silent espionage of the young man she seemed to have known always without ever noticing particularly, and she became restive and later, woman-like, she resented it.

One day shortly after her graduation, when Frederick was already a full fledged lawyer, they set upon the high doorsteps of her father's house overlooking the square, in which stood the Temple of Justice, wherein Frederick hoped to be a high priest some day, and sitting there talking as young persons talk on doorsteps, they almost quarreled.

"You are so very peculiar, Fred," she said petulantly and as if feeling that it were necessary for her to defend herself against something she could not definitely designate.

"In respect of what, Miss Foy," he responded with a stateliness which was more sarcasm than dignity.

"I don't exactly know," she answered, feeling that while her argument might be defective she was sure of her facts, "but you seem to act towards me as if I were a little girl, and you were my grandfather and were constantly on the watch for fear I would run away."

"Have I ever said anything that would lead you to infer that I was your grandfather?" he smiled in kindly fashion.

"No, you haven't, "she snapped back at him as if his tone nagged her, "but you make me feel as if you carried a sign before my eyes reading, 'Behold your grandfather.""

"That must be because I am so much older than you.'

"A man at twenty-five is always the junior of a woman of twenty," she retorted.

"A lady asked me to-day how old Miss Foy was," he said easily, “and I did not give her much satisfaction. When I see her again I shall apologize and say that while I do not know Miss Foy's exact age, I have it on her own authority that she is older than I am and that I am twenty-five."

Her face flushed and the angry lines showed themselves around the corners of her mouth and about her eyes. She was on the point of making a hasty reply when she checked herself and laughed.

"You thought you would provoke. me into saying something I shouldn't have said, didn't you?" she said, "Well,

I shall not do it. I am older than you are as I said I was, and I prove it to you by not doing a foolish thing under your provocation. Now, Mr. Attorney, you may go on with your argument."

"It is women like you are, Janet, he said seriously after he had laughed at her skillful manoeuvering, "who make men do whatever they wish them to do, be it good or bad."

"But you are not of the kind of men whom women control in that way. There are women as you say I am, Mr. Ball, and there are men as I say you are. What happens when they meet? Is it the irresistible meeting the unsurmountable?"

Frederick had for a long time wished to speak to Janet exactly on the lines that now seemed to stretch straight before them both and by Fate's doing rather than by any planning of their own. Certainly not by any of his and he knew that Janet had no need of scheming.

"Janet," he said, with more depth of feeling than he had ever known, "whatever you would ask me to do, that would I do, good or bad."

Now

The girl looked at him in amazement. Perhaps she had never thought of him other than as the friend of her school days and girlhood-a boy merely. there was in every modulation and accent of his voice and words the very spirit and strength of a man, and a man willing to do whatever she asked. If she had thought of him as a lover of hers who might one day become her husband, no one of those who saw her most ever suspected it for she had given no sign. He knew that she had encouraged him not so much as a master encouraged his dog. He had watched her smile on the dozens who flocked about her and he had prayed in his silence that some day she might smile on him, but not as she did on them. It was not the fraction of a smile he sought, but all-all-all.

What she may have thought she did not speak, and whatever of amazement followed his words passed as a summer cloud and she looked fairly into his eyes, cold and hard, but firmly.

"Mr. Ball," she said very slowly, "I shall take you at your word. I shall ask you to do for me what may be good or

bad as you make it. Come to-morrow evening here. And now, good-bye until then."

As Frederick Ball thought that night of Janet Foy it seemed to him that some new being had taken the place of the pretty little girl he had known, and he wondered what she would ask him to do when he came again the next evening. It was no trifling matter he was sure, for Janet had spoken as only a woman in her most serious mood could speak. Be her commands what they might be, however, he was prepared to obey them to the utmost limit. He dreamed of her that night, but his dreams for the first time were not bright as they had been. There was a shadow lurking in them which he could not define and when morning came he felt as if he were facing some evil. All day the feeling forced itself in upon him at intervals and when he met Janet in the evening he was not as he had ever been. As for Janet she gave no sign, except that she was very serious, indeed.

"Mr. Ball," she said, when they had sat for perhaps a half hour talking at random, "you remember last night that you said you would do anything I asked. you to do, good or bad?"

"Quite distinctly, Miss Foy," he replied, "and I am no less willing to perform it now than I was to say it last night. What would you have me to do?”

She seemed to appreciate this forestalling of her request by asking for it, and. she smiled and put out her hand to him.

"You have an ambition to be a great lawyer," she said slowly, "and you have made such a beginning here as any young man should be proud of. I ask you to give it all up and go to Baltimore, there to begin at the beginning among a strange people. I ask you "

Ball was struck speechless for an instant and then he interrupted her.

