have doubtless learned that the contest over the election in the Sixth Congressional District of South Carolina has been decided in my favor, and that I now have the honor of representing my native State at the national capital.  I have just been appointed a member of a special committee to visit and inspect the Sault River and the Straits of Mackinac, with reference to the needs of lake navigation.  I have made arrangements to start a week ahead of the other members of the committee, whom I am to meet in Detroit on the 20th.  I shall leave here on the 2d, and will arrive in Groveland on the 3d, by the 7.30 evening express.  I shall remain in Groveland several days, in the course of which I shall be pleased to call, and renew the acquaintance so auspiciously begun in Washington, which it is my fondest hope may ripen into a warmer friendship.

If you do not regard my visit as presumptuous, and do not write me in the mean while forbidding it, I shall do myself the pleasure of waiting on you the morning after my arrival in Groveland.

With renewed expressions of my sincere admiration and profound esteem, I remain,

Sincerely yours,
Hamilton M. Brown, M.C.

To Alice, and especially to her mother, this bold and flowery letter had very nearly the force of a formal declaration.  They read it over again and again, and spent most of the afternoon discussing it.  There were few young men in Groveland eligible as husbands for so superior a person as Alice Clayton, and an addition to the number would be very acceptable.  But the mere fact of his being a Congressman was not sufficient to qualify him; there were other considerations.

“I ’ve never heard of this Honorable Hamilton M. Brown,” said Mr. Clayton.  The letter had been laid before him at the supper-table.  “It ’s strange, Alice, that you have n’t said anything about him before.  You must have met lots of swell folks not to recollect a Congressman.”

“But he was n’t a Congressman then,” answered Alice; “he was only a claimant.  I remember Senator Bruce, and Mr. Douglass; but there were so many doctors and lawyers and politicians that I could n’t keep track of them all.  Still I have a faint impression of a Mr. Brown who danced with me.”

She went into the parlor and brought out the dancing programme she had used at the Washington ball.  She had decorated it with a bow of blue ribbon and preserved it as a souvenir of her visit.

“Yes,” she said, after examining it, “I must have danced with him.  Here are the initials—­’H.M.B.’”

“What color is he?” asked Mr. Clayton, as he plied his knife and fork.

“I have a notion that he was rather dark—­darker than any one I had ever danced with before.”

“Why did you dance with him?” asked her father.  “You were n’t obliged to go back on your principles because you were away from home.”

“Well, father, ’when you ’re in Rome’—­you know the rest.  Mrs. Clearweather introduced me to several dark men, to him among others.  They were her friends, and common decency required me to be courteous.”