ked, "You know what is dat?"

"Naw," replied the father, "I dunno. I t'ink 'taint no real mash-in'
[machine] 'cause I dawn't never see nuttin' like dat at Belle Alliance
plant-ation, neider at Belmont; and I know, me, if anybody got one
mash-in', any place, for do any t'in' mo' betteh or mo' quicker,
Mistoo Walleece an' M'sieu Le Bourgeois dey boun' to 'ave 'im. Can't
hitch nuttin' to dat t'ing you got dare; she too small for a rat. What
she is, Claude?"

A yet stronger hope and courage lighted Claude's face. He laid one
hand upon the table before him and the other upon the shoulder of his
sitting companion:

"Papa, if you want to go wid me to de city, we make one big enough for
two mule'. Dass a mash-in'--a new mash-in'--my mash-in'--my
invention!"

"Invench? What dat is--invench?"

Some one knocked on the door. Claude lifted the model, moved on
tiptoe, and placed it softly under the bed. As he rose and turned
again with reddened face, a card was slipped under the door. He took
it and read, in a pencil scrawl,--

"State Superintendent of Public Education,"--

looked at his father with a broad grin, and opened the door.

Mr. Tarbox had come at the right moment. There was a good hour and a
half of the afternoon still left, and he and Claude took a walk
together. Beyond a stile and a frail bridge that spanned a gully at
one end of the town, a noble avenue of oaks leads toward Vermilion
River. On one side of this avenue the town has since begun to spread,
but at that time there were only wide fields on the right hand and on
the left. At the farther end a turn almost at right angles to the left
takes you through a great gate and across the railway, then along a
ruined hedge of roses, and presently into the oak-grove of the old
ex-governor's homestead. This was their walk.

By the time they reached the stile, Claude had learned that his friend
was at the head of his line, and yet had determined to abandon that
line for another

"Far up the height--
Excelsior!"

Also that his friend had liked him, had watched him, would need him,
and was willing then and there to assure him a modest salary, whose
amount he specified, simply to do whatever he might call upon him to
do in his (Claude's) "line."

They were walking slowly, and now and then slower still. As they
entered the avenue of oaks, Claude declined the offer. Then they went
very slowly indeed. Claude learned that Mr. Tarbox, by some chance n