A Well-Regulated Family

JOHN GATESDEN’S possession of the seven hundred ancestral acres of the Kingswell estate seemed to the community in which he flourished as inalienable a blessing as his possession of the straight Gatesden nose and the finest name in the county. The ownership of Kingswell, every one felt, would always be a more important factor in Gatesden’s career than his profession of the law; though his choice of vocation, coming to him by heredity as naturally as his estate, had never during the thirty years he had lived been a moment in doubt.

Gatesden’s law office — no unfair index to the character of its occupant — was regarded by the legal fraternity of Graysville with more of affectionate indulgence than respect. No door in the long low line of attorneys’ quarters that flanks the court-house opened oftener than John’s to admit a friend, and few remained less disturbed by clients. By common consent of the well-selected souls who had the entrée, Gatesden’s office was the best place in town to idle away a vagrant half-hour in the discussion of books or travel, politics or balls.

Yet there was nothing flippant about either John or his office. The walls of the two rooms were lined to the ceiling with sheep-bound repositories of cases, statutes, and reports — the accretion of three earlier generations of Gatesdens, supplemented, however, in good judgment, by recent purchases. Two diplomas, hung unobtrusively low behind the desk, occasionally awoke the visitor to surprised remembrance that John Gatesden had done notably well some ten years before at the fine college which had educated his grandfathers, showing, as an old professor had declared, a marked hereditary aptitude for legal reasoning.

No one, indeed, could have said that the slight opinion of Gatesden’s professional ability had arisen from any overt error or neglect. On the contrary, though the habitués of his office generally wasted his time and their own in miscellaneous chatter, John’s mind did not the less dominate the discussion when a visitor introduced shop-talk in connection with some thorny current case. Not infrequently in the past years, his struggling and rising contemporaries had even admitted, with a freedom bred of the inconceivableness of rivalry, that the decisive argument in an involved suit had been suggested by a lightly offered reference or extemporary harangue of John’s.

Some of the older practitioners, friends of his father, would still ask when John Gatesden was going to stop fooling and become a lawyer; but the general public, which in such cases is wont to assume what is most agreeable to it, had long settled that John would never amount to much in his profession. How could the community afford to exchange for a self-engrossed intellectual machine, this incomparable gentleman of leisure and letters, whose fine-flavored courtesy and charming mind lay always as freely and generously open as his office-door? Had not fate itself foreordained through two hundred years that Gatesden of Kingswell should be free from sordid cares and ambitions?

The smallest hints of impracticality were in John’s case joyously exaggerated into proofs of lovable incompetence. The weekly copy of Le Figaro on his desk, the annotated copy of Chaucer which a too boisterous intruder once snatched from his hand with shouts of laughter, were regarded as fatal symptoms of a digressive mind, and served to discourage clients as effectually as any spring-gun on the door. And yet no visitor to Judge Thornton’s untidy adjoining office was ever rash enough to draw a similar inference from the hideous pile of dime detective novels with which that legal Trojan was used to relieve his orgies of work.

As the idleness of the vacations was followed each year by the more glaring inoccupation of the terms of court, Gatesden came more and more to accept the position which circumstances and opinion seemed to have prescribed for him. Pride itself helped to cover the springs of energy. Since the universe had gratuitously adopted this delusion concerning him, was it not more seemly to accept the false estimate with an inward shrug, as he might let pass some stranger’s egregious blunder concerning him, rather than make himself ridiculous in the effort to vindicate his possession of a trait which was never disputed in many of his most commonplace associates?

The inward protest which the more ardent part of his nature did make from time to time against the trend of his existence was too gentle to sour his enjoyment of life; and it was everywhere noted that the years were dealing graciously with him. Since college, his fine-featured face had grown a shade rounder, his attitudes and movements more reposeful. Though no taint of fatness or self-indulgence had as yet begun to coarsen his refinement of look and manner, his personality now gave forth the companionable charm which comes with the knowledge how to get the fullest enjoyment out of every passing moment. No man could smoke a pipe with a more perfect balance between the nervous jerks that frustrate soporific pleasure and the apathy which grows oblivious of satisfaction. In his presence people realized for the first time how fine and rare an art it is to sit properly in one’s chair.

