y to make the request, but I don't know it."

"If there is I don't know it, either," was the kindly answer, which
both Nickols and I took for assent.

"Thank you, sir," said Nickols, as he turned away towards father and Mr.
Cockrell and Mr. Jeffries, who had come out on the porch with their
cigars, and left him and me standing alone in the starlight.

"God guard you!" he said to me without taking the hand I held out to him
in the darkness with a kind of desperation that seemed that of a
drowning woman. "Good-bye!" and he was gone out into the night, leaving
me, I knew, forever outside of his life.

"Wait, Oh wait!" I pleaded, but he was gone and I didn't even know if he
heard the cry out into the velvet darkness.

That night was the most brilliant night that Goodloets had ever known.
The Town was full of guests who had motored over from all the towns
around in the Harpeth Valley. The Governor had come down from the
capital in his huge touring car to congratulate father on his
appointment and to meet Mr. Jeffries. His adjutant-general and several
of his aids were with him in their showy State Guard uniforms and all of
the girls were rosy with excitement at the presence of so many rows of
brass buttons. Mr. Jeffries opened the ball, and to the delight and
amusement of us all, he succeeded in leading out with him Mrs. Sproul,
who turned the opening dance into a stately old Virginia reel, which so
delighted the tango dancers with its novelty that the dance was repeated
several times during the evening by enthusiastic requests.

And while the Town reveled in celebration of the new Goodloets, down in
the Settlement like rejoicings were being held at the dance hall of the
Last Chance. In fact, the whole small city was in the throes of a great
rejoicing. Why shouldn't all Goodloets revel when it was enjoying a
prosperity beyond anybody's dreams of two years before? Everybody had
been generous to the old town with the money that had come so easily
from other suffering people's necessities, and security and good
fellowship and prosperity reigned supreme. In each heart there was the
feeling that now the old town and their personal lives were founded on
solid rocks of peace and plenty and it was the time to eat, drink and be
merry.

At supper the Governor's first toast, after that to the town itself,
was to father and his distinctions. Then Mr. Jeffries toasted Nickols
and me. He called Nickols the "American Wizard of Habita