part of America--a culture that had ripened in the
early wilderness.

Morgan Wallifarro was home from Harvard for his first vacation, and as
General Prince eyed the boy his brows puckered in the momentary ghost of
a frown. This lad, alone of all the young folk in the laughing groups,
struck him as one to whom he could not accord an unreserved approval--as
one whose dress and manner grated ever so slightly with their marring
suspicion of pose. But this, he told himself, was only the conceit of
extreme youth. Morgan was named for his old chieftain of the partisan
cavalry. He was Tom Wallifarro's boy, and if there was anything in blood
he must ultimately develop into worthiness.

"He's the best stock in the world," mused the General. "He's like a
fractious colt just now--but when he's had a bit of gruelling, he'll run
true to form."

The fiddles swung into a Sousa march, and couples drifted out upon the
floor. General Prince stood against the wall, teasing and delighting a
small girl with short skirts and beribboned hair. It was Anne Masters,
that bewitching child who in a few years more would have little leisure
for gray-heads when the violins sang to waltz-time.

The music ran its course and stopped, as all music must, and the couples
stood encoring. Some one, flushed with dancing, threw open the front
door, and a chilly gust swept in from the night. Then quite suddenly
General Prince heard Morgan Wallifarro's laugh break out over the hum of
conversation.

"Well, in Heaven's name," satirically inquired that young gentleman,
"what have we here?"

It was a strange picture for such a framing, yet into the eyes of
General Prince flashed a quick indignant light and under his breath he
muttered, "That young cub, Morgan! He disappoints me."

Seen across the sparkling shoulders and the filmy party gowns of the
girls, beyond the black and white of the men's evening dress, was the
parallelogram of the wide entrance-door, and centred on its threshold,
against the night-curtain, bulked a figure which hesitated there in
momentary indecision and grotesque inappropriateness.

It was a boy, whose long mop of red-brown hair was untrimmed and whose
eyes were just now dazzled by the unaccustomed light and sparkle upon
which they looked. His shirt was of blue cotton, his clothes patched and
shoddy, but under a battery of amused glances he sensed a spirit of
ridicule and stiffened like a ramrod. A drifting peal of laughter from
so