On this particular afternoon the Captain settled himself to work, but his reminiscences did not get on. He pinched a bit of floss from the nib of his pen and tried to swing into the period of which he was writing. He read over a few pages of his copy as mental priming, but his thoughts remained flat and dull. Indeed, his whole life, as he reviewed it in the waning afternoon, appeared empty and futile. It seemed hardly worth while to go on. The Captain had come to that point in his memoirs where the Republican representative from Knox County had set going the petard which had wrecked his political career. From the very beginnings of his labors the old lawyer had looked forward to writing just this period of his life. He meant to clear up his name once for all. He meant to use invective, argument, testimony and a powerful emotional appeal, such as a country lawyer invariably attempts with a jury. But now that he had arrived at the actual composition of his defense, he sat biting his penholder, with all the arguments he meant to advance slipped from his mind. He could not recall the points of the proof. He could not recall them with Peter Siner moving restlessly about the room, glancing through the window, unsettled, nervous, on the verge of eloping with a negress. His secretary's tragedy smote the old man. The necessity of doing something for Peter put his thoughts to rout. A wild idea occurred to the Captain that if he should write the exact truth, perhaps his memoirs might serve Peter as a signal against a futile, empty journey. But the thought no sooner appeared than it was rejected. In the Anglo- Saxon, especially the Anglo-Saxon of the Southern United States, abides no such Gallic frankness as moved a Jean-Jacques. Southern memoirs always sound like the conversation between two maiden ladies,--nothing intimate, simply a few general remarks designed to show from what nice families they came. So the Captain wrote nothing. During all the afternoon he sat at his desk with a leaden heart, watching Peter move about the room. The old man maintained more or less the posture of writing, but his thoughts were occupied in pitying himself and pitying Peter. Half a dozen times he looked up, on the verge of making some plea, some remonstrance, against the madness of this brown man. But the sight of Peter sitting in the window-seat staring out into the street silenced him. He was a weak old man, and Peter's nerves were strung with the desire of youth. At last the two men heard old Rose clashing in the kitchen. A few minutes later the secretary excused himself from the library, to go to his own room. As Peter was about to pass through the door, the Captain was suddenly galvanized into action by the thought that this perhaps was the last time he would ever see him. He got up from his chair and called shakenly to Peter. The negro paused. The Captain moistened his lips and controlled his voice.