machines for the next year, for I was farming more and more on a big
scale. But what seemed most wonderful to me was an instrument now being
talked about which sent messages by electricity. It was not perfected
yet. It was treated with skepticism. But if it could be! If I could get
a message from St. Louis, a distance of more than a hundred miles, in a
few minutes or an hour!

Douglas came out to see me one night to tell me what was on his mind. He
wanted to be the prosecuting attorney. Consider the straits of a young
man who must make his way and get a place in the world! Is there
anything more desperate at times? What was the law business in this
community, divided, as it was, by eleven lawyers, shared in by visiting
lawyers? Douglas had to live. Youth is forced to push ahead or be
crushed. I know he has been accused of manipulation in having the law
passed by which he could be appointed to the office and supplant a
rival. Well, if he had not had the gifts and the energies to do such
things, how could he have served the country and maintained himself? The
next February before he was twenty-two, he was state's attorney for the
district. No wonder that lesser men railed at him. But what one of them
would not have done the same thing if he could?

And now I was seeing much of Dorothy. What did it mean? Was she only my
friend? Reverdy, her brother, was my most intimate friend. Did she
receive my attentions on account of the relations between him and me? If
she knew anything about Zoe she never betrayed it to me. Surely she
could not be in Jacksonville so long and be ignorant that Zoe was my
half-sister. At last I decided to explore Dorothy's mind. I went at it
forthrightly. Did she know that Zoe and I had the same father?

She had heard it. That was a common enough thing in the South; not