WHEN Gaston arrived in Independence he went direct to St. Clare’s.

“Where the Dickens have you been, Gaston?”

“Jumping from Murphy to Manteo making love to hayseed statesmen.”

“What luck?”

“They’re all crazy. They swear they are going to have the United States establish a Sub-Treasury in Raleigh and issue Government script they can use as money on their pumpkins, or they are going to tear the nation to tatters and vote for a nigger for Governor if necessary!”

“Can’t you get into their fool heads that an alliance with the Republican party is the last way on earth for them to go about their Sub-Treasury schemes?”

“Can’t seem to do a thing with them. McLeod’s stuffed them full. I’m sick of it. I’ve a notion to let them go with the niggers and go to the devil. It’s growing on me that there must be another way out. I can’t get down in the dirt and prostitute my intellect and lie to these fools. We’ve got to get rid of the Negro.”

“A large job, old man.”

“Yes, it is, and thank God I’m done with it for a week. I’m going to heaven now for a few days. I ’ll see her in an hour. I rise on tireless wings!”

“Look out you don’t come down too suddenly. The earth may feel hard.”

“Bob, I’m going to risk it. I’m going to look fate squarely in the face and get my answer like a little man, for life or death.”

Mrs. Worth met Gaston and greeted him with warmest cordiality.

“We are charmed to welcome you to Oakwood again, Mr. Gaston.”

“I assure you, Mrs. Worth, I never saw a home so beautiful. I feel as though I am in paradise when I get here.”

“I hope to see more of you this time, I feel that I know you so much better since our talk at the Springs.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Worth.” He said this so simply and earnestly she could but feel his deep appreciation of her attitude of welcome.

“Sallie will be down in a minute.”

Gaston smiled in spite of himself.

“What are you laughing at?”

“I was just thinking how sweetly her name sounded on your lips.”

“Do you like these old-fashioned Southern names?”

“I think they are lovely.”

“Well, that’s my name too.”

Sallie suddenly stepped from the hall into the doorway.

“Now, Mama, there you are again carrying on with one of my beaux! I don’t know what I will do with you!”

Mrs. Worth actually blushed, sprang up and struck Sallie lightly on the arm with her fan exclaiming, “Oh! you sly thing, to stand out there and listen to what I said! Mr. Gaston I turn her over to you to punish her for such conduct.”

“Isn’t she a dear?” said Sallie when her mother was gone.

“I was charmed with her at the Springs, but the gracious way she made me feel at home this morning completely won my heart.”

“I can do anything with Mama. She’s the dearest mother that ever lived. She always seems to know intuitively my heart’s wish, and, if it’s best, give it to me, and if it’s not, she makes me cease to desire it. I wish I could manage Papa as easily.”

“I’m sure he idolises you, Miss Sallie.”

“He does, but when he lays the law down, that settles it. I can’t move him one inch.”

“That’s the way with forceful men, who do things in the world.”

“Well, I confess I like to have my own way sometimes. I wonder if you are like that?”

“I ’ll be frank with you. Somehow I never could be anything else if I tried. I don’t think a man of strong character will yield to every whim of a woman, whether wife or daughter.”

“I heard of a man the other day who whipped his wife,” she said in a far away tone of voice. “Come, my horse is ready, go with me for another ride to-day. I am going to take you across the river and show you a pretty drive over there.”

They were soon lost in the deep shadows of the stately pine forest that lay beyond the Catawba. The road was a cross-country narrow way that wound in and out around the big trees.

They jogged slowly along while he bathed his soul in the joy of her presence. Oh, to be alone and near her! There seemed to him a magic power in the touch of her dress as she sat in the little buggy so close by his side. For hours, again he lay at her feet and drank the wine of her beauty until his heart was drunk with love.

Once he opened his lips to tell her, and a great fear awed him into silence. He longed to pour out to her his passion, but feared her answer. He Had studied her every word and tone and look and hand-pressure since he had known her. He was sure she loved him. And yet he was not sure. She was so skilled in the science of self defence, so subtle a mistress of all the arts of polite society in which the soul’s deepest secrets are hid from the world, he was paralysed now as the moment drew near. He put it off another day and gave himself up to the pure delight of her face and form and voice and presence.

