"Stowed away somewhere," the Captain mildly responded.

Dr. Blecker was testy.

"You know Joseph, her brother? I mean our candidate for Congress next
term?"

"Yes. Democratic. J. Schuyler Gurney,--give him his name, Mac.
Republican last winter. Joseph trims to wind and tide well. I heard
him crow like a barn-yard fowl on the Capitol-steps at Washington
when Lincoln called for the seventy-five thousand: now, he hashes up
Breckinridge's conservative speech for your hickory-backed farmers. Does
he support the family, Mac?"

"His election-expenses are heavy."

"Brandy-slings. I know his proclivities."

McKinstry colored. Dr. Blecker was coarse, an ill-bred man, he
suspected,--noting, too, the angry repression in his eyes, as he stood
leaning on the gate, looking in at the Fort, for they had reached it
by this time. The Captain looked in, too, through the dusky clumps of
altheas and plum-trees, at the old stone house, dyed tawny-gray in the
evening light, and talked on, the words falling unconscious and simple
as a stream of milk. The old plodder was no longer dumb. Blecker had
hit on the one valve of the shut-up nature, the obstinate point of
self-reliant volition in a life that had been one long drift of
circumstance. This old stone house, shaggy with vines, its bloody script
of Indian warfare hushed down and covered with modern fruit-trees and
sunflowers,--this fort, and the Gurneys within it, stood out in the bare