She rubbed her cheek softly against my sleeve. "Shall I confess something just as dreadful?" she asked. "When I looked up and saw him standing there my first feeling was exactly the same." "Sally, I am so thankful." "You wicked creature, to want me to be as bad as yourself." "It couldn't have lasted with you but a second." "It didn't, but a second is an hour in the mind of a snob." "Well, we were both snobs together, and that's some comfort, anyway." For the three days that President remained with us he wore my clothes, in which he looked more than ever like a miner attired for church, and carried himself with a resigned and humble manner. Sally took him to the theatre and to drive with her in the afternoon, and I carried him to the General's office and over the Capitol, which he surveyed with awed and admiring eyes. Only Jessy still shrank from him, and not once during his visit were we able to prevail upon her to appear with him in the presence of strangers. There was always an excuse ready to trip off her tongue--she had a headache, she was going to the dressmaker's, the milliner's, the dentist's even; and I honestly believe that she sought cheerfully this last place of torture as an escape. To the end, however, he regarded her with an affection that fell little short of adoration. "Who'd have thought that little Jessy would have shot up into a regular beauty!" he exclaimed for the twentieth time as he stood ready to depart. "She takes arter pa, and I always said the only thing against pa was that he wa'nt born a female." He kissed her good-by in a reverential fashion, and after a cordial, though exhausted, leave-taking from Sally, we went together to West Virginia. In spite of the General's advice, I had decided to take a look at the coal fields of Wyanoke, and a week later, when I returned to Richmond, I was the owner of a control of the little West Virginia and Wyanoke Railroad. It was a long distance from the presidency of the Great South Midland and Atlantic, but I watched still from some vantage ground in my imagination, the gleaming tracks of the big road sweeping straight on to the southern horizon.