to town, and a number of new stores were opened, and
new young men came to tend the counter and swell the parties, and still
young Powlett held supremacy, and everybody began to say that the cadet
was cut out, and Almira Quimby had gone over heart and soul to the new
claimant, when there came a cataclysm,--a scandal at the sanitarium, a
stir at the Palace Hotel, Urbana's new hostelry, the arrest of a
recently discharged patient by the name of Brannan, an afflicted young
man with what was described as an unconquerable mania for drink, and the
sudden disappearance of young Powlett. There was investigation and more
scandal. It transpired that this young Adonis had abused his father's
trust to the extent of smuggling liquor to certain patients and of
heaven only knew what else. Dr. Powlett resigned, crushed and
humiliated. Lawyers came and bailed out the other unfortunate, of whom
it soon was rumored that he was Almira Quimby's own cousin, the son of
her rich city aunt, and that was the reason the lawyers and not the
relatives came. It was presently established that young Brannan was more
sinned against than sinning, and the holidays opened, with a fearful gap
in Urbana, for Almira's devoted lover, to the comfort of every
right-thinking maid and swain in Sangamon society, had fled, no one knew
whither.

Two weeks later the Widow Davies lay at death's door. Her son was
telegraphed for, and came. His leave was for only one week,--even that a
most unusual concession, granted only because of his unimpeachable
conduct and his safe though not high standing in scholarship. His coming
seemed to give new life to the mother, and Almira vied with him in
attention and devotion. Urbana took it much to heart that after her
months of monopoly of Mr. Powlett, of whom the most damaging and
dreadful things were now told, she should so calmly and complacently
resume her apparent sway over this martial and dignified and superior
sort of person, the widow's son. Urbana fully meant that his eyes should
be opened just so soon as the mother's were closed. But Urbana found
that luck was dead against it. The widow began to mend,--the son it was
who was suddenly prostrated on the eve of his return to the Point.

Leaving Almira at her father's door one night after seeing her safely
home, Davies was found lying in the high-road, senseless, an hour later,
and never, said Urbana, knew what hit him. Concussion of the brain was
feared, for he had evidentl