e, fair
face that had wrecked his young life. The consulship at Coralio
seemed to offer a retreat sufficiently removed and romantic enough
to inject the necessary drama into the pastoral scenes of Dalesburg
life.

It was while playing the part of Cupid's exile that Johnny added his
handiwork to the long list of casualties along the Spanish Main by
his famous manipulation of the shoe market, and his unparalleled feat
of elevating the most despised and useless weed in his own country
from obscurity to be a valuable product in international commerce.

The trouble began, as trouble often begins instead of ending, with a
romance. In Dalesburg there was a man named Elijah Hemstetter, who
kept a general store. His family consisted of one daughter called
Rosine, a name that atoned much for "Hemstetter." This young woman
was possessed of plentiful attractions, so that the young men of the
community were agitated in their bosoms. Among the more agitated
was Johnny, the son of Judge Atwood, who lived in the big colonial
mansion on the edge of Dalesburg.

It would seem that the desirable Rosine should have been pleased to
return the affection of an Atwood, a name honoured all over the state
long before and since the war. It does seem that she should have
gladly consented to have been led into that stately but rather empty
colonial mansion. But not so. There was a cloud on the horizon, a
threatening, cumulus cloud, in the shape of a lively and shrewd young
farmer in the neighbourhood who dared to enter the lists as a rival
to the high-born Atwood.

One night Johnny propounded to Rosine a question that is considered
of much importance by the young of the human species. The accessories
were all there--moonlight, oleanders, magnolias, the mock-bird's
song. Whether or no the shadow of Pinkney Dawson, the prosperous
young farmer, came between them on that occasion is not known; but
Rosine's answer was unfavourable. Mr. John De Graffenreid Atwood
bowed till his hat touched the lawn grass, and went away with his
head high, but with a sore wound in his pedigree and heart. A
Hemstetter refuse an Atwood! Zounds!

Among other accidents of that year was a Democratic president. Judge
Atwood was a warhorse of Democracy. Johnny persuaded him to set the
wheels moving for some foreign appointment. He would go away--away.
Perhaps in years to come Rosine would think how true, how faithful
his love had been, and would drop a tear--maybe in the c