on't know,
I'm sure, same thing I suppose that put it into his head to give me
impudence."

"You've taken him back," said Phyl.

"Well, I suppose I have," said the other in a resigned voice, "and likely
to pay for my foolishness."

Pinckney had said that it was only a two hours' run from Charleston to
Grangerville, but he had reckoned without taking into consideration the
badness of some of the roads, and the intricacies of the way, for it was
after one o'clock when they reached the little town beyond which, a mile
to the West, lay the Colonel's house.

Grangerville lies on the border of Clarendon county, a tiny place that yet
supports a newspaper of its own, the _Grangerville Courier_. The _Courier_
office, the barber's shop and the hotel are the chief places in
Grangerville, and yellow dogs and black children seem the bulk of the
population, at least of a warm afternoon, when drowsiness holds the place
in her keeping, and the light lies broad and steadfast and golden upon the
cotton fields, and the fields of Indian corn, and the foliage of the woods
that spread to southward, enchanted woods, fading away into an enchanted
world of haze and sun and silence.

When the great Southern moon rises above the cotton fields, Romance
touches even Grangerville itself, the baying of the yellow dog, darkey
voices, the distant plunking of a banjo, the owl in the trees--all are the
same as of old--and the houses are the same, nearly, and the people, and
it is hard to believe that over there to the North the locomotives of the
Atlantic Coast railway are whistling down the night, that men are able to
talk to one another at a distance of a thousand miles, fly like birds,
live like fish, and perpetuate their shadows in the "movies."

Grangersons lay a mile beyond the little town, a solidly built mansion set
far back from the road, and approached by an avenue of cypress. As they
drew up before the pillared piazza, upon which the front door opened, from
the doorway, wide open this warm day, appeared an old gentleman.

A very fine looking old man he was. His face, with its predominant nose,
long white moustache and firm cleft chin, was of that resolute and
obstinate type which seems a legacy of the Roman Empire, whose legionaries
left much more behind them in Gaul and Britain than Trajan arches and
Roman roads. He was dressed in light grey tweeds, his linen was
immaculate--youthful and still a beau in point of dress, and bearing
him