nearest town and signed. Arthur, trusting blindly to the honesty and
good-will of everybody, had hurried for his train without seeing more
than that the stipulated rates had been properly mentioned in the
contract. His wife was ill; in fact, Charlotte was only a few days
old, and he was anxious and eager to be home. There had been no
strikes at that period in that vicinity, and indeed comparatively few
in the whole country. Arthur would almost as soon have thought of
guarding in his contract against an earthquake; but the strike clause
was left out, and there was a strike. In consequence he was unable to
fill the contract without ruin, and he was therefore ruined. In the
end the old friend of his father, who had purchased his patrimony,
remained in undisputed possession of it, with an additional value of
several thousands from the passage of the railroad through one end of
the plantation, and had, besides, the mine. Arthur had sold the mine
at a nominal price to pay his debts, to a third party who represented
this man. He had been left actually penniless with a wife and two
babies to support, but as his pocket became empty his very soul had
seemed to become full to overflowing with the rage and bitterness of
his worldly experience. He had learned that the man whom he had
trusted had instigated the strike; he learned about the railroad
deal. One night he went to his plantation with a shot-gun. He
approached the house which had formerly been his own home, where the
man was living then. He fully intended to shoot him. He had not a
doubt but he should do it, and he had always considered that he
should have carried out his purpose had not an old horse which the
man had purchased with the estate, and which was loose on the lawn,
from some reason or other, whinnied eagerly, and sidled up to him,
and thrust her nose over his shoulder. He had been used, when a boy,
to feed her sugar, and she remembered. Arthur went away through the
soft Southern moonlight without shooting the man. Somehow it was