of a missionary sort to other young people needing the chastening and quelling persuasions of experience, the only logic sure to convince a diseased imagination and restore it to rugged health.  Then he approached the subject of marriage with the daughter of the American Claimant with a good deal of caution and much painstaking art.  He said praiseful and appreciative things about the girl, but didn’t dwell upon that detail or make it prominent.  The thing which he made prominent was the opportunity now so happily afforded, to reconcile York and Lancaster, graft the warring roses upon one stem, and end forever a crying injustice which had already lasted far too long.  One could infer that he had thought this thing all out and chosen this way of making all things fair and right because it was sufficiently fair and considerably wiser than the renunciation-scheme which he had brought with him from England.  One could infer that, but he didn’t say it.  In fact the more he read his letter over, the more he got to inferring it himself.

When the old earl received that letter, the first part of it filled him with a grim and snarly satisfaction; but the rest of it brought a snort or two out of him that could be translated differently.  He wasted no ink in this emergency, either in cablegrams or letters; he promptly took ship for America to look into the matter himself.  He had staunchly held his grip all this long time, and given no sign of the hunger at his heart to see his son; hoping for the cure of his insane dream, and resolute that the process should go through all the necessary stages without assuaging telegrams or other nonsense from home, and here was victory at last.  Victory, but stupidly marred by this idiotic marriage project.  Yes, he would step over and take a hand in this matter himself.

During the first ten days following the mailing of the letter Tracy’s spirits had no idle time; they were always climbing up into the clouds or sliding down into the earth as deep as the law of gravitation reached.  He was intensely happy or intensely miserable by turns, according to Miss Sally’s moods.  He never could tell when the mood was going to change, and when it changed he couldn’t tell what it was that had changed it.  Sometimes she was so in love with him that her love was tropical, torrid, and she could find no language fervent enough for its expression; then suddenly, and without warning or any apparent reason, the weather would change, and the victim would find himself adrift among the icebergs and feeling as lonesome and friendless as the north pole.  It sometimes seemed to him that a man might better be dead than exposed to these devastating varieties of climate.