while she was still distrusted
and feared.

Away back in the days of the Revolution the people of the hills were of
the best. All of them who could serve their country then, did it nobly
and well. Some of them signed the Declaration of Independence and then
returned to their homes with the dignity and courage of men in whose
veins flowed aristocratic blood as well as that of adventurous freemen.
There they waited for the recognition they expected and deserved. But
the new-born republic was too busy and breathless to seek them out or
pause to listen to their voices, which were softer, less insistent than
others nearer by. In those far past times the Morleys and the
Hertfords were equals and the Walden Place deserved its name of the
Great House. The Appointed Way was the Big Road, and was kept in good
order by well-fed and contented slaves who had not then dreamed of
freedom.

The final acceptance of the hill people's fate came like a deadening
shock to the men and women of the Lost Mountain district--they were
forgotten in the new dispensation; in the readjustment they were
overlooked! The Hertfords left the hills with uplifted and indignant
heads--they had the courage of their convictions and meant to take what
little was left to them and demand recognition elsewhere--they had
always been rovers. Besides, just at that time Lansing Hertford and
Sandford Morley, sworn friends and close comrades, had had that secret
misunderstanding that was only whispered about then, and it made it
easier for Hertford to turn his back upon his home lands and leave them
to the gradual decay to which they were already doomed. The Waldens
had retained enough of this world's goods to enable them to descend the
social scale slower than their neighbours. Inch by inch they debated
the ground, and it was only after the Civil War that Fate gripped them
noticeably. Up to that time they had been able to hide, from the none
too discriminating natives, the true state of affairs.

The Morleys and the Tabers, the Townleys and the Moores, once they
recognized the true significance of what had happened, made no
struggle; uttered no defiance. They slunk farther back into the hills;
they shrank from observation and depended more and more upon
themselves. They intermarried and reaped the results with sullen
indifference. Their hopes and longings sank into voiceless silence.
Now and then Inheritance, in one form or another, flared forth, but