In the hotel across the way the loungers leaning back in their cane-bottomed chairs straightened up with keenest interest and delight. Jule Chinn in the Blue-grass Club up-stairs, happening to glance out of the window, turned his box over, and remarked that if any gentleman cared to bet, he would lay any part of $5000 on Bill. When the General was directly opposite him Colonel Bill gravely and courteously lifted his hat. For an instant the old man hesitated, and then, with a glance at his daughter, he lifted his own hat and passed through the gate. “Well, I'll be----!” cried Jule, with a whistle of infinite amazement. “Things is changed in Kentucky!” “That,” said Major Cicero Johnson, who had exchanged several hundred subscriptions to his paper for an ever-decreasing pile of Jule's blue chips--“that is the tribute which valor pays to beauty. Their pleasure has only been postponed. Colonel Chinn, you have overlooked that small wager on the ace. Thanks.” Ten minutes later Colonel Bill was galloping out to the race-track, gayly singing a popular love-song. Suddenly something occurred to him and he stopped, reached back into his hip-pocket, and drew out a long pistol. He threw it as far as he could into a neighboring brier-patch, and once more giving rein to his horse, began to sing with renewed enthusiasm. When he reached the track he called old Elias into his room, and they remained together for a long time in whispered conference. That night any one who happened to have been belated on the Versailles 'pike might have passed Elias jogging along on his horse, looking very important, and an air of mystery enveloping him like a garment. It was far into the night when he returned. As he started to creep up the ladder to the loft above his young master's room, his shoes in his hand so as not to awaken him, the Colonel, who had been tossing on a sleepless bed for hours, called out. Elias, who evidently regarded himself as a conspirator, waited until he had reached the loft, and then whispered back, “Hit's all right, Marse Bill,” and was instantly swallowed up in the darkness. It was one of those perfect June nights so often seen in Kentucky. The full moon hung in a cloudless sky, filling the air with a soft white radiance. There was not a movement in the still, warm atmosphere, and to Colonel Bill, waiting beneath the shadows of the big oak-tree near the General's gate, it seemed that all nature was waiting with him. The leaves above his head, the gray old church steeple beyond the house, the long stretch of deserted streets--they all wore a hushed, expectant look. It was several minutes past the appointed hour, and Miss Braxton had not come. He had begun to fear that perhaps her father, suspecting something, had detained her, when he saw her figure, a white outline among the rose-bushes, far up the walk. As she drew near he stepped out from the shadows, and she gave a little cry of delight.