ad struck deep into
his great heart.

"My God!" he said, a touch of reverential tone in his whisper, "to think
of her following me!"

And he stretched out his hand in the darkness and laid it upon the side
of the cradle lightly, and afterwards fell asleep.

CHAPTER IX

Just at this time, which was the year before the Civil War, that
fashionable summer resort, the White Briar Springs, was at its gayest.
Rarely before had the hotel been filled with so brilliant a company. A
few extra cases of yellow fever had been the cause of an unusual exodus
from the fever districts, and in consequence the various summer resorts
flourished and grew strong. The "White Briar" