from the mountains--last trace of a
giant geology which once dealt in continental terms, rivers once
seas, valleys a thousand miles in length. Thus, at first sight,
one set down in the valley might have felt that it had neither
inlet nor outlet, but had been created, panoplied and peopled by
some Titanic power, and owned by those who neither knew nor desired
any other world. As a matter of fact, the road up through the
lower Ozarks from the great Mississippi, which entered along the
bed of the little stream, ended at Tallwoods farm. Beyond it,
along the little river which led back into the remote hills, it was
no more than a horse path, and used rarely except by negroes or
whites in hunting expeditions back into the mountains, where the
deer, the wild turkey, the bear and the panther still roamed in
considerable numbers at no great distance from the home plantation.

Tallwoods itself needed no other fence than the vast wall of hills,
and had none save where here and there the native stone had been
heaped up roughly into walls, along some orchard side. The fruits
of the apple, the pear and the peach grew here handsomely, and the
original owner had planted such trees in abundance. The soil,
though at first it might have been, called inhospitable, showed
itself productive. The corn stood tall and strong, and here and
there the brown stalks of the cotton plant itself might have been
seen; proof of the wish of the average Southerner to cultivate that
plant, even in an environment not wholly suitable. All about, upon
the mountain sides, stood a heavy growth of deciduous trees, at
this time of the year lining the slopes in flaming reds and golds.
Beyond the valley's rim, tier on tier, stately and slow, the
mountains rose back for yet a way--mountains rich in their means of
frontier independence, later to be discovered rich also in
minerals, in woods, in all the things required by an advancing
civilization.

Corn, swine and cotton,--these made the wealth of the owner of
Tallwoods' plantation and of the richer lands in the river bottoms
below. These products brought the owner all the wealth he needed.
Here, like a feudal lord, master of all about him, he had lived all
his life and had, as do all created beings, taken on the color and
the savor of the environment about him. Rich, he was generous;
strong, he was merciful; independent, he was arrogant; used to his
own way, he was fierce and cruel when crossed in that wa