will taste, feel, see, touch,
hear all! I will not be cheated. I will know for myself what it is to
live.”
When he woke to the consciousness of time and place, he found
he was seated at the Sulphur Spring where it gushed from the foot
of the hill, and that the eastern horizon was grey with the dawn.
A sense of new-found power welled up in him. He had regained
control of himself.
“Good! I will no longer be a moping love-sick fool. I am a man. To
will is to live, to cease to will is to die. I have regained my will,—I
live!”
He walked rapidly back to town with vigourous step. His mind was
clear.
“I will never write her another line until she writes to me. I will not
be a dog and whine at any rich man’s door or any woman’s feet. The
world is large, and I am large. I will be sought as well as seek.
Besides, my country needs me. If I am to give myself it will be for
larger ends than for the smiles of one woman!”
And then for two weeks he entered deliberately on a series of
dissipations. He left Hambright and sought convivial friends on the
sea coast. He amazed them by asking to be taught cards.
He swept the gamut of all the senses without reserve, day after
day, and night after night.
 At the end of two weeks he found himself haunting the post-office
oftener, with a vague sense of impending calamity.
“The thing’s all over I tell you!” he said to himself again and again.
And then he would hurry to the next mail as eagerly as ever. As the
excitement began to tire him, the sense of longing for her face, and
voice, and the touch of her hand became intolerable.
“My God, I’d give all the world holds of sin to see her and hear
one word from her lips!” he exclaimed as he locked himself in his
room one night.
“Why didn’t she answer my last letter?” he continued. “Ah, that
was the best letter I ever wrote her. I put my soul in every word. I
didn’t believe the woman lived who could read such confessions and
such worship without reply; Surely she has a heart!”
When he went to the post-office next day he got a letter
forwarded from Hambright by the Preacher. It was postmarked
Narragansett Pier, and addressed in a bold masculine hand he had
never seen before.
He tore it open, and inside found his last letter to Sallie Worth,
returned with the seal unbroken. He sprang to his feet with flashing
eyes, trembling from head to foot.
“Ah! they did not dare to let her receive another of my letters! So
a clerk returns it unopened,” he cried.
And a great lump rose in his throat as he thought of the scenes of
the past two weeks. The old fever and the old longing came rushing
over his prostrate soul now in resistless torrents: “How dare a
strange hand touch a message to her! I could strangle him. We will
see now who wins the fight.” He set his lips with determination,
packed his valise, and took the train for home without a word of
farewell to the companions of his revels.
When he reached Hambright he felt sure of a letter from her. A
strange joy filled his heart.
 “I have either got a letter or she’s writing one to me this minute!”
he exclaimed.
He went to the post-office in a state of exhilaration. The letter was
not there. But it did not depress him.
“It is on the way,” he quickly said.
For two days, he remained in that condition of tense nervous
excitement and expectation, and on the following day he opened his
box and found his letter.
“I knew it!” he said with a thrill of joy that was half awe at the
remarkable confirmation he had received of their sympathy.
He hurried to his office and read the big precious message.
How its words burned into his soul! Every line seemed alive with
her spirit. How beautiful the sight of her handwriting! He kissed it
again and again. He read with bated breath. The address was
double expressive, because it contained the first words of
abandoned tenderness with which she had ever written to him,
except in the concealed message dotted in the note that broke their
earlier correspondence.
“My Precious Darling:—I have gone through deep waters within
the last three weeks. I became so depressed and hungry to see you,
I felt some awful calamity was hanging over you and over me, and
that it was my fault. I could scarcely eat or sleep.
“I felt I should go mad if I did not speak and so I told Mama. She
sympathised tenderly with me but insisted I should not write. She is
so feeble I could not cross her. But Oh! the agony of it! Sometimes I
saw you drowning and stretching out your hands to me for help.
“Sometimes in my dreams I saw you fighting against
overwhelming odds with strong brutal men, whose faces were full of
hate, and I could not reach you.
