responded papa. [Pg 9] [Pg 9] "Well, stop reading then and come up stairs," was the young person's next command. "I've had such an awful afternoon with those pokey people. I want to tell you——" Here she caught sight of Colburne regarding her fixedly in the mirror, and with another rustle of vesture she suddenly slid beyond reach of the angle of incidence and refraction. The stranger laid down the Post in his lap, pocketed his spectacles, and, looking about him, caught sight of Colburne. "I beg your pardon, sir," said he with a frank, friendly, man of the world sort of smile. "I have kept the evening paper a long time. Will you have it?" To our young gentleman the civility of this well-bred, middle-aged personage was somewhat imposing, and consequently he made his best bow and would not accept of the Post until positively assured that the other had entirely done with it. Moreover he would not commence reading immediately because that might seem like a tacit reproach; so he uttered a few patriotic common-places on the news of the day, and thereby gave occasion for this history. "Yes, a sad struggle, a sad struggle—especially for the South," assented the unnamed gentleman. "You can't imagine how unprepared they are for it. The South is just like the town's poor rebelling against the authorities; the more successful they are, the more sure to be ruined." While he spoke he looked in the young and strange face of his hearer with as much seeming earnestness as if the latter had been an old acquaintance whose opinions were of value to him. There was an amiable fascination in the sympathetic grey eyes and the persuasive smile. He caught Colburne's expression of interest and proceeded. "Nobody can tell me anything about those unlucky, misguided people. I am one of them by birth—I have lived among them nearly all my life—I know them. They[Pg 10] are as ill-informed as Hottentots. They have no more idea of their relative strength as compared to that of the United States than the Root-diggers of the Rocky Mountains. They are doomed to perish by their own ignorance and madness." [Pg 10] "It will probably
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