Guests at the bachelor dinners at Kingswell used to comment on John’s growing likeness to the portrait of his Revolutionary ancestor, Colonel John Gatesden, which hung behind the host’s seat in the dining-room. He was in fact reverting to type, developing a more leisurely and stately manner, with smoother brow and slower movement than belongs to the gentleman of the present order. And, indeed, he was not ill-pleased to have this observed. The master of Kingswell would not be living in vain, he fancied, while he revived for the benefit of a too busy age the more charming traits of the early Gatesdens.

The Kingswell property, which was so largely responsible for John Gatesden’s state of mind, was an object of pride not only to its owner, but to the entire region. Though reduced to less than a tithe of its colonial extent, it was still a very imposing tract, and almost alone of the old demesnes had been able to keep itself in the undisturbed possession of the family to which its original charter had been granted. The land had been strictly entailed from the first, and though the Revolution had annulled the legal force of the old tenure, it had in no way weakened the religious respect in which every Gatesden was taught to hold it. The duty of preserving the estate indivisibly in the family, as their first ancestors had bequeathed it, had been instilled till it had become a racial instinct; and the land passed from eldest son to eldest son as regularly as if the law of primogeniture were still unquestionable. It was a point on which the Gatesdens were fanatic, a channel into which was turned from earliest youth the whole force of their family pride. Each will recorded in the Graysville court-house, generation after generation, continued the traditional disposal of the property.

For the younger branches of the family, no treason could seem blacker than that which might, for selfish ends, attempt the disruption of the estate. This was the doctrine in which John Gatesden had been bred up. It was a doctrine, moreover, which local feeling highly approved. Though the estates of the Washingtons and the Randolphs were falling, one by one, into the vandal hands of aliens, Virginians might expect Kingswell to stand intact against the tide of changing conditions so long as the Gatesdens were not unfaithful to the tradition of their race.

Gatesden’s black caretaker, Dennis, moving with characteristic deliberation about the removal of dust and tobacco-ash, was startled one midsummer morning by an unwonted apparition. It was while Dennis, with head and shoulders bent far out of the frontoffice window, was wholly absorbed in the forbidden but labor-saving device of emptying a heaping dust-pan between the bars of the grating in the pavement below.

‘I reckon Mister John Gatson lives here?' drawled the voice of an unseen speaker, belonging clearly to a circle of society in which Dennis and his master did not move.

Inasmuch as Dennis had cautiously scanned the pavement up and down before venturing to display the objectionable dust-pan, the interruption was distinctly alarming to an uneasy conscience. He raised himself with a haste which brought his shoulders into sharp contact with the uplifted sash and left him pilloried uncomfortably in the window, while the dust-pan, diverted from its aim, poured an accusing heap of cigar-stumps directly beside the doorstep.

It required several startled glances to discover the speaker, seated on a weather-beaten spring-wagon beside the curbstone, where he had been waiting irresolutely for several minutes. Losing his alarm, Dennis stared in growing disapproval at this intruder, who continued to sit on the hard, unbacked wagon-seat in a characteristic attitude of mingled apathy and nervousness. Arms and legs were twisted awkwardly as if their owner sought to deprecate their superfluous length. The face, that of a man of forty, was covered with a growth of sandy hair in which moustache and beard merged indistinguishably. The only visible garments, besides the rough shoes and wide, chip hat, were a collarless shirt of brown cotton check, and overalls, originally dark-blue, but worn to a faded gray at the knees and other points of friction. The wagon, drawn by an aged mule, was laden with home-made baskets containing berries. Evidently the stranger was a ‘mountain man’ from the Blue Ridge beyond the Shenandoah, a member of the class which in the judgment of the Negro population ranks lowest in the social scale.

