As he wheels he raises his hat. She pushes aside the climbing roses. In an instant he has cleared the garden beds, and has reined in his horse just below her window-sill. Looking up into her face:-- "Nancy, for the last time, shall I stay?" She only shakes her head. "Then look, Nancy, look! This is your work!" A gleam of steel in a clenched hand, a burst of smoke, and before Chad can reach him Nancy's lover lies dead in the flowers at her feet. It had not been an easy story for the colonel. When he ceased he passed his hand across his forehead as if the air of the room stifled him. Then laying down his pipe, he bent once more over the slender vase, his face in the roses. * * * * * "May I come in?" In an instant the colonel's old manner returned. "May you come in, Nancy? Why, you dear woman, if you had stayed away five minutes longer I should have gone for you myself. What! Another skein of yarn?" "Yes," she said, seating herself. "Hold out your hands." The loop slipped so easily over the colonel's arms that it was quite evident that the role was not new to him. "Befo' I forget it, Nancy, Mr. Fitzpatrick was called suddenly away to attend to some business connected with my railroad, and left his vehy kindest regards for you, and his apologies for not seein' you befo' he left." Fitz had said nothing that resembled this, so far as my memory served me, but it was what he ought to have done, and the colonel always corrected such little slips of courtesy by supplying them himself. "Politeness," he would sometimes say, "is becomin' rarer every day. I tell you, suh, the disease of bad manners is mo' contagious than the small-pox." So the deception was quite pardonable in him. "And what does Mr. Fitzpatrick think of the success of your enterprise, George?" The colonel sailed away as usual with all his balloon topsails set, his sea-room limited only by the skein, while his aunt wound her yarn silently, and listened with a face expressive at once of deep interest and hope, mingled with a certain undefined doubt. As the ball grew in size, she turned to me, and, with a penetration and practical insight into affairs for which I had not given her credit, began to dissect the scheme in detail. She had heard, she said, that there was lack of connecting lines and consequent absence of freight, as well as insufficient harbor facilities at Warrentown. I parried the questions as well as I could, begging off on the plea that I was only a poor devil of a painter with a minimum knowledge ofsuch matters, and ended by referring her to Fitz. The colonel, much to my surprise, listened to every word without opening his lips--a silence encouraged at first by his pride that she could talk so well, and maintained thereafter because of certain misgivings awakened in his mind as to the ultimate success of his pet enterprise.