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Show I Periwinkle House ! " By OPIE READ ' 1 ' Copyright. The Ball SynrlicntG, Trie y THE GENERAL 8TNOPSIS. The time Is the late 60s or early '70s and the scene a steamboat on the Mississippi river. All the types of the period are present and the floating palace Is distinguished by merriment, dancing danc-ing and gallantry. There are the customary drinking and gambling, also. Virgil Drace, a young northern north-ern man, Is on his way south on a mission of revenge. He meets an eccentric character In the person of one Liberty Shottle, who 1b constantly con-stantly tempting the goddess of f chance. They agree to a singular pact. Drace, seeing an opportunity to use Bhottle, confides to him that his mission Is to find a certalnex-guerrilla, certalnex-guerrilla, Stepho la Vltte, who had murdered Drace's rather. It Is his determination to hang La Vltte as high as Haman. Drace falls in love with a striking young beauty on the coat. The steamer reaches New Orleans, at that time in the somewhat turbulent throes of carpetbag car-petbag government. The young men attend the French ball and Drace unexpectedly meets the girl. She is accompanied by one Boyce, apparently her fiance. Shottle learns that the name of the girl Is Nadine la Vltte. Drace passes an uneasy night torn by the suspicion that ' Nadine is the daughter of old Stepho la Vitte, now an admitted outlaw. Now, more than ever, is he resolved to find where the girl lives and to find Stepho. Drace and Shottle begin a search of the city. Drace takes a hand In a carpetbagger riot. He catches a glimpse of one he is sure is Nadine. Drace and Shottle get Into bad standing with the authorities, and are given until the next day to board a steamer bound north. Returning Re-turning to the house where he thought he had glimpsed the girl, Drace finds the place abandoned. Shottle discovers that a case of wine on the steamer is addressed to Steph( la Vitte at Farnum's Landing, Mississippi. It Is the next stop below Bethpage's Landing and General Bethpagc is Liberty Shot-tie's Shot-tie's uncle. They decide to visit him. Liberty goes broke again and rwears off again on betting. embankment was an endless view of spreading cane fields. The General's house slood In the midst of old trees near half a mile from the river. Leading Lead-ing from the landing was a road in the perpetual shade of low-branching live onks. Along the road wild poppies blazed In patches of sunlight, and in the shade glowed the color of darker blood. In clumps of feathery grasses insects sang, while from everywhere came the low and drowsy murmur of the cane. Drace was enchanted with the scene, the sweet air. Beside him Shottle long-legged his way, his neck stretched out. "Yonder comes Uncle Howard, the General," he said. Toward them, with a slow but firm and emphatic step, came a tall, spare, erect old gentleman ; and as he drew nearer, Drace saw that he wore a mustache mus-tache and whiskers trimmed neatly down to a sharp point. The soldtar within him predominated, the professional profes-sional soldier, who is often gentler and more kindly than the volunteer. Shottle hailed him, and he quickened his pace. "Well, well. Liberty Shottle! Welcome, Wel-come, sir, and your friend " "Uncle, this Is Virgil Drace, my best friend." The old man straightened, held out both his hands and made Liberty's friend welcome most hospitably. Now the.y walked toward the house, the General with his hand on Drace's arm. Over the yard fence poured a stream of hounds, and an old 'possum-dog 'possum-dog "barked up" Shottle as if he had treed. The double hallway doors stood open. The Genera! conducted Drace into the library,- a room that looked big enough for a tennis court. Then he hastily withdrew, and Shottle spoke : "Gone to find Aunt Tycie. You'll like her. No hickory tree sap is any sweeter sweet-er than her disposition. She was a Shottle, my father's young sister. She's young, as I told you. And she I len wilh his chain. In the parlor Aunt Tycie sang, in this bouse a custom to be dreaded by the learned ear; hut Drace's ear was not learned ; Shottle's was as an oyster-shell clapped to hi." head; and In music the General could not distinguish Intention from nccom pllshment. It was a song of love. "Hast Thou No Feeling to See M Kneeling?" and when Its last note had found a dark corner wherein to die. Drace requested her to sing It again. She gave him a