- now in Mr. Baron's mind was that the sacred routine of the day had been broken. Often there are no greater devotees to routine than those who are virtually idlers. Endowed with the gift of persistence rather than with a resolute will, it had become second nature to maintain the daily order of action and thought which he believed to be his right to enforce upon his household. Every one chafed under his inexorable system except his wife. She had married when young, had grown up into it, and supplemented it with a system of her own which took the form of a scrupulous and periodical attention to all little details of housekeeping. There was a constant friction, therefore, between the careless, indolent natures of the slaves and the precise, exacting requirements of both master and mistress. Miss Lou, as she was generally called on the plantation, had grown up into this routine as a flower blooms in a stiff old garden, and no amount of repression, admonition and exhortation, not even in her younger days of punishment, could quench her spirit or benumb her mind. She submitted, she yielded, with varying degrees of grace or reluctance. As she increased in years, her thoughts, as we have seen, were verging more and more on the border of rebellion. But the habit of obedience and submission still had its influence. Moreover, there had been no strong motive and little opportunity for independent action. Hoping not even for tolerance, much less for sympathy, she kept her thoughts to herself, except as she occasionally relieved her mind to her old mammy, Aun' Jinkey.

She came into the dining-room hastily at last, but the expression of her face was impassive and inscrutable. She was received in solemn silence, broken at first only by the long formal grace which Mr. Baron never omitted and never varied. In her rebellious mood the girl thought, "What a queer God it would be if he were pleased with this old

cut-and-dried form of words! All the time uncle's saying them he is thinking how he'll show me his displeasure."

Mr. Baron evidently concluded that his best method at first would be an expression of offended dignity, and the meal began in depressing silence, which Mrs. Baron was naturally the first to break. "It must be evident to you, Louise," she said in a thin, monotonous voice," that the time has come for you to consider and revise your conduct. The fact that your uncle has been kept waiting for his supper is only one result of an unhappy change which I have observed, but have forborne to speak of in the hope that your own conscience and the influence of your past training would lead you to consider and conform. Think of the precious moments, indeed I may say hours, that you have wasted this afternoon in idle converse with an old negress who is no fit companion for you! You are becoming too old - "

"Too old, aunt? Do you at last recognize the fact that I am growing older?"

With a faint expression of surprise dawning in her impassive face Mrs. Baron continued: "Yes, old enough to remember yourself and not to be compelled to recognize the duties of approaching womanhood. I truly begin to feel that I must forbid these visits to an old, ignorant and foolish creature whose ideas are totally at variance with all that is proper and right."

"Uncle thinks I have approached womanhood sufficiently near to know something of my business affairs, and even went so far as to suggest his project of marrying me to my cousin in order to unite in sacred- I mean legal bonds the two plantations."

The two old people looked at each other, then stared at their niece, who, with hot face, maintained the pretence of eating her supper. "Truly, Louise," began Mr. Baron, solemnly, "you are indulging in strange and unbecoming

language. I have revealed to you your pecuniary affairs, and I have more than once suggested an alliance which is in accordance with our wishes and your interests, in order to prove to you how scrupulous we are in promoting your welfare. We look for grateful recognition and a wise, persistent effort on your part to further our efforts in your behalf."

"It doesn't seem to me wise to talk to a mere child about property and marriage," said the girl, breathing quickly in the consciousness of her temerity and her rising spirit of rebellion.

"You are ceasing to be a mere child," resumed her uncle, severely.

"That cannot be," Miss Lou interrupted. "You and aunt speak to me as you did years ago when I was a child. Can you expect me to have a woman's form and not a woman's mind? Are women told exactly what they must think and do, like little children? Aunt threatens to forbid visits to my old mammy. If I were but five years old she couldn't do more. You speak of marrying me to my cousin as if I had merely the form and appearance of a woman, and no mind or wishes of my own. I have never said I wanted to marry him or any one."

"Why, Louise, you are verging towards flat rebellion," gasped her uncle, laying down his knife and fork.

"Oh, no, uncle! I'm merely growing up. You should have kept the library locked; you should never have had me taught to read, if you expected me to become the mere shell of a woman, having no ideas of my own."

"We wish you to have ideas, and have tried to inculcate right ideas."

"Which means only your ideas, uncle."

"Louise, are you losing your mind?”

"No, uncle, I am beginning to find it, and that I have a right to use it. I am willing to pay all due respect and

deference to you and to aunt, but I protest against being treated as a child on one hand and as a wax figure which can be stood up and married to anybody on the other. I have patiently borne this treatment as long as I can, and I now reckon the time has come to end it."

Mr. Baron was thunderstruck and his wife was feeling for her smelling-bottle. Catching a glimpse of Zany, where she stood open-mouthed in her astonishment, her master said, sternly, "Leave the room!" Then he added to his niece, "Think of your uttering such wild talk before one of our people! Don't you know that my will must be law on this plantation ?"

"I'm not one of your people," responded the girl, haughtily. "I'm your niece, and a Southern girl who will call no man master."

At this moment there was a knock at the door. Without waiting for it to be opened, a tall, lank man entered and said, hastily, "Mr. Baron, I reckon there's news which yer orter hear toreckly." He was the overseer of the plantation.

CHAPTER III.

MR

MAD WHATELY.

R. BARON was one of the few of the landed gentry in the region who was not known by a military title, and he rather prided himself on the fact. "I'm a man of peace," he was accustomed to say, and his neighbors often remarked, "Yes, Baron is peaceable if he has his own way in every thing, but there's no young blood in the county more ready for a fray than he for a lawsuit." "Law and order" was Mr. Baron's motto, but by these terms he meant the perpetuity of the conditions under which he and his ancestors had thus far lived. To distrust these conditions was the crime of crimes. In his estimation, therefore, a Northern soldier was a monster surpassed only by the out-and-out abolitionist. While it had so happened that, even as a young man, his tastes had been legal rather than military, he regarded the war of secession as more sacred than any conflict of the past, and was willing to make great sacrifices for its maintenance. He had invested all his funds as well as those of his niece in Confederate bonds, and he had annually contributed a large portion of the product of his lands to the support of the army. Living remote from the scenes of actual strife, he had been able to maintain his illusions and hopes to a far greater extent than many others of like mind with himself; but as the war drew towards its close, even the few newspapers he read were compelled to justify their name in some degree by giving very unpalatable information.