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IN WHICH TWO STRANGERS VISIT RED ROCK AND ARE INVITED TO COME AGAIN

Everyone knows what a seething ferment there was for some time before the great explosion in the beginning of the Sixties—that strange decade that changed the civilization of the country. Red Rock, like the rest of the land, was turned from a haunt of peace into a forum. Politics were rampant; every meeting was a lyceum; boys became orators; young girls wore partisan badges; children used party-catchwords, which they did not understand—except one thing: that they represented “their side.” There existed an irreconcilable difference between the two sections of the country. It could not be crushed. Hydra-headed, it appeared after every extirpation.

One side held slavery right under the double title of the Bible and of the Constitution. The leader of the other side said, “If it was not wrong, then nothing was wrong”; but declared that he would not interfere with it.

“Bosh!” said Major Legaie. “That is not a man to condone what he thinks wrong. If he is elected, it means the end of slavery.” And so said many others. Most of them, rather than yield, were for War. To them War was only an episode: a pageant: a threshold to glory. Dr. Cary, who was a Whig, was opposed to it; he had seen it, and he took the stump in opposition to Major Legaie.

“We could whip them with pop-guns,” said the fire-eaters. Fordyce Lambly and Hurlbut Bail were two of them.

“But will they fight with that weapon?” asked Dr. Cary, scornfully. He never liked Lambly and Bail; he said they had no convictions. “A man with convictions may be wrong; but you know where to meet him, sir. You never know where to find these men.”

“Do you know what War is?” he said in a speech, in reply to a secession-speech by Major Legaie. “War is the most terrible of all disasters, except Dishonor. I do not speak of the dangers. For every brave man must face danger as it comes, and should court glory; and death for one’s Country is glorious. I speak merely of the change that War inevitably brings. War is the destruction of everything that exists. You may fail or you may win, but what exists passes, and something different takes its place. The plough-share becomes a spear, and the pruning-hook a sword; the poor may become richer, but the rich must become poorer. You are the wealthiest people in the world to-day—not in mere riches, but in wealth. You may become the poorest. No people who enter a war wealthy and content ever come out of war so. I do not say that this is an unanswerable reason for not going to war. For war may be right at any cost. But it is not to be entered on unadvisedly or lightly; but in the fear of God. It should not be undertaken from mere enthusiasm; but deliberately, with a full recognition of its cost, and resolution to support its possible and direst consequences.”

When he had ended, Mr. Hurlbut Bail, a speaker from the city, who had come to the county to stir up the people, said:

“Oh! Dr. Cary is nothing but a Cassandra.”

“Did Troy fall or not?” asked Dr. Cary, calmly.

This, of course, changed no one. In times of high feeling debate only fuses opinions into convictions; only fans the flames and makes the fire a conflagration.

When the war came the old Doctor flung in his lot with his friends, and his gravity, that had grown on him of late, was lighted up by the old fire; he took his place and performed his part with kindling eyes and an erecter mien. Hurlbut Bail became an editor. This, however, was later on.

The constantly increasing public ferment and the ever-enlarging and deepening cloud did not prevent the ordinary course of life from flowing in its accustomed channels: men planned and performed; sowed and reaped; bought and sold, as in ordinary times. And as in the period before that other flood, there was marrying and giving in marriage; so now, with the cloud ever mounting up the sky, men loved and married, and made their homes as the birds paired and built their nests.

Among those who builded in that period in the Red Rock district were a young couple, both of them cousins in some degree of nearly every gentle family in the county, including the Grays and Carys. And after the blessing by old Mr. Langstaff, at St. Ann’s, amid the roses and smiles of the whole neighborhood, they spent their honeymoon, as the custom was then, in being entertained from house to house, through the neighborhood. In this round of gayety they came in due order to Red Rock, where the entertainment was perhaps to be the greatest of all. The amount of preparation was almost unprecedented, and the gentry of the whole county were invited and expected. As it was a notable occasion and near the holidays, Jacquelin was permitted to come home from Dr. Maule’s on the joint application of his mother, his Aunt Thomasia, and Blair Cary; and Blair was allowed to come over with her mother and father and spend the night, and was promised to be allowed to sit up as late as she pleased—a privilege not to be lightly esteemed.

