On his trip East the winter before he met two persons with whom he had since corresponded. One, the first, was a young man not long out of an agricultural college whose father was a great success as a potato grower. He and Jean became intimate friends. It now so happened that the one mentioned had a sister, and through him Jean Baptiste was introduced to her by mail.

Correspondence followed and by this time it had become very agreeable.

She proved to be a very logical young woman, and Jean Baptiste was favorably impressed. She was, moreover, industrious, ambitious, and well educated. Her age was about the same as his, so on the surface he thought that they should make a very good match. So be it.

In the meantime, however, he had opened a correspondence with another whom he had met on his trip the winter before where she had been teaching in a coal mining town south of Chicago. The same had developed mutually, and he had found her agreeable and obviously eligible. Her father was a minister, a dispenser of the gospel, and while for reasons we will become acquainted with in due time, he had cultivated small acquaintance with preachers, he took only such slight consideration of the girl's father's profession that he had good cause to recall some time later.

About the time he was deeply engrossed in his correspondence with both the farmer's daughter and the young school teacher, he received a letter from a friend in Chicago introducing him to a lady friend of hers through mail. This one happened to be a maid on the Twentieth Century Limited, running between New York and Chicago. Well, Jean Baptiste was looking for a wife. Sentiment was in order, but it was with him, first of all, a business proposition. So be it. He would give her too a chance.

He was somewhat ashamed of himself when he addressed three letters when perhaps, he should have been addressing but one. It was not fair to either of the three, he guiltily felt; but, business was business with him.

From his friend's sister he received most delightful epistles, not altogether frivolous, with a great amount of common sense between the lines. But what was more to the point, her father was wealthy, and she must have some conception of what was required to accumulate and to hold. He rather liked her, it now seemed.

Now from the preacher's daughter he received also pleasing letters.

Encouraging, but not to say unconventionally forward. He appreciated the fact that she was a preacher's child, and naturally expected to conform to a certain custom.

But from New York he received the most encouragement. The position the maid held rather thrilled him. He loved the road--and she wrote such letters! It was plain to be seen here what the answer would be.

Which?

He borrowed ten thousand dollars, giving a mortgage upon his land in security therefor. He purchased relinquishments upon three beautiful quarter sections of land in the county lying just to the west. The same, having to be homesteaded before title was acquired, had all ready been in part arranged for. His grandmother and sister were waiting to file on a place each--the third was for the bride-to-be. There remained a few weeks yet in which to make said selection; but, notwithstanding, all must be ready to make filing not later than the first day of October--and September at last arrived.

He became serious, then uneasy. Which? He wrote all three letters that would give either or all a right to hear the words from him, but did not say sufficient to any to give grounds for a possible breach of promise suit later.

He rather liked the girl whose father had made money. Yes, it so seemed--more than either of the other two. A match with her on the surface seemed more practical. But for some reason she did not reply within the time to the letter he had written her. Oh, if he could only have courted her; could have been in the position to have seen her of a warm night; to have said to her: "----." Poor Jean Baptiste your life might not have later come to what it did....

He waited--but in vain. October was drawing dangerously near when at last he left for somewhere. Indeed he had not a complete idea where, but of one thing he had concluded, when he returned he would bring the bride-to-be.

At Omaha he made up his mind. The girl whose father had made money had had her chance and failed. He regretted it very much, but this was a business proposition, and he had two thousand dollars at stake that he would lose if he failed to get some one to file on that quarter section he had provided, on October first.

He was rather disturbed over the idea. He really would have preferred a little more sentiment--but time had become the expedient. "Of course,"

he argued, as he sped toward Chicago, "I'll be awfully good to the one I choose, so if it is a little out of the ordinary--why, I'll try to make up for it when she is mine."

With this consolation he arrived in Chicago, wishing that the girl who lived two hundred miles south of Omaha and whose father was well-to-do had replied to his letter. He really had chosen her out of the three.

However, he resigned himself to the inevitable--one of the other two.

He left the train and boarded the South Side L. He got off again at Thirty-first Street, and found what he had always found before, State Street and Negroes. He was not interested in either this time. He had sent a telegram to New York from Omaha to the effect that he was headed for Chicago. It was to the maid, for she had drawn second choice. He planned to meet her at the number her dear friend--and the match maker, lived.

So it was to this number he now hurried.

"Oh, Mr. Baptiste," cried this little woman, whose name happened to be Rankin, and she was an old maid. She gave him her little hand, and was "delighted" to see him.

"And you've come! Miss Pitt will be so glad! She has talked of nobody but Mr. Baptiste this summer. Oh, I'm so glad you have come!" and she shook his hand again.

"I sent her a telegram that I was coming, and I trust she will let me know...."

