desire,
and crushed the luck of all the race of Zanes.

Duff Salter was sitting at his writing table, with an open snuff-box
before him, and, as Calvin Van de Lear entered his room, Duff took a
large pinch of snuff and shoved the tablets forward. Calvin wrote on
them a short sentence. As Duff Salter read it he started to his feet and
sneezed with tremendous energy:

"Jeri-cho! Jericho! Jerry-cho-o-o!"

He read the sentence again, and whispered very low:

"Can't you be mistaken?"

"As sure as you sit there!" wrote Calvin Van de Lear.

"What is your inference?" wrote Duff Salter.

"Seduction!"

The two men looked at each other silently a few minutes, Duff Salter in
profound astonishment, Calvin Van de Lear with an impudent smile.

"And so religious!" wrote Duff Salter.

"That is always incidental to the condition," answered Calvin.

"It must be a great blow to your affection?"

"Not at all," scrawled the minister's son. "It gives me a sure thing."

"Explain that!"

"I will throw the marriage mantle over her. She will need me now!"

"But you would not take a wife out of such a situation?"

"Oh! yes. She will be as handsome as ever, and only half as proud."

Duff Salter walked up and down the floor and stroked his long beard, and
his usually benevolent expression was now dark and ominous, as if with
gloom and anger. He spoke in a low tone as if not aware that he was
heard, and his voice sounded as if he also did not hear it, and could
not, therefore, give it pitch or intonation:

"Is this the best of old Kensington? This is the East! Where I dreamed
that life was pure as the water from the dear old pump that quenched my
thirst in boyhood--not bitter as the alkali of the streams of the
plains, nor turbid like the rills of the Arkansas. I pined to leave that
life of renegades, half-breeds, squaws, and nomads to bathe my soul in
the clear fountains of civilization,--to live where marriage was holy
and piety sincere. I find, instead, mystery, blood, dishonor, hypocrisy,
and shame. Let me go back! The rough frontier suits me best. If I can
hear so much wickedness, deaf as I am, let me rather be an unsocial
hermit in the woods, hearing nothing lower than thunder!"

As Duff Salter went to his dinner that day he looked at Agnes sitting in
her place, so ill at ease, and said to himself,

"It is true."

* * * * *

Another matter of concern was on Mr. Duff Salter's mind--his