the house. It had been hastily written, and was as follows:

"DEAR CHARLEY; Here I am in Stringtown County, Kentucky, but I half wish myself elsewhere. I came near drowning the night of my arrival; might have drowned but for a strange make-up of a man, a giant preacher, who rode his horse into as vicious a flood as I ever saw, and risked his life to pick me off a snag. Talk about your surf and undertows, you haven't a wave on the coast that approaches this devilish yellow creek, that runs like a race-horse and sucks and surges and roars its way through hills high enough to scrape the horns off the moon. But here I am, ready to study fossils and bones andoh, well, anything that comes my way. A devilish curious old man, this man Warwick, the first predestinarian I ever met; lucky it is for me, too, that he is one, for none but a religious fanatic would have risked his life as he did for me. But his gawky son Joshua is waiting for this letter,

and I must close.

"LIONEL.

"P. S. Forgot to say that Mr. Warwick has a slip of a daughter about sixteen years of age, as timid as a rabbit and as pretty as a dove. Send me the papers regularly. Only the Signs of the Times comes to this place."

CHAPTER V.

MARY AND LIONEL.

THUS began the Kentucky life of the young student from the North. Each morning the family breakfasted before the rise of the sun; and, when the meal was finished, Joshua and his father turned toward the tobacco patch, where both worked diligently until noon. Again after dinner they returned to the field. Lionel lingered in the house until the dew disappeared, classifying his fossil collection of the previous day, or reading the papers that soon began coming to him at irregular intervals. The girl busied herself about the housework. There were two servants, one an old negro woman, the other a negro man not less aged; but they gave no attention to the house, their duties being to attend to the cooking and the kitchen and dining-room work.

So whenever Lionel was in the house the daughter was usually near; and, naturally, it was

not long before she began to exhibit some curiosity concerning the work of the young man. She discovered that the visitor was a student in one of the celebrated universities of New England, and had been advised by the professor of geology to spend his vacation near Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, where, as he had informed her father, not only were to be found rich fields of fossil, shellfish and trilobites, but mammoth and mastodon bones, buffalo roads, Indian trails and other subjects of great interest to naturalists.

On reaching Stringtown, as already related, he left his baggage, and in a farmer's spring wagon started for the home of Preacher Warwick, who had been recommended to him by the landlord of the "Williams House" in Stringtown as one who lived in the very heart of the region he sought, and who had room in his home for a boarder, providing he would agree to take one.

"But," said Mr. Williams, "Warwick has two sons in the rebel army, and because you are from the North he may decline to give you lodging." After leaving the wagon of the farmer, about a mile from Warwick's house, the storm came suddenly; and next, as he stood on an undercut

sod, came the accident that threw him into the torrent.

"Your father is a very stern man, Miss Warwick. He seems never to smile," concluded Lionel.

"Father seems harsh," she answered, "but he is very kind. He speaks sternly, but he means no harm. He loves his church above all things, and is devoted to his religion."

She hesitated and then added, "Do not cross him in his views concerning baptism or in his religious belief about the infallible decrees of God, for he will not take it kindly. I know how honest are his motives, and I know, too, his kindly disposition."

"But to you, Miss Warwick, he speaks very harshly."

"You do not know him."

"He is very religious, but yet he believes that his daughter--" Lionel paused.

"You wish to say that he believes I am not elected to salvation?" said the girl.

"That is it. You do not believe it, do you? You do not believe that such as you will be damned and such as your father saved?"