Kate Beaumont

CHAPTER XVIII.

WHILE Frank waited for Mr. Beaumont, in order to ask him whether he might or might not propose marriage, he either walked up and down before Mrs. Armitage in absent-minded silence, or he talked altogether of Kate.

This behavior did not make him tiresome to the lady ; on the contrary, she found him incessantly agreeable and fascinating. A man who has donned the cross of love and set his adventurous face toward the holy city of marriage is to a woman one of the most interesting objects that she can set eyes on, even though he looks for his crown to some other queen of beauty. To her mind he is bound on the most important and noblest of pilgrimages : the question of his success or failure impassions her imagination and kindles her warmest sympathies ; she can hardly help wishing him good fortune, even though he is a stranger.

“ But I must weary you; Mrs. Armitage,” apologized Frank, not knowing the above-mentioned facts. “ I must seem terribly stupid to you.”

“No, indeed,” returned Nellie, innocently, and continued to prattle away about her sister, telling every minute more of the subject than she meant to tell, and revealing through sparkling eyes anti flushed cheeks her satisfaction with the state of things.

But this quarter of an hour of delightful expectation was a false portal, not opening to higher felicities. In place of Peyton Beaumont came his tropical henchman, Cato, riding up at the usual breakneck speed of darkies on horseback, rolling out of his saddle with the prompt agility of a kicked football, and holding forth a letter with the words, “ Powerful bad news, Miss Nellie.”

Mrs. Armitage read to herself and then read aloud the following note from her father: “Tell Kate — gently, you understand — that her grandfather is sick ; you might say quite sick. On the whole, you had better send her over here to take care of him. I may stay here overnight myself. Now don’t scare the child out of her senses. Just send her over here at once.”

“ You see,” said Nellie, looking up at Frank with something like a pout of disappointment at the postponement of the love business.

“ I see,” answered the young man, turning anxious and gloomy. “ I must come another time.”

He started soberly homewards ; then, after going a quarter of a mile, he had a bright thought and returned to escort Kate over to Kershaw’s ; but, although he thus secured a half-hour with her, he proffered no manner of courtship, knowing well that it was no time for it. Finally, after seeing Lawson and learning from the troubled man that the good old Colonel was dangerously ill, he once more turned his back on his queen of hearts, the love message still unspoken.

Reaching home, he met in the doorway his evil genius, and politely bowed to him without knowing him. This fateful stranger, this man who, without the slightest ill-will toward Frank, or the slightest acquaintance with him or his purposes, had come to cross his path and make him dire trouble, was in some points a creature of agreeable appearance, and in others little less than horrible. His blond complexion was very clear, his profile regular and almost Greek, his teeth singularly even and white, and his smile winning. But he was unusually bald ; his forehead was so monstrous as to be a deformity ; his eyes had the most horrible squint that ever a scared child stared at ; his expression was as cunning, unsympathizing, and pitiless as that of a raccoon or fox. His moderate stature was made to seem clumsily short by over-broad shoulders, thick limbs, and a projecting abdomen. It was difficult to guess his age, but he might have been about forty-five. . . .

The Judge was escorting this visitor to his carriage with an air of solemn politeness and suppressed dislike, such as an elephant might wear in bowing out a hyena.

“ I regret that you can’t at least stay to dinner, Mr. Choke,” he said, smiling all the way from his broad wrinkled forehead to his broad double chin.

“ As for the business in hand, you may rely upon me.”

“ I expect nothing less from your intelligence and noble ambition, Judge, replied Mr. Choke, with a smile so sweet that for a moment Frank failed to notice his squint.

Let us now go back an hour or so, and learn what was “ the business in hand.” Although this combination of beauty and the beast had come unexpectedly to the McAlister place, and had simply announced himself through Matthew as “ Mr. Choke of Washington,” the Judge had guessed at once what mighty wire-puller it was who waited in his parlor, and had thoughtfully stalked thither, snuffing the air for political traps and bails and perfidies. He, however, remembered his manners when he came face to face with his guest ; he uttered a greeting of honeyed civility which at once set on tap all Mr. Choke’s metheglin. Each of these remarkable men (two of the most remarkable men in our country, sir ! says Jefferson Brick) was by many degrees more polite than the other.

“ I am delighted to welcome you to South Carolina, sir,” said the Judge, with such a benevolent smile as Saint Peter might have on admitting a new saint into Paradise. “ I have long known the Hon. Mr. Choke by reputation. Let us hope that you are prepared to stay with me for some weeks at least.”

“ You are exceedingly courteous and hospitable,” replied Mr. Choke. “ You are even more courteous and hospitable than I expected to find you. The South, Judge McAlister, is the land of hospitality and of courtesy. It should be. Heaven has lavished abundance upon it. What a soil, what a climate, and what men ! ” looking up reverently at the McAlister’s lofty summit.

“ Even the water is a luxury.”

It must be observed that these two men flowered out thus in compliments from very different causes. The host blossomed because he had grown up in doing it, and because all the people whom he knew expected it; while the guest, an extremely business-like man by nature, was merely talking what he considered the fol-de-rol of the country.

“ We are unworthy of our gifts, and you do us too much honor, Mr. Choke,” chanted the Judge, when it came his turn in the responses. “ I beg pardon. Excuse me for having forgotten your proper title. Judge, I believe, is it not ? ”

“ No,” returned the visitor, beaming out a smile of humility which was pure flattery. “ I have not yet gained your eminence. I am merely an attorneyat-law, and of late a member of Congress. I have no claim to any address beyond plain Mister.”

Merely a member of Congress ! The Judge could not prevent the blue philanthropy of his eyes from turning a little green with envyThe title of “ M. C.” had been for more than a quarter of a century the mark of his ambition. To set those two letters to his name he had spent money, gushed eloquence, intrigued, entertained, flattered, bowed, grinned, lived, and all in vain. Ever since age had qualified him to run for that goal, the State party had been an overmatch for the Union party in his district, and it was always a Beaumont, or some other Calhounite, who had won the congressional race. At last, two years previous to this interview, he “had despaired of being called to save his country, had publicly announced his final withdrawal from politics, and declined a candidature. But the disappointment rankled in his soul, and he still cherished wild dreams of success. His desire and hope were increased by his contempt and dislike for the men who had beaten him. In his opinion the Hon. Peyton Beaumont was nothing but a well-descended blockhead and rowdy. It was abominable that a man who had the rhetoric of a termagant and the logic of a school-boy should represent year after year a district which contained within its bounds the copious, ornate, argumentative, and learned Judge McAlister. A man who hoarsely denounced a spade as a spade had surely no claims compared with a man who blandly reproved it for being an agricultural implement. Moreover, Beaumont made few speeches in Congress, and those few excited bitter opposition. The Judge imagined himself as orating amid the echoes of the Hall of Representatives with such persuasiveness and suavity as to draw even the Senate around him, and to beguile Sumner himself into moderation. Yet he was not elected, and his inferiors were. It was horrible ; like the belted knight who was overcome by the peasant, he cried, “Bitter, bitter!” and, in his revolt at such outrage, he could not believe that Heaven would be forever unjust.

