rtain of winning, had generously retired in order to defeat a third
candidate and throw the prize to Oliver Hampden.

They came home and both went to the Bar, but with different results.
Young Drayton was learned and unpractical. Oliver Hampden was clever,
able, and successful, and soon had a thriving practice; while his
neighbor's learning was hardly known outside the circle of the Bar.

Disappointed in his ambition, Drayton shortly retired from the Bar and
lived the life of a country gentleman, while his former friend rapidly
rose to be the head of the Bar.

The old friendship might have disappeared in any event, but a new cause
arose which was certain to end it.

Lucy Fielding was, perhaps, the prettiest girl in all that region.
Oliver Hampden had always been in love with her. However, Fortune, ever
capricious, favored Wilmer Drayton, who entered the lists when it looked
as if Miss Lucy were almost certain to marry her old lover. It appeared
that Mr. Drayton's indifference had counted for more than the other's
devotion. He carried off the prize with a dash.

If Oliver Hampden, however, was severely stricken by his disappointment,
he masked it well; for he married not long afterward, and though some
said it was from pique, there was no more happily married pair in all
the county.

A year later a new Oliver came to keep up the name and tenets of the
Hampdens. Oliver Hampden, now the head of the Bar, would not have envied
any man on earth had not his wife died a few years later and left him
alone with his boy in his big house.

Lucy Drayton was born two years after young Oliver Hampden.

The mammies of the two children, as the mammies of their parents had
done before them, used to talk them over on the edge of the shaded
meadow which divided the places, and thus young Oliver Hampden, a lusty
boy of five, came to know little Lucy Drayton fully three years before
his father ever laid eyes on her.

Mr. Hampden was riding around his fences one summer afternoon, and was
making his way along the double division line with a cloud on his brow
as the double rows recalled the wide breach with his neighbor and former
friend, and many memories came trooping at the recollection. Passing
through a small grove which had been allowed to grow up to shut off a
part of his view of the Drayton place, as he came out into the meadow
his eye fell on a scene which made him forget the present with all its
wrongs. On the green turf bef