cal economists. The wealthy classes of ante bellum days were
the most destitute paupers that the newly-risen Union sun shone upon.

The French Revolution and its subsequent eruptions of Communism failed
to destroy the value of land; and the emancipation of Russian serfs may
have stimulated agricultural activity, but that political and social
Communism which the Pandora of "reconstruction" let loose throughout
the conquered States of the South, accomplished all that the victors
could have desired.

Abandoned by the laborers God had fitted to endure toil under climatic
conditions peculiar to the soil, vast silent fields of weeds stared
blankly, and the richer a man found himself in ancestral acres, the
more hopelessly was he manacled by taxes. "Reconstructionists" most
thoroughly inoculated with "Loyal" rabies, held in lofty disdain the
claims of widows and orphans, and the right of minors was as dead as
that of secession. In the general maelstrom, Colonel Gordon's large
estate went to pieces; but after a time, Judge Dent took lessons from
his new political masters in the science of wrecking, and by degrees,
as fragments and shreds stranded, he collected and secreted them.
Certain mining interests were protected, and some valuable plantations
in distant sugar belts, were secured. As guardian of his sister's
daughter, he changed, or renewed investments in stocks which rapidly
increased in value, until an unusually large fortune had accumulated:
and verifying figures justified his boast, that his niece and ward was
the wealthiest heiress in the State.

Reared in a household which consisted of an elderly uncle and aunt, and
a middle-aged governess, Leo Gordon had never known intimate
association with younger people; and while her nature was gentle and
tranquil, she gradually imbibed the grave and rather prim ideas which
were in vogue when Miss Patty was the reigning belle of her county.
Although petted and indulged, she had not been spoiled, and remained
singularly free from the selfishness usually developed in the character
of an only child, nurtured in the midst of mature relatives. When
eighteen years old, Leo, accompanied by her governess, Mrs. Eldridge,
had been sent to New York and Boston for educational advantages, which
it was supposed that her own section of the country could not supply;
and subsequently the two went abroad, gleaning knowledge in the great
centres of European Art. During their sojourn in Munich, M