quietly: "You certainly talk differently from the young men of Dothan. They think there is nothing to fear but black rule and nothing to hate but the Yankee. What you say may be true."

"Would you believe me if I told you something else?" His tone was so changed that she turned quickly and saw him pulling himself a little nearer to her side. He lowered his voice and continued: "I think you yourself have awakened these very thoughts in my soul. Before I met you I faced life with a sneer. Now I I want to face it with a smile and a heart and hand to do and dare."

It was not what he said, but the gentle tones of his voice, that made the dark-eyed daughter of Alabama blush a crimson red. She hung her head and made no reply.

"Can I call you Florence after this?" he pleaded.

Still she was silent. He reached out his hand and clasped hers, carrying it slowly to his lips, and she did not resist. Another moment and she lay on his breast, and he rapturously kissed her lips again and again.

In a little while they arose to go, but it seemed a new world for them both.

"We are a good many miles away from Dothan," he remarked as he cranked his motor, "but we will not be in such a hurry to return."

Before the long ride home was finished he had taught her shyly to call him "Jefferson," and he called her "Florence," as though he had known her all his life. "I am glad your name is Jefferson," she said once during the ride. "It is a name the South loves."

"My full name is Jefferson Davis Lilly. I am a child of the Confederacy, but I do not fight over the battles that were decided a generation ago. I live in the pres

ent, and, like Henry Grady, I believe in a new South, greater, grander, freer than the old."

She asked him to stay for supper and he consented and spent the evening with the family. He found Mr. Ashley, the father, a broad-minded man, but absorbed in his legal profession and seemingly uninterested in the current questions of modern politics. He was somewhat of a student, however, and he and Jefferson had a friendly discussion over Victor Hugo's ideals in literature and in a comparison between Longfellow and Browning.

During the evening Florence played and sang. The old Southern melodies seemed to have a new meaning when Jefferson heard her sing them. He could discover a new pathos in "Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground," and a fresh note even in "My Old Kentucky Home," as she sang these familiar airs.

"It has been a great day in my life," he thought to himself as he drove his automobile along the street that night. "To-day I have really lived. Life is sweet. God is good."

This last sentiment was a strange one to Jefferson Lilly, but it seemed natural for him to think so on the evening of that eventful day.

CHAPTER VI

HARBISON INSTITUTE

"GOOD MORNING, Mr. Lilly, do you not remember me?" Jefferson Lilly brought himself back to earth swiftly as he heard these words one morning. Physically he was walking along the main street of Dothan, but mentally he was whirling along in an automobile beside a fair companion. Aroused suddenly from his pleasing day dream, he responded rather absent-mindedly, "I beg your pardon, Miss. I did not recognize you."

"I am afraid you are like some others in Dothan just now," replied the other, who was Rose Atkinson herself. She had met Mr. Lilly on the street, and in his self-absorption he was walking past without noticing her when she accosted him. "Perhaps you do not care to recognize a teacher from Harbison Institute," she continued, laughing gayly, showing plainly that any ostracism she was receiving had not weighed heavily on her mind.

"Are you teaching there now, Miss Atkinson?" Jefferson asked, as he turned and walked along by her side.

"Yes. I began the first of the week. I am delighted with the work the institution is doing, and I am planning to get all Dothan interested in Harbison. No sensible person could fail to be interested if they knew what the school was accomplishing."

"I am afraid Harbison is not a popular institution with

the white people of the community, as I expect you have already found out."

"I am going to change all that," said the girl with a toss of her fair head. "I expect to make the people investigate the school, and this foolish prejudice against making the negroes intelligent and industrious will soon cease in Dothan in spite of such men as Mr. Legree."

"You have undertaken a bigger work than you imagine," responded Jefferson, "but if you can't succeed certainly no one can," and he bowed gallantly to the fair. young Northerner.

“Thank you. I am going to begin right now to win the favor of the whites in Dothan, and I want to start with you."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

66 Can't you come up this afternoon and let me show you around the institution? There are some exercises to be given in the chapel this afternoon and you can see the students all together and get some idea of what such a school as Harbison is doing. Come out there at two o'clock and that will give us time to look around. It will astonish you, I know."

Brought up in the atmosphere of the South, Jefferson Lilly had an inherent prejudice against the Northern coddling of the Afro-Americans, and had never visited any of their institutions designed to solve the race problem by lifting up the negro race out of its primitive and enforced ignorance. His attitude was one of complete indifference to such efforts on the part of Northern philanthropists. But his one act of mercy to a wounded black had strangely interested him in the negro. His visit to the little home of Mose Thomas, and his meeting with his son and daughter, who were students at Harbison, conspired to make the prospect of a visit to

the Institute rather attractive, especially when he was urged to come by such a fair young lady as Rose Atkinson. Accordingly, without further ado, he promised to pay the school a visit that day, as she had suggested.

When he entered the grounds of the institution he was conscious of a feeling of strangeness, as though he were going into some forbidden place. But he was charmed by the attractive grounds which surrounded the school. Harbison Institute lay on the north side of Dothan, occupying a beautiful site, and presenting a general appearance of prosperity. The farm adjoining, which covered 200 acres, was worked by the students. The main group of buildings consisted of a large central college hall, dormitories, the president's house, and also some other smaller edifices devoted to the industrial training, a branch of the curriculum on which the school placed much emphasis.

Rose Atkinson met him at the door of the main building and took him directly to the president's office. The president, Dr. Furber, was an elderly, cultured gentleman from New York State, who had been in charge of the school from its beginning. Jefferson knew him by appearance, but had never met him.

"I am glad to see you, sir!" he exclaimed with great cordiality, when Rose introduced the two men. delighted to have you visit our institution."

"Miss Atkinson invited me to come out to-day and I could not refuse her," he answered, smiling at the girl. "Ah, I see!" said the president good-humoredly. "She has told me she wanted to begin her work here by cultivating a closer relationship between our school and the white population of Dothan. I am glad to see she is, at least, interesting the young men."

66

They simply can't resist her," laughed Jefferson,