"Why, what do you mean, Janet," he cried, "What can you mean? Do you want me to ruin myself? Do you want me to desert my friends? Have you no feeling for my own people? What of you and of me? Is it all to be lost for a foolish woman's whim ?"

She did not change color under this

attack.

"You said you would do for me anything I asked," she said coldly, "Am I

3

to understand by that statement just now repeated by yourself that what you say is not what you mean? That you will not do what you say you will do?"

He jumped from the step to the pavement below and walked up and down in front of her as if he were a caged beast under the lash.

"You do not know what you are saying," he exclaimed. "You, a girl, to demand this of me. It is silly, preposterous; it will make me the laughing stock of the town and will mark you as a dangerous flirt who would ruin a man simply to show her power over him."

"That is not the question. I have asked you to give up everything here and go to Baltimore to make a new beginning. I ask again that you do this for my sake, seeing that you have said you would do anything for me I asked, and that you do not return here or communicate with any one. You are to be for two years dead to what may be here. As for myself, I shall go on as I have gone on in the past. At the end of two years you may return. Now, what will you do?"

It was a tremendous question for a man to decide, but there was in Frederick Ball's nature that quality of chivalry which has made poetry and song and love, and with a sudden resolve he stood up before this girl calmly asking so much of him.

"Janet," he said almost fiercely, "what I have said I would do, that will I do. Good night," and he stepped lightly down and hurried away in the darkness.

The girl's eyes glistened and her face shone, with a feeling of triumph, shall it be said?-as the young man walked rapidly down the quiet street, his footsteps striking the time as a soldier's who goes away to battle and victory.

4

Janet, and he was doing what she had asked him to do for her sake and without so much as a word of promised reward. It was enough to do something for her; that was its own reward.

As the first year went by and the second, Janet was no less the object of adoration to love-sick mankind than she had been always. She was to that manner born, and she could not prevent the men from falling in love with her. But she gave her thought to Frederick Ball, and as she thought of him, so silent, so submissive, the woman in her began to assert itself, and instead of loving him as she thought she should do for the great sacrifice he was making, she began to think that a man who would do all he had done for her was a weak man and did not love her as he should. If he had loved her, she argued, he would have told her in the beginning that he would not act so foolishly just because she asked him to, but like a sensible man he would have made his sacrifice by marrying her then and there and assuming the responsibilities of marriage, and would have become a good and useful citizen. As it was, he simply listened to what she had been silly enough to ask of him, and was now keeping himself away from her and making himself and everybody else miserable by his conduct, and she would not have such a man now if he came home that very minute. And so on to a great extent, as any woman under similar circumstances would do.

Whoever has come into the Frederick of to-day over the Baltimore & Ohio railroad has observed, if he has been at all observant, an old-fashioned whitewashed stone freight depot just before the train stops at the station. On the roof at one end of this ancient structure is a little cupola, in which, in the time of this story, hung a bell. The building was the passenger station of the Baltimore railroad, and when the trains arrived, drawn by horses as they were then, this bell was rung to inform the people of the town that the train with its mail and passengers had arrived.

A day before the two years of Frederick Ball's exile had expired, Janet Foy was walking in the evening across the square in front of her home with two young attorneys, when they heard the

bell ringing at the station, and it was proposed that they walk over to the train, a distance of half a mile, to see who had come in. As they crossed the bridge over the little stream between the station and the town, they met the conductor of the train, whom they all knew, and he stopped and handed Miss Janet a letter. It was not addressed, but something told her it was a letter to be opened only in her own room, and she laughingly put aside the inquiries of her escorts and showed them the envelope to decide for themselves whence it came. She did not know, and told them so, but she suspected and she wondered, but she controlled her curiosity so admirably that it was after ten o'clock when her callers left and she had an opportunity to solve the problem.

She was nervous when she tore open the letter, and when she saw it was from whom she suspected she could not imagine what it meant nor why he should have written it.

"I

"My Dear Miss Foy," it read. have decided that under the circumstances it would not avail me to come back to you after the expiration of my term of exile. You have given no sign in these long two years that a visit from me would be at all welcome, and I do not care to further pain and humiliate myself through the whims of, I fear, a heartless woman. Therefore, let me very briefly say farewell. Sincerely,

FREDERICK BALL."
Baltimore, June 7th, 1845.

Janet's face flushed, and her first impulse was anger and resentment against what seemed to her to be an unjust imputation. She threw the letter to one side and began putting out the lights in the room, softly humming to herself, but not joyously. There was an undertone that was susceptible of more than one interpretation. That she was busily thinking the meanwhile was apparent, for presently she smiled as if she had met with an agreeable idea in her mental wanderings. She went immediately to her room then and wrote two letters. The first was as follows: "MY DEAR MR. BALL: You have decided wisely.

Cordially, JANET FOY." Frederick, Md., 10.15 P. M., June 8.