Steve Allen, with a faint mustache curled above his smiling mouth, was home from the University, and so were Morris Cary and the other young fellows; and the office in the yard, blue with tobacco-smoke, was as full of young men and pipes and dogs, as the upstairs chambers in the mansion were of young girls and ribbons and muslin.

What a heaven that outer office was to Jacquelin, and what an angel Steve was to call him “Kid” and let him adore him!

Among the company that night there were two guests who “happened in” quite unexpectedly, but who were “all the more welcome on that account,” the host said graciously in greeting them. They were two gentlemen from quite another part of the country, or, perhaps, those resident there would have said, of the world; as they came from the North. They had come South on business connected with a sort of traditionary claim to mineral lands lying somewhere in the range of mountains which could be seen from the Red Rock plantation. At least, Mr. Welch, the elder of the two, came on that errand. The younger, Mr. Lawrence Middleton, came simply for pleasure, and because Mr. Welch, his cousin, had invited him. He had just spoiled his career at college by engaging, with his chum and crony, Aurelius Thurston, in the awful crime of painting the President’s gray horse a brilliant red, and being caught at it. He was suspended for this prank, and now was spending his time, literally rusticating, seeing a little of the world, while he made up his mind whether he should study Law and accept his cousin’s offer to go into his office, or whether he should engage in a manufacturing business which his family owned. His preference was rather for the latter, which was now being managed by a man named Bolter, who had made it very successful; but Reely Thurston intended to be a lawyer, and wanted Lawrence to go in with him; so he was taking time to consider. This visit South had inclined him to the law.

Mr. Welch and Middleton had concluded their business in the mountains: finding the lands they were seeking to lie partly in the clouds and partly in the possession of those whom they had always heard spoken of as “squatters;” but now found to be a population who had been there since before the Revolution, and had built villages and towns. They were now returning home and were making their way back toward the railroad, half a day’s journey farther on. They had expected to reach Brutusville, the county seat, that night; but a rain the day before had washed away the bridges, and compelled them to take a circuitous route by a ford higher up the river. There, not knowing the ford, they had almost been swept away, and would certainly have lost their vehicle but for the timely appearance of a young countryman, who happened to come along on his way home from a political gathering somewhere.

AMONG THE COMPANY THAT NIGHT THERE WERE TWO GUESTS WHO “HAPPENED IN” QUITE UNEXPECTEDLY.

Their deliverer: a certain Mr. Andy Stamper, was so small that at a distance he looked like a boy, but on nearer view he might have been anywhere from twenty or twenty-five to thirty, and he proved extraordinarily active and efficient. He swam in and helped Middleton get their buggy out of the river, and then amused Mr. Welch very much and incensed Middleton by his comments. He had just been to a political meeting at the Court House, he said, where he had heard “the finest speech that ever was made,” from Major Legaie. “He gave the Yankees sut,” and he “just wished he could get every Yankee in that river and drown ’em—every dog-goned one!” This as he was working up to his neck in water.

Mr. Welch could not help laughing at the look on Middleton’s ruddy face.

“Now, where’d you find a Yankee’d go in that river like me an’ you—or could do it, for that matter?” the little fellow asked of Middleton, confidentially.

“We are Yankees,” blurted out Middleton, hotly. “And a plenty of them would.” His eye flashed as he turned to his rescuer.

The little countryman’s eyes opened wide, and his jaw fell.

“Well, I’m durned!” he said, slowly, staring in open astonishment, and Middleton began to look gratified at the impression he had made.

“You know, you’re the first I ever seen as wan’t ashamed to own it. Why, you looks most like we all!”

Middleton flushed; but little Stamper looked so sincerely ingenuous that he suddenly burst out laughing.

After that they became very friendly, and the travellers learned much of the glories of the Grays and Carys, and of the charms of a certain Miss Delia Dove, who, Stamper declared, was as pretty as any young lady that went to the Brick Church. Stamper offered to guide them, but as he refused to take any money for what he had done, and as he said he was going to see Miss Delia Dove and could take a nearer cut through the woods to his home, Mr. Welch declined to accept his offer, and contented himself with getting him to draw a map of the roads from that point to the county seat.

“All you’ve got to do is to follow that map: keep the main plain road and you can’t get out; but I advise you to turn in at the first plantation you come to. If you go to Red Rock you’ll have a good time. They’re givin’ a party thar to-night. Major Legaie, he left the meetin’ to go thar.”

