WANALAH ^ WESTOVER OF WANALAH A Story of Love and Life in Old Virginia HER RESCUER KNEW NOT WHETHER SHE LIVED. Page 8. WESTOVER OF WANALAH A STORY OF LOVE AND LIFE IN OLD VIRGINIA BY GEORGE GARY EGGLESTON ILLUSTRATED BT EMIL POLLAK OTTENDORFF BOSTON LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. Published, August, 1910 COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD Co. All rights reserved WESTOVER OF WANALAH BERWICK & SMITH Co. Norwood, Mass., U. S. A. CONTENTS ?TER PAGB I. PERIL AND PASSION i II. A SONG WITHOUT WORDS ... 14 III. THE BEST LAID PLANS ... 31 IV. A WOMAN'S WORD . . . .27 V. PLEASANT DREAMS AND AN UGLY AWAKENING 40 VI. OUT OF A CLEAR SKY . . 50 VII. IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW . . 63 VIII. THE SHADOWS FALL .... 72 IX. THE COURAGE OF WOMANHOOD . . 83 X. THE PACKET OF PAPERS ... 88 XI. THE EVENTS OF A MORNING ... 99 XII. AFTER THE STORM 117 XIII. "AUNT BETSY" TAKES THE HELM . 130 XIV. WESTOVER AT WANALAH . . . 138 XV. UP AT JUDY'S 152 XVI. JUDY PETERS'S DIAGNOSIS . . .161 M575158 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XVII. JUDY INFORMS HERSELF AND MAKES PLANS .171 XVIII. JUDY PLANS A CAMPAIGN . . . 184 XIX. THE BEGINNING OF A CAMPAIGN . . 199 XX. THE SATISFACTION OF W. W. WEBB . 212 XXI. FLAGS FLYING 227 XXII. AN UNMISTAKABLE CURE . . . 239 XXIII. COURT DAY . . . . . .254 XXIV. A PERFECT WOMAN AND A MAN . 266 XXV. THE GREAT RENUNCIATION . . . 279 XXVI. MOONLIGHT RESOLUTIONS . . . 308 XXVII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF JACK TOWNS . 316 XXVIII. THE EVENTS OF A DAY . . .330 XXIX. THE WORK OF A WILD WIND . . 341 XXX. WHAT HAD HAPPENED AT THE OAKS 359 XXXI. A SUNSET INTERVIEW .... 372 XXXII. WHAT HAPPENED AT FIGHTING CREEK 388 XXXIII. CONSPIRACIES 396 XXXIV. JUDY'S PLANS OF CAMPAIGN . . 413 XXXV. A MOUNTAIN TOP REVELATION . . 425 XXXVI. THE MEETING AT THE OAKS . . 433 ILLUSTRATIONS HER RESCUER KNEW NOT WHETHER SHE LIVED (Page 8) Frontispiece FACING PAGE " NOW COME OUT HERE, BOYD " 162 WITH THE FIRST ONSET OF THE WIND . . . 342 " IT WILL BE BETTER, I THINK, TO ACCEPT MY DE- CISION AS FINAL" 366 HE DISMOUNTED, AND, WITH HIS BRIDLE REIN OVER HIS ARM, JOINED HER 374 "MARGARET!" . . . "BOYD!" ... 436 Westover of Wanalah I PERIL AND PASSION ONE midsummer morning in the late eighteen-fifties, Boyd Westover of Wanalah was riding along a Virginia plantation road, accompanied by half a dozen hounds, for whose discipline and restraint he carried a long, flexible black-snake whip. The weapon played the part of sceptre rather than that of sword. The young man had no inten- tion of striking the dogs with it, but whenever their exuberance broke bounds he cracked the lash in air, making a report like that of a pistol shot, and the reminder of his authority was quite sufficient for purposes of canine disci- pline. 2 WESTOVER OF WANALAH He was not hunting. He was merely riding to a distant part of the plantation he controlled, to inspect the work of the negroes there and to give directions for its proper doing. But he liked the company of his dogs and enjoyed their mad relish of the morning. The glory of it gladdened his own spirit in spite of the vexing problems that were never quite absent from his mind. Boyd Westover, a young man of not more than twenty-three or twenty-four years, had never known a serious care until the spring of that year. Then a burden of responsibility had fallen upon him that threatened to bend even his broad shoulders beneath its weight. His father had died suddenly in the early spring, leaving a widow and this one son who in the ordinary course of affairs became ad- ministrator of the estate and master of the plantation. Then it was that the burden fell upon him. The plantation was an unusually large one, and its late owner had been accounted the rich- est man in all the region round about, just as his forbears for generations past had been. PERIL AND PASSION 3 Wanalah, the ancestral seat of the family, had been for two hundred years the home of a hospitable, high living, high mettled race of men and women, but during the reign of Boyd Westover's father the hospitality of Wanalah had outdone itself in lavishness. There were always guests in numbers there, and a multi- tude of servants were withheld from profitable industry to minister to their comfort. There were thoroughbred horses enough in the stables to mount half a company of cavalry, and a like profusion was apparent in the case of every other provision for enjoyment and the un- stinted entertainment of guests. In brief the late master of Wanalah had kept open house for all gentlemanly comers. But when Boyd Westover took his degree at the University in early June and returned to Wanalah to assume his duties as adminis- trator, he learned for the first time that the plantation had not been earning the cost of all this high living. There was not only the hereditary debt upon the place a debt that so great a plantation, wisely conducted, might have borne comfortably but added to it was 4 WESTOVER OF WANALAH a confused mass of fresh debts accumulated during his father's lifetime and in consequence of his extravagance. The entertainment of pleasure-seeking guests was suspended now, of course, during the period of mourning, and in view of the ill health into which his mother had fallen since the shock of his father's sudden death, the sus- pension seemed likely to endure for a long period to come. In the meantime Boyd Westover was both perplexed and appalled by the magnitude of the problem he was set to solve. For a time he doubted even the solvency of the estate, but later reckonings had shown him that this fear was not justified, though the fact brought small relief to his mind, for peculiar reasons con- nected with the character of the property itself. If he might have sold out everything, he could have paid off all the debts, leaving a small but sufficient competency for his mother's support. As for himself, he gave no thought for the future. He was young, strong and fit to meet fate unarmed. But he could not sell the property without PERIL AND PASSION 5 unpardonable offence to his own soul and to the sentiment of the community which was to him the world. For by far the greater part of that property and altogether the most sal- able part of it consisted of the negroes, every one of whom had been born on Wanalah plan- tation as their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had been before them. Among the high class Virginians the class to which Boyd Westover belonged by imme- morial inheritance it was held to be a shamefully impossible thing to sell a negro ex- cept for incorrigible crime, or for the purpose of bringing a man and wife together, on one plantation. " I simply will not sell the servants," the young man said to himself when matters seemed at their worst. " Rather than do that, I'll run them all off north, set them free and let the estate fall into bankruptcy." Since that time the young man's close study of the situation had convinced him that neither of these courses was necessary. By cutting down the force of house servants to the mea- sure of his own and his mother's modest 6 WESTOVER OF WANALAH needs, and putting every able-bodied negro at profitable work in the crops, he was confident that he could make the plantation carry its load of debt and slowly reduce it. That was now his task, and in spite of the glory of the midsummer morning his mind was busy planning ways and means, when suddenly a combined baying from the hounds arrested his attention. Looking up he saw a young woman on horseback in a pasture not far ahead a young woman in difficulty and sore danger. Streamers of flaming red the reason for which he could in no wise guess were flying from her shoulders and a maddened bull of huge bulk was charging her with the fury of a bovine demon. Instantly the young man plunged the rowels into the flanks of his horse. An eight-rail fence lay in his way, but there was no time in which to throw off even one of its rails. With- out a thought of pause he urged his horse toward it at the top of his speed, determined to force him over it or through it as the case might be. The weight of the steed and the PERIL AND PASSION 7 speed at which he was moving would be suffi- cient, Boyd Westover thought, to crush a way through the barrier. It was likely to cost the beautiful animal his life, but what of that? There was another life at stake, in rescue of which the young man was ready to sacrifice even his own for the life in peril was that of the woman he loved, the woman who had awakened all the passion, all the tenderness, all the chivalry of his brave young soul. To save her he would have doomed any and every other living thing to cruel death. The horse he rode seemed to realize the perilous choice his rider was forcing upon him and to choose the safer but far more difficult course. Putting forth all his superb strength in utmost endeavor, he cleared the barrier at a flying leap. As he did so his rider saw to his horror that the young woman's mount had faltered in her frightened flight, and in the next instant the beautiful mare was lifted bodily from the ground, impaled upon the sharp horns of the bull and evidently done to death by the goring. As the animal fell the young woman was hurled 8 WESTOVER OF WANALAH. forward half a dozen yards, and before the wrath-blinded bull could gather himself to- gether for a charge upon her prostrate form, Boyd Westover forced his own horse between the bull and his victim and with three or four rapid swishes of the cruel black-snake whip across the animal's face and eyes, sent him staggering back. The delay, as the young man knew, would be but for a few seconds, but these proved suf- ficient for his purpose. Turning his horse toward the unconscious girl, he hooked his left knee around the cantle of his saddle and, hang- ing almost head downwards, seized her about the waist. Recovering his position, he placed her across the horse's withers. The bull was almost upon him now, but a sharp touch of the spurs caused the horse to spring forward at a full run in time to save himself and his rid- ers, though the escape was so narrow that one of the bull's horns tore an ugly gash in the calf of Boyd Westover's leg. The body of the girl hung limp across the withers, so that her rescuer knew not whether she lived or had been killed by her fall. Until PERIL AND PASSION 9 his horse cleared the fence again this time scattering the upper rails as he did so there was no time for inquiry. But once out of the field, the young man reined in the frantic creature, and lifting the girl's head to his shoulder, felt her fluttering breath upon his cheek. " Thank God she lives ! " he exclaimed with reverent fervor, but his efforts to rouse her to consciousness were unavailing. " It may be only a faint," he thought, but such fainting as he had seen among women had been far less enduring than this, and the mem- ory of that fact greatly alarmed him. He reflected that in any case the shock pro- duced by the dashing of water into the face is desirable at such times, and turning his horse's head he rode down a slope into a shaded, grass- carpeted dell, where a bubbling spring arose. Gently laying the girl on the greensward, but resting her head in his lap, he dashed handfuls of water into her face, with the result of arous- ing her almost at once. When she opened her eyes they were vacant and dreamy, like those of one only half awakened from sleep, but a io WESTOVER OF WANALAH few moments later the light came back into them, and she spoke. "Is it you, Boyd? Then you're not dead, as I dreamed you were." " Oh, no, I'm not hurt," he replied ignor- ing his lacerated leg " but you mustn't talk yet. Lie still till you feel better." And with that he gently passed his hand over her eyes, closing them. She lay quiet for a minute or two seemingly asleep, and he, moved by a sudden impulse whether of passion or pity he knew not bent over and pressed his lips to hers gently ut- tering her name " Margaret." Instantly he repented, as she opened her eyes and with a flushing face tried to raise her- self to a sitting posture, saying as she made the effort. " I reckon you mustn't do that." But the effort to rise was futile. Sharp pain caused her to grow pale again and she sank back as she had been. " Where are you hurt, Margaret ? " Boyd asked in sympathetic distress. " I don't know ; all over I reckon." PERIL AND PASSION n " Are any of your bones broken ? Feel of them and see." " I reckon not. I can't tell. The pains are all over me mostly inside. I reckon I'm go- ing to faint." Boyd Westover was now seriously alarmed. He vaguely remembered hearing of persons dying of " internal injuries," though exter- nally showing no hurt. Instantly he lifted the girl again and, mounting with her in his arms, set off at a gallop toward the great house at Wanalah. The sharp prick of a pin, as he adjusted his burden on the withers, attracted his attention to the two flaming red bandana kerchiefs, pinned by their corners to Margaret's shoul- ders, and in the midst of his apprehensions for her life he found time to wonder why she had dedorated herself in that extraordinary way. He was too full of anxious concern to question her on so trivial a matter, but she, recovering herself, volunteered an explanation, after ask- ing him to reduce the horse's gait to a walk. " I reckon I was right foolish," she said, laughing in spite of her pain. " You see this 12 WESTOVER OF WANALAH is one of old Aunt Sally's birthdays. She has one every three or four months now, and she's rapidly adding to her ninety years a year at each birthday. She was my Mammy you know, and so I always take her a present on her birthdays." The girl paused in her speech as some sharp twinge of pain changed her smile into a gri- mace. It was only for a moment, and she con- tinued : " On her last birthday, two or three months ago, she told me I would some day be an angel with red wings, and so when I set out this morning to take her these two turban kerchiefs, the foolish whim came to me to pin them to my shoulders and make red wings of them." Again an access of severe pain silenced speech and she closed her eyes while her lips grew pale. Evidently the effort to chatter had been too much for her, and Boyd rightly guessed that she had been forcing herself to talk of her little prank by way of preventing him from saying more serious things which she did not wish just then to hear. He in his turn resolved to say those more PERIL AND PASSION 13 serious things at the earliest opportunity. He felt that in caressing her as he had done, down there by the spring, he had placed himself un- der a binding obligation to explain at the first possible opportunity, and the explanation could take but one form a full and free declaration of his yet unspoken passion. This, he felt, he had no right to delay one moment longer than he must, but as she lay still with closed eyes, her head upon his shoulder and his arm about her, he realized that his present and very press- ing task was to place her as soon as possible in the tender care of his mother and her maids. The rest must wait. II A SONG WITHOUT WORDS THE physician for whom Boyd West- over sent a young negro at breakneck speed, while his mother's maids were getting Margaret Conway to bed, reported that she had " sustained painful contusions " and was additionally " suffering from shock," but that no bones were broken and, so far as he could determine, no serious internal injuries had befallen. He directed that she should re- main in bed for a few days, and then stay quietly at Wanalah, without attempting a homeward journey until he should himself give permission. " Above all," he said to Boyd, " she must not be excited in any way pleasurably or the reverse lest hysteria supervene." Boyd smiled a little over the medical man's stilted diction, and rejoiced in the assurance 14 A SONG WITHOUT WORDS 15 of Margaret's safety which the ponderous phraseology gave him. But upon reflection he chafed a good deal over the restraint the doc- tor's instructions required him to put upon himself. He was impatient now to put into words the declaration of love which his ca- resses had implied and promised. He was still more impatient for her reply to that declara- tion, for, like the modest young lover that he was, he gravely feared his fate and was an- noyed by the necessity of waiting before put- ting it to the test. Her words, spoken half consciously when she had received or repelled his embraces for he could not determine in his own mind whether she had meant to do the one or the other in no wise encouraged his self-confi- dence. He recalled those words : "I reckon you mustn't do that " and questioned them closely as to their significance, but no satisfac- tory answer came. The utterance might mean anything or nothing. And what did the sud- denly flushing face that accompanied it sug- gest? Was it joy or sorrow, pleasure or re- sentment that had sent the blood to her cheeks 16 WESTOVER OF WANALAH in that way, and prompted her attempt to escape him by rising? Wonder as he might he could not tell, and as he paced the colon- naded porch that night after all the house was asleep, he succeeded only in working himself into a passionate fury of impatience and mad- dening perplexity. He tried to reason with himself, only to find himself utterly unreasonable. Doubtless Mar- garet would be enjoying the air in the porch within a few days, resting and perhaps inter- estingly helpless still. The attentions he must lavish upon her in that case promised abundant opportunity for a tenderness of care which would open the way for his passionate declara- tion. At that point in his planning another and a very annoying thought obtruded itself. "Confound it!" he muttered, "Colonel Conway is a stickler for all the conventions of our artificial social life. He will insist upon the idiotic rule that a young man mustn't ad- dress a girl in his own house or at any time when she is under his protection. What utter nonsense it is, anyhow ! But I suppose I must obey it or bring down Colonel Conway's wrath A SONG WITHOUT WORDS 17 upon my head. I must let all my opportunities slip away, and restrain my impulses during all the time she's here, making myself seem to her a cold-blooded brute who has taken advantage of her helplessness to force caresses upon her and then doesn't think enough of her dignity to explain himself." Perhaps Boyd Westover's mood was playing tricks with his logical faculties. It is certain that if he had been asked at any ordinary time his opinion of the social requirement which he now scorned as an idiotic convention, he would have answered that it was eminently right and reasonable, that it was imperatively necessary indeed, for the protection of the young woman in the case against the embar- rassment of having to accept hospitality or es- cort or favor of other kind from a man whose proffer of love she has just rejected. But who expects an impatient lover to be reasonable who that has ever been himself a lover? Reasonable or unreasonable, Boyd Westover felt xhimself bound to observe the rule that imposed so annoying a restraint upon him. He might fret and fume in revolt against 1 8 WESTOVER OF WANALAH it, but he must bend to the custom. He re- solved to wait with what grace he could until Margaret's return to her own home. He worked out in his mind all the situations that were likely to occur during her convalescence at Wanalah, and framed all the conversations to fit the embarrassing circumstances. Of course the situations that actually arose were totally different from those he had im- agined, and the dialogues he had rehearsed proved to be as unfit for use as the text of a Greek tragedy would be on a modern comedy stage. Colonel Conway, who happened to be in Richmond when his daughter's mishap oc- curred, returned at once and, after learning the details, delivered his thanks and commenda- tions in a way that overwhelmed her rescuer with embarrassment. It was in vain that Boyd protested, disclaimed any right or title to the Colonel's extravagant eulogies of his conduct, and declared that he had done no more than any other man would have done under like circumstances. Colonel Conway would not have it so. A SONG WITHOUT WORDS 19 " You gravely imperilled your own life, sir," he replied in his peremptory way. " You went to the rescue of a damsel in distress as only a gallant knight would do, with reckless disregard of all consequences to yourself. That's what I call heroism, sir, heroism worthy of the name you bear and the proud race from which you are sprung. Now don't protest, don't contradict, don't argue, don't answer. It is only your modesty that shrinks from the recognition of your gallantry " and so on with what Boyd felt to be " damnable itera- tion." But when the old gentleman had gone back to Richmond, leaving his daughter to the care of Boyd Westover's mother, the young man reflected that the Colonel's enthusiasm would probably stand him in good stead if ever Mar- garet should smile upon his suit and give him leave to ask her father for her hand. Thus in meditations sometimes hopeful and joyous, sometimes perplexed and desponding, Boyd Westover worried through the days until the glad morning carne when Margaret Con- way rebelled against her physician's orders and 20 WESTOVER OF WANALAH made her appearance in the porch. She was still weak enough and enough distressed by her bruises to be treated as a convalescent to whom solicitous attention was due, and of course Boyd elected himself her " gentleman in waiting." These two, brought up on adjoining planta- tions, had known each other from their earliest childhood, but in later years they had seen little of each other. Boyd had been away, first at boarding-school and afterwards at the University, while the motherless girl had been slowly and awkwardly growing to woman- hood, under care of her aunt and the tutelage of an accomplished governess. It was only during vacations that the two had met, and during the last two summers they had not met at all, for the reason that Margaret, with her father, had been travelling in the North and Canada and in what was then the great West during both those seasons. It was with surprise, therefore, not unmixed with the awe of strangeness, that on his return from the University this year he had found his little playmate grown into a beautiful and A SONG WITHOUT WORDS 21 very dignified womanhood. She presided now at The Oaks, her father's plantation, with all the gracious ease that enabled Virginia women of that time to make of plantation houses de- lightful centres of unruffled hospitality, where the coming and going of guests was in no way a matter of previous arrangement and where neither the coming nor the going created the smallest ripple in the placid self-composure of the well-ordered life of the mansion. So great was the change in her, or so great did it seem to Boyd, that at first he hesitated and faltered over the old familiar form of ad- dress. It did not seem possible to him to call this dignified and almost stately young woman " Margaret " as he had always called the little girl that she had been. He could not address her as " Miss Conway " but he thought he might compromise on the form " Miss Mar- garet." The first time he addressed her in that fashion was the only time. She looked at him in dignified surprise for a moment; then with a rippling little laugh that seemed to him singularly charming, she said : " If we have become such strangers, Boyd, 22 WESTOVER OF WANALAH that you must put a handle to my name, I'll give you all your honors and address you as ' Boyd Westover, Esq., M. A., University of Virginia.' You are to call me just ' Margaret,' please, as you've always done, if you wish to be just ' Boyd ' to me." As she spoke the words all the winsomeness he remembered in the girl came back again, but it did not dissipate the stately dignity that had grown upon her with her ripening woman- hood. It was perhaps at that moment that he fell in love with her. Of that he could never be sure, but he knew now that his love for her was the one supreme passion of his life. That knowledge had come to him at the moment when he first realized her danger out there in the pasture. He recalled now the impulse that had prompted him in his half mad determina- tion to let no obstacle stand in the way of his reaching her in time for rescue. He remem- bered the horror that had rended his very soul as he saw the maddened bull lift the mare and her rider and fling them from his gory horns. He knew now that he had done and dared in those maddening moments, not with the hu- A SONG WITHOUT WORDS 23 mane impulse to save an imperilled life that must come to every man with blood in his veins, but actuated by his passionate love's in- stinct of self-preservation. As he ministered to her after her return to the porch, all these memories were awakened in him by a certain change that had come over her, a shyness that was not quite reserve, but yet resembled it. He was too little acquainted with the ways of women to understand this or to estimate it aright. It did not occur to him that the revelation he had made to her by his passionate caress as she lay half conscious in his arms might explain her impulse of re- serve. He was too scantily versed in the im- pulses of womanhood to understand that after such a manifestation of his love womanly mod- esty must stand upon its defence until such time as he should see fit to give more formal and definite expression to his purpose. Yet to that caress he attributed the change. It was only that he misinterpreted its meaning. The thought came to him that he had mortally offended her, that she resented his act in the only way possible to her so long as she must 24 WESTOVER OF WANALAH remain a guest in his mother's house, and that upon her release from that restraint she would banish him forever from her presence and her acquaintance. So severely did all this torture him that on the second day of her convalescence the impulse to make an end of suspense overcame him, banishing for th moment all considerations of prudence and all regard for conventionalities. He had read to her for an hour, and when the book was finished, he observed a certain rest- lessness on her part, for which he suggested one or two remedies, only to have his sugges- tions negatived. Presently she said : " It is only that I need exercise, I reckon. I think I'll try to walk a little, up and down the porch." She rose with some difficulty, he ta- king her hand in assistance. But no sooner was she on her feet than she relaxed her grasp Upon his hand, and, as he did not relax his own so readily, she seemed to shake it off. The act was not an impatient one, but he mis- took it for such. Instantly he faced her, ask- ing: " Why did you do that, Margaret ? Why A SONG WITHOUT WORDS 25 have you tried in every way to show me that my presence is disagreeable to you? What have I done to offend you? Tell me, and I'll quit the plantation at once and stay away so long as you remain. I have a right to know. Tell me!" For answer the young woman looked at him in silence but with tear drops glistening in her eyes. At last she said : " You have done nothing that you ought not, I reckon nothing to offend me. Oh, Boyd, I'm not angry with you I can never feel that way. I owe my life to you, but that isn't it. I don't know what it is. May be it's just because I'm weak or may be just because." With that the tears released themselves and trickled down her cheeks. She could not re- strain them and she made no effort to hide them. She simply stood there facing him and letting the honest tears flow unrestrained. There was no need of second sight to fore- tell the result. Nothing in all the world so unseats a man's resolution as the vision of the woman he loves in tears. Boyd Westover was a full-blooded young man and he acted after 26 WESTOVER OF WANALAH his kind. He took the unresisting girl in his arms and passionately embraced her. Words on either side were unnecessary. Love is quick to understand. But the words came also, after a space words of love beyond recalling, words of the kind that make or mar human lives and set Destiny its tasks. Ill A WOMAN'S WORD THOSE were halcyon days that fol- lowed, while Margaret lingered at Wanalah. The barriers were broken down now between these two ; the vexing sus- pense was over and the most precious certainty that human kind can know had taken its place. And there was not the embarrassment of others' knowing. No word of their awakened love had been spoken, or could be spoken until Margaret's return to The Oaks should impose upon her lover the duty of announcing their understanding to her father and invoking his sanction of their troth. Until that time should come they were not " engaged " and might pass their days and nights under one roof with- out offending even Virginian propriety. Con- vention had no claim to control over them in those blissful intervening days. 27 28 WESTOVER OF W ANAL AH But the shadow of it fell on the morning of the day when Margaret was to journey home- wards in company with her maid. " I will visit Colonel Conway at The Oaks to-morrow," Boyd promised as the pair strolled through the garden during the morning hours that alone remained to them now. " I wonder how he will receive the news our news, Margaret? " " How he will receive it? Why, of course he " " He's rather rigid, you know, in his views of propriety, and I've sinned against light in that respect. You see I addressed you in my own home, and not only so, but at a time when you were not able to run away." Margaret laughed half below her breath. " That was very terrible of course," she said in an amused tone. " But I see a way out of it, Boyd." " Of course you do. That's feminine in- stinct. But tell me about it." " Why, it's simple enough. If Father finds fault with that, you can take it all back and say it all over again at The Oaks." A WOMAN'S WORD 29 Boyd smiled over the conceit, but he was not reassured by it. The case was one in which the least shadow of uncertainty seemed more than he could endure. " Oh I forgot," the girl went on, teasingly; " perhaps it wouldn't be agreeable to you to rehearse the scene." Boyd said not a word in reply, but he man- aged in another way to convince her that her doubt on that point was unfounded. When she had readjusted the " flat " that she wore as headgear it had somehow become disar- ranged she put jest aside, saying : " I think we needn't fear anything of that sort, Boyd. My father is apt to make distinc- tions, just as other people are. If he disliked you or disapproved of you, he would make trouble of course ; but as it is I reckon he will brush the thing aside and scold about the idiocy that makes such silly rules." She paused in her speech for a space. Then she added, in a tone which the young man afterwards recalled in doubt and distress : " At any rate it makes no difference. Noth- ing can make any difference now." 30 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " Tell me, please," he said gently, " just what you mean by that." " I am not a women to love lightly, or lightly to forget. Love seems to me a holy thing and to trifle with it is blasphemy. I have given you my love, Boyd, and there is no power in all the universe that can make me take it back. Even you could not do that. Nothing you might do even if it were crime itself could alter the fact that my love is all yours, now and forever." He drew her to him in a tender embrace, but spoke no word in reply. Speech in such a case must be an impertinence. Presently she went on: ' That is what I meant, Boyd. I have prom- ised to be your wife. I shall keep that promise if the stars fall. I have no doubt my father will cordially give his consent; but if it should be otherwise, it will make no difference I shall keep my promise." How those words came back in after time to Boyd Westover! And how he pondered them in amazement and bitterness of soul! IV THE BEST LAID PLANS MARGARET was right in her antici- pations regarding Colonel Conway's attitude. He highly approved of the young man upon whose gallantry in rescue he had enthusiastically and incessantly descanted in all companies. He was in no mood to find fault with the slight lapse of Boyd Westover from conventional propriety. He liked the way in which Boyd presented his case, neither justifying his conduct by argument nor offer- ing excuses for it, but treating it as a matter of manhood necessity. " I suppose I should not have addressed Margaret when I did," he said in manly fash- ion ; " I ought to have waited, but under the circumstances I couldn't help myself. Hang it, Colonel, there are times when a man must do things he ought not." " Right, my boy, altogether right, absolutely 3* 3 2 WESTOVER OF WANALAH