About midnight came supper—pies, cakes and lemonade. Before this, Jack had had two dances with Bess and Donald three, and Jack had also succeeded in persuading Mrs. Powell to walk with him through a quadrille.
It was at the dance that Jack Mason and Claib met. Claib had come in while Mason was dancing, and had seated himself to look on. As soon as Mason left his partner, he walked directly over to Claib.
"Well, Claib, how goes it?" he asked cheerily.
"All right now, Jack; and I'd like to shake hands with you, and call bygones bygones."
"That'll suit me to death, Claib," said Mason, giving his former enemy a hearty handshake.
A little later, Mr. Sturgis appeared in the ballroom. He shook hands with Mrs. Powell and Bess and then looked about for the faces of his own outfit. When he saw Mason, he told him that the cars had arrived, and that he wanted all hands down to begin to load by daylight, and asked him to tell the others.
Daylight had come before the dance ended, but when it broke up the Sturgis outfit were down in the loading corrals, hard at work getting the steers into the cars as fast as they could.
And the next morning Jack's heart-strings were stretched when he shook hands with his friends and took the passenger for the Atlantic coast.
THE END