LOCAL institution in which “the gang” was more or less interested was known as the “Darley Club.” It occupied the entire upper floor of a considerable building on the main street, and had been organized, primarily, by the older married men of the town to give the young men of the best families a better meeting-place than the bar-rooms and offices of the hotels. At first the older men looked in occasionally to see that the rather rigid rules of the institution were being kept. But men of middle-age and past, who have comfortable firesides, are not fond of the noisy gatherings of their original prototypes, and the Club was soon left to the management of the permanent president, Mr. Wade Tingle, editor of the Headlight.

Wade endeavored, to the best of his genial nature, to enforce all rules, collect all dues, and impose all fines, but he wasn't really the man for the place. He accepted what cash was handed to him, trying to remember the names of the payers and amounts as he wrote his editorials, political notes, and social gossip, ending up at the end of each month with no money at all to pay the rent or the wages of the negro factotum. However, there was always an outlet from this embarrassment, for Wade had only to draw a long face as he met some of the well-to-do stay-at-homes and say that “club expenses were somehow running short,” and without question the shortage was made up. Wade had tried to be officially stern, too, on occasion. Once when Keith Gordon had violated what Wade termed club discipline, not to say club etiquette, Wade threatened to be severe. But it happened to be a point upon which there was a division of opinion, and Keith also belonged to “the gang.” It had happened this way: Keith had a certain corner in the Club reading-room where he was wont to write his letters of an evening, and coming down after supper one night he discovered that the attendant had locked the door and gone off to supper. Keith was justly angry. He stood at the door for a few minutes, and then, being something of an athlete, he stepped back, made a run the width of the sidewalk, and broke the lock, left the door hanging on a single hinge, and went up and calmly wrote his letters. As has been intimated, Wade took a serious view of this violation of club dignity, his main contention being that Keith ought to have the lock repaired and the hinge replaced. However, Keith just as firmly stood on his rights, his contention being that a member of the Club in good standing could not be withheld from his rights by the mere carelessness of a negro or a twenty-five cent cast-iron lock. So it was that, in commemoration of the incident, the door remained without the lock and hinge for many a day.

It was in this building that the grand ball in honor of Helen Warren's home-coming was to be given. During the entire preceding day Bob Smith and Keith Gordon worked like happy slaves. The floor had been roughened by roller-skating, and a carpenter with plane and sand-paper was smoothing it, Bob giving it its finishing touch by whittling sperm candles over it and rubbing in the shavings with the soles of his shoes as he pirouetted about, his right arm curved around an imaginary waist. The billiard-tables were pushed back against the wall, the ladies' dressing-rooms thoroughly scoured and put in order, and the lamps cleaned and trimmed. Keith had brought down from his home some fine oil-paintings, and these were hung appropriately. But Keith's chef-d'ouvre of arrangement and decoration was a happy inspiration, and he was enjoining it on the initiated ones to keep it as a surprise for Helen. He had once heard her say that her favorite flower was the wild daisy, and as they were now in bloom, and grew in profusion in the fields around the town, Keith had ordered several wagon-loads of them gathered, and now the walls of the ballroom were fairly covered with them. Graceful festoons of the flowers hung from the ceiling, draped the doorways, and rose in beautiful mounds on the white-clothed refreshment-tables.

As a special favor he admitted Carson Dwight in at the carefully guarded door at dusk on the evening of the ball, first drawing down the blinds and lighting the candles and lamps that his chum might have the full benefit of the scene as it would strike Helen on her arrival.

“Isn't that simply superb?” he asked. “Do you reckon they gave her anything prettier while she was down there? I don't believe it, Carson. I think this is the dandiest room a girl ever tripped a toe in.”

“Yes, it's all right,” Dwight said, admiringly. “It is really great, and she will appreciate it keenly. She is that way.”

“I think so myself,” said Keith. “I've been nervous all day, though, old man. I've been watching every train.”

“Afraid the band wouldn't come?” asked Dwight.

“No, those coons can be depended on; they will be down in full force with the best figure-caller in the South. No, I was afraid, though, that Helen might have written to that Augusta chump, and that he would come up. That certainly would give the thing cold feet.”

“Ah!” Carson exclaimed; “I see.”

