"I must, however, content myself with my experiment; my wolf-cub. "You write of my kindness to him, but my dear General, it is the other way about. It is he who has made my hermitage endurable, and filled in the empty spaces of my life. My fantastic idea of making him the American who starts the pioneer and ends the modern, begins to assume the colour of plausibility. "I now look forward with something like dread to the time when he must go out into a wider world. For then I cannot follow him. I shall have reached the end of my tutorship. I do not think I can then endure this place without him--but there are others as secluded. "But my dear General, the very cordial tone of your letters emboldens me to ask a favour (and it is a large one), in this connection. When he has finished his course at college I should like to have him read law in Louisville. That will take him into a new phase of the development I have planned. He will need strong counsel and true friends there, for he will still be the pioneer with the rough bark on him, coming into a land of culture, and, though he will never confess it, he will feel the sting of class distinctions and financial contrasts. "There he will see what rapid transitions have left of the old South, and despite the many changes, there still survives much of its spirit. Its fragrant bouquet, its fine traditions, are not yet gone. God willing, I hope he will even go further than that, and later know the national phases as well as the sectional--but that, of course, lies on the knees of the gods." * * * * * General Prince laid down the letter and sat gazing thoughtfully at the scabbarded sabre on the wall. Then he rose from his chair and went along the corridors to a suite legended, "Wallifarro, Banks and Wallifarro." The General paused to smile, for the last name had been freshly lettered there, and he knew that it meant a hope fulfilled to his old friend the Colonel. His son's name was on the door, and his son was in the firm. But it was to the private office of Colonel Tom that he went, and the Colonel shoved back a volume of decisions to smile his welcome. "Tom," began the General, "I have a letter here that I want you to read. I may be violating a confidence--but I think the writer would trust my judgment in such a matter." Tom Wallifarro read the sheets of evenly penned chirography, and as he handed them back he said musingly: "Under the circumstances, of course, it would not be fair to ask if you have any guess as to who McCalloway is--or was. He struck me as a gentleman of extraordinary interest--He is a man who has known distinction." "That's why I came in this morning, Tom. I want you to know him better--and to co-operate with me, if you will, about the boy. Since the mountain can't come to Mahomet--" "We are to go there?" came the understanding response, and Basil Prince nodded.