building up a new fortune. His decision, his force,
and his ability soon placed him at the head of one of the earliest new
enterprises in the State--a broken-down railway--which he re-organized
and brought to a full measure of success.

Colonel Drayton, on the other hand, broken in body and in fortunes,
found it impossible to adapt himself to the new conditions. He possessed
none of the practical qualities of General Hampden. With a mind richly
stored with the wisdom of others, he had the temperament of a dreamer
and poet and was unable to apply it to any practical end. As shy and
reserved as his neighbor was bold and aggressive, he lived in his books
and had never been what is known as a successful man. Even before the
war he had not been able to hold his own. The exactions of hospitality
and of what he deemed his obligations to others had consumed a
considerable part of the handsome estate he had inherited, and his
plantation was mortgaged. What had been thus begun, the war had
completed.

When his plantation was sold, his old neighbor and enemy bought it, and
the Colonel had the mortification of knowing that Drayton Hall was at
last in the hands of a Hampden. What he did not know was that General
Hampden, true to his vow, never put his foot on the plantation except
to ride down the road and see that all his orders for its proper
cultivation were carried out.

Colonel Drayton tried teaching school, but it appeared that everyone
else was teaching at that time, and after attempting it for a year
or two, he gave it up and confined himself to writing philosophical
treatises for the press, which were as much out of date as the Latin and
Greek names which he signed to them. As these contributions were usually
returned, he finally devoted himself to writing agricultural essays for
an agricultural paper, in which he met with more success than he had
done when he was applying his principles himself.

"If farms were made of paper he 'd beat Cincinnatus," said the General.

Lucy Hampden, thrown on her own resources, in the town in the South in
which her husband had died, had for some time been supporting herself
and her child by teaching. She had long urged her father to come to
them, but he had always declined, maintaining that a man was himself
only in the country, and in town was merely a unit. When, however, the
plantation was sold and his daughter wrote for him, he went to her, and
the first time that the little boy wa