ly maturing. That is their way. And then she
will marry."

"Good gracious! Leila marry!"

"Yes--it is a way they have. Let us go home."

John was disinclined to talk. Marry--yes--when I am older, I shall ask
her until she does!

November came in churlish humour and raged in storms of wind and rain,
until before their time to let fall their leaves the woods were stripped
of their gay colours. On the fourth day of November the Squire voted the
Fremont electoral ticket, and understood that with the exception of
Swallow and Pole, Westways had followed the master of Grey Pine. The
other candidates did not trouble them. The sad case of Josiah and the
threat to capture their barber had lost Buchanan the twenty-seven votes
of the little town. Mr. Boynton, the carpenter, fastening the last
shingles on the chapel roof remarked to a workman that it was an awful
pity Josiah couldn't know about it and that the new barber wasn't up to
shaving a real stiff beard.

The Squire wrote to his wife from Philadelphia on the ninth:

"DEAR ANN: We never talk politics because you were born a Democrat and
consider Andrew Jackson a political saint. I begin to wish he might be
reincarnated in the body of Buchanan. He will need backbone, I fear. He
has carried our State by only three thousand majority in a vote of
433,000. I am told that the excitement here was so great that the
peacemaking effect of a day of cold drizzle alone prevented riot and
bloodshed. Mr. Buchanan said in October, 'We shall hear no more of
"Bleeding Kansas."' Well, I hope so. Here we are at one. I should feel
more regret at the defeat of my party if I had more belief in Fremont,
but your man is, I am sure, elected, and we must hope for the best and
try to think that hope reasonable.

"I have been fortunate in my contracts for rails with the two railroads.
I shall finish this letter in Baltimore.--

"Baltimore.--I saw Leila, who has quite the air of a young lady and is
well, handsome and reasonably contented. Dined with your brother Henry;
and really, Ann, the cold-blooded way the men talked of secession was a
little beyond endurance. I spoke my mind at last, and was heard with
courteous disapproval. My friend, Lt.-Colonel Robert Lee of the Army, was
the only man who was silent about our troubles. Two men earnestly
advocated the re-opening of the slave-trade, and if as they say slavery
is a blessing, the slave-trade is morally justified and logically
desirable. I do