“I was nervous and unstrung, but you can never know how real
the horror of it all was upon me.
 “I made up my mind one night to telegraph you. I heard some
one talking inside Mama’s room. I gently opened the door between
our rooms, and she was praying aloud for me. I stood spellbound. I
never knew how she loved me before. When at last she prayed that
in the end I might have the desire of my heart, and my life be
crowned with the joy of a noble man’s love, and that it might be
yours, and that she should be permitted to see and rejoice with me,
I could endure it no longer.
“Choking with sobs I ran to her kneeling figure, threw my arms
around her neck and covered her dear face with kisses.
“I could not send the message I had written after that scene.
“The next day Papa came, and she told him in my presence, ‘Now,
General I have carried out your wishes with Sallie against my
judgment. The strain has been more than you can understand. I
give up the task. You can manage her now to suit yourself.’
“There was a firmness in her voice I had never heard before. He
noted it, and was startled into silence by it. He had a long talk with
me and repeated his orders with increasing emphasis.
“The next day I was unusually depressed. I did not get out of bed
all day. At night I went down to supper. The clerk at the desk of the
hotel called me and said, ‘Miss Worth, I have a terrible sin to confess
to you. I’m a lover myself, and I’ve done you a wrong. I returned to
a young man yesterday a letter to you by request of the General.
Forgive me for it, and don’t tell him I told you.’
“That night Papa and I had a fearful scene. I will not attempt to
describe it. But the end was, I said to him with all the courage of
despair: I am twenty-one years old. I am a free woman. I will write
to whom I please and when I please and I will not ask you again. It
is your right to turn me out of your house, but you shall not murder
my soul!
“Then for the first time in his life Papa broke down and sobbed like
a child. We kissed and made up, and I am to write to you when I
like.
 “Forgive my long silence. Write and tell me you love me. My heart
is sick with the thought that I have been cowardly and failed you.
Write me a long letter, and you can not say things extravagant
enough for my hungry heart.
“I feel utterly helpless when I think how completely you have
come to rule my life. I wish you to rule it. It is all yours”——
And then she said many little foolish things that only the eyes of
the one lover should ever see, for only to him could they have
meaning.
When he finished reading this letter, and had devoured with
eagerness these foolish extravagances with which she closed it, he
buried his face in his arms across his desk.
A big strong boastful man whose will had defied the world! Now
he was crying like a whipped child.
BOOK THREE—THE THE TRIAL BY
FIRE
 CHAPTER I—A GROWL BENEATH
THE EARTH

A
PPARENTLY McLeod’s triumph was complete and permanent.
The farmers were disappointed in their wild hopes of a sub-
treasury, and other socialistic schemes, but the passions of the
campaign had been violent, and the offices they had won with their
Negro ally had been soothing to their sense of pride.
A Republican farmer was Governor for a term of four years, they
had elected two Senators, and three Supreme Court judges, and
they had completely smashed the power of the Democratic party in
the county governments. Everywhere they were triumphant in the
local elections, filling almost every county office with heavy-handed
sons of toil from the country districts, and making the town fops
who had been drawing these fat salaries get out and work for a
living.
Even McLeod was amazed at the thoroughness with which they
cleaned the state of every vestige of the invincible Democracy that
had ruled with a rod of iron since Legree’s flight.
Gaston could see but one weak spot in the alliance. The negroes
had demanded their share of the spoils, and were gradually forcing
their reluctant allies to grant them. He watched the progress of this
movement with thrilling interest. The negroes had demanded the
repeal of the county government plan of the Democracy, under
which the credit of the forty black counties had been rescued from
bankruptcy at the expense of local selfgovernment.
When the lawmakers who succeeded Legree had put this scheme
of centralised power in force, these forty counties were immediately
lifted from ruin to prosperity. But no negro ever held another office
in them.
