ntry sports so sadly lacking in the life of the city youth, ... the
faithful, admiring negro servants to whom young "Marse Warren" had been
a veritable Sir Galahad--the flower of the neighborhood chivalry.
Indeed, in this portion of the States still glows the tradition of the
ancient knighthood: the gallantry to women, the reverence for family
honor, the bravery in men, the loyalty to neighborhood, commonwealth,
and nation,--in verity, the spirit of ideal citizenship.

Warren saw once more the gentle face of his mother, as she worked in
her old-fashioned garden of rosemary, hollyhocks, larkspur, iris, rue,
... heard the soft dialect of quaint old ladies gossiping on the broad,
shaded portico ... listened again to the laughter of neighboring
judges, colonels, majors--his father's old cronies--as they
good-naturedly wrangled and bantered over the battles of the War, the
merits of their respective thoroughbreds, or the correct manner in
which to concoct that nectarian classic of the Southland, the mint
julep!

To Warren's retrospection came the vision of his departure for the
famous college in the East, the joyful vacation times, and finally his
decision to seek adventure far, far to the south--in Brazil, Guatemala,
Panama, where he had developed his own executive caliber as a commander
of men, in the great construction work on the Big Ditch.... Then came
the sorrowful day when he had returned from his travels, to behold the
ravages of time on his mother's aging face and his father's stooping
shoulders. Even the servants were changed, and it had been to keep a
closer bond with the dear old estate that he had taken faithful Rusty
Snow as his manservant when he went on to New York again to pursue his
profession.

Warren's mind burrowed in the memories of the feudism of the
countryside, the sole blot on its simple yet aristocratic modes. He
remembered the fragmentary stories of the ancient Marcum-Jarvis quarrel
... this had cost the lives of men for three generations, in an equity
of vengeful settlement based strictly on the Mosaic law of "an eye for
an eye--a tooth for a tooth." The Marcum family fortunes had been
dissipated, those of the Jarvis clan ascending--yet still the feud
continued, until the men of both families had paid for the bitterness
with their lives. Now his father had been the last Jarvis to go--after
a lull of many years.

The sweetness of the old memories was swept by the maelstrom of hate
which surge