He disappeared at a gallop down a bridle-path through the woods.

Notwithstanding the young countryman’s assurances and map, the two strangers had gotten “out.” The plantations were large in that section and the roads leading off to them from the highway, in the dark were all alike, so that when night fell the two travellers were in a serious dilemma. They at length came to a gate and were just considering turning in at it when a carriage drove up in front of them. A horseman who had been riding behind the vehicle came forward at a trot, calling out that he would open the gate.

“I thought you fellows would have been there hours ago,” he said familiarly to the two strangers as he passed, evidently mistaking them in the dusk for some of his friends. “A laggard in love is a dastard in war.”

The rest of his speech was lost in the click of the gate-latch and his apostrophe to his horse. When he found that Mr. Welch was a stranger, he changed instantly. His tone became graver and more gracious.

“I beg your pardon, sir. I thought from your vehicle that you were some of these effeminate youngsters who have given up the saddle for that new four-wheeled contrivance, and are ruining both our strains of horses and of men.”

Mr. Welch asked if he knew where they could find a night’s lodging.

“Why, at every house in the State, sir, I hope,” said Dr. Cary; for it was he. “Certainly, at the nearest one. Drive right in. We are going to our cousins’, and they will be delighted to have you. You are just in good time; for there is to be quite a company there to-night.” And refusing to listen for a moment to Mr. Welch’s suggestion that it might not be convenient to have strangers, Dr. Cary held the gate open for them to pass through.

“Drive in, sir,” he said, in a tone of gracious command. “I never heard of its being inconvenient to have a guest,” and in they drove.

“A gentleman by his voice,” the travellers heard him explaining a little later into the window of the carriage behind them. And then he added, “My only doubt was his vehicle.”

After a half-mile drive through the woods they entered the open fields, and from a hill afar off, on top of which shone a house lit till it gleamed like a cluster of brilliants, a chorus of dogs sent them an inquiring greeting.

They passed through a wide gate, and ascended a steep hill through a grove, and Middleton’s heart sank at the idea of facing an invited company, with a wardrobe that had been under water within the last two hours. Instantly they were in a group of welcomers, gentlemen, servants, and dogs; negro boys running; dogs frisking and yelping and young men laughing about the door of the newly arrived carriage. While through it all sounded the placid voice of Dr. Cary reassuring the visitors and inviting them in. He brought the host to them, and presented them:

“My friends, Mr. Welch and young Mr. Middleton—my cousin and friend, Mr. Gray.” It was his customary formula in introducing. All men were his friends. And Mr. Welch shortly observed how his manner changed whenever he addressed a lady or a stranger: to one he was always a courtier, to the other always a host.

As they were ushered into the hall, Middleton’s blue eyes glistened and opened wide at the scene before him. He found himself facing several score of people clustered about in one of the handsomest halls he ever saw, some of whom he took in at the first glance to be remarkably pretty girls in white and pink, and all with their eyes, filled with curiosity, bent on the new comers. If Middleton’s ruddiness increased tenfold under these glances, it was only what any other young man’s would have done under similar circumstances, and it was not until he had been led off under convoy of a tall and very solemn old servant in a blue coat with brass buttons, and shown into a large room with mahogany furniture and a bed so high that it had a set of steps beside it, that he was able to collect his ideas, and recall some of those to whom he had been introduced. What a terrible fix it was for a fellow to be in! He opened his portmanteau and turned to his cousin in despair.

“Isn’t this a mess?”

“What?”

“This! I can never go out there. All those girls! Just look at these clothes! Everything dripping!—some of them awfully pretty, too. That one with the dark eyes!” He was down on his knees, raking in his portmanteau, and dragging the soaking garments out one by one. “Now, look at that.”

“You need not go out. I’ll make your excuses.”

“What! Of course I’m go——”

Just then there was a knock at the door.

“Come in.” Middleton finished his sentence.

The door opened slowly and the old servant entered, bearing with a solemnity that amounted almost to reverence, a waiter with decanters and an array of glasses and bowls. He was followed by the young boy who had been introduced as their host’s son.

“My father understood that you had a little accident at the river, and he wishes to know if he cannot lend you something,” said Jacquelin.