 Now the negroes demanded the return to the principles of pure
Democracy and the right to elect all town, township, and county
officers direct. They got their demands. They took charge in short
order of the great rich counties in the Black Belt, and white men
ceased to hold the offices.
A negro college-graduate from Miss Walker’s classical institution
had started a newspaper at Independence noted for its open
demands for the recognition of the economic, social and political
equality of the races. Young negro men and women walking the
streets now refused to give half the sidewalk to a white man or
woman when they met, and there were an increasing number of
fights from such causes.
Gaston noted these signs with a growing sense of their import,
and began his work for the second great campaign. The election for
a legislature alone, he knew was lost already. His party had simply
abandoned the fight. The Allied Party had passed new election laws,
and under the tutelage of the doubtful methods of the past they had
taken every partisan advantage possible within the limits of the
Constitution. They could not be overthrown short of a political
earthquake, and he knew it. But he thought he heard in the depths
of the earth the low rumble of its coming, and he began to prepare
for it.
 CHAPTER II—FACE TO FACE WITH
FATE

T
HREE weeks before Christmas Gaston began to dream of the
visit he was to make to Independence to see Sallie Worth.
How long it seemed since she had kissed him in the twilight of
that Pullman car and the Limited had rolled away bearing her further
and further from his life! He would sit now for an hour reading her
last letter, looking at her picture on his desk, and dreaming of what
she would say when he sat by her side again in her own home.
And then like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky came a tearful letter
announcing another storm at home. Her father had again forbidden
her to write. She said, at the last, that Gaston’s visit must be
postponed indefinitely for the present. He gazed at the letter with a
hardened look.
“I will go. I ’ll face General Worth in his own home, and demand
his reasons for such treatment. I am a man I am entitled to the
respect of a man.” He made this declaration with a quiet force that
left no doubt about his doing it.
He wrote Sallie that he could not and would not endure such a
fight in the dark with the General, and that he was going to
Independence on the day before Christmas as she had planned at
first, to have it out with him face to face.
She wrote in reply and begged him under no circumstances to
come until conditions were more favourable. He got this letter the
day before he was to start.
“I ’ll go and I ’ll see him if I have to fight my way into his house,
that’s all there is to it!” he exclaimed.
 When he reached Independence, St. Clare met him at the depot,
and gave him an eager welcome.
“I’ve been expecting you, you hard-headed fool!” he said
impulsively.
“Well, your words are not equal to your handshake. What’s the
matter?” asked Gaston.
“You know what’s the matter. Miss Sallie has been to see me this
afternoon, and begged me to chain you at my house if you came to
town to-day.”
“Well, you ’ll need handcuffs, and help to get them on,” replied
Gaston with quiet decision.
“Look here, old boy, you’re not going down to that house to-night
with the old man threatening to kill you on sight, and your girl
bordering on collapse!”
“I am. I’ve been bordering on collapse for some time myself. I’m
getting used to it.”
“You’re a fool.”
“Granted, but I ’ll risk it.”
“But, man, I tell you Miss Sallie will be furious with you if you go
after all the messages she has sent you.”
“I ’ll risk her fury too.”
“Gaston, let me beg you not to do it.”
“I’m going, Bob. It isn’t any use for you to waste your breath.”
“You know where my heart is, old chum,” said Bob, yielding
reluctantly. “I couldn’t go down to that house to-night under the
conditions you are going for the world.”
“Why not? It’s the manly thing to do.”
“It’s a dangerous thing to do. Fathers have killed men under such
conditions.”
 “Well, I ’ll risk it. I’m going as soon as I can brush up a little.”
Bob walked with him to the outskirts of the city, begging in vain
that he should turn back, but he never slacked his pace.
When he turned to go home, Bob pressed his hand and said
“Good luck. And may your shadow never grow less.”
