, the butt or the
muzzle?"

Mrs. March only gasped. She was too refined a woman to mention either
end of a gun by name. "I saw--the--front end."

"He didn't aim it at you, or at anything, did he?"

"No--yes--he aimed it--sidewise."

"Sideways! Now, mother, there I draw the line! No man shall come around
here aiming his gun sideways; endangering the throngs of casual
bystanders!"

"Ah! John, is this the time to make your captive and beleaguered mother
the victim of ribald jests?"

"My dear mother, no! it's a time to go to bed. If that fellow's still
nosing 'round here with his gun aimed sideways he's protection enough!
But seriously, mother, whatever you mean by being embargoed and
blockaded----"

"I did not say embargoed and blockaded!"

"Why, my dear mother, those were your very words!"

"They were not! They were not my words! And yet, alas! how truly----"
She turned and wept.

"O Lord! mother----"

"My son, you've broken the second commandment!"

"It was already broke! O for heaven's sake, mother, don't cave in in
this hysterical way!"

The weeper whisked round with a face of wild beseeching. "O, my son,
call me anything but that! Call me weak and credulous, too easily led
and misled! Call me too poetical and confiding! I know I'm more lonely
than I dare tell my own son! But I'm not--Oho! I'm not hysterical!" she
sobbed.

So it continued for an hour. Then the lamp gave out and they went to
bed.

The next morning John drove his mother to Suez for a visit of several
days among her relatives, and rode on into Blackland to see if he could
find "a girl" for Widewood. He spent three days and two nights at these
tasks, stopping while in Blackland with--whom would you suppose?
Proudfit, for all the world! He took an emphatic liking to the not too
brainy colonel, and a new disrelish to his almost too sparkling wife.

As, at sunset of the third day, he again drew near Suez and checked his
muddy horse's gallop at Swanee River Bridge, his heart leaped into his
throat. He hurriedly raised his hat, but not to the transcendent
beauties of the charming scene, unless these were Fannie Halliday and
Barbara Garnet.

XLV.

A LITTLE VOYAGE OF DISCOVERIES

For two girls out on a quiet stroll, their arms about each other and
their words murmurous, not any border of Suez was quite so alluring as
the woods and waters seen from the parapet of this fine old stone
bridge.

The main road from Blackland crosse