A deep murmur interrupted the carrying young voice which rolled out these words with rapidity. The captain's hand reached across the hubbub.

"Let him go on," the captain ordered. Fluent words poured on the heels of the captain's sentence. "They call us the melting-pot of the nations. More like a rubbish heap; we're a crazy-quilt, a hash, an historic witticism. There's no such thing as an American nation. I'm no American-I'm an Englishman five times removed, and I've got the ginger to stand up and say it. I've got the truthfulness to own that the flag yonder means nothing to me, and I've got the courage

A full glass of Burgundy stood at his plate; he had touched nothing to drink during dinner. With a swift movement he caught up the globe of crimson light and poised it for a shot, his eyes blazing at the Washington and the flag. But Armstrong caught his wrist. Vane slewed about, stared down at Armstrong, and then suddenly vague, laughing foolishly-he turned the red wine upside down into a finger-bowl, where it spread and colored the water as bright as blood. With that he broke out sobbing; he fell into his chair, a dead weight, and, with a crashing of china, flung his arms out over the table, dropped his head on them, and was still.

In the captain's cabin the next morning Vane reported, a bit pale, but in his right mind. "You sent for me, sir."

The captain wrote on, not lifting his head; the boy stood and waited. Outside, seas rolled heavily up from across the world and flung themselves on the ship's sides with an air of finality, unendingly. The captain looked up. "Mr. Vane," he said, "do you remember anything of your speech at dinner last night?"

have talked as I did except for the hashish. There seemed to be-a lack of power-to inhibit the-the boiling over of thought into speech. It was as if the engine worked at full speed and the steering-gear was broken."

The captain smiled. "Not much steering, I imagine. It was partly my fault. I had been reading the same article which, the doctor tells me, set you off, and I was interested to see how the stuff would affect you. I let you go on out of curiosity. I'll admit you surpassed my expectations. I've sent for you to say that I'd like you, to-night at dinner, to explain. Just a word. Of course, everybody understands, but things like that spoken publicly should be withdrawn publicly. I'd like you to withdraw them to-night." Vane stood tense.

"Well?" demanded the captain. "I can't do it, sir."

"What?" the captain threw at him. "I can't withdraw what I said, sir," Vane repeated.

"What do you mean? draw disloyal words? mean, Mr. Vane?"

You can't withWhat do you

"I believed it." The boy spoke in a low voice. "I didn't mean to say it in that way. But I can't take it back because I still believe it. I don't take any stock in the American nation or, of course, in the colors."

Outside the ship seas rolled heavily up from across the world and broke on the steel sides with a sound of finality-unendingly. The boy stood, breathless, steady. If the captain had been thumped in the lungs he would not have gasped with more violence. Words seemed beyond him at first; once he found them they came flooding. Plenty of words. He poured them out on the boy, words of indignation, of scorn, of counsel, of reason; varieties of words; and the boy stood respectful, firm.

"You are right, sir; the navy is no place for me," after a while he answered quietly. "I'll resign my commission, of course. I've been coming to it for a while. I didn't realize how near I was to thejumping-off place till that stuff yesterday -precipitated things." Once more the captain raged; once more the boy, not arguing, stood firm.

The outcome was that a promising career in the United States navy was swiftly ended. There was a short sensation about the affair in the papers, editorials were written, with the young officer as a text, as a horrible warning against Anglophobia; it was noted that Vane had gone into the business world under his uncle, a successful steel man; sharp things were said as to the young man's right to live in America at all; and then he was forgotten-forgotten until he emerged from oblivion in another rôle. Twenty years later Armstrong ran across him at the Cosmos Club in Washington.

"There's sand in the chap," Admiral Miller, late captain of the John Paul Jones, considered, talking it over with Armstrong. "It took sand for a lad like that to stand up to me and tell me with perfect respect that he had no opinion of the flag or the nation."

"Sand, yes," Armstrong threw back. "He couldn't roll up a fortune at his present rate without qualities. They say he jumps a few millions a year." Then Armstrong's brows lowered.

There is a curious side-light on American patriotism in the attitude of Americans about changes of nationality. More than any nation on the globe, they are used to such, and they take it as a matter of course and welcome and honor the new citizen-if the change is to their own flag. But let a citizen of the United States shift his allegiance to any other government whatsoever, and a growl of resentment goes up across the continent. It argues a deep-set pride in the value of Americanism that no excuse is accepted and that a whole nation takes it as a personal insult when an American surrenders Americanism.