right, eternally right," was the enthusiastic response. " It's blood that flows in your veins hot blood and not tepid milk and water. Why, sir, I courted Margaret's mother as we hung to the gunwale of a capsized sailboat, and I've been proud of it all my life, sir. A mollycoddle would have waited for her to comb her hair and put on dry clothes while he was making up pretty speeches for the occasion. That's the mollycoddle's way. The man's way is to tell the girl he loves her, whenever the right moment comes, and leave the dry clothes and the pretty speeches for another time. So don't apologize, don't fret, don't give the thing another thought. You shall have Margaret's hand with her father's blessing whenever you and she choose to fix upon the day. I'll pack The Oaks with the best of good company; there shall be feasting and oh, by the way, there's one little formality I suppose you'll have to go through. There's Margaret's aunt, my sister Betsy, you know. It'll be best all around if you treat her with distinguished con- sideration. She's apt to stand upon her dig- nity, and I've always found it best to recognize THE BEST LAID PLANS 33 the fact, gracefully. It ministers to peace and comfort. I think you and Margaret had better present yourselves to her together, and do the thing up with all the formalities. It will not be necessary to mention to her the little slip you've been confessing to me. She'd probably take it seriously. It's a way she has. You can just let her think the thing occurred here to-day. You and Margaret can go out into the garden after dinner, and when you return pre- sent yourselves to Betsy and tell her about it as if it had just happened." With the reassurance of the solemn words Margaret had spoken the day before, Boyd Westover had no great fear of anything " Aunt Betsy " might say, but he was disposed to humor Colonel Conway, and besides he fore- saw that life at The Oaks might be pleasanter for Margaret with the old lady's approval than without it. So the little diplomatic stratagem was carried out so successfully that Aunt Betsy always chary in the bestowal of praise said to Margaret that night : " If you must marry, and I suppose you must, I'm glad you're to marry a young 34 WESTOVER OF WANALAH gentleman who observes the courtesies of life and knows how to treat his elders with proper respect. I rather approve of Mr. Boyd West- over." " Thank you, Aunt Betsy," Margaret an- swered, concealing a smile. " You don't often say so much in praise of a young man." " Of course not. In these days it's not easy to find young gentlemen who deserve any praise at all. Manners are so dreadfully lax nowadays. Even you shock and distress me frequently, in spite of the pains I've taken to train you properly." " Why, Aunt Betsy, what have I been doing now? Is it something dreadful?" " From my point of view it is. You spoke of Mr. Boyd Westover just now, by implica- tion at least, as a * young man.' A young lady doesn't associate with ' young men ' ; those whom she recognizes are young gentlemen/' " If you'd seen him encounter that bull and snatch me from under his horns, Aunt Betsy, I reckon you'd have thought him a good deal of a man." "No a good deal of a gentleman rather. THE BEST LAID PLANS 35 The distinction is important, my dear, though I can't make you see it. And besides he's so polite to his elders, especially ladies. I was never more respectfully treated in my life. He's just like the young gentlemen of my time. Of course when he addressed you he sank upon his knees " " He certainly did nothing of the kind," Margaret answered hotly. " If he had I should have spurned him with contempt. No man who respects himself would bend his knee to any woman." " I wish you would say * gentleman ' and ' lady ' and especially wouldn't call yourself a ' woman/ Margaret. It's positively shock- ing. But it's so with everybody in these de- generate days even well-bred young girls, and Heaven is my witness that I've tried hard to raise you well. When did he address you the first time?" " There was only this one time," Margaret answered, dreamily, as she recalled the scene on the porch. " Do you mean, Margaret, that you accepted him the first time he asked you ? " 36 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " Yes, Aunt Betsy, why not? I loved him." " Margaret, you shock me ; worse than that, your conduct grieves and afflicts me. Haven't I told you a thousand times that no lady ever forgets her dignity so far as that ? " " I haven't counted the times, Aunt Betsy, but probably your estimate of a thousand isn't far wrong. It is more than five hundred at any rate." " Margaret, you trifle, and I'm not accus- tomed to be trifled with." " I beg your pardon, Aunt Betsy. I didn't mean to trifle. Listen to me seriously now. I hold the love of a man and a woman to be the holiest thing on earth. I regard all trifling with it as blasphemy, and I think all your rules and conventionalities concerning it silly and sinful nonsense. If there is ever a time when a woman should be honest and truthful it is when the man she loves tells her of his love and asks for hers in return. There, I have shocked you dreadfully, I know, but you forced me to do it. I have spoken the truth as my soul sees it." Without another word the high-strung girl THE BEST LAID PLANS 37 quitted the room. It was the first time in her life that she had " broken bounds " with her aunt, and her self-assertion astonished even herself. But she did not and would not repent of it. Love had brought to her a new dignity of womanhood, that was all. During the week that followed Boyd West- over found himself a busier man than he had ever been before. He was up at dawn to set going the day's work in the crops, and not long after sunrise he was apt to appear at The Oaks where Margaret awaited his coming for their early morning ride. After breakfast with her he returned to his fields, but by four o'clock he was at The Oaks again for dinner. His evenings were spent in his own chamber, where he toiled over papers until far into the night, in an effort to master every detail of the finan- cial condition of the Wanalah estate. When he had done so, he asked for a con- ference with Colonel Conway, to whom he ex- plained his plans. " I find that the interest charged on nearly all the notes my father gave is higher than it ought to be ; on some it is positively extortion- 38 WESTOVER OF WANALAH ate. My father was an optimist, I suppose, and he seems to have fallen among thieves money lenders, I should say." " One and the same thing," said the elder man. " I know their kind. I'm myself a vic- tim. Go on." " Well, as I figure it out, the excessive inter- est the estate is paying I mean the amount of interest in excess of a reasonable rate eats up about half the tobacco crop every year, and I've decided to stop it, just as we stop the depredations of the worms and grasshop- pers." "Good! But how?" " Why, I'm going to Richmond, and per- haps to the North if necessary, to find some one who will take a single mortgage loan for the whole amount of the estate's debts, a loan carrying a reasonable rate of interest. With the proceeds I'll cancel all the present debts, and thereafter the estate will have but one creditor, pay a moderate interest and devote every dollar of surplus earnings to a steady reduction of the principal. I've figured the whole thing out, and with ordinarily fair crops THE BEST LAID PLANS 39 and a reasonable style of living, I can extin- guish the entire debt in ten years or less." The two went together over the figures, and the older man, who was both shrewd and ex- perienced, pronounced the plan entirely sound and feasible. It remained only to find the bank, insurance company, or other financial in- stitution that would make the loan. In search of that, Boyd Westover set off almost at once for Richmond. As he rode away after parting with Margaret he turned in his saddle and gaily waved her a last adieu, quite as if the parting were expected to be for months or years instead of for the brief tale of days the youth assigned to it. V PLEASANT DREAMS AND AN UGLY AWAKENING BOYD WESTOVER sat in his hotel room about nine o'clock in the evening. Papers, mostly memoranda, lay scat- tered about upon his table, while some large sheets were spread out before him. On these he was making calculations. He was a thorough-going person by nature and habit, and he was making careful estimates of the several offers he had secured for the making of the desired loan on Wanalah plan- tation, in an effort to determine which of them he might most wisely accept. Finally he said to himself : " The Milhauser offer is the best, or will be if I can persuade the agent to accept a mort- gage instead of the deed of trust he wants. Perhaps I can. He didn't make the condition peremptory, and he clearly wants to secure the 40 PLEASANT DREAMS 41 loan as an investment. I'll see him in the morning. No, by the way, he said I'd find him at home this evening if I should want to see him. I'll walk out to his house now." Turning to the table he took up one of the memorandum sheets and read at top the num- ber of the agent's house in far upper Broad Street. " It's almost out of town," he muttered. " Must be out beyond Richmond College. But the walk will do me good, and I'll sleep better if I can get the thing settled to-night." He put an extinguisher over the camphene lamp, and set out without overcoat or wrap of any kind. It was a warm, cloudy summer night, and the Virginians rarely wore over- coats even in winter. They were horsemen, all of them, and even the lightest overcoat is a burden and a nuisance to one riding on horseback. As he walked up Grace Street beneath the spreading shade trees, it began to rain, not heavily but steadily. Westover was too well accustomed to the out of door life to think of turning back because of a drizzle, but as the 42 WESTOVER OF WANALAH rain increased he turned up the collar of his coat and drew his soft felt hat down over his eyes. Presently he stopped under a street lamp and consulted a paper which he drew from his pocket. Some detail of the negotiation had es- caped his mind and he stopped thus to refresh his memory. As he stood there under the lamp with his back turned away from the sidewalk Sam An- derson, an acquaintance of his own, passed, and recognizing him called out: " Hello, Boyd ! Reading a love letter by the light of a street lamp in a soaking rain ? You'd better go indoors somewhere unless you want to imagine tear drops punctuating the tender missive." Boyd turned and made some careless reply. The two separated Boyd going on up Grace Street and turning north to Broad, while An- derson hurried down town. The incident was utterly trifling in itself, but it was destined to exercise a baleful influ- ence upon Boyd Westover's life. It was nearly an hour after midnight when the young man presented himself again at the PLEASANT DREAMS 43 hotel office and asked for his key. The night clerk observed that he was soaked and drip- ping, for the rain was falling in torrents now, and suggested the need of a little fire in Boyd's room. The fire was ordered, as the night had grown chill in spite of the season, and by the time he had got himself into dry clothes, the blaze of the soft coal had made the room so cheerful that the young man decided to write letters before going to bed. One of them was addressed to Colonel Conway, and in it Boyd announced his success in arranging the loan, setting forth the terms secured and going mi- nutely into detail. In the other, which was addressed to Colonel Conway's daughter, he told again of his success, giving no details at all, but setting forth his rosy anticipations of the coming time now not far away when she should be " my lady of Wanalah." The letter to Colonel Conway was a long- one of necessity ; that to Margaret was much longer without any necessity at all. But even the longest letter must come to an end some- time, and at last, about four o'clock in the morning, Boyd Westover crept into bed, a man 44 WESTOVER OF WANALAH altogether happy in the present and confidently hopeful of the future. And why not? For- tune was bringing him its richest gifts. Love was already his and the future held out to him an assured promise of happiness and peace in the plantation life he loved. Now that he had succeeded in arranging his financial affairs to his liking, he had no vexing problems to wrestle with, no cause of anxiety of any kind. With Margaret for his wife, with an ample sufficiency of this world's goods, he had only to conduct his plantation affairs, to entertain his friends, and to keep company with his books. It was of all this he dreamed when he sank to sleep. When he awoke a constable stood by his bedside, with two of his assistants a few feet farther away. " Sorry, sir," said the constable. " I don't like to wake a gentleman, sir, and still less in a case like this. If it was only a common criminal, sir, I shouldn't mind, but with a young gentleman, my duty ain't no ways a pleasant job." " What do you mean, you ruffian ? " angrily PLEASANT DREAMS 45 asked Westover springing out of bed. " Why do you presume to " ; 'Taint presumin' I reckon," answered the constable, " when I've got this fer my author- ity. Read it, sir, and see." Boyd hastily glanced at the paper. It was a warrant for his arrest on a charge of bur- glary. He laughed a little, as he proceeded to dress, saying : " Of course this is a ludicrous mistake, but you are not to blame for it. Those who are will have to answer for their blundering. I'm ready. Take me to the magistrate." " He don't git up this soon in the mornin', sir. He was woke up to 'tend to this thing, an' he wa'n't in no pleasant frame o' mind 'bout it nuther. I reckon he'll lay abed late this mornin' to make up his lost sleep, like. I don't reckon he'll show hisself in court till 'long 'bout noon." " Where will you take me, then ? " " I reckon it'll have to be the lock-up, sir." " The lock-up ? You mean a jail ? " " Well jail's the straightaway name fer it, 46 WESTOVER OF WANALAH but we mostly calls it lock-up. Seems softer like." " Now my man, listen to me. You have no right to put me in jail. Your warrant merely directs you to arrest me and bring me to court. It says nothing about locking me up in jail. I tell you there's some absurd mistake about this thing, and when I'm brought before the magis- trate it will all be cleared up. You can detain me until then without putting a jail indignity upon me. Stay here at the hotel with me. Go with me to breakfast, leaving your men on guard outside. When the time comes take me before the magistrate. In the meanwhile I'll send for my lawyer and find out what's to be done." The constable ran his eye over the muscular young man, and shook his head. " Can't be did," he replied. " You mout make up your mind to break away, and I don't brag o' stren'th enough to handle a limber twig like you." " Well then, you can bring your men with you into the dining room and keep them with you." PLEASANT DREAMS 47 " See here, Mr. Westover," interrupted the bailiff, " this here ain't noways a pleasant job fer me, an' ef you'll give me your word of honor as a gentleman that you won't git me into no trouble by givin' me the slip or tryin' to break bounds, I'll take the chances on you. I won't go to breakfast with you, 'cause it 'ud make talk ef folks saw a gentleman like you a entertainin' a feller like me that a ways. I'll jest set down furder down the table like, an' leave my men outside. Is it a go ? " '' Yes, and thank you for your consideration. I give you my word of honor as a gentleman that I will make no attempt to escape, either during breakfast or at any other time, and that when you wish me to go to the court with you I'll go without a word. Is that suffi- cient?" " Yes, sir, that's enough. A gentleman may do things that gits him into trouble with the courts, but I ain't never knowed a gentleman to break his word of honor." The constable was by no means an over- confiding person, but the dictum he announced was based upon the facts of a social system 48 WESTOVER OF WANALAH with which he had been familiar all his life. It would have been accepted without question by any other man of his class in the common- wealth. Thanks to it, Boyd Westover was left free to go and come at will within the pre- cincts of the hotel. He hurriedly summoned his friend and attorney, Jack Towns, and re- mained in conference with him throughout the morning. Neither could frame any plausible conjec- ture as to the meaning of the arrest. There was nothing in any of the morning newspapers to give even a hint toward the solution of the mystery. It was not the practice of the Rich- mond newspapers at that time to print news, except such as related to politics. If by chance they recorded any local happening, it was by mere mention, in small type in some out of the way corner of columns which were mainly devoted to ponderous editorial essays on affairs of state, and to a reprint of the pro- ceedings of Congress on the day before. It was not until the two friends, lawyer and client, were escorted by the bailiff to a magis- trate's court that they learned aught of the PLEASANT DREAMS 49 charge against the accused man. What they learned there was very little, but it furnished a basis for further inquiry on their part. As this is not a detective story, all that they learned in court and by subsequent inquiry may best be related directly, in another chap- ter. f. VI OUT OF A CLEAR SKY ON a corner of Grace Streeftn that part of it which Westover had twice trav- ersed on the evening before, stood a very spacious dwelling house, used at that time as a " Select Educational Establishment for Young Ladies." That was what the pro- prietor, Monsieur Le Voiser, called it in his circulars and the like ; everybody else called it ".Le Voiser's School." There young women, mostly the daughters of the well to do planters, were " finished " after the most approved fashion. The train- ing they had received at the hands of their governesses and tutors was supplemented by certain refinements of education which were deemed necessary to the perfection of their minds and manners. They had already learned to strum on the piano; here they were taught OUT OF A CLEAR SKY 51 how to do so with ease and grace and with the air of accomplished pianistes. Instead of Stephen C. Foster's melodious but idiotically sentimental songs, which they loved, they were trained to screech " Hear me Norma," and other " operatic pieces," which they loathed. More important than all, they were taught French until they could dream in that language bad dreams probably, if they were in har- mony with the French in which they were cast. Boyd Westover was acquainted with a dozen or more of Monsieur Le Voiser's pupils, they being the daughters of his neighbors and friends. He knew the place also, having de- livered a brief course of lectures there during the preceding year. About half past twelve o'clock on the night on which he had stopped under a street lamp to read a paper in the rain, there was an alarm in Le Voiser's school. There were shriekings that might have been heard a block away; there were a few faintings, and there was a general muster of scantily robed young women headed by the matron of the establishment, 52 WESTOVER OF WANALAH who was madly bent upon marching them into the garden in spite of the pouring rain. The alarm had gone forth that there was " a man in the house." One girl had impru- dently asked, " Is it a burglar? " only to bring down the matron's wrath upon her head. " What does that matter to you, Mademoi- selle? As a properly brought up young lady it is enough for you to know that he's a man. You should be ashamed to need more than that to alarm you." It was Monsieur Le Voiser's proud boast that " French is the language of the establish- ment, and no young lady attending it is per- mitted to employ any other tongue." It is per- haps an illustration of the untrustworthiness of educational veneering, that in this time of ex- citement nobody spoke a word of French, until the intruder, who had been hiding behind a door, slipped from his place of concealment and made a dash for the verandah through the French window by which he had entered. As he did so the light of three or four bedroom candles held high in air fell full upon him, and half a dozen of the girls shouted in chorus : OUT OF A CLEAR SKY 53 " Regardez him ! It's Mr. Boyd Westover ! " The consternation which fell upon the ex- cited group at this announcement seemed to afford a sufficient occasion for several interest- ing attacks of hysteria, in the execution of which one damsel made the startling announce- ment : " He came to kidnap me ! " repeating it sev- eral times. When she grew a little calmer so that she might be questioned as to her mean- ing she declared that Boyd Westover was madly in love with her. Then, having set the inventive machinery of her creative imagina- tion going, she told a romantic story interest- ing to hear and perfectly delicious to tell. In it she figured as a heroine of romance, beset by the passionate entreaties of a lover to whom she found it impossible to give her love in return, and so forth to the end of as pretty a story of love and coldness, persuasion and pleading, as any that Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz or Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth ever manufac- tured for the delectation of languishing Lydias. The girl's ambition to win interest in her own behalf somewhat overreached itself. The 54 WESTOVER OF WANALAH other girls were jealous of her romantic dis- tinction and, when they grew calm while she got herself carried to bed, they flatly refused to believe her story. But there was no room for doubt that the intruder was Boyd Westover, or that he had forced the fastenings of a bolted window in gaining entrance. One girl, whose father was a lawyer, explained that this forcing of fas- tenings, however frail they might have been, constituted the crime of burglary. Then somebody remembered that the in- truder had escaped and some one else ventured the suggestion that steps ought to be taken to apprehend him. To that end Monsieur Le Voiser was summoned from his private resi- dence in the next street. After all the girls who personally knew Boyd Westover, and all those who had attended his course of lectures had borne witness that the intruder was un- mistakably he, Monsieur proceeded to set the machinery of the law in motion, with the re- sults already set forth. When Boyd, Avith Jack Towns as his counsel, presented himself before the magistrate, there OUT OF A CLEAR SKY 55 was a group of Monsieur Le Voiser's pupils there, whom Jack Towns, borrowing his text from the circus posters, called " A bevy of beauty and galaxy of grace." They were there under command of their matron to testify to the facts of the burglary and the identity of the burglar, which they one and all did with so much confidence that Jack Towns found it impossible to shake their beliefs in the smallest degree. Sam Anderson was there too, very reluc- tantly indeed and under compulsion of a sub- poena. The Commonwealth's Attorney had somehow learned of his encounter with West- over near the scene of the burglary under what appeared to be suspicious circumstances. The hotel clerk was present to testify concerning the' hour and circumstances of Westover's re- turn to the hotel on the night before. To meet all this array of testimony, Boyd Westover had no single witness of any kind. And if there had been any such Jack Towns would not have put him on the stand. It was clear that the accused young man must be committed in any case to await the action of 56 WESTOVER OF WANALAH the Grand Jury, and Jack Towns was much too shrewd a lawyer to waste strength if he had had any strength in this preliminary hear- ing. He devoted himself instead to the task of getting the bail fixed at as low a sum as possible. When he pleaded that his client was well known to be a gentleman of the best fam- ily connections and the most scrupulous honor, a man to whom the commission of such a crime was utterly impossible, the magistrate re- minded him that the witnesses were young gentlewomen of equally good families, in whom perjury was not even conceivable; that their number was too great and their testimony too positive to leave room for the theory of possible mistake ; and finally that the very fact of Boyd Westover's high place in life rendered any crime on his part especially heinous. He felt bound, he said, to fix bail at five thousand dollars a very great sum in those days. Within the hour, however, Boyd's friends and those who had been friends of his father, rallied about him, ready and eager to furnish bonds for any amount. Not one of them knew aught of the merits of the case, and not one of OUT OF A CLEAR SKY 57 them asked a question concerning it. They simply did not believe that Boyd Westover had broken by night into a girls' school for any purpose whatever, and they were deter- mined that he should not go to jail while awaiting indictment and trial on so absurd a charge. " Now come with me/' said Jack Towns as soon as the matter of the bail bonds was set- tled. " We'll go to my house, not to my office, to avoid interruptions. I must get at the very marrow of this matter before a word is said about it. Come." When the two were seated in an untidy room of Jack Towns's untidy bachelor estab- lishment, and Jack had locked the front door for the first time within his recollection, he turned to his friend, saying: " I want you to tell me every thing you did last night the unimportant things even more than the important. Don't be afraid of .bor- ing me with details, and relate everything in the order in which it occurred. Then I'll cross- examine you as rigidly as if you were a wit- ness concealing something. Perhaps we may 58 WESTOVER OF WANALAH discover something to shed light upon what seems the most perplexing mystery I ever knew. Go on." Boyd told the story in minute detail, ending it by saying : " I can make oath to all that and swear that nothing else of any kind occurred." " No, you can't," said Jack Towns. " The court won't let you swear to any of it." " Can I not make a statement of facts in a case that involves my liberty, my reputation, and everything else that I care for ? " " No. The law of Virginia does not per- mit an accused person to testify in his own be- half. That is the Common Law rule, and Vir- ginia is under the Common Law. Don't tell me the thing is absurd, unjust, cruel, barbaric, and all that; for I know it already. It is the law, and you and I cannot change it. Let us go on with our inquiry instead. Do you know approximately at what hour you passed Le Voiser's school on your return from your visit to Milhauser?" " I know exactly. It was precisely half-past twelve. I saw lights carried about in the OUT OF A CLEAR SKY 59 school and, wondering at the fact, looked at my watch to see the hour." " And you left Milhauser's house at what time?" " Half-past ten." " Why did it take you so long to get back to the hotel?" " Milhauser's house, as you know, is away out of town beyond Richmond College. There's a horse car which runs at irregular intervals between the college and the Broad Street end of the Fredericksburg Railroad, using the track of that railroad when no train is due. When I got to the college gate it was raining heavily and I took shelter under a sort of shed opposite the gates to wait for the car. It didn't come, and at last I decided to walk on." " Why did you turn south and into Grace Street, instead of coming on down Broad?" " Because it was raining and muddy, and the sidewalks are better in Grace Street. Besides, as my hotel is in Main Street I had to turn south at some point on the journey." " Yes, of course." 60 WESTOVER OF WANALAH After a period of silent thinking to no pur- pose, Jack Towns said: " It's a queer case. All those girls swear you were in the school a little after twelve. Milhauser, if questioned, would have to swear that you left his house at half-past ten. You saw nobody else after that, who could even suggest an alibi. You got to the hotel drenched and dripping, at precisely the time you would have got there if you had been chased out of the school at the time the intruder was. You admit that you passed the school at the time of the disturbance. The case is so clearly made out against you, both by the positive testimony of eyewitnesses, and by all the circumstances, that any jury ever empanelled would have to convict you. Why, I'd feel bound to convict you myself " " Do you mean that you have the remotest shadow of doubt as to my innocence of this charge?" sternly demanded Westover, rising. " Certainly not. Don't be an idiot. Sit down. But as the case stands we haven't a straw to cling to. We can't impeach the testi- mony of a dozen high-bred young women. OUT OF A CLEAR SKY 61 every one of whom swears positively that she knows you well and that she saw you make your escape from the invaded precincts. There is no way in which we can so much as cast a doubt upon your guilt. With the case pre- sented as it stands, any juror who should hesitate to pronounce you guilty would be a perjurer. The only hope is that we may find some way out before the case comes to trial." "When will that be?" asked Boyd West- over, in a tone so stoically calm that Jack Towns looked at him to see what had hap- pened to him. "Are you ill?" he asked. " No, not at all. It is only that I see the utter hopelessness of the case. I am a man condemned to worse than death. But I am a man and must face even such calamity without flinching. When the trial is over, I shall be a convicted felon. It will do no good to assert my innocence. Nobody will believe it no- body can, in face of the testimony. My life is ruined, my reputation blasted, my doom sealed. But I shall neither whine nor whim- 62 WESTOVER OF WANALAH per. Now tell me when the blow is to fall? When will the trial occur ? " " The court is in session now. The indict- ment will be found to-morrow, but I shall se- cure a postponement of the trial until the next term." " Do nothing of the kind. Let the trial come on at once the sooner the better. De- lay will do no sort of good. I believe every accused person is entitled to ' a speedy trial.' Demand that for me, and secure it." Towns argued and pleaded, but to no pur- pose. He could offer no suggestion of advan- tage in delay, except by saying: " I have always found it worth while to trust to the unexpected. If we have time, something may happen that we don't anticipate." " And I, in the meantime ? " answered Boyd. " No. Bring the thing to a head at once. How soon can you make it ? " " Within forty-eight hours," answered the lawyer. " I advise against it, but " " I quite understand. The responsibility rests upon me. Go on and make an end of the horrible thing." VII IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW IT was the chivalric custom of the Virgin- ians to protect their woman-kind in all cir- cumstances, at all costs and at all hazards, not only against wrong and danger, but equally against annoyance and especially the annoy- ance of publicity. Women in Virginia were proudly feminine; men intensely and bravely masculine. Accordingly the news of Boyd Westover's case had only begun to spread abroad when all the male relatives of all the girls in Le Voiser's school set themselves to hurry their daughters, sisters and nieces into secure hiding, so that they might be spared the annoyance of appear- ing in court as witnesses in a criminal case. Short as the time was, the officers sent to serve summonses upon such as were wanted found the school well nigh deserted. Some 63 64 WESTOVER OF WANALAH even of those on whom they succeeded in serv- ing their subpoenas were protectingly abducted before the day of the trial by relatives who braved the penalties of contempt of court in rescue of delicately nurtured maidens dear to them. Nevertheless there were one or two of the girls present in court when Boyd Westover was called to the bar. These had been in hid- ing, but their places of concealment had been discovered and the girls themselves brought by force to the court. Then too the matron was there prepared to bear unhesitating witness to Boyd's identity with the offender. A good deal of time was consumed in se- curing a jury. The first man called declared : " I would not believe this charge against Boyd Westover even if I had been present, see- ing him with my own eyes." Others ex- pressed their incredulity in different forms of words but with equal positiveness, and of course all such were rejected. It thus hap- pened that the jury was not completed till a late hour in the day. But on the other hand it took very little time for the Commonwealth's VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 65 witnesses to give their testimony, and after one or two fruitless attempts to secure from them an admission of doubt or possible mis- take, Jack Towns forbore to cross examine them. He had no witnesses to offer in his client's behalf. He had nothing to depend upon in- deed except a certain persuasive eloquence which had often served him well, and this he brought to bear with all his passionate nature to stimulate it. He spoke for an hour. He argued, pleaded, persuaded. He set forth the character of his client and of the distinguished family from which he was sprung. He dwelt upon the utter improbability of the commis- sion of such a crime by such a man. He pointed out and emphasized the fact that a girls' school was not the place that any house- breaker in his senses would think of entering in search of booty. He ended with an im- passioned setting forth of the ruin and dis- grace that must fall upon this high-charactered young man as the result of an adverse verdict. So eloquently and so pathetically did he pre- sent the pitiful aspect of the matter that tears 66 WESTOVER OF WANALAH ran down scores of cheeks, and the Judge him- self bowed his head upon the desk in front of the bench, as if to conceal an emotion he could not control. The Commonwealth's Attorney the pros- ecuting officer rose, but instead of making the usual speech, simply said, in a voice choked with sobs: " The testimony is before you, gentlemen of the jury. I have nothing to add to it." There was but one result possible. Ten minutes after the jury retired, it filed into court again bearing a verdict of " Guilty." Boyd Westover was a convicted felon. The sun of his fair young life had gone down amid clouds of black disgrace, and it could know no rising. Worse than death a thousand fold, worse than the cruelest torture was this to a proudly sensitive nature, nurtured in traditions of honor that held every slightest character stain to be an indelible blot. Yet it was with head erect, with dry eyes, with unshaken nerves and unflinching spirit that he met this decree of doom. It was the tradition of his race to meet Fate without fal- VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 67 tering, to fight while the possibility of fighting lasted, and when it failed, to shroud an un- daunted soul in the chain mail of unconquer- able courage. When the verdict was rendered, the young man turned to his friend and counsellor, and in an entirely unemotional voice, said: " I thank you sincerely for all you have done and tried to do. I have need of a little time in which to arrange my affairs. Can you do me a final favor by securing it for me?" The matter was easily arranged. The Judge, full of compassion for the ruined youth, and in spite of reason, testimony, and everything else, still not believing in Boyd Westover's guilt, asked if ten days would suffice. Then without renewing the bail bonds that had ex- pired with the beginning of the trial, he ap- pointed the tenth day thereafter for sentence. It was the Commonwealth's Attorney's busi- ness to move for the renewal of the bonds, without which the condemned man was in fact under no restraint whatever, but he made no motion of the kind. When asked by Jack 68 WESTOVER OF WANALAH Towns some time afterwards why he had not done his duty in that respect, he replied : " I simply couldn't. Boyd Westover and I were schoolmates, you know, and I lived for many months in his father's house. I knew he wouldn't run away. Who ever heard of a Westover flinching? Why should I subject him to an indignity ? " Thus, in Virginia, did character personal and inherited count. There were some things that a gentleman could not do. He might commit a crime of violence, but he could not do a cowardly or treacherous act. The bailiff who had trusted Boyd Westover's word of honor, knew that and risked the loss of his place upon his confidence in it. The Common- wealth's Attorney knew it and took the chance of impeachment upon it. The net result was that on the day of his conviction Boyd Westover walked out of court an absolutely free man except in so far as he was bound by his own sense of honor and by the traditions of the race from which he was sprung. These bound him to appear in court for sentence at the end of the ten days VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 69 allowed to him, and as everybody knew, the bond was amply sufficient. Jack Towns took him in the meanwhile to his own house. " You'll be my guest," he said, " and I'll see that we aren't interrupted." " You still don't mind that ? " Boyd asked. For response he got an earnest look in the eyes, and the verbal answer: " Don't be a fool, Boyd." After a minute, Boyd asked, reflectively: " How is it, Jack, that you and some others seem still to believe in me? In view of the evidence " " Hang the evidence," interrupted the law- yer. " Don't you know that character is the most important and the most trustworthy fact in life ? You don't suppose for a moment that I have a doubt in your case, do you? If you do, you grievously wrong my friend- ship." " How then do you account for the facts as set forth in the testimony against me ? " " What do you mean, Boyd ? Are you try- ing to convince me that you are guilty of a 70 WESTOVER OF WANALAH crime that I know to be utterly impossible to you?" " No. I am only trying to find out the grounds of your confidence in me, so that I may know how far to impose on them in ma- king my arrangements for the future. That's the purport of my question, which, by the way, you haven't answered yet." " Oh well, as to that, you're the victim of some hideous mistake. If you had let me stave off your trial for six months the chances are we should have found out what the mistake is. As it is " " As it is, I couldn't have lived for six months in such suspense as that. Neither could you, in like case. We're the sort of men who say to the lightning, ' Strike if you will, but don't prolong your threats.' Besides, I cannot see how this thing could have been bettered by delay. Those girls honestly believe they recognized me as an intruder in the school. They would believe that quite as firmly six months hence as now." " Perhaps so. But six months hence not one of them would have been in Virginia to testify VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 71 against you. Their friends would have taken care of that." " Yes, I know. And I should have been sus- pected of securing my acquittal by spiriting away the witnesses against me. I couldn't live under so black a shadow as that." " I understand. But all this is profitless. We have much to do to get your affairs in order. Let us address ourselves to that. First of all I've had all your mail sent up here from the hotel. Suppose you read it now, and after supper we'll set to work." VIII THE SHADOWS FALL WHEN the shadows begin to fall upon a human life, they fall quickly and darkly. In Boyd Westover's mail was a letter from the agent who had arranged the mortgage loan upon Wanalah plantation, threatening to abandon the arrangement on the ground that young Westover's conviction impaired the se- curity. This sorely troubled Boyd Westover for if he was to go to prison his mother's financial ease was a matter of primary concern to him. It didn't trouble Jack Towns in the least. " Leave that to me for answer," the lawyer said, taking possession of the letter. " The man ought to seek employment as an oyster- opener at Rockett's. That's about his size. That mortgage is completely executed. I've 72 THE SHADOWS FALL 73 seen to it, pending other things. That will stand, and, as the property is amply good for it, the fellow's an idiot to want to fly his bar- gain." There was news in the next mail that could not be so lightly dismissed. The family phy- sician wrote that Boyd's mother, already in feeble and precarious health, had been shocked by the tidings of her son's calamity into a con- dition that threatened the worst. This calam- ity was one which even Boyd Westover's stoi- cism could not face without flinching. From childhood his affection for his mother had been a dominant passion, and since his father's death it had become fatherly as well as filial. He had jealously guarded that " little mother," as he called her, against every shock, every care, every breath of an adverse wind as it were. He had made a veritable pet of her, and while never for a moment laying aside his chivalric respect and reverence, he had added to them a certain big brotherly manner in which she had found joy untellable. If she wearied while walking with him in the house grounds, he would pick her up, as he might have done with 74 WESTOVER OF WANALAH any child, and in spite of her laughing pro- tests, carry her into the porch and deposit her in a hammock. If a light shone disagreeably in her eyes he discovered it and shut it off before she became conscious of its glare. If she went to her room to rest he quietly sta- tioned a maid at the foot of the stairs with orders to permit no noise and no passing up or down. Now that news came of this dearly loved lit- tle mother's serious illness, the young man was made to suffer agonies by the consciousness that her affliction was on his account, so that it required all of Jack Towns's eloquence to convince him that he was himself in nowise to blame for it. By way of emphasizing that, the young lawyer had to put the matter into brutally plain phrase. " If you were guilty of the crime of which you have been convicted, and for which you will have to serve a term in state's prison, you would do well to scourge your soul with a whip of scorpions for your sin against the mother who bore you. As you are innocent of that and of all other crimes you have no THE SHADOWS FALL 75 right to hold yourself responsible for the con- sequences of other people's mistakes." " Am I free to go to my mother while she yet lives ? " Boyd asked in an agony of appre- hension. Then Jack Towns lied like the generous gentleman he was. " No," he said. " Legally you are free to go anywhere you please to Mozambique or the dominions of Mumbo Jumbo if you choose. But you are free only because of the generous confidence .of the Judge and the Common- wealth's Attorney in your honor as a gentle- man. You are bound by that honor not to leave Richmond during the days granted you." As a matter of fact Jack Towns had in his possession a letter addressed to him by the Westover family physician in which were written these words : " Whatever else happens, for heaven's sake don't let Boyd come home now. The shock of seeing him would kill his mother out of hand." But Jack Towns was a lawyer and he found 76 WESTOVER OF WANALAH a better way of putting the matter by way of accomplishing his purpose. Still another thing darkened the young man's way. It was not because of news, but because of no news at all. There was no line in any of his mails from Margaret Conway, the woman he loved with all his soul, the woman who had plighted her troth to him in the impassioned words he so well remembered : " I am not a woman to love lightly or lightly to forget. Love seems to me a holy thing, and to trifle with it a blasphemy. I have given you my love, Boyd, and there is no power in all the universe that can make me take it back. Even you could not do that. Nothing you might do even if it were crime itself could alter the fact that my love is all yours, now and forever." Upon reflection, he absolved Margaret from blame, and with good reason. Upon his first accusation he had not written to her at all in supplement to the love letter of that night. He had regarded the whole matter as a thing preposterous, which a hearing in the magis- THE SHADOWS FALL 77 trate's court would promptly dissipate into thin air, and it had been his kindly thought not to tell her of the absurd accusation until he could tell her also of the ridiculous end made of it at a court hearing. When at last the matter had assumed a serious aspect he had written her a letter in which he had asserted his inno- cence but without protesting it in any impas- sioned way. To that he had added: " Of course if I am a man of honor I am bound to offer you a release from the engage- ment between us, while if I am not an honor- able man but the criminal I am accused of be- ing, you are free to take your release without permission from me." A calculation showed that if that letter had reached its destination when it should, and if an answer had been sent by the first returning mail, he should now have the reply. But mails were slow and uncertain in those days and The Oaks lay far up near the Blue Ridge and seven miles from the post office. It might easily have happened that his letter to Margaret had not reached her as soon as it should; or that the shock of it might have unfitted her to reply 78 WESTOVER OF WANALAH immediately; or that her answer might have been delayed in transmission. All these were possibilities, and they comforted the young man. But as the days went by and still no letter came from Margaret the comfort became less and less, until at last he despaired and sum- moned his stoicism to his relief. " Why should I have expected her to write to me? " he asked himself. " What obligation can she owe to a convicted criminal? I was a fool to look for a letter. I must bear my burden alone. I must meet my fate with a calm mind." Then another thought came to him. " I am living in a fool's paradise. Jack Towns professes still to believe in me, and perhaps he does. But how can I expect any- body else to do so? In view of the testimony against me, there is no room or reason for doubt of my guilt in any sane mind. I must recognize that and face it with what courage I can. I am a convicted criminal, and I must expect everybody to regard me as such. I must go through my life with that brand upon THE SHADOWS FALL 79 my brow. There is an end of hope for me. I must simply endure." It was characteristic of him that in all this melancholy meditation, no thought of suicide entered his mind. He had from his youth up held his life in readiness for sacrifice in any worthy behalf. There was never a time when he would not have given it as a forfeit in be- half of those he loved, never a time when he would not have laid it down gladly in answer to any call of duty. But the cowardly thought of destroying it by way of himself escaping from intolerable sufferings did not suggest it- self to his brave young soul. It is a man's part to endure what comes to a man, and Boyd Westover was altogether a man. He remembered Margaret's impassioned promise, and he doubted not the sincerity of her soul in giving it. But he absolved her now and accepted the result as part and parcel of the strangely bewildering Fate that had overtaken him. To that effect he wrote to her on the night before the day appointed for his sentencing. On that day had come to him the crushing 8o WESTOVER OF WANALAH news of his mother's death, and very bitterly he had felt the cruelty of a fate that forbade him even to go home to bury his dead. He wrote to Margaret: " I find that I have been expecting some letter from you in reply to my late one. I realize that I had neither right nor reason to expect anything of the kind. I am a convicted criminal, convicted upon testimony so conclu- sive that no sane person can doubt its truth. To-morrow morning I shall be sentenced. You can have no relations with me. You can bear me no duty of any kind. It is only to say this that I write to you now, to say that I hold you absolved from any and all obligations toward me, and that I shall live and die cher- ishing in full measure my faith in your loyalty and truth. You are never to let a doubt of that vex your mind." With that he finally banished all thought of his past life, its joys, its sorrows, its aspira- tions and its apprehensions, from his mind. " How long a sentence will they give me, Jack? " he asked his lawyer. " I don't know. The shortest, probably, or THE SHADOWS FALL 81 very nearly the shortest that the law allows; not over two years at any rate." " Of course it doesn't matter," Boyd an- swered. " Two minutes or two years of shame are all one to a sensitive man, and as for the ' hard labor/ I'm strong and well. I probably shall not find it interesting to grind stove lids or do whatever else the prison authorities set me at, but at any rate the work will occupy the time and prevent me from thinking too deeply. It will tire me, too, so that I shall sleep of nights." Jack Towns found nothing to say by way of reply, and he said nothing. Presently Boyd drew a package of papers from his pocket and passed it over to the man he regarded as the one friend left him in all the world now. " Perhaps you'd better look into that," he said. " It may help Wanalah out of difficulty. I don't know. The thing came in my mail a week ago, but it didn't interest me then and I slipped it into my pocket and forgot all about it. No, don't bother with it now. Read it later. Just now I have something else to talk to you about. You've promised to look after 82 WESTOVER OF WANALAH my affairs while I'm in prison, and there's one thing I want to ask you. Don't let the over- seer at Wanalah work the servants too hard. There is no need. With only ordinary crops the plantation can easily carry its load now, and I don't want the people there overworked. See to it please. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed. To-morrow night I'll lie in a cell." With that the young man withdrew, and after half an hour of sad gazing at the moon- light that streamed in through the window, Jack Towns turned up the gas and set to work reading the papers that had failed to interest their owner. They interested Jack Towns amazingly, and he had no sooner finished the reading of them than he hurried unceremoni- ously into Boyd's room, and shaking him said : " Here, get up. This thing must be at- tended to immediately. There are papers to be drawn and executed at once. So hustle into some clothes quick/' IX THE COURAGE OF WOMANHOOD WHEN rumors came to The Oaks of Boyd Westover's trouble, Margaret Conway's first impulse was to drive over to Wanalah and comfort Boyd's mother with assurances that there could be no truth in the reports. Margaret had always cherished a very tender affection for Mrs. Westover, and during the brief time since her love had been pledged to Boyd, she had found that affection rapidly taking upon itself the character of a girl's tenderness for her mother. Having never known a mother of her own, the girl was quick to make herself a daughter in affec- tion where she was presently to become a daughter in law and in fact. She drove every day to Wanalah and spent loving hours there with the gentle invalid who had so warmly welcomed her daughterly love. 83 84 WESTOVER OF WANALAH But when the evil news of Bevel's convic- tion came and Margaret planned to go earlier than usual to Wanalah, Colonel Conway ob- jected. " You will only distress yourself and afflict her," he said. " This thing will be your only topic of conversation, and what can either of you say that will bring comfort to the other ? " " I can tell her I love her and that I loyally believe in Boyd," answered the girl with all the pride of her race in her voice and attitude. " But how can you say that, daughter, in face of the evidence?" " It isn't evidence it's merely testimony. The evidence lies in Boyd Westover's character and it flatly contradicts the testimony. The testimony is false; the evidence is subject to no possible question. I'm sorry you don't see it so, Father." The old man paced the floor for a space and then answered : " Perhaps I do see it so. I'd like to, at any rate; I'm strongly disposed to give the young man the benefit of the doubt, but " There isn't any doubt," interjected the COURAGE OF WOMANHOOD 85 passionate girl with vehemence. " There isn't any doubt, and I shall quarrel even with you, Father, if you suggest such a thing." " Be calm, my child," pleaded the old man placatively. " Perhaps you are right. I'm dis- posed to take your view strongly so. But there's your Aunt Betsy, you know." " Yes, I know. She's the only human being you were ever afraid of, Father. But you're afraid of her as everybody else is everybody but me. I don't know why." " But your Aunt Betsy presents the matter in a way that must be considered. She says " " Oh, I know what she says," interrupted the overwrought girl. " She has said it all to me, over and over again. She urges the conven- tions the cowardly shams and falsities of our artificial life. She talks of ' what people will say/ as if it made any difference what people say when we know we are doing right. You know that Boyd Westover is an honorable man, just as I know it. If you hadn't been afraid of Aunt Betsy, you'd have done your duty like a man; you'd have gone to Boyd's 86 WESTOVER OF WANALAH side. You'd have stood by him in his hour of need " " But, Margaret, what good would that have done in face of the evidence or the testimony, for I agree with you that there's a difference? " " It would have strengthened and encour- aged him with the assurance that one brave man at least knew his character and was ready to face calumny with an assertion of his con- fidence. But you were afraid of Aunt Betsy. It is the only cowardice I ever knew you to be guilty of. She talks of placing ' blots on our escutcheon ' as if we had an escutcheon, whatever that sort of thing may be ; I tell you the worst blot of all was made by your failure to go to Richmond and stand by Boyd in his undeserved trouble. You played the part of a coward there. Pardon me if my words are harsh. I feel them and mean them. Now I am going to Wanalah. I, at least, will do my part as a descendant of a brave race, if all the demons of perdition stand in the way." With that the girl moved proudly out of the house, mounted the horse that a negro held waiting for her, and rode away. COURAGE OF WOMANHOOD 87 She did not return until after the funeral at Wanalah, which her father and her aunt at- tended, and when she returned, her attitude was one of stately reserve which appalled her father and " grieved " her aunt. In the meanwhile she had written every day a loyal letter to Boyd Westover. Not one of those letters ever reached him. Nor did any of his letters come to her. Aunt Betsy had deemed it her " duty to the family " to see to that, and Aunt Betsy prided herself upon doing her duty, no matter how disagree- able it might be to others. But the failure of the missives left Margaret in sorely distressing perplexity. Why did not Boyd write to her? Why did he not take her into his confidence ? Especially why did he not respond, in some way, to her repeated avowals of splendid loyalty and confidence? She could not understand. She could not even inquire. She could only mourn. X THE PACKET OF PAPERS JACK TOWNS was accustomed to have about him whatever there was that could make his hard-working life comfortable, if any reasonable expenditure of money could secure it. And he interpreted the words " reasonable expenditure," in that connection, rather liberally. His income was large and he had nobody anywhere dependent upon him. Accordingly he was one of the two or three self-indulgent men in Richmond at that time, who possessed a set bath tub with water taps running into it and a showering apparatus above. When he roused his friend that night, after hurriedly running through the packet of pa- pers, he was full of an eagerness and enthusi- asm which the other did not seem to share. Boyd Westover was sleepy, and worse still, in 88 THE PACKET OF PAPERS 89 his present case, he was indifferent. What good could a packet of papers or anything else bring to a man disgraced, condemned, -doomed to a life of lost repute? He heartily wished that Jack had kept the papers and done what- ever he pleased with them after the closing of the prison doors behind himself on the ap- proaching day. But in response to Jack's in- sistence, he arose, drew on a light dressing gown and slippers, and offered his dully unin- terested presence in Jack's dining room. Promptly recognizing his condition of mind, Jack took matters into his own hands, after a masterful habit he had. He seized Boyd by the elbow and led him into the bath room. " There," he said ; " lay off your gown and pull your toes out of those slippers. Hop into the tub and I'll wake you up." At the next instant the cold shower de- 'scended upon the young man's head and per- son, and Jack continued his chatter. " Now you're awake, rub yourself down and come into the dining room. I've got to have you awake and you and I are going to work all night. I've sent Dick for half a hundred 9 o WESTOVER OF WANALAH oysters and a dozen bottles of cold ale, and later he'll make black coffee for us. Hurry up now, and * do try to be interested ' as a bash- ful friend of mine said to a girl when he was about to propose to her." As he left the bath room abruptly, Boyd made no reply until he joined the lawyer in the dining room where the papers from the packet lay spread out in the order in which they were to be taken up for consideration. Then he said: " I will try to be interested, Jack ; for your sake I'll do my best. But what interest can a man in my position feel in anything? " " Now listen to me, Boyd ! " Jack Towns said commandingly, and rising to his feet to say it. " Listen to me. You are morbid. You need calomel or something. You're the victim of some mistake and you're in sore trouble. But you are not disgraced. Nobody can disgrace a man but the man himself. You are conscious of your own honor; what mat- ters it what others think? Besides, no hon- est man in Virginia believes that you are guilty of a sneaking crime or capable of it. THE PACKET OF PAPERS 91 The jury that convicted you didn't believe it and not one of them believes it now. The Judge who will sentence you doesn't believe it. If the envious and malignant falsely pretend to believe it, why should you care for the des- picable pretense of people so utterly unwor- thy? If cowards fight shy of your acquaint- ance, lest recognition of you should compro- mise themselves, why should you care for the acquaintance of such poltroons? You are Westover of Wanalah inheritor of an hon- orable name. You will be that so long as you shall live. It behoves you to bear that name with head erect and with contempt alone for those who do not recognize your worthiness to bear it. This affair is an unfortunate inci- dent. It will soon be over, and you will have a lifetime before you in which to teach men the falsity of the accusation against you. There. My lecture is done. Let us get to these papers. They hold great news for you." When the two were seated, Jack took up a letter, which was first of the papers in the order of consideration. " This is from a firm of lawyers, Dodge, 92 WESTOVER OF WANALAH Denslow and Deming of Denver charm- ingly alliterative throughout do you happen to know who they are? " " Yes, in a way. There was a memorandum among my father's papers, that mentioned them." " Well, go on. What did it say, or reveal, or suggest? This is business, Boyd. Put your thinking machine on it." " I will, to oblige you, Jack. The memo- randum catalogued a long list of mining lands and mining claims somewhere up in the Rocky Mountains or in some side issue of a range you'll find the paper in my desk at home lands and claims which my father had bought during one of his journeys out that way and had placed in my name, as a provision for me in case of accident." " That accounts for these papers being in your name and not your father's," interrupted Jack. " I was puzzled by that. But go on. I want to hear all about it." {( Well, you know my father was an optimist a dreamer almost and he was possessed of an idea, reflected in the memorandum, that THE PACKET OF PAPERS 93 these things would make the future Westover of Wanalah myself or my son if I should have one enormously rich. As nearly as I could make out, the multitudinous lands and mining claims he bought in my name covered a large area of entirely untillable and not very accessible land somewhere up in the high mountains, where grub-staked miners scratched the surface for silver ore, with now and then a little find of gold. They worked on shares somehow, and this law firm collected my share from time to time and remitted it. It was so small a part of the assets of the estate that I've forgotten how much it was. That's all I know of Dodge, Denslow & Deming." " You're likely to know a good deal more about them hereafter," said Jack, " if I can awaken in your mind a reasonable interest in a matter that promises to make you the richest man in Virginia, twice or thrice over." " Cui bono ? " responded Boyd. " When my prison term ends I shall have enough, without that, to feed me, and I've nobody else to feed." " Boyd Westover, if you go on in that mood, 94 WESTOVER OF WANALAH I'll chuck you into the bath tub again and set the shower going without giving you a chance to shed your clothes. Can't you see that when you when well, when present difficulties are over, this thing will give you an interest in life, something to occupy your mind, some- thing to manage and oh, I forgot, you don't know the facts yet. It appears from these papers we won't bother now to read them in detail that the mining lands your father bought in your name, have proved to be about the richest in the world. They cover practi- cally all of one of the richest deposits of gold, silver, lead, and quicksilver, ever discovered. Listen. This is the way Jake Greenfield puts it in a letter. Jake seems to be a shrewd Yan- kee whom your lawyers have established on the lands to watch operations and prevent tres- pass. He writes to the lawyers: " ' I don't s'pose Mr. Westover nor you neither's got a krect idee of what he's got up here. It's like an injun's blanket, with fringes all round it. He's got the blanket an' these fellers what's opened up mines north an' south THE PACKET OF PAPERS 95 of him has got the fringes. Nachurly they's a tryin' to git in under the blanket, but I'm a watchin' out an' they're a doin' no trespassin'. They's got the fence corners an' Mr. West- stover's got the field. They's plannin' to buy him out an' they's got experts an' engineers an' lawyers enuff here to run a ship or an orphan asylum. My say to Mr. West Stover is don't bargain with 'em till you know for yourself. That used to be our way in Varmont, whare I come from. This is my wink to a blind hoss, an' a nod with it' " The lawyers seem to have taken Jake Greenfield's counsel seriously, so far at least as to send experts of their own to study the situation, and these seem to confirm Jake's judgment. So do these other letters, from the mining men who want to buy you out. I'll read them." " Can't you summarize them in your own words, Jack? " interrupted Boyd. " The thing doesn't greatly interest me, and " " Well, listen then, and perhaps I can awaken your interest. These people it appears 96 WESTOVER OF WANALAH are amply backed by New York and Boston bankers. In fact the bankers really constitute the company, and they seem to know their own minds. They have spent some hundreds of thousands in setting up machinery and all that sort of thing, and they say their mining opera- tions are paying heavy dividends twenty- five or thirty per cent, on their investment. But the richest leads or lodes or veins or what- ever they are called, lie beneath your land. You've got the blanket and they only the fringe, as Jake picturesquely puts it. They want to buy the blanket, or get in under it somehow, and they're prepared to pay for what they want. They propose to organize a new company to work the whole thing; they to put in their plant, their costly machinery, their mining privileges and all their other assets, and you to put in your mineral lands. They make you a flat offer of nine hundred thousand dol- lars in money, and thirty-nine per cent, of the stock of the new company, if you will join them in this project by ceding your lands, min- ing rights, etc., to the joint concern. Perhaps they can be induced to do better even than THE PACKET OF PAPERS 97 that, as they seem very eager, but that is what they offer to begin with. It means fabulous wealth to you if their hopes as to the profits of the new company are measurably fulfilled, and even if they are not fulfilled at all it means that you can wear Wanalah plantation as a watch charm for all your life to come. Isn't that a fine prospect? " Jack was disappointed in Boyd's reply. He had hoped that this startling happening might awaken his friend to a new interest in life and life's affairs, but, after swallowing two oys- ters and slowly sipping half a glass of ale, the unfortunate young man said, in a melancholy tone: " I suppose the thing ought to be looked into. If I were a free man again, I'd make my way out into those wilds and see what could be done. As it is " " As it is," broke in Jack Towns, " you're going to execute a sweeping power of attorney authorizing me to act for you, and I'm going out there. When you well, I mean later, you'll take hold of the thing yourself, and those hustling fellows out there will wake you up, g8 WESTOVER OF WANALAH if I can't. Go to bed now, if you feel like it. I'll prepare the power of attorney and you can execute it at breakfast time. I must say you're uncommonly bad company." " I suppose I am," said Boyd as he shuffled off to his bedroom. XI THE EVENTS OF A MORNING IT was with a firm step and with head erect, and, more significant still, with eyes that looked straight into other eyes without a suggestion of flinching, that Boyd Westover entered the court room on the morning ap- pointed for the pronouncement of sentence upon him. Jack Towns, who accompanied him, thought he had never seen so superb an exhibition of stoicism as that which Boyd had given throughout this affair. " But this caps the climax," he said to the Commonwealth's Attorney, whose drawn fea- tures showed clearly the distress he felt in view of the duty he had to do in moving that sen- tence be pronounced upon his old schoolmate, his boyhood's comrade, whom he had been compelled to prosecute and convict of an in- famous crime. * 99 ioo WESTOVER OF WANALAH " Just look at him," Jack whispered. " For all that his appearance or his manner could mean you'd think he had come here to deliver an oration on some distinguished occasion. It's simply magnificent ! " " It is simply horrible my part of it, I mean," answered the other with a suppressed groan. There was no further time for conversation. The moment had come when Boyd Westover must be called to the bar to receive the sen- tence of the court. The Commonwealth's At- torney made the necessary motion in a voice that could hardly be heard because of his lack of control over his organs of speech. The Judge tried hard to deliver the little address he had carefully prepared as a means of sug- gesting what he could not say that in spite of everything he could not personally regard Boyd Westover as a man actually guilty of crime. His voice behaved so badly that after a futile attempt he gave up the effort to say anything, except the formal words that con- demned the prisoner to serve a term at hard labor in the State prison. EVENTS OF A MORNING 101 The term fixed by the sentence was the short- est that the law allowed, but what comfort was there in that to a sensitive man like Boyd West- over, to whom disgrace for half a minute meant the same thing as disgrace for all time ? It is doubtful that he even grasped the mean- ing of the words used in limiting the sentence to the briefest time allowed. As there were papers to be made out and signed, Jack Towns and his client sat for a brief while waiting. Presently there was a little commotion in the outer corridor and a moment later a bailiff hurriedly entered and made his way to the Commonwealth's Attor- ney, to whom he whispered excitedly. That officer asked a brief question or two under his breath. Then he turnexl to the court and said, while all listened with the greatest interest : " If your honor please, something has hap- pened something out of the ordinary, some- thing important, something which if I am cor- rectly informed vitally concerns business now before the court. I ask to be excused for a few minutes in order that I may learn the facts and report them to the court." 