d a
worthy career. Patiently would he await the results of his labours,
and if they came not in great measure in his own lifetime, he would be
content to know that after years would see their full fruition.

So that night he sat down and wrote a long answer to Kirby's letter,
in which he told him of Phil's death and burial, and his own grief.
Something there was, too, of his plans for the future, including his
marriage to a good woman who would help him in them. Kirby, he said,
had offered him a golden opportunity for which he thanked him
heartily. The scheme was good enough for any one to venture upon. But
to carry out his own plans, would require that he invest his money in
the State of his residence, where there were many openings for capital
that could afford to wait upon development for large returns. He sent
his best regards to Mrs. Jerviss, and his assurance that Kirby's plan
was a good one. Perhaps Kirby and she alone could handle it; if not,
there must be plenty of money elsewhere for so good a thing.

He sealed the letter, and laid it aside to be mailed in the morning.
To his mind it had all the force of a final renunciation, a severance
of the last link that bound him to his old life.

Long the colonel lay thinking, after he retired to rest, and the
muffled striking of the clock downstairs had marked the hour of
midnight ere he fell asleep. And he had scarcely dozed away, when he
was awakened by a scraping noise, as though somewhere in the house a
heavy object was being drawn across the floor. The sound was not
repeated, however, and thinking it some trick of the imagination, he
soon slept again.

As the colonel slept this second time, he dreamed of a regenerated
South, filled with thriving industries, and thronged with a prosperous
and happy people, where every man, having enough for his needs, was
willing that every other man should have the same; where law and order
should prevail unquestioned, and where every man could enter, through
the golden gate of hope, the field of opportunity, where lay the
prizes of life, which all might have an equal chance to win or lose.

For even in his dreams the colonel's sober mind did not stray beyond
the bounds of reason and experience. That all men would ever be equal
he did not even dream; there would always be the strong and the weak,
the wise and the foolish. But that each man, in his little life in
this our little world might be able to make the most of himself,