grateful look ; the General Gen-eral smiled at him; and as the song began be-gan again to mourn Its way, Shottle said to himself: "If Providence will lend virtue to a scheme, that will cost you money, Virgil. Vir-gil. Came here to rest after going through more than Stonewall Jackson could stand, and this Is what I get I Oh, it's respectable and ought to be endured, and so is a casket lined with satin, but it doesn't suit me. Lord, but this atmosphere Is unsympathetic unsympathet-ic !" If you have patience to wait, bedtime bed-time always comes; history Is strewn with bedtime. It came slow-footed for Shottle, but quickly enough for Drace, w'ith his nerves of steel wire. And how delighted he was with his room, h museum of antiquity, a great four-poster four-poster bedstead with a canopy heavy enough to have served as deadfall to some medieval giant. A chair that looked like the oaken throne of an ancient an-cient Briton, a wardrobe wherein Bluebeard Blue-beard might have hanged his wives, a rough-hewn mantelpiece remindful of a beetling cliff these were featured in the light of a hanging lamp big enough to turn the ashes of a cremated cre-mated dragon. The night was warm, and through the windows the air came cool and lulling from the Gulf; but Drace lay until daybreak before he slept, and when he awoke the noontime bell was ringing. A negro knocked to tell him that dinner was ready. The General and Tycie were seated, but Shottle was not at the table with them; and following Drace's look of Inquiry, came explanation from the General : "I gave him the five hundred dollars that he was to put In with the five hundred furnished by you to be Invested In-vested initiative!' in that cotton-bagging factory at Vicksburg, and he took an early boat for that city. I think It is a fortunate thing for the South that they discovered a wild plant, a sort of jute, really better for making ropes and bagging than either flax or hemp. I had seen nothing about the discovery, but I am not a very close reader of the newspapers. But Shottle assures me that this wild jute can be grown on the poorest land and that It needs no tending. I am naturally cautious, cau-tious, Virgil, and I did not myself Invest, In-vest, but hacking your judgment 'n the matter, I loaned Liberty five hundred. hun-dred. When do you expect active operations op-erations toward building the factory?" Tycie forestalled Drace's answer: "Oh, I am sure It will succeed, and it will be a great thing, especially for Liberty. He has tried so hard, but somehow his energies haven't been properly directed. And he Is so capable!" cap-able!" She was so confident, and so hopeful for her luckless kinsman, that Drace played protecting villain to Shottle's purposes. CHAPTER V Continued. Drace was much taken with Hawkins, Haw-kins, his quiet manner, his athletic mold, and passed some time with him In talk, the Major having given to Hawkins a scheming wink, j The boat was now fluting her ruffled way up the river. At a table beneath a great shaded lamp, Shottle sat, not alone, not staring into vacancy but into in-to the expressionless countenance of men merciless in vivisection. Luck at first had cajoled him, let him swell the fifty he had obtained to near five hundred, but a yellow-looking swab of whiskers entangled with him and leeched him down to twenty-five. Shottle looked at him, his caterpillar eyebrows, heard his slight hacking cough, his request for a glass of ice-water, ice-water, and said to himself: "One of these days I may have n chance to set fire to you as I would any other patch of dead grass." Slowly and with an economy painful for him to practice, Shottle with many ups and downs built up again toward two hundred; but at length in the afternoon aft-ernoon an old citizen who sat high and who looked like a steer, hooked him and horned him broke. Shottle came stumbling over the doorsill and found Drace In conversation conver-sation with Major I'ewitt and William lite Mi mm 4k ' I flf "Well, I don't know exactly when they are to begin work, .but soon, I trust." She gave him a grateful took for his trust, now perfectly assured of Shot-tie's Shot-tie's useful future. Put the. General did not appear to be easy la his mind, and a little later when he and Drace were walking about the yard, bortearh the trees, he referred again to the investment. in-vestment. Drace would have shuffled shuf-fled away from It, but the old gentleman gentle-man cornered him with