102 WESTOVER OF WANALAH With that, receiving a nod of approval from the Judge, he withdrew. When he had gone the Judge said : " We may as well save what we can of the time of waiting. Mr. Clerk, if you have the papers ready in the Westover case I'll sign them." They were passed to him and, after he had signed them, handed over to the sheriff, thus completing that matter at once. A moment later, the Commonwealth's At- torney returned, pale to the lips, trembling like one in an ague fit, and with the muscles about his mouth twitching in a way that was posi- tively painful to all who looked at him. In a voice that was hard, metallic, and obvi- ously controlled only by a supreme effort of the will, he addressed the court. " There has been a terrible mistake made," he said with none of the formalities of speech usual in addressing a tribunal, " a disas- trous, cruel, irreparable mistake, for my share in which I hide my head in shame as I ask God and man to pardon me. In convicting and sentencing Boyd Westover, we have convicted EVENTS OF A MORNING 103 and sentenced an innocent man. The real cul- prit is now in a jury room adjoining this apart- ment. He has been caught in a repetition of the act for which Boyd Westover has been convicted and sentenced. He has confessed that he was the offender on the former occa- sion, and the committing magistrate before whom he was brought this morning has brought him hither to repeat his confession and to let your honor look upon him. It is the most phenomenal case of mistaken identity I ever knew or heard of. Even fiction, with its limitless license of invention, offers no par- allel that I ever heard of. The resemblance between this man and Boyd Westover is so perfect, so startling in its completeness that I could never have believed it upon any testi- mony other than that of my own eyes. I ask permission to bring the prisoner into court." By this time the court room was packed with all sorts and conditions of men, for the news of what had happened during the night before had spread like wildfire over the city. A minute later the prisoner, who gave his name as " Dolly Andrews," but admitted that io 4 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " Dolly " was short for Adolphus, was brought to the bar. At the Commonwealth's Attor- ney's request, Boyd Westover moved forward and stood by his side. The two men were precisely alike in size, form and feature, but strangely unlike in ex- pression. As Jack Towns put the matter: " Boyd Westover, being a gentleman, looks into your eyes when he speaks to you or you to him; the other fellow looks anywhere but at you. In the one face there is intelligence, in the other a low cunning ; in the one an alert outlook, in the other a look of morbid intro- spection. Still the two men are absolutely alike in all physical respects more alike than I supposed that even twins could be. I could myself easily mistake one for the other, and I don't wonder that a lot of excited school girls, routed out of bed in the middle of the night and with only bedroom candles to see by, made the terrible mistake they did." The problem now was what to do. Fortu- nately the committing magistrate was a man of wise discretion. He presented himself in court and said to the Judge : EVENTS OF A MORNING " I have not yet committed this man, though he was caught in the act and has made full confession, both as to his present offence and as to the former crime, of which another has been mistakenly convicted. I have thought it better to bring him before your honor and ask you to sit as committing magistrate in the case, in order that you may yourself hear his confes- sion. It has seemed to me that this course was best in aid of justice in another case." After an exchange of dignified compliments, the Judge, sitting as a committing magistrate, heard the case. During the preceding night there had been an alarm of " burglars " in Le Voiser's school. As before, the matron mar- shalled her charges for retreat, but this time there were two stalwart men on the premises and awaiting call. Monsieur Le Voiser had looked out for that, by ordering his furnace man and his steward to sleep in a room within convenient call, and when the intruder at- tempted to escape they were there to seize and hold him by physical force. They testified to the facts. Then the culprit repeated the confession he io6 WESTOVER OF WANALAH had already made. He seemed in no way ashamed, and he did not hesitate. He declared that it was he, and not Boyd Westover, who had invaded the school on the former occasion, and when asked what his motive was, he dis- claimed all purposes of robbery and sought to justify himself by the solemn declaration : " On both occasions I went there under the command of the Supreme Being." " Just what do you mean by that?" asked the Judge, testily. " I am divinely commissioned to marry Miss " "Stop!" commanded the Judge. "Don't mention the young lady's name. Just say ' a certain young lady.' We won't have her name dragged into the case." " Very well," said the culprit. " It is only that I am acting under a divine commission and have nothing to conceal. I must marry the young lady in question. I met her in the street once, and talked to her on the subject. She mistook me for Boyd Westover, and I thought it best to use that name in my dealings with her. You see, Judge, when one is divinely EVENTS OF A MORNING 107 commissioned to achieve a purpose, details make no difference." " Go on," said the Judge; "omit expla- nations and arguments, and tell what hap- pened." " The young lady rejected my addresses. I was not discouraged by that. I had been divinely warned to expect it. I wrote her many notes, but she did not reply to them. Then I saw my duty clearly. I decided to use gentle force and carry her away with me, leaving the divine influence to chasten her proud spirit and teach her the duty of loving me. I have been twice defeated in my endeav- ors. I shall succeed when the appointed time is ripe. I must be patient and faithful, that is all." " After all," whispered Jack Towns to the Commonwealth's Attorney, " that hysterical girl who said he had come to abduct her was right, except in her identification of the man." " Yes, but the exception is one of disastrous consequences. Help me, Towns, to right this wrong! I'll never do the like again. I'll never prosecute another case so long as I live. io8 WESTOVER OF WANALAH I've already sent in my resignation from of- fice." " You're a sublimated idiot," said Jack. " Listen. The Judge is speaking." " I will commit this man to await the action of the Grand Jury," the Judge said. " In the meanwhile the Court suggests to the Common- wealth's Attorney the propriety of asking for a commission in lunacy to inquire into this man's sanity." Thus spurred out of the lethargic collapse into which he had fallen, the official prosecu- tor made the necessary motion and the court promptly appointed the commission. Then Jack Towns arose to ask: " What is to be done to right the wrong in the case of my client? And more especially, what is to be done to prevent the aggravation of that wrong? I call attention to the fact that the papers committing this obviously in- nocent man to the penitentiary are already in the hands of the sheriff, who has no right to exercise discretion in the case. In the ordinary course of events my client, innocent of offence as he obviously is, must pass the portals of the EVENTS OF A MORNING 109 prison within the hour. I ask the court to pre- vent this crowning wrong in a case in which enough and too much of wrong has been done already." The Judge was in full sympathy, but for order's sake he asked if the Commonwealth's Attorney desired to be heard in opposition to the request of the counsel. " Not in opposition," said the official, " but in full and hearty sympathy. I feel that a great wrong has been done; I feel this so strongly that I have sent to the proper author- ity my resignation of the office I hold, in order that I may never again have part or lot in a wrong so grievous. I earnestly second the re- quest of the counsel for the prisoner that every- thing shall be done which the law permits, to prevent further wrong and to right the wrong already done." " Very well," said the Judge. " The sheriff is ordered to return to the clerk the papers in his possession. The prisoner is paroled in the custody of his counsel, to await further pro- ceedings. Unfortunately the court knows of no process of law by which the fact of this no WESTOVER OF WANALAH innocent man's conviction and sentence can be undone. It is not within the power of man to make that not to be which has been. The court cannot undo the proceedings that have been had in this case. It can only make an earnest effort to prevent the wrongful results of those proceedings. To that end I purpose to go in person before the Governor of the State to ask for the fullest reparation that can be made, namely, a pardon pardon for a crime that has not been committed. It seems almost a mockery, but it is the best that is pos- sible under the law. In order to give all the emphasis I can to the proceedings, I shall ad- journ court for a time, and ask the Common- wealth's Attorney to accompany me on this mission of justice. Further than that, I direct him to summon the members of the jury that convicted Boyd Westover of a crime of which he is not guilty, to go with us before the Gov- ernor and join us in our request. So far as the securing of a pardon is concerned, no ef- fort of this kind is necessary; but the court deems it proper in this case to make this united appeal of judge, jury, and prosecutor by way EVENTS OF A MORNING in of emphasizing our recognition of the injustice done. The court stands adjourned until four o'clock this afternoon, at which hour Mr. Boyd Westover " the Judge no longer spoke of him as " the prisoner " " will present himself here and the court will itself deliver to him as it is fitting that the court should do in such a case the papers relieving him, so far as it is possible now to relieve him, of all the consequences of a clearly erroneous ac- cusation and conviction." When the Judge ceased speaking, Boyd Westover made a profound bow to him, say- ing simply : " I thank you." Then turning to Towns he said : " Come, Jack ! I'm faint and hungry. Let's go to Tom Griffin's and get something to eat." Tom Griffin's was a place well known in the Richmond of that old time. Tom himself was a negro slave who enjoyed vastly more liberty than any free man of color ever did in Vir- ginia. Every gentleman in Richmond was his personal friend; so was every aristocratic planter east of the Blue Ridge. Any one of ii2 WESTOVER OF WANALAH them would have drawn his check in payment for Tom's liberty, if Tom had desired to be free. But Tom Griffin wanted nothing of the kind. He was happy and he knew when he was well off. If his freedom had been bought, he must, under the law, have left his native state, whose people were his friends and whose associations meant to him all that life could mean. He knew all there was to know of catering and of cookery. Better still, as he phrased it, he " instincted just how to make things good to eat." He had genius, in short, and the fact was recognized and celebrated by every man in Virginia who had a palate and the price and who enjoyed Tom Griffin's favor. For Tom Griffin's place was no ordinary restaurant. Men of the common herd were not welcomed there. Only those whom he recognized as his friends and his friendships were rigidly re- stricted to the aristocratic class were priv- ileged to sit at Tom's polished old mahogany table, and enjoy sora, or canvas backs or te*r- rapin in perfection. Only such were served with his glorified chine and spare-ribs, his roast EVENTS OF A MORNING turkey or his forequarters of spring lamb. And those who were so privileged could never be persuaded to believe that anybody else in all the world could even by accident serve any viand in such perfection as that in which every viand came from Tom Griffin's expert hands. Tom probably knew who his master was, but nobody else ever asked. Tom probably paid his master a liberal compensation for his time ; he could well afford to do so. For Tom Griffin was rich so rich that many a young Virginian whose frequent rash expenditures threatened to involve him in argument with his father, found relief in a loan from Tom Grif- fin's hand, concerning which no papers were passed. These loans were certain to be repaid. They were debts of honor, seeing that as a suitor Tom Griffin a negro slave would have had no standing in court. Tom Griffin had waiters in adequate force, but he never permitted them to serve a gentle- man without his personal superintendence. If a gentleman wanted a glass of water during his meal as even Virginia gentlemen some- times did Tom regarded his waiter as a ii 4 WESTOVER OF WANALAH person competent to serve it. The waiter could clear away the used crockery, too, and see to it that lighted wax candles were in place for cigar-lighting purposes. There were other minor offices that Tom permitted to his wait- ers. But when it came to serving a dish, Tom took the function upon himself. " You see," he once explained, " the boys is so stupid. If I've laid myself out to have a dish just right, I ain't a goin' to spile all my work by lettin' a clumsy nigger slap-bang it on the table, like as if he was a sellin' fish in the market." In accordance with his custom, therefore, Tom personally served a dinner that Boyd Westover had not ordered. There were soft crabs to begin with. There was a whole fore- quarter of genuine spring lamb for Boyd to carve at will. There were the earliest peas of the season, secured by Tom Griffin's " Sys- tem," which consisted in letting all the market gardeners know that he paid higher prices than anybody else for the first and best of every garden's product, and, more important still, that any gardener failing to give him first EVENTS OF A MORNING 115 choice would be cut off his list, a proscription too serious to be faced with composure. There were the first tomatoes of the season, too, and there was everything else that was possible, including a meringe a la creme, black coffee and cigars at the end. Boyd Westover had ordered nothing of the sort, but Tom Griffin served it all quite as if he had done so, and when it came upon the table Tom busied himself and a corkscrew in opening a dusty, cobwebbed bottle of antique Madeira, saying as he did so : " Dis is Ann Maria wine, Mas' Boyd, an* dere ain't much of it left in Old Virginia, I reckon. Will you 'scuse me ef I say I ain't paid no attention to your order in gittin' your dinner ready, an' I ain't asked what sort o' wine you wanted ? De explanation is dat Tom Griffin is a furnishin' this here dinner an' this here Ann Maria Madeira, as his contribution to de joyful occasion. Gentlemen, I trust your appetites is good." With that Tom withdrew too hastily for protest or remonstrance. As he went he snatched a napkin from a vacant table, with n6 WESTOVER OF WANALAH which to dry his dusky cheeks of the tears that were streaming down them in spite of all his efforts at self-control. Tom had learned from his customers to speak fairly correct English, and his lapse into the negro dialect of his boyhood on this occa- sion was the " outward and visible sign of the inward " emotional disturbance that Boyd Westover's experience had wrought in his all- affectionate soul. XII AFTER THE STORM HUNGRY as Boyd Westover had de- clared himself to be, and tempting as was the dinner that Tom Griffin served, the young man ate with scant appetite, and when the meal was over his friend was anxiously worried. " See here, Boyd ! " he said. " In view of all the circumstances you ought to be the j oi- liest fellow in Richmond to-day. You've borne up astonishingly during the real stress of this affair. Why should you flunk now that it's all over and you're a victor? " " I'm not flunking. I'll never flunk, but stoicism costs," answered Westover. " Just how do you mean ? " " I mean that my determination to bear a bold and unflinching front as it becomes a Westover to do when the penitentiary doors 117 n8 WESTOVER OF WANALAH were yawning for me, with lifelong disgrace as my portion, has taken more out of me than you can easily believe. To a man raised in our traditions, the prospect of disgrace and shame is a fearful thing to face. A score of agoniz- ing deaths by torture would have been to me as nothing in comparison with what I have suffered in contemplation of this horror. I have faced the thing as bravely as I could. That much I owed to my name, my caste, my lineage call it what you will. But my bank account of endurance is running low now. My drafts upon it have been heavy and well, there have been no deposits to strengthen it." He was thinking bitterly of Margaret Con- way's defection. " Don't let us talk of that. I'm as nearly on the verge of collapse as a healthy man can be, that's all." " But you are vindicated, and when your pardon comes this afternoon " " Pardon ? Yes. For a crime I did not com- mit. Think of it, Jack. From this hour forth I shall be a man accused, convicted and sen- AFTER THE STORM 119 tenced for a crime of infamous character, and graciously pardoned for it. It couldn't be worse except to my own soul if I were guilty. The pardon undoes nothing but the punishment. It doesn't wipe out the stain. It doesn't oh, well, you understand. I am free, but my life is ruined. If I were called as a witness in court, the opposing attorney would be free to ask me if I had not been con- victed of a felony and sentenced, and I should have to answer yes. Then he could forbid me to explain. The thing is horrible. The law as it stands is infamously unjust. Why should I be a pardoned criminal when I have committed no crime? Why should not the court that convicted me and sentenced me un- der a mistake have power to undo the wrong by another trial or procedure of some kind? Why should I not be acquitted of a false ac- cusation instead of being ' pardoned ' for an offence never committed? No, don't bother to answer. I know the answer already. Such cases are too rare for the law to have provided for them, though it is the law's boast that there is no wrong for which it doesn't provide a 120 WESTOVER OF WANALAH remedy. However, let's talk of something else. I'm going off for rest. I suppose this Rocky Mountain matter ought to be looked after. Will you go out there as my representative, under your blanket power of attorney, and do whatever you think best about it? There seems to be money enough in it to pay you all you want in the way of fees, according to your representation." " I'll go, of course. But I wish you would go instead, or go with me. It would divert your mind, and, believe me, Boyd, you need such diversion more than anything else. Why can't you go ? " " Because I must rest, and because well, because of many things. Never mind. I'm not going and you are. I'm going a fishing. Draw up all the necessary papers and I'll exe- cute them. Can you get them ready to- night? I want to go away to-morrow morn- ing and forget." " Where will you go ? To Wanalah ? " " No ; except for brief preparations. To the mountains. You know I own three or four high mountain tops up in the Blue Ridge, with AFTER THE STORM 121 the swales, called valleys, that lie between. The land is worthless, but the woods up there are full of game and the brooks alive with trout. My grandfather bought the vast tract as an indulgence and my father kept it with a like purpose. There's a shack of some sort up there I believe. If not, I can build one in a half day, and it will interest me to chink and daub it." Jack Towns sat silent for a time. Then he said: " I heartily disapprove of your plan. It means solitude, and you need association with men to cure you of morbid and unwholesome feelings." " But I can associate with men only upon sufferance. You've heard of the person who said : ' The more I see of men, the better I like dogs/ I'm not quite of his mind, but any- how I'm going up into the high mountains with my dogs, my guns and my fishing tackle. So get all the papers ready, Jack, and let me get away as soon as possible." Again, Jack Towns sat silent and troubled. After awhile he said : 122 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " Of course you'll go to my house to-night and be my guest so long as you remain in Richmond?" " Thank you, I will if you'll see to it that no visitors get at me. I want to go to sleep as soon as this thing's over and I'd like to stay asleep forever." " You're all wrong, but of course as a guest in my house you'll be protected from every- thing that is reasonably or unreasonably dis- agreeable to you. But really, Boyd, the people who are sure to call to-night " " Yes, I know. They will call to offer con- gratulations which are in fact commiserations and condolences. I don't care to attend my own funeral in the capacity of chief mourner, just yet. I shouldn't mind the funeral, with myself for the corpse, but I'm not prepared to play the part of chief mourner." " You're morbid, Boyd." " Perhaps so, but I'm going to become healthy again. Now listen. I'm going off into the mountains to match my wits with those of the wiliest trout, the shyest deer, the most experienced wild turkey gobblers, and now and AFTER THE STORM 123 then perhaps to try conclusions with a sly old bear. By the time I return to civilization, I'll have decided upon my career. I'm going to do something I don't know what. But by that time I'll know." " Good ! That's the way to look at things. After all, the strain your stoicism has put upon you hasn't robbed you of your robust manhood, and that is what I feared." " My dear Jack, I couldn't lose that and go on living. It is only that I must have a little time in which to pull myself together and see what I can do. If your mission to the Rocky Mountains proves that those fellows out there are right, and that a great wealth is ready to my hand, I may turn philanthropist, or I may enter upon great business undertakings which by their employment of multitudes of men at good wages are perhaps the most philanthropic of all endeavors. I don't know. I can't think till I sleep and rest. At any rate while I am recovering tone up in the high mountains of the Blue Ridge, you will find out what mone- tary tools I have to work with. Theology teaches us that the primal curse was a con- i2 4 WESTOVER OF W ANAL AH demnation to work. It was the primal bless- ing instead. That's an aside. I have good friends up in the mountains, chief among whom is Judy Peters." " The Queen of the mountains ? I've heard of her. She's an erratic political factor with whom every candidate must reckon, I'm told." " She's all that. She controls the mountain vote in her district as absolutely as the Super- intendent of the Penitentiary was to have con- trolled me " " Now, my dear Boyd, I beg you to put aside that sort of brooding. It's morbid, it's hurtful to your character, it's " " Yes, I know. But I'm not pardoned yet, you know, and naturally never mind. I was speaking of Judy. She doesn't abuse her political power. In many elections she doesn't use it at all. She says to her subjects : ' I ain't choosed 'twixt them two candidates. Choose for yourselves.' But when she does choose and intimates her choice the men of the moun- tain all vote her way, and their vote makes an end of all uncertainty as to the result of that AFTER THE STORM 125 election. But it isn't only in politics that she rules. A Baptist preacher went up that way once and became pastor of a church. For a while he ' cut a wide swath,' as Judy said. But he made the mistake of offending her majesty by some indiscreet criticism of her. She manifested no displeasure, but on the next Sunday and the next he found a meeting house full of empty benches to preach to. Then he quit, as Judy afterwards explained, ' because his usefulness was at its end.' It's the same way with everything else. Ordinarily she does not interfere, but when she does her interference is instantly effective. It's a com- mon saying up there that ' ef you want to stay in the mountings comfortable like, you don't want to git yourself into Judy Peters's bad books.' " " On what does her extraordinary influence rest?" " It would be hard to say. Partly I should say upon her extraordinary sagacity, especially in her judgment of men and her penetration of their motives. My father used to say she had second sight of the Scottish sort. It is 126 WESTOVER OF WANALAH certain that no man ever deceives her for long, no false pretense ever endures her scrutiny, and she never falters in her judgments. She is as relentless as Fate itself and as merciless in her dealings with what she adjudges to be wrong. As she doesn't know what fear means, she is equally resolute in her active support of all causes that enlist her sympathy. She is ignorant, as we reckon such things, but her sagacity is well nigh supernatural, and she keeps herself informed on all matters that in- terest her, with an accuracy that a detective bureau might envy. She is kindly, but not courteous. She hates shams with an elemental intensity. If you are a guest in her house she fulfils every obligation of hospitality, but she tells you no lies either in word or deed. She will lay herself out to serve you with sublime fried chicken and glorified waffles, but if she catches you in a falsehood she'll tell you you are a liar even while she presses the apple butter or the maple syrup upon your accept- ance. In brief, Judy Peters is altogether a natural human being, whose elemental pas- sions have never been curbed by convention, AFTER THE STORM 127 whose courage is of the kind that never shrinks from the recognition of truth or from its telling in plain words. If she likes you she will say so. If she dislikes you she will tell you the fact in equally plain words. If she is in doubt about you, she will tell you she ' ain't choosed yit ' as to you. That's Judy. Still my descrip- tion utterly lacks something, I don't know what personality perhaps. You must know Judy personally if you would understand her. Her malignity, in cases that seem to her to call for it, is well nigh beyond conception in its devilish ingenuity and persistence; her loy- alty, on the other hand, stops at nothing that may serve its fortunate beneficiary. She was my father's friend, in her odd way, and she is mine. My father once rendered her a service ; I don't know what it was, and she won't tell me. He always said it was a trifle of no conse- quence ; she always answers my inquiries about it by saying: 'Tain't none o' your business, Boyd, what he done for me, but ef I could 'a' turned these here mountings upside down an' he'd 'a' give the word as how he wanted it done, over the 128 WESTOVER OF WANALAH mountings would 'a' gone, you kin bet your bottom dollar on that proposition.' " She is my friend on my father's account and nothing can change that. If I should try to deceive her she'd denounce me to my face as a liar, but she'd make the mountains too hot to hold anybody else who should suggest such a thing, and she'd go on doing her mightiest in my interest, in spite of my fault. In her way she is a wholesome sort of person for me to meet just now, and I'm going to spend a few days with her, just for the bracing up she'll give me. After that I'll go on up into the high mountains." So ended the dinner and the conversation. Next morning Westover set out for Wanalah, where he intended to spend a few days giving necessary directions and equipping himself with supplies for his sojourn in the mountains. These consisted of books, mainly, with a bag of corn meal, a ham or two, a few sides of bacon, guns, ammunition, fishing tackle and rough clothing, all of which were loaded into an ox cart, which a negro boy was to drive in leisurely fashion to Judy Peters's. Beyond AFTER THE STORM 129 that, in the climb up the mountainside, oxen would be of less use than bother, and West- over depended upon the long legs and strong arms of mountaineers to manage the further transportation. XIII TAKES THE HELM IT would have been a dangerous thing for any man to accuse Colonel Conway of cowardice. Personal courage was his in full measure. Three times during the Mexi- can war he had been promoted rising from lieutenant to colonel and each time in spe- cial recognition of " conspicuous gallantry in action." He was afraid of no man and no company of men. He did and dared through- out his life with absolute disregard of dan- ger. But Colonel Conway was mightily afraid of his sister Betsy, as his daughter had said. Why, he could not have told, but the fact re- mained that he was afraid of that elderly little woman, encased as she was in an armor of conventionalities, gentle but resolute, and mer- 130 "AUNT BETSY" 131 cilessly insistent upon what she decreed to be " proper " conduct. When the negro boy who daily brought the letter bag from the post office to The Oaks reported that Mr. Boyd Westover had come up from Richmond and was to stay only for a day or two at Wanalah, Colonel Conway promptly announced his purpose to ride over and congratulate him. The family were at the breakfast table at the time and the Colonel observed that his daughter paled at the men- tion of his purpose, though she said nothing in reply to his declaration. His sister, " Aunt Betsy," also said nothing. It was her habit to say nothing till the time was ripe. Immediately after breakfast Margaret sought speech with her father. " You are right, father, and what you pur- pose is the part of an honorable man. You ought to go to Boyd and take his hand, and make him feel that men of your kind and his kind understand. But " She paused un- certainly. " ' But ' what, daughter? " asked the Colo- nel, eagerly scanning her face. i 3 2 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " Nothing. I was only going to say that perhaps it will be just as well not to mention me unless he does so first." There was that in her hesitating utterance which awakened the Colonel's attention and curiosity. " But why not, Margaret? " he questioned. " Surely it is about you he will be most eager to hear." " If so he will ask. If he doesn't, I beg of you " " Why, surely you've heard from him fre- quently during this trouble and you've writ- ten to him?" " I've written to him, yes." " And he has written to you, of course? " The girl stood silent, while she plucked honeysuckles from the vines that shrouded the porch in which they stood, and nervously pulled them to pieces. " Answer me, child," the Colonel said in a tone of command. " Hasn't Boyd Westover written to you during all this trouble ? " " I have received no letter from him," she answered hesitatingly. "AUNT BETSY' 1 133 " Do you mean that he hasn't written to you of his arrest, trial and all the rest of it, of his vindication and " " I have had no letter from him," she re- peated. " Hasn't he even offered you a release from your engagement ? " " I have had no letter from him," she said again, but this time she lost her self control and blurted out the thought that had troubled her for many days. " Oh Father," she said, seizing his arm as if to detain him, " there has been some cruel mistake, some miscarriage, something, I don't know what. I only know that Boyd Westover is a gentleman and would never have neglected such a duty." " As he has neglected it, he is unworthy of a gentleman's recognition, Margaret. I shall not go near him." " You are judging him unheard," she promptly and passionately answered ; " and oh, Father, that isn't like you, because it is un- worthy, and nothing unworthy or unjust is like you. I beg of you, give him a chance. 