There was a little chuckle of delight under Mason's watch-pocket, as if that dry timepiece laughed like a dice-box at the thought of the little round-eyed girl who had listened to his vaporing with no mere hypocrisy of belief; but he said, "Marry for money! eh, aunty? Not that she isn't a clean little filly, built up from the ground, neat pastern, good shoulders; but marry for money! eh, aunty?" It was the purest of cant. He knew, his aunt knew, he would as soon think of eating his knife and fork as marrying a piece of furniture that did not feed him. "Bah! ostrich with your head in the sand!" said his aunt. "You have played Ancient Pistol all your life. I show you where it will win. Will you play?" Lind looked over his hand: he remembered that he had made Bob fag on the playground, and as he thought of little Sue he believed it feasible; but he saw more tricks in his hand than that one. "Well," said he affectedly, "if it is to keep out an interloper I don't mind; but you said pistols? A man that has seen Perryville, Stone River, Vicksburg, Gettysburg"--Lind got his battles mixed sometimes in the haste of composition--"don't mind saying he has seen enough of bloodshed." "Pah!" said the dowager in the tone of Hamlet putting down Yorick's skull. "You amuse me to disgust. I'll mop up all the blood spilt with a cambric handkerchief. Will you do it?" "Didn't I say so?" answered Mason, chafing under her open contempt. "But war cannot be carried on without funds, and Asteroid let into me heavily." He was playing for the odd trick now. "I expected that," said the dowager contemptuously. "How much?" "Well, say two hundred," hesitated Lind, for he expected a controversy--"for first impressions." She only took out her portemonnaie and said, "See that you earn it." "You bet! I mean, Thank ye, aunt," muttering as he left the room, "Confounded old cow with the crumpled horn! but who thought she would milk so easy?" Elated with having "made a raise," he went strutting and breathing down the avenue, clanking his chains and thinking of his little cousin as already won. But that was the way of the dowager, this Queen Catharine of the Browns. If she heard of derelictions from loyalty, she did not stop to mediate and discuss, but, like a vigorous ruler, took prompt means to put them down. We shall see how she succeeded, and what befel her chief marshal in this campaign. CHAPTER II.