ch had the odor of violets in the waves
so heavy and black, up very near to mine. I could feel a comfort from
her breath on my cheek.

"I am in fear, Madam, that you should leave the train before I am
awake," I said in a voice under my breath. "I do not want that I lose
you into this great America."

"Oh, I'm not easily lost."

"I am desolated with loneliness and I must know where it is that you
leave the train, immediately, so that I may sleep."

"At Hayesville, Harpeth, you ridiculous boy. Now don't disturb me
again. Go to sleep."

As I sank back on my pillow, happy with a great relief, I thought I
heard two laughs in the darkness, one in a tone of silver from beneath
me and one of the sound of a choke from opposite me where was reposed
that Mr. G. Slade of Detroit.

"It is a good chance for you, Robert, that you go to sleep your first
night in America with the sound of a nice laugh from two persons of
kindness towards you, one of whom is to be with you for a friend in
the same--what was it the gray lady with the pencil and paper called
it?--'tall timbers of Old Harpeth' where all is of such strangeness to
you." And with this remark to myself I fell asleep, "as is," I think
it was that Mr. G. Slade of Detroit called my state of not being
disrobed further than trousers and coat.

After many months in which came to me cruel pain and a long hard fight
for the honor of my beloved, I cannot but remember that feeling of
gratitude that came over me as I went into sleep on that narrow shelf
under which lay the beauty of that Madam Patricia Whitworth.

In the eight years that I had become all of life to my father we had
made many travels into distant lands and had seen all of beauty that
the Old World had to offer seekers after it, but nowhere had I seen
the majestic wonder of this, his own land, that I beheld pass by like
a series of great pictures wrought by a master. All of the morning I
could but sit and gaze with eyes that sometimes dimmed with tears for
him as faster and faster I was carried down into his own land of the
Valley of Harpeth, which he had given up for love of my Mother and
from the cruelness of my wicked Uncle who would not welcome her to his
home. When the great Harpeth hills, in their spring flush from the
rosiness of what I afterwards learned was their honeysuckle and
laurel, shot with the iridescent fire of the pale yellow and green and
purple of redbud and dogwood and maple leaf, all veiled i