hanged photographs; there was not a passage in his letters that might
not have been perused by her parents,--which, I fear, was probably one
reason why she had never shown her correspondence; and beyond the fact
that this letter-writing gave her a certain importance in her own
eyes and those of her companions, it might really be stopped. She even
thought of writing at once to him that her parents objected to its
further continuance, but remembering that his usual monthly letter was
now nearly due, she concluded to wait until it came.

It is to be feared that Miss Sally had little help in the way of family
advice, and that the moral administration of the Dows household was as
prematurely developed and as precociously exhausted as the estate and
mansion themselves. Captain Dows' marriage with Josephine Jeffcourt,
the daughter of a "poor white," had been considered a mesalliance by his
family, and his own sister, Miranda Dows, had abandoned her brother's
roof and refused to associate with the Jeffcourts, only returning to
the house and an armed neutrality at the death of Mrs. Dows a few years
later. She had taken charge of Miss Sally, sending her to school at
Nashville until she was recalled by her father two years ago. It may be
imagined that Miss Sally's correspondence with Jeffcourt's murderer had
afforded her a mixed satisfaction; it was at first asserted that Miss
Sally's forgiveness was really prompted by "Miss Mirandy," as a subtle
sarcasm upon the family. When, however, that forgiveness seemed to
become a source of revenue to the impoverished Jeffcourts, her Christian
interference had declined.

For this reason, possibly, the young girl did not seek her aunt in
the bedroom, the dining-room, or the business-room, where Miss
Miranda frequently assisted Captain Dows in the fatuous and prejudiced
mismanagement of the house and property, nor in any of the vacant
guest-rooms, which, in their early wreck of latter-day mahogany and
rosewood, seemed to have been unoccupied for ages, but went directly to
her own room. This was in the "L," a lately added wing that had escaped
the gloomy architectural tyranny of the main building, and gave Miss
Sally light, ventilation, the freshness and spice of new pine boards and
clean paper, and a separate entrance and windows on a cool veranda all
to herself. Intended as a concession to the young lady's traveled taste,
it was really a reversion to the finer simplicity of the pioneer.

N