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Nathaniel sat inside the coach as it rolled through the village streets and out into the country road toward Albany, and tried to think. All remembrance of Janet and her foolish pet had passed from his mind. He had before him a problem to decide. It was the harder because the advice of his nearest and dearest friends was so at variance.

He took out two letters which represented the two sides of the question and began to reread. The first was the letter which Phoebe had brought, torn, disfigured by the dust, but still legible. It bore a Texas postmark and was brief and businesslike.

"Dear nephew, (it read), if you are keen as you used to be you have been keeping yourself informed about old Texas, and know the whole state of the case better than I can put it. Ever since Austin went to ask the admission of Texas as a separate state into the Mexican Republic and was denied and thrown into prison, our people have been gathering together; and now things are coming to a crisis. Something will be done and that right soon, perhaps in a few days. The troops are gathering near Gonzales. Resistance will be made. But we need help. We want young blood, and strong arms behind which are heads and hearts with a conviction for right and freedom. No one on earth has a right to deprive us of our property, and say we shall not own slaves which we have come honestly by. We will fight and win, as the United States has fought and won its right to govern itself. Now I call upon you, Nathaniel, to rise up and bring honor to your father's name by raising a company of young men to come down here and set Texas free. I know you are busy with your law studies but they will keep and Texas will not. Texas must be set free now or never. When you were a little chap you had strong convictions about what was right, and I feel pretty sure my appeal will not come to deaf ears. Your father loved Texas and came down here to make his fortune. If he had lived he would have been here fighting. He would have been a slave-owner, and have asserted his right as a free man in a free country to protect his property. He would have taught his son to do the same. I call upon you for your father's sake to come down here in the hour of your Texas' need—for it is the place where you were born—and help us. Use your utmost influence to get other young men to come with you.

"Your uncle the Judge will perhaps help you financially. He owns a couple of slaves himself I remember, house servants, does he not? Ask him how he would like the government of the United States to order him to set them free. I feel sure he will sympathize with Texas in her need and help you to do this thing which I have asked.

"I am a man of few words, but I trust you, Nathaniel, and I feel sure I am not pleading in vain. I shall expect something from you at once. We need the help now or the cause may be lost. If you feel as I think you do go to the New York address given below. This letter will be sufficient identification for you as I have written to them of you, but it is most important that you present this letter or it will do no good to go, but Be sure that no one else sees it, or great harm may come to you! There is grave danger in being found out, but if I did not know your brave spirit I would not be writing you. Come as soon as possible!

"Your uncle,

"Royal Graham."

The other letter was kept waiting a long time while the young man read and reread this one, and then let his eyes wander through the window of the coach to the brown fields and dim hills in the distance. He was going over all he could remember of his boyhood life in that far-away Southern home. He could dimly remember the form of his father, who had been to him a great hero; who had taken him with him on horseback wherever he went and never been too weary or too busy for his little son. There came a blur of sadness over the picture, the death of this beloved father, and an interval of emptiness when the gentle mother was too full of sorrow to know how the baby heart had felt the utter loneliness, and then one day this Uncle Royal, so like yet not like his father, had lifted him in his arms and said: "Good- by, little chap. Some day you'll come back to us and do your father's work, and take his place."Then he and his mother had ridden away in an endless succession of post- chaises and coaches, until one day they had come to Judge Bristol's great white house set among the green hedges, and there Nathaniel had found a new home. There, first his mother, and then Janet's mother, had slipped away into that mysterious door of death, and he had grown up in the home of his mother's brother, with Janet as a sister. From time to time he had received letters from this shadowy uncle in Texas, and once, when he was about twelve, there had been a brief visit from him which cleared the memory and kept him fresh in Nathaniel's mind; and always there had been some hint or sentence of expectation that when Nathaniel was grown and educated he would come back to the country which had been his father's and help to make it great. This had been a hazy undertone always in his life, in spite of the fact that his other uncle, Judge Bristol, was constantly talking of his future career as a lawyer in New York City, with a possibility of a political career also. Nathaniel had gone on with his life, working out the daily plan as it came, with all the time the feeling that these two plans were contending in him for supremacy. Sometimes during leisure moments lately he had wondered if the two could ever be combined, and if not how possibly they were to both work out. Gradually it had dawned upon him that a day was coming, indeed might not be far away, when he would have to choose. And now, since these two letters had reached him, he knew the time had come. And how was he to know how to choose?

