“Why, it's the beginning of a new emancipation,” he said. “It will break the bonds of distance and set us free. In a few years we shall take our train in New York and leave it in San Francisco. The desert plains will be settled and tilled, and there will be great cities where there's nothing now but gophers and wild sage. Why, in the Far West there's land enough for all the oppressed of Europe.” It was the first time that I had heard the phrase now so well worn. Within a week new schedules were established, and Central freight and passengers went on without delay. “It's all settled,” said McCarthy. “My dream is coming true. Soon there'll be one system from New York and Boston to Chicago.” But things not so cheerful were pressing on us. My mother and sister and I had taken a small furnished house in Albany, and fitted up a room for the gentleman, agreeably with his own plan, for he had been urgent in his wish to live with us. Months had passed, but the room was still unoccupied. My sister had made it cosey and homelike, with the pretty arts of a school-girl. “Don't you think it's lovely?” she said to me one day. “Oh, it's a charming room!” I exclaimed. “I wonder why he doesn't like it?” “I think that he does like it.” “But he's only been here once since it was ready,” she answered. “Just one look at that room was enough for him.” She turned away, and when I went and put my arm around her waist and kissed her I saw that there were tears in her eyes. “You silly child,” I said, “you are fond of him!” I had not dreamed of such a thing, and yet I ought to have known it. Sarah began to laugh, and ran away from me and up-stairs to her room. The revelation worried me, and that very day I had a talk with my mother about it. “Sarah will get over that,” said she. “All boys and girls have their little troubles. You had yours, and have recovered.” “Not yet,” was my answer. “If it takes hold of her as it took hold of me, God pity her. I shall not fall in love again.” “I'm sorry to hear you say that,” said my mother. “Jo treats you very badly. Sarah had a letter from her the other day, and there was not a word for you in it. They are in India, and intend to stay there for a year or so. It seems rather strange to me.” “There's some reason--I'm sure she means well,” I insisted. That evening McCarthy and I sat together in his room at the Delevan writing letters until midnight. “Speaking of the ring in the bull's nose,” he said, “what do you think of that?” He passed me a letter from a firm of New York lawyers in behalf of Maud Isabel Manning. They demanded that he keep his promise to marry the young woman or pay a “reasonable sum” in damages. That sum should be, in their opinion, forty thousand dollars. “I'm in an awful mess,” he said, as he turned to me with a troubled look in his face. “There's a quotation from Ecclesiastes that fits the case pretty well: