ropolitan music
hall, gaudily bedecked and brilliantly lighted, it would have been
tolerable from the lips of a black-face comedian. But in this quiet
place, upon this quiet night, and in the colonel's mood, it seemed
like profanation. The song of the coloured girl, who had dreamt that
she dwelt in marble halls, and the rest, had been less incongruous; it
had at least breathed aspiration.

Mrs. Treadwell was still dozing in her armchair. The colonel,
beckoning Miss Laura to follow him, moved to the farther end of the
piazza, where they might not hear the singers and the song.

"It is delightful here, Laura. I seem to have renewed my youth. I
yield myself a willing victim to the charm of the old place, the old
ways, the old friends."

"You see our best side, Henry. Night has a kindly hand, that covers
our defects, and the starlight throws a glamour over everything. You
see us through a haze of tender memories. When you have been here a
week, the town will seem dull, and narrow, and sluggish. You will find
us ignorant and backward, worshipping our old idols, and setting up no
new ones; our young men leaving us, and none coming in to take their
place. Had you, and men like you, remained with us, we might have
hoped for better things."

"And perhaps not, Laura. Environment controls the making of men. Some
rise above it, the majority do not. We might have followed in the
well-worn rut. But let us not spoil this delightful evening by
speaking of anything sad or gloomy. This is your daily life; to me it
is like a scene from a play, over which one sighs to see the curtain
fall--all enchantment, all light, all happiness."

But even while he spoke of light, a shadow loomed up beside them. The
coloured woman who had waited at the table came around the house from
the back yard and stood by the piazza railing.

"Miss Laura!" she called, softly and appealingly. "Kin you come hyuh a
minute?"

"What is it, Catherine?"

"Kin I speak just a word to you, ma'am? It's somethin'
partic'lar--mighty partic'lar, ma'am."

"Excuse me a minute, Henry," said Miss Laura, rising with evident
reluctance.

She stepped down from the piazza, and walked beside the woman down one
of the garden paths. The colonel, as he sat there smoking--with Miss
Laura's permission he had lighted a cigar--could see the light stuff
of the lady's gown against the green background, though she was
walking in the shadow of the elms. From the murmur which came to