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 men stood, hands clasped. After a moment the clergyman was gone.

Dr. Tansey and Bennet soon retired and it was not long thereafter before the heavy breathing of the former told Bennet that his companion was sound asleep. Bennet, however, lay awake a long time, thinking over the experiences of the day, and Lida. His mind was filled with her. After the conversations on the ship and his experiences and observations in Charleston he was ready to believe that she had been persuaded to give him up.

"And yet," he debated with himself, "she knew all these things before she promised." Her words at their last meeting sounded in his soul: "I love you, and always will." Despite all the doubts that assailed him, this expression with her image cheered till he slept with a smile about his face.

Dr. Tansey was the first to awaken in the morning and by the time he and Bennet had prepared for their trip the chauffeur, engaged the previous day, arrived with the car. It was a Packard and its well oiled engine purred musically, as the two fares piled in their luggage, preparatory to departure.

Just as the sun was burnishing the waves of the harbor and reddening Forts Moultrie and Sumter they started from the hotel and after skirting the suburbs, headed for the open country along the road to Augusta. As they sped along the flat countryside, great fields of cotton lay spread before them interspersed here and there with other fields of corn. Acres and acres of full blown cotton, in the