Mr. Choke was an experienced detective of feeling. Looking modestly at the floor with his oblique eye, but studying his host’s face steadily with his direct one, he perceived that he had won the game. The Judge was bitterly envious ; the Judge furiously desired to go to Congress ; the Judge could be made use of. Suddenly dropping the conversational roses and lilies which he had waved hitherto, Choke entered upon business.

“ Judge, we want you alongside of us,” he said with an abruptness which wore the charm of sincerity. “ We need just such men as you are in Congress. We need them terribly.”

It was precisely McAlister’s opinion, and he could not help letting his eyes look it, although he waved his hand disclaimingly.

“ Now don’t object,” begged Mr. Choke. “ I must be earnest, as I have been blunt, I must beg you to consider this matter seriously. I came here for that purpose ; came here solely and expressly for that; hence my abruptness. Yes, I came here to beg you to take your proper place in the Congress of the United States.”

“ O, it I only could ! ” was the wish of the Judge’s heart. But he controlled himself, wore his dignity as carefully as his wig, and pursed his mouth with the air of a Cincinnatus who does not know whether he will or will not save an ungrateful country.

“You are perhaps not aware, Mr. Choke, that I have withdrawn definitely from public life,” he said, stroking his chin. This chin, we must repeat, was on a magnificent scale; it was even broader than the capacious forehead which towered above it ; it gave its owner’s face the proportions of an Egyptian gateway. It had development forward, as well as breadth of beam. It was one of those chins which proudly front noses. From any point of view it was a great chin. There was plenty of room about it for rubbing, and the Judge now went over it pretty thoroughly, stirring it up as if it contained his spare brains.

“ We understand that Beaumont is going to run again for the House,” continued Mr. Choke, who did not believe that any old politician ever withdrew definitively from public life, and had no time to waste upon pretences to that effect. “ We don’t want him there. He is a marplot. He is a barking bulldog who brings out other bulldogs. Every word that he utters loses us votes at the North. If he and such as he continue to come to Congress and keep up their stupid howling there, the party will be ruined, and that shortly.”

The great, calm, and bland Judge could scarcely help frowning. It did not please him to observe that Mr. Choke spoke only of the party. In connection with these matters the leader of the moderates of Hartland district always said, “ The country ! ”

“We must get rid of these mules who are kicking the organization to pieces,” continued the straightforward and practical Choke. “That is the object of my present tour. If we can bring into Congress twenty Southerners who will talk moderation, we are saved. It is all important to make a break in this phalanx of fire-eaters. It is almost equally important that the break should be made here in South Carolina. Divide the voice of this State, and you split disunion everywhere. Am I right ? ” inquired the Hon. Choke, perceiving that it was time to flatter the Judge, and stopping his speech to smile his sweetest.

“ I entirely coincide with you,” bowed McAlister, who, anti-Calhounite as he was, believed that South Carolina marched at the head of the nations, and that what she did not do would be left undone. He was a little out of breath, by the way, with following after the speaker. He was not accustomed to such rapid argumentation and application. It was his custom to go over a subject with long chains of reasoning, staking them out deliberately, and often stopping to look back on them with satisfaction. Mr. Choke was rather too fast for him ; had the air of hurrying him along by the collar ; might be said to hustle him considerably. The Judge did not quite like it, and yet it was obviously his interest to listen and approve ; it was clear that something good was coming his way.

“Well, we look to you,” pursued Mr. Choke, with that bluntness of his which was so startling, and yet so flattering because confidential, — “we look to you to beat Beaumont.”

The Judge was like a woman on a sled drawn over smooth ice by a rapid skater. Unable to stop himself, he must hum swiftly along the glib surface, even though a breathing - hole should yawn visibly ahead. He had an instantaneous perception that running against Beaumont would reopen the family feud, and spoil Frank’s chances for marrying the presumptive heiress of the Kershaw estate, besides perhaps leading to new duellings and rencontres. But how could he check his lifelong mania for going to Congress, while this strong and speedy Choke was tugging at the cords of it ? The sagest and solidest of men have their weak and toppling moments. Unable to reflect in a manner worthy of himself, and incapable of restraining his ambition until Frank should have made sure of the Kershaw succession, he sprawled eagerly at full length toward the House of Representatives, and agreed to run against Beaumont.

“If you need help, you shall have it,” instantly promised Choke, anxious to seal the bargain. “Our committee will furnish you with the sinews of war. The organization will go deep into its pockets to secure the presence of such a man as Judge McAlister in Congress. You can draw upon us for five thousand dollars. Do you think that will do it ? ”

“I should think it highly probable,” bowed the Judge, virtuously astounded at the hugeness of the bribe, and unable to imagine how he could use it all.

“My best wishes,” said Mr. Choke, taking off a very modest glass of the McAlister sherry. “And now allow me to wish you good morning.”

“But, God bless my soul ! you must stay to dinner,” exclaimed the Judge, breathless with this haste.

“ A thousand thanks. But I really haven’t the time. I must gallop over to Newberry, arrange matters with Jackson there, and get on to Spartanburg by the evening train. A thousand thanks for your lavish hospitality. Let us hear from you. Good morning.”

And Mr. Choke bustled, smiled, and squinted his way out of the McAlister mansion, leaving its master thoroughly astounded at the unceremoniousness and speed of “these Northerners.”

But the chief of the Hartland conservatives was soon himself again. By dint of fingering that talisman, his broad chin, he rubbed out his emotions and restored his judgment. Once more in a reasoning, independent frame of mind, he coolly queried whether he should keep his promise to Mr. Choke, or break it for some patriotic reason. He had very little difficulty in deciding that he would hold fast to it. There, to be sure, was the family feud, certain to “mount” him if he ran for Congress ; but it was a burden which lifelong habit had made easy to his shoulders. There, too, was the strong probability that his candidature might upset Frank’s dish of cream. But if he should once beat the Beaumonts, if he should once show them that he was a rival to be feared, would they not be all the more likely to agree to an alliance, not only matrimonial, but political ? As for the boy’s heart, the Judge did not think of it. It was so long since he had been conscious of any such organ, that he had forgotten its existence. On the whole, he would keep his promise ; on the whole, his word as a gentleman was engaged; especially as revenge and power and fame are sweet. But there should be discretion shown in the matter; until his trap was fairly set, nobody should know of it, excepting, of course, his trusted and necessary confederates ; from the sight of even his own family he would hide it, as he knew how to hide things. Meanwhile, before the Beaumonts could so much as suspect what he was about, his son might lay an irrevocable hand on the heart of their heiress.

“ Frank,” he said next morning, “you ought to ride over to Kershaw’s and inquire about the Colonel. If Miss Beaumont is still there, present her with my kindest regards and sympathies, and tell her I am distressed to hear of her grandfather’s illness. Exceedingly distressed, you know ! ” emphasized the Judge, his brow wrinkling with an agony that stirred his wig.