134 WESTOVER OF WANALAH You need do nothing but make a call. The explanation will follow if there is an ex- planation. If there isn't well, we shall know." " I'll go, daughter, of course. It is my duty. But I'll force the explanation. I have a right to ask him why, being engaged to marry my daughter, he has sent her no release, in view of the circumstances. That will bring out all there is to say on the subject." At that point in their conversation the father and daughter were interrupted by the advent of " Aunt Betsy," who passed from the house into the porch quite casually, and said to Mar- garet : " When you have leisure, dear, you'd better see Janet. She has come to say that Diana is much worse this morning and that the doctor, who was in a hurry, left some important writ- ten directions out at the quarters." Quick to respond to duty, especially where the sick of the plantation were concerned, Mar- garet was in the saddle a minute later and gal- loping toward the " quarters," as the negro village was called in plantation nomenclature. "AUNT BETSY" 135 No sooner had her sorrel palfry's white tail flashed its signal of departure through the outer grove, than " Aunt Betsy " turned to her brother, saying: " Of course you forgot yourself, brother, when you impulsively declared your purpose to visit Mr. Boyd Westover to-day. The one serious fault in your nature is impulsiveness. You are too chivalric, too trusting, too confi- dent of others, too apt to think of them as men like yourself." " What is it you want to say, Betsy? " asked the Colonel as he sank limply into one of the porch chairs. " Only that upon reflection you must see that it won't do for you to call upon Mr. Westover." "But why not?" " There are a dozen reasons. He's a man under a cloud you know. He has been regu- larly convicted of a crime, and sentenced for it, and " " But he has been fully vindicated and par- doned," interrupted the Colonel. " Yes, of course. Fully vindicated by the 136 WESTOVER OF WANALAH confession of a demented man who may or may not know what he is saying. It may be well, anything may be, you know, and opin- ions in this community are likely to be divided as to the matter of Mr. Boyd Westover's guilt. So long as that remains unsettled the Master of The Oaks cannot afford to take sides by visiting Wanalah." " You mean that I, Colonel Robert Conway, of The Oaks, am not free to do as I damn please just because a lot of pestilent old gos- sips think to say me nay ? " " You misunderstand me, Robert, and you grieve me to the heart by the violence of your language." " Did I swear? If so I beg pardon, but sometimes oaths will slip out. It's a bad habit I acquired in the army." " You utterly fail to understand me," said " Aunt Betsy." " I am not concerned about myself or you, or the family name, though that is dearer to me than all else in the world. I'm concerned for Margaret. You are a man, of course, but even a man ought to see that for Margaret's father to visit Westover of Wana- "AUNT BETSY' 1 137 lah, under existing circumstances, would be everywhere interpreted as throwing Margaret at his head, challenging him to fulfil his en- gagement with her. In brief it would be al- most the equivalent of that vulgar impossibility in Virginia, a breach of promise suit." " Aunt Betsy " saw in Colonel Conway's face that she had carried her point, and she did not imperil the result by further speech. She suddenly applied her handkerchief to her eyes instead, and hastily retreated to her room, confident that on that day at least her brother would not ride over to Wanalah. XIV WESTOVER AT WANALAH BUT if Colonel Conway did not visit Westover during his brief stay at Wa- nalah, some others did. In the main they were elderly men of his own social class, whose purpose was sincere to express their pleasure in his escape from an embarrassing perplexity. But their very sincerity proved to be the undoing of their purpose. They hardly knew how to approach the subject of his trouble without offence and yet it seemed nec- essary to speak of it. It isn't easy to tell a man of high place in the world that you are pleased with his accidental escape from a term of penal servitude in the penitentiary. As a result of this embarrassment the congratula- tions of these gentlemen, which were meant to be cordial, seemed to Westover to be coldly 138 WESTOVER AT W ANAL AH 139 commiserative instead. Meant to be com- radely, they seemed to him condescending 1 almost to the point of offensiveness. To make matters worse, Westover's visitors were as sorely embarrassed as he was, and by way of escape, every one of them, upon one pre- text or another, declined his invitation to stay to dinner which, under ordinary circum- stances, every one of them would have ac- cepted quite as a matter of course. To him this suggested avoidance of intimacy. Perhaps all this was emphasized to his mind by his experience with the earliest of his visit- ors on that day. This was William Wilber- force Webb, a young lawyer who as repre- sentative of the county in the House of Dele- gates the legislature of Virginia regarded himself as " a rising young statesman, in the direct line of promotion." Mr. Webb was not a man in Westover's class, and in visiting Wanalah at all he was guilty of something approaching presumption, under the rules of the social regime of that time and country. Still, as the representative of the county in the legislature, he had a right i 4 o WESTOVER OF WANALAH perhaps to regard himself as privileged to that extent. However that might be, Westover welcomed him cordially as the first of his neighbors to call. He extended the customary hospitalities of the house, which the other accepted. Then the two fell into conversation upon general topics, drifting into more personal themes by natural processes. Lacking the tact that comes of good breeding, the voluble and self appreci- ative lawyer presently sought to exalt his own condescension in promptly calling upon West- over. " You see I have no hidebound prejudices, Westover, and in my position, as the represent- ative of the people, the promptitude of my visit may encourage others to recognize you, in spite of what has happened." Pale to the lips with passion, Westover rose as the man spoke, moved to the edge of the porch in which they had been sitting, and, call- ing to a negro boy, said : " Bring this gentleman's horse to the door at once; do you hear? He has imperative busi- ness elsewhere than at Wanalah." WESTOVER AT WANALAH 141 There was no mistaking the meaning of this, and Webb was quick to comprehend it. Ris- ing angrily he asked : " What do you mean, sir? " ' You heard my instruction to the boy," an- swered Westover in an even, unexcited voice. " You can infer my meaning from that. By the way, the boy has obeyed promptly and your horse is waiting for you." The man was unaccustomed to such deliber- ation and self control in the speech of an angry person, but he sought to imitate it as he had sought before to copy the manners of those whose social position he envied. He sup- pressed the impulse of intemperate speech and, assuming the dignity that he thought" belonged to him in right of his " position," said: " You will hear from me, promptly, Mr. Westover." " At your pleasure, sir," answered West- over. " I shall remain at Wanalah for four days, after to-day. After that I shall be absent for a time, but should your message to me be delayed so long, which I can hardly conceive i 4 2 WESTOVER OF WANALAH to be possible, you can communicate with me later through my overseer, with whom I shall leave an address to be used only in emergencies. Should you leave any message with him he will have instructions to forward it to me by a special courier who will lose no time in its delivery." This was a crowning affront to a man of Webb's extraction, and perhaps Westover meant it to be such. The overseer class in Virginia was the most inferior of all, and the very suggestion of one gentleman that he would communicate with another through his overseer would have implied insult. If West- over had been speaking to one whom he re- garded as an equal he would have said: " My address for a time will be uncertain, but my overseer will have it and I'll instruct him to keep my lawyer informed of it from time to time." To make matters worse, it was the bitterest drop of gall in Webb's cup that he was him- self descended from a race of overseers. His father, indeed, had never served in that capac- ity, for the reason that the grandfather had left WESTOVER AT WANALAH 143 him enough money to buy a little plantation of his own and struggle for recognition as a member of the planter class. But Webb had learned by experience that there was vitality in the Virginian dogma that " it takes three generations to make a gentleman." The suggestion, therefore, that he might, if necessary, communicate with Westover through the Wanalah overseer, was peculiarly offensive to Webb. Whether Westover had intended it to be so or not, there is no means of finding out. He was angry enough to in- tend anything. But this encounter spoiled Westover's ca- pacity to enjoy the visits of his later coming friends. It set his sensitiveness on edge, as it were, and prompted his mind to misinter- pretation, so that when he was left to dine alone at Wanalah that day the very spacious- ness of the dining room seemed to mock his solitude, while the polished furniture that had witnessed so much of joyous festivity in that great banquet hall seemed to have put on mourning for its master. About sunset, however, relief came to West- i 4 4 WESTOVER OF WANALAH over's spirit in the person of Dr. Carley Farns- worth. His real name was Don Carlos Farns- worth, and he was a physician, but to West- over as to every other friend he had ever had, he was known as " Carley." Carley was in many ways peculiar. He was cynical at times and always disposed to take a whimsical view of things. His sense of humor was alert and keen, though he never in his life made a joke and very rarely laughed. His most whimsical interpretations of events and situations were delivered in solemn, philosophical fervor, and with a seriousness that well nigh undid the humor of them. He arrived at Wanalah about sunset, and greeted his old friend cordially, and quite as if his visit had been an ordinary one with no " circumstances " of any kind behind it. Car- ley Farnsworth was a gentleman, that was all. He had tact and nous, and above all a sympa- thy so abounding that trespass upon another's sensibilities was impossible to him. Even in examining patients, it was said of him that he asked all his questions in a way that made them seem a matter of course. WESTOVER AT WANALAH 145 After the first greetings were over he said : " I've been rather impatiently waiting for your return to Wanalah, Boyd, because I've been wanting to floor you with half a dozen authorities that agree with me as to the con- struction of ut with the subjunctive in that passage we came so near fighting about. I've devoted all my time lately to the task of ac- cumulating ammunition and after supper I'm going to blow you clear out of the arena. But supper first, of course. I'm a hungry hygienist and I know the flavor of the Wanalah hams. By the way, you and I are alone; why shouldn't we be dissolute? If you'll tell your cook to serve us some roasted black-eyed peas, such as you and I ate here a year ago, roasted in the pod you know, and served with the hot ashes on them, I'll promise to be happy for a whole year to come. Of course there'll be broiled tomatoes as an adjunct to the cold ham, and paper thin wafer biscuit to keep our digestions in order, and after supper we'll discuss f ut with the subjunctive ' as far into the night as you please." 6 Thank you," said Westover, smiling for 146 WESTOVER OF WANALAH the first time that day. " I'm ready for the contest, though really I don't think either of us is Latin scholar enough to be entitled to ' views ' on the subject." " There you annoyingly agree with the au- thorities," answered Dr. Farnsworth. " You see I wrote to Professor Anthon on the sub- ject, submitting my contentions, and he re- plied most courteously, suggesting that if I would supplement my obviously rudimentary Latin studies with a more considerable read- ing of Latin texts, he mentioned fifteen hundred or so that he thought I might profit- ably run through in my leisure moments, I would gain some slight insight into the grammatical problem I had undertaken to settle out of my own inner consciousness and Bullion's Latin Grammar. The thing put me on my mettle, so I wrote to our own Univer- sity professor, Dr. Gessner Harrison. What do you think? He replied: ' My dear Dr. Farnsworth: You're a sublimated idiot and a good many different kinds of a donkey.' Those weren't his exact words, you under- stand, but the paraphrase fairly interprets the WESTOVER AT WANALAH 147 spirit of his reply. However, we'll leave all that till after supper." So he chattered on, after his habit, and he succeeded not only in preventing talk of de- pressing things, but in amusing his host so far as to awaken something like jollity in him. But an occurrence during supper threatened to spoil all. A missive arrived from Webb, borne not by a friend commissioned to " act for him," but by a negro servant. Westover tore the envelope open and read the few lines written upon the sheet within. They ran as follows: " Mr. Webb intimated to Mr. Westover to- day that he would presently send him a hostile note. Upon reflection Mr. Webb has decided that he cannot afford to send anything of the kind. It seems to him and to such friends as he has had time to consult that recent events affecting Mr. Westover's status in society - events which need not be specified in detail have rendered it unnecessary and unbecoming for any gentleman to pay attention to anything that Mr. Westover may say or do." Having read the insolent message with no i 4 8 WESTOVER OF WANALAH sign of anger that would have been observed by anybody, Westover turned to his dining room servant and said, quite indifferently: " Send the boy who brought that note to me. I wish to speak to him." When the negro messenger entered, West- over asked : " Do you belong to Mr. Webb? " " No, sir. Laws a Massy, Mas' Boyd, he don't own no folks er nothin' else. He jes' hires me to fetch and carry for him some- times." " I thought so. How much did he pay you to bring this note to me? " " Eighteen pence, sir." " Well, now I want you to carry it back to him and I'll give you two and threepence for the service. I'll make it half a dollar, if you'll tell him just what I say." In old Virginia " eighteen pence " meant a quarter of a dollar, and " two and threepence " meant thirty-seven and a half cents, the shill- ing then being sixteen and two-thirds cents, as the result of some ancient debasement of coin in England. WESTOVER AT WANALAH 149 " Suttenly, sir. Ef what you wants me to say is so superfluous like as to make him mad, I reckon I kin run faster'n he kin." !< Very well then. I want you to hand him back his letter and say: " ' Mas' Boyd Westover says he hasn't time just now to ride seven miles to the Court House to pull your nose or slap your jaws, but he'll attend to the matter at the first convenient op- portunity.' Can you say that?" " No," interrupted Carley Farnsworth. " Why should you want him to ? It wouldn't add a cubit to the stature of your dignity and it wouldn't be any worse affront to Webb than you can put upon him by sending his note back without a word. He would rejoice in a quar- rel with you a safe one at arm's length I mean. It would exalt him in the eyes of others, and as he's a member of the legislature sure of his reelection, you can't challenge him or he you. You may hold any view you please as to f ut ' with the subjunctive, but on this matter you simply mustn't obey the impulses of temporary anger. Send the letter back with- out a word, and to-morrow you'll thank me 1 50 WESTOVER OF WANALAH for bringing philosophy and common sense to the restraint of an impulse that has its root in the dormant but still potential savagery of your nature." Westover laughed at the solemn ponderous- ness of his friend's utterance, and the laughter was good for him. " You're right, of course," he said. " Here, Sam, just take this letter back to Mr. Webb and tell him I sent no message of any kind. And here's your half dollar." Then, as the negro left the room the young man said: " After all, my time hasn't come yet, and meanwhile I must preserve my dignity. You see, Carley, I am still Westover of Wanalah, and I mean to prove it to all men by doing things. I don't know yet what things they are to be, but they must be worthy of the name I bear. I'm going off to rest and think for a while, and when I come back to Wanalah Jack Towns will tell me what tools I have to work with. Meanwhile brawling with an un- derbred fellow like Webb would be most un- becoming." WESTOVER AT WANALAH 151 " I'm glad to see that you have lucid inter- vals, Boyd," answered his friend. " I reckon we won't bother with Latin Grammar to-night. Let's play backgammon instead. But in the meantime let me give you a professional opin- ion and some professional advice. You are neurasthenic and you've got to get over it. Your mountain trip will be good for you, but it would be better still if you could get up a fight of some sort. I'll try to stir up something of the kind for you, when you get back. Any- how, you've got to quit thinking about your- self. Let me assure you that there are thou- sands of more interesting topics to think about. There's lettuce, for example, and there is music, to say nothing of onions and roe herrings and the Missouri Compromise, and the relations of agriculture to national wealth, and 'possum hunting, and black-eyed peas and the Dred Scott decision and the morality of flipping quarters at crack loo. Oh, here's the backgammon board. Let's get to work." XV UP AT JUDY/S ROBUST as he was, Boyd Westover felt himself somewhat weary and footsore when he put one hand on the top rail of Judy Peters' s gateless fence and sprang over it to greet his hostess. She was waiting for him of course. She had caught sight of him far down the mountain, at one of the many turns of the road which were conveniently visible from her door or her other points of observation. It was not Judy's habit to be surprised by any arrival. She had had no warning of Westover's intended visit, but she was keen of vision, and had had no difficulty in recognizing the wayfarer four miles away, if measured by the tortuosities of the road, and perhaps a mile away as the crow flies. That had been two or three hours before the 152 UP AT JUDY'S 153 time of his actual arrival, but Judy had not wondered at the delay. She knew Boyd's ways and she had made out that he had fishing tackle with him. " Sapphiry," she had asked her daughter, " how many chickens has you got picked an' fixed in the spring house." " Four," answered Sapphira. " Why, Mammy? " " Never you mind why." Then relenting toward the girl's curiosity she said : " Boyd Westover's a comin', an' he'll be mighty hungry fer supper. He's afoot an' it's more'n twenty mile from his place here. Besides that he's got four big branches to fish afore he gits here an' that'll take a heap o' walkin' to say nothin' o' the len'th o' the road. So you jes' go on with your ironin' till I tell you to set about gittin' supper." " May be he won't fish the branches," sug- gested the girl. " Yes, an' may be the moon'll rise in the west to-night an' run wrong way 'crost the firmament. It's the same sort of a may be, an* that sort never happens." 154 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " What you reckon he's a comin' fer, Mammy?" asked Sapphira as she held up a stiffly starched garment to inspect her work. " Dunno, an' it don't make no difference neither, as the feller says. Boyd Westover's father always found a welcome a waitin' at the fence when he come to Judy Peters's house, an' I's got the same sort o' welcome a holdin' out both han's for Boyd when he comes." Then by way of a more direct though conjec- tural answer to her daughter's question she added : " Reckon he wants to git away from them stuckups down his way. I hear they's a been a botherin' of him o' late. Coffey, William, son to Jesse, was a tellin' me all about it." The form " Coffey, William, son to Jesse," was one in familiar use in the mountains as a means of identifying one among a multitude of men bearing the same name. There were several families whose membership was so all pervasive of that region that some such method of identification on the polling lists and else- where was a necessity, and the polling list UP AT JUDY'S 155 nomenclature had been very generally adopted into ordinary use. " What was 't all 'bout, Mammy? " " I dunno, only, whatever 'twas, another feller done it." With that lucid explanation Judy set her flatiron on a trivet in front of the fire and went to one of her points of vantage to scan the road below. On her return she took Sap- phira's flatiron from her hand, saying : " I'll finish up the ironin'. They ain't but three or four pieces. You run over to the fur- dest 'tater patch an' gravel a pan o' potaters. Git a plenty of 'em, kase they's mighty good with fish." To " gravel " potatoes is to dig into the " hill " in which the vines grow, from its side remove the larger potatoes from the rootlets, close up the opening and leave the vines to bring the remaining tubers to perfection. It is a process that yields new potatoes before their time and without destroying the growths. The potatoes secured in that way are very small, very unwholesome, but altogether deli- cious. 156 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " May be he didn't git no fish," said Sap- phira doubtingly. " Well, you jes' look after the potater may- bes. That's your job. The fish'll git here all right kase I seen him a cleanin' of 'em on the rocks down 'long Samson's branch. He won't fish no more this evenin' an' he'll be here in less 'n an hour. So mosey along an' git them potaters. Soon's I git through with this petti- coat, I'll sif some meal fer batter bread, git out a crock o' apple butter, an' cut up some tomatuses. Boyd Westover's hungry an' he's a goin' to have a good supper ef Judy Peters knows her business, an' she thinks she do.' 5 When Boyd nimbly swung himself over the fence, all preliminary preparations for the eve- ning meal were completely made, and Judy stood ready to welcome him. In his honor she had changed the limp, hot weather gown that had served her during her ironing, for a stiffly starched calico in the violently high colors of which her barbaric soul mightily rejoiced. For greeting Judy said : " You's come up to shake off the stuck-ups. UP AT JUDY'S 157 Boyd, an' git among natural folks I s'pose. Anyhow you're welcome. Them's beauties," looking into Boyd's fish basket, " an' they's a flat-back an' two catfish among 'em. I'd ruther eat a catfish or a flat-back any time than a trout. Trout's sort o' stuck up fish, even ef they does live up here in the mountings. But I ain't forgot how to make trout good with the sauce your pappy learnt me how to make sauce All on Days he called it, an' I'll make you some fer supper." Presumably Judy meant sauce Hollandaise. At any rate the sauce she served with the trout that night was a glorified example of the dress- ing that chefs call by that name, improved by the gastronomic genius of the late Westover of Wanalah, and made by Judy Peters, whose instinct was infallible in the manufacture of things delectable to the palate. Suddenly Judy observed something in Boyd Westover's face, a look of utter weariness that she was sagacious enough to interpret aright, though she made no mention of her interpretation. " He's got things on his mind," she re- 158 WESTOVER OF WANALAH fleeted ; " an' they's more tiresome like than all the trarnpin' a feller can do. His legs is good fer twice the walkin' he's done to-day. Never mind. We'll fix that up afore we're through." Then turning to Westover she said : " You is awful tired, Boyd, even ef you did clear the fence like a yearlin' colt. Now you's a goin' to rest. Never min' tellin' me nothin' 'bout what you're here for nor none o' the rest of it. You's a-goin' to have a nap. It'll be a hour or may be two hour afore supper's ready, 'cause I's got that sauce All on Days to make, an' it's a slow job. It's awful hot this evenin' " Judy meant afternoon, but like the more aristocratic Virginians she called every- thing between noon and nightfall " evening " and everything after dusk " night," as in very fact it was. " It's awful hot this evenin', but they's a good breeze a blowin' through the passage, an' they's a broad sofy there, three foot wide an* seven foot long, an' there you's a goin' to spen' the time twix this an' supper. They's pillers a plenty, an' you ain't got nothin' to do UP AT JUDY'S 159 only to lay down an' git a good rest. Come on in." Five minutes later Boyd Westover was com- fortably asleep, with the assurance that there were no shams or false pretenses in the hospi- tality he was enjoying, and it was more than two hours later before Judy permitted him to be waked. She was accustomed to dominate everything in her own household, suppers in- cluded, and this particular supper she had " sot back " by a full hour in order that her guest might have his nap out. Even then she forbade a rude awakening. She simply passed two or three times through the broad passage- way between the two log houses that consti- tuted her home, until the swish of her starched calico skirts awakened him " drop by drop like," as she explained to Sapphira and those of her long-legged sons who had " turned up " for supper in the maternal home. Those boys, Webster, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson and Theonidas heaven only knows where Judy got that name were always uncertain quan- tities in the household. Each was a law unto himself. They came and went at their own i6o WESTOVER OF WANALAH free will, giving no account of themselves. Home was home to them. They appeared there, sure of a welcome, whenever it suited their convenience to do so. Sometimes all four would be there; sometimes not one of them would appear for months at a time. In either case no questions were asked and no accounts given. The boys were strong of limb, alert, industrious, independent. They made their own living by doing any sort of work that fell in their way, and they envied no man his lot or his possessions. They were types of a ro- bust citizenship of which the Trusts and the Trades Unions conspiracies both in restraint alike of trade and of liberty have left us small trace in this modern world. Their ages varied from thirteen to nineteen years; their height from five feet ten to six feet three; their muscularity and their sturdy self reliance not at all. XVI JUDY PETERS'S DIAGNOSIS / that if I practise reserve at all, it is only be- cause of my tender affection for you. Can you believe that blindly, without explanation? And will you? " " I believe whatever you tell me, Margaret, and I do not wish to hear anything that for any reason you do not wish me to hear." " Thank you, dear," said the agitated girl as she again pressed her horse to his paces; " God help me if I'm wrong ! " There was so strong a suggestion of trag- edy in the girl's tone that Millicent felt herself called upon to interfere with Margaret's pur- pose, which she instinctively understood and which seemed to her scarcely less than suicidal. She said nothing so long as the horses were moving swiftly. When they resumed the walk, she turned to her companion and asked : 352 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " Do you believe in my friendship, Mar- garet, and do you trust its loyalty so far as to forgive an impertinence in its behalf? " " I certainly do, Millicent. I could never " " Listen, then, and don't interrupt. I know far more about this matter than anybody has ever told me. My woman's instinct has in- structed me. It may be in error as to details, but I am right as to the essentials, and in such a case it is the essentials alone that need be considered. I'll tell you the story of the situ- ation as I understand it. You are not a woman to love lightly, or lightly to forget." Margaret well nigh fell from her horse as she heard her own passionately uttered words thus repeated in merely explanatory fashion, but in a moment she realized that this was purely a coincidence. Millicent had chosen the words for herself; she could not have heard them as a quotation. ff There may be many fancies to a woman like you, but there can be only one passionate, self-giving, all-surrendering love. It is com- monly said that there is no such thing as self- WORK OF A WILD WIND 353 sacrificing loyalty or friendship between women that while we may heroically sacrifice our- selves for the love of a man we never sac- rifice that love in loyalty to a woman. It is a slander on our sex. I accepted it as true until very recently ; indeed I saw many things to confirm it. I know better now." She paused for a considerable time, but Margaret did not prompt her to go on. Per- haps she foresaw what was coming, and at any rate she saw clearly that there was strug- gle and disturbance in Millicent's mind. After awhile the girl resumed : 4 The one love of your life, Margaret, is for Mr. Boyd Westover. It began long be- fore you knew it and it will last as long as you live. Now I am going to make a shame- ful confession," she added. Then she broke into a gallop, but when the horses resumed a moderate pace she did not make the con- fession. Perhaps she shrank from it. Perhaps she deemed it unnecessary. Perhaps she thought its making might tend rather to com- plicate than to simplify the problems in hand. However that may be, she made no further 354 WESTOVER OF WANALAH reference to the matter, but took up her para- ble where she had laid it down. " Something, I don't know what yes, I do, but I don't know why has come between you and Mr. Boyd Westover. I am not blind, and I think I am not stupid. There were unopened letters there from him to you, and other unopened letters from you to him. With- out asking anybody any questions I know that for some reason somebody has sought to cut off communication between him and you. I see clearly that that purpose has been accom- plished, and I see that as a consequence he has been thinking you fickle and treacher- ous, as women