GASTON awoke next morning at half past ten o’clock with a dull headache, and a sense of hopeless depression. His anger had cooled and left him the pitiful consciousness of his loss. He slowly and mechanically dressed.

When he buttoned his coat he felt something hard press against his heart. It was the ring. He sat down on his bed and drew it from his pocket. To his surprise he found coiled inside it and tied by a tiny ribbon a ringlet of her hair. She had taken off the ring in her mother’s presence and promised her to register and mail it in Atlanta. She had bound this little piece of herself with it. He kissed it tenderly.

“My God, it is hard!” he groaned. And all the unshed tears that his eager interest in her presence and his kindling anger the night before had kept back now blinded him.

He did not notice his door softly open, nor know his mother was near until she placed her hand gently on his shoulder. He looked up at her face full of tender sympathy, and poured out to her his trouble in a torrent of hot rebellious words.

“What have I done to be treated like a dog in this way?” he ended with a voice trembling with protest.

“Perhaps you have offended the General in some way?”

“Impossible. I’ve been the soul of deference to him.”

“He’s a very proud man when his vanity is touched, are you sure of it?”

“As sure as that I live. No, some scoundrel has interfered between us and in some unaccountable way covered me with infamy in the General’s eyes.”

“But who could have done it?”

“I used my utmost power of persuasion to get it from her. But she would not tell me. I have been stabbed in the dark.”

“Whom do you suspect? She has a dozen suitors.”

“There’s only one man among them who is capable of it, Allan McLeod.”

“Nonsense, child. He is not one of her suitors,” she protested warmly.

“Then why does he hang around the house with such dogged persistence?”

“He has always had the run of the house. His father committed him to the General when he died on the battle field.”

Her face clouded, and then a great pity for his sorrow filled her heart. She stooped and kissed him.

“Come, Charlie, you must cheer up. If she loves you, it’s everything. You will win her.”

“But what rankles in my soul is that I have been treated like a dog. If he objected to my poverty that was as evident the first day he welcomed me to his house as the day he dictated to her his brutal message, refusing me a word. He welcomed me to his house, and gave Miss Sallie his approval of our love while I was there. There could be no mistake, for she told me so.”

“I can’t understand it,” she interrupted.

“Now he suddenly shows me the door and refuses to allow me to even ask an explanation. If he thinks he can settle my life for me in that simple manner, I’ll show him that I ’ll at least help in the settlement.”

“Good. I like to see your eyes flash that fire. Don’t forget your resolution. Your enemies are your best friends.” She said this with a ring of her old aristocratic pride. “Come,” she continued, “I’ve a nice warm breakfast saved for you. You don’t know how much good you have done me in my lonely life.”

“Dear Mother!” he whispered pressing her hand. After breakfast he went to his office and read over slowly the letters he had received from Sallie, kissed them one by one, tied them up and sent them to her mother. He took the ring out of his pocket and locked it in one of his drawers.

“I can’t work to-day. It’s no use trying!” he muttered looking out of his window. He locked his office and started down town with no purpose except in the walk to try to fight his pain. Instinctively he found his way to Tom Camp’s cottage.

“Tom, old boy, I’m in deep water. You’ve been there. I just want to feel your hand.”

Tom was clearing up his kitchen with one hand and holding the other tight over the wound near his spinal column. He had suffered untold agonies through the nigh............