So Frank rode over to Kershaw’s, obtained an interview with Miss Beaumont, and spoke the speech which his father had dictated, but not the one which his father had intended. How could a sensitive, generous young fellow spring love-traps upon the woman whom he worshipped, while she was trembling for the life of her adored grandfather ? This fruitless riding to and fro went on until the Judge became impatient and very anxious. Of the probability of Kershaw’s death and the certainty that his estate would go to Kate Beaumont he talked repeatedly to his wife, hoping that she would be inspired to repeat these things to Frank, and that the boy would be led thereby to make haste in his wooing. At times, when it occurred to him that he might be ruining his son’s chances of success and happiness, he was so far conscience-stricken and remorseful as to wrinkle his forehead and go about the house muttering. In those days guileless Mrs. McAlister could not imagine what it was that made her usually calm and bland husband nervous and waspish.

Frank, too, was in sore trouble ; he wore a troubled brow, and grew thin. He afflicted himself with imaginations of Kershaw dying and of Kate weeping by the bedside. In more selfish moments he cringed at the thought that funereal robes would prevent him for weeks or months from telling the girl what was in his heart ! The longer the great declaration was put off, the more he feared lest it should be ill received. There were whole days in which he felt as if he were already a rejected lover. Even Mrs. Armitage could not keep up his spirits, although she was by this time keenly and obviously interested in his success, and talked to him daily in a very sweet way about her sister.

At last, unable to bear his suspense longer, he resolved that he would at least utter his gentle message to the father, trusting that some blessed chance would waft it on to the daughter. Anxiety and doubt walked with him to the interview ; and his heart was not lightened by the countenance with which he was received. Peyton Beaumont, always sufficiently awful to look upon, seemed to be in his grimmest mood that morning. His very raiment betokened a squally temper. The neatness of attire which marked him when Kate was at home and saw daily to his adornment had given way to a bodeful frowsiness. He had dressed himself in a greasy old brown coat and frayed trousers, as if in preparation for a rough and tumble. Apparently he had slept badly ; his eyes w'ere watery and bloodshot, perhaps with brandy; his voice, as he said good morning, was a hoarse, sullen mutter.

“ Mr. Beaumont, I have come to ask a great favor,” began Frank, with that abruptness which perhaps characterizes modest men on such occasions.

“ I ask your permission, sir, to offer myself to your daughter.”

Beaumont was certainly in a very unwholesome humor. His eyes had none of the kindness which frequently if not usually beamed from their sombre depths when he greeted the savior of his favorite child. Even at the sound of that tremulous prayer of love they did not light up with the mercy or at least sympathy which such an orison may rightfully claim. They emitted an abstracted, suspicious, sulky stare, much like that of a dog who is in the brooding fit of hydrophobia.

“ I don’t understand this at all,” he replied, deliberately and coldly. “ Your father and you — between you — I don’t understand it, I don’t, by heavens ! It looks as though I was being made a fool of,” he added, in a louder and angrier tone, his mind reverting to McAlister perfidies of other days.

“ I beg your pardon, — I don’t comprehend,” commenced Frank, utterly confused and dismayed. “ I should hope that — ”

“ Is n’t your father preparing to run against me for Congress ? ” interrupted Beaumont, his black, blood - streaked orbs lighting up to a glare.

“ I don’t believe it! ” was the amazed and indignant response.

The elder man stared at the younger for what seemed to the latter a full minute.

“ Mr. Beaumont, do you suppose I am deceiving you ?” demanded Prank, his face coloring high at the ugly suspicion.

After gazing a moment longer Beaumont slowly answered, “No — I don’t, — no, by Jove! But,” he presently added, his wrath boiling up again, “ I think your father is humbugging us both. I think, by heavens — ” He had been about to say something very hard of the elder McAlister’s character as to duplicity ; but, looking in the frank, manly, anxious face of this younger McAlister, his heart softened a little ; he remembered how Kate had been saved from death, and he fell silent.

“ It is useless now to ask an answer to my request,” resumed Frank, after a pause.

“ Yes,” said Beaumont. “ Things don’t stand well enough between our families. What you propose would only make worse trouble.”

“ I will go home and inquire into what you allege against my father,” continued the young man, with a sad dignity. “ Meantime, I beg you to suspend your judgment. Good morning, sir.”

He held out his hand. Beaumont took it with hesitation, and then shook it with fervor.

“ By heavens, I don’t know but I’m a brute,” he said. “ If I’ve hurt your feelings — and of course I have hurt them — I beg your pardon ; I do, by heavens. As for what you propose — well, wait. For God’s sake, wait. Good morning.”

More miserable than he had ever been in his life before, Frank rode home to call his father to an account.

CHAPTER XIX.

WORDS are a feeble, undisciplined rabble, able to perform little true and efficient service. Even the imagination is an uncertain general who gets no full obedience out of wretched soldiers and sees not how to marshal them so that they may do their best duty. It seems at times as if there were nothing real and potent about the human being, except the passion which he can feel and which he cannot describe.

Here is a man full of love, — full of the noblest and far the strongest of all passions, and this passion so intensified by anxiety and disappointment that it is near akin to frenzy, — riding furiously homeward to encounter his father with a face of white anger, and to ask hoarsely, Is it true that you have made me wretched for life ? So far as feeling is concerned, the figure is one of high tragedy. The youth is mad enough to break his neck without recking, mad enough to commit a crime without being half conscious of it. He is so possessed by one imperious desire, that he cannot take rational account of the desires of others. Flying over the slopes between the Beaumont house and his home, he is impatience and haste personified. He comes in upon his father with the air of an avenger of blood. Well, have we described him in such a way that he can be seen and comprehended ? Probably not.

“ Is it true, sir, that you are running for Congress?” were his first words.

The Judge dropped back in his large office-chair, and stared over his spectacles at this questioning, this almost menacing apparition. It was the first time in his life that he had been frightened by one of his own children. For a moment he was too much discomposed to speak. It was really a strange thing to see this large, sagacious, cunning face, usually so calm and confident and full of speculation, reduced to such a state of paralysis.

“ Is it true, sir ?” repeated the young man, resting his tremulous hands on the back of a chair and sending his bold blue eyes into his father’s sly gray ones.

“ Why, good heavens, Frank.” stammered the Judge, “what is all this?”

Frank said nothing, but his face repeated his question ; it demanded a plain answer.

“ Why, the fact is, Frank,” confessed the Judge, with a smile of almost humble deprecation, “ that I have been badgered, yes, I may say fairly badgered, into trying my luck again.”

Uttering a groan, or rather a smothered howl of anger and pain, the young man sat down hastily, his head swimming.

“ But good heavens, Frank, is there anything so extraordinary in it?” asked the father.

“ Mr. Beaumont charged you with it,” said Frank, dropping his face into his hands. “ I did n’t believe it.”

“ Charged me with it ! ” repeated the Judge. “ Is it a crime, then?” he demanded, feeling somehow that it was one, yet trying to be indignant.

“ It reopens the old account of blood,” the youth muttered without looking up.

“ Not at all. I don’t see it,” declared the Judge, glad to find a point on which he could argue, and grasping at it.

‘‘It breaks my heart,” were the next words, uttered in a whisper.

All notion of an argument dropped out of the Judge’s head. A world suddenly opened before him in which no ratiocination was possible. He became aware of the presence of emotions which were as mighty as afreets and would not listen to logic. He was like a man who has denied the existence of devils, and all at once perceives that they are entering into him and taking possession. He was so startlingly and powerfully shaken by feelings without and feelings within, that for the first time in many years his healthy blood withdrew from his face. His cheeks (usually of a redoak complexion) flecked with ash color, he sat in silence watching his silent son.