Gaston walked rapidly on toward Oakwood. As he passed through
the shadows of the forest near the gate, a flood of tender memories
rushed over him. He was back again by her side on that morning he
met her, with the first flush of love thrilling his life. He could see her
looking earnestly at him as though trying to solve a riddle. He could
hear her laughter full of joy and happiness. As he turned into the
gateway the house flashed on him its gleaming windows from the
hill top. He felt his heart sink with bitterness as he realised the
contrast of his last entrance into that house, its welcomed guest,
and his present unbidden intrusion. Once those lights had gleamed
only a message of peace and love. Now they seemed signals of war
some enemy had set on the hill to warn of his approach.
He paused a moment and wiped the perspiration from his brow. It
was Christmas eve, but the air was balmy and spring-like and his
rapid walk had tired him. He had eaten nothing all day, had slept
only a few hours the night before, and the nerve strain had been
more than he knew.
He looked up at the great white pillars softly shining in the
starlight, and a sickening fear of a possible tragedy behind those
doors crept over him.
“My God!” he exclaimed, “I had rather charge a breastworks in the
face of flashing guns than to go into that house to-night and meet
one man!”
He recognised the breach of the finer amenities of life involved in
forcing his way into a home under such conditions, and it humiliated
him for a moment.
 “We will not stickle for forms now,” he said to himself firmly. “This
is war. I am to uncover the batteries of my enemy. I have hesitated
long enough. I will not fight in the dark another day.”
As he stepped briskly up to the door, he started at a sudden
thought. What if the General had ordered the servants to slam the
door in his face! The possibility of such an unforeseen insult made
the cold sweat break out over his face as he rang the bell. No
matter, he was in for it now, he would face hell if need be!
He waited but an instant, and heard the heavy tread of a man
approach the door. Instinctively he knew that the General himself
was on guard, and would open the door. Evidently he had expected
him.
The door opened about two feet and the General glared at him
livid with rage. He held one hand on the door and the other on its
facing, and his towering figure filled the space.
“Good evening, General!” said Gaston with embarrassment.
“What do you want, sir?” he growled.
“I wish to see you for a few minutes.”
“Well, I don’t want to see you.”
“Whether you wish to or not, you must do it sooner of later,”
answered Gaston with dignity.
“Indeed! Your insolence is sublime, I must say!”
“The sooner you and I have a plain talk the better for both of us.
It can’t be put off any longer,” Gaston continued with self control. He
was looking the General straight in the eyes now, with head and
broad shoulders erect and his square-cut jaws were snapping his
words with a clean emphasis that was not lost on the older master
of men before him.
“Call at my office in the morning at ten o’clock.” he said, at length.
“I will not do it. I am going home on the nine o’clock train. To-
morrow is Christmas day. The issue between us is of life import to
me, and it may be of equal importance to you. I will not put it off
another hour!”
The General glared at him. His hands began to tremble, and
raising his voice, he thundered, “I am not accustomed to take orders
from young upstarts. How dare you attempt to force yourself into
my house when you were told again and again not to attempt it,
sir?”
“Your former welcome to me on three occasions when the object
of my visits was as well known to you as to me, gives me, at least,
the vested rights of a final interview. I demand it,” retorted Gaston
curtly.
“And I refuse it!” Still there was a note of indecision in his voice
which Gaston was quick to catch.
“General,” he protested, “you are a soldier and a gentleman. You
never fought an enemy with uncivilised warfare. Yet you have
allowed some one under your protection to stab me in the dark for
the past year. I am entitled to know why I fight and against whom. I
ask your sense of fairness as a soldier if I am not right?”
The General hesitated, and finally said, as he opened the door,
“Walk into the parlour.”
When they were seated, Gaston plunged immediately into the
question he had at heart.
“Now, General, I wish to ask you plainly why you have treated me
as you have since I asked you for your daughter’s hand?”
“The less said about it, the better. I have good and sufficient
reasons, and that settles it.”
“But I have the right to know them.”
“What right?”