Armstrong frowned. "There's a screw loose if a man can't be satisfied with his own country-especially this country. My word! And the story goes that Vane is using America as a workshop; that he will become an Englishman when he is rich enough."

"I don't know about that," doubted the admiral. The papers have been full of his buying the old family place in Virginia. Did you see that? Spending a gold-mine on it, it's said. That doesn't look like living in England."

"Oh, that's merely a flier for a Croesus like Vane."

On the June afternoon when these officers of the navy, each living on a few thousand a year, discussed their former subaltern and his millions, a little girl in a riding-habit idled with her dogs down the long drive of a place outside a great steel city. A taxicab turned from the road into the stone gateway. The child watched. The taxi dashed by and she caught a glimpse in it of her father. With that child and dogs scampered after the machine toward the house.

The taxi stopped under the portecochère, and out jumped Jerrold Vane and dived into his pockets. The little girl was surprised. Father in a taxicab ! One of the cars went for father every afternoon. Something must have happened. With that Vane saw her. "Anne!" he called.

Anne came running; the dogs barked excitedly, leaping about her. Vane seized her as dogs and girl arrived; then he held her off and gazed with an expression that seemed queer to Anne, as if he were gazing with other people's eyes, apprising her. Little Anne summed up the look as "queer." The new judgment did not find her wanting. He laughed aloud joyfully.

"You'll do, Anne; you'll fill the place," he cried; and then, his eyes full of laughter, "Honorable Anne Vane!" he threw at her. "How does it sound, chicken?”

Anne rippled a giggle. "Funny father! What does it mean? Is it nonsense?" she asked happily.

There were wicker chairs with gay upholstery and tables and bright summer rugs on the porch. Anne's father caught her hand and ran with her around the corner. He dropped into a deep chair and drew the fifteen-year-old girl to his knee.

"Listen, darling," he began. "A great thing has happened; the greatest thing in our lives."

"Oh!" said Anne, wide-eyed. And then delightedly: "Something about Wargrave? The horses-tell me, father!"

Vane laughed again. "You'll forget Wargrave now, baby. This is something so wonderful that all America doesn't count. We'll sell Wargrave now."

She clutched his arm. "Sell Wargrave!

Vane considered, drew the child close, and patted her shoulder. "Listen, Anne dear; it's quite a long story." Then he explained. His great-great-grandfather, the younger son of an English county family, had come over and settled in Virginia, at Wargrave, a hundred and fifty years before. For three generations the Vanes had been rich and important in America. Sixty years ago the war had ruined them and the estate had been sold. His father had put the boy, born after the war, into the navy as a good calling for a poor gentleman. Vane touched lightly on his naval experience; Anne did not know that episode; in a few words he told her of his fortune, one of the colossal fortunes, now, of America. Then:

"All my life," Vane said, "I've thought of myself as an expatriated Englishman. All my life I've been sure that in going back to England to live I'd find my real environment. I bought Wargrave on the James because it seemed the obvious thing to do and because it pleased my girl. But all the time I've thought that England would get us some day. And it's got us!" He turned his face, radiant, and looked at the fresh face close to him. The girl's eyes met his with a look which surprised him. "Father! We're Americans! I'm an American!" spoke Anne vehemently.

Vane laughed and hugged her, but the slim figure was unyielding.

"Father, I don't understand. What else is it?" she demanded. Anne had a character of her own; Vane knew that and gloried in it.

"England's got us, you young Yankee," he threw at her. "The older branch of the Vanes has given out. The estates and the barony have come to me if I choose to take them. Baron Wargrave of Wargrave Abbey in England, I am.'

He waited. There was a long silence. Then little Anne spoke tremblingly, deliberately. "I'll have to go there if you

want our own Wargrave on the James." With that her arms were around his neck and she was sobbing into his shoulder. Swiftly she flung away and stood before him, boyish in her riding-clothes, a flame of a child. Words seemed to come from the young thing like lava from a volcano. She lifted a finger sternly.

