nd in what consisted
this sovereign ally, hitherto uncalculated, of his optimism. As he
tracked his thought, it led him undeviatingly back to its direct
inspiration, the words of Natalie Rathbawne.

"Before your fears come true"--she had said.

Before his fears came true--well, what? The revelation leaped at him
full and fair now, and every nerve sang like a taut wire in answer to
its touch. Before his fears came true, this wretched little world of
petty chicanery and official corruption which surrounded and sickened
him would be wiped out of existence. Abbott--McGrath--their machinations
and their misdeeds--their lies and their ambitions--their power and
their pride,--they were newts that fouled a pool, gnats in the sunshine,
cinders on the snow. Towering above them, ready, at an instant's
notice, to crush them out of being, was the rock of ages, the righteous
spirit of Alleghenia, integral and indestructible, illumined by the
ancient, undimmed, and eternal sense of rectitude inherent in the
American people!

Not by his agency, perhaps--perhaps not even in his day,--nevertheless
and infallibly, the right was bound to conquer in the end. The clear
eyes and the firm mouths of the men of the Ninth spoke it, their rifles,
their broad shoulders, and their precision confirmed and guaranteed it,
and back of these stood the great, taciturn figure of the People, a
smile upon its calm and silent lips. When those lips should speak, as
speak they would, their words would be the annihilation of Elijah Abbott
and of all his kind!

Meanwhile--the bitterness--the disappointments--the humiliations--ah, in
a moment, how they had grown shrunken, and wizened, and old! For out of
the radiance of revelation, as Christ of old spoke to His disciples, so
now the spirit of Alleghenia spoke to her Lieutenant-Governor.

"_What is that to thee? Follow thou Me!_"

Like a woman, the spirit of her cried unto him, and, like a man, the
spirit of John Barclay answered.

X

A QUESTION AND AN ANSWER

Much to Barclay's satisfaction, Cavendish had obtained his appointment
as a city reporter on the staff of the "Sentinel." Even the first week
of the new life thus entered upon had produced a vast change in his
manner and appearance. Though the Lieutenant-Governor had seen him but
once, when he came to repay the loan made him--in itself, of all signs
of restoration to a normal attitude, the most significant--he found that
his complexion had