g the printed
statues of the land. The F.F.V. was born a gentleman; his highest duty in
life was to watch over that great inheritance and keep it unsmirched. He
must keep his honor spotless. Those laws were his chart; his course was
marked out on it; if he swerved from it by so much as half a point of the
compass, it meant shipwreck to his honor; that is to say, degradation
from his rank as a gentleman. These laws required certain things of him
which his religion might forbid: then his religion must yield--the laws
could not be relaxed to accommodate religions or anything else. Honor
stood first; and the laws defined what it was and wherein it differed in
certain details from honor as defined by church creeds and by the social
laws and customs of some of the minor divisions of the globe that had got
crowded out when the sacred boundaries of Virginia were staked out.

If Judge Driscoll was the recognized first citizen of Dawson's Landing,
Pembroke Howard was easily its recognized second citizen. He was called
"the great lawyer"--an earned title. He and Driscoll were of the same
age--a year or two past sixty.

Although Driscoll was a freethinker and Howard a strong and determined
Presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no impairment in consequence.
They were men whose opinions were their own property and not subject to
revision and amendment, suggestion or criticism, by anybody, even their
friends.

The day's fishing finished, they came floating downstream in their skiff,
talking national politics and other high matters, and presently met a
skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said:

"I reckon you know one of the new twins gave your nephew a kicking last
night, Judge?"

"Did WHAT?"

"Gave him a kicking."

The old judge's lips paled, and his eyes began to flame. He choked with
anger for a moment, then he got out what he was trying to say:

"Well--well--go on! Give me the details!"

The man did it. At the finish the judge was silent a minute, turning
over in his mind the shameful picture of Tom's flight over the
footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud,

"H'm--I don't understand it. I was asleep at home. He didn't wake me.
Thought he was competent to manage his affair without my help, I reckon."
His face lit up with pride and pleasure at that thought, and he said with
a cheery complacency, "I like that--it's the true old blood--hey,
Pembroke?"

Howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded