"We're not talking business, Cun'nleand business was my only excuse for coming here, and taking Sophy's place. I'll send her in to yo' now."

"But, Miss Dows!-Miss Sally!"

She stopped-hesitated-a singular weakness for so self-contained a natureand then slowly produced from her pocket a second letter-the one that Courtland had directed to the company. "I didn't read this letter, as I just told yo', Cun'nle, for I reckon I know what's in it, but I thought I'd bring it with me too, in case yo' changed yo'r mind!"

He raised himself on his pillow as she turned quickly away; but in that single

"Not much, honey! When Miss Sally say she goes-she done gone, shuah!"

"But, Sophy!" Perhaps something in the significant face of the girl tempted him; perhaps it was only an impulse of his forgotten youth. his forgotten youth. "Sophy!" appealingly tell me!--is Miss Sally engaged to her cousin?"

"Wat dat!" said Sophy, in indignant scorn. "Miss Sally engaged to dat Dumont ! Whet fo'? Your crazy! No!"

"Nor Champney? has she a lover?"

Tell me, Sophy,

For a moment the whites of Sophy's eyes were uplifted in speechless scorn,

"Yo' ask dat! Yo' lyin' dar wid dat snake-bit arm! Yo' lyin' dar and Miss Sally,-who has only to whistle to call de fust quality in de state raoun her-coming and going here wid you, and trotting on yo'r arrants- and yo' ask dat. Yes! she has a lover, and what's mo', she can't help it; and yo're her lover; and what's mo', yo' can't help it either! And yo' can't back out of it now bofe of yo'-nebber! Fo' yo're hers, and she's yo'res-fo' ebber. For she sucked yo" blood."

"What!" gasped Courtland, aghast at what he believed to be the sudden insanity of the negress.

"Yes! Whar's yo' eyes! whar's yo' years! who's yo' dat yo' didn't see nor heah nuffin! When dey dragged yo' outer de swamp dat night,-wid de snakebite fresh on yo' arm--didn't she, dat poh chile!-dat same Miss Sally-frow herself down on yo', and put dat baby mouf of hers to de wound and suck out de pizen and sabe de life ob yo' at de risk ob her own? Say? And if dey's any troof in Hoodoo, don't dat make yo' one blood and one soul! Go way-white man! I'm sick of yo'. Stop dar! Lie down dar! Hol' on, Cun'nle, for ma sy's sake. Well, dar-I'll call her back!"

And she did!

"Look here-don't you know?-it rather took me by surprise," said Champney, a few days later, with a hearty grip of the Colonel's uninjured hand-"but I don't bear malice, old fellow, and, by Jove, it was such a sensible, all-round, business

like choice for the girl to make-that no wonder we never thought of it before. Hang it all, you see a fellow was always so certain it would be something out of the way and detrimental, don't you know, that would take the fancy of a girl like that-somebody like that cousin of hers, or Higbee, or even me, by Jove! that we never thought of looking beyond our noses-ever thought of the business! And you, all the time so cold and silent and matter-of-fact about it! But I congratulate you! You've got the business down on a safe basis now, and what's more, you've got the one woman who can run it."

They say he was a true prophet. At least the Syndicate affairs prospered, and in course of time even the Reeds and the Higbees participated in the benefits. There were no more racial disturbances; only the districts polled a peaceful and smaller Democratic majority at the next election. There were not wanting those who alleged that Colonel Courtland had simply become Mrs. Courtland's superintendent; that she had absorbed him as she had every one who had come under her influence, and that she would not rest until she had made him a Senator (to represent Mrs. Courtland) in the councils of the nation. But when I last dined with them in Washington, ten years ago, I found them both very happy and comfortable, and I remember that Mrs. Courtland's remarks upon Federal and State interests, the proper education of young girls, and the management of the family, were eminently wise and practical.

MR statesmen's years

R. John Morley is still young, as years are counted, but he has lived long enough to disprove one or two widely accepted Parliamentary aphorisms. One is that the gateway of success is closed against a man in the House of Commons unless he takes his seat whilst yet young. Another points to high reputation acquired

out of doors as a bar to Parliamentary renown. Whilst a third fixes upon literary men as the least likely to achieve high Parliamentary position. All these things are true, and Mr. Morley's variation of the rule affords evidence of his indomitable courage and dogged

disadvantage would prove insurmountable to Mr. Morley. Upon a man of his temperament and nature it pressed with exceptional weight. Superadded was his literary training and the high reputation he had won outside the precincts of Westminster. For a time it seemed as if the world was destined to witness the re-enactment of the tragedy of the Parliamentary failure of John Stuart

Mill.

The House was crowded on every bench to hear the maiden speech of the biographer of Burke and Cobden, the philosopher who had written "On Compromise," the man who had thrown fresh light on the working of the minds of Voltaire and Rousseau. It was, moreover, a friendly audience, generously eager to welcome a new acquisition to its intellectual forces. That the speech was full of weighty matter, carefully prepared, goes without saying. This was, perhaps, the secret of the failure. It was an essay on the question of the hour, and would have been well enough if the course usually found convenient in communicating essays to an audience had been permissible, and the new member had been allowed to read straight through his MS. That was out of order, and Mr. Morley, with parched tongue and blanched face, painfully stumbled through an imperfect recital.

He ranks to day as one of the ablest debaters in the House of Commons, but the position was acquired by slow and laborious process. He always had it in him, but for several sessions could not get it out. To some men the delivery of a