generous ambition to found a college. He of
Suez--the town that was to be--selected for his prospective seat of
learning a parcel of sixty acres close against the western line of
Widewood. Whereupon the grantee of Widewood good-naturedly, as well as
more wisely, "took up" near the _Suez tract_ the sixty acres which
eventually became Rosemont. Both pieces lay on the same side of the same
creek and were both in Clearwater County, as was much, though not the
most, of Widewood. Moreover, both were in the same "section" and
"range," and in their whole description differed scarcely more than by
an N and an S, one being in the northwest and the other in the southwest
corner of the same township. On the ill-kept county records these twin
college sites early got mixed. When Garnet founded Rosemont his friends
in office promised to tax that public benefaction as gently as they
dared, and he was only grateful and silent, not surprised, when his
tax-bill showed no increase at all. But while Rosemont was still small
and poor and he seriously embarrassed by the cost of an unsuccessful
election, came this letter of Leggett's to open his eyes and complete
his despair. There across it were his own pencilings of volume and page
to show that he had seen the record. In one of his mad moments, and in
the hopeful conviction that the mulatto would soon get himself shot or
hung, he paid him to keep still. From that time on, making Leggett's
silence just a little more golden than his speech, he had, "in bad
faith," as the lawyers say, been pouring all his gains, not worse spent,
into property built on land belonging to the Widewood estate; that is,
into Rosemont. When Judge March found his Clearwater taxes high, he was
only glad to see any of his lands growing in value. When John came into
possession, Garnet, his party being once more in power, had cunningly
arranged for Rosemont not to be taxed on its improvements, but only on
its land, and March discovered nothing. In the land boom Garnet kept the
odd sixty acres, generally supposed to be a part of Widewood, out of
sight, and induced John to deed it to his mother. But when John came
back from Europe landless, there arose the new risk that he might
persuade her to sell the odd sixty acres, and, on looking into the
records to get its description, find himself and his mother the legal
owners of Rosemont.

"That's why the villain was so anxious to marry her!" said John to
himself audibly as he p