Mr. Welch spoke first, his eyes twinkling as he glanced at his cousin, who stood a picture of indecision and bewilderment.

“Why yes, my cousin, Mr. Middleton here, would be greatly obliged, I think. He is a little particular about first impressions, and the presence of so many charming——”

Middleton protested.

“Why, certainly, sir,” Jacquelin began, then turned to Middleton—“Steve’s would fit you—Steve’s my cousin—he’s at the University—he’s just six feet. Wait, sir——” And before they could stop him, he was gone, and a few minutes later tapped on the door, with his arms full of clothes.

“Uncle Daniel’s as slow as a steer, so I fetched ’em myself,” he panted, with boyish impatience, as he dropped the clothes partly on a sofa and partly on the floor. “Aunt Thomasia was afraid you’d catch cold, so she made me bring these flannels. She always is afraid you’ll catch cold. Steve told her if you’d take a good swig out of a bottle ’twould be worth all the flannel in the State—Steve’s always teasing her.” With a boy’s friendliness he had established himself now as the visitors’ ally.

“I’m glad you came to-night. We’re going to have lots of fun. Were you at the speaking to-day? They say the Major made the finest speech ever was heard. Some say he’s better than Calhoun ever was; just gave the Yankees the mischief! I wish they’d come down here and try us once, don’t you?”

Mr. Welch glanced amusedly at Middleton, whose face changed; but fortunately the boy was too much interested in the suit Middleton had just put on to notice the effect.

“I thought Steve’s would fit you,” he said, with that proud satisfaction in his judgment being verified which characterizes the age of thirteen, and some other ages as well.

“Steve’s nineteen, and he’s six feet!—You are six feet too? I thought you were about that. I hope I’ll be six feet. I like that height, don’t you? Steve’s at the University, but he don’t study much, I reckon. Are you at college?—Where? Oh! I know. I had a cousin who went there. He and two or three other Southern fellows laid outside of the hall for one of those abolition chaps who was making a speech, to cut his ears off when he came out, and they’d have done it if he had come out that way. I reckon it’s a good college, but I’m going to the University when I’m sixteen. I’m thirteen now—You thought I was older? I wanted to go to West Point, but my father won’t let me. Maybe, Rupert will go there. I go to school at the Academy—Doctor Maule’s—everybody knows about him. I tell you, he knows a lot.—You have left college? Was it too hot for you? Were you after somebody’s ears too? What! painted the President’s horse red! Oh! wasn’t that a good one! I wish I’d been there. I’ll tell Steve and Blair about that. Steve put a cow up in the Rotunda once. The worst thing I ever did was making Blair jump off the high barn. I don’t count flinging old Eliphalet Bush in the creek, because I believe his teeth were false anyhow! But I’ll remember painting that horse. I reckon he was an abolitionist too?”

So the boy rattled on, his guests drawing him out for the pleasure of seeing him.

“What State are you from? Maybe, we are cousins?” he said presently, giving the best evidence of his friendliness.

“What! Mass—a—! I beg your pardon.”

He looked so confused that both Mr. Welch and Middleton took some pains to sooth him.

“Yes, of course I was not talking about you; but I wouldn’t have said anything about Massachusetts if I had known you came from there. I wouldn’t like anybody to say anything about my State. You won’t mind what I said, will you? I think Massachusetts the best of the Northern States—anyhow——” And he left them, his cheeks still glowing from embarrassment.

This apology, sincerely given, with a certain stress on the word Northern, amused Mr. Welch, and even Middleton, to whom it presented, however, an entirely new view.

“Aren’t they funny?” asked Middleton of his cousin, after their young host had left them. “You know I believe they really think it.”

“Larry, you have understated it. They think they know it.”

Jacquelin employed the few moments, in which he preceded the visitors to the hall, in telling all he had learned, and when Mr. Welch and Middleton appeared they found themselves in the position of the most distinguished guests. The fact that they came from the North, and Jacquelin’s account of his mistake, had increased the desire to show them honor. “The hospitality of the South knows no latitude,” said Dr. Cary, in concluding a gracious half apology to Mr. Welch for Jacquelin’s error; and he proceeded deftly to name over a list of great men from Massachusetts, and to link their names with those of the men of the South whom she most delighted to honor. His dearest friend at college, he said, was from New England, and unless he was mistaken, Anson Rockfield would one day be heard of. Nothing could have been more gracious or more delicately done; and when supper was announced, Mr. Welch was taken to the table by the hostess herself, and his health was drunk before the groom’s. Middleton meanwhile found himself no less honored. The artistic feat performed on the President’s horse had made him a noted personage, and in consequence of this and of the freemasonry which exists among young college-men, he was soon surrounded by all the younger portion of the company, and was exchanging views with Steve Allen and the other young fellows with that exaggerated man-of-the-world air which characterizes the age and occupation of collegians.

