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key of pleasantry prevalent among her new friends, was deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than ever to quarrel with Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection rankled among the most unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact that he knew something of her wretched transaction with Trenor, and was sure to put the basest construction on it, seemed to place her hopelessly in his power. Yet at Carry Fisher's suggestion a new hope had stirred in her. Much as she disliked Rosedale, she no longer absolutely despised him. For he was gradually attaining his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always less despicable than to miss it. With the slow unalterable persistency which she had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly use he had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in the world of affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations which only Fifth Avenue could repay. In response to these claims, his name began to figure on municipal committees and charitable boards; he appeared at banquets to distinguished strangers, and his candidacy at one of the fashionable clubs was discussed with diminishing opposition. He had figured once or twice at the Trenor banquets, and had

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learned to speak with just the right note of disdain of the big Van Osburgh crushes; and all he now needed was a wife whose affiliations would abbreviate the last tedious steps of his ascent. It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed his affections on Miss Bart; but in the interval he had mounted nearer to the goal, while she had lost the power to shorten the remaining steps of the way. All this she saw with the clearness of vision that came to her in moments of despondency. It was success that dazzled her she could distinguish facts plainly enough in the twilight of failure. And the twilight, as she now sought to pierce it, was gradually lighted by a faint spark of reassurance. Under the utilitarian motive of Rosedale's wooing she had felt, clearly enough, the heat of personal inclination. She would not have detested him so heartily had she not known that he dared to admire her. What, then, if the passion persisted, though the other motive had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please him-he had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if she now chose to exert the power which, even in its passive state, he had felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now that he had no other reason for marrying her?

(To be continued.)

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THE SNYDER COUNTY GOLD-STRİKE

By Nelson Lloyd

ILLUSTRATIONS BY FLETCHER C. RANSOM

Sa man of honor Piney Cridle had but one way open to him, and that led past the worthies of the bench, past the stern figure of the storekeeper, past the tall rolls of oil-cloth standing sentinel-like at the counter's end, through the door, and out into the world. He followed it. But the world was cold that morning. Not a chicken had dared the blast that swept the village street, and on the valley's edge the mountains arose, dark and forbidding, capped by a gray cloud that bore a promise of sleet and hail. To those mountains he must go. His honor demanded it. But now that the door was open and the wind was clutching at his neck, he turned a moment from the way and looked back.

"I didn't think it o' you, Amos," he said. "You've sayd the word, though, an' I go, fer I'll never hang around a store where I can't have trust."

"Don't you know the threenometer says it's freezin'?" shouted Lucien Killowill, as he turned up his coat collar and pushed along the bench to avoid the draft. "Hain't you no better sense than to git insulted with the door open!"

"I didn't think it o' you, Amos," said Piney again, not heeding the old man's protests, though he obeyed the implied command, and was now standing with his hand on the knob, his back to the cold world and the dreary hills, his face to that bright, stove-lit circle from which he was banished.

Amos's face softened. He unbent and leaned over the counter, strumming a tattoo with his pencil.

"I'm sorry, Piney," he said; "but I ain't in business fer love. I'd like to be, well enough, but I can't so there's the end of it."

Lucien Killowill nodded his head approvingly.

"When a man gits the gold craze," he began; "when he leaves home an' friends,

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"I owe you an' yours nothin', Lucien,” he said. 'When I do, you can wag your head an' leckter—not till then, mind you. This here is between Amos an' me—this is; an' if he won't give me no more trust till I settle a leetle matter of five dollars, that's his affair an' mine—ain't it, Amos?"

The store-keeper, having in mind Killowill's own account with him, readily admitted that it was, and this gracious acquiescence misled Piney.

"Do I understand, then," said the adventurer, "that now an' here you refuses to trust me fer a poke of tobacco?"

"I do." Amos Pinking's voice was very low. He seemed to have lost his courage, and for the moment to be on the point of relenting. "It ain't that I've anything agin you, Piney," he went on, pleading like a man in the wrong, "but it don't seem right to encourage you. Here you are lettin' your clearin' go to rack an' ruin, livin' over in the mountains, diggin' an' diggin' like a crazy man. It's gold-gold

gold! Every time you comes back you looks poorer an' peekiter. The weeds has choked your clearin'; Harmon Barefoot himself is feedin' your cow; Willie Calker's had to sing bass in the choir all winteran' him only fourteen-all because you think you'll find a mine an' make yourself a for-tune."

Lucien Killowill wagged his head and beat the floor with his cane, thus expressing what he dared not with his voice. The worthies of the bench were with him to a man, and half-a-dozen heads rocked in unison with his. From that bench Solomon Holloberger arose slowly, with a dignity that became a preacher of the Word and the

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most eloquent speaker in the Dunker meeting for many miles around. He shuffled to the stove, and wheeling about, faced the misguided man, who, now at bay, backed toward the door again, and leaned on one of the sentinel oil-cloth rolls.

"Gold is a deceiver," said the preacher, in measured tones. "The Good Book tells us that in many places, Piney Cridle. Don't you mind how it says 'Gold is a mocker'? Lay not up riches in this world, but put your faith in that to come. Oh, that I had your young years! Would I be wastin' 'em over in them Snyder County mountains diggin' an' diggin', sellin' meself to Satan fer a mess o' potage? Never! I'd spend them blessed years goin' from house to house, from walley to walley, workin' in the harvest, gatherin' in the brands from the burnin'. You needn't laugh, Piney Cridle. The day'll come when you'll look back on this wery time; when, tossin' on your bed o' sufferin', with all your gold piled around you, you'll cry out, 'Oh, had I only minded Brother Holloberger's warnin'"

"It ain't so much that," broke in Amos Pinking, in a dry, commercial tone. "I

wasn't thinkin' so much about him sellin' himself to Satan, perwidin' he got cash down. What bothers me is that there ain't no gold in Snyder County."

"How do you know?" demanded Piney. "All the regular gold comes from Californy," cried Killowill. "All my life I've been hearin' about folks findin' gold in Pennsylwany, an' as fur as I know, nothin' has ever yet panned out."

"But why shouldn't there be gold in Snyder County?" Piney was in a defiant mood, and he waved his.forefinger at the group at the stove, and closed his jaw with a snap.

Lucien pushed himself into the obscurity offered by the broad form of Andrew Rickaback, and turned an appealing eye to Brother Holloberger. What the store needed was a man of science. Lacking that, it had to turn in its extremity to the theologian. Brother Solomon was not to be confounded. In truth, he always gloried in what he termed "tight pints," and, as compared to the problem of Jonah and the whale, which he had solved years ago, the question propounded by this wayward son of Tuscarora was childlike.

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