‘Does Mr. Gatson live here?’ repeated Dennis derisively, forgetting his embarrassment in the agreeable sense of superiority to his interlocutor. ‘Everybody that knows anything knows that Mr. Gatson re-sides at Kingswell!’

‘Wall,’ replied the stranger, ‘they tole me at the co’t-house to count five doors up the street on the right, and this here is the fif’, and yonder is his name.’

He pointed to the sign, ‘John Gatesden, Attorney at Law,’ beside the doorway.

‘Dis here is Mr. Gatson’s orffice,’ acknowledged the Negro grudgingly, ‘whar he comes to trans-form business with his friends, but he ain’t never here befo’ ten.'

‘Kin I see him ef I wait till ten?' persisted the other, glancing at the clock on the court-house, which now pointed to nine-forty.

‘I cain’t exac’ly say,’ replied Dennis. ‘Mister John he don’t have to be so powerful on time like a ’surance agent or that kin’ o’ trash; and he don’t see folks ’cep’ an’ he wants to. How come he to know you?’

‘He’ll be bound to know me, all right, and my father, too. Leastways he had ought to, bein’ as he’s the son of Colonel Bevis Gatson.’

Dennis drew in his head with ponderous dignity and set about the completion of his duties without another glance at the occupant of the wagon. The antipathy between the mountain whites, the pariahs of the district, and the old family Negroes, who regard themselves as a part of the dominant class, is as natural as that between cat and dog. Dennis resented the intrusion of this ‘po’ white trash’ as an affront to his own dignity and his master’s. He would gladly have driven him away ; but his only weapons, discouragement and condescension, were clearly ineffectual. Moreover, the Negro was a little impressed by the stranger’s familiar allusion to Gatesden’s father, and by his correct local pronunciation of the name. ‘Gatson,’ he had pronounced it. Had he said ‘Gates-den,’ as strangers often did, Dennis would have felt justified in turning him from the door as an arrant intruder.

Half an hour later, when John Gatesden walked into his office, after leaving his horse and buggy as usual at the livery-stable in the next street, he found Dennis abstractedly polishing the backs of his books, as if oblivious of every other concern.

‘Nobody called this morning, Dennis?’ he asked.

‘No, Mister John,’ answered the Negro; ‘there ain’t ben no callers—not’ less you count a old mountain man with berries. He mought be out there still,’ he continued, with an elaborate affectation of doubt concerning the continued presence of the stranger. ‘I jes’ knowed you did n’t want to see the likes of him; but them folks is powerful hard to decompose when they gets set on a thing.’

A glance through the window in the direction of Dennis’s scornful nod showed John the previously unnoticed mountaineer, still immobile on the wagon-seat. Gatesden returned to the door.

‘I am afraid you have been kept waiting for me,’ he said, with his charming smile. ‘I am Mr. Gatesden.’

For answer, the mountaineer straightened out his long legs and climbed stiffly out of the wagon. From among the litter of baskets behind, he took a stained and misshapen leather receptacle about the size of a long boot. Then he followed Gatesden into the office. Simultaneously Dennis retired with stately disgust through the door into the rear room.

At the threshold the visitor stopped nervously.

‘My name is Jackson,’he said; ‘Bevis Jackson from Otter Crick over thar in the mountain, fifteen mile t’ other side of the river. My father was Bevis Jackson too, and he was in Colonel Gatson’s regiment in the wah.’

‘Oh, I have often heard my father speak of him,’ exclaimed John, real interest replacing quizzical curiosity in his face. ‘When he raised a company, Bevis Jackson was one of the first to volunteer. He was his companion twice on scouting duty, and it was Bevis Jackson that dragged him to shelter when he was shot in the last charge at Malvern Hill.’

‘The old Colonel allers treated Pap real handsome when he come to town. He wanted to deed him our land in Otter Crick, because he said it was down in the co’t-house books that it belonged to the Gatsons. But Pap he would n’t take no new deed, for we uns allers knowed that the land is ours. We ain’t never been squatters and our papers is all in here,’ Jackson concluded, as he laid the old leathern bag on the desk.

