a new man; I am a new man!" he exclaimed. Then he glanced
at the pitiful figure, maundering and sputtering across the way. "I am
going home," he went on, "and will put father to bed and nurse him and
take care of him just as if--well, just as if I was his mother."

"The Lord'll love you for it, Jack," said Miss Jane, "and so'll Rose
Gaither. When ever'thing else happens," she continued, solemnly, "put
your trust in the Lord, and don't have no misdoubts of Rose."

The superstition that recognises omens and portents we are apt to laugh
at as vulgar, but it has an enduring basis in the fact that no
circumstance can be regarded as absolutely trivial. Events apparently
the most trifling lead' to the most tremendous results. The wisest of
us know not by what process the casual is transformed into the
dreadful, nor how accident is twisted into fate.

Jack Carew visited the Inchlys almost daily; yet if he had postponed
the visit, the purport of which has been given above, the probability
is that he would have been spared much suffering; on the other hand, he
would have missed much happiness that came to him at a time of life
when he was best prepared to appreciate it. He had determined in his
own mind to sell the little land and the few negroes he had saved from
the wreck his father's extravagance had made; he had determined to sell
these, and slip away with his father to a new life in the West; but his
conversation with Miss Jane gave him new hope and courage, so that when
Bradley Gaither, a few weeks afterwards, offered to buy the Carew place
for two or three times its value, he received a curt and contemptuous
message of refusal.

Young Carew was high-strung and sensitive, even as a boy, and events
had only served to develop these traits. When he was compelled to leave
college to take charge of his father's' affairs, he felt that his name
was disgraced for ever. He found, however, that all who had known him
were anxious to hold up his hands, and to give him such support as one
friend is prepared to give another. If the Pinetuckians were
simple-minded, they were also sympathetic, There was something gracious
as well as wholesome in their attitude. The men somehow succeeded in
impressing him with a vague idea that they had passed through just such
troubles in their youth. The idea was encouraging, and Jack Carew made
the most of it.

But he never thought of Rose Gaither without a sense of deepest
humiliation. He had loved