A Hoosier Chronicle

vii, 605 pp. Color frontispiece and plates by F.C. Yohn. The scene of this story is laid in Indiana and opens in the town of Montgomery, the seat of Madison College. Here Professor Kelton, retired from active labor, lives a quiet and secluded life with his grand-daughter Sylvia Garrison. The latter, a girl of sixteen, has lived with her grandfather since the death of her mother, his only child, which occurred when she was but three years old. Her antecedents are mysterious and even the Professor does not know who her father was, as her mother made a runaway match while away from home and kept her husband’s identity a secret for some unexplained reason. Her short married life was spent in the Adirondacks in seclusion and when illness overtook her, she started to take her child to her father, but died before reaching him. No clue could be found to the husband, who had evidently deserted his young wife, and so Sylvia was cared for by her grandfather. She was taught by him until fitted for college which she was enabled to attend through the generosity of an old friend of the professor’s, Mrs. Owen. The latter’s niece is the wife of Morton Bassett, a prominent politician, unscrupulous and ambitious. His private secretary is Daniel Harwood, a Yale graduate, sound mentally and morally. Harwood loves Sylvia who refuses him, and retains his association with Bassett until the latter in his race for the senator-ship employs methods which Harwood cannot endorse. A political rival unearths an episode in Bassett’s early life which has been carefully hidden, and which he intends to divulge at the convention to the detriment of Bassett. It relates to his connection with an unknown woman and child in the Adirondacks and these are proven to be Sylvia and her mother. When Sylvia discovers the identity of her father she goes to him for an explanation and he tells her that his marriage to her mother was legal and his desertion of her unintentional. Sylvia tells him that to make reparation to her mother he must give up the senator-ship, and though it has been the ambition of his life he does so. Sylvia marries Harwood, whom she had previously refused because of the mystery surrounding her birth.