the temptations offered by modern architectural
innovations, and clung to the simplicity of large rooms and broad
verandas: a style whose merits had stood the test of easy-going and
comfort-loving generations.

The negro quarters were scattered at wide intervals over the land,
breaking with picturesque irregularity into the systematic division of
field from field; and in the early spring-time gleaming in their new
coat of whitewash against the tender green of the sprouting cotton and
corn.

Therese loved to walk the length of the wide verandas, armed with her
field-glass, and to view her surrounding possessions with comfortable
satisfaction. Then her gaze swept from cabin to cabin; from patch to
patch; up to the pine-capped hills, and down to the station which
squatted a brown and ugly intruder within her fair domain.

She had made pouting resistance to this change at first, opposing it
step by step with a conservatism that yielded only to the resistless.
She pictured a visionary troop of evils coming in the wake of the
railroad, which, in her eyes no conceivable benefits could mitigate.
The occasional tramp, she foresaw as an army; and the travelers whom
chance deposited at the store that adjoined the station, she dreaded
as an endless procession of intruders forcing themselves upon her
privacy.

Gregoire, the young nephew of Mrs. Lafirme, whose duty on the
plantation was comprehended in doing as he was bid, qualified by a
propensity for doing as he liked, rode up from the store one day in
the reckless fashion peculiar to Southern youth, breathless with the
information that a stranger was there wishing audience with her.

Therese at once bristled with objections. Here was a confirmation of
her worst dread. But encouraged by Gregoire's reiteration "he 'pear to
me like a nice sort o' person," she yielded a grudging assent to the
interview.

She sat within the wide hall-way beyond the glare and heat that were
beating mercilessly down upon the world out of doors, engaged in a
light work not so exacting as to keep her thoughts and glance from
wandering. Looking through the wide open back doors, the picture which
she saw was a section of the perfect lawn that encircled the house for
an acre around, and from which Hiram was slowly raking the leaves cast
from a clump of tall magnolias. Beneath the spreading shade of an
umbrella-China tree, lay the burly Hector, but half awake to the
possible nearness of tramps; and Bet