For some seconds Frank did not look up ; and if he had raised his eyes, he would not have seen his father; he was gazing at Kate Beaumont and bidding her farewell.

“That is all,” he broke out at last, rising like a denunciatory spectre and speaking with startling loudness and abruptness, so little was his voice under command. “ I have nothing more to say, sir.”

“ See here, Frank,”called the Judge, as the young man strode to the door.

“ I beg your pardon,” muttered Frank, just turning his discomposed face over his shoulder. “ I can’t speak of it now.”

He was gone. The Judge looked at the closed door for a minute as if expecting to see it reopen and his son reappear. Slowly his eyes dropped, his ponderous chin sank upon his deep chest, and he slipped into perplexities of thought. For a long time he emitted no sound, except a regular and forcible expulsion of breath through his hairy nostrils, which was a habit of his when engaged in earnest meditation. At last he said in a loud whisper, “ Good heavens ! He really likes her. Loves her.”

Then he tried to remember his way back thirty-five years and pick up something which would enable him to understand clearly what it was to be in love. In the midst of this journey he found himself on a platform before a crowd of his fellow-citizens, explaining to them his very eminent fitness for a seat in Congress. Next, after another plunge toward the lang-syne of affection, he became aware of the offensive propinquity of Peyton Beaumont, and gave him just for once a plain piece of his McAlister mind, calling him an unreasonable old savage, a selfish, greedy brute, etc.

“Ah!” gasped the Judge, angrily, recurring to his loud whisper. “ Must I quit running for Congress because he demands it ? What business has he to domineer over me in this fashion ? By the heavens above me, I will run and I ’ll beat him. I ’ll be master for once ; I ’ll bring him down ; I ’ll smash him. Then we ’ll see whether he won’t beckon my son back. I ’ll make him glad to accept my son. I ’ll make him jump to get him.”

Of course he was greatly pleased with this idea. It laid hands on the goal of the Capitol, and humiliated the life-long enemy, and secured the Kershaw estate, and made Frank happy. Perhaps no man, however judicialminded by nature or habit, is entirely lucid on the subject of his ruling passion. The Judge felt almost sure of winning his seat in the next Congress, and quite sure that that success would make all other successes easy. After some further loud breathing, he resumed his whispering.

“ I can help Frank. I can do better for him than he can do for himself.

If I give up, and he gets the girl by that means, he will be a slave to the Beaumonts for life. But let me once lay her father on his back, and he can make his own terms. Beaumont will be glad to come to terms with a family that can beat him. Beaumont will jump at the marriage. The girl will jump at it. Frank will have reason to thank me.”

Then came more expulsions of breath, and then calmness in that mighty breast. The Judge was tranquil ; he had reasoned the matter clean out; he had reached a decision.

Somewhat of these meditations he revealed to Frank at their next interview, taking care, of course, to deal in delicate hints, so as not to hurt the boy’s feelings.

“ I have no right to stand in your way, sir,” was the cold, hopeless reply.

“Why no, of course not,” was the feeling of Judge McAlister, although he failed to say it. It did not seem to him, now that he had had time to reflect upon the matter, that any human being, not even his favorite son, had a right to stand in his way, especially when that way led to the House of Representatives. At the same time he repeated to himself that neither would he stand in the boy’s road, but, on the contrary, would help him mightily.

“ It will be all right, Frank,” he declared blandly and cheerfully, meanwhile looking at the ceiling so as not to see the youngster’s gloomy face. “ You will find that your father is right” Thus it was that the Judge’s candidature went on, and that as a consequence the old feud blazed out volcanically. Any one who could have studied the two families at this time would have judged that they hated each other all the more because they had stricken hands for a few weeks. The Beaumonts raved against McAlister duplicity, and the McAlisters against Beaumont imperiousness and insolence. The Hon. Peyton breathed nothing but brandy and gunpowder from ten minutes after he woke up to two hours or so after he went to sleep. His boys, even to the fat and philosophic Poinsett, oiled their duelling-pistols, wore revolvers under their shooting-jackets, refreshed their memories as to the code of honor, and held themselves ready to fight at a whistle. The McAlisters, a less aggressive and fiery people, but abundantly capable of the “ defensive with offensive returns,” made similar preparations. The women of the two houses were blandly but firmly warned by their men that they must not call on each other. There were no advocates of peace, at least none in a state to intervene. The good gray head of Kershaw was tossing on a sick-pillow ; and the pure, sweet face of Kate was always hovering near it, her soul so absorbed by his peril that she scarcely heard of other troubles. Nellie Armitage, bewildered by the sudden reflux of the traditional hate, and believing with her father that Judge McAlister had shown himself the most punic of men, had not a word to say for her sister or her sister’s lover. In the rival house the women were silent, obedient to their male folk, as was their custom. Frank, not at liberty to speak against his father, not at liberty to plead the cause of a heart which nobody seemed to care for, was voiceless, helpless, and miserable. He wore no revolvers ; he wanted to be shot at sight.

The village of Hartland was charmed with this fresh eruption of its venerated volcano. Men and women and boys were in as delightful an excitement over it as ever were so many physicists over a convulsion of nature. There was no end to the discussions and the predictions and the bettings. But we cannot listen to all these crowding talkers ; we must select some little knot which shall sufficiently chorus to us public opinion ; and perhaps we cannot do better than incline our ears to our oldtime acquaintance, Wilkins and Duffy. Every evening, after trading hours were over, these two friendly rivals in merchandise had a “caucus,” sometimes in the “store ” of one and sometimes in that of the other, and discussed the Beaumont-McAlister imbroglio with the aid of other village notables. These little reunions were very interesting to Wilkins, and at the same time very provoking. His ancient crony was much in liquor at this period of Hartland’s history. The excitement which filled the district had been too much for Duffy. Duffy had taken to drink to quiet his nervousness, and his head as we remember, being uncommonly weak, the remedy had increased the disease. He rushed into the imprudence of three “horns” a day, and consequently he was more or less flighty from morning to night.

“ I tell you, Wilkins, it’s all right,” he affirmed in the course of one of these parliaments. “ All come out right in the end. Make up an’ marry yet. Bet you a hat they will. Bet you a hat, Wilkins. Any kind of a hat. Black hat or white. Broad brim or narrow brim. Bell crown or stovepipe. Bet you a hat, Wilkins.”

“ Now don’t be a d-a-a-m fool !” implored Wilkins, for perhaps the tenth time that evening. “ I don’t want to win your hat. I don’t want your bet. Just shut up about your hat and listen to reason.”