‘Of course, you know that your possession will never be interfered with by any of us, even if we should be able to do so; but if you will accept the formal deed to your farm which your father declined, we can quickly make your title absolutely clear.’

‘T ain’t that that made me come to you,’answered Jackson, quickly. ‘We know that you all would n’t never make us no trouble, and we know the land has always been rightly ourn. But this here lumber company from Roanoke has been nosin’ about, and they have drove stakes clean across our wood-lot. The engineer fellow allows as how it belongs to them. So I thought if maybe you could look through this here and tell me how things stand, I’d feel safer like when them folks comes back to begin choppin’.'

He pushed the bag farther across the desk in Gatesden’s direction.

‘I shall be delighted to do so,’ said John. ‘It will be only a small repayment of the debt we owe you. Leave me the papers and come back, if you can, about one o’clock.’

The man nodded with an abruptness which was far from uncivil.

‘I got to peddle my berries aroun’, and buy some truck. I reckon I’ll be back by one.’

He climbed into his wagon and after clucking several times to the irresponsive mule, lumbered down the street at an irregular trot which drove the berry baskets clattering from side to side.

John took up the bag from the desk and looked at it curiously. It weighed perhaps five or six pounds, and though much discolored and misshapen, was still so stout as to seem almost air-tight. It was clearly a saddle-bag of the type carried by gentlemen of the eighteenth century, when travel in this region was all by horseback. Evidently, too, it had belonged to a person of distinction, for the mountings were of silver and a great plate of the same metal on the flap bore the armorial badge of some family, now tarnished beyond recognition. The lock John found much stronger than he would have imagined from its small size and ornamental appearance. Though the silver key had been left within the keyhole, it refused for a long time to turn. Apparently the lock had set from long disuse.

John poured a drop of machine-oil into the keyhole, and, while waiting for the lubricant to work, occupied himself with the engraved silver plate. Taking the chamois-skin cover of his watch, he rubbed the tarnished metal several minutes, till the inscription began to grow legible.

As the letters under the arms appeared, he uttered an exclamation. It was the Gatesden motto, ‘Jus suum cuique ’ that the bag bore. On the shield above could be traced, though very dimly, the outline of the scroll and balance of the Gatesden crest. Tense with interest, John turned again to the lock. The oil had had its effect, and the key now turned.

The first glance inside the case was disappointing. It revealed only a squat little volume, mouldering with damp and age, a Greek Testament with the imprint, ‘Oxoniæ, 1760.’ Laying it aside, John examined the bag itself more particularly, and discovered, sewed against the side, a kind of oilskin envelope designed for the carrying of papers. He unbuttoned this inner case and drew forth several documents which, though yellowed, had been preserved from decay. The largest paper was a rent-roll of the Gatesden property, drawn up in the year 1774. An official parchment beside it proclaimed the appointment of Bevis Gatesden, of the county of Frederick in Virginia, Esquire, stamp commissioner for western Virginia, and representative, under Lord Dunmore, of the authority of King George the Third.

A rough note, written as John recognized in the hand of his Revolutionary great-grandfather, was the only other paper. It ran as follows: —

Williamsburg, June 8, 1775. Honoured Brother: It seems my duty to acquaint you, as our late Father’s representative and the Head of our Family, that I have this day taken an action, which, though it may not occasion you surprise, will, I doubt not, give you vexation and grief. I have bound myself with many Gentlemen of the Colony to resist the enforcement of His Majesty’s late measures and the will of his Governor. Lord Dunmore hath retired in anger from the city and the burgesses no longer venture to hope for a peaceful issue. I have not the hardihood to flatter myself that you will regard my step without anger; but I beg you to reflect that, should our undertakings miscarry, you are like at least to be no more troubled by a young half-brother who has already caused you too much displeasure. I am, Sir,
Your obedient, humble brother,
JOHN GATESDEN.

