“Three men to subjugate. Nothing could suit me better,” and Helen clasped her hands in ecstasy. “_Au revoir_, cousin mine. Wish me success, and don’t forget the library.” “If it were right I’d pray that she might not succeed. I have prayed for more trivial things than that, and been heard,” Alice thought, as she watched her cousin going down the stairs and saw her turn in the direction of the north piazza. CHAPTER XIII. ON THE NORTH PIAZZA. Craig had been to the post office after his mail, and taking his mother’s letters to her room, had returned to his accustomed place on the north piazza. Here he found a large glass of iced lemonade with a straw in it waiting for him, and Uncle Zacheus, with his coat off, seated in an armchair, mopping his face with a yellow silk handkerchief. “It’s swelterin’ hot again to-day. Most 90 in the shade, and I thought mabby some lemonade would taste good after your walk,” he said to Craig, who thanked him and began to sip the cool beverage. “That’s on old-fashioned toddy tumbler. I told Mark to use it, as I thought you’d want a big drink,” Uncle Zacheus said, and Craig thanked him again, and said he was very thoughtful. At that moment Mark joined them, glad to escape from the office which at that hour of the day was very warm. There had been a lingering hope in his mind that Miss Helen Tracy might be there. But she wasn’t, and taking one of the vacant chairs, he brought it near to the railing on which he put his feet and leaning back with his hands behind his head, gave himself up to a rest which he felt he needed. Craig, too, had hoped to find Helen on his return from the post office. But he did not, and, both young men had seated themselves with a feeling of disappointment and with no suspicion of the preparations making for a raid upon them. For a time Uncle Zacheus rambled on about the weather and the new fence for the “cemetry” for which “Widder Wilson had only given five dollars.” “I mean to ask Miss Tracy to give sunthin’ seein’ her gran’father is buried there,” he said; then, turning to Craig, he asked, “Have you seen t’other one yet?” Craig knew whom he meant, but wishing to hear what Uncle Zacheus would say, he asked with an air of some surprise, “Who is t’other one?” “Why, you know. You’ve seen the one I call the daisy, though she’s more like them lilies she got with Jeff, who has never behaved so well in his life as sense he come up from the river with her. I mean the cousin,—the rich one. I seen her last night, and I tell you she’s a dandy. Shorter than the daisy,—plump as a partridge, and such eyes. Old as I am they gave me some such feelin’s as Dot’s used to when she talked to me over her father’s gate. She’s the one writ that nice letter I’ve got put away with Johnny’s blanket and the old sign.”