The day of the masquerade came, and a more sombre mortal than was Patience Sanford the sun did not shine upon. The resolve to wear the costume she had chosen cost her many a bitter pang. She endeavored to persuade herself that self-respect required this assertion of her independence of control, yet by this very decision it sank like the mercury upon a winter's night. She said to herself, that, had Tom requested her not to wear the dress, she would gladly have yielded; but that his assumption of deliberate indelicacy on her part, and his overbearing way of correcting her, were insolences not to be endured. There was little meekness about Patty's love. As yet it was a flame that scorched rather than warmed. But she was as true as steel, and the fire within would in time work to her finer tempering.

Riding with her father the morning of this day, Patty saw Peter Mixon accompany Tom Putnam into the office of the latter; and she fell to wondering deeply what could be the occasion of so strange a companionship. Had she entered with them unperceived, she might have heard the following conversation:—

"What is up between you and Frank?" the lawyer asked. "You are together a good deal. What sort of a hold have you on him?"

"Hold on him?" echoed the other. "I hain't got no hold on him. We've been gunning together some. He got kind o' used to me when he was a little feller. He always had more sconce than Hazard. Hazard's too almighty good for me. I like a feller's got some devil in him."

"I think likely," Putnam answered. "What is your hold on him?"

"I tell you I hain't got none."

"You may as well carry your lies somewhere else," the lawyer said coolly. "They are wasted on me."

"You was always d—d hard on me," Mixon said after a moment of sullen silence. "You don't take no account o' your family's spoilin' me. I was straight as a Christian before Breck got hold o' me. 'Tain't no fair twittin' on facts gener'ly; but you don't seem to remember that I know your brother-in-law wrote your name once, an' there warn't never nothin' done about it."

"Now you speak of it," returned the other unmoved, "I remember that Peter Mixon witnessed it. It seems to me rather longer than it is broad; for Breck is dead, and Mixon is living."

"But Breck's family ain't dead. You won't bedaub them in a hurry, I'm thinkin'; and you can't touch me 'thout you do them."

"We talked this all over when Breck died," Putnam said. "It will hardly pay to go over it again now. I want to know just what you and Frank are at."

"'Tain't nothin' that concerns you," the man said, sullenly yielding. "'Tain't nothin' but a paper his father gave me to keep, and he wants it."

"To keep for whom?"

"To keep for—for myself of course. 'Tain't at all likely he'd give me a paper for any one else."

"No, it is not," the lawyer remarked impartially; "and that is why I think you stole it."

"D—n you!" began Mixon, "I'm no more of a thief than Breck was. I'll"—

"There," Putnam interrupted, "that will do. Keep still, and let me see this paper, whatever it is."

"I hain't got it with me."

"Nonsense! Let me see it."

"I hain't got it here, I tell yer. You never take no stock in nothin' I say, seems to me."

"That's true. What is this paper? and how came you by it?"

"He give it to me the night before he died. That old maid Mullen wanted to get it, but Breck he give it to me. 'You've always been a faithful frien' to me,' says he, 'an' you shall have it.' An' then he give it to me."

The lawyer looked at him with mingled amusement and disgust. Perfectly aware that the man was lying, he tried to decide upon what slight foundation of fact had been built this touching death-bed fiction. In his own mind Putnam connected this mysterious paper with the anxiety of his nephew Frank to force Ease Apthorpe to marry him, the mention of Miss Mullen's name giving to this some plausibility. Suddenly a new thought flashed through his mind.

"Is Mrs. Smithers mixed up in this business?" he asked.

Mixon, evidently startled, denied this so strongly, that his questioner was positive he had hit the truth, and insisted upon seeing the mysterious document. Peter stuck to his assertion that he did not have it with him, but at length promised to bring it on the following day for Putnam's inspection. And with this the lawyer was forced to content himself.

On the afternoon of this same day a pleasant little scene was enacted in the chamber of Burleigh Blood, that young man being at once actor and audience.

He had been trying on the dress he was to wear that evening, and his thoughts naturally turned from the robe to its maker. In his fancy rose a picture of the little maiden seated by his own fireside, or flitting about the house as its mistress. He felt his bosom glow, thinking how dear to him would be the traces of her presence, the sound of her voice. His heart grew warm with sweet languors at the dream of clasping her in his arms, of resting that tiny blonde head upon his breast. There is something inexpressibly touching in the love of a strong, pure man. Burleigh neither analyzed nor understood his own passion; but in manly, noble fashion, he loved Flossy with all the strength of his big heart.

"I wonder," Burleigh mused, "if she would be angry if I asked her to marry me; or if she'd have me. She'd be a fool if she did! she knows so much, and is so used to great people! I suppose it is no use to bother my head for what I can't have. But I want her; and she's been very good to me; and perhaps—perhaps she wouldn't really say no. I'm a fool to lose the chance by being afraid to speak! Confound it! a woman's no right to be angry with a fellow for being in love with her. He can't help it, I suppose. I'm sure I can't. Besides I've heard her say she'd like to live in Montfield all her life."

He had thrown himself half-dressed upon the bed, his monkish masquerade costume hanging over a chair near by. Turning and twisting about uneasily as the conflict in his mind became more and more earnest, the silver-pieces loose in his pocket rattled out, one rolling from the bed to the floor. He raised himself, and picked it up. It was a Mexican dollar, dated the year of his birth, and he had for years carried it as a pocket-piece.

"I have half a mind," he soliloquized, tossing the coin in his hand, "to offer myself this very night. I don't think it would be so hard with this suit on as it would in my own clothes. It would be more natural to do any thing extraordinary in a mask. I've a mind to toss up for it. That is one way of settling it. It might go against me, though. However, it won't be any harm to see what it would have been if I had tried it."

The coin went spinning into the air.

"Heads!" he called aloud. "Humph!" he commented inwardly, "It's tails. But of course I should have tried the best two in three. Heads! And heads it is, by thunder! That's one and one. Heads! Confound it, it's tails again. But then that was only to try what might have been. Here goes in earnest. Heads!"

The dollar struck upon the edge of the bed, and Burleigh cried out "Bar that!" then, picking it up, found the head uppermost.

"Why didn't I let that go?" he said. "Heads!"

The coin spun round and round gayly. When at last it lay still, the reverse stared the lover in the face.

"Plague take that dollar! it is always tails. I'll change it, and begin again. Heads now!"

The new coin proved no less perverse than the old one, and turned its back toward the young man quite as resolutely as its predecessor.

"Well, then, here goes,—tails! By the great horn spoon, heads it is! I'll make it the best three in five. Tails!"

But neither the "best three in five" nor the "best four in seven" gave any thing of hope or comfort to the lovelorn swain. He ended by dashing the coins together between his palms with a great clash, all the combativeness in him aroused by the perverseness of fate.

"I'll be hanged if I don't propose this very night," he said resolutely. "I'll not be beaten out of that by all the unlucky lucky-pennies between here and Africa. She can't do any more than refuse me, and I certainly never'll get her if I don't try."

With which notable resolve burning in his heart, he adjusted his toilet, and descended to the work-a-day world.