heavily encumbered with debt. But it had its cross, its choir,
and its rector, a scholarly old man who persuaded Philip into the
ministry and who on his death was succeeded by him. And from the first
it had its congregation. The farming people of that section of the State
had come, or their immediate forebears had come, almost entirely from
Virginia, so that the English service was as much a part of their
traditions as of Mrs. Leigh's. The building of the first Episcopal
church in that country did more to break down the enmity toward Basil
Kildare's young widow than any of her patient efforts to win their
friendship; and this despite the fact that she herself rarely entered
it.

The little edifice stood in a grove of fine beeches between Storm and
the crossroads village; a four-square structure of field boulders, with
a modest steeple, and a gallery across the back for negroes, in the
patriarchal Virginia fashion. The mistress of Storm saw to it that this
gallery was well filled. The corner-stone bore an inscription that
excited much comment in the community, as Kate intended it should:

ERECTED IN MEMORY OF BASIL KILDARE
BY HIS TWO CHILDREN

It was the first word of her answer to the world, and it had its weight.

"It says _his_ two children. She wouldn't dare to tell a lie on stone!"
was the current opinion.

Near the church was the rectory, one of those log-cabins boarded over
and whitewashed, which are still quite common in Kentucky, sturdy
mementoes of the sturdy pioneers whom they have outlived and will
outlive for many a generation yet to come. Lilac, hollyhock, and
hydrangea bloomed in season about this cabin, and it had a door-yard
that made women linger enviously and men smile in scorn; for to these
rough, hard-working, hard-living farmers it seemed that a young man
might find better use for his leisure than the tending of flowers.

He had other weaknesses than flowers. The walls of his long living-room
were lined with books, many of them "poetry-books," and the rector was
reported to have read them all. Passers-by often heard him playing
softly on his mother's old piano, and more than once he had been
discovered in the kitchen, cooking his own dinner. The one servant he
kept was an ancient negress addicted to the use of whisky and cocaine.
To those who remonstrated with him for keeping the old woman, he
explained that he got her very cheap because of her habits; but the
community suspec