to Heaven, I shan't seek your guidance at
all--I'll merely nose Prince Rupert at the Bible and give him his head."

"It's a comfort to know, at least, that you won't be trusting to your own
deserts, my boy," responded the rector, who dearly loved his joke, as he
helped himself to yellow pickle.

"Let us hope that the straight and narrow way is a little clearer than the
tavern road to-night," said Champe. "I'm afraid you'll have trouble getting
back, Governor."

"Afraid!" took up the Major, before the Governor could reply. "Why, where
are your manners, my lad? It will be no ill wind that keeps them beneath
our roof. We'll make room for you, ladies, never fear; the house will
stretch itself to fit the welcome, eh, Molly?"

Mrs. Lightfoot, looking a little anxious, put forward a hearty assent; but
the Governor laughed and threw back the Major's hospitality as easily as it
was proffered.

"I know that your welcome's big enough to hold us, my dear Major," he said;
"but Hosea's driving us, you see, and he could take us along the turnpike
blindfold. Why, he actually discovered in passing just before the storm
that somebody had dug up a sugar berry bush from the corner of your old
rail fence."

"And we really must get back," insisted Mrs. Ambler, "we haven't even fixed
the servants' Christmas, and Betty has to fill the stockings for the
children in the quarters."

"Then if you will go, go you shall," cried the Major, as heartily as he had
pressed his invitation. "You shall get back, ma'am, if I have to go before
you with a shovel and clear the snow away. So just a bit more of this roast
pig, just a bit, Governor. My dear Miss Lydia, I beg you to try that spiced
beef--and you, Mr. Bill?--Cupid, Mr. Bill will have a piece of roast pig."

By the time the Tokay was opened, the Major had grown very jolly, and he
began to exchange jokes with the Governor and the rector. Mr. Bill and the
doctor, neither of whom could have told a story for his life, listened with
a kind of heavy gravity; and the young men, as they rattled off a college
tale or two, kept their eyes on Betty and Virginia.

Betty, leaning back in her high mahogany chair, and now and then putting in
a word with the bright effusion which belonged to her, gave ear half to the
Major's anecdotes, and half to a jest of Jack Morson's. Before her branched
a silver candelabrum, and beyond it, with the light in his face, Dan was
sitting. She watched him with a frank curios