“The right of every man to face his accuser when on trial for his
life.”
 “Bah! men don’t die nowadays for love, or women either,” the
General growled.
“Besides,” continued Gaston, “you are under the deepest
obligations to tell me fairly your reasons.”
“Obligations?”
“The obligations of the commonest justice between man and man.
You invited me to your home. I was your welcome guest. You
encouraged my suit for your daughter’s hand.”
“How dare you say such a thing, sir!”
“Because she told me you did. I was led to believe that you not
only looked with favour on my suit, but that you were pleased with
it. I asked for your daughter. You insulted my manhood by refusing
me permission even to seek an interview, and know the reasons for
your change of views. Since then you have treated me with plain
brutality. Now something caused this change.”
“Certainly something caused it, something of tremendous
importance,” said the General.
“I am entitled to know what it is.”
“Simply this. I received information concerning you, your habits,
your associates, your character, and your family, that caused me to
change my mind.”
“Did you inquire as to their truth?”
“It was unnecessary. I love my daughter beyond all other
treasures I possess. With her future I will take no risks.”
“I have the right to know the charges, General,” insisted Gaston.
“I demand it.”
“Well, sir, if you demand it, you will get it. I learned that you are a
man of the most dissolute habits and character, that you are a hard
drinker, a gambler, a rake and a spendthrift, and that your family’s
history is a deplorable one.”
 “My family history a deplorable one!” cried Gaston, springing to his
feet, with trembling clinched fists and scarlet face on which the blue
veins suddenly stood out.
“I begged you to spare me and yourself the pain of this,” replied
the General in a softer voice.
“No, I do not ask to be spared. Give me the particulars. What is
the stain on my family name?”
“Not a moral one, but in some respects more hopeless, a physical
one. I have positive information that your people on one side are
what is known in the South as poor white trash—”
Gaston smiled. “I thank you, General, for your frankness. The only
wrong of which I complain, is your withholding the name of the liar.”
“There is no use of a fight over such things. I do not wish my
daughter’s name to be smirched with it.”
“Her name is as dear to me as it can possibly be to you. Never
fear. You are her father, I honour you as such. I thank you for the
information. I scorn to stoop to answer. The humour of it forbids an
answer if I could stoop to make one. Now, General, I make you this
proposition. I am not in a hurry. I will patiently wait any time you
see fit to set for any developments in my life and character about
which you have doubts. All I ask is the privilege of writing to the
woman I love. Is not this reasonable?”
“No, sir,” declared the General, “I will not have it. You are not in a
position to make me a proposition of any sort. I have settled this
affair. It is not open for discussion.”
“You mean to say that I have no standing whatever in the case?”
asked Gaston with a smile, rubbing his hand over his smooth shaved
lips and chin.
“Exactly. I’ve settled it. There’s nothing more to be said.”
“I ’ll never give her up. She is the one woman God made for me,
and you will have to put me under the ground before you have
settled my end of it,” said Gaston still smiling.
The old man’s face clouded for a moment, he wrinkled his brow,
drew his bushy eyebrows closer and then turned toward Gaston in a
persuasive way.
“Look here, Gaston, don’t be a fool. It’s amusing to me to hear a
youngster talk such drivel. Love is not a fatal disease for a man, or a
woman. You will find that out later if you don’t know it now. I loved
a half dozen girls, and when I got ready to marry, I asked the one
handiest, and that seemed most suited to my temper. We married
and have lived as happily as the romancers. The world is full of
pretty girls. Go on about your business, and quit bothering me and
mine.”
“There’s only one girl for me, General!”
“That’s proof positive to my mind that you are a little cracked!” he
answered with a smile.
Gaston laughed and shook his head. “I ’ll never give her up in this
world, or the next,” he doggedly added.
Again the General frowned. “Look here, young man, did it ever
occur to you that your pursuit might be held the work of a low
adventurer? My daughter is an heiress. You haven’t’ a dollar. Don’t
you know that I will disinherit her if she marries without my
consent?”
