ed dubiously.

"Why, then, you've got to come with me," says Tom, heartily. "It isn't
too late, and they'll want you. I've a buggy, and I'm going to the
Russells' to change my clothes. Came along"

Steven went.

CHAPTER XIII

AT MR. BRINSMADE'S GATE

The eastern side of the Brinsmade house is almost wholly taken up by the
big drawing-room where Anne gave her fancy-dress ball. From the windows
might be seen, through the trees in the grounds, the Father of Waters
below. But the room is gloomy now, that once was gay, and a heavy coat of
soot is spread on the porch at the back, where the apple blossoms still
fall thinly in the spring. The huge black town has coiled about the place
the garden still struggles on, but the giants of the forest are dying and
dead. Bellefontaine Road itself, once the drive of fashion, is no more.
Trucks and cars crowd the streets which follow its once rural windings,
and gone forever are those comely wooded hills and green pastures,--save
in the memory of those who have been spared to dream.

Still the old house stands, begrimed but stately, rebuking the sordid
life around it. Still come into it the Brinsmades to marriage and to
death. Five and sixty years are gone since Mr. Calvin Brinsmade took his
bride there. They sat on the porch in the morning light, harking to the
whistle of the quail in the corn, and watching the frightened deer
scamper across the open. Do you see the bride in her high-waisted gown,
and Mr. Calvin in his stock and his blue tail-coat and brass buttons?

Old people will tell you of the royal hospitality then, of the famous men
and women who promenaded under those chandeliers, and sat down to the
game-laden table. In 1835 General Atkinson and his officers thought
nothing of the twenty miles from Jefferson Barracks below, nor of dancing
all night with the Louisville belles, who were Mrs. Brinsmade's guests.
Thither came Miss Todd of Kentucky, long before she thought of taking for
a husband that rude man of the people, Abraham Lincoln. Foreigners of
distinction fell in love with the place, with its open-hearted master and
mistress, and wrote of it in their journals. Would that many of our
countrymen, who think of the West as rough, might have known the quality
of the Brinsmades and their neighbors!

An era of charity, of golden simplicity, was passing on that October
night of Anne Brinsmade's ball. Those who made merry there were soon to
be driven and scattered