For a long time Gatesden fingered the papers. What an interesting relic of his old Tory ancestor, of whose passionate loyalty to King George many stories were still rife! By what curious accident, he mused, could this memorial of his family have lain for generations in the possession of the Jacksons? And then he suddenly remembered. Otter Creek lay deep in the heart of the Blue Ridge, visited even to-day by none but its sparse mountaineer population and a few hunters of wild turkey. Gatesden himself had never been there. It was somewhere in this inaccessible part of the county that old Bevis Gatesden had been killed, according to family history, in a desperate attempt to secrete the King’s munitions from the rising colonists. Overtaken in a ravine of the mountains, the old fellow had long fought in defense of the royal stores, and finally, after the dispersal of his followers, had ridden off the field like Hampden, wounded and alone, to die, it was supposed, somewhere in the wilds. The body was never recovered: but there stood in the burying ground at Kingswell a monument to his memory with the inscription, ‘Officio fortiter perfunctus pro rege et fide vitam deposuit.’

The saddle-bag had doubtless been taken from the old man’s horse by the mountaineers who witnessed his death. It was a most precious heirloom, to be recovered at all costs and treasured with the other family relics at Kingswell. John carefully replaced the papers in the pocket from which he had taken them, revolving in his mind as he did so the arguments by which he might best obtain Jackson’s surrender of the curio.

As he rebuttoned the pocket, his eyes fell again upon the Testament. Holding the little volume in both hands, he carefully opened the stiffened leather and turned over the pages in search of annotations. On the fly-leaves at the back of the book he found several pages of manuscript, written in inferior ink and much more weather-stained than the papers in the pocket.

As Gatesden slowly deciphered the faded writing, the look of satisfaction died out of his face. His checks flushed uncomfortably, and he felt a chill settling about his heart. According to the inscription on the Kingswell cenotaph, old Bevis Gatesden had died in 1775; but the first note in the book was dated 1778. This is what John read: —

October 9, 1778. I, Bevis Gatesden, late representative of His Majesty in these parts, was this day married by a travelling parson, one Thomas Eckles, to Joan Ellerslie, a peasant wench by whom I have been nursed these three years past through wounds and fever. This I have done in sound mind, though still infirm health, being determined to pass the poor remainder of my days among these people who have sheltered and preserved me when my own have cast me off. God knows I can do naught else, for my lands, save these barren hills, are in possession of the rebels, and my fractured thigh prevents me from sitting horse again in His Majesty’s service.

The next entry, written in a hand yet more wavering and illegible, ran crookedly across the middle of a page_

March 4. 1780. On this day was baptized my son Bevis, called by the name of his forefathers, though like to know naught of his heritage. Better that my unhappy strain continue in obscurity than that it contaminate the Gatesden stock with peasant blood and enjoy its patrimony by truckling to disloyalty and rebellion!

To John Gatesden, as he pored over the last crabbed letters, the whole story became suddenly clear. He was unconscious of any course of ratiocination, however short; nor did he feel the slightest doubt concerning the overpowering conclusion to which his mind leaped. This mountaineer, Bevis Jackson, bearing like his father the unusual Christian name of the Gatesdens, was the descendant of the elder Bevis of the Revolution, the old Tory whom the family records assumed to have died without issue. It was he, not John, who represented the senior branch and to whom, according to the inviolable rule, the family estate should have descended. Even the name Jackson, which he now bore, was convincing evidence. Gatesden was in vulgar pronunciation Gatson, and Gatson would inevitably pass into Jackson among the leveling influences of the backwoods.

The hours which dragged away before the return of Jackson were for John Gatesden the most poignant of his life. Too honest to dodge realization of the new state of affairs, he was yet incapable of perceiving any tolerable course of action. What could he do which should be just and honorable at once to this uncouth stranger, to himself, and to his trust as fiduciary of the family dignity? Like all men bred to a high sense of personal responsibility, he had a horror amounting almost to physical repulsion for anything flashily melodramatic or hysterical. By heaven, if this man, whose existence shook down about him all the stately edifice of his self-satisfaction, were an equal, a gentleman, he could see his way and follow it to its logical end of personal renunciation. But to make himself and all that his birth and position represented a butt for widemouthed gossip by investing this vulgar jay in the plumes which had lain so gracefully upon his ancestors and himself—to do this wantonly, without legal compulsion, for the gratification of a whimsical, squeamish honor — would be not noble, but hideously grotesque.