a question: "I want the truth. Did Liberty lie to me?" "Yes, sir, he did." "I begi n to think so the moment he left me. Well, it is a singular thing, that when be Is with me, I believe in him, but the moment be Is gone my faith has gone with him. I have had much experience with men. Mr. Drace, In the army and elsewhere, but my wife's nephew Is the most I don't know bow to define him. Let me thank you for protecting him In the presence of my wife, and I regret that I may have seemed In doubt. Rut Drace, that fellow makes me angry with myself. Confouno him, ho almost convinces me at times that I have no stability of character. And yet I am fend of him. I am always glad to see him come. And let me say tbnt he '1- j lust rates one truth very cleorly that ability consists mostly !n the fervor f with which we go at a thing. I sup- j pose be lias cost you considerable." 'Monsieur, how foolish t, 1 come! If you do rut go cow, in a s'tort time you wi!l die." ' cr. 1 ItB o "ri N run. ! Hawkins. With a wink the Major enjoined a humorous silence, and mutely they sat attendant on the loser's los-er's mood. Shottle sat down, took out a card, wrote on it, put it back into his pocket, tapped his teeth with the pencil and spoke: "I have just written a resolve, and whenever I do, it becomes a law of my being. It has just been enacted and recorded that never again on this earth am I to bet another cent. I may go to houses where there are card parties, hut never again am I to shuffle a deck. My career as a fool Is ended . Who was It that wrote, 'If at first you don't succeed, try! try again"? A prls-y prls-y on sentence would he too good for the hatcher of such a fallacy. If at first you find you're wrong, quit. That's my course for the future." "I congratulate you. P.ut what are you going to do?" Drace Inquired. "I will drag a surveyor's chain and fqtllnt at the landscape. I'll lug a tripod tri-pod and eat a raw turnip In the wind. Or, if compelled to be humbler. I can curry horses." "And bet some fellow that you'll have your horses curried first," said the Major. With his pencil Shottle slowly tapped his teeth. "The first squirt of cold water generally gen-erally comes from one as much afflicted af-flicted as yourself. Put no matter. Cold water "chills, but at the same time It cleanses. And from this time on. gentlemen. Liberty Shottle. the vague nnd unreal, will become the obviou-s and the actual. If I had a thousand dollars right now, 1 wouldn't bet tbnt the sun will rise tomorrow. Oh. there Is such a thing as redemption." . CHAPTER VI. Aoout four o'clocR in 'he i.rternoon (he Pumlnebee passed Farnum's Land Ing. and Inter touched at Pethnace Landing. From the crsl of tl..' hig'i "I Want the Truth. Did Liberty Lie to Me?" looks yonnger'now than when she married. Did you ever notice that when a young woman marries an old fellow, she always tries to look younger? young-er? Here they are." i Presently the great plantation bell on a tower In the yard rang time for the evening meal. The General arose, and bowing to bis wife, gracefully offered of-fered her his arm. To Drace it was a pretty ceremonial, and he contrasted It wilh the more brusque customs of everyday life in the North. When an opportunity offered. Draco inquired of the General, as casually as possible, if he knew anything of an old fellow named Stepho la Vitte, who was reputed to live somewhere in the vicinity. The General seemed somewhat stir-prised stir-prised at the Inquiry. "Yes." he said, "I know something of him. And I believe be-lieve tliAire are rumors that be Is sometime some-time seen across the Klver near here. During the war he was a guerrilla and casl much blame on the Confederacy. I met him once, after the war near your father's house, my dear. My mules were tired, nnd I had halted in the shade to let them rest, when up came two men ; one put his hand on the wheel of my buggy and said that my mules were bis that they had been stolen from him. I laughed, but meantime I had the mnzze of a pistol between his eyes. He didn't flinch nor wink. He looked at me and said that lie may have made a mistake. I told him I thought he had. Then, taking j his bund off my wheel, he bowed himself him-self back and said that be would see me again, to apologize.. Put I haven't seen hint since." In the evening bow still and sweet was the air! From tVo quarter c;n:i.j the weird drone f the negro's cbac'.j for lb'- haolt of the slave had not I'al- j |