so often are, and you have been thinking him disloyal and dishonor- able." " No, no, no," interrupted Margaret. " I have never accused him of disloyalty or dis- honor, even in my wildest moments of per- plexity and distress. I have never for one moment doubted his honor. It is only that I have been unable to conjecture why he left me in silence, when in fact he was writing great, manly, loving letters to me every day. WORK OF A WILD WIND 355 Oh, Millicent, it was cruel, and I can never forgive " She did not need mention the name. " You haven't read Mr. Westover's un- opened letters," suggested Millicent. " No, I have no right now. They were written in the past, when he loved and trusted me. He, might not wish me to read them now. He might not feel in the same way toward me now that he did then." " That's stuff and nonsense, I think, Mar- garet. I really do. If I were you I should read the letters carefully. Then I should sit down and write to Mr. Boyd Westover, enclosing the letters you wrote to him at that time and explaining how all the trouble had come about." " That would never, never do. It would be throwing myself like a cast-off garment at his feet. It would be asking him to renew relations that he may have been glad to for- get." " You say that, Margaret, but you don't be- lieve it. Neither do I." " I think, Millicent, you don't understand 356 WESTOVER OF WANALAH our conventionalities down here. It would be impossible for any Virginia girl, under such circumstances, to take the initiative in reopen- ing relations. That is the prerogative of the gentleman in the case." " But when the gentleman doesn't know the facts, and the woman does, what then? " " That makes no possible difference." " You are right on one point, Margaret. I do not understand your conventions, nor do I in the least sympathize with them. They are shams and falsities, as all conventionalities are, and they are cruel beyond measure. They decree that where a mistake has been made and the woman discovers it, she must let wreck and ruin overwhelm two lives her own and that of the man she loves rather than send to him .a simple and easy explanation of the mistake that has made the trouble. No, I do not understand such conventions. What are you going to do ? " " I'll place the whole thing in my father's hands, and he shall do what he will with it." " And as to the one who has wrought all this mischief?" WORK OF A WILD WIND 357 " My relations with my Aunt Betsy will be changed. Come! We must hurry back to the house. I want my father to know what has happened." They trotted on for a space, when suddenly Millicent reined in her horse and Margaret stopped in company, for Millicent had come to a complete halt in the roadway. For a mo- ment the two confronted each other without a word, for Millicent, sitting on her horse with compressed lips and set jaw, did not at first explain herself. After a while she said : " I cannot sit idly by and see two glorious young lives wrecked when a next to nothing would save both. I am a Yankee, of Boston, but so was Paul Revere. Let me have those letters. Ask me no questions, but let me ride as Paul Revere did ! " For a moment Margaret hesitated. The temptation was very great, but she put it aside. " That would never do, Millicent," she said. " I understand your loving loyalty and I am grateful for it, but that would never do. To Mr. Westover you would be my emissary, no 358 WESTOVER OF WANALAH matter what you might say. It would be the same as if I went to him myself." " Is your decision final, or may I argue the matter?" Millicent asked. " It is final," Margaret answered, and not another word was spoken during the remain- der of the homeward journey. XXX WHAT HAD HAPPENED AT THE OAKS THAT little jaunt on horseback that Margaret, with her friend, took by way of steadying her nerves, was perhaps a mistake. If she had gone to her father at once, while " Aunt Betsy " was making herself comfortable in bed, the impul- sive old gentleman would have been off on a journey to Wanalah within five minutes, and his intent to explain and make reparation would have accomplished its purpose instantly. But Margaret went riding instead, and no sooner did " Aunt Betsy " learn of the fact than she made a quick recovery from her ill- ness, and almost before the two young women were out of sight of the house, " Aunt Betsy," tearful and in every other way appealing, was closeted with Colonel Conway. She thus 359 360 WESTOVER OF WANALAH gained the distinct advantage of being first on the ground. Her tears and her agitation ap- pealed strongly to the protective instinct of the chivalric old soldier. She told him in her own way what had happened, diverting his attention from her own misconduct by lamen- tations and copious weepings and protestations that in all she had done she had sought only to protect the honor and dignity of the family and to prevent Margaret " an unformed girl " from compromising herself in her ig- norance of the world. It would be too much to say that she con- vinced her brother of the righteousness of her conduct. Tampering with letters even without reading them was to him a point of special sensitiveness, and there were other matters involved which he could in no wise reconcile with his conceptions of honorable conduct. But he recognized the weakness of women as a palliation of misconduct, and his sister's tearful appeals to him for the protec- tion of her dignity affected him in the tender- est part of his nature. He was profoundly displeased with her, but AT THE OAKS 361 she was his sister, nevertheless, and he was her natural protector. It was his duty and his desire to spare her, so far as might be possible, but he felt also the obligation to censure and correct her. " You have done a gravely improper thing, Betsy," he said, with sternness and tenderness struggling for mastery in his tone. " Indeed what you have done is unpardonable, inex- cusable, except that as a woman you did not know the enormity of your act." " That is the main point, Robert," she in- terrupted, " and I beg you to bear it in mind. All I did was done with good intentions. I am naturally solicitous for the honor of our family, and I " " And you did a dishonorable thing in that behalf," he said with severity in his tone. " In your desire to protect the family name you did a thing that would forever subject it to shame, if it should become known." "That is it, Robert. It mustn't become known. I depend upon you, as the head of the family, to prevent that. Blame me as 362 WESTOVER OF WANALAH severely as you will, but don't expose me, don't subject me to criticism and scorn! Oh, Rob- ert, I beg you to protect me ! " " I'll protect you of course," he replied, " but you have made it difficult and exceed- ingly embarrassing for me to do so. I have my own conscience to reckon with. You have made me do things, in ignorance of the facts I may as well be frank and say you have deliberately deceived me into the doing of wrongs for which I know not how to atone or even apologize. If you were not my sister, if you were not under my protection, if I could be indifferent to your feelings my course would be simple and easy. A frank, manly statement of the facts would exorierate me. As it is " " As it is, Robert, you cannot subject your sister to humiliation. You must protect me from shame. You must take pains that what has happened shall never be known outside this house ! " It was at this stage of the conversation that Margaret entered. " Aunt Betsy," confident that she had secured herself, said : AT THE OAKS 363 " I will leave you to talk with your father, Margaret, if you desire." " No," the young woman answered ; " I prefer that you should remain. I, at least, have nothing to conceal, and I do not seek, as you do, to get my father's ear in private. Be- sides, I have some things to say to you, and I prefer to say them in my father's presence. I am mistress of The Oaks. Hitherto, out of a respect which you have not justified, I have permitted you to exercise certain functions that belong to me. I shall do so no longer. I have given directions that hereafter I will make up the outgoing mail bag and open the incoming one." " But, my dear child " " I am not a child, Aunt Betsy. You have made some grievous mistakes in forgetfulness of that fact. It shall not be forgotten again while I remain mistress of this plantation. What was it you were going to say, Aunt Betsy? I beg pardon for interrupting, but it seemed necessary." " I was going to ask what the servants will think." 364 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " I do not know what they will think, Aunt Betsy." " On that point I must appeal to your fa- ther," " Aunt Betsy " replied. " On that point it is very dangerous for you to appeal," answered the younger woman, still preserving an extraordinary calm that was at once astonishing and alarming to her aunt, but speaking with a degree of emphasis that suggested something behind the words. " What do you mean? Explain yourself," said " Aunt Betsy," in that authoritative tone which she had all her life employed in address- ing her niece. " I will explain if you wish," Margaret an- swered ; " but I'd rather spare you the ex- planation." " I insist upon knowing what you mean," the elder woman unwisely replied. " Very well, then ; you shall hear. In addi- tion to the wrong you have done me, wrecking my life and placing me in a grievously false position; in addition to the wrong you have done to another, you have been guilty of the crime of robbing the United States mails, AT THE OAKS 365 Aunt Betsy, and as the minimum penalty of that crime is a long term in prison, I do not think it wise of you to suggest appeals in this case. It will be better, I think, to accept my decision as final." The old lady rose in wrath, alarm, indig- nation and all the other emotions of an exci- ting sort, and demanded to know what her niece meant by such an accusation of infamy. At the same time Colonel Conway exclaimed : " Oh, daughter, daughter, you do not mean what you say. Take it back! You are ex- cited. You are beside yourself ! " " I am not in the least excited," the young woman answered. " I did not wish or intend to mention that aspect of the matter, but Aunt Betsy insisted upon it. I have no desire to emphasize it or to insist upon it, if only my authority as mistress at The Oaks is properly recognized. As your daughter, Father, I am entitled to that dignity which you yourself have been fond of insisting upon ; and as your daughter I intend to exercise the authority and maintain the dignity of that position so long as you permit me to hold it. When you cease 366 WESTOVER OF WANALAH to permit that, I shall leave The Oaks and go to my own plantation of Tye, which my mother left me. You must remember that I am a grown woman of twenty-one, and that I am not a dependent upon anybody." " Now, daughter," interrupted Colonel Con- way with affection, " you are talking nonsense. You know that you are mistress of The Oaks, and " " That is quite all I am insisting upon. As mistress of The Oaks I do not intend to have my authority questioned or my affairs inter- fered with by anybody. I'm sorry I have this occasion to assert myself, but the circumstances are not of my making." " But what do you mean, you you you ill-regulated girl, in charging me with a crime ? " almost shrieked the elder woman as she confronted her niece in an attitude that suggested a desire to shake her. "What do you mean ? What do you mean ? " " You'd better let that phase of the affair drop, Aunt Betsy," answered the girl with a calm that additionally exasperated her aunt. " No, I will not let it drop. You have ut- IT WILL, BE BETTER, I THINK, TO ACCEPT MY DECISION AS FINAL.' Page 365. AT THE OAKS 367 tered an accusation that I cannot and will not let pass. You must say what you meant by it." " I will say it if you insist," answered Mar- garet, still preserving her exasperating calm. " I do insist. I will not rest under such an accusation. Go on ! Tell me what you meant." " I will," said Margaret. " You remember that five years ago an attempt was made to open our mail bag in some political interest. Father appealed to the Government for its protection, and from that day to this it has gone back and forth under a United States mail lock. In tampering with its contents in abstracting from it letters addressed to me, you I don't like to put the matter into plain words. Let me say instead that you violated the law which renders the United States mail sacred. I'm sorry I have had to call your attention to such a matter, but you forced the necessity upon me." By this time it was necessary to summon maids and get " Aunt Betsy " back to bed again, genuinely ill this time. It was not until she was made as comfort- able as circumstances permitted, that Colonel 3 68 WESTOVER OF WANALAH Conway and his daughter returned to the library and resumed their conversation. " Now, daughter," said the old soldier, " I am ready to do anything to right this wrong anything, of course, that will not compro- mise your aunt." " Father," responded the girl with a world of tenderness in her voice, " you ought not to have anything to do in the matter. It is Aunt Betsy who has wrought all the mischief. She has deceived you; she has deceived me; she has deceived Mr. Westover. It should be her duty, not yours, to undo the wrong she has done." " But, my dear daughter, how can she ? She is a woman." " I know that, Father, and I know our Vir- ginian view of such things. But it is all wrong. You men of Virginia have granted to us women a license that ought not to be. If one of us utters a slander, you hold your- selves responsible for it even unto death. If one of us lies it isn't a ladylike term, I know, but it is what I mean if one of us lies you hold yourselves bound to maintain the AT THE OAKS 369 lie and answer for it, even at the pistol's point. You Virginia gentlemen insist upon only one point of honor for women. So long as we observe that, we may lie and cheat and slander at will and you sustain us in it. It is all wrong. If a woman does mischief, she should herself atone for it. In this case it is Aunt Betsy who has wrought the wrong and it is Aunt Betsy who should undo it." " But how can she, dear? " " By going to Mr. Westover, or writing to him, and saying frankly : ' I robbed the post bag of your letters to Margaret and her letters to you.' That is what a brave man would do. Why should not a brave woman do the same ? " " But, daughter, your aunt is a lady and excessively sensitive." " She forgot to be a lady when she did this infamous thing, and her sensitiveness is mainly a pretence assumed to play upon your chivalry and to deceive you and others. If she were honest in mind, a real, genuine, conscientious sensitiveness would prompt her to make pre- cisely the reparation I have suggested. As she is utterly dishonest and dishonorable in- 370 WESTOVER OF WANALAH stead, I quite understand that no force, moral or physical, could ever compel her to an act of reparation like that." " My dear, you are very hard upon your poor old aunt." " Not at all, Father. Truth is as much an obligation of women as of men. So is courage of the moral sort. But it is idle to expect that after generations in which you gentlemen of Virginia have excused us from all obligations except that of chastity. You have assumed our protection, and you have met that obliga- tion bravely ; but well, I have thought much on that subject, and what I have thought is of no consequence. What are you going to do by way of righting the wrong Aunt Betsy has done, as you excuse her from the obligation of herself righting it? " " I'll do anything you suggest anything that will not compromise your aunt. You see I must protect her." " I understand. The one who has wrought the wrong must be spared the consequences. The victims of it must bear them. I have noth- ing whatever to suggest, Father." AT THE OAKS 371 And with that she advanced, kissed him tenderly, said : " Poor, dear old Dad ! " and quietly left the room. Then it was that Colonel Conway set him- self to satisfy his daughter's conscience and his own by writing a letter to Boyd Westover. Then it was that, after repeated failures, he compromised with his conscience by writing to Dr. Carley Farnsworth instead. Then it was that under Dr. Carley Farns- worth's instructions Millicent Danvers sent Colonel Conway and Margaret to bed. " Aunt Betsy " was already sleeping the sleep of one who feels that she has adroitly escaped uncomfortable consequences. XXXI A SUNSET INTERVIEW THE days were growing short, and so when Jack Towns approached The Oaks that afternoon, the sun was set- ting and Millicent was watching it from a little hilltop just beyond the orchard and perhaps half a mile from the house. Jack came upon her there and was fascinated with the picture she presented. With her head bare and her hair in some disorder as a result of facing the west wind too fearlessly, she wore upon her shoulders a voluminous mass of fleecy knitted work known in those days as a " nubia," or, by those who preferred good English to very bad dog-Latin, a " cloud." As he approached from the east he saw her figure silhouetted against the glowing western sky, and the grace of it fascinated him. It was like a great picture suggesting one of Tur- 372 A SUNSET INTERVIEW 373 ner's interpretations of Venice, with an ab- sorbing human interest added to the glow and glory of it. For to Jack Towns the girl who turned to greet him as he rode up was a very absorbing human interest indeed. The hour he had passed in converse with her on the day before, had left him with a glamor upon him which even his jaunty indifference to permanent im- pressions could not dismiss. He had been moved to make this special visit to The Oaks by an irresistible desire to see more of a young woman whose superiority of mind and charac- ter was strongly impressed upon him, and whose very peculiarities mainly due to dif- ferences of environment and education were strangely appealing to his imagination. Upon approaching her there upon the little, sun illumined hilltop, he dismounted, and, with bridle rein over his arm, joined her in admi- ration of the glowing sunset. After the first greetings were over she said : " Do you know, Mr. Towns, I think that is where your chivalry comes from?" And as she said it, she waved her hand toward the 374 WESTOVER OF WANALAH horizon with its gold and purple, intermingled with pinks and blues and exquisite greens that the dyer's art has never matched. " I mean," she added without waiting to be asked for an explanation, " that you Virgin- ians are inspired with gentleness and chivalry by the quality of the climate in which you live, and that your sunsets give color to your imag- inings of courage, optimism, and high en- deavor." " I doff my hat in acknowledgement of the double compliment," he said, " to our climate and to our manhood. But surely fine sunsets are not our exclusive possession. You must have such at the North ? " " Sometimes not often. They are so rare indeed that we make note of them and recall them afterwards as pleasant memories." " But isn't that because you live in a large city where the vapors of industry cloud the sky and shut out nature's displays ? " " I do not live in a large city, Mr. Towns, except for the two or three worst months of the year, and not always even then. I live on the ' blue hills of Milton/ My father has a HE DISMOUNTED, AND, WITH HIS BRIDLE REIN OVER HIS ARM, JOINED HER. Page 373. A SUNSET INTERVIEW 375 country place there, and since he has grown old enough to relax a little in his business en- terprises, we live there almost all the year round. So you see I know our climate quite irrespective of the factory chimneys and their fumes. The sunset is dying out. I don't like to see the death of beauty or grandeur or glory of any kind. Let's turn our faces toward the house." As they turned Jack Towns in his own mind formulated his impressions in this wise: " Here is a young woman who can think for herself and without any regard whatever for the conventions of thought; she is inspired with an appreciation of truth and beauty, which is only another way of saying that she is a poet in her soul thank God she is not a poet in the magazines, for that would be dreadful. She has common sense, too, in an uncommon abundance. Jack Towns, you are falling in love in a way you never dreamed of be- fore, and the fact doesn't alarm you in the least." As his meditations kept him silent for a longer time than is usual when youth and 376 WESTOVER OF WANALAH beauty walk together in the gloaming, Millicent was the first to speak. " I wish you could know our ' blue hills of Milton.' They have some attractions of their own." " They certainly have," he answered. " I know them at least in a small way." "Why, how did that come about?" she asked in surprise. " I understood you to say you were never in Boston but once." " * And that same is thrue for you,' as my Irish office attendant would say. I was never in Boston until a few weeks ago, when I went thither to arrange some financial affairs for a client of mine " he did not mention West- over's name. " I had some negotiations with a banking firm there, and the head of the estab- lishment was exceedingly courteous to me. He took me to his country place to spend the Sun- day. By a curious coincidence, his surname is the same as yours Danvers. He's the head of the banking house of Danvers, Appleton and Went worth. I wonder if by any chance he's a relative of yours. At any rate he deserves to be. For a more courtly gentleman I have A SUNSET INTERVIEW 377 never met. He's the sort of educated, refined, polished, considerate person that only three States in this Union produce, so far as I have been able to observe." " Which are the three States, please, - that is to say, if you are free to designate them?" " Massachusetts, Virginia, and South Caro- lina. Mind, I don't say that such gentlemen are not found in other States. It is only that those of them whom I have personally met have happened to be sons of one or other of the three States mentioned." " I suppose there is a reason for that," an- swered Millicent. " What is it? " he inquired in answer. " They are the three oldest commonwealths," she answered, " and the three most conserva- tive. You have a saying here in Virginia a true saying, I think that ' it takes three generations to make a gentleman.' The three States you have named have lived their own lives for a good many more than three genera- tions, and so they have had time to make gen- tlemen: Still " 378 WESTOVER OF WANALAH She did not continue her sentence, till Towns urged her to do so. Then she said : " I was going to say that about the most perfect gentleman I ever met was Jake Green- field, a Vermonter, without education beyond what he called the ' rujimenteries,' whom I met in the Rocky Mountains." " Tell me about him," implored Jack, saying nothing of his own acquaintance with Jake, who had been his companion and shrewd ad- viser during his stay in the Rocky Mountains in Boyd Westover's interest. " Tell me about him." " I will," she answered. " I am always pleased to celebrate his virtues. Jake is igno- rant, unfamiliar with the ways of society, and wholly unformed as to his manners, but he is instinctively a gentleman. He habitually eats with his knife a dirk-like thing that he car- ries in his belt. He has no hesitation about sitting at table and picking his teeth with a fork. It never occurs to him to apologize for lighting his pipe at table or quitting the com- pany before the others have done. None of the conventions of civilized life have dawned A SUNSET INTERVIEW 379 upon his intelligence as matters worthy of at- tention. When I knew him, if a single pie sat before him he would carefully count noses and divide it equally; but if the table were well dotted with pies he would seize upon the one nearest him and devour it from his hand with- out enlisting the services of knife or fork in aid of the process. " I met him in the Rocky Mountains where my father had some mining interests, and I was a good deal distressed and disgusted by his lack of manners until I came to know the real man who lived under so rough an exte- rior." " How did that come about ? Tell me, please," said Jack Towns as he handed his companion up the two or three steps that led to the porch. " It was a rather thrilling experience," she answered, " at least in its beginning. I was only a girl then of eighteen or nineteen. I had gone to the Rockies with my father for the sake of * roughing it/ as they say out there, and enjoying the out-of-door life. I was in the habit of riding alone, anywhere I pleased, 380 WESTOVER OF WANALAH for the region was a wilderness and nobody lived in it except a few surface miners. One day I rode away till I came to a little stream, a few inches deep, which was crossed by a ford. The road to and from the stream had been cut by nature or by man, through bluff banks, twenty feet high. I crossed the stream, scarcely wetting the fetlocks of my horse. I rode up through the cut on the other side to the high ground above, and thence on through a delightfully wild region, until presently it began to rain in that sudden and torrential way that belongs to the Rocky Mountains. I turned my horse about and trotted him some- what hurriedly toward the ford I had crossed. When I got there I found the trickling little brook swollen to a mountain torrent, but I did not recognize the change as a matter of consequence. I saw that the water had risen, but to me that meant only that where I had had to make my horse wade fetlock deep before, I must make him wade knee deep now. I pushed him into the stream and almost instantly he was swept from his footing. The depth required swimming, and the onrush of the waters was A SUNSET INTERVIEW 381 so great that swimming across the stream was impossible. The horse made a gallant struggle to reach the other side within the roadway space, but he was swept away down stream. I was afloat on his back, imprisoned as it were between two perpendicular bluffs that offered no point of possible landing or rescue. " Just as I fully realized my situation Jake Greenfield, mounted upon a strong horse, ap- peared on the bank above. " ' Hold on for your life ! ' he cried to me, * an' I'll be with you in half a minute/ With that he turned his horse's head and rode away for thirty or forty paces. Then, suddenly turn- ing about, he rode straight toward the bluff, digging spurs into his horse's flanks at every step, and lashing his rumps with a black snake whip by way of making sure that he should not refuse the leap. A moment later there was a splash and a struggle in the water. Jake Greenfield's horse had leaped into the stream from the bluff twenty feet or more above, with Jake Greenfield on his back, and the two had sunk beneath the flood within a few feet of me as I clung to my horse. 382 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " After a few moments both came to the sur- face, and the snortings of the horse indicated that his breathing capacity was impaired. By way of sparing him Jake slipped off the saddle and took hold of a stirrup strap as a towing line. But his poor horse's powers were ex- hausted and he could sustain himself no longer. He gave up the struggle and sank beneath the flood, a martyr to the duty he owed to his master man. Pardon me, I'm making a long story of this, but the details interest me so." " They interest me, too," quickly responded her companion. " You cannot narrate them in too minute detail to please me. I could listen all night to the story Go on, please." " Well, Jake continued to swim until pres- ently he caught my horse's tail and used it as a means of keeping up with me. Then he said: " ' Turn him to the right ! Keep close in shore. There's a little break in the bluffs just ahead, and may be we can make it! More to the right! Closer in shore! There! There's the break. Make him catch bottom there if A SUNSET INTERVIEW 383 you can.' You see, Mr. Towns, every word spoken at that time was burned into my mem- ory, and I recall every detail as vividly as if the thing had happened yesterday, or even to- day. " I succeeded in ' beaching ' my horse at that little break in the bank. It was literally like beaching him, for no sooner had he taken three or four steps through shoaling water toward the land, than he lay down, utterly exhausted." Here the girl stopped in her narrative, as if it had been done. Jack Towns had no mind thus to lose the climax. " You haven't told me yet in what way Jake proved himself a gentleman." :< That is true," she answered, " and it was that that I set out to tell you. Somehow hero- ism always appeals to me, and in telling you of Jake's heroism I forgot the other end of the story. I was soaked through, of course, and chilled to the bone. So Jake took me by the arm he wanted to take me on his back but I wouldn't let him and hurried me to one of his cabins. You see, as caretaker of 384 WESTOVER OF WANALAH the mining lands, he had several cabins, scat- tered about over them. He told me there was a motherly old squaw there who would look after me, but when we got there the squaw, after the manner of her race, had wandered away somewhere and was not likely to return. Jake built a big fire in the cabin chimney, and then went outside, telling me to ' shuck off them soakin' clothes ' and wrap myself up in the quilts that covered the sole orderly bed in the place. As I did so I bethought me of the conventionalities, and when Jake came back to cook my supper and dry my clothes, I protested that I could not consent to stay there alone, and without even a squaw to sustain my dignity. I simply must go to my father, I said, and when he objected that the mountain torrent lay be- tween and was by this time twenty-fold fiercer in its fury than when I had dared it before, I declared that it made no difference ; that at all hazards I must make my way to my father's quarters that night. By way of making the matter impersonal and in that way sparing his feelings, I dwelt upon the anxiety my father must feel for me. I think Jake understood my A SUNSET INTERVIEW 385 real objection to the situation. Indeed I know he did, for by way of reply he said : " ' Ef you only could rest quiet here an' not worrit overmuch, I've been a-plannin' to go up the mountain to where the stream don't 'mount to nothin', an 1 cross it an' go down an' tell Mr. Danvers as how you is safe an' sound never- theless of your bein' tired out an' chilly an' all that. Ef you kin spare me, I'd like to do that.' " Not at all realizing the fact that that tor- rent had its beginning twenty miles away and in mountains so precipitous that no man could scale them, I gave eager consent to his pro- posal, and after preparing such supper as he could for me, the devoted fellow no, the chivalric gentleman, I mean set forth in the torrential rain. I learned afterwards that he toiled up the stream for six miles, plunged into it and the darkness, breasted his way across it as it swept him down its resistless current, and with difficulty effected a landing on the oppo- site side four miles below his starting point. Thence he trudged through the darkness and the rain to my father's quarters, where rescue parties were forming to hunt for me. That's 3 86 WESTOVER OF WANALAH the story. Don't you agree with me that Jake's a gentleman in the true sense of the word ? " " All that is what I should have expected of Jake," answered the young man. " You see I've just returned from that region, and dur- ing my stay there I was closely associated with him/' The girl uttered a little exclamation of as- tonishment; then, with that perfect self-pos- session which Jack Towns had found to be the most fascinating thing about her, she added : " Confidence deserves confidence in return, and before you go," for Jack had risen and the two were advancing toward his restless, pawing horse, " it seems only fair to tell you that what you have said of the Boston banker who entertained you over Sunday has been very gratifying to me, for the reason that the gentleman concerned is my father, and the house you found so hospitable is my home. I sincerely hope you'll have other occasions to visit us there." Jack's instant thought was : " I'll make the occasions, and I'll do it pretty soon too," but he confined his speech to A SUNSET INTERVIEW 387 the courtesies of the moment, and a minute later he was riding at half speed toward Wana- lah, wondering if his absence had kept supper waiting, and not caring in the least whether it had done so or not. XXXII WHAT HAPPENED AT FIGHTING CREEK IN Virginia in the late fifties there was no question of principle or policy or anything else at issue between the Whig and Demo- cratic parties. Even in national politics there was none. The Whigs were supposed to represent tariff protection and internal im- provements. The Democrats stood for free trade and sailors' rights, but neither the one nor the other of these cries represented anything vital, any policy that was pending. In Virginia the instinct of self-preservation, awakened by hostility at the North to the in- stitution of slavery, had stimulated both par- ties to an intemperate, uncompromising, re- lentless advocacy of slavery as a system right in itself, a thing that nobody really believed, and whenever Whig and Democrat met in debate, the only question between them was 388 AT FIGHTING CREEK 389 which could go to the greatest extreme in that direction. There were the old antagonisms between the two parties. They were still re- membered with bitterness, and men grew ex- cited and even violent in their discussion ; but nobody on either side could have said what they meant, for the sufficient reason that they meant just nothing at all. There was a new, Free Soil party rapidly gaining strength at the North, and by both Whigs and Democrats in Virginia that party was regarded as the com- mon enemy, to be fought to the death. But while waiting for that, the Whigs and Demo- crats fought each other for precedence and place. Political speaking under such conditions was apt to be uninteresting to others than the speak- ers, unless it involved something of accidental and unusual moment. If any speaker under the excitement of perfervid oratory happened to use terms which his adversary could con- strue to be offensive to himself, there was in- stantly awakened the interest that pertains to a quarrel which may presently ripen into a duel or a street fight. 