“Where is Blair?” he asked Jacquelin, presently, who was standing by Steve, open-eyed, drinking in their wisdom as only a boy of thirteen can drink in the sapience of men of nineteen or twenty.

“Over there.” Jacquelin nodded toward another part of the hall. Middleton looked, but all he saw was a little girl sitting behind a big chair, evidently trying to conceal herself, and shaking her head violently at Jacquelin, who was beckoning to her. Jacquelin ran over to her and caught her by the hand, whereupon there was a little scuffle between them behind the chair, and as Middleton watched it he caught her eye. The next second she rose, smoothed her little white frock with quite an air, and came straight across with Jacquelin to where they stood. “This is Blair, Mr. Middleton,” the boy said to the astonished guest. And Miss Blair held out her hand to him with an odd mixture of the child and the lady.

“How do you do, sir?” She evidently considered him one of the ancients.

“She jump off a high barn!” Middleton’s eyes opened wide.

“Blair is the champion jumper of the family,” said Steve, tall and condescending, catching hold of her half-teasingly, and drawing her up close to him.

“And she is a brick,” added Master Jacquelin, with mingled condescension and admiration, which brought the blushes back to the little girl’s cheeks and made her look very charming. The next moment she was talking to Middleton about the episode of the painted horse; exchanging adventures with him, and asking him questions about his chum, Reely Thurston and his cousin, Ruth Welch, whom he had mentioned, as if she had known him always.

It was a night that Middleton never forgot. So completely was he adopted by his hosts that he could scarcely believe that he had not been one of them all his life. As Mr. Welch said truly: they had the gift of hospitality. Jacquelin and Blair constituted themselves young Middleton’s especial hosts, and he made an engagement to visit with them all the points which they wished to show him, provided his cousin could accept their invitation to spend several days there.

In the midst of their talk an old mammy in a white apron, with a tall bandanna turban around her head, suddenly appeared in a doorway, and dropping a curtsey made her way over to Blair, like a ship bearing down under full sail. There was a colloquy between the two, inaudible, but none the less animated and interesting, the old woman urging something and the little girl arguing against it. Then Blair went across and appealed to her mother, who, after a little demurring, came over and spoke to the mammy, and thereon began further argument. She was evidently taking Blair’s side; but she was not commanding, she was rather pleading. Middleton, new to the customs, was equally surprised and amused to hear the tones of the old colored woman’s voice:

“Well, jist a little while.” Then as she turned on her way out, she said, half audibly:

“You all gwine ruin my chile’ looks, meckin’ her set up so late. How she gwine have any complexion, settin’ up all times o’ night?” As she passed out, however, many of the ladies spoke to her, and they must have said pleasant things; for before she reached the door she was smiling and curtseying right and left, and carried her head as high as a princess. As for Blair, her eyes were dancing with joy at her victory, and when the plump figure of the mammy disappeared she gave a little frisk of delight.

There were no more speeches that could wound the sensibilities of the guests; but there was plenty of discussion. All the young men were ardent politicians, and Middleton, who was nothing himself, was partly amused and partly horrified at the violence of some of their sentiments. Personally, he agreed with them in the main about Slavery or, at least, about Abolitionism. He thought Slavery rather a fine thing, and recalled that his grandfather or his great-grandfather, he couldn’t be certain which, had owned a number of slaves. He was conscious of some pride in this—though his cousin, Patience Welch, who was an extreme abolitionist, was always bemoaning the fact.

But he was thunderstruck to hear a young orator of sixteen or seventeen declaim about breaking up the Union, under certain circumstances, as if it were a worthless old hulk, stuck in the mud. It had never occurred to Middleton that it was possible, and he had always understood that it was not. However, he was reassured by the warmth with which others defended the Union, and the ardor with which toasts were drunk to it. Jacquelin himself was a stanch Democrat, like his father. He confided to Middleton that Blair was a Whig, because her father was one; but that a girl did not know any better, and that she really did not know the difference between them.

