which he had just removed from the table.

"Yas, yas, dat's it. Yo' needn't 'nounce it. We knows pintedly what yo's
aimin' ter do, an' may de Lawd have mussy 'pon us if yo' _suc_ceeds. But
dere's shorely gwine be ructions 'fore yo' does, er my name ain't Jerome
Randolph Lee Stewart."

CHAPTER II

RECONSTRUCTION

"I have to ride into Annapolis, this morning, Aunt Katherine. Would you
like to drive in?" asked Peggy, when the unpleasant breakfast was ended.

"I should be delighted to, dear," answered Mrs. Stewart sweetly,
striving to recover lost ground, for she felt that a good bit had been
lost. "At what time do you start?"

"Immediately. I will order the surrey."

She left the room, her aunt's eyes following her with a half-mystified,
half-baffled expression: Was the girl deeper than she had given her
credit for being? Had she miscalculated the depth of the pool after all?

All through the breakfast hour Peggy had been a sweet and gracious young
hostess, anticipating every want, looking to every detail of the
service, ordering with a degree of self-possession which secretly
astonished Mrs. Stewart, who felt that it would have been difficult for
her, even with her advantage of years, to have equaled the girl's
unassuming self-assurance and dignity, or have rivaled her perfect
ability to sit at the head of her father's table. A moment later Mrs.
Stewart went to her room to dress for the drive into town, her breakfast
toilet having been a most elaborate silk negligee. Twenty minutes later
the surrey stood at the door, but, contrary to Mrs. Stewart's
expectations, her niece was not in it: she was mounted upon her
beautiful black horse Shashai, at whose feet Tzaritza lay, her nose
between her paws, but her ears a-quiver for the very first note of the
low whistle which meant, "full speed ahead." On either side of Shashai,
a superb bodyguard, stood Silver Star, Polly Howland's saddle horse,
though he was still quartered at Severndale, and Roy, the colt that
Peggy had raised from tiny babyhood, and which had followed her as he
would have followed his dam, ever since the accident that had made him
an orphan.

Perhaps the reader of "Peggy Stewart" will recall Mrs. Stewart's horror
upon being met at the railway station by "the wild West show," as she
stigmatized her niece's riding and her horses, for rarely did Peggy
Stewart ride unless accompanied by her two beautiful horses and the
wolfhound, and her riding w