Isabel sat on the porch alone that evening. The women, with the men, were at work ploughing corn on the upland, and her father would not return from Sevier until late. The sun was going down, throwing the shadow of a great peak of the Balsam Range over the house and the neat farm with its Pennsylvania barn and fences. High up on the mountain heaps of mica outside of the gaping black mouth of a deserted mine glistened like silver. A queer little figure was coming up the lonely road. Isabel saw it, and laughed. Nobody could mistake the consequential strut, the flapping linen suit, the white hat with its band of crape. But Isabel was in a happy, tender mood toward all the world to-night; and she had always been gentle with the poor little major. She only, of all the people in Sevier, saw beneath the drunken braggart a man who had been sorely worsted, and that perhaps not fairly, in the long fight. He was quite sober this evening. But as she rose to meet him she saw signs of an odd change in him. The linen clothes were scrupulously clean, costly ruby buttons blazed in his shirt-front, on his fore finger was a curious antique ring never seen there before: the usual defiant jauntiness of the man had given way to a more significant self-assertion, as if he had at last found secure ground beneath his feet. "My father is not at home, Major Fetridge: I am sorry," said Isabel, offering him a chair. But he remained standing, leaning airily against a pillar, looking down at her. "_I_ am not sorry, Miss Calhoun. It was you that I came to see," he said pointedly. A nervous smile showed his teeth; his pale blue eyes shone: the little man was, she saw, aflame with some secret exultation as with wine. "I fancy that you bring me good news, major?" said Isabel, humoring his mood. "News? Yes, I bring you news. The will is read--Judge Scroope's will." "Who is the heir?" "Peter Marmaduke Boyer, if he is alive. If he is dead, young Cabarreux." Isabel made no reply for a moment: the work she held fell from her hand. She had not known of this chance. If David Cabarreux were the heir he would have every virtue in her father's eyes. "I hope," she said at last, taking up her work again with a soft, complacent little laugh, "Mr. Cabarreux may live long to enjoy his good fortune." "The fortune is not his," cried Sam excitedly. "You don't understand. Boyer is the heir--the Honorable Peter M. Boyer. A man who stood in the Senate of the United States, Miss Calhoun. A man who knows the world--who will know how to give his wife place and power, and who will have money now to buy both." "I thought you said he was dead?" "No. I--" He paused, grew suddenly pale, and went on hurriedly: "I know the man. He is alive." "Then--It does not matter. It is all just as it was before," said Isabel with a proud smile. But, her thoughts going to her lover in his disappointment, she almost forgot that the major was there until he spoke again.