announced, "an' Marse Tom is
a-stampin' roun' same ez er bull. I reckon you'se gwine ter ketch it
when dey once gits dere han's on you." Then, as her eye fell on
Nicholas, she assumed an indignant air. "Dis ain't de place fer po'
folks," she added.

Eugenia rose and put a roasted apple in her pocket.

"I ain't goin' to catch anything that Bernard doesn't catch," she said.
"When he goes I'm goin' too."

And she went out, followed by Rindy and the boys.

The first breath of the chill atmosphere brought a glow to Nicholas's
cheek, and he started at a brisk run across the fields. He had gone but
a few yards when he was checked by Eugenia's voice.

"Nick!" she called.

Her small, dark shadow was falling on the ground beside him, and by the
light of the pale moon he could see the fog of her breath.

As he went towards her she held out her hand.

"Here's an apple I saved for you," she panted. "And--and I don't mind
about your being poor white trash!"

He took the apple, but before the reply left his lips she had darted
from him and was speeding homeward across the glimmering whiteness of
the frost.

BOOK II

A RAINY SEASON

I

Mrs. Jane Dudley Webb was a lady who supported an impossible present
upon an important past. She had once been heard to remark that if she
had not something to look back upon she could not live: and, as her
retrospective view was racial rather than individual, the consolation
attained might be considered disproportionate to the needs of the case.
The lines of her present had fallen in a white frame house in the main
street of Kingsborough; those of her past began with the first Dudley
who swung a lance in Merry England, to end with irascible old William of
the name, who slept in the family graveyard upon James River.

Mrs. Webb herself was straight and elegant, and inclined to the
ironical, when, as Jane Dudley, the belle of the country-side, she fired
the fancy of young Julius Webb, an officer in the cavalry of the United
States. He danced a minuet with her at a ball in Washington, was heard
to swear an oath by her eyes at punch before the supper was over; and
proceeded the following week to spur his courtship upon old William as
daringly as he had ever spurred his horse upon an Indian wigwam.

The last Dudley of the Virginian line withstood, through several stormy
years, the united appeals of his daughter and her lover. In the end he
yielded, subdued by opposition a