"No, she’s different, Mary," Ann declared. "Jane Hemingway is another proposition altogether. She’s fought a long, fierce fight, and God Almighty’s forces have whipped her clean out. She was a worthy foe, and I respect her more now than I ever did. She was different from the rest. _She_ had a cause. _She_ had something to fight about. She loved Joe Boyd with all the heart she ever had, and when I married him she couldn’t—simply couldn’t—let it rest. She held on like a bull-dog with his teeth clamped to bone. She’s beat; I won’t wait for her to come to me; I may take a notion and go to her." XL It was a crisp, clear day in December. Langdon Chester had gone to Darley to attend to the banking of a considerable amount of money which his father had received for cotton on the market. It happened to be the one day in the year in which the town was visited by a mammoth circus, and the streets were overflowing with mountain people eager to witness the grand street-parade, the balloon ascension, the side-shows, and, lastly, the chief performance under the big tent. From the quaint old Johnston House, along Main Street to the grain warehouses and the throbbing and wheezing cotton compress, half a mile distant, the street was filled with people afoot, in carts, wagons, and buggies, or on horseback. All this joy and activity made little impression on Langdon Chester. His face was thin and sallow, and he was extremely nervous. His last conversation with Virginia and her positive refusal to consider his proposal of marriage had left him without a hope and more desperate than his best friend could have imagined possible to a man of his supposedly callous temperament. And a strange fatality seemed to be dogging his footsteps and linking him to the matter which he had valiantly attempted to lay aside, for everywhere he went he heard laudatory remarks about Luke King and his marvellous success and strength of character. In the group of lawyers seated in the warm sunshine in front of Trabue’s little one-storied brick office on the street leading to the court-house, it was a topic of more interest than any gossip about the circus. It was Squire Tomlinson’s opinion, and he had been to the legislature in Atlanta, and associated intimately with politicians from all sections of the state, that King was a man who, if he wished it, could become the governor of Georgia as easy as falling off a log, or even a senator of the United States. The common people wanted him, the squire declared; they had worshipped him ever since his first editorial war-whoop against the oppression of the political ring, the all-devouring trusts, and the corrupt Northern money-power. The squire, blunt man that he was, caught sight of Langdon among his listeners and playfully made an illustration out of him. "There’s a chap, gentlemen, the son of a good old friend of mine. Now, what did money, aristocratic parentage, family brains, and