he rose into
prominence, and that person was Captain Elijah Brent. If, upon entering
the ground-glass office, he found Eliphalet without the Colonel, Captain
Lige would walk out again just as if the office were empty. The inquiries
he made were addressed always to Ephum. Once, when Mr. Hopper had bidden
him good morning and pushed a chair toward him, the honest Captain had
turned his back and marched straight to the house or Tenth Street, where
he found the Colonel alone at breakfast. The Captain sat down opposite.

"Colonel," said he, without an introduction. "I don't like this here
business of letting Hopper run your store. He's a fish, I tell you."

The Colonel drank his coffee in silence.

"Lige," he said gently, "he's nearly doubled my income. It isn't the old
times, when we all went our own way and kept our old customers year in
and year out. You know that."

The Captain took a deep draught of the coffee which Jackson had laid
before him.

"Colonel Carvel," he said emphatically, "the fellow's a damned rascal,
and will ruin you yet if you don't take advice."

The Colonel shifted uneasily.

"The books show that he's honest, Lige."

"Yes," cried Lige, with his fist on the table. "Honest to a mill. But if
that fellow ever gets on top of you, or any one else, he'll grind you
into dust."

"He isn't likely to get on top of me, Lige. I know the business, and keep
watch. And now that Jinny's coming home from Monticello, I feel that I
can pay more attention to her--kind of take her mother's place," said the
Colonel, putting on his felt hat and tipping his chair. "Lige, I want
that girl to have every advantage. She ought to go to Europe and see the
world. That trip East last summer did her a heap of good. When we were at
Calvert House, Dan read her something that my grandfather had written
about London, and she was regularly fired. First I must take her to the
Eastern Shore to see Carvel Hall. Dan still owns it. Now it's London and
Paris."

The Captain walked over to the window, and said nothing. He did not see
the searching gray eyes of his old friend upon him.

"Lige!" said the Colonel.

The Captain turned.

"Lige, why don't you give up steamboating and come along to Europe?
You're not forty yet, and you have a heap of money laid by."

The Captain shook his head with the vigor that characterized him.

"This ain't no time for me to leave," he said. "Colonel; I tell you
there's a storm comin'."

The Col