hunt another trail?"

"If you are quite sure you wish it above all else the world can give, we
will live the dream."

* * * * *

Cornwall spent the entire day after the dance at his office. He found a
note from Mary in his mail. She was at her home in Madison County. He
wondered how she might look after three years at Wellesley. She
mentioned that one of her neighbors was visiting in Harlan, Miss Clay,
whose brother, Bradley Clay, had called the evening before, and stated
his sister had written she was having a perfectly glorious time.

The thought occurred to him that if Mary were near enough, he would go
to her. Rosamond I love when near her; I think of Mary every day--yet I
have not seen her for three long years.

When Bradford, entering the room and all smiles, said: "Come, let's go
to the Neals,'" he answered: "No, I think I shall rest tonight; I am
moody and prefer solitude."

"Well, I'll go for Duffield. Pleasant dreams, John, as happy as mine
shall be; so long!"

John went into the library and read the first few pages of Machiavelli's
"History of Florence," about a king of the Zepidi and his daughter,
Rosamond, and he slept, and as he slept he dreamed.

It seemed to him that his Rosamond, perhaps ten year older, came into
the room. She was clothed in vivid draperies and wore a circlet of old
gold upon her brow, heavy bracelets upon her upper arm and a chain-like
girdle of gold around her waist, from which hung a jeweled dagger.

As he looked she spoke:

"I rarely see father, except in armor. Day after day mother and her
maids work at bandages and wound dressings. The halls of the castle are
littered with arms and the courtyard and plain surrounding the walls is
the assembly ground of armed horsemen preparing to go and returning from
distant camps. It has been thus since Narses drove our kinsmen home to
Pannonia, after several years' quiet occupancy of northern Italy.

"Now, Alboin, King of Lombardy, instigated by Narses and aided by the
Avars, following after our expelled kinsmen, has invaded our country
even to the plains of the Danube. We can see from the castle walls not
only our own, but his invading host as they make preparation for final
battle to determine the sovereignty of Pannonia.

"With such a drama pending, I am not content to be a bandage and
salve-maker in the women's quarter. Who would, if brought up to ride and
fence and wrestle with brothers and cous