They were in the little room in rear of Duffy’s “store”; the room where he kept his double - barrelled shot-gun and revolver ; the room where he slept. It was nearly midnight; buying and selling were long since over ; several of the village gossips had been in for an hour ; there had been much talking and some drinking. General Johnson, a little, thin, palefaced, gray-headed man, attired in a black dress-coat, black satin vest, and black trousers frayed around the heels, stood with his back to the Franklin stove, his hands behind him, his coattails parted, apparently under the impression that he was warming himself, although there was no fire and the weather was stifling. Colonel Jacocks, a plethoric young lawyer with a goodnatured flabby face and a moist laughing eye, sat on Duffy’s bed, his fat thighs spreading wide and his fat hands in his pockets. Major Jobson (the partner of Jacocks), a slender, very dark and sallow young man, with piercing black eyes and an eager martial expression, marched up and down the room like a sentinel, striking the floor with a thick black cane, the handle of which was evidently loaded. Duffy, very soggy with his last little drink, was astride of a chair, holding on by the back and staring argumentatively at Wilkins. Wilkins, his leathery and humorous face much more in earnest than usual, was gesturing at Duffy.

All these men, excepting the prudent and strong-headed Wilkins, were solemnly and genteelly the worse for liquor. Jacocks, notwithstanding that he sat there so quietly, was to that extent elevated that he had insisted on saying grace over the last “drinks around,” taking off his broad-brimmed hat and raising his fat hand for the purpose. General Johnson had been so far from seeing any impropriety in the act, that he had reverently bowed his head and dropped a tear upon the floor, muttering something about “pious parents.” But drunk as the gentlemen were, they could remember that they were gentlemen and keep up a fair imitation of sobriety. Even the jolly Jacocks. although he had fallen from his religious exaltation into a spirit of gayety, was only blandly merry.

“Go on, Duffy,” he said, winking at the fierce Jobson. “No man who can sit astride of a rocking-chair can be beaten in an argument. Hold fast by your opinion. Only don t bet hats ; bet drinks for the crowd. The crowd will stand by you.”

“ I will,” responded Duffy, with obvious thickness of speech, — speech as broad as it was long. “ I ’ll bet drinks for the crowd, an’ I ’ll bet hats for the crowd. I say those two families ’ll make it up yet; shake han’s all roun’ an’ make’t up; make ’t up an’ marry. Bet you those two families ’ll make’t up. Bet you they will. Bet you drinks for the crowd. Bet you hats for the crowd. Bet you they ’ll make’t up. Bet you they will.”

“ O just hear him now ! ” exclaimed Wilkins, driven to desperation by such persistent unreason. Then walking up to General Johnson, he whispered confidentially, “ That’s the way he always is, if he takes anything. Only had one horn since supper, and here he is drunker than you or I would be on a quart. And those two fellows are putting him up to make a fool of himself. I don’t call it the square thing.”

“ Allow me, Mr. Duffy,” interposed the General, thus incited to remonstrate. “ And you, my dear Colonel Jacocks, excuse me for disagreeing. Knowing as I do the characters of these two families, and having been intimately familiar with them from my youth up, I venture to say that I unhappily see no reason to believe that there can be any lasting amity between them, especially in view of the political differences which have lately arisen, or rather which have always smouldered beneath their intercourse. My impression is, and I cannot tell you how much I regret to insist upon it, that the Beaumonts and McAlisters, incited by a family history without parallel in the history of the world, are destined to remain enemies for many years to come, until circumstances, more potent than have yet been developed, shall arise to soothe the passions which boil betwixt them, and lead them irresistibly into one common bond of friendship cemented by interest and new methods of thought and feeling.”

General Johnson had a disputed reputation as an orator. He could talk in a diffuse, inconclusive, incomprehensible manner for hours together. His admirers, among whom was young Jobson, gave him credit for “flights of eloquence ” ; these flights being the passages in which he took leave of intelligibility altogether. On the present occasion, as the reader must have observed, he came very near a flight. Jobson looked at him with ebony eyes of intense admiration, glanced about the company to call attention, and tapped his cane smartly on the floor. But Duffy was neither entranced nor convinced nor even interested. He had simply his own ideas about the subject in hand, and he was bent solely on uttering them.

“That’s so,” he declared, just as if the General had agreed with him. “Always told you fellahs they’d come together. Told you two so months ago. Told you they ’d marry an’ put an’ end to the fight. You know it, Bill Wilkins. Told you so on board the Mersey. That’s what I said. I said they’d marry an’ put an end to the fight. Don’t ye mind how I said so ? ”

“ O —blast it ! ” groaned Wilkins.

“ Well, blast it, if you want to. But don’t ye ’member it ? Don’t ye ’member I said so ? ”

“ Yes, I know you said so. But they have n’t done it. That’s the point. They have n’t done it.”

“ But they ’re goin’ to,” persisted the infatuated Duffy. “ Bet you hats for the crowd. Bet you they ’ll make it up an’ marry. That’s what I bet on. Bet you they will.”

“ O thunder ! ” responded Wilkins, driven to wrath. “ Well, you may lose your hats, if you will. Yes, I ’ll bet five hats with you. Time, one year from to-night.”

“ And drinks for the crowd,” amended Jacocks.

“ Yes, drinks for the crowd,” agreed Wilkins.

“ And now, Duffy, tell us about Hutch Holland’s store,” grinned Jacocks.

“ Took up posish at the corner,” commenced Duffy, with a muddy idea that there was humor in the repetition of the old story, although unaware that the joke pointed at himself.

“ O, stop,” implored Wilkins. “ If you go over that confounded bosh again, I ’ll quit.”

“ But seriously, gentlemen,” interrupted Major Jobson, perceiving that his favorite orator and great man, General Johnson, did not enjoy this trifling,—“ seriously, gentlemen, I believe that this feud between the Beaumonts and McAlisters is fuller of earthquake throes than in the times of old. I believe that we shall shortly behold tragedies which will make even sturdy old Hartland recoil with horror. I believe that before the election is over blood will flow in torrents.”

“ O, not torrents,” objected Jacocks, who accused his partner of a tendency to Irish oratory and habitually laughed at him about it. “ Say drops.”

“ Well, drops then,” responded Jobson, with a fierce roll of his great blazing black eyes. “ But drops from the heart, gentlemen. Drops of lifeblood.”

“ Meetings are sure,” declared General Johnson, thinking how easily he had got into a number of meetings during his life, and feeling not unwilling to assist at some more.

“ O, hang it! I hope not,” groaned the humane and pacific Wilkins. It must be understood, by the way, that had not General Johnson been a rather seedy old grandee, not given to paying his bills, and much addicted to accepting treats, Wilkins would not have been so free and easy with him. To a Peyton Beaumont or a Donald McAlister this modest and sensible storekeeper would have been far more reverent.

“ Your feelings, sir, on this subject honor you, and honor our whole species,” melodiously began the frayed and threadbare General. “ But, sir, you will pardon me, I hope, for suggesting — ” He was interrupted by the sound of unsteady steps in the darkness of the long outer room. Southerners, when not overexcited by liquor or anger, are fastidious about giving offence ; they are more prudent than non-duelling peoples as to letting their opinions reach the wrong ears. The General stopped talking, assumed a diplomatically bland expression of countenance, and waited for the unknown to show himself. His caution was well timed, for the visitor was Tom Beaumont.

“ Good evening, gentlemen,” said the youngster, courteously, although he was clearly in liquor. “ Thought I should find somebody hanging up here. We wo-n’t go ho-me till morn-ing.”

“ Duffy is in for a night of it,” whispered Major Jobson to Wilkins. “ I shall vamos.”

