“Gordon Keith.”

“How do you do, Gordon Keith?” She held out her hand.

“How do you do, Lois Huntington?”

She shook hands with him solemnly.

A day or two later, as Gordon was passing through one of the streets in the lower part of the village, he came upon a hurdy-gurdy playing a livelier tune than most of them usually gave.  A crowd of children had gathered in the street.  Among them was a little barelegged girl who, inspired by the music, was dancing and keeping perfect time as she tripped back and forth, pirouetted and swayed on the tips of her bare toes, flirting her little ragged frock, and kicking with quite the air of a ballet-dancer.  She divided the honors with the dismal Savoyard, who ground away at his organ, and she brought a flicker of admiration into his bronzed and grimy face, for he played for her the same tune over and over, encouraging her with nods and bravas.  She was enjoying her triumph quite as much as any prima donna who ever tripped it on a more ambitious stage.

Gordon recognized in the little dancer the tangled-haired child who had run away with the little girl’s doll a few days before.

CHAPTER II

GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN OVERSEER

When the war closed, though it was not recognized at first, the old civilization of the South passed away.  Fragments of the structure that had once risen so fair and imposing still stood for a time, even after the foundations were undermined:  a bastion here, a tower there; but in time they followed the general overthrow, and crumbled gradually to their fall, leaving only ruins and decay.

For a time it was hoped that the dilapidation might be repaired and the old life be lived again.  General Keith, like many others, though broken and wasted in body, undertook to rebuild with borrowed money, but with disastrous results.  The conditions were all against him.

Three or four years’ effort to repair his fallen fortunes only plunged him deeper in debt.  General Keith, like most of his neighbors and friends, found himself facing the fact that he was hopelessly insolvent.  As soon as he saw he could not pay his debts he stopped spending and notified his creditors.

“I see nothing ahead of me,” he wrote, “but greater ruin.  I am like a horse in a quicksand:  every effort I make but sinks me deeper.”

Some of his neighbors took the benefit of the bankrupt-law which was passed to give relief.  General Keith was urged to do likewise, but he declined.

“Though I cannot pay my debts,” he said, “the least I can do is to acknowledge that I owe them.  I am unwilling to appear, even for a short time, to be denying what I know to be a fact.”

He gave up everything that he owned, reserving nothing that would bring in money.