The entertainment consisted of dancing—quadrilles and “the Lancers,” and after awhile, the old Virginia reel. In the first, all the young people joined, and in the last, some of the old ones as well. Middleton heard Steve urging their host’s sister, Miss Gray—“Cousin Thomasia” as Steve called her—a sweet patrician-faced lady, to come and dance with him, and when she smilingly refused, teasing her about Major Legaie. She gave him a little tap with her fan and sent him off with smiling eyes, which, after following the handsome boy across the hall, saddened a second later as she lifted the fan close to her face to arrange the feathers. Steve mischievously whisked Blair off from under Jacquelin’s nose and took her to the far end of the line of laughing girls ranged across the hall, responding to Jacquelin’s earnest protest that he was just going to dance with her himself, with a push—that unanswerable logic of a bigger boy.

“But you did not ask me!” said Miss Blair to Jacquelin, readily taking the stronger side against her sworn friend.

“Never mind, I’m not going to dance with you any more,” pouted Jacquelin as he turned off, his head higher than usual, to which Miss Blair promptly replied: “I don’t care if you don’t.” And she held her head higher than his, dancing through her reel apparently with double enjoyment because of his discomfiture. Then when the reel had been danced again and again, with double couples and fours, to ever-quickening music and ever-increasing mirth, until it was a maze of muslin and radiance and laughter, there was a pause for rest. And someone near the piano struck up a song, and this drew the crowd. Many of the girls, and some of the young men, had pleasant voices, which made up by their natural sweetness and simplicity for want of training, and the choruses drew all the young people, except a few who seemed to find it necessary to seek something—fans or glasses of water, in the most secluded and unlikely corners, and always in couples.

There was one song—a new one which had just been picked up somewhere by someone and brought there, and they were all trying to recall it—about “Dixie-land.” It seemed that Blair sang it, and there was a universal request for her to sing it; but the little girl was shy and wanted to run away. Finally, however, she was brought back and, under coaxing from Steve and Jacquelin, was persuaded; and she stood up by the piano and with her cheeks glowing and her child’s-voice quavering at first at the prominence given her, sang it through. Middleton had heard the song once at a minstrel-show not long before, and had thought it rather a “catchy” thing; but now, when the child sang it, he found its melody. But when the chorus came, he was astonished at the feeling it evoked. It ran:

“Away down south in Dixie, away, away—

In Dixie land, I’ll take my stand,

To live and die for Dixie land—

Away, away, away down south in Dixie.”

It was a burst of genuine feeling, universal, enthusiastic, that made the old walls resound. Even the young couples came from their secluded coverts to join in. It was so tremendous that Dr. Cary, who was standing near Mr. Welch, said to him, gravely:

“A gleam of the current that is dammed up?”

“If the bank ever breaks what will happen?” asked Mr. Welch.

“A flood.”

“Then the right will survive.”

“The strongest,” said Dr. Cary.

The guest saw that there was deep feeling whenever any political subject was touched on, and he turned to a less dangerous theme. The walls of the hall and drawing-room were covered with pictures; scenes from the Mythology; battle-pieces; old portraits: all hung together in a sort of friendly confusion. The portraits were nearly all in rich-colored dresses: men in velvets or uniforms, ladies in satins and crinolines, representing the fashions and faces of many generations of Jacquelin-Grays. But one, the most striking figure of them all, stood alone to itself in a space just over the great fireplace. He was a man still young, clad in a hunter’s garb. A dark rock loomed behind him. His rifle lay at his feet, apparently broken, and his face wore an expression of such determination that one knew at once that, whatever he had been, he had been a master. The other paintings were portraits; this was the man. To add to its distinction, while the other pictures were in frames richly gilded and carved, this was in straight black boards apparently built into the wall, as if it had been meant to stand him there and cut him off from all the rest of the world. Wherever one turned in the hall those piercing eyes followed him. Mr. Welch had been for some time observing the picture.

“An extraordinary picture. It has a singular fascination for me,” he said, as his host turned to him. “One might almost fancy it allegorical, and yet, it is intensely human. An indubitable portrait? I never saw a stronger face.”

