barrier, the sudden achievement of equality. Had Mary Louise been
asked, no doubt she could have told them of a social ban at the
North quite as definite as that in Watauga, if different; but her
father's daughter kept a silence that was not without dignity
over what she found irremediable, in the North as in the South.

To warm-hearted Mary Louise, Watauga meant, of course, father and
mother; but directly after them--perhaps before them, in the
calendar of youth--it meant Ellen Kendrick and Grant Payson. And
the colored elders, looking on, felt that as these twin idols of
the girl turned out, so rose or fell the chances of keeping her
with them in Watauga.

Grant instituted at once a courtship as ardent and eager as it
was open and avowed. His people, florid and colorful in
temperament, are natural wooers, free of the language of
affection and adroit in its use. Grant was very much in love with
the girl, and she meant even more to him than that, since in
aspiring to her his ambition stepped hand in hand with his
affections.

Mary Louise received his advances with curious reservations, as
though there were positions and premises she defended against
him.

It was when the girl's visit was three weeks old that the
fine-looking, broad-shouldered, young colored man in his
well-fitting business suit--a goodly figure in the eyes of the
mother watching from her own room across the hall--left the
parlor where he and Mary Louise had been sitting all evening,