On the second morning after the wedding and next trip of this train, the sleeping-car was nearly half filled with passengers by the time it was a night's run from Pulaski City. To let the porter put their two sections in order, a party of three, the last except one to come out of the berths, had to look around twice for a good place in which to sit together. They were regarded with interest.

"High-steppers," remarked a very large-eared commercial traveler to another.

"The girl's beautiful," replied the other, remembering that he was freshly shaved and was not bad-looking himself.

"Yes," said the first, "but the other two are better than that; they're comfortable. They're done raising children and ain't had any bad luck with 'em, and they've got lots of tin. If that ain't earthly bliss I'll bet you!"

"They're gett'n' lots of entertainment out of that daughter, seems like."

"Reason why, she's not their daughter."

"How d'you know she's not?"

"I mustn't tell—breach o' confidence. Guess."

"O I guess you're guessing. George! she's—what makes you think she's not their daughter?"

"O nothin', only I'm a man of discernment, and besides I just now heard 'em call her Miss Garnet."

Their attention was diverted by the porter saying at the only section still curtained, "Breakfus' at next stop, seh. No, seh, it's yo' on'y chaynce till dinneh, seh. Seh? No, seh, not till one o'clock dis afternoon, seh."

"Is that gentleman sick?" asked the younger commercial man, wishing Miss Garnet to know what a high-bred voice and tender heart he had.

"Who? numb' elevm? Humph! he ain't too sick to be cross. Say he ain't sleep none fo' two nights. But he's gitt'n' up now."

The solicitous traveler secured a seat at table opposite Miss Garnet and put more majestic gentility into his breakfasting than he had ever done before. Once he pushed the sugar most courteously to the lady she was with, and once, with polished deference, he was asking the gentleman if he could reach the butter, when a tardy comer was shown in and given the chair next him. As this person, a young man as stalwart as he was handsome, was about to sit down, he started with surprise and exclaimed to Miss Garnet,

"Why! You've begun——Why, are we on the same train?"

And she grew visibly prettier as she replied smilingly,

"You must be Number Eleven, are you not?"

Coming out of the place the young lady's admirer heard her introduce Number Eleven to "Mr. and Mrs. Fair," and Mr. Fair, looking highly pleased, say,

"I don't think I ever should have recognized you!"

Something kept the train, and as he was joined by his large-eared friend—who had breakfasted at the sandwich counter—he said,

"See that young fellow talking to Mr. Fair? That's the famous John Marsh, owner of the Widewood lands. He's one of the richest young men in Dixie. Whenever he wants cash all he's got to do is to go out and cut a few more telegraph-poles—O laugh if you feel like it, but I heard Miss Garnet tell her friends so just now, and I'll bet my head on anything that girl says." The firm believer relighted his cigar, adding digressively, "I've just discovered she's a sister-in-law"—puff, puff—"of my old friend, General Halliday"—puff, puff—"president of Rosemont College. Well, away we go."

The train swept on, the smoking-room filled. The drummer with the large ears let his companion introduce "Mr. Marsh" to him, and was presently so pleased with the easy, open, and thoroughly informed way in which this wealthy young man discussed cigars and horses that he put aside his own reserve, told a risky story, and manfully complimented the cleanness of the one with which Mr. March followed suit.

A traveling man's life, he further said, was a rough one and got a fellow into bad ways. There wasn't a blank bit of real good excuse for it, but it was so.

No, there wasn't! responded his fellow-craftsman. For his part he liked to go to church once in a while and wasn't ashamed to say so. His mother was a good Baptist. Some men objected to the renting of pews, but, in church or out of it, he didn't see why a rich man shouldn't have what he was willing to pay for, as well as a poor man. Whereupon a smoker, hitherto silent, said, with an oratorical gesture,

"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, the rich and the poor meet together, yet the Lord is the maker of them all!"

March left them deep in theology. He found Mr. and Mrs. Fair half hid in newspapers, and Miss Garnet with a volume of poems.

"How beautiful the country is," she said as she made room for him at her side. "I can neither write my diary nor read my book."

"Do you notice," replied he, "that the spring here is away behind ours?"

"Yes, sir. By night, I suppose, we'll be where it's hardly spring at all yet."

"We'll be out of Dixie," said John, looking far away.

"Now, Mr. March," responded Barbara, with a smile of sweetest resentment, "you're ag-grav-a-ting my nos-tal-gia!"

To the younger commercial traveler her accents sounded like the wavelets on a beach!

"Why, I declare, Miss Garnet, I don't want to do that. If you'll help me cure mine I'll do all you'll let me do to cure yours."

Barbara was pensive. "I think mine must be worse than yours; I don't want it cu-ured."

"Well, I didn't mean cured, either; I only meant solaced."

"But, Mr. March, I—why, my home-sickness is for all Dixie. I always knew I loved it, but I never knew how much till now."

"Miss Garnet!" softly exclaimed John with such a serious brightness of pure fellowship that Barbara dropped her gaze to her book.

"Isn't it right?" she asked, playfully.

"Right? If it isn't then I'm wrong from centre to circumference!"

"Why, I'm glad it's so com-pre-hen-sive-ly cor-rect."

The commercial traveler hid his smile.

"It's about all I learned at Montrose," she continued. "But, Mr. March, what is it in the South we Southerners love so? Mr. Fair asked me this morning and when I couldn't explain he laughed. Of course I didn't confess my hu-mil-i-a-tion; I intimated that it was simply something a North-ern-er can't un-der-stand. Wasn't that right?"

"Certainly! They can't understand it! They seem to think the South we love is a certain region and everything and everybody within its borders."

"I have a mighty dim idea where its Northern border is sit-u-a-ted."

"Why, so we all have! Our South isn't a matter of boundaries, or skies, or landscapes. Don't you and I find it all here now, simply because we've both got the true feeling—the one heart-beat for it?"

Barbara's only answer was a stronger heart-beat.

"It's not," resumed March, "a South of climate, like a Yankee's Florida. It's a certain ungeographical South-within-the-South—as portable and intangible as—as——"

"As our souls in our bodies," interposed Barbara.

"You've said it exactly! It's a sort o' something—social, civil, political, economic——"

"Romantic?"

"Yes, romantic! Something that makes——"

"'No land like Dixie in all the wide world over!'"

"Good!" cried John. "Good! O, my mother's expressed that beautifully in a lyric of hers where she says though every endearing charm should fade away like a fairy gift our love would still entwine itself around the dear ruin—verdantly—I oughtn't to try to quote it. Doesn't her style remind you of some of the British poets? Aha! I knew you'd say so! Your father's noticed it. He says she ought to study Moore!"

Barbara looked startled, colored, and then was impassive again, all in an instant and so prettily, that John gave her his heartiest admiration even while chafed with new doubts of Garnet's genuineness.

The commercial man went back to the smoking-room to mention casually that Mrs. March was a poetess.

"There's mighty little," John began, but the din of a passing freight train compelled him to repeat much louder—"There's mighty little poetry that can beat Tom Moore's!"

Barbara showed herself so mystified and embarrassed that March was sure she had not heard him correctly. He reiterated his words, and she understood and smiled broadly, but merely explained, apologetically, that she had thought he had said there was mighty little pastry could beat his mother's.

John laughed so heartily that Mrs. Fair looked back at Barbara with gay approval, and life seemed to him for the moment to have less battle-smoke and more sunshine; but by and by when he thought Barbara's attention was entirely on the landscape, she saw him unconsciously shake his head and heave a sigh.