"She is due in tomorrow," cried their little friend, and her voice was like delicate music.

"I expect a telegram," he said evenly. "I am somewhat rushed."

"Indeed! But of course, you are a business man, Mr. Baptiste," chimed Miss Rankin with much admiration in her little voice. "How Miss Pitt will like you!"

Jean Baptiste smiled a smile of vanity. He was getting anxious to meet Miss Pitt himself--inasmuch as he expected to ask her to become his wife on the morrow.

"Ting-aling-aling!" went the bell on the street door, and little Miss Rankin rushed forth to open it.

"Special for Mr. Jean Baptiste," he heard and went to get it. After signing, he broke the seal a little nervously, and drawing the contents forth, read the enclosed message.

He sighed when it was over. Miss Pitt had been taken with a severe attack of neuralgia in New York, was indisposed and under the care of a physician, but would be in Chicago in six days. He studied the calendar on the wall. Six days would mean October second!

Too late, Miss Pitt, your chance is gone. And now we turn to the party of the third part who will follow us through our story.

[Illustration: From a painting by W.M. Farrow.

"MISS PITT WAS SO ANXIOUS TO MEET YOU AND I WAS, TOO, BECAUSE I THINK YOU AND HER WOULD LIKE EACH OTHER. SHE'S AN AWFULLY GOOD GIRL AND WILLING TO HELP A FELLOW."]

CHAPTER III

MEMORIES--N. JUSTINE MCCARTHY

"She will not be in tomorrow," said Baptiste, handing the letter to Miss Rankin.

"Oh, is that so!" cried Miss Rankin in a tone of deep disappointment, as she took the letter. "Now isn't that just too bad!"

"It is," agreed Baptiste. "I will not get to see her, since I shall have to return to the West not later than two or three days." He was extremely disappointed. He sat down with a sigh and rested his chin in his palm, looking before him thoughtfully.

"I'm sure sorry, so sorry," mused Miss Rankin abstractedly. "And you cannot possibly wait until next week?" she asked, anxiously.

He shook his head sadly.

"Impossible, absolutely impossible."

"It is certainly too bad. Miss Pitt was so anxious to meet you. And I was, too, because I think you and her would like each other. She's an awfully good girl, and willing to help a fellow. Just the kind of a girl you need."

He shifted his position now and was absorbed in his thoughts. He had come back to his purpose. He was sorry for Miss Pitt; but he had also been sorry that Miss Grey had not answered his letter.... The association with neither, true, had developed into a love affair, so would not be hard to forget. He had agreed with himself that love was to come later. He had exercised discretion. Any one of the three was a desirable mate from a practical point of view. After marriage he was confident that they could conform sufficiently to each other's views to get along, perhaps be happy. Miss McCarthy was, in his opinion, the most intelligent of the three, as she had been to school and had graduated from college. He had confidence in education uplifting people; it made them more observing. It helped them morally. And with him this meant much. He was very critical when it came to morals. He had studied his race along this line, and he was very exacting; because, unfortunately as a whole their standard of morals were not so high as it should be. Of course he understood that the same began back in the time of slavery.

They had not been brought up to a regard of morality in a higher sense and they were possessed with certain weaknesses. He was aware that in the days of slavery the Negro to begin with had had, as a rule only what he could steal, therefore stealing became a virtue. When accused as he naturally was sure to be, he had resorted to the subtle art of lying. So lying became an expedient. So it had gone. Then he came down to the point of physical morality.

The masters had so often the slave women, lustful by disposition, as concubine. He had, in so doing of course, mixed the races, Jean Baptiste knew until not more than one half of the entire race in America are without some trait of Caucasian blood. There had been no defense then, and for some time after. There was no law that exacted punishment for a master's cohabitation with slave women, so it had grown into a custom and was practiced in the South in a measure still.

So with freedom his race had not gotten away from these loose practices.

They were given still to lustful, undependable habits, which he at times became very impatient with. His version was that a race could not rise higher than their morals. So in his business procedure of choosing a wife, one thing over all else was unalterable, she must be chaste and of high morals.

Orlean McCarthy, however she as yet appeared from a practical standpoint, could, he estimated rightly, boast of this virtue. No doubt she was equally as high in all other perquisites. But strangely he did not just wish to ask Miss McCarthy to become his wife. He could not understand it altogether. He was confident that no girl lived who perhaps was likely, as likely, to conform to his desires as she; but plan, do as he would, that lurking aversion still remained--infinitely worse, it grew to a fear.

He sighed perceptibly, and Miss Rankin, catching the same, was deeply sympathetic because she thought it was due to the disappointment he felt in realizing that he was not to see Miss Pitt on the morrow. She placed her arm gently about his shoulders, leaned her small head close to his, and stroked his hair with her other hand.