dal party to Elkins Junction, connecting there with the
east-bound limited on the Pendleton line, thence direct to Elysium.

Laura, rosy as a bride should be, and actually attractive to me for the
first time in her life, sat in her traveling-dress trying to look
matter-of-fact, and discussing time-tables with her bridegroom, who
seemed to find less and less of dream and more of the actual in the
situation,--calm returning with the cutaway. Cecil and the coterie of
gilded youth who followed him did their share to bring Giddings back to
earth by a series of practical jokes, hackneyed, but ever fresh. The
largest trunk, after it reached the platform, blossomed out in a sign
reading: "The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the
Owners by that Absorbed Expression!" Divers revelatory incidents were
arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was
produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this
occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the
joke, his disapproval of it--a feeling which he expressed in an aside to
me.

"Hoss-play of this so't, suh," said he, "ought not to be tolerated among
civilized people, and I believe is not! In the state of society in which
I was reahed such niggah-shines would mean pistols at ten paces, within
fo'ty-eight houahs, with the lady's neahest male relative! And propahly
so, too, suh; quite propahly!"

"Shall we go to the train, Albert?" said Alice, as the party made ready
to go.

"No," said I, "unless you particularly wish it; we shall go home."

"Mr. Barslow," said one of the maids, "you are wanted at the telephone."

"Is this you, Al?" said Jim's voice over the wire. "I'm up here at
Josie's, and I am afraid there's trouble with her father. When we got
here we found him gone. Hadn't you better go out and look around for
him?"

"Have you any idea where I'm likely to find him?" I asked. I saw at once
the significance of Bill's absence. He had taken advantage of the fact
of his wife and daughter's going to the wedding, and had yielded to the
thing which drew him away from them.

"Try the Club, and then O'Brien's," answered Jim. "If you don't find
him in one place or the other, call me up over the 'phone. Call me up
anyhow; I'll wait here."

The _Times_ man heard my end of the conversation, saw me hastily give
Alice word as to the errand which kept me from going home with her,
observed my preparations for leavin