pair of new red striped yarn stockings or any other of the embellishments which nature teaches little girls to wear casts a sheen over all the world for a boy. The magic bundle that charmed John Barclay was a scarlet dress, "made over," that came in an "aid box" from the Culpeppers in Virginia. And when the other children in Miss Lucy's school made fun of John and his amour, the boy fought his way through it all—where fighting was the better part of valour—and made horsehair chains for Ellen and cut lockets for her out of coffee beans, and with a red-hot poker made a ring for her from a rubber button as a return for the smile he got at the sly twist he gave her hair as he passed her desk on his way to the spelling class. As for Miss Lucy, who saw herself displaced, she wrote to Philemon Ward, and told him of her jilting, and railed at the fickleness and frailty of the sex.

And by that token an envelope in Ward's handwriting came to Miss Lucy every week, and Postmaster Martin Culpepper and Mrs. Martin Culpepper and all Sycamore Ridge knew it. And loyal Southerner though he was, Martin Culpepper's interest in the affair between Ward and Miss Lucy was greater than his indignation over the fact that Ward had carried his campaign even into Virginia; nothing would have tempted him to disclose to his political friends at home the postmarks of Ward's letters. That was the year of the great drouth of '60, remembered all over the plains. And as the winter deepened and the people of Sycamore Ridge were without crops, and without money to buy food, they bundled up Martin Culpepper and sent him back to Ohio seeking aid. He was a handsome figure the day he took the stage in his high hat and his ruffled shirt and broad coat tails, a straight lean figure of a man in his early thirties, with fine black eyes and a shocky head of hair, and when he pictured the sufferings of the Kansas pioneers to the people of the East, the state was flooded with beans and flour, and sheeted in white muslin. For Martin Culpepper was an orator, and though he is in his grave now, the picture he painted of bleeding Kansas nearly fifty years ago still hangs in many an old man's memory. And after all, it was only a picture. For they were all young out here then, and through all the drouth and the hardship that followed—and the hardship was real—there was always the gayety of youth. The dances on Deer Creek and at Minneola did not stop for the drouth, and many's the night that Mrs. Mason, the tall raw-boned wife of Lycurgus, wrapped little Jane in a quilt and came over to the Ridge from Minneola to take part in some social affair. And while Martin Culpepper was telling of the anguish of the famine, Watts McHurdie and his accordion and Ezra Lane's fiddle were agitating the heels of the populace. And even those pioneers who were moved to come into the wilderness by a great purpose—and they were moved so—to come into the new territory and make it free, nevertheless capered and romped through the drouth of '60 in the cast-off garments of their kinsmen and were happy; for there were buffalo meat and beans for the needy, the aid room had flour, and God gave them youth.

Not drouth, nor famine, nor suffering, nor zeal of a great purpose can burn out the sparkle of youth in the heart. Only time can do that, and so John Barclay remembered the famous drouth of '60, not by his mother's tears, which came as she bent over his little clothes, before the aid box came from Haverhill, not by the long days of waiting for the rain that never came, not even by the sun that lapped up the swimming hole before fall, and left no river to freeze for their winter's skating, not even by his mother's anguish when she had to go to the aid store for flour and beans, though that must have been a sorry day for a Thatcher; but he remembers the great drouth by Ellen Culpepper's party, where they had a frosted cake and played kissing games, and—well, fifty years is along time for two brown eyes to shine in the heart of a boy and a man. It is strange that they should glow there, and all memory of the runaway slaves who were sheltered in the cave by the sycamore tree should fade, and be only as a tale that is told. Yet, so memory served the boy, and he knew only at second hand how his mother gave her widow's mite to the cause for which she had crossed the prairies as of old her "fathers crossed the sea."

Before the rain came in the spring of '61 Martin Culpepper came back from the East an orator of established reputation. The town was proud of him, and he addressed the multitude on various occasions and wept many tears over the sad state of the country. For in the nation, as well as in Sycamore Ridge, great things were stirring. Watts McHurdie filled Freedom's Banner with incendiary verse, always giving the name of the tune at the beginning of each contribution, by which it might be sung, and the way he clanked Slavery's chains and made love to Freedom was highly disconcerting; but the town liked it.

In April Philemon R. Ward came back to Sycamore Ridge, and there was a great gathering to hear his speech. Ward's soul was aflame with anger. There were no Greek gods and Roman deities in what Ward said, as there were in Martin Culpepper's addresses. Ward used no figures of speech and exercised no rhetorical charms; but he talked with passion in his voice and the frenzy of a cause in his eyes. Martin Culpepper was in the crowd, and as Ward lashed the South, every heart turned in interrogation to Culpepper. They knew what his education had been. They understood his sentiments; and yet because he was one of them, because he had endured with them and suffered with them and ministered to them, the town set him apart from its hatred. And Martin Culpepper was sensitive enough to feel this. It came over him with a wave of joy, and as Ward talked, Culpepper expanded. Ward closed in a low tone, and his face was white with pent-up zeal as he asked some one to pray. There was a silence, and then a woman's voice, trembling and passionate, arose, and Sycamore Ridge knew that Mrs. Barclay, the widow of the Westport martyr, was giving sound to a voice that had long been still. It was a simple halting prayer, and not all those in the room heard it clearly. The words were not always fitly chosen; but as the prayer neared its close,—and it was a short prayer at the most,—there came strength and courage into the voice as it asked for grace for "the brother among us who has shared our sufferings and lightened our burdens, and who has cleaved to us as a brother, but whose heart is drawn away from us by ties of blood and kinship"; and then the voice sank lower and lower as though in shame at its boldness, and hushed in a tremulous Amen.

No one spoke for a moment, and as Sycamore Ridge looked up from the floor, its eyes turned instinctively toward Martin Culpepper. He felt the question that was in the hearts about him, and slowly, to the wonder of all, he rose. He had a beautiful deep purring voice, and when he opened his eyes, they seemed to look into every pair of eyes in the throng. There were tears on his face and in his voice as he spoke. "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." And then he sank to his chair and hid his face, and for a moment a hundred wet-eyed men were still.

Though John Barclay was at the meeting, he remembered only his mother's prayer, but in his heart there was always a picture of a little boy trying to walk home with a little girl, and when he came up with her she darted ahead or dropped back. At the Culpepper gate she