Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) KITTY'S CONQUEST. BY CHARLES KING, U.S.A., AUTHOR OF "THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER." PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 1890. Copyright. 1884, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. PREFACE. The incidents of this little story occurred some twelve years ago, and it was then that the story was mainly written. If it meet with half the kindness bestowed upon his later work it will more than fulfil the hopes of THE AUTHOR. February, 1884. KITTY'S CONQUEST. CHAPTER I. It was just after Christmas, and discontentedly enough I had left my cosy surroundings in New Orleans, to take a business-trip through the counties on the border-line between Tennessee and northern Mississippi and Alabama. One sunny afternoon I found myself on the "freight and passenger" of what was termed "The Great Southern Mail Route." We had been trundling slowly, sleepily along ever since the conductor's "all aboard!" after dinner; had met the Mobile Express at Corinth when the shadows were already lengthening upon the ruddy, barren-looking landscape, and now, with Iuka just before us, and the warning whistle of the engine shrieking in our ears with a discordant pertinacity attained only on our Southern railroads, I took a last glance at the sun just disappearing behind the distant forest in our wake, drew the last breath of life, from my cigar, and then, taking advantage of the halt at the station, strolled back from the dinginess of the smoking-car to more comfortable quarters in the rear. There were only three passenger-cars on the train, and, judging from the scarcity of occupants, one would have been enough. Elbowing my way through the gaping, lazy swarms of unsavory black humanity on the platform, and the equally repulsive-looking knots of "poor white trash," the invariable features of every country stopping-place south of Mason and Dixon, I reached the last car, and entering, chose one of a dozen empty seats, and took a listless look at my fellow-passengers,--six in all,--and of them, two only worth a second glance. One, a young, perhaps very young, lady, so girlish, _petite_, and pretty she looked even after the long day's ride in a sooty car. Her seat was some little distance from the one into which I had dropped, but that was because the other party to be depicted was installed within two of her, and, with that indefinable sense of repulsion which induces all travellers, strangers to one another, to get as far apart as possible on entering a car, I had put four seats 'twixt him and me,--and afterwards wished I hadn't.