ange glow of
ancestral hickory--and the golden glory of maples, on which the hectic
fever of the dying year kindled gleams of fiery red;--over all, a
gorgeous blazonry of riotous color, toned down by the silver gray
shadows of mossy tree-trunks, and the rich, dark, restful green of
polished magnolias.

Half a dozen fine Cotswold ewes browsed on the grass, and the small
bell worn by a staid dowager tinkled musically, as she threw up her
head and watched suspiciously the figure moving under the elm arches.
Beneath the far reaching branches of a patriarchal cedar, a small herd
of Jersey calves had grouped themselves, as if posing for Landseer or
Rosa Bonheur; and one pretty fawn-colored weanling ran across the sward
to meet the stranger, bleating a welcome and looking up, with
unmistakable curiosity in its velvety, long-lashed eyes.

As the avenue gradually climbed the ascent, the outlines of the house
became visible; a stately, typical southern mansion, like hundreds,
which formerly opened hospitably their broad mahogany doors, and which,
alas! are becoming traditional to this generation--obsolete as the
brave chivalric, warm-hearted, open-handed, noble-souled, refined
southern gentlemen who built and owned them. No Mansard roof here, no
pseudo "Queen Anne" hybrid, with lowering, top-heavy projections like
scowling eyebrows over squinting eyes; neither mongrel Renaissance, nor
feeble, sickly, imitation Elizabethan facades, and Tudor towers; none
of the queer, composite, freakish impertinences of architectural style,
which now-a-day do duty as the adventurous vanguard, the aesthetic
vedettes "making straight the way," for the coming cohorts of Culture.

The house at "Elm Bluff" was built of brick, overcast with stucco
painted in imitation of gray granite, and its foundation was only four
feet high, resting upon a broad terrace of brickwork; the latter
bounded by a graceful wooden balustrade, with pedestals for vases, on
either side of the two stone steps leading down from the terrace to the
carriage drive. The central halls, in both stories, divided the space
equally into four rooms on each side, and along the wide front, ran a
lofty piazza supporting the roof, with white smooth round pillars;
while the upper broad square windows, cedar-framed, and deeply
embrasured, looked down on the floor of the piazza, where so many
generations of Darringtons had trundled hoops in childhood--and
promenaded as lovers in the silvery m