"Father, it's awful," she said. "It's awful. A man that-that's not loyal to his country-that's terrible. You're born to America just as I'm born to you, and you ought to want to do everything— everything for America. You ought to want to give all your money, and your life, too, if it's needed, for your country."

Vane laughed easily, pleased at this exhibition of spirit, quite unaffected by the substance of it. The child was like her Southern mother, a fire-eater. Beautiful, too, like Anne Carter. He stared at the fresh little face. Her skin was creamy; her eyes were black light; her eyebrows were like one stroke each of a camel's-hair brush. He sighed; she was dear, dead Anne Carter's own child; then he smiled.

"My country, goose! All the world is his country to a cosmopolitan. Narrow patriotism is the hall-mark of the undeveloped. Moreover, if one must have a country, England's mine. My ancestors were English; my name is English; I choose to be English. A mere accident stranded the Vanes over here. And now we're going back!" he cried exultantly. "We're going to live in a great land, a finished, sophisticated land," he went on, talking more to himself than to the child, "where the machinery is oiled and the engine doesn't rattle and the screws don't drop out; where there's a nation, a racemy race. Not a hodge-podge of the scrapings of the world. We'll shake the dust of this cheap-built conglomeration of States off our feet and we'll enter into our inheritance." His eyes flashed into the sombre eyes of the child.

"Father," said Anne, "you make me hopping mad."

Vane grinned. "You're a saucy little baggage," he threw at her. "Moreover, your language is unsatisfactory. 'Mad,' my young one, means mentally unbalanced. As you use it it is an Americanism. What you mean is 'angry.' But

you'll lose that sort of thing when you hear only pure English speech."

"Father," Anne went on, paying no attention to the digression, "what would you think of me if a-man should want to adopt me as his child, and he was richer than you and—and had pleasanter manners and lived in a nicer place. And and I should want to go and be his daughter because of those things? Would you respect me?"

"Respect you?" Vane chuckled. "Respect you? No, I'd spank you," he answered. "And how could anybody have pleasanter manners than mine?" he inquired. "Drop those lordly airs and come and sit on my lap, baby, and we'll talk about what we'll do in England. Come, my precious!"

But the boyish figure held aloof; the brown eyes glowered yet. And Anne broke forth again and made oration: "Father, I had a history lesson this morning. Mr. Wheelock made a sort of speech -just this morning. He said how much we had to be proud of and to be grateful for because we are Americans. We have the Revolution to be proud of, George Washington, and those others who dared to fight a strong nation and were able to whip them."

Vane sniffed. "England was tied up continental wars,' ," he murmured.

Anne went straight on. "We whipped 'em," she stated. "Mr. Wheelock said we should never forget, we Americans, that we had Valley Forge and Yorktown and King's Mountain to be proud of. And the Civil War, and the soldiers on both sides, he said-Phil Kearney, and Grant, and Stonewall Jackson, and Lee. They were all Americans. He said we should be proud of 'em all. And our sailors-John Paul Jones, and Perry, and Farragut, and Dewey, and Clark of the Oregon-father!" The slim chest heaved with a thrill of patriotism; her eyes flamed. "And thousands and thousands, he said, whose names we don't know, good citizens who've loved the country and helped to build it just as really as the ones who died under the flag. He said we could, every one of us, do that, be good citizens stand by the colors. That's loyalty, he said. And I want to-father-be an American citizen-stand by my colors.

We've got to; Mr. Wheelock said so; because if we don't America can't grow to be as great as it could be. Everybody counts, he said. I can help you can help a lot-father. And if we don't help we're cowards-and renegades." The last words came difficultly, but Anne shot them like a shaft, her black gaze on her father's face.

The shaft went home. Vane sprang up as if the hit were physical. "Quite an indictment," he said, "from one's daughter! 'Coward and renegade!' Well, Anne,' he addressed her, "you'll be good enough. not to apply such words to me again. And you needn't report any more of Mr. Wheelock's speeches. You are a child and don't understand, but you will later. I shall do what I think best for you." It came to him then, as it did always when he was severe, that this was Anne Carter's child. He bent and kissed her. "In two years from now your point of view will be the same as mine, baby." He swung away.