“The dear girl wouldn't rub it in on us to that extent, old man,” Keith said. “I know it now. She really may be engaged to him, and she may not, but she knows how we feel, and it's bully of her not to invite him. It would really have been a wet blanket to the whole business. We'd have to treat him decently, as a visitor, you know, but I'd rather have taken castor-oil for my part of it. All the gang except you were over to see her Sunday afternoon; why didn't you go?”

“Oh, you know I live only next door, with an open gate between, and I thought I'd better give my place to you fellows who don't have my opportunity. I've already seen her. In fact, she ran over to see my mother yesterday.”

The ball was in full swing when Carson arrived that night. The street in front of the club was crowded with carriages, buggies, and livery-stable “hacks.” The introductory grand march was in progress, and when Carson went to the improvised dressing-room in charge of Skelt to check his hat he found Garner standing before a mirror tugging at the lapels of an evening coat and trying to adjust a necktie which kept climbing higher than it should. Darley was just at the point in its post-bellum struggle where evening dress for men was a thing more of the luxurious past than the stern present, and Dwight readily saw that his partner had persuaded himself for once to don borrowed plumage.

“What's the matter?” Carson asked, as he thrust his hat-check into the pocket of his immaculate white waistcoat.

“Oh, the damn thing don't fit!” said Garner, in high disgust. “I know now that my father has a hump, or did have when he ordered this suit for his wedding-trip. The tailor who designed this costeem de swaray tried to help him out, but he has transferred the hump to me by other means than heredity. Look how the back of it sticks out from my neck!”

“That's because you twist your body to see it in the glass,” said Carson, consolingly. “It's not so bad when you stand straight.”

“It's a case of not seeing others as they see you, eh?” Garner said, better satisfied. “I haven't taken a chew of tobacco to-night. I wouldn't splotch this shirt for the world. I couldn't spit farther than an inch with this collar on, anyway. She's holding the reel for me. I can't dance anything else, but I can go through that pretty well if I get at the end and watch the others. You'd better hurry up and see her card. There is a swell gang coming on the ten-o'clock train from Atlanta, and they all know her.”

It was during the interval following the third number on the programme that Carson met Helen promenading with Keith and offered her his arm.

“Oh, isn't it simply superb?” she said, when Keith had bowed himself away and they had joined the other strollers round the big, flower-perfumed room. “Carson, really I actually cried for joy just now in the dressing-room. I declare I never want to go away from home again. I'll never have such devoted friends as these.”

“It is nice of you to look at it that way, Helen,” he said, “after the gay time you have had in Augusta and other cities.”

“At least it is honest and sincere here at home,” she answered, “while down there it is—well, full of strife, social competition, and jealousies. I really; got homesick and simply had to come back.”

“We are simply delighted to have you again,” he said, almost fearing to look upon her, for in her exquisite evening gown and the proud poise of her head she seemed more beautiful and imperious, and farther removed from his hopes than he had thought her even in the darkest hours of her first refusal to condone his fatal offence.

She was looking straight into his eyes with a thoughtful, questioning stare, when she said: “They all seem the same, Carson, except you. Bob Smith, Keith, and even Mr. Garner are just like I left them, but somehow you are altered. You look so much older, so much more serious. Is it politics that is weighing you down—making you worry?”

“Well,” he laughed, evasively, “politics is not exactly the easiest game in the world, and the bare fear that I may not succeed, after all, is enough to make a fellow of my temperament worry. It seems to be my last throw of the dice, Helen. My father will lose all faith in me if this does not go through.”

“Yes, I know it is serious,” the girl said. “Keith and Mr. Garner have talked to me about it. They say they have never seen you so much absorbed in anything before. You really must win, Carson—you simply must!”

“But this is no time to talk over sordid politics,” he said, with a smile. “This is your party and it must be made delightful.”

“Oh, I have my worries, too,” she said, gravely. “I felt a queer twinge of conscience to-night when all the servants came to see me before I left home. They were all so happy except Mam' Linda. She tried to act like the rest, but, Carson, her trouble about that worthless boy is actually killing the dear old woman. She has her pride, too, and it has been wounded to the quick. She was always proud of the fact that my father never had whipped one of his slaves. I've heard her boast of it a hundred times; and now that she no longer belongs to us in reality, and her only child was beaten so cruelly, she simply can't get over it.”

“I knew she felt that way,” Dwight said, sympathetically.

Helen's hand tightened unconsciously on his arm as they were passing by the corner containing the orchestra. “Do you know,” she said, “Mam' Linda told me that of all the people who had been to see her since then that you had been the kindest, most thoughtful, the most helpful? Carson, that was very, very sweet of you.”

