As soon as he entered, they rose up together, the young lady addressing him as "father," and the young man as "doctor." "How are you, Harry, my boy?
give me a kiss, Em'," he said, in one breath, as he shook the young man warmly by the hand and pressed a parental kiss on the brow of his daughter.

"Pretty warm weather, this," he continued, speaking to the young man; "it is almost stifling." "Suppose we step out on the balcony, pa," said the young lady; "it is much cooler there." "Ha, ha, ha," he laughed; "you had not found that out until I entered.
However," he went on, "do you both go out there.

I am certain you will do better without than with me." His daughter blushed, but made no reply, and the young man removing two chairs to the balcony, they both left the old gentleman, who, turning up the gas, proceeded to read his evening _Mississippian_.
Dr.James Humphries was one of the oldest and most respectable citizens of Jackson, and was looked upon with great esteem by all who knew him.

He had been a medical practitioner in that city from the time it was nothing more than a little village, until railroad connections had raised it to be a place of some consequence, and the capital of the State.

He had married when a young man, but of all his children, none remained but his daughter Emma, in gaining whom he lost a much-loved wife, she having died in child-birth.
At the time we write, Emma Humphries was betrothed to Henry Shackleford, a young lawyer of fine ability, but who was, like many of his countrymen, a soldier in the service of his country, and been elected first lieutenant of the "Mississippi Rifles." We will now leave them for the present, and in the next chapter introduce the reader to two other characters..