and imposed more arduous tasks than those of actual warfare.
Valour was of small account without arms and ammunition. A
commissariat might be improvised, but gunpowder must be manufactured
or purchased.

Ralph's nephew Malcolm kept bachelor's hall in the great house. The
only women in the household were an old black cook, and the
housekeeper, known as "Viney"--a Negro corruption of Lavinia--a tall,
comely young light mulattress, with a dash of Cherokee blood, which
gave her straighter, blacker and more glossy hair than most women of
mixed race have, and perhaps a somewhat different temperamental
endowment. Her duties were not onerous; compared with the toiling
field hands she led an easy life. The household had been thus
constituted for ten years and more, when Malcolm Dudley began paying
court to a wealthy widow.

This lady, a Mrs. Todd, was a war widow, who had lost her husband in
the early years of the struggle. War, while it took many lives, did
not stop the currents of life, and weeping widows sometimes found
consolation. Mrs. Todd was of Clarendon extraction, and had returned
to the town to pass the period of her mourning. Men were scarce in
those days, and Mrs. Todd was no longer young, Malcolm Dudley courted
her, proposed marriage, and was accepted.

He broke the news to his housekeeper by telling her to prepare the
house for a mistress. It was not a pleasant task, but he was a
resolute man. The woman had been in power too long to yield
gracefully. Some passionate strain of the mixed blood in her veins
broke out in a scene of hysterical violence. Her pleadings,
remonstrances, rages, were all in vain. Mrs. Todd was rich, and he was
poor; should his uncle see fit to marry--always a possibility--he
would have nothing. He would carry out his purpose.

The day after this announcement Viney went to town, sought out the
object of Dudley's attentions, and told her something; just what, no
one but herself and the lady ever knew. When Dudley called in the
evening, the widow refused to see him, and sent instead, a curt note
cancelling their engagement.

Dudley went home puzzled and angry. On the way thither a suspicion
flashed into his mind. In the morning he made investigations, after
which he rode round by the residence of his overseer. Returning to the
house at noon, he ate his dinner in an ominous silence, which struck
terror to the heart of the woman who waited on him and had already
repented of her temerity. W