“I was only electioneering,” he said, with a flush. “I was after Uncle Lewis's vote and Mam' Linda's influence.”

“No, you were not,” Helen declared. “It was pure, unadulterated unselfishness on your part. You were sorry for her and for Uncle Lewis and even Pete, who certainly needed punishment of some sort for the way he's been conducting himself. Yes, it was only your good heart. I know that, for several persons have told me you have even gone so far as to let the affair hamper you in your political career. Oh, I know all about what your opponent is saying, and I know mountain people well enough to know you have given him a powerful weapon. They are terribly wrought up over the race troubles, and it would be easy enough for them to misunderstand your exact feeling. Oh, Carson, you must not let even Mam' Linda's trouble stand between you and your high aim. Taking up her cause will perhaps not do a bit of good, for no one person can solve so vital a problem as that is, and your agitation of it may wreck your last hope.”

“I've promised to keep my mouth shut, if Dan Willis and men of his sort will not stay right at my heels with their threats. My campaign managers—the gang, who hold a daily caucus at the den and lay down my rules of conduct—have exacted that much from me on the penalty of letting me go by the board if I disobey.”

“The dear boys!” Helen exclaimed. “I like every one of them, they are so loyal to you. The close friendship of you all for one another is simply beautiful.”

“Coming back to the inevitable Pete,” Dwight remarked, a few minutes later. “I've been watching him since he was whipped, and I know he is in great danger of getting even more deeply into trouble. He has a stupidly resentful disposition, as many of his race have, and he is going around making surly threats about Johnson, Wiggin, and others. If he keeps that up and they get hold of it he will certainly get into serious trouble.”

“My father was speaking of that to-night,” Helen said. “And he was thinking if there were any way of getting the boy away from his idle town associates that it might prevent trouble and ease Mam' Linda's mind.”

“I was thinking of that the other day when I saw Uncle Lewis searching for him among the idle negroes,” said Carson; “and I have an idea.”

“Oh, you have? What is it?” Helen asked, eagerly.

“Why, Pete always has seemed to like me and take my advice, and as there is, plenty of work on my farm for such a hand as he is I could give him a good place and wages over there where he'd be practically removed from his present associates.”

“Splendid, splendid!” Helen cried; “and will you do it?”

“Why, certainly, and right away,” Carson answered. “If you will have Mam' Linda send him down to me in the morning I'll give him some instructions and a good sharp talk, and I'll make my overseer at the farm put him to work.”

“Oh, it is splendid!” Helen declared. “It will be such good news for Mam' Linda. She'd rather have him work for you than any one in the world.”

“There comes Wade to claim his dance,” Dwight said, suddenly; “and I must be off.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, almost regretfully.

“To the office to work on political business—dozens and dozens of letters to answer. Then I'm coming back for my waltz with you. I sha'n't fail.” And as he put on his hat and threaded his way through the whirling mass of dancers down to the street, he recalled with something of a shock that not once in their talk had he even thought of his rival. He slowed up in the darkness and leaned against a wall. There was a strange sinking of his heart as he faced the grim reality that stretched out drearily before him. She was, no doubt, to be the wife of another man. He had lost her. She was not for him, though there in the glare of the ballroom, amid the sensuous strains of music, in the perfume of the flowers dying in her service, she had seemed as close to him in heart, soul, and sympathy as the night he and she—

He had reached his office, a little one-story brick building in the row of lawyers' offices on the side street leading from the post-office to the courthouse, and he unlocked the door and went in and lighted the little murky lamp on his desk and pulled down a package of unanswered letters.

Yes, he must work—work with that awful pain in his breast, the dry, tightening sensation in his throat, the maddening vision of her dazzling beauty and grace and sweetness before him. He dipped his pen, drew the paper towards him, and began to write: “My dear Sir,—In receiving the cordial assurances of your support in the campaign before me, I desire to thank you most heartily and to—”

He laid the pen down and leaned back. “I can't do it, at least not to-night,” he said. “Not while she is there looking like that and with my waltz to come, and yet it must be done. I've lost her, and I am only making it harder to bear. Yes, I must work—work!”

The pen went into the ink again. On the still night air came the strains of music, the mellow, sing-song voice of the figure-caller in the “square” dance, the whir and patter of many feet.