ng belief that it needs only
matrimony to tame the wildest of eagles into a cooing dove. Kildare,
moreover, was one of the great landowners of the State, a man of
singular force and determination, and, when he chose to exert it, of a
certain virile charm. When Mrs. Leigh realized that, ever since her
daughter had been old enough to exhibit promise of the beauty she
afterwards attained, this man had marked her for his own, a feeling of
utter helplessness came over her.

They were a magnificent pair to look at, as they stood before her, tall,
vivid, vital. Beside Basil Kildare the youths who had hitherto courted
Kate, young as she was, seemed callow and insignificant, even to the
mother. It would need a man to rule such a woman as Kate was to become,
not an adoring boy; and Mrs. Leigh was of the type and generation that
believed firmly in the mastery of husbands.

She could not make up her mind to consent to the marriage, but she did
not forbid it. And it is probable that her forbidding would have had as
much effect upon that pair of lovers as the sighing of the southwind.
Perhaps less effect; for, in a Kentucky May, the sighing of the
southwind is very persuasive.

Bridesmaids and their escorts rode part way on the wedding journey; a
gay cavalcade, some of the youths a little white and quiet, all of the
girls with envious, sentimental eyes upon Kate where she rode beside the
handsomest of the wild Kildares, with the romantic, whispered reputation
of his race upon him.

When these had turned back, the bridegroom, chafing a little under their
surveillance, swore a great oath of relief and spurred his horse close.
In a sudden panic Kate bolted away from him, galloped up a lane, leaped
a fence into a field, where he caught her and seized her, laughing
aloud: "That's my girl! That's my pretty wild hawk! The spirit for a
mother of Kildare men, by God!"

After that she met his kisses unafraid. Girl as she was, it seemed to
her a beautiful saying--"a mother of Kildare men." Only three things she
was bringing with her from the old home to the new--her piano, her
father's books, and the oaken cradle that had come with the first Leigh
from overseas, and followed other Leighs across the mountains along the
old Wilderness Trail, into Kentucky.

Toward the end of their two days' journey through the May woods and
meadows, a little barking dog sprung out at them, frightening Kate's
thoroughbred until it almost threw her. Kildare