flying with the eagle high across the valley, searched the velvet folds
of the ridges, as they lay in infinite shades of green in the level
light, for the place where the enchanted realm might be. Just what the
state of his feelings were at this time towards Victoria Flint is too
vague--accurately to be painted, but he was certainly not ready to give
way to the attraction he felt for her. His sense of humour intervened if
he allowed himself to dream; there was a certain folly in pursuing the
acquaintance, all the greater now that he was choosing the path of
opposition to the dragon. A young woman, surrounded as she was, could be
expected to know little of the subtleties of business and political
morality: let him take Zeb Meader's case, and her loyalty would naturally
be with her father,--if she thought of Austen Vane at all.

And yet the very contradiction of her name, Victoria joined with Flint,
seemed to proclaim that she did not belong to her father or to the Rose
of Sharon. Austen permitted himself to dwell, as he descended the
mountain in the gathering darkness, upon the fancy of the springing of a
generation of ideals from a generation of commerce which boded well for
the Republic. And Austen Vane, in common with that younger and travelled
generation, thought largely in terms of the Republic. Pepper County and
Putnam County were all one to him--pieces of his native land. And as
such, redeemable.

It was long past the supper hour when he reached the house in Hanover
Street; but Euphrasia, who many a time in days gone by had fared forth
into the woods to find Sarah Austen, had his supper hot for him.
Afterwards he lighted his pipe and went out into the darkness, and
presently perceived a black figure seated meditatively on the granite
doorstep.