To John there seemed no escape from the horrible dilemma. Before his brain three ideas kept repeating themselves monotonously, as though he should never be able either to dismiss or to harmonize them. The family motto on the bag, Jus suum cuique, ‘To every man his due’; the old law of the exclusive right of the elder branch, which seemed the holier now that it depended no longer upon legal force but upon race loyalty and devotion; — these seemed to keep hammering themselves upon his throbbing temples; while beside them kept rising in hideous discord the image of the mountaineer, himself the negation of the qualities of hereditary nobility which all this rigid machinery of succession had been framed to perpetuate.

The actual appearance of Jackson, standing in the doorway, unannounced by knock or salutation, was a relief. Something in the man’s shyness appealed to John’s own embarrassment. He felt that they were less rivals than comrades in the bizarre adventure which fate had suddenly let fall upon them.

‘Sit down,’ he said, after a glance of friendly hesitation. ‘How much can you tell me about the original owner of these things?’ he asked as he began again to take out the contents of the bag.

‘The old squire, you mean?’ answered the other. ‘He was Pap’s grandfather, but he died long before Pap was born, I reckon. They say he never got over the wounds he got when he first come into Otter Crick. He’d been fighting the Injuns or Britishers, I reckon. His hoss brought him up to our cabin and after he had got a little better he was married to Pap’s grandmother. He is buried in the buryin’ground at the forks of the road. They allers said as how he was a great man at home, but we never rightly knowed jest whar he come from.’

‘His name was really Bevis Gatesden. He was the owner of the Kingswell estate, which passed to my great-grandfather, because he was supposed to have died unmarried. According to the family rules, the property should have remained with your branch and descended to you, I suppose, not to me.’ John went on slowly. ‘Here is the evidence of your ancestor’s marriage and of the birth of his son.’

He read aloud the entries in the Testament.

‘And you mean that the law would take your land and give it to me, if this here was known?’ asked Jackson, in supreme astonishment.

‘Probably not; but we have always settled our family affairs without invoking the law, and we have settled them justly. The question is, what is just here?’

‘It says thar in the book that the old squire did n’t want Pap’s father to get the land.’

‘That would n’t bar his title,’ answered John. ‘It looks to me as if the property is rightfully yours.’

‘You don’t mean that you would give it to me without having to?’

‘I don’t know. You must help me to decide. I don’t see how I could keep what is morally not mine.’

The mountaineer sat for a moment downcast. The unconscious melancholy of his expression was intensified as he thought. John bit his lips as he stared at the wall, irritated with himself for his inability to deal decisively with the situation.

After two or three minutes, Jackson looked up. The shy awkwardness of his manner, which astonishment had for a moment shaken off, was again upon him.

‘If you please, Mister Gatson, do you reckon that I could see this place that was my — that was the old squire’s? ’

‘ Certainly,’ answered John. ‘ I drive back for lunch. Come with me now.’

Gatesden’s fast trotter covered the two miles to Kingswell in ten minutes. Neither man spoke during the drive. John was a prey to the keen annoyance with himself, which fills the conscientious person when he scents unpleasant duty and cannot decide upon his course of action. The stranger gazed wide-eyed at the evidences of prosperity along the road, at the handsome iron gates adorning the entrance to the estate, at the long avenue, and the low, capacious sweep of the house’s façade.

Seated tête-à-tête with John in the long dining-room, under the withering scowls of the waiter, Jackson won the cordial respect of his host. To the natural dignity of the mountaineer he joined a quick power of observation which preserved his manners from rudeness even in the unfamiliar environment. John’s rare gift of hospitality was called into play as he led his guest to forget his embarrassment and entertained him with family anecdotes. By the end of the meal all stiffness had disappeared.

