dwellings, it seemed to him that they might afford a hospitality denied him by the more imposing houses of the town. He had already eaten of the Negro's charity, and it was possible that before dawn he might be compelled to eat of it again.

Beneath his feet the long road called to him as it wound a curving white line drawn through the vague darkness of the landscape. Somewhere in a distant pasture a bull bellowed, and the sound came to him like the plaintive voice of the abandoned fields. While he listened the response of his tired feet to the road appeared to him as madness, and stopping short, he turned quickly and looked back in the direction of Tappahannock. But from the spot on which he stood the lights of the town offered little promise of hospitality, so after an uncertain glance, he moved on again to a bare, open place where two roads met and crossed at the foot of a blasted pine. A few steps farther he discovered that a ruined gate stood immediately on his right, and beyond the crumbling brick pillars, he made out dimly the outlines of several fallen bodies, which proved upon nearer view to be the prostrate forms of giant cedars. An avenue had once led, he gathered, from the gate to a house situated somewhere at the end of the long curve, for the great trees lying across the road must have stood once as the guardians of an estate of no little value. Whether the cedars had succumbed at last to age or to the axe of the destroyer, it was too dark at the moment for him to ascertain; but the earth had claimed them now, magnificent even in their ruin, while under the dim tent of sky beyond, he could still discern their living companions of a hundred years. So impressive was the past splendour of this approach that the house seemed, when he reached it, almost an affront to the mansion which his imagination had reared. Broad, low, built of brick, with two long irregular wings embedded in English ivy, and a rotting shingled roof that sloped over dormered windows, its most striking characteristic as he first perceived it under the moonlight was the sentiment which is inevitably associated with age and decay. Never imposing, the dwelling was now barely habitable, for the roof was sagging in places over the long wings, a chimney had fallen upon one of the moss-covered eaves, the stone steps of the porch were hollowed into dangerous channels, and the ground before the door was strewn with scattered chips from a neighbouring wood pile.

The air of desolation was so complete that at first Ordway supposed the place to be uninhabited, but discovering a light presently in one of the upper windows, he ascended the steps and beat with the rusted knocker on the panel of the door. For several minutes there was no answer to his knock. Then the sound of shuffling footsteps reached him from the distance, drawing gradually nearer until they stopped immediately beyond the threshold.

"I ain' gwine open dis yer do' ef'n hits oner dem ole hants," said a voice within, while a sharp point of light pierced through the keyhole.

An instant later, in response to Ordway's assurance of his bodily reality, the bolt creaked back with an effort and the door opened far enough to admit the slovenly head and shoulders of an aged negress.

"Miss Meely she's laid up en she cyar'n see ner comp'ny, Marster," she announced with the evident intention of retreating as soon as her message was delivered.

Her purpose, however, was defeated, for, slipping his heavy boot into the crack of the door, Ordway faced her under the lamp which she held high above her head. In the shadows beyond he could see dimly the bare old hall and the great winding staircase which led to the painted railing of the gallery above.

"Can you give me shelter for the night?" he asked, "I am a stranger in the county, and I've walked thirty miles to-day."

"Miss Meely don' wan'ner comp'ny," replied the negress, while her head, in its faded cotton handkerchief, appeared to swing like a pendulum before his exhausted eyes.

"Who is Miss Meely?" he demanded, laying his hand upon her apron as she made a sudden terrified motion of flight.

"Miss Meely Brooke—Marse Edward's daughter. He's daid."

"Well, go and ask her. I'll wait here on the porch until you return."

Her eyelids flickered in the lamplight, and he saw the whites of her eyes leap suddenly into prominence. Then the door closed again, the bolt shot back into place, and the shuffling sound grew fainter as it passed over the bare floor. A cold nose touched Ordway's hand, and looking down he saw that an old fox-hound had crept into the porch and was fawning with pleasure at his feet. He was conscious of a thrill of gratitude for the first demonstrative welcome he had received at Tappahannock; and while he stood there with the hound leaping upon his chest, he felt that, in spite of "Miss Meely," hidden somewhere behind the closed door, the old house had not lost utterly the spirit of hospitality. His hand was still on the dog's head when the bolt creaked again and the negress reappeared upon the threshold.

"Miss Meely she sez she's moughty sorry, suh, but she cyarn' hev ner strange gent'mun spendin' de night in de house. She reckons you mought sleep in de barn ef'n you wanter."

As the door opened wider, her whole person, clad in a faded woollen dress, patched brightly in many colours, emerged timidly and followed him to the topmost step.

"You des go roun' ter de back en den thoo' de hole whar de gate used ter be, en dar's de barn. Nuttin' ain' gwine hu't you lessen hits dat ar ole ram 'Lejab."

"Well, he shall not find me unprepared," responded Ordway, with a kind of desperate gaiety, and while the old hound still leaped at his side, he found his way into a little path which led around the corner of the house, and through the tangled garden to the barn just beyond the fallen gateposts. Here the dog deserted him, running back to the porch, where a woman's voice called; and stumbling over a broken ploughshare or two, he finally reached the poor shelter which Miss Meely's hospitality afforded.

It was very dark inside, but after closing the door to shut out the wind, he groped his way through the blackness to a pile of straw in one corner. The place smelt of cattle, and opposite to the spot on which he lay, he distinguished presently a soft, regular sound which he concluded to be caused by the breathing of a cow. Evidently the barn was used as a cattleshed also, though his observation of the mansion did not lead him to suppose that "Miss Meely" possessed anything approaching a herd. He remembered the old negress's warning allusion to the ram, but so far at least the darkness had revealed nothing that could prove hostile to his company. His head ached and his will seemed suddenly benumbed, so stretching himself at full length in the straw he fell, after a few troubled moments, into the deep and dreamless sleep of complete physical exhaustion.

An instant afterwards, it seemed to him, he was aroused by a light which flashed into his face from the opening door. A cold wind blew over him, and as he struggled almost blindly back into consciousness, he saw that a girl in a red cape stood holding a lantern above her head in the centre of the barn. At his first look the red cape warmed him as if it had been flame; then he became aware that a voice was speaking to him in a peculiar tone of cheerful authority. And it seemed to him that the red cape and the rich voice expressed the same dominant quality of personality.

"I thought you must be hungry," said the voice with energy, "so I've brought your supper."

Even while he instinctively grasped the tray she held out, he observed with quickened attention that the hands which offered him the food had toiled out of doors in good and bad weather—though small and shapely they were chapped from cold and roughened by marks of labour.

"You'd better drink your coffee while it's hot," said