Edward had intended returning to Ilexhurst after tea, but every one inveighed against the announcement. Nonsense! The roads were bad, a storm was possible, the way unfamiliar to him! John, the stable boy, had reported a shoe lost from the horse! And besides, Norton would come out and be disappointed at having missed him! And why go? Was the room upstairs not comfortable? He should have another! Was the breakfast hour too early? His breakfast should be sent to his room! Edward was in confusion. It was his first collision with the genuine, unanswerable southern hospitality that survives the wreck of all things. He hesitated and explained and explaining yielded. Supper over, the two gentlemen sat upon the veranda, a cool breeze wandering in from the western rain area and rendering the evening comfortable. Mary brought a great jar of delicious tobacco, home raised, and a dozen corn-cob pipes, and was soon happy in their evident comfort. As she held the lighter over Edward's pipe he ventured one glance upward into her face, and was rewarded with a rare, mysterious smile. It was a picture that clung to him for many years; the girlish face and tender brown eyes in the yellow glare of the flame, the little hand lifted in his service. It was the last view of her that night, for the southern girl, out of the cities, is an early retirer. "The situation is somewhat strained," said the colonel; they had reached politics; "there is a younger set coming on who seem to desire only to destroy the old order of things. They have had the 'new south' dinged into their ears until they had come to believe that the old south holds nothing worth retaining. They are full of railroad schemes to rob the people and make highways for tramps; of new towns and booms, of colonization schemes, to bring paupers into the state and inject the socialistic element of which the north and west are heartily tired. They want to do away with cotton and plant the land in peaches, plums, grapes," here he laughed softly, "and they want to give the nigger a wheeled plow to ride on. It looks as if the whole newspaper fraternity have gone crazy upon what they call intensive and diversified farming. Not one of them has ever told me what there is besides cotton that can be planted and will sell at all times upon the market and pay labor and store accounts in the fall. "And now they have started in this country the 'no-fence' idea and are about to destroy our cattle ranges," continued the colonel, excitedly. "In addition to these, the farmers have some of them been led off into a 'populist' scheme, which in its last analysis means that the government shall destroy corporations and pension farmers. In national politics we have, besides, the silver question and the tariff, and a large element in the state is ready for republicanism!" "That is the party of the north, I believe," said Edward.