“ I must see Duffy out,” the faithful Wilkins muttered in reply. “ If I don’t keep watch over him, he ’ll say some blasted stupid thing, and then Beaumont ’ll mount him.”

Meantime Tom advanced to a couple of whiskey-bottles which stood on the stove, found a gill or so of liquor in the bottom of one of them, poured it out and drank it pure. He was as confident and superior as if he belonged to a higher scale in creation than these other men. He even seemed to patronize General Johnson, reverend with eloquence and honors, and seedy with noble povery. Moreover, the respect which he demanded was accorded to him. There was a silence about him as of courtiers. To Wilkins and all the others he represented a great name, the name of a long-descended and predominant family, the name of the Beaumonts. They were not humiliated, but they were reverent; he was not insolent, but he was confident. There was a sort of calm sublimity in the young toper, notwithstanding his thick utterance and ridiculous reeling.

“ We wo-n’t go ho-me till morn-ing,” sang Tom. “ Who says he will ? Duffy, more whiskey. I treat. Here’s the cash. Roll in the whiskey. None of that, Wilkins,” plunging at the door to prevent the exit of the person addressed. “ Over my body, Wilkins.”

“ Somebody in the store,” returned Wilkins, determined to make his escape, if it could be done peaceably.

“ Bring him in,” laughed Tom, and flung the door wide open.

To the horror of Wilkins the light from the back room disclosed the lofty figure of Frank McAlister, who had entered for the purpose of buying some small matter, and without a suspicion that he should stumble upon a Beaumont.

“Ah!” shouted crazy Tom. “There’s the tall fellow. I ’ll take him down a story. I ’ll razee him.”

Whiskey, the family feud, the pugnacious instinct of his race, made him forget that he owed this man lifelong gratitude. He had not an idea in his buzzing head but the sole stupid idea of rushing to the combat.

“ For God’s sake, get out of this,” whispered Wilkins, springing forward and pushing Frank toward the door. “ He’s as crazy as a loon. Get out of this, if you don’t want mischief.”

Our gentle giant certainly did not want mischief with one of Kate’s brothers ; but iu his surprise and indignation he stood his ground, softly putting Wilkins aside.

The next instant the long room rang with the report of Tom’s pistol, whether fired by accident or intention no one could afterwards tell, not even the lunatic young roister himself.

CHAPTER XX.

IF Tom fired intentionally, then it must be that Frank looked to him about ten feet high, for the ball went a yard or two over the head of the latter, entering the wall only a little below the ceiling.

Wilkins took the hint and dodged into some invisible nook of safety. He was a cool, brave man, and he was pretty well accustomed to this sort of thing, but he had a rational dislike to being shot for some one else. General Johnson, that bland, yet heroic habitui of duelling-grounds, advanced speechifying through the half-darkness, but fell over a pile of ropes and cords with his hands in his pockets, and lay for some seconds helpless. The somnolent Jacocks did not stir from his seat on Duffy’s bed ; and Duffy, smiling straight whiskeys, remained astride of his rocking-chair. The martial-eyed Jobson hastily pushed the door to with his loaded cane, and then intrenched himself behind the projecting fireplace, remarking, “ This is cursed ugly.”

The hereditary enemies had a free field to themselves for a fight in the dark.

“ Where are you ? ” shouted Tom, so completely bewildered by drink and the obscurity that he turned his back upon the foe and fired a couple of barrels into Duffy’s dry-goods. Frank plunged toward the flashes, wound his long arms around his slender antagonist, pinioned him, disarmed him, and threw the pistol over a counter.

“ Let go of me,” shouted the struggling Tom. “ I say, who is that ? Is it you, McAlister ? Let go of me.”

“ Will you be quiet, you idiot ? ” demanded Frank, who had forgotten that he wanted to be shot, and fought instinctively to keep a whole skin, as other men do.

“O, it’s you, is it ?” returned Tom. Then came a string of ferocious threats and of such abuse as cannot be written. But it was useless for the madman to scold and scuffle ; he was thrown across a chair with his face downward and held there ; he was as helpless as a mouse in the iron grasp of a trap. At this point Wilkins, judging that the pistol-firing was over, came out of his unknown hiding-place, and, throwing open the door of the back room, let in light upon the battle - field. General Johnson now saw his way clear to disentangle himself from the coils of rope on which he had made shipwreck, and in so doing kicked a loose bed-cord within reach of the combatants. Frank perceived it and instantly grasped it.

“ Will you give me your word of honor to keep quiet ? ” he demanded.

“ No, I won’t,” gasped the captive, still struggling. “Take your hands off me.”

“Then, by heavens, I’ll tie you,” exclaimed Frank, beside himself with anger for the first time in this history.

In half a minute more Tom was wound from head to foot in the bedcord, like the Laocoön in his serpents.

“ My God ! ” whispered General Johnson to Wilkins. “ Tie a gentleman !

I never heard of such a thing in the whole course of my experience.”

“ Let’s go out of here,” said the martial-eyed Jobson, when he became aware of what was going on. “ Beaumont might hold us responsible.”

And, raising a window, he leaped into Duffy’s back yard, followed the lead of a scared cat, made his way into the street, and hastened homeward with his face over his shoulder. Meantime Jacocks, Duffy, and Wilkins gathered behind the General and stared speechlessly at the pinioned Beaumont, as much confounded at his plight as if they beheld him paralyzed by the wand of an enchanter. Probably the oldest inhabitant of Hartland could not have remembered seeing a “ high-tone gentleman ” subjected to such treatment. But then the inhabitants of Hartland, meaning those of the masculine gender, rarely lived to be old. A good many were carried off early by whiskey, and a considerable number “ died in their boots,”

“ I wish to prevent him from disgracing himself,” said Frank, recovering somewhat of his self-possession as he remembered that his captive was Kate’s brother. “A rencontre is not gentlemen’s business.”

“ Mr. McAlister, I approve of your sentiments,” murmured General Johnson, growing more cheerful as he saw a duel in prospect. The honor of Hartland and the chivalrous repute of its race of patricians were dear to the noble old militia-man.

“ I shall go now,” added Frank, after setting Tom in a chair and giving him a last knotting to fasten him in it. “ When he comes to his senses you will please explain the matter to him. His pistol is behind the counter. Mr. Duffy, I came in to purchase something ; but it does n’t matter now. Gentlemen, good evening.”

“ Good evening, Mr. McAlister,” replied the General, touching his seedy beaver, while the other three simply bowed without speaking, so fearful were they of drawing upon themselves the wrath of the high and mighty Beaumonts.”

“Untie me, won’t you?” roared Tom, as his eyes followed Frank out

of the street door. “ I tell you, by-!

untie me.”

“ Yes, yes,” assented the pacificatory Wilkins, pretending to pick and pull at the bedcord. But he was so judiciously slow and bungling that before he had half finished the disentanglement the gallop of a horse was heard outside ; and when Tom at last seized his pistol and rushed howling into the street, no McAlister was in the neighborhood.

“That’s just as right as can be,” observed Wilkins, peering out cautiously. “ But it is n’t, by gracious, any too right. There ’ll be a duel sure. Duffy, you’ve lost your hats.”