His host smiled.

“Yes. It has a somewhat curious history, though whether it is exactly a portrait or not we do not know. It is, or is supposed to be, the portrait of an ancestor of mine, the first of my name who came to this country. He had been unfortunate on the other side—so the story goes—was a scholar, and had been a soldier under Cromwell and lost all his property. He fell in love with a young lady whose father was on the King’s side, and married her against her parents’ wishes and came over here. He built a house on this very spot when it was the frontier, and his wife was afterward murdered by the Indians, leaving him one child. It is said that he killed the Indian with his naked hands just beside a great rock that stands in the grave-yard beyond the garden, a short distance from the house. He afterward had that picture painted and placed there. It is reported to be a Lely. It has always been recognized as a fine picture, and in all the successive changes it has been left there. This present house was built around the fireplace of the old one. In this way a story has grown up about the picture, that it is connected with the fortunes of the house. You know how superstitious the negroes are?”

“I am not surprised,” said Mr. Welch, examining the picture more closely. “I never saw a lonelier man. That black frame shutting it in seems to have something to do with the effect.”

“The tradition has possibly had a good effect. There used to be a recess behind it that was used as a cupboard, perhaps a secret cabinet, because of this very superstition. The picture fell down once a few years ago and I found a number of old papers in there, and put some more in myself.

“Here, you can see the paint on the frame, where it fell. It was in the early summer, and one of the servants was just painting the hearth red, and a sudden gust of wind slammed a door and jarred the picture down, and it fell, getting that paint on it. You never saw anyone so frightened as that boy was. And I think my overseer was also,” he laughed. “He happened to be present, settling up some matters with which I had entrusted him in the South, and although he is a remarkably sensible man—so sensible that I had given him my bonds for a very considerable amount—one for a very large amount, indeed, in case he should need them in the matter I refer to, and he had managed the affair with the greatest shrewdness, bringing my bonds back—he was as much frightened almost as the boy. You’d have thought that the fall of the picture portended my immediate death. I took advantage of the circumstance to put the papers in the cupboard, and, to ease his mind, made Still nail the picture up, so that it will never come down again, at least, in my lifetime.”

“I had no idea the whites were so superstitious,” said Major Welch.

“Well, I do not suppose he really believed it. But, do you know, after that they began to say that stain on it was blood? And here again.”

He pointed to where three or four little foot-tracks, as of a child’s bare foot, were dimly seen on the hard white floor near the hearth.

“My little boy, Rupert, was playing in the hall at the time I mention, dabbling his feet in the paint, and the same wind that blew down the picture scattered my papers, and he ran across the floor and finally stepped on one. There, you can see just where he caught it: the little heel is there, and the print of the toes is on the bond behind the picture. His mother would never allow the prints to be scoured out, and so they have remained. And now, I understand, they say the tracks are blood.”

“On such slim evidence, perhaps other and weightier superstitions have been built,” said Mr. Welch, smiling.

Next morning, as Mr. Welch wished to see a Southern plantation, he deferred his departure until the afternoon, and rode over the place with Mr. Gray. Middleton was taken by his young hosts to see all the things of interest about the plantation: the high barn from which Blair had jumped into the tree, the bloody rock beside which the “Indian-Killer” had been buried, and the very spot where Steve had slept that night; together with many other points, whilst Mr. Welch was taken to see the servants’ quarters, the hands working and singing in the fields, and such things as interested him. The plantation surpassed any he had yet seen. It was a little world in itself—a sort of feudal domain: the great house on its lofty hill, surrounded by gardens; the broad fields stretching away in every direction, with waving grain or green pastures dotted with sheep and cattle, and all shut in and bounded by the distant woods.

During this tour Mr. Langstaff, the rector, made to Mr. Welch an observation that he thought there were evidences that the Garden of Eden was situated not far from that spot, and certainly within the limits of the State. Major Welch smiled at the old clergyman’s ingenuousness, but was graver when, as they strolled through the negro quarters, he began to speak earnestly of the blessings of Slavery. He pointed out the clean cabins, each surrounded by its little yard and with its garden; the laughing children and smiling mothers curtseying from their doors. The guest remained silent, and the old gentleman took it for assent.

