TO YOU AT THE GATE.
There was a daisy-meadow, that flowed brimming to the stone wall at the roadside, and on the wooded crest beyond a lamp twinkled in a house round which stole softly the unhurried, eddyless dusk. You stood at the gate, your arms folded on the top bar, your face uplifted, watching the stars and the young moon of June. I was not so old but that I marked your gown of white, your dark head, your eyes like the blue of mid-ocean sea-water in the shadow of marching billows. As my step sounded you looked up startled, a little disdainful, maybe; then you smiled gravely; but a certain dejection of attitude, a sweet wistfulness of lips and eyes, arrested and touched me; and I stole on guiltily, for who was I to intrude upon a picture so perfect, to which moon and stars were glad contributors? As I reached the crown of the road, where it dipped down to a brook that whispered your name, I paused and looked back, and you waved your hand as though dismissing me to the noisy world of men.
In other Junes I have kept tryst with moon and stars beside your gate, where daisies flow still across the meadow, and insect voices blur the twilight peace; but I have never seen again your house of shadows among the trees, or found you dreaming there at the gate with uplifted face and wistful eyes. But from the ridge, where the road steals down into the hollow with its fireflies and murmuring water, I for ever look back to the star- and moon-hung gate in the wall, and see your slim, girlish figure, and can swear that you wave your hand.
Katonah, June 30, 1908. M. N.
CONTENTS.
| I. | Two Gentlemen say Good-Bye | [ 7] |
| II. | The Absence of Governor Osborne | [ 29] |
| III. | The Jug and Mr. Ardmore | [ 40] |
| IV. | Duty and the Jug | [ 55] |
| V. | Mr. Ardmore Officially Recognized | [ 71] |
| VI. | Mr. Griswold Forsakes the Academic Life | [ 89] |
| VII. | An Affair at the State House | [ 100] |
| VIII. | The Labours of Mr. Ardmore | [ 115] |
| IX. | The Land of the Little Brown Jug | [ 129] |
| X. | Professor Griswold Takes the Field | [ 138] |
| XI. | Two Ladies on a Balcony | [ 149] |
| XII. | The Embarrassments of the Duke of Ballywinkle | [ 160] |
| XIII. | Miss Dangerfield Takes a Prisoner | [ 175] |
| XIV. | A Meeting of Old Friends | [ 191] |
| XV. | The Prisoner in the Corn-Crib | [ 209] |
| XVI. | The Flight of Gillingwater | [ 228] |
| XVII. | On the Road to Turner’s | [ 237] |
| XVIII. | The Battle of the Raccoon | [ 246] |
| XIX. | In the Red Bungalow | [ 255] |
| XX. | Rosæ Mundi | [ 269] |
| XXI. | Good-Bye to Jerry Dangerfield | [ 281] |
THE
WAR OF THE CAROLINAS.
CHAPTER I.
TWO GENTLEMEN SAY GOOD-BYE.
“IF anything really interesting should happen to me I think I should drop dead,” declared Ardmore, as he stood talking to Griswold in the railway station at Atlanta. “I entered upon this life under false pretenses, thinking that money would make the game easy, but here I am, twenty-seven years old, stalled at the end of a blind alley, with no light ahead; and to be quite frank, old man, I don’t believe you have the advantage of me. What’s the matter with us, anyhow?”