“You can’t frighten me on that tack,” answered Gaston firmly. “No
dollar mark has yet been placed on the doors of Southern society.
Manhood, character and achievement are the keys that unlock it.
You know that, and I now it. I was poorer and more obscure the day
you first invited me here than to-day. And yet you gave me as hearty
a welcome as her richest suitor. All I ask is time to prove to you in
my life my manhood and worth,—one year, two years, five years, ten
years, any time you see fit to name.”
“No, sir,” firmly snapped the General, “not a day. I don’t like long
engagements. Yours is ended, once and for all time. I have settled
that.”
“Can even a father decide the destiny of two immortal souls off
hand like that?”
“Now, you are assuming too much. I am not speaking for myself
alone. I have laid all the facts carefully before Sallie, and she has
agreed to the wisdom of my decision, and asked me to represent her
in what I say this evening.”
Gaston turned pale, his lips quivered, and turning to the General
suddenly, he said, “That is the only important fact you have laid
before me. Just let her come here, stand by your side and say that
with her own lips, and I will never cross your path in life again.”
The General hung his head and stammered, “No, it is not
necessary. It will embarrass and humiliate her. I will not permit it.”
“Then I deny your credentials!” exclaimed Gaston.
The General seemed embarrassed by the failure of this fatherly
subterfuge, and Gaston could not help smiling at the revelation of
his weakness. He decided to press his advantage and try to see her
if only for a moment.
“General,” protested Gaston persuasively, “I appeal to your sense
of courtesy, even to an enemy. After all that has passed between us
in this house, is it fair or courteous to show me that door without
one word of farewell to the woman to whom I have given my life?
Or is it wise from your point of view?”
Again the General hesitated. He was a big-hearted man of
generous impulses, and he felt worsted in this interview somehow,
but it was hard to deny such a request. He fumbled at his watch
chain, arose, and said, “I will see if she desires it.”
Gaston’s heart bounded with joy! If she desired it! He could feel
her soul enveloping him with its love as he sat there conscious that
she was somewhere in that house praying for him!
 He fairly choked with the pain and the joy of the certainty that in a
moment he would be near her, touch her hand, see her glorious
beauty and his ears drink the music of her voice.
“Just step this way,” said the General, re-appearing at the door.
Gaston walked into the hall and met Sallie as she emerged from
the library door opposite. He tried to say something, but his throat
was dry and his tongue paralysed with the wonder of her presence!
Besides, the General stood grimly by like a guard over a life prisoner.
He looked searchingly into her eyes as he held her hand for a
moment and felt its warm impulsive pressure. Oh! the eyes of the
woman we love! What are words to their language of melting
tenderness, of faith and longing. Gaston felt like shouting in the
General’s face his triumph. She tried to speak, but only pressed his
hand again. It was enough.
He bowed to the General, and left without a word.
 CHAPTER III—A WHITE LIE

T
HAT night as he walked back through the streets he was
thrilled with a sense of strength and of triumph. He knew his
ground now. There was to be war between him and the
General to the bitter end. He had never asked her once to oppose
her father’s or mother’s command. Now he would see who was
master in a test of strength. And he was eager for the struggle. His
mind was alert, and every nerve and muscle tense with energy.
“Heavens, how hungry I am!” he exclaimed when he reached the
brilliantly lighted business portion of the city.
He went into a restaurant, ordered a steak, and enjoyed a good
meal. He recalled then that he had not eaten for twenty-four hours.
The steak was good, and the faces of the people seemed to him lit
with gladness. He was singing a battle song in his soul, and the eyes
of the woman he loved looked at him with yearning tenderness.
“Now, Bob, I count on you,” he cried to his friend next morning. “I
am going to have a merry Christmas and you are to aid in the
skirmishing.”