His Uncle Royal's letter had reached him the afternoon of the nutting party on the hill. Pompey, his uncle's house servant, had brought it to him on a silver salver just as they were starting. He had glanced at the familiar writing, known it for his uncle's, and put it in his pocket for reading at his leisure. He always enjoyed his uncle's letters, yet they were not of deep moment to him. He had been too long separated from him to have keen interests in common with him. Hence he had not read the letter until after his return from the hill-side, which explains how he had carelessly left it behind the log by Phoebe, as an excuse to return and help her out of the laurel.

In the quiet of his own room after Janet and the others were sleeping he had remembered the letter, and, relighting his candle, which had been extinguished, he had read it, feeling a touch of reproach that he could have so lightly put off attending to his good relative's words. How, then, was he startled to discover its contents! The talk of the afternoon floated back to him, idle talk, about his going down to set Texas free. Talk that grew out of his own keen interest in all the questions of the day, and his readiness to argue them out. But he had never had a very definite idea of going to Texas to take part in the struggle that was going on until this letter brought him face to face with a possible duty.

Perhaps he would have had no question about his decision, if, following hard upon this letter, had not come the other one, the very next day in fact, which put an entirely new phase upon some sides of the question, and made duty seem an uncertain creature with more faces than one.

The coach was half way to Albany before Nathaniel finally folded away his uncle's letter and put it in his inner pocket with great care. Then he took up the other letter with a perplexed sigh, and read:

"Dear Chum:

"I am sitting on a high point of white sand, where I can look off at the blue sea. At my right is a great hairy, prickly cactus with a few gorgeous yellow blossoms in a glory of delicate petals and fringed stamens that look as out of place amid the sand as a diamond on a plank. Just now a green lizard peered curiously out from under one of the hairy balls that pass for leaves with a cactus, and then slid back out of sight. But the next time I looked he was blue, brilliant, and palpitating as a peacock's feathers, and sunning himself, not thinking of me at all. Then just as I moved he became a dull gray-brown, hardly discernible from the sand. And thus I know he is not a lizard at all, but a chameleon. The sun is very warm and bright, and everything about seems basking in it.

"As I look off to sea the Gulf Stream is distinct to-day, a brilliant green ribbon in the brilliant blue of the sea. It winds along so curiously and so independently in the great ocean, keeping its own individuality in spite of storm and wind and tide. I went out in a small boat across it the other day, and could look down and see it as distinctly as if there were a glass wall between it and the other water. I cannot but think that God took pleasure in making this old earth—so curious, mysterious, and beautiful.

"A great lazy bird is floating high in the air, looking down to the water for prey, doubtless. I think I could almost see the bright, curious fishes of this strange clime darting in the sunny water myself, if I tried, the air is so clear and the days so bright.

"There are orange groves back of me, not far away—a few miles. I fancy their perfume is wafted even here. There is a curious sweet apathy that steals over one down here, which soothes, and rests.

"I am having a holiday, for my little pupils are gone away on a visit. This is a delightful land to which I have come, and a charming family with whom my lot is cast. I am having an opportunity to study the South in a most ideal manner, and many of my former ideas of it are becoming much modified. For example, there is slavery. I am by no means so sure as I used to be that it was ordained of God. I wish you were here to talk it over with me, and to study it, too. There are possibilities in the institution that make one shudder. Perhaps, after all, Texas is in the wrong. As you have opportunity drop into an Abolition meeting now and then and see what you think. I have been reading the Liberator lately. I find much in it that is strong and appeals to my sense of right. You know what a disturbance it has made in the country recently. I hear some mails have even been broken into and burned on account of it. I wonder if this question of slavery will ever be an issue in our country. If it should be I cannot help wondering what the South will do. From what I have seen I feel sure they will never stand it to have their rights interfered with.

