"All aboard!" said Corcoran; and the joyful and triumphant party, with their outward intimacy and their inward warfare of passions and desires, rolled on toward "Mystery Number Two," which was duly christened "Cornish," and celebrated in champagne furnished by its godfather. "Don't you ever drink champagne?" said Cornish, as Josie declined to partake. "Never," said she. "What, _never_?" he went on, Pinaforically. "My God!" thought I, "the assurance of the man!" And the palm-encircled alcove at Auriccio's, as it was wont so often to do, came across my vision, and shut out everything but the Psyche face in its ruddy halo, speeding by me into the street, and the vexed young man in the faultless attire slowly following. Mystery Number Three was "Antonia," a lovely little place in embryo; "Barslow" came next, followed by "Giddings" and "Tolliver." We were tired of it when we reached "Hinckley," platted on a farm owned by Antonia's father, and where we ceased to perform the ceremony of unveiling. It was a memorable trip, ending with sunset and home. Captain Tolliver assisted General Lattimore to alight from the train, and they went arm in arm up to the old General's home. That night, according to his wont, Jim came to smoke with me in the late evening. "Let's take a car," said he, "and go up and have a look at the houses." These were our new mansions up in Lynhurst Park Addition, now in process of erection. In the moonlight we could see them dimly, and at a little distance they looked like masses of ruins--the second childhood of houses. A stranger could have seen, from the polished columns and the piles of carved stone, that they were to be expensive and probably beautiful structures. "What do you think of the General in the role of Cassandra?" asked Jim, as we sat in the skeleton room which was to be his library. "It struck me," said I, "as a particularly artistic bit of croaking!" "The Captain says frequently," said Jim, his cigar glowing like a variable star, "that opportunity knocks once. The General, I'm afraid, knocks all the time. But if it should turn out that he's right about the--the--dervish-dance ... it would be ... to put it mildly ... a horse on us, Al, wouldn't it?" I had no answer to this fanciful speech, and made none. Instead, I told him of Giddings's love-sickness. "The philosophy of Iago has broken down," said he, "and the boy is sort of short-circuited. Antonia can take him in hand, and turn him out full of confidence; and with that, I'll answer for the lady. That can be fixed easy, and ought to be. Let's walk back." "What was it he said?" he asked, as we parted. "'Coma, cold forms, still hands, and extinction.' Well, if the dervish-dance does wind up in that sort of thing, it's only a short-cut to the inevitable. Those are pretty houses up there; we'd have been astounded over them when we used to fish together on Beaver Creek;--but suppose they are?