“ Bet you, I have n’t,” returned the imperturbably idiotically smiling Duffy.

“ O, you go to bed and sleep off your quarter of a thimbleful of whiskey,” advised Wilkins, as he marched homewards.

This adventure between Tom Beaumont and Frank McAlister sent all Hartland into fits of excitement. For three days hardly any business was transacted in the little borough. Duffy, who had seen a little of the fight, told a great deal ; and Jobson, who had not seen “the first lick ” of it, told much more. General Johnson narrated and lectured and prophesied on every corner ; and, being invited into various bar-rooms, repeated himself until he grew pathetic over “those two noble young men, by G—d, sir ” ; meanwhile leaning his shining elbows for support on a sloppy counter and letting his tears mingle with a thin drizzle of tobacco-juice. The only spectator of the “ unpleasantness ” who could not be got to remember anything about it was the sagacious Wilkins ; blandly intent upon saying nothing which should offend either mighty Beaumont or doughty McAlister, and also pleased to go on with his trading while others entertained the bummers ; whereby he got into temporary disfavor with the chivalry of Hartland, a race scornful of prudence and of finance.

If the village was thus excited, imagine the tempest at the Beaumont place. It must be understood that Tom got home without breaking his neck, fell a slumbering in a heap while unbuckling his spurs, was found and put to bed by a helot accustomed to such duties, and in the morning related his mishap to his father, at least so far as he could remember it. Such, by the way, was the candid habit of the junior Beaumonts ; they always went to the head of the family with the tale of their disagreements. The father was proud of this frankness, looked upon it as the behavior of true-born gentlemen, and contrasted it favorably with the managements of other youngsters, who, as he said, sneaked into their duels.

Peyton was utterly astounded by the story of the tying, and could not bring himself to believe it on Tom’s unsupported testimony, half suspecting the boy of delirium-tremens or other lunacy. But the insult being at least possible, he rode over to the village in search of General Johnson, and obtained a full, finished, and flowery statement of what had happened at Duffy’s. When he got home he was in such a fit of rage as nobody could be in but an old-time Beaumont. He drank a pint of brandy that forenoon without feeling it.

“Vincent, this is perfectly awful,” he said, drawing a gasp of horror, as he thought anew of the hitherto unheardof indignity which had been inflicted upon a Beaumont. “ I really don’t know what to do, Vincent,” he added, almost pathetically.

“ Tom will have to fight him, of course,” replied the eldest son of the family, his face perfectly calm over this terrible announcement. “ The old obligation is more than cancelled.”

“ Cancelled ! Of course it is,” exclaimed Beaumont, senior. “ An insult cancels any obligation. Of course, Tom must fight. He could n’t stay in the State if he did n’t. But how? I never heard of such an outrage. What sort of fighting will avenge it ? — Ah ! ”

This “ Ah ” was a whispered confession of fearful pain. At that moment one of the most dolorous of Peyton Beaumont’s diseases gave him a twinge which seemed as if it would separate soul from body. He straightened himself, threw his head slowly backward, grasped the arms of his chair with both hands, and remained silent for a few seconds, his forehead beaded with perspiration and his eyes fixed in agony. As the transport passed he drew another low sigh, this time a deep breath of relief, and resumed the conversation. Not a complaint, not an explanation, not even a groan. If the old fellow was something of a savage, he at all events had the grit of a savage, and he was for a moment sublime.

“ Does it seem to you, Vincent,” he calmly asked, “that Tom ought to insist upon any peculiar terms ? Fighting over a handkerchief, for instance ? ”

“ I don’t see it,” put in Poinsett. “ Tom’s own story is that he fired his revolver, and that the other man did not fire. Tom has already had his shot.”

“ Suppose you have your shot on the duelling-ground, and then your antagonist rushes on you and pulls your nose ? ” returned Vincent.

“ Yes ; there is your case,” said Beaumont, senior, turning upon Poinsett. “ There is McAlister’s behavior. A most beastly business ! Just worthy of a nigger.”

“ I beg your pardon, but I can’t see it,” declared the clear-headed Poinsett, educated to law and logic. “ There was no duel here. Tom passed an insult and fired a pistol, all without immediate provocation. I don’t excuse the tying, understand. After McAlister had disarmed Tom, he was at liberty to kill him, or to leave him. The tying was superfluous and insulting. But at least a part of the wrong of it is removed by the fact that Tom had taken the initiative and forced the rencontre. I don’t believe that we should be justified in demanding any unusual proceedings. A duel simple is all we can ask.”

After a long argument Poinsett’s judicial mind prevailed over the fiery brains of the other Beaumonts, and they decided to demand only a duel simple.

Does the inhabitant of a more peaceful district than Hartland find himself horror-stricken and incredulous over this tremendous family council ? The Beaumonts were not inhabitants of a peaceful district ; they were the most pugnacious brood of a peculiarly pugnacious population ; for generation after generation they had had an education of blood and iron, A Quaker, a New-Englander, or even an ordinary Englishman could not easily comprehend their excitable nature. Two centuries, perhaps seven or eight centuries, of high feeding, high breeding, habits of dominion, and habits of fighting, had made them unlike the mass of men. They were of the nature of blood horses ; they had the force, the courage, the nervousness, the fiery temper, and the dangerousness ; they were admirable and they were terrible. There was not one of them, old man or boys, not even the lazy Poinsett, who would not have fought to the death rather than submit to what he thought dishonorable. They had a morality very different from the morality of the hard-working, law-abiding bourgeois. It was utterly different, and yet it governed as strictly. They would no more have fallen short of their ideas of honor than Neal Dow would break the Maine liquor law, or Charles Sumner would trade in niggers. If we want to find a parallel to the Beaumonts in some other land, we must, I think, go to the Green Erin of one or two hundred years ago, and resurrect the profuse, reckless, quarrelsome, heroic O’Neills and O’Learys and O'Sullivans,

Tom’s challenge found our usually pacific Frank McAlister in a pugnacious state of mind. He was pale and haggard in these days ; he ate little and slept scarcely at all, and fretted continually over his troubles ; the consequence was that his nerves were shaky and his temper insurgent and his reason far from clear.

“ Look at that,” he said, handing the cartel to his brother, Robert Bruce. “ Did you ever hear of such an unreasonable, malignant little beast ? I disarmed him and tied him to keep him from committing simple murder and bringing himself to the gallows. The young brute ought to thank me on his knees. And here he wants to fight me. By heavens, if it were not for one thing, I don’t know but I would; yes, I would — kill him. But that is nonsense,” he added, after a moment’s pause. “ I would do nothing of the sort. I am not bound to fight him, and I won’t fight him.”

Bruce, meanwhile, his habitually thoughtful and melancholy eyes fixed on the ground, was considering the affair from the point of view of the code. His conclusion was precisely the same with that of the logical Poinsett.

“ You had a right to disarm him,” he said. “ And you had a right to kill him. But the tying was an insult. The challenge is en régle.”

“ What ! ” exclaimed Frank, astonished by the argument, and at the same time beaten by it. “ So, according to the code, I owe a shot to the man whom I would not let murder me ? What barbarity ! ”

“ If you had simply disarmed him, he would not have had a foot left to stand upon,” said Bruce. “ I am sorry you tied him.”