“Why, sir, I have just prepared a paper which my friends think establishes incontrovertibly that Slavery is based on the Scriptures, and is, as it were, a divine institution.” Mr. Welch looked up to see how the other gentlemen took this. They were all grave, except Dr. Cary, usually the gravest, around whose mouth a slight smile flickered, and in whose eyes, as they met Major Welch’s, there was a little gleam of amusement.

“It is written, ‘A servant of servants shall he be.’ You will not deny that?” asked the old preacher, a little of the smouldering fire of the controversialist sparkling for a moment in his face.

“Well, no, I don’t think I will.”

“Then that settles it.”

“Well, perhaps not altogether,” said Mr. Welch. “There may be an economical sin. But I do not wish to engage in a polemical controversy. I will only say that down here you do not seem to me to appreciate fully how strong the feeling of the world at present is against Slavery. It seems to me, that Slavery is doomed as much as the Stage-coach, and the Sailing vessel.”

“My dear sir,” declared Mr. Gray, “I cannot agree with you. We interfere with nobody; all we demand is that they shall not interfere with us.”

“It is precisely that which you cannot enforce,” said Mr. Welch. “I do not wish to engage in a discussion in which neither of us could convince the other; but I think I have not defined my position intelligibly. You interfere with everyone—with every nation—and you are only tenants at will of your system—only tenants by sufferance of the world.”

“Oh! my dear sir!” exclaimed his host, his face slightly flushed; and then the subject was politely changed, and Mr. Welch was conscious that it was not to be opened again.

The only additional observation made was by a gentleman who had been introduced to Mr. Welch as the leading lawyer of the county, a portly man with a round face and keen eyes. “Well, as George IV. remarked, it will last my time,” he said.

Before the young people had seen half the interesting places of which Jacquelin had told Middleton, they were recalled to the house. Jacquelin’s face fell.

“School!” he said in disgust.

As they returned on a road leading up to a farm-house on a hill, they passed a somewhat rickety buggy containing a plain-looking young girl, a little older than Blair, driven by a thin-shouldered youngster of eighteen or nineteen, who returned Jacquelin’s and Blair’s greeting, with a surly air. Middleton thought he checked the girl for her pleasant bow. At any rate, he heard his voice in a cross tone, scolding her after they had passed.

“That’s Washy Still and Virgy, the overseer’s children,” explained someone.

“And he’s just as mean to her as he can be. She’s afraid of him. I’ll be bound I wouldn’t be afraid of him!” broke out Blair, her eyes growing suddenly sparkling at the idea of wrong to one of her sex. Middleton looked down at her glowing face and thought it unlikely.

On arrival at the house it proved that Jacquelin’s fears were well-founded. It had been decided that he must go back to school. Jacquelin appealed to his Aunt Thomasia to intercede for him, and she did so, as she always interceded for everyone, but it was in vain. It was an age of law, and the law had to be obeyed.

As Middleton was passing from the room he occupied, to the hall, he came on Blair. She was seated in a window, almost behind the curtain and he would have passed by without seeing her but for a movement she made to screen herself entirely. Curiosity and mischief prompted the young man to go up and peep at her. She had a book in her hand, which she held down as if to keep out of sight, and as he looked at her he thought she had been crying. A glance at the book showed it was “Virgil,” and Middleton supposed, from some personal experience, that the tears were connected with the book. So he offered to construe her lesson for her. She let him do it, and he was just congratulating himself that he was doing it tolerably well when she corrected him. At the same moment Jacquelin came in. He too looked unusually downcast, and Blair turned away her face, and then suddenly sprang up and ran away.

“What’s the matter?” asked Middleton. “Can’t she read her lesson?”

“No: she can read that well enough. You just ought to hear her read Latin. I wish I could do it as well as she does, that’s all! I’d make old Eliphalet open his eyes. She’s crying because I’ve got to go back to school—I wish I were grown up, I bet I wouldn’t go to school any more! I hate school, and I hate old Eliphalet, and I hate old Maule—no, I don’t quite hate him; but I hate school and I’m going to paint his horse blue, if he licks the life out of me.” After which explosion the youngster appeared relieved, and went off to prepare for the inevitable.

When he rode away with Doan behind him, his last call back was to Middleton, to be sure and remember his promise to come back again, and to bring Reely Thurston with him.