That evening when she entered the home her mother caught her hand and softly whispered, “Did he court you to-day, Sallie?”

She shook her head smilingly. “No, but I think he will to-morrow.”

St. Clare was sitting on his veranda awaiting Gaston’s return.

“What luck, old boy?” he eagerly asked.

“Couldn’t say a word. I ’ll do it to-morrow or die.”

“Shake hands partner. I’ve been there.”

“Bob, it’s a serious thing to run up against a little answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ that means life or death.”

“Feel like you’d rather live on hope a while, and let things drift, don’t you?”

“Exactly, I think I can understand for the first time in my life that awful look in a prisoner’s face on trial for his life, when he watches the lips of the foreman of the jury to catch the first letter of the verdict. I used to think that an interesting psychological study. By George, I feel I am his brother now.”

The next day was perfect. The warm life-giving sun of June was tempered by breezes that swept fresh and invigorating over the earth that had been drenched with showers in the night. The woods were ringing with the chorus of feathered throats chanting the old oratorio of life and love. Again Gaston and Sallie were jogging along the shady river road they had travelled on the first day she had taken him driving.

“Do you remember this road?” she asked.

“I ’ll never forget it. Along this road we hurried in the twilight to face your angry mother, and just one kiss smoothed her brow into a welcoming smile for me.”

“Well, I’m going to risk greater trouble to-day, and take you a mile or two further up the river to the old mill site at the rapids. It’s the most beautiful and romantic spot in the country. The river spreads out a quarter of a mile in width, and goes plunging and dashing down the rapids through thousands of projecting rocks, a mass of white foam as far as you can see. It’s full of tiny green islands with feras and rhododendron and wild grape vines, and their perfume sweetens the air for miles along the water. These little islands, some ten feet square, some an acre, are full of mocking-birds nesting there, though since the mills were burned during the war nobody has lived near. The songs of these birds seem tuned to the music of the river.”

“It must be a glimpse of fairy-land!” he exclaimed.

“I know you will be thrilled with its romantic beauty. It’s five miles from a house in any direction.”

Gaston was silent. He made a resolution in his soul that he would never leave that spot until he knew his fate. His heart began to thump now like a sledge-hammer. He looked down furtively at her and tried to imagine how she would look and what she would say when he should startle her first with some word of tender endearment or the sound of her name he had said over and over a thousand times in his heart, and aloud when alone, but never dared to use without its prefix.

She saw his abstraction and divined intuitively the current of emotions with which he was struggling, but pretended not to notice it. He tied the horse at the old mill, and they walked slowly down the bank of the river.

“That is my island,” she cried pointing out into the river. “That third one in the group running out from the point. We can step from one rock to another to it.”

It was indeed an entrancing spot. The island seemed all alone in the middle of the river when one was on it. It was not more than fifty feet wide and a hundred feet long, its length lying with the swift current. At the lower end of it a fine ash tree spread its dense shade, hanging far over the still waters that stood in smooth eddy at its roots. On the upper side of this tree lay a big boulder resting against its trunk and embedded in a mass of clean white sand the water had filtered and washed and thrown there on some spring flood.

She climbed on this rock, sat down, and leaned her bare head against its trunk.

“This is my throne,” she laughingly cried.



0300

He leaned against the rock and looked up at her with eyes through which the yearning, the hunger, the joy, and the fear of all life were quivering. What a picture she made under the dark cool shadows! Her dress was again of spotless white that seemed now to have been woven out of the foam of the river. Her throat was bare, her cheeks flushed, and her wavy hair the wind had blown loose into a hundred stray ringlets about her face and neck. Her lips were trembling with a smile at his speechless admiration.

“You seem to have been struck dumb,” she said. “Isn’t this glorious?”

“Beyond words, Miss Sallie. I didn’t know there was such a spot on the earth.”

“This is my favourite perch. Art and wealth could never make anything like this! I could come here and sit and dream............