“It was an awful outrage ! ” returned Frank with bitter irony. “ I served him right, and committed an outrage. It won’t answer among madmen to be rational.”

“ What will you do ? ” asked the elder brother, after a full minute of silence.

“ Look here, Bruce,” Frank burst forth. “ I don’t care one straw for your cursed code of honor. It is a beastly barbarity ; I hate it and despise it. But I want to be shot. I want this very man to shoot me. He saw me save his sister from death when he had lost her. He is the very man to shoot me ; don’t you think so ? If I want to be shot, — and I do with all my heart and soul, — let him do it. You know what is the matter with me, don’t you ? I love his sister more than my life. I love her, and I have lost her. No use. I stopped this cursed quarrel for a while ; I stopped it, as I thought, forever ; and here it is again. It will never end in my time. I give up to it. It has beaten me. Even she has joined in it. I have dared to write to her, and have got no answer. I never can marry her ; and even if I could, it would only be to make her miserable ; and I would rather die than that. O my God, how I love her ! And she, — she won’t give me one line, — won’t say that she does not hate me —like the rest of her family. And for all that I love her. Bruce, I wonder if you or any one can understand it. I wonder if any man ever so loved a woman before. I can call up every expression of her face. I can see her now as plainly as if she were here. O my God, what a heaven I can make around me ! But it is a delusion. I am like a spirit in hell, seeing paradise afar off. There is a great gulf fixed. My father fixed it. Her brother helps. All the power of this damnable old feud goes to widen it. There is no crossing. There is no hope at all. Not the least. I wish I was dead. I want to die. Yes, let him fight me ; let him shoot at me as much as he pleases ; let there be an end of it. I sha'n't fire back. Understand that, Bruce. I sha’n’t fire at her brother Not at Kate Beaumont’s brother ” His voice broke here and his gigantic frame shook with sobs ; he did not try to conceal his agony, for he was not ashamed of it; indeed, he rather gloried in confessing that he suffered for her ; it was a strange consolation, and it was his only one. Shall we impute the force of his passion to him as a weakness, and the greatness of his power of suffering as a littleness ? It would be an error ; the nobility of a soul is gauged as much by its emotional as by its intellectual strength ; the being who feels is as sublime as the being who thinks.

Bruce could make no response to his brother’s outburst of anguish. There was a silence similar in motive to that which men often keep in the presence of those who lament the dead. It was the speechlessness of sympathy and awe, incapable of giving help and conscious that there is no comfort.

Shall we who do not fight duels condemn the young man for accepting the challenge to the field of honor ? We must remember the education of his childhood, the spirit of the society in which he now lived, and the irrationality of overmuch misery. But although he would hazard his life in a way which our reason and his own reason condemned, he would go no further in the path of bloodshed. He persisted in declaring that he would receive Tom’s fire, and that he would not return it. On this point he would not listen to argument.

“ Then,” said Bruce, his own voice wavering a little at last, — “ then I will have nothing more to do with it. You must seek some other adviser.”

“ I shall choose General Johnson,” replied Frank.

“ The old wretch is murderous,” remonstrated Bruce. “ He will get you both killed, if possible. He will keep you standing there all day to be shot at.”

“ So much the better,” was the desperate response of one of those rational men, who, when they do go mad, outpace all others’ madness.

Old and shaky as General Johnson was, he no more quailed before the task of seeing Frank through his “difficulty” than a fashionable dowager shrinks from matronizing a young belle through a party. One result of this strange choice of a second was that Tom Beaumont made a still more singular one. Our sociable friend Major Lawson, riding over to the Beaumont place with news of Kershaw and Kate, heard with horror of the projected encounter. The humane, sentimental, friendly creature went through instantaneous, terrible exercises of spirit, and thought like a mill-race. How should he stop the duel, save the life of Frank McAlister, close up once more the abyss of the feud, and bring to a happy ending his poem of Romeo and Juliet ? Should he apply for aid to Kershaw, or to Kate ? Alas, the old man was but just convalescing from a perilous illness, and the shock of such news as this might sweep him back to the borders of the grave ! As for the girl, she was worn out with watching; moreover, she had received mysterious letters which paled her young cheeks; she had written answers, and then had torn them up suddenly, as if under a sense of duty; she was evidently wretched and evidently ailing. Clearly she was in no fit condition to wrestle with fresh troubles, and it would be both cowardly and wicked to drag her into an arena of gladiators. Next the Major had thoughts of appealing to Frank, and begging him to prevent the duel by an apology. But the Beaumonts were obviously infuriated to that degree that no act of satisfaction would serve which was not a degradation. Thus baffled wheresoever he looked for aid, our peacemaker took a desperate leap into the darkness of the untried, and resolved to offer himself as Tom’s second, with the hope of effecting an arrangement. Knowing nothing of duels except by report, and his whole humane, peaceable nature shrinking from participation in them, his impulse was an inspiration of true heroism.

“ My God, my dear Tom ! ” said the Major, drawing that warlike youngster to one side, and speaking with such earnestness that he forgot to play his usual vocal variations. “ This is a dreadful business; more dreadful than I had expected. I knew of the political misunderstanding. I knew that the Judge had been unwise enough to reopen the quarrel with your excellent father. But I did hope that things might get on without bloodshed. Excuse me. I mean no reflections. My remarks have no personal bearing. I was simply speaking from general considerations of humanity. But allow me. Permit me a friendly question or two. I feel deeply interested in your welfare,” protested the Major, who in reality wished that Tom would drop down dead. “ May I ask who is to be your second ? ”

“ I wanted Vincent,” said Tom, with abominable frankness and calmness. “I thought McAlister would take his brother Bruce ; then I could have had Vincent, who knows these things like a book. But he has chosen old Johnson ; and that knocks me out of Vincent, of course ; and, in fact, I suppose I ought to pick out some other old cock. That’s what fellows would call the correct thing.”

“ Take me,” begged Lawson, turning pale as he made his great plunge. “ My dear young friend, I am quite at your service. Take me.” We must do Tom Beaumont justice. When he was in liquor he was a brute ; but when he was sober he was a gentleman at all hazards, that is, as he understood gentility. Knowing full well that Lawson was no fit man to take charge of a duel, and profoundly astonished at his audacity in proposing so to do, he instantly and politely accepted his offer. In five minutes more, still trembling from head to foot with excitement, the Major was off to discuss the terms of the meeting with General Johnson.

“ What ! ” exclaimed Vincent, when Tom informed him of his choice of a second. “ That old imbecile ! He doesn’t know anything about it.”

“ How could I help taking him when he offered ? ” answered the heroic young roister.

“ I don’t know,” admitted the puzzled Vincent, after long consideration.

Peyton Beaumont was equally amazed and displeased when he heard who was to manage for his son on the field of honor. But on learning that Lawson had himself proposed the arrangement, his mouth was stopped at once ; and though he had seen Tom at the brink of death through the Major’s inability to load pistols, he would not have opened it. It must be admitted that these Beaumonts, domineering and uncomfortable as they were, had their admirable points.

F. W. DeForest