bordered on either side by rows
of closely clipped box, which ended in the long avenue of cedars leading
from the lawn to the distant turnpike. To the right of the house there
were three pointed aspens, which shivered like skeletons in silver,
holding grimly aloof from the vivid pink of the crepe myrtle at their
feet. Beyond them was the well-house, with a long moss-grown trough
where the horses and the cows came to drink, and across the road began
the cornlands, which stretched in rhythmic undulations to the dark belt
of the pine forest. On the left of the box walk, in a direct line from
the three aspens, towered a huge sycamore, and from one of its
protecting arms, shaded by large fan-like leaves, a child's swing
dangled by a thick hemp rope. Near the sycamore, where an old oak had
fallen, the rotting stump was hidden by a high "rockery," edged with
conch shells, and over the rough gray rocks a tangle of garden flowers
ran wild--sweet-william, petunias, phlox, and the mossy stems of red and
yellow portulaca. On the western side of the house there was a spreading
mimosa tree, its sensitive branches brushing the green shutters of a
window in the second story.

The Hall had been built by the general's father when, because of family
dissensions, he had decided to move from a central county to the more
thinly settled country surrounding Kingsborough. There the general had
passed his boyhood, and there he had left his wife when he had gone to
the war. At the beginning of the struggle he had freed his slaves and
buckled on his sword.

"They may have the negroes, and welcome," he had said to the judge. "Do
you think I'd fight for a damned darkey? It's the principle, sir--the
principle!"

And the judge, who had not freed his servants, but who would as soon
have thought of using a profane word as of alluding in disrespectful
terms to a family portrait, had replied gravely:

"My dear Tom, you will find principle much better to fight for than to
live on."

But the general had gone with much valour and more vehemence. He had
enlisted as a private, had risen within a couple of years to a
colonelcy, and had been raised to the rank of general by the unanimous
voice of his neighbours upon his return home. After an enthusiastic
reception at Kingsborough he had mounted a heavy-weight horse and ridden
out to the Hall, to find the grounds a tangle of weeds and his wife
with the pallor of death upon her brow. She had rallied at his c