nd others, who, having returned to Germany, felt themselves
quite at home under the new conditions and had found their way open to
public positions and activities of distinction and influence, in
harmony with their principles. As he repeated this, or something like
it, in a manner apt to command my attention, I might have taken it as
a suggestion inviting me to do likewise. But I thought it best not to
say anything in response.

Our conversation had throughout been so animated that time had slipped
by us unaware, and it was again long past midnight when I left. My old
friends of 1848 whom I met in Berlin were of course very curious to
know what the great man of the time might have had to say to me, and I
thought I could without being indiscreet communicate to them how
highly pleased he had expressed himself with the harmonious
cooperation between him and them for common ends. Some of them thought
that Bismarck's conversion to liberal principles was really sincere.
Others were less sanguine, believing as they did that he was indeed
sincere and earnest in his endeavor to create a united German empire
under Prussian leadership; that he would carry on a gay flirtation
with the Liberals so long as he thought that he could thus best
further his object, but that his true autocratic nature would assert
itself again and he would throw his temporarily assumed Liberalism
overboard as soon as he felt that he did not need its support any
longer, and especially when he found it to stand in the way of his
will.

THE FOREHANDED COLQUHOUNS

BY MARGARET WILSON

ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. E. CEDERQUIST

I

"Perhaps I'm too old to be wearing such things, but I love bright
colors, and there's not a bit of use denying it."

Mary Ann gathered one end of the fancy tartan into a handful, and
looked approvingly at its soft, heavy folds.

"Particularly at this time of year. It's warming to the blood on a
cold autumn day just to see a dress like this on the street. I
always did like a good rich tartan. It becomes me, too. Look,
Selina'n'Jane."

She held the dress material against one cheek, and her sisters
looked--but somehow failed to see what a pleasing picture she made.
She had just come in from shopping and had not yet removed her hat,
and its trimming of foliage repeated the colors of her face--autumnal
tints of red and bronze and healthy yellow. She, the eldest of the
family and the only unmarried one, was forty-five, but she w