"Now, I have to confess that much as I rebelled against giving up my work and coming down here I feel that it has already benefited me. I can take long walks without the least weariness, and can even talk and sing like any one else without becoming hoarse. I do not believe my lungs have ever been affected, and I feel I am going to get well and come back to my work. With that hope in my veins I can go joyfully through these sunny days and feel the new life creeping into me with every breath of balmy air. We shall yet work shoulder to shoulder, my friend—I feel it. God bless you and keep you, and show you the right.

"Yours, faithfully,

"Martin Van Rensselaer."

Nathaniel folded the letter, placed it in his pocket with the other, and leaned his head back to think. It was all perplexing.

This man Van Rensselaer had been his room-mate for four years. They had grown into one another's thoughts as two who are much together and love each other will grow until each had come to depend upon the other's decision as if it were nearly his own judgment. Nathaniel could not quite tell why it was that this letter troubled him, yet he felt breathing through the whole epistle the stirring of a new principle that seemed to antagonize his sympathy with Texas.

So, through the long cold journey the question was debated back and forth. His duty to his uncle demanded that he go to the address given and investigate the matter of helping Texas, else his uncle might think him exceedingly neglectful; and when he looked at the question from his uncle's stand-point, and thought of his father, and his own natural heritage, his sympathy was with Texas. On the other hand his love for his friend and his perfect trust in him demanded that he investigate the other side also. He felt intuitively that the two things could not go together.

Martin Van Rensselaer had been preparing for the Christian ministry. His zeal and earnestness were great, too great for his strength, and before he had finished his theological studies he had broken down and been sent South, as it was feared he had serious lung trouble. This separation had been a great trial to both young men. Martin was three years older than Nathaniel, and two years ahead of him in his studies, but in mind and spirit they were as one, so that the words of the letter had great influence.

The day had grown surly as the coach rumbled on. Sullen clouds lowered in the corners of the sky as if meditating mutiny. There was a hint of snow in the biting air that whistled around the cracks of the coach windows. Nature seemed to have suddenly put on a bare, brown look—hopeless, discouraging, cold.

Nathaniel shivered and drew his cloak close about him He wished the journey were over, or that he had some one with whom to advise. Somehow the question troubled him as if it were of immediate necessity that it be decided, and he could not dismiss it, nor put it off. He had once or twice broached the subject with Judge Bristol, but had hesitated to show him either of the letters which had been the cause of his own perplexity. He felt that his uncle's letter might arouse antagonism in Judge Bristol on account of the claim it seemed to put upon himself, as his father's son, to come and give himself.

Judge Bristol was almost jealously fond of his sister's son, and felt that he belonged to the North. Aside from that, his sympathies would probably have been with Texas. Keeping a few slaves himself as house servants, and treating them as kindly as if they had been his own children, he saw no reason to object to slavery, and deemed it a man's right to do as he pleased with his own property.

Martin Van Rensselaer's letter the Judge would have been likely to look upon as the production of a sentimental, hotheaded fanatic, whose judgment was unsound. Nathaniel was morally certain that if the Judge should read those letters he would advise against having anything to do with either cause personally; yet, dearly as he loved and honored the Judge, who had been a second father to him, Nathaniel's conscience would not let him drop the matter thus easily.

So the coach thumped on over rough roads and smooth. The coachman called to his horses, snapped his whip alluringly, and wondered why Nathaniel, who was usually so sociable, and liked to sit on the box and talk, stayed glumly inside with never a word for him. The coachman was the same one who had brought Nathaniel and his mother to the Judge's door that first time when on their last stage route from Texas. He felt aggrieved, for Nathaniel belonged to him. Had he not allowed him to drive in smooth stretches of road, even when he was a little fellow? Could it be possible that New York had spoiled him, and he was growing too proud to companion with his old friend, or was he in love? The coachman sat gloomily mile after mile, and tried to think what girl of his acquaintance was good enough for Nathaniel.

But all oblivious of his old friend's disquietude, Nathaniel sat inside with closed eyes and tried to think, and ever and anon there came a vision of a sweet-faced girl with brown hair and a golden gown sitting among the falling yellow leaves with bowed head; and somehow in his thoughts her trouble became tangled, and it seemed as if there were three instead of two who needed setting free, and he was to choose between them all.