pierced Rena's heart like a knife and lent wings to her feet.
She wished for the enchanted horse of which her brother had read to her
so many years before on the front piazza of the house behind the
cedars, that she might fly through the air to her dying mother's side.
She determined to go at once to Patesville.

Returning home, she wrote a letter to Warwick inclosing their mother's
letter, and stating that she had dreamed an alarming dream for three
nights in succession; that she had left the house in charge of the
servants and gone to Patesville; and that she would return as soon as
her mother was out of danger.

To her lover she wrote that she had been called away to visit a
sick-bed, and would return very soon, perhaps by the time he got back
to Clarence. These letters Rena posted on her way to the train, which
she took at five o'clock in the afternoon. This would bring her to
Patesville early in the morning of the following day.

XI

A LETTER AND A JOURNEY

War has been called the court of last resort. A lawsuit may with equal
aptness be compared to a battle--the parallel might be drawn very
closely all along the line. First we have the casus belli, the cause
of action; then the various protocols and proclamations and general
orders, by way of pleas, demurrers, and motions; then the preliminary
skirmishes at the trial table; and then the final struggle, in which
might is quite as likely to prevail as right, victory most often
resting with the strongest battalions, and truth and justice not seldom
overborne by the weight of odds upon the other side.

The lawsuit which Warwick and Tryon had gone to try did not, however,
reach this ultimate stage, but, after a three days' engagement,
resulted in a treaty of peace. The case was compromised and settled,
and Tryon and Warwick set out on their homeward drive. They stopped at
a farm-house at noon, and while at table saw the stage-coach from the
town they had just left, bound for their own destination. In the
mail-bag under the driver's seat were Rena's two letters; they had been
delivered at the town in the morning, and immediately remailed to
Clarence, in accordance with orders left at the post-office the evening
before. Tryon and Warwick drove leisurely homeward through the pines,
all unconscious of the fateful squares of white paper moving along the
road a few miles before them, which a mother's yearning and a
daughter's love had thrown, like the apple o