gh, and books to read, and plenty of pretty things to look at, and
old lace to wear, and I've kept my figure and my vanity--I'm not too old
yet to thank the Lord for that! So don't talk to me about worsted shawls
and horrible arctics. For I won't wear 'em. Not if I know myself! Here
comes Shirley. She's made two juleps, and if you're a gentleman, you'll
distract her attention till I've got rid of mine in my usual way."

* * * * *

The major, at the foot of the cherry-bordered lane, looked back across
the box-hedge to where the two figures sat under the rose-arbor, the
mother's face turned lovingly down to Shirley's at her knee. He stood a
moment watching them from under his slouched hat-brim.

"You never looked at me that way, Judith, did you!" he sighed to
himself. "It's been a long time, too, since I began to want you
to--'most forty years. When it came to the show-down, I wasn't even as
fit as Tom Dandridge!"

He pulled his hat down farther over his big brow and sighed again as he
strode on. "You just couldn't make yourself care, could you! People
can't, maybe. And I reckon you were right about it. I wasn't fit."

CHAPTER XI

DAMORY COURT

"Dar's Dam'ry Co'ot smack-dab ahaid, suh."

John Valiant looked up. Facing them at an elbow of the broad road, was
an old gateway of time-nicked stone, clasping an iron gate that was
quaint and heavy and red with rust. Over it on either side twin
sugar-trees flung their untrammeled strength, and from it, leading up a
gentle declivity, ran a curving avenue of oaks. He put out his hand.

"Wait a moment," he said in a low voice, and as the creaking conveyance
stopped, he turned and looked about him.

Facing the entrance the land fell away sharply to a miniature valley
through which rambled a willow-bordered brook, in whose shallows
short-horned cows stood lazily. Beyond, alternating with fields of young
grain and verdured pastures like crushed velvet, rose a succession of
tranquil slopes crowned with trees that here and there grouped about a
white colonial dwelling, with its outbuildings behind it. Beyond,
whither wound the Red Road, he could see a drowsy village, with a spire
and a cupolaed court-house; and farther yet a yellow gorge with a wisp
of white smoke curling above it marked the course of a crawling far-away
railway. Over all the dimming yellow sunshine, and girdling the farther
horizon, in masses of purplish blue, the tumble