CHAPTER

    I. A major and two Minors
   II.  Stuffed birds
  III.  A Wolf in the forest
   IV.  Rain and Randy’s soul
    V. Little sister
   VI.  Georgie-Porgie
  VII.  Mademoiselle Midas
 VIII.  Ancestors
   IX.  “T.  Branch”
    X. A gentleman’s lie
   XI.  Wanted—­A pedestal
  XII.  Indian—­Indian
 XIII.  The whistling Sally
  XIV.  The dancer on the moor
   XV.  The trumpeter swan
  XVI.  The conqueror

ILLUSTRATIONS

“When I am married will you sound your trumpet high up
near the moon?” . . . . . . Frontispiece

“It’s so heavenly to have you home.”

Becky drew a sharp breath—­then faced Dalton squarely—­“I am going to marry Randy.”

“Oh, oh,”, she whispered, “you don’t know how I have wanted you.”

THE TRUMPETER SWAN

CHAPTER I

A MAJOR AND TWO MINORS

I

It had rained all night, one of the summer rains that, beginning in a thunder-storm in Washington, had continued in a steaming drizzle until morning.

There were only four passengers in the sleeper, men all of them—­two in adjoining sections in the middle of the car, a third in the drawing-room, a fourth an intermittent occupant of a berth at the end.  They had gone to bed unaware of the estate or circumstance of their fellow-travellers, and had waked to find the train delayed by washouts, and side-tracked until more could be learned of the condition of the road.

The man in the drawing-room shone, in the few glimpses that the others had of him, with an effulgence which was dazzling.  His valet, the intermittent sleeper in the end berth, was a smug little soul, with a small nose which pointed to the stars.  When the door of the compartment opened to admit breakfast there was the radiance of a brocade dressing-gown, the shine of a sleek head, the staccato of an imperious voice.

Randy Paine, long and lank, in faded khaki, rose, leaned over the seat of the section in front of him and drawled, “It is not raining rain to me—­it’s raining roses—­down——?”

A pleasant laugh, and a deep voice, “Come around here and talk to me.  You’re a Virginian, aren’t you?”

“By the grace of God and the discrimination of my ancestors,” young Randolph, as he dropped into the seat opposite the man with the deep voice, saluted the dead and gone Paines.

“Then you know this part of it?”

“I was born here.  In this county.  It is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” there was a break in the boy’s voice which robbed the words of grandiloquence.

“Hum—­you love it?  Yes?  And I am greedy to get away.  I want wider spaces——­”