“Well, you see,” Major Warren began, lamely, “Carson and I saw Pete the night he was whipped so severely and we took pity on him. They played together when they were boys, as boys all over the South do, you know, and then he saw Mam' Linda break down over it and saw old Lewis crying for the first time in the old man's life. I was mad, Henry, myself, and you would have been if you had been there. I could have fought the men who did it, so I understand how Carson felt, and when he made the remark Wiggin is using to such deadly injury to his prospects my heart warmed to the boy. If he doesn't succeed as a politician it will be because he is too genuine for a tricky career of that sort. His friends are trying to get him to make some statement that will reinstate him with the mountain people who sympathized with the White Caps, but he simply won't do it.” “Won't do it! I reckon not!” Dwight blurted out. “Didn't the young idiot wait in Blackburn's store for Dan Willis to come and shoot the top of his head off? He sat there till past midnight, and wouldn't move an inch till actual proof was brought to him that Willis had left town. Oh, I'm no fool! I know a thing or two. I've watched him and your daughter together. That's at the bottom of it. She sat down on him before she went off to Augusta, but her refusal didn't alter him. He knows Helen thinks a lot of her old negro mammy, and in her absence he simply took up her cause and is fighting mad about it--so mad that he is blind to his political ruin. That's what a man will do for a woman. They say she's about to become engaged down there. I hope she is, and that Carson will have pride enough when he hears of it to let another man do her fighting, and one with nothing to lose by it.” “She hasn't written me a thing about any engagement,” the Major answered, with some animation; “but my sister highly approves of the match and writes that it may come about. Mr. Sanders is a well-to-do, honorable man of good birth and education: Helen never seemed to get over her brother's sad death. She loved poor Albert more than she ever did me or any one else.” “And I always thought that it was Carson's association with your son in his dissipation that turned Helen against him. For all I know, she may have thought Carson actually led Albert on and was partly the cause of his sad end.” “She may have looked at it that way,” the Major said, musingly. They had now reached the porch in the rear of the house and they went together into the wide hall. A colored maid with a red bandanna tied like a turban round her head was dusting the walnut railing of the stairs. Passing through the hall, the old gentlemen turned into the library, a great square room with wide windows and tall, gilt-framed pier-glass mirrors.