stranger to all the other darkies, and nobody seems to know him."

By the river road! Could it possibly be, then, that it was the Tory maid who sent those many miles to see if I were in the land of the living or the dead? Ah, it was too pleasant a thing to dream of; too pleasant to have it shattered by the rough hand of fact. And so I said dreamily, "It is only one of John Cotton's stories, I suppose."

Yet I would not have believed it otherwise for all of John Cotton's weight in gold. Thus it was I was thinking one day of the Tory maid, when the door opened, and a tall, dignified gentleman came in—the man who had stood by my side that day when with drawn sword I held the door against Rodolph and his followers—Mr. Lambert Wilmer of the White House in Kent.

He came forward and greeted me with many kind phrases. While he sat talking to me of the duel and its cause, I thought of that great burst of laughter when he told Rodolph to put up his sword, as by this time he should have had enough of Gordon of the Braes, and I asked the reason for it all.

"It is a long story, lad," said he, "but I will tell it to you."

Then he told me how, many years before, Mistress Margaret Nicholson had been the loveliest girl in Kent, and the belle of the whole shore, and how there was not a bachelor within three counties who did not seek her as his bride, or who would not have sold his soul for a glance of her eyes or the soft pressure of her hand; and how when James Rodolph of Charlestown Hundred came riding down from Cecil and boasted of his wealth, his horses, and his slaves, swearing that he would win her or no one would, the suitors stood aside to see how he would fare with this the proudest of Kent beauties. To their dismay, he seemed to prosper well, until one day there disembarked from a vessel that came sailing up the broad Chester a young gentleman of distinguished appearance, who asked his way to Radcliffe, the home of the Nicholsons.

"Now, the Nicholsons, as you know," said Mr. Wilmer, "are Scotch, and this young gentleman was Scotch, for his accent betrayed him, and we, thinking he might be a cousin and have brought news from over the water, welcomed him, and showed him the way to Radcliffe. He, though he was very reserved, told us that he had indeed come from over the sea, and bore a letter to the Nicholsons, who were old friends of his family, but of himself he would say no more. And so, when he strode off, we turned to Captain Hezekiah Brown of the Maid of Perth, who was a man who delighted to talk. From him we learned that his name was Gordon, and that there was a mystery about him, as people suspected him of being one of the young chiefs who had led that famous clan in the recent rebellion against the King. But this we held not to his injury, for there were still many lovers of the White Rose in the fair province of Maryland, and we afterward welcomed him the more heartily for it. From the advent of the stranger the good fortune of James Rodolph began to wane; for the rich planter of the border, with his wild and boisterous manners, was no match for the Scottish cavalier. It is true that he was penniless, but he was very handsome, of distinguished manners and address, and when it became known that he was out in 'forty-five' the mantle of romance that fell around Prince Charles was shared as well by him, and he became the hero of many a pair of fair eyes.

"James Rodolph soon saw this, and his hatred grew from day to day, as his rival became more successful. One day there was a quarrel, and next morning, upon the smooth, sandy shore of the river, they met and fought it out. Rodolph was fiery, quick, and fierce; Gordon cool and steady; until Rodolph, growing weary and desperate, tried a foul and dangerous stroke, to find his rapier flying through the air, to fall with a splash into the river.

"'I would not stain my blade by killing you,' said Gordon; and turning with the other gentlemen who had seen the foul stroke, he walked away, leaving him there.

"And so it was that Rodolph came back to Cecil with a blot upon his name, and Gordon married the maid, and became in time the owner of the Braes, for she was an heiress as well as a great beauty. From that time has grown the feud which we may some day see the end of. And that is why the people laughed and Rodolph slunk away. For the old story is known throughout the shore, and Rodolph proved, in his fight with you, the bad blood in his veins. It never does to cross the white blood with the red, for the treachery of the Indian will taint the race for generations."

Thus it was, by the light of this old tale of thirty years before, I saw and read the cause and reason of it all—of his fatal course, of our quarrel, and of the meeting by the banks of the river Elk.