Wargrave on the James was not sold. Caretakers were put in and the buildings were repaired and kept in order, and the James River rolled past the sloping lawn and the mansion, built of bricks brought from England a hundred and fifty years ago, and the patient old house waited, sunlit, silent. While across the ocean the girl growing into womanhood thought of the place faithfully every day and said to herself often: "Some time!"

The Thames trickled, a tiny brook forever just starting on its historic way, through the park at Wargrave Abbey. The splendid terrace with its stone and brick balustrades, its stone peacocks guarding the entrance of the steps, the wide steps dropping down to the sunken garden in flights through silken lawn, these things were in view of the silvery, baby Thames, tinkling through the trees, tinkling down to London. The gray, large old house lifted its complicated system of red-tiled roofs-"the most beautiful roofs in England"-into sunlight beyond the terrace. There were people all about, this afternoon of the 3d of July. Lord Wargrave had come down from London with a week-end party; the Abbey was kept full of people a large part of

the year now, since the American baron had come into the estate five years back. Miss Vane, it was said, liked the country better than London at its gayest. In spite of her beauty and money and social success, her tastes were simple. If it had not been for her father and his ambitions, it was said, she would have been happier to live always at the Abbey, flashing about country roads on a horse, running down lanes with a crowd of joyful dogs around her, flying into cottages with friendliness and presents and laughter. The young American lady of the manor was a popular person about Wargrave; not less popular, it seemed, because of her vehement Americanism; perhaps because of the presents, partly, but more likely because of the friendliness, the people liked her pretty faithfulness to her own land.

She had wandered down to the Thames after tea on the terrace this July day with an American, young John Grayson of the legation. "I knew you for a Virginian," she said, looking up at the big boy. "Your speech-and your name and you look Southern. You know, I'm an American-Virginian, too, really? Do you think-you don't think I speak like an Englishwoman?"

Young Grayson smiled. "Nobody could talk to you five minutes without knowing you for sure-enough American," he pronounced heartily. And then: "Is Wargrave on the James any kin to you? It belongs to Vanes.. I used to ride over there from home. It's only ten miles." He stopped, at the radiance of the girl's face.

With that all England was forgotten; she was across the Atlantic, riding through quiet roads, sailing a sunshiny, broad river in the never-forgotten country of her love. This big young Virginian knew it better than she did. "I never was there but twice," she said after eager questions. "It about broke my heart when this big place and the title dropped on father's shoulders and we had to give up going there to live. He was glad, yet I think he's homesick at times, though he never owns it. But it's the dream of my life to go home and live on the James River."

The boy's gray eyes darkened with feeling. "Mine, too," he said. "I'm pegging

now for that. I've got it all scheduled— do my job here decently and get some small reputation; then home and a startthere, and money enough before I'm forty, maybe, to go to Virginia and open the old place and specialize at something for a living and get into the legislature, and then-" He hesitated. "I don't know why I should bore you with my career, especially as I haven't one yet." "Do," pleaded Anne. "It doesn't bore me. It's an American career. I love America. Then-what?"

"You'll laugh," said the boy, "but the top notch of my dream is to be some day governor of Virginia. Three of my forebears were."

"Why not?" demanded Anne. "Has anybody a better right to hope for it? And then, maybe, I'll be living at Wargrave on the James, and I'll send a note beginning 'My dear Governor: Will you and Mrs. Governor-"" The girl stopped.

The brown young eyes stared at the gray young eyes and the gray eyes held the glance. Unphrased, yet recognized, there was a false note somewhere; it might not be just like that, the gray eyes said; then the deep, boyish voice went on:

"We'll plan to see a lot of each other on the James River. I'll put that in my schedule now."

"But things aren't looking very pleasant for dashing back and forth from England to America, are they?" Anne asked, hesitating a little.

And the young diplomat at once left off being a Virginia boy and became a young diplomat. "The mill-pond is in some respects a more lively mill-pond than it was," he smiled down with non-committal geniality, and the girl smiled back and said no more about England and America.

Up there on the terrace, however, around the tea-table, the subject had been brushed with a bit more reaction. Sir Everard Allen, the attorney-general, had motored down straight from Westminster and had arrived at Wargrave in a visibly surly temper, so that when Mrs. Northcote, who was pretty enough to carry off usually much flighty bromidity, made her ill-advised speech her prettiness for once did not save her.

"Have you read the American note?"