390 WESTOVER OF WANALAH Nothing of that kind occurred at Fighting Creek on the day after Jack Towns's visit to Millicent, but some other things occurred that gave peculiar interest to the occasion. Carley Farnsworth read from the platform the note in which Colonel Conway pledged himself to the support of Westover's nomination. That in itself was a staggering blow to Webb's candi- dacy. As Foggy, whose phrases were apt to be picturesque, put the matter : " It knocks the underpinnin' out of our cam- paign, and it looks to me, Webb, as if it might knock the stuffin' out'n you." But staggering as the announcement was, there was far worse to come. When Sam Butler, the Democratic candidate for Senator, had emptied his mind and mouth of all the florid rhetorical phrases he had sat up of nights to construct, he brought a matter of practical political importance to the front. " I have endeavored to show you, my fellow citizens, that Democratic principles ought to triumph in this election; but neither you nor I can fail to see that there is no chance of that in this senatorial district. After consultation AT FIGHTING CREEK 391 with my friends and political advisers, I have decided that the issue lies solely between the regular and the independent Whig candidates ; and as between these two I think no Democrat can hesitate to choose Mr. Boyd Westover as the fittest man to represent us. I therefore re- sign my own candidacy in Mr. Westover's behalf, and I urge all my friends, all loyal Democrats in the district, to vote for him. I have been moved to this decision by impulses of patriotism and by a sense of duty to the dis- trict and to my fellow citizens." This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, and for a full minute the crowd stood paralyzed with astonishment. Then Butler's most active supporter by prearrangement of course leaped to the platform and cried out : " Friends, Democrats, patriots ! It occurs to me that our party in this county has named no candidate for the lower house of the Legisla- ture. In order that the Democratic vote shall not be completely unrecorded, I move that we now name Samuel Butler, Esq., for that hon- orable place. His candidacy for that will in no way interfere with his self-sacrificing decision 392 WESTOVER OF WANALAH to take himself out of the senatorial campaign. I ask all Democrats here present to gather in the prize barn across the road, to consider this suggestion." A " prize barn " was one in which there were appliances for pressing leaf tobacco into hogsheads. Ten minutes later it was announced that the late Democratic candidate for Senator had been unanimously nominated for the House of Delegates. " Now I know," said Carley Farnsworth to himself, " what Edgar Coffey's message from Judy to Butler meant. It's the shrewdest bit of play I ever heard of. By securing his with- drawal from the senatorial contest, the Queen of the Mountains has enormously swelled Boyd's planter vote. And by way of accom- plishing that she has promised the mountain vote to Butler for the lower office, and it will elect him beyond a doubt. On the whole, I reckon I won't explain the matter to West- over. He's quixotic, and he knows nothing of politics. But, by Jove, it was a master stroke on Judy's part." AT FIGHTING CREEK 393 That night when Edgar Coffey made his report to Judy, telling her of the adroit and graceful way in which the program had been carried out by Butler, her comment was : " Some folks has more sense'n you'd think." When he had told her of the confidence with which Webb was reckoning upon the mountain vote to offset the loss, she added : " An' some folks ain't got the sense the law allows 'em." But if Webb had less political sense " than the law allowed him," there were certain of his followers who were better endowed. Foggy, in particular, realized the situation, and, by way of meeting it, summoned Webb and a dozen or so of his immediate supporters to a conference in the hostelry of a neighboring county seat. There Foggy laid down the law to the opti- mistic candidate. " These here two happenings," he said, " mean trouble. All the swell Whig planters who were holding back because of Colonel Con- way's stand will now vote for Westover, and use their influence to make their overseers and 394 WESTOVER OF WANALAH others do the same. Every Democrat in the district will vote for him as a matter of course. They want to beat the regular Whig nominee, and now that they haven't a candidate of their own, they'll vote for Westover. Now what have we got to meet all this with? " Webb suggested the mountain vote, and Foggy instantly replied: " So far as I can see, we ain't got no mort- gage on that, and if we are to carry it we've got to go after it." So they went on discussing the situation, ending by ordering a vigorous campaign in the mountains with Webb for leader and Judy Peters as the Dominant Power to be ap- proached with negotiations. When Jack Towns heard of this program, he went to Carley Farnsworth in some alarm, to suggest some counter move. " I am conducting this campaign," answered the little doctor, " and I am in confidential re- lations with Judy. I'll tell you, Jack, but you must keep the secret, that it was Judy herself who conceived and planned and organized Boyd's candidacy. She made one of the best AT FIGHTING CREEK 395 diagnoses I ever heard of in his case, and her therapeutics is matchless. Let her alone. She has made up her mind to elect Westover with such a majority as shall be convincing even to him, and she will do it you may be sure. If she wants to see any of us she'll have Edgar Coffey whisper a hint of her desire into our ears. Until she does that we mustn't interfere. She might resent it as a reflection on her skill in political management. Now let me drop a hint into your ear. I said just now that I was managing this campaign. That was a vain- glorious boast. I didn't persuade Butler to re- tire in Westover's favor, but somebody ar- ranged that. Have you any idea who it was? And if at the end of the campaign Butler should find himself elected to the lower house of the Legislature by virtue of the entire moun- tain vote added to the regular Democratic poll down here, do you imagine for an instant that the result would take him by surprise? Now keep mum about all these things. I am only making suggestions by way of preventing you from making mistakes. Don't say a word to Boyd about it." XXXIII CONSPIRACIES JACK TOWNS was particularly pleased with the reassurance that Farnsworth gave him respecting the campaign. It set him free. In his loyalty to Boyd Westover he would have ridden all night and all day in aid of his friend's election; but he greatly pre- ferred to go to Dr. Carver's and dance all night with Millicent. In fact he did very nearly that. He put his name down on her card for every set that wasn't taken in advance, and he danced all of them but three or four which she elected to " sit out." If she had been accompanied by a chaperon, she would have had to restrict Mr. Towns's allowance of sets, but chaperons were not deemed necessary for well-bred young women in Virginia. Such young women were supposed to know how to behave properly, and 396 CONSPIRACIES 397 as for protection, was not the entire adult male population ready and eager to render it upon occasion ? Moreover, Jack Towns did not in fact secure an undue proportion of Millicent's sets, for the reason that all the young men in the company, who managed to get possession of her card in time, put their names on it, for one dance each. She rigidly restricted them to one. Perhaps she considered Jack. But she put no restric- tion on Jack Towns in the matter, and Jack was so ill-mannered in his infatuation that he asked no other young woman for her card, ex- cept in the case of Charlotte Deane. Char- lotte was no longer as young as she could have wished, and s}ie was distinctly not beautiful or brilliant. So Jack, observing that there were no throngs of young men about her, asked for her card and put his name down for two dances. For the rest, he devoted his attention to Mil- licent Danvers until everybody was set wonder- ing if at last Jack Towns had really and truly fallen in love. The same question arose in Jack's own mind, but he, at least, was able to 398 WESTOVER OF WANALAH answer it. " Yes," he admitted to himself, " I have had many fleeting fancies before, but none that resembled this. I am determined to win Millicent Danvers if devotion can accomplish it. I never felt in that way before. Always I have felt, that while one young woman pleased me, there were others who might be equally pleasing. I don't feel so now. It is Millicent Danvers now, or nobody with me. I wonder what she will think of my big, disorderly bach- elor establishment if she ever consents to be its mistress ? I'll wager something handsome that she'll well, it will be time enough to specu- late on that when I have won her. By the way, she would say that differently ' when I shall have won her/ Anyhow my present task is to win her. If I do that she will take care of the rest. And after all a bachelor es- tablishment isn't a home. Just think of the difference between my big house, where every- thing is in chaos, and that home of hers among the blue hills of Milton." So he went on, thinking, wondering, specu- lating, so long as she was fulfilling an engage- ment to dance with somebody else whom he CONSPIRACIES 399 hated and held in unmerited contempt without any assignable reason. And when his own turn came and he danced with her, his fancies floated before his eyes as a dream pervades the mind, a dream that so rejoices as to make of waking a calamity. Millicent did well whatever she did at all. In dancing with her, Jack felt that she simply lifted herself half an inch or so from the floor and floated about without again touching it. It was a delight to dance with her, as every young man who had enjoyed the experience stood ready to testify, but Jack Towns rejoiced even more in " sitting out " a set. For then, with her arm in his he could promenade the porches, or the pair could stroll out into the grounds where common prudence and courtesy required him frequently to readjust the wrap- pings that protected her otherwise bare arms and shoulders, or, better still, he could seek out a secluded nook in the porch or else- where, where they two might talk of things that held interest for both of them in com- mon. It was during one of these confabs, when 400 WESTOVER OF WANALAH they sat out two dances in succession, that Jack Towns invited himself to Boston and to Millicent's home in the blue hills of Milton. It came about in this way. Jack was really and earnestly in love, for the first time in his life, and the impulse to tell Millicent so was well nigh irresistible. But Jack was a Vir- ginian, and he recognized the right of a young woman to be courted in her own home. He restrained his impulse of speech, therefore, so far as open avowals were concerned, but his utterances, short of a declaration, were such as to leave the young woman in no doubt as to his attitude and purpose. When she spoke of her prospective home- going, he asked, a little eagerly perhaps, when that was to occur. She answered : " It must be very soon as soon as I shall have done a duty that rests upon me. I'm sorry Mr. Boyd Westover isn't here to-night. He told me, when I met him casually this afternoon, that he was obliged to return to Wanalah." " I suppose he was," answered Jack Towns in a peculiarly inscrutable tone that he adopted CONSPIRACIES 401 upon occasion. " But why? Do you particu- larly want to see him ? " ' Yes, not only particularly but perempto- rily. It is a part of the duty I have set myself. I cannot go back to Boston till I do." "I see," he answered. "If you like I'll call at The Oaks and ask you to ride with me. We can ride over to Wanalah, and I'll see to it that he shall be there at the time." " Oh, no, no, no ! That would never do. There are reasons which I cannot explain, if you'll excuse me. I must meet Mr. Westover casually, quite by accident as it were." " Very well, then," answered Jack, with all the confidence he was accustomed to assume at a court trial when his case was an uncertain one. " I'll arrange the accident and create the 1 casualty.' You have only to respond favor- ably to the invitations you receive during the next few days. I'll take care of the rest." There was a certain masterful self-confidence in his words and tone that was somehow ex- ceedingly pleasing to Millicent. She felt that Jack Towns was a man of limitless resource, a man accustomed to do things and to get 402 WESTOVER OF WANALAH others to do things, a man to be leant upon with confidence, and the feeling was altogether comforting. The thought that floated vaguely through her mind, though she shrank from formulating it, was that if ever Jack Towns should love a woman, that woman would be exceedingly comfortable in the certainty that his care of her would be always tenderly solic- itous in its impulse, aggressively masterful in its manifestation, and measurelessly ingenious in its devices of safety for her against every ill. If she had permitted her thought to frame itself, as she resolutely refused to do, it would have been to the effect that he was a man into whose arms the woman he loved might throw herself in full assurance of a welcome and in trustful confidence of all-loving, all-daring pro- tection. She did not let the thought formulate itself, but it floated nebulously in her mind, which was perhaps even more dangerous if indeed there was any danger involved. In answer to his words she said : " You are certainly very good. I'll leave it to you to arrange for me, and as soon as I know definitely that my duty is done, I shall CONSPIRACIES 403 go back to Boston, or at least as soon after that as my brother can come down here to es- cort me. You know the journey is a trying one." ' Yes, I know. But why trouble your brother needlessly? I shall be obliged to go to Boston sometime soon, and if you permit, I shall be glad to be your escort." Jack was not fibbing. It is true that he had no business that required him to visit Boston, and yet he really felt it necessary for him to go thither. He had fully decided to ask Milli- cent Danvers to become his wife, and he must go to Boston for that. Millicent was right in saying that the jour- ney was a trying one. In that infant age of railroad service -the trip from Richmond to Boston involved eight or ten changes of cars, some of them at midnight. There were no sleeping cars, no parlor cars, no dining cars, no buffet cars nothing in fact but rattletrap coaches, linked together with chains and pins and controlled only by hand brakes. No car ran through, or further than its own railway terminus. The connections were never close, 404 WESTOVER OF WANALAH and for the waiting times between there were no accommodations other than those which an open and often rain-drenched railway platform afforded. But there was the question of chaperonage to be considered. Boston notions on that sub- ject were different from Virginia notions. In Virginia it was held that a man in escort of a woman was in honor bound to protect her not only against all others but against himself as well. He must not, under such circumstances, permit his conversation even remotely to ap- proach the confines of courtship. He must maintain, from beginning to end of the escort- ing, the attitude of one performing a duty with absolutely unemotional and impersonal temper. The man escorting was supposed to be a gen- tleman who would suffer no harm to come to the woman under his escort, even if his life should be the forfeit. But Jack Towns understood the difference between Northern and Southern manners in that respect, and so, to his offer of escort, he promptly added : " My good old negro Mammy will go with CONSPIRACIES 405 you, of course. She'll see that you have all the comforts that are possible on such a trip." " But if you take her to Massachusetts she will be free, will she not? " asked Millicent. " Free ? Yes. She is free now to do as she pleases, and she regulates me with the high hand, just as she did when I was a baby. Why she even dominates my dress. Not long ago I came to breakfast with a blue cravat on, and she made me change it on the ground that I had a murder case to defend that day and she thought black would be more appropriate. When I get ready to go to the club in the after- noon, she inspects me, and if any detail of my costume fails to meet the exigent requirements of her code, I have to make a change, no mat- ter how hurried I am. Oh, she's free. Why, she took away the breakfast I had ordered the cook to prepare for me the other day be- cause it included fried eggs, and she was per- suaded that fried eggs didn't agree with me. She is absolute mistress in my establishment, and every darkey there recognizes the fact. Her authority is supreme ; mine is utterly sub- ordinate. If I want any change made in the 4 o6 WESTOVER OF WANALAH houehold arrangements, I must appeal to her to order it. Fortunately she always gives the order because she still regards me as her ' precious chile,' for whom everything must be done, and whose uttermost whim is to be grati- fied, regardless of the convenience of other folk, high or low." " But she is a slave," answered Millicent, " and " " In a way, I suppose she is," he interrupted, " but all the eloquence of all the orators of Boston could not convince her that her condi- tion in life could be improved. She is absolute mistress of an establishment and of the poor fellow who owns it. She has everything that her heart desires, everything that her imagi- nation can conjure, up as a want. Her present is provided for, and her old age is secure. I don't know any device of freedom that can match that." " Neither do I," Millicent answered ; " but I cannot approve slavery as an institution. I am prejudiced, perhaps, but " " I am not prejudiced," he answered, " but I thoroughly agree with your dislike of slavery CONSPIRACIES 407 as an institution. All our great Virginians, Thomas Jefferson, John Randolph, George Wythe, Henry Clay, and the rest, have re- garded the institution as an inherited evil to be got rid of in any way that might be prac- ticable, in any way that might give to the ne- groes a chance to become self-supporting citi- zens. Thomas Jefferson put the Virginian thought into an apt phrase when he said that in freeing the negroes we must not ' arm them with freedom and a dagger.' He might have added, as many Virginians have done in prac- tice, that we must arm them with a hoe and a plow." " I see," she said, " and history teaches us that Virginia has done more for the restriction of slavery than any other State. It was in her cession of the Northwest territory that a clause was written forever excluding slavery from that region; and we cannot forget that in the convention which framed the constitution, the Virginia delegates fought vigorously for a pro- vision to stop the African slave trade in the year 1800, and the New England delegates fought to continue it for eight years longer. 4 o8 WESTOVER OF WANALAH I think these things are not understood, and I think I sympathize with your Virginian re- sentment of outside interference by people who do not understand. At any rate I shall carry back to Boston with me a very different im- pression of your attitude from that which I had before. I shall be honored to have you for my escort, Mr. Towns, and delighted to be coddled all the way home by your dear old Mammy." At that moment one of the young men who had secured a place on Millicent's card came to claim his dance, and the conversation was at an end. But Jack Towns had a problem to solve. He had promised to bring Millicent and West- over together without seeming intention, and he did not know how he was to do it. Sud- denly a thought came to him, and, as he had exhausted his claim upon Millicent's dancing card, he took French leave, mounted his mare and set off for Chinquapin Knob, whither Carley Farnsworth had preceded him many hours before. He arrived there about break- fast time and entered at once into negotiations. CONSPIRACIES 409 Carley Farnsworth, as Jack Towns knew, was in close touch with Judy Peters ; for these two friends of Boyd Westover had many con- fidences with respect to the campaign, of which Westover himself knew nothing, and Towns had learned all about Judy's attitude and initia- tive in Boyd's campaign. " Of course Boyd's election is secure," said Jack, as he buttered a slice of the hot break- fast bread; "and now that Butler has with- drawn and Colonel Conway has endorsed his candidacy, his support will include a large ma- jority of the vote down here." " Yes, and that is what Judy and I have been working for. Her influence in the moun- tains, when she gets ready to give the word, will settle the question of election. But Judy is practising psychological therapeutics. She wouldn't recognize the words, but they repre- sent the facts. Her sole interest in this thing is to brace Boyd up by showing him that his fellow men believe in him. To that end she has planned to secure as heavy a vote for him as possible down here among the planter peo- ple. To that end she has held back all intima- 4 io WESTOVER OF WANALAH tions of her purpose in the mountains. To that end she arranged with Butler to withdraw from the senatorial contest and run for the lower house instead. Of course you under- stand that she means to elect him to that." " No, does she ? " asked Towns in aston- ishment. " I hadn't thought of that. How astonishing ! " " Well, it is only a conjecture of mine, but it is what is going to happen. Judy always pays her debts to the last cent. In this case, by his own withdrawal Butler throws every Democratic vote in the district to Boyd, and you don't imagine, do you, that he did that without prospect of a recompense? Of course Judy negotiated it, and it is my conjecture that the price she is to pay is the mountain vote for Butler's election to the House of Delegates, which, with the Democratic vote down here, will elect him. Of course I know nothing about the matter. It is only that I can see through a millstone if there is a hole in it. And besides I know Judy's ways. She doesn't care a fig for this election except to make it serve her purpose of setting Boyd up again CONSPIRACIES 411 and making him feel that he is Westover of Wanalah." "I see," answered Jack; " and the old woman would do anything in reason, I sup- pose, to aid in the accomplishment of that purpose? " " Anything in reason ? Yes. And anything out of reason too. What is it you have in mind?" " Well, I want Judy to give a frolic of some kind, and I'll take Miss Danvers to it. Can you arrange that? " " Easily, if it is likely to benefit Boyd. But I don't see " " Of course you don't. But I tell you it will do more for his rejuvenation than would his unanimous election to the Senate. Of course he must be there, and so must Miss Danvers. I will take care of the rest." "What is it you're up to, Jack?" asked Farnsworth in not unnatural curiosity. " I shall not tell you, except that I want Miss Danvers and Boyd Westover to meet casually. Besides, Miss Danvers is an inter- ested and sympathetic student of Virginia life, 4 i2 WESTOVER OF W ANAL AH and I want to show her the mountain side of it before she goes back to Boston. How soon can you arrange the thing, Carley? " " Well, let's see. Edgar Coffey, who is not supposed to know me by sight or by name is to be here to-night. He will see Judy to- morrow, some time, and deliver my messages about Butler's withdrawal and the rest of it. Will next Saturday do for the party ? " " Yes, if you can arrange it so soon." " Judy does things promptly, when she is minded to do them at all, and in this case she is sure to be so minded. You may safely in- vite Miss Danvers to be one of the guests at next Saturday's frolic. Now you must go to bed. You had a hard day yesterday, and made a brilliant speech, and of course you danced all night with Miss Danvers. Since then you have ridden fifteen miles with a load on your mind. It is time for you to take some rest. The front room in the west wing is prepared for you. Go ! " XXXIV JUDY'S PLANS OF CAMPAIGN THE events at Fighting Creek threw Webb's political advisers into some- thing like panic. They realized that Butler's withdrawal and Colonel Conway's support of Westover's candidacy would give Westover a majority vote in the piedmont sec- tion of the district. If Webb was to win at all, it must be by securing the mountain vote. To that end they sent all their speakers into the mountains, arranging that Webb himself should speak there twice or thrice a day. He was a plausible fellow, persuasive in his ora- tory and capable of verbal acrobatics of a kind likely to be attractive to simple minded audi- ences. But chiefly, W 7 ebb's backers relied upon negotiations with Judy Peters, whose control over the mountain vote of her own county was almost absolute, and whose influence over the 413 4 i4 WESTOVER OF WANALAH vote in other mountain parts of the district was apt to be controlling if she saw fit to ex- ercise it, as in many cases she did not. In the present campaign Judy had given no sign. Apparently she was altogether indiffer- ent. If she should persist in that indifference, then a vigorous speaking campaign might turn the battle; but if she could be induced to take an active interest in Webb's election, the re- sult would be secure. So Webb and some of his most persuasive lieutenants were set to " arouse Judy's inter- est." They visited her immediately after the Fighting Creek disaster, and told her of the danger that impended. She entertained them with glorified fried chicken, stewed shoat, salt pork with cream gravy, apple butter, and limit- less apple jack, but she declined to commit herself. To all their solicitations she replied in carefully equivocal phrases that left them pleased, encouraged, but by no means satis- fied. " The old gal's a-goin' back on us, it's my belief," said Foggy when these results were reported to him. JUDY'S PLANS 415 " You are certainly mistaken," Webb an- swered. " I had a long, confidential talk with her and I came away from the conference with an unshakable conviction that she means to throw her uttermost influence in my favor." " Did she say so in plain words ? " asked Foggy. " No, not precisely that, but she certainly intended to give me that impression. You don't know Judy, or you would understand. She likes to keep one hanging on, as it were. She never commits herself by definite promises. Sometimes she doesn't let even her henchmen know how they are going to vote until the night before election. We can safely trust ourselves in Judy's hands." " Well, I hope you're right, but I'd feel a good deal better," responded Foggy, " if we had a definite promise." No sooner was the visit of the Webb forces over than Judy turned to Sapphira and said : " Go an' hang my red petticoat on the frontmost panel o' the fence, an' leave it there." " Is Edgar Coffey a-comin' long by here this 4 i6 WESTOVER OF WANALAH evenin' ? " asked the girl who had rendered this service on several former occasions. " Don't be too knowin', Sapphiry, an' don't git yourself into a inquirin' frame o' mind. That there red petticoat's enough fer you to think about jest now." About sunset Edgar Coffey came slouching up the road, apparently intending to pass the place without stopping, but when he saw the red petticoat hanging over the top rail of the fence he seemed suddenly to remember that he wanted a drink of water from Judy's glacial spring, with something to temper its coldness perhaps. So he leaped the fence, and passing around the house, toward the spring, con- fronted Judy at her back door. Quite casually she invited him in, and after her hospitable habit she brought forth a decanter of apple jack for his entertainment. " Now drink sparin'-like, Edgar," she said, " 'cause you's got business to ten' to an' I don't want none o' that confusion o' tongues the Bible tells about. But mend your drink an' git over your tired an' then I'll give you your pinters." JUDY'S PLANS 417 Edgar Coffey was habitually a sober man. That is to say he never drank liquor that he must pay for; but when the tipple cost him nothing he was apt to make up for lost time. Judy, whose habit it was to know all about the men she dealt with, knew this, and upon occasion tempered her alcoholic hospitality with prudent reserve. If she had had no mis- sion for Edgar Coffey to fulfil, he might have emptied the bottle without interference on her part. As it was, she withdrew the supply as soon as he had filled his little tumbler for the third time, and as soon as he had emptied it again she addressed herself to the business in hand. " That there William Wilberforce Webb has been here with his gang, to 'lectioneer me," she said. She would have used some oppro- brious epithet with Webb's name if she could have thought of one that seemed to her more scornful than the man's own cumbersome name did. " Yes, I knowed they was a-comin'," an- swered Edgar. " Never mind what you knowed. Listen to 4 i8 WESTOVER OF WANALAH me. You is to go an' git Morris Bryant an 5 Lem Fulcher, an' Wyatt Fletcher an' two or three others, an' 'tend his speakin' meetin's, specially them as don't lay close to here them as is held in the furder parts o' the moun- tings where may be a word from me don't count for as much as it does round here." " Is we to raise a racket an' break up the meetin's?" " No. Yous is to be as meek as Moses, an' ax questions, jest as ef you was doubtful like an' a seekin' information. But you ain't to ax William Wilberforce Webb none o' the questions, 'cause he mout answer 'em an' spile the game. 