ldered young man of
twenty-three or thereabouts, came forward to meet me. I should have
recognized him for Radnor anywhere, so striking was his resemblance to
the brother I had known. He wore a loose flannel shirt and a
broad-brimmed felt hat cocked on one side, and he looked so exactly the
typical Southern man of the stage that I almost laughed as I greeted
him. His welcome was frank and cordial and I liked him from the first.
He asked after my health with an amused twinkle in his eyes. Nervous
prostration evidently struck him as humorously as it did Terry. Lest I
resent his apparent lack of sympathy however, he added, with a hearty
whack on my shoulder, that I had come to the right place to get cured.

A drive over sweet smelling country roads behind blooded horses was a
new experience to me, fresh from city streets and the rumble of elevated
trains. I leaned back with a sigh of content, feeling already as if I
had got my boyhood back again.

Radnor enlivened the three miles with stories of the houses we passed
and the people who lived in them, and to my law-abiding Northern ears,
the recital indubitably smacked of the South. This old gentleman--so Rad
called him--had kept an illicit still in his cellar for fifteen years,
and it had not been discovered until after his death (of delirium
tremens). The young lady who lived in that house--one of the belles of
the county--had eloped with the best man on the night before the wedding
and the rightful groom had shot himself. The one who lived here had
eloped with her father's overseer, and had rowed across the river in the
only available boat, leaving her outraged parent on the opposite bank.

I finally burst out laughing.

"Does everyone in the South run away to get married? Don't you ever have
any legitimate weddings with cake and rice and old shoes?" As I spoke I
remembered Nannie and wondered if I had touched on a delicate subject.

But Radnor returned my laugh.

"We do have a good many elopements," he acknowledged. "Maybe there are
more cruel parents in the South." Then he suddenly sobered. "I suppose
you remember Nan?" he inquired with an air of hesitation.

"A little," I assented.

"Poor girl!" he said. "I'm afraid she had a pretty tough time. You'd
best not mention her to the old gentleman--or Jeff either."

"Does the Colonel still feel hard toward them?"

Radnor frowned slightly.

"He doesn't forgive," he returned.

"What was the trouble with Jeff?" I