In the spirit of congeniality which arises from the recognition of common interest, the two men passed from a survey of the portraits on the walls to the examination of the tombstones in the burying-ground outside. Still occupied with question and answer about the family and the history of Kingswell, they returned to the town.

The old gray mule, standing disconsolate before the office door, seemed to wake Jackson from a dream. In a kind of stage fright he tumbled from the cushioned seat upon which he had been reclining in unembarrassed ease, and stood twirling his hat nervously between his fingers.

‘You have given me a day, Mr. Gatson,’ he stammered, ‘that I won’t ever forget, and — and that will maybe help me to make something of myself. And if you are still agreeable to let me have a deed for the Otter Crick land, I’ll take it and thank you.’

‘But, my dear fellow,’ answered John in surprise, ‘we can’t dispose of the matter so easily. Don’t you see that as the representative of the elder branch of our family, you should be the owner of all my property — not by the present law, perhaps, but morally and according to the intention of the original proprietors of the estate?’

‘Me?’ cried Jackson, in genuine fright. ‘Do you think I could be mean enough or fool enough to take that? I’d be plain miserable, anyway, with them niggers and the other folks scoffin’ at me.’

‘Well, that’s our problem, cousin,’said John, frankly. ’I can’t fancy myself standing in another man’s shoes.’

‘Tell me,’ asked Jackson suddenly, ‘why they started this silly rule about the property.’

‘ Why, mainly to insure its remaining intact in the family.’

‘And you feel uncomfortable about it because I am the oldest son of the oldest son all the way down?’

‘Yes.’

‘But if I had an older brother, or my father had had, then it would go to him, and I would n’t have no claim?’

‘That was the old principle.’

‘Then you needn’t be nowise disturbed, sir,’ said Jackson, looking his hearer clearly in the eye, ’for Pap had an older brother named John, who left home befo’ the wah. I reckon he went out West when they was talkin’ so much about gold in Californy. We ain’t heard nothin’ of him lately, and we ain’t likely to; but even supposin’ he war my own brother and the dearest kin I had, I’d throw him off clean ef he would do sech a low-down mean thing as take a penny’s worth of what is yourn. You see, sir,’ he went on with a flushed face, ‘we uns has allers had our pride too. That’s why we would n’t take the old colonel’s offer to deed us that land—he bein’ a stranger, as we thought. And now, ef we can think of you, livin’ here so fine and noble, as our kin and what you call the head of our family, it’ll make us a deal happier than ten times the land would. It’ll do me real good, sir, that will, and maybe help me to get over bein’ so shiftless and no-count.’

He wrung John’s hand hard and mounted his old wagon. The mule trotted once more down the street. The empty baskets rattled. John Gatesden looked after the man with friendly eyes. Then he turned into the office. The prim tidiness of the room smote him suddenly with sharp reproach. How amateurish and ineffectual his life was! How ready he had been to deck himself in borrowed plumes! The rude awakening to his false position had taught him his lesson, thank God! The Kingswell heritage, falsely his, which had so long lulled him in complacent idleness, would be in future his sharpest goad.

One possible avenue of escape into the world of living activity lay before him. An election for the office of prosecuting attorney of the county was nearly due. In this region, with its large tracts of mountain wilderness, it was a post of much labor, and even danger, and of infinitesimal profit, sought usually only by desperate beginners at the law. He would be ridiculed for desiring it, but he could doubtless have it for the asking. It would give him at the least hard work and a start.

He crossed the room to the neatly folded Figaro on his table, tore it, and flung the fragments into the scrapbasket. The old exhilaration of his college days beat intoxicatingly about his temples; the very office air seemed wine and iron. In the flush of the new dawn his mind turned again to the image of the departed mountaineer.

‘He’s worthy of his stock,’ he murmured. ‘I suppose he was lying in what he said about his uncle? Who knows? But he is right. The trust is mine, and with God’s help I will hold it as highly as I may.’