'Tain't answers we want, but ef- fec's. You is to ax everybody you see, what that feller's wagon-load o' name means. An' you's to wonder, jest curious like whar he got it to tote round. An' then you can sort o' explain your curiosity by sayin' you's heard somewhere's as how William Wilberforce is one o' the biggest abolitionists, an' wonder whether Webb is his nephew or his son, an' if Webb ain't maybe a abolitionist in disguise, a tryin' to git into the Legislatur. Ef any- JUDY'S PLANS 419 body answers your questions an' tries to ex- plain, you can jest say, ' Well, I dunno nothin' 'bout it, only it looks sort o' 'spicious like,' an' go away an' hunt up another crowd. You know how to do a sneakin' thing like that, Edgar, better'n anybody I ever seen, an' the men Fs named fer your feller sinners ain't no slouches at that sort o' thing nuther. You's got no call to argify or say anything as any- body can pick up. You-all's business is jest to ax questions, raise suspicions an' make im- pressions." She chuckled as Edgar winked at her in token of complete comprehension, and as she did so she muttered : " That feller's name'll be the death of him yit." Then she added : " Now you can have another pull at the apple jack, Edgar, an' then you must be off, fer they's a big Webb gatherin' 'pinted fer to- morrer over at Olivet church, an' I want all you fellers to be thar." " Wait a minute, Judy," said the hulking mountaineer as he unlimbered his legs and sat 420 WESTOVER OF WANALAH upright in his chair. " I's got a message fer you from Dr. Carley Farnsworth." "Why didn't you tell me that fust off?" asked Judy almost angrily. " 'Cause 'twouldn't 'a' been polite, like, tell you was done speakin'. ' Ladies fust ' is my motto." " All right. Limber up your tongue an' tell me what 'tis." " Well, he says he'll cover all expenses, but you is to give a very select them was his words a very select Brunswick Stew here next Saturday an' let him bring up a wagon- load o' folks from down below. He says it'll do more'n the 'lection itself for Westover in the way you an' him is a-thinkin' of. I didn't ax him what he meant by that, 'cause he seemed to think you'd know all about it. Oh, he said you must be sure to send a partic'lar invite to Westover. He's to speak over at Cob Station Friday." Judy received the message placidly, and, without comment upon it, hurried Edgar Cof- fey away on his mission. " Well," she said to herself presently, JUDY'S PLANS 421 " Carley Farnsworth ain't no fool ; but I'd give somethin' purty to know how he expects me to make a Brunswick Stew this late in the fall when they ain't a tomato or a ear o' green corn left alive in all the land." Then suddenly she called for her three sons, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and The- onidas, who happened to be at home at the time. " We's a goin' to give a barbecue nex' Sat- urday, right out in the patch o' red oak an' black gum woods. So you's got to git to work. Kill an' dress a shoat an' two lambs an' 'bout a dozen chickens, an' hang 'em in the spring house to cool. Then you three haul out the lumber from the corn crib an' knock up a lot o' tables. No, Daniel Webster an' Henry Clay can ten' to that, while Theonidas digs the roastin' pits an' chops some oak an' hickory wood to roast with. Chop it short, Theonidas, an' split it fine, so's it'll go to coals quick." After she had given these orders and in- structed Sapphira as to duties that must de- volve on her, she busied her mind with other things relating to the affair. First of all she 422 WESTOVER OF WANALAH filled and lighted her pipe and sat down in a big rocking chair to " do a little studyin'." " Very select/' she mused. " That means I mustn't let the fellers drink too much. I can ten' to that, so they ain't no bother. He's a goin' to bring a lot o' stuck-ups with him. That's all right, an' I'll make 'em think we's purty nigh on to bein' sort o' civilized our- selves. Le's see; Burch Wrigley an' Lewis Vance an' Jim Woodson won't do. They'd go round chawin' meat an' a holdin' it in their han's what hain't been washed sence Noah's flood cleaned things up, like. Them fellers ain't to have no invites. I'll send 'em a feed in a bucket instid. " Le' me see ! Jim Wood's a-goin' down to the speakin' at Cob Station, Friday. I'll tell him to tell Boyd to come up here Friday night. Then I'll have him on the ground fer Saturday. Oh say, Judy, I'll send a invite to William Wilberforce Webb ! It'll be good fun to see him when he fin's out what sort o' party I's got, an' oh Jemimy! When he fin's Boyd here ! An' jes' ten days 'fore the 'lection too ! It'll be fun all over the woods ! " JUDY'S PLANS 423 And Judy was so pleased with her little de- vice for amusement that she chuckled over it for full ten minutes afterward. She wound up her chuckling with the exclamation : " William Wilberforce Webb ! Blue light- nin', what a name ! By the time Edgar Coffey an' them fellers is through with him he'll wish he'd boxed up that name an' put it in his cellar 'fore ever he come up into the mount- ings. An' I'll string out the whole o' that name every time I speak to him on Satur- day." Having thus settled upon her arrangements and set them going, Judy turned her medita- tions into another channel. " Of course Carley Farnsworth knows what he's about, but I don't. May be I can figger it out, though. He sent word as how this thing would do more good to Boyd than the 'lection itself. I reckon it somehow tetches on his trouble with that gal what's been a preyin' on his mind. I reckon that's it, an' Carley sees how to make it patch things up like. Course that's it. They wouldn't be no sense in it ef that wasn't the meanin'. All right. Ef we 424 WESTOVER OF WANALAH can straighten things out, twix' Boyd an' the gal, they won't be no more trouble o' no sort 'bout him. They ain't never no cause to worry 'bout a feller that's got a big office an' a little gal all to wunst, I reckon." XXXV A MOUNTAIN TOP REVELATION THE barbecue at Judy's was successful in every way. Jack Towns and Car- ley Farnsworth took two crowded wagon-loads of young women up the mountain, starting early in the morning, and there were a dozen or twenty young men on horseback to complete the piedmont contingent. Boyd Westover was already at Judy's, and the Queen had summoned all the presentable mountain folk, male and female, to the feast and frolic. Millicent had begged Margaret to go, but there were conclusive reasons why she should not, some of which she mentioned in excuse and some of which she forbore to mention. Her aunt was really ill, as a result of shock. Her father was by no means well. She her- self was in distress, and above and beyond all, she did not wish to meet Boyd Westover. She 425 426 WESTOVER OF WANALAH could conceive of nothing more embarrassing than a meeting with him under the circum- stances. She did not say so to Millicent, but Millicent understood, and Millicent had plans of her own, in aid of which, as Jack Towns had clearly set forth, to her, this expedition had been organized. Another absentee, whose absence Judy re- sented rather angrily and vituperatively, be- cause his absence robbed her of anticipated fun, was William Wilberforce Webb. He was on his way to Judy's when he learned that Boyd Westover was there. Then suddenly he re- membered some engagement that took him in a different direction and far away from the festivity. He sent an elaborately apologetic and rhetorically grandiloquent letter of apol- ogy, which Judy did not read further than the opening sentences that announced his inability to be present. Having dug so much of meaning out of the rubbish of words in which it was hidden, she muttered : " The durned coward ! " and cast the letter into the fire. A MOUNTAIN REVELATION 427 But there was fun enough and to spare. The mountaineers understood that this was a show, that they were the performers and that the guests from the piedmont region were the audience. They put forth their utmost en- deavors to entertain, and they were abundantly successful. Their contests of strength and agility, their exhibitions of skill with the rifle, in throwing " rocks " at a minute mark, and in other ways, won a degree of applause that might have satisfied even the morbid desires of an opera company.* Millicent was standing by Westover's side, talking of indifferent things, when some change of program in the athletics created an unan- nounced intermission. She seized upon the occasion for the accomplishment of the pur- pose that had brought her thither. " There must be a grand view," she sug- gested, " from the top of that rock up there." " There is," he answered, " and I'd like you to enjoy it. Will you mind walking or per- haps I should say climbing up there? " She responded gladly and the two set off. The climb was not an easy one, and it was 428 WESTOVER OF WANALAH quite half an hour before they reached the sum- mit. When they arrived there Westover led his companion to the best points of observa- tion, but he was disappointed to find that her enthusiasm was less than he had hoped. " You don't care much for the views after all," he ventured to say, half reproachfully. " Yes, I do. Or rather, I should enjoy them intensely, if it were not that I have something on my mind, something that it is my duty to do and that I fear I shall go wrong in doing. It was for that that I came up here with you, Mr. Westover, in order that I might talk with you apart from the crowd down there." She paused timorously, and nervously stripped the glove she had unconsciously re- moved from her hand. By way of encourage- ment, Boyd Westover said : " Go on. I shall be glad to hear anything you have to tell me." She remained meditatively silent for half a minute more. Then she asked, with great, open, honest eyes looking into his : " Mr. Westover, can you, do you believe a woman in the same way that you take a A MOUNTAIN REVELATION 429 man's word, I mean? If Mr. Towns, or Dr. Farnsworth, should solemnly assure you of the perfect truth of anything they might have to say to you, you would believe him as implicitly as if his statement were a fact within your per- sonal knowledge. Can you believe a woman's solemn assurance in the same way and to the same extent? " " When you are the woman making the statement, yes ! " he answered gallantly, but with an assurance of sincerity in his voice, and with a still more emphatic assurance of sin- cerity in the eyes that looked straight into hers. " I shall believe anything you tell me as firmly as I believe in my own existence, or in the stability of the rocks under our feet." " I thank you sincerely," she said, with that Bostonian fulness of expression that had pe- culiarly charmed all the Virginians who had enjoyed a meeting with her. " Now I'll make the statement that you are to believe as abso- lutely true." She paused, as if framing her utterance care- fully. After a moment she said : " In what I am going to say to you, and in 430 WESTOVER OF WANALAH seeking this opportunity to say it, I do not represent anybody but myself. Especially I do not represent Margaret Conway." He started a little at the name, and she ob- served the fact, but she went on, not heeding it. " Indeed in telling you what I am going to tell you, I am violating Margaret's earnest and express commands. Perhaps I am even vio- lating a confidence of friendship. I don't know, and it makes no difference. It is my duty to tell you, and I'll do that duty at all hazards. It involves the life-long happiness or unhappiness of two persons whom I hold in affectionate regard." By this time Westover, nervous, restless, troubled and enthusiastic as he was, was wrought up to the verge of delirium. " Tell me ! " he cried earnestly. " Tell me quickly! I can endure the suspense no longer." In reply the girl, who had completely recov- ered her self-control, said very deliberately: " What I have to tell you may perhaps ex- plain many things that you have not hitherto understood. It is this : the letters you wrote to Margaret Conway at the time of your A MOUNTAIN REVELATION 431 trouble were never delivered to her ; the letters she wrote to you at that time were never posted. That is all." " How do you know this ? " he asked, seiz- ing her by the shoulders as if intent upon sha- king the answer out of her. " Do you know it or is it only conjecture? Tell me, quick, how do you know it ? " " I have seen the letters," she answered, calmly enjoying his half-mad excitement. " But how do you know mine were not re- ceived and hers not mailed? " " I have seen them," she answered. " Yours were not opened and Margaret had never seen them. Hers were addressed and stamped, but bore no postmarks. Be perfectly sure, Mr. Westover, that I know all I say." " But who interfered ? Why were the letters stopped in transit ? " he asked almost angrily. " That I am not free to tell you. I am con- cerned only for you and Margaret. The rest concerns another person, and I have no right " " Was it Colonel Conway ? Did he - " Mr. Westover, you know Colonel Conway. 43 2 WESTOVER OF WANALAH Therefore you know it was not he, just as you know that he isn't a coward or anything else dishonorable. Now please don't ask me any further questions. I have already violated ob- ligations, I suppose. At any rate I have put you in possession of the essential facts. The rest lies with you. We must go down the hill now." The two started off together, but before they had journeyed far, Westover stopped suddenly and, taking both the girl's hands in his, said fervently : " I thank God, and I thank you, Millicent Danvers. To the end of my life I shall thank you. Now let us be off, for I must get away from here." She did not ask him why, but she under- stood and approved. XXXVI THE MEETING AT THE OAKS AS the two neared the scene of Judy's festivities, Millicent suddenly stopped and, looking straight into Westover's eyes, asked : " You are very sure you believe me, and that I have acted upon the prompting of conscience alone?" " Millicent Danvers, I never believed any- thing in my life more confidently than I do that." " And do you think I have done right? " " Right ? Yes. You have saved two lives from wreck and wretchedness. Could any- thing be righter than that? You have a sen- sitive conscience; bid it rest easy in the con- sciousness of a brave deed well done. Charles Kingsley says : ' God gives it to few men to carry a line to a stranded ship.' That is what 433 434 WESTOVER OF WANALAH God has given it to you to do. Be sure I shall not compromise you in any way, and may God always bless you ! " Both were too much overwrought to indulge in further speech. They hurried on to the house, and Boyd went instantly to Judy, say- ing: " I'm sorry to miss the rest of the frolic and especially the evening dance ; but I find I must leave immediately." " That's all right, Boyd, ef it's becase o' the gal," answered Judy with womanly sympathy. " Jest set still here fer five minutes an' I'll have Theonidas bring your horse round to the road back o' the house, so's nobody'll see you a set- tin' off. Say, Boyd, that Boston gal's awful nice. I wish 'twas her." " Let Jack Towns dance with her to-night, Judy, and you'll be satisfied." Five minutes later Westover was in the sad- dle and hurrying down the mountain as rap- idly as his concern for the welfare and the bones of Rob Roy would permit. That enthusi- astic quadruped had an unconquerable pref- erence for the faster gaits familiar to horse MEETING AT THE OAKS 435 flesh, and, if left to himself, he would have gone at a gallop all the way down the moun- tain. But his master, with a discretion supe- rior to his, restrained him, permitting only a trot on the levels and compelling what the horse evidently regarded as an absurd walk down the steeper inclines. In spite of all restraints the good horse car- ried him over the twenty-mile distance in little more than two hours' time, and it was at the gloaming time that he approached The Oaks. He had formed no plans when he rode away from Judy Peters's place. His first thought as he went down the mountain was that he would go to Wanalah, write a letter to Mar- garet, enclose it in a note to Colonel Conway and send it by a special messenger. He aban- doned that program promptly, and after fra- ming and rejecting several others of less elab- orate formality, he resolved to go straight to Margaret. " I have a right to do that," he said to him- self. " Now that I know what her attitude has been it is not only my privilege but my duty 436 WESTOVER OF WANALAH to deal directly with her, to tell her what I have learned, to tell her of the misapprehen- sion I have labored under, to renew my suit and to learn from her lips what her present feeling is. I know that, already, but it will be reassuring to have her tell me of it. God bless that Boston girl and her New England con- science and her courage ! For it required cour- age of a high order to do what she did. Not many people would have dared do it." So thinking he rode into the house grounds at The Oaks while the last glow of daylight was fading out of the sunset side of the sky. Seeing a young negro, he dismounted and tossed the rein to the boy, saying : " Don't stable him ; just walk him back and forth till he cools down and then hitch him somewhere handy; I shall ride again pres- ently." Walking rapidly up the path he stepped upon the porch, and there met Margaret face to face for the first time since he had gaily bidden her adieu at midsummer. " Margaret ! " he exclaimed. " Boyd ! " she answered, and a moment later "MARGARET! " BOYD! "Page 436. MEETING AT THE OAKS 437 he had taken her in his arms and caressed her fervently. " You have come at last ! " she said as she withdrew herself from his embrace. "At last?" he asked in answer. "It was only two hours ago that I learned that I might come at all. I was twenty miles away then, and I am here now, here to claim fulfilment of the most glorious promise a woman ever made to a man here to claim you, Mar- garet." " I know," she answered, as they sank into porch chairs. " Don't let us waste time in explanations, now that they are so utterly un- necessary. Just let us be happy." The conversation thus begun lasted until near supper time. It is not necessary to re- port it for the information of any who have been lovers, and as for the rest, they would never understand. Just before the late supper time Westover suddenly awakened to his duty. " I must see your father," he said. " With- out his permission I have no right to consider myself a guest in his house." 438 WESTOVER OF WANALAH Margaret, knowing her father's perplexed eagerness to see Westover and be reconciled with him, smiled as she answered: " I'll send for Father." She did so, and presently the old Colonel came limping into the porch. As he ap- proached, Margaret slipped into the house, leaving the two men alone. They greeted each other with a cordiality that rendered all explanations and apologies needless, but Colonel Conway insisted upon explaining and apologizing. " I've been a coward, Boyd ! I've been an abject coward." " I don't know any other man living who would dare say that, Colonel." " Perhaps not. No, I suppose not. Still it is true, and I'm profoundly ashamed of it." " Now my dear Colonel Conway," inter- jected Westover, " let us not talk of that. This is the happiest hour of my life and, I hope, of Margaret's. Let us not spoil it by discussing disagreeable things which are com- pletely past and gone." " But there are some things that I must MEETING AT THE OAKS 439 explain, Boyd, and you must listen to me. I ought to have gone to you in Richmond at the time of your trouble. I didn't, because I was forbidden to do so by an authority which I was cowardly enough to yield to. Margaret great woman that she is told me then I was a coward, and she was right. When you came back to Wanalah my purpose was to go to you at once, but the same authority forbade, giving me a sufficient reason in the fact that you had written no line to Mar- garet. I know better now, but only within the past few days. Under that mistaken be- lief I refused to join in your nomination. A few days ago a catastrophe here revealed the truth to both Margaret and me. She appealed to me to do what my sense of honor might suggest. That meant that I should go to you at once, grasp your hand, tell you of the mis- apprehension and of the facts that removed it, and ask your pardon. No, don't interrupt. You are generously disposed to spare me, but I shall not consent to be spared. My first impulse was to do what Margaret expected of me. But an appeal was made to me to 440 WESTOVER OF WANALAH spare another the culprit in the case and I weakly yielded to it. I compromised with my conscience and my honor. I wrote to Dr. Farnsworth the letter you have doubtless seen, and I did no more. It was all cowardice, and I am heartily ashamed of it. Will you forgive me, Boyd? " " Colonel Conway," answered Boyd with intense earnestness, " no man with a cowardly nerve in his body could ever have made the manly self-accusing apology you have offered to me. You grievously wrong yourself. It was not cowardice that restrained you, but a tender and generous consideration for a help- less person who was entitled to every pro- tection you could give her. Now let us talk no more of this! Let us never refer to it! Let it be a dead thing of a dead past a thing done with, forgotten, banished forever from our minds ! " " You are very generous," answered the now feeble old man. " But that is not a thing to be wondered at. You are Westover of Wanalah, and for nearly two hundred years that name has stood for all there is of gentle, MEETING AT THE OAKS 441 generous and courageous manhood. You'll stay to supper of course ? " " No, Colonel. I have much to do to-night. I must ride at once as soon as I shall have said ' good night ' to Margaret." It took a considerable time for the saying of that good night. " I'll be over here at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, Margaret," he said, " and we'll go for a ride. I'll have a servant bring over a young filly I have in my stables, that you'll be delighted to ride. She's spirited, but as gentle as a zephyr that's what I've named her ' Zephyr ' and her paces are perfect. She's to be yours from this time forth. I per- sonally educated her for you last summer, before before the trouble came." " But to-morrow is Sunday ; aren't we to go to church ? " " No. We are going to Wanalah, so that you may look over the place and see what alter- ations are needed. I must tell you, Margaret, that an investment, very wise or very lucky, I don't know which, made by my father in my name, has suddenly borne fruit, making 442 WESTOVER OF WANALAH me, Jack Towns says and he has charge of the business three times over the richest man in Virginia. The wealth is of no con- sequence in itself, but I mention it so that in deciding what shall be done at Wanalah you need have no fear of expense before your eyes." " But church is at Round Hill, to-morrow, almost under our noses. If we don't attend, what will people say ? " " Hang ' people.' We are ' people ' now. We're happy and we're going to stay happy. And after all what can they say? They'll say that Boyd Westover and Margaret Conway are very much in love with each other, and we don't care to contradict that, do we ? " " I do not," she answered. " Neither do I. So let them say on. They'll wonder when it is to be, and I'm wondering about that myself now. When is it to be, Margaret?" " I don't know. Of course I must have time to make a trousseau." " What for? " he asked. " Hang the trous- seau, or make it after we're married. What's MEETING AT THE OAKS 443 the difference? You've plenty of clothes, and you're charming in any of them." " But Boyd, dear, " " But Margaret dear," he interrupted, " you see our marriage was to have occurred in the late summer or early fall. It has already been unreasonably delayed. It is nonsense to delay it further. Think a little, and think quick, and name a day." " If you must have it so, I suppose it must be so. You are the Master now. And be- sides " She did not finish her sentence till he chal- lenged it, saying: " Besides what, Margaret? " " I was only thinking," she answered, " that I can't persuade Millicent to stay much longer, and I do want her to be my first bridesmaid. You see, Boyd, it isn't only that Fm very fond of her I am very grateful to her." " So am I," he answered with emphasis, but neither the one nor the other said aught of the occasion for gratitude. They both under- stood. But he eagerly grasped at the helping hand: 444 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " Then you must name a very early day, or she will have flitted." " Let me see," she said ; " the election will occur one week from next Tuesday; that is ten days hence. Our wedding shall occur on the day after you are elected Senator." " But suppose I should not be elected ? " " In that case the day will come round just the same," she said ; " but you will be elected. I have Dr. Farnsworth's positive assurance that you will be elected by the largest ma- jority any candidate ever received in this dis- trict, and Dr. Farnsworth is a man who deals exclusively in facts, never in conjectures." 1 Then you have concerned yourself about my election ? " " How could it be otherwise ? As I told you in the long ago, Boyd, I am not a woman who loves lightly or lightly forgets." " I know," he answered. " Your father is taking his supper alone. Go to him at once. I'll mount and away." XXXVII THE OLD CLOCK TICKS AGAIN " TTT'S a rambling old place," Westover said, as he and Margaret strolled through the vast spaces of the Wanalah rooms with their highly polished white ash floors, their wealth of stoutly built, time dark- ened furniture, their ancient, oaken wainscots and their hospitably spacious fireplaces. " I suppose a modern judgment would say tear it down and build anew " * Then the modern judgment shall have no welcome when I am mistress here. Tear down Wanalah, with its walls of thick masonry, its generously large rooms, and its memories? Only a vandal would do that. I'll tell you, Boyd, there is only one change I'd like you to make here." "I'll make it. What is it?" 445 446 WESTOVER OF WANALAH " There's a beautiful old standing clock in the dining room that has never ticked since I have known Wanalah. Won't you have some- body put new works into it and set it going again? " " Yes," he answered, " but it shall not run until you and I return from our wedding trip and you enter the house as its mistress. We'll go to it together then and set it going, to mark time in a new era at Wanalah." " You are very good and thoughtful and tender, Boyd. I suppose you are a trifle ro- mantic also, but I shall certainly not quarrel with that, now or ever." " Speaking of our wedding trip, Margaret," he said eagerly, " what is it to be ? We can go anywhere you like and everywhere you like and for as long as you like." "Am I really free to choose?" she asked, looking into his eyes. " Yes, really and absolutely." " What I would like best, then, would be to go up to that place of yours in the high mountains. It was there that you suffered most on my account; I want you to rejoice THE OLD CLOCK 447 and be happy there, Boyd, by way of recom- pense." " But it's rough living up there, Margaret ; perhaps you'd find it " " I'd find it delightful. How could it be otherwise, with just you and me there? " " It shall be so then. Nothing could de- light me more. I'll get Theonidas to carry my things back up there at once. They are still at Judy's. And we'll take along with us whatever baggage you want." " That will be very little. It is the air, the sunshine, the rain, the freedom and you, Boyd, that I want. And besides, you know you have forbidden me to have a trousseau. I'll be a wood nymph or a water witch or something of that sort, and such beings do not bother with baggage, I suppose." During the next week, Westover was speak- ing day and night, all over the district. He really cared nothing for the office he was run- ning for, but it was his temperament to do his mightiest to win in any contest in which he had a part, and in this case he had the addi- 448 WESTOVER OF WANALAH tional impulse to gratify- Margaret by secur- ing the biggest majority possible for his elec- tion. Meanwhile, in his enthusiasm, Colonel Con- way forgot all about his gout, and busied him- self in the fulfilment of the promise he had long ago given, to fill The Oaks at the wed- ding time with the most brilliant company the country could furnish, and to have feasting there of a kind that might make the occasion memorable. He even made a journey to Washington and fairly forced his old com- mander in the Mexican War, General Scott, to be a guest, honored and honoring the occasion. Judy Peters was also an honored guest. When Westover learned at last what part she had borne in his nomination and in his cam- paign, he rode all the way up to her place to persuade her to come. And when the time arrived, he sent the Wanalah carriage to fetch her. She appeared at the ceremony, in a gown more gaudily gorgeous than any that had been seen in that region since " the time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the con- trary." THE OLD CLOCK 449 Colonel Conway devoted his particular at- tention to her. Among other special cour- tesies he shared with her a bottle of precious old Madeira too precious, as he told her, to be " wasted on a lot of young fellows whose palates are not educated up to it." She drank the wine with relish, and after the third thimbleful glass she gave judgment. " It's better 'n apple jack, but in the matter o' taste, 'tain't quite up to peach an' honey, is it now, Bob ? " Since his boyhood nobody had ever ven- tured to address Colonel Conway as " Bob," but as it came from Judy's barbaric and priv- ileged lips, he rather liked it. The wedding was held in the early morn- ing because Boyd Westover had explained, without a hint of whither they were bound, that he and Margaret had a long journey to make before nightfall. The wedding morn was on the day follow- ing the election, and the returns were all in. Carley Farnsworth summarized them to the company by announcing that Westover was elected by the vote of more than three-fourths 450 WESTOVER OF WANALAH and nearly four-fifths of the citizens of the district. Then he added : " And Sam Butler, Democrat, is elected to the House of Delegates, chiefly by the moun- tain vote, which seems to have been pretty nearly solid for him." Judy Peters beamed upon Colonel Conway, and ventured the remark : " 'Tain't no use a-votin', Colonel, ef you don't stick together an' vote to 'lect. That's our way up in the mountings." "Ah, Judy," the Colonel replied, "I'm afraid you're a sad sinner. I'm afraid you manipulated that vote." " I ain't close acquainted with that big word o 5 your'n, Bob, but I was purty nigh right in my jedgment as to how this here 'lection was a goin' to come out. Say, Bob, what d'you think that there comb-cut rooster William Wilberforce Webb thinks of hisself by now? I wonder ef he'll unload some o' that name? " Westover and his bride left as soon as the ceremony was over, but Colonel Conway kept THE OLD CLOCK 451 the festivities going all day, and there was a dance at night. The occasion was rich in opportunities for Jack Towns, and, with the alert energy which was characteristic of him, he made the most of them. When, two days later, he left for Boston as Millicent's escort, there was no room for doubt in anybody's mind as to the outcome of his visit to the blue hills of Mil- ton. It was a month later, and winter had begun, when Westover and. Margaret just entering the house went to the clock and set it going. She said something no matter what. He said nothing, but gathering her head to his breast, he caressed her. Words seemed super- fluous. THE END. The Potter and the Clay A Romance of To-day By MAUD HOWARD PETERSON. Illustrated by Charlotte Harding. J2mo, decorated cloth, $1.50 A STRONG and impressive story one of the most forceful of recent novels by a new author of promise and ability. The motive is love versus loyalty; the characters are alive and human; the plot is puzzling, and the action is remarkably vivid. A Carolina Cavalier A Romance of the Revolution By GEORGE GARY EGGLESTON. Illustrated fay C D. Williams. J2mo, cloth, rough edges, gilt top, $ J .50 THIS is a historical romance of love, loyalty, and fighting. The action passes in South Carolina during the stormy days of British invasion, in the region once made famous by Simms and not touched since his day. It is full of vigor, plot, and action. Tories and patriots, war and adventure, love and valor crowd its pages and hold the reader's atten- tion from first to last. Cbe Cittfe Green Door By MART E. STONE BASSETT Eight illustrations by Louise Clarke and twenty-five decorative half-tide pages by Ethel Pearce Clements izmo Cloth $1.50 A charming romance of the time of Louis XIII. The door which gives the title to the book leads to a beautiful retired garden belonging to the King. In this garden is developed one of the sweetest and tenderest romances ever told. The tone of the book is singularly pure and elevated, although its power is intense. "This is a tale of limpid purity and sweetness, which, although its action is developed amid the intrigues and deceptions of a corrupt French court, remains fine and delicate to the end. There is power as well as poetry in the little romance, so delicate in con- ception." Chicago Daily News. "Tender, sweet, passionate, pure ; a lily from the garden of loves." Baltimore Herald. "The story is exquisitely pure and tender, possessing a finished daintiness that will charm all clean-minded persons." Louisville Courier-Journal. "This book carries with it all the exhilaration of a beautiful nature, of flowers, birds, and living things, and the beauty of a winsome personality of a pure, beautiful girl. It is a romance en- tirely of the fancy, but a refreshing one." Chicago Tribune. "The little romance is charmingly wrought, and will be sure to find its way to the heart of the reader." Boston Transcript. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. BOSTON