“I’m with you to the finish!” Bob responded with enthusiasm.
“We must make a feint this morning to deceive the enemy while I
turn his flank. I go home on the nine o’clock train. You understand?”
“Yes, over the left. It’s dead easy too. There’s to be a big
Christmas party to-night at the Alexanders’. She’s invited. I ’ll see
that she goes to it if I have to drag her.”
“Good. Don’t tell her I’m in town. I want to surprise her.”
The General had a man at the morning train who reported
Gaston’s departure. He was surprised at Sallie’s good spirits but
attributed it to the magnificent present he had given her that
morning of a diamond ring and an exquisite pearl necklace.
He bustled her off to the party that night and congratulated
himself on the certainty of his triumph over an aspiring youngster
who dared to set his will against his own.
When the festivities had begun, and the children were busy with
their fireworks, Sallie strolled along the winding walks of the big
lawn. She was chatting with Bob St. Clare about a young man they
both knew, and when they reached the corner furthest from the
house, under the shadows of a great magnolia with low overhanging
boughs she saw the figure of a man.
She smiled into Bob’s face, pressed his hand and said, “Now, Bob
you’ve done all a good friend could do. Go back. I don’t need you.”
And Bob answered with a smile and left her. In a moment Gaston
was by her side with both her hands in his kissing them tenderly.
“Didn’t I surprise you, dear?” he softly asked.
“No. Bob denied you were here, but I knew it was a story. I was
sure you would never leave without seeing me. You couldn’t, could
you?”
“Not after what I saw in your eyes last night!” He whispered.
“It seems a century since I’ve heard your voice,” she said wistfully.
“God alone knows what I have suffered, and I am growing weary of
it.”
“Do you think I have been treated fairly?” he asked.
“No, I do not”
“Then you will write to me?”
“Yes. I will not starve my heart any longer.” And she pressed his
hand.
“You have made the world glorious again! When will you marry
me, Sallie?” he bent his face close to her, and for an answer she
tenderly kissed him.
They stood in silence a moment with clasped hands, and then she
said slowly, “You didn’t want your freedom did you, dear? That’s the
third kiss, isn’t it? I wonder if kissing will be always as sweet! But
you asked me when we can marry? I can’t tell now. I can do nothing
to shock Mama. She seems to draw closer and closer to me every
day. And now that I have determined no power shall separate us, it
seems more and more necessary that I shall win Papa’s consent. He
loves me dearly. I feel that I must have his blessing on our lives.
Give me time. I hope to win him.”
“And you will never let another week pass without writing to me?”
“Never. Send my letters to Bob. He loves you better than he ever
thought he loved me. He will give them to me on Sundays at church,
and when he calls.”
For two hours the kindly mantle of the magnolia sheltered them
while they told the old sweet story over and over again. And
somehow that night it seemed to them sweeter each time it was
told.
 CHAPTER IV—THE UNSPOKEN
TERROR

W
HEN Gaston reached Hambright the following day, and
whispered to his mother the good news, he hastened to tell
his friend Tom Camp. The young man’s heart warmed
toward the white-haired old soldier in this hour of his victory. With
sparkling eyes, he told Tom of his stormy scene with the General, of
its curious ending, and the hours he spent in heaven beneath the
limbs of an old magnolia.
 Tom listened with rapture. “Ah, didn’t I tell you, if you hung on
you’d get her by-and-by? So you bearded the General in his den did
you? I ’ll bet his eyes blazed when he seed you! He’s got an awful
temper when you rile him. You ought to a seed him one day when
our brigade was ordered into a charge where three concealed
batteries was cross firin’ and men was failin’ like wheat under the
knife. Geeminy but didn’t he cuss! He wouldn’t take the order fust
from the orderly, and sent to know if the Major-General meant it. I
tell you us fellers that was layin’ there in the grass listenin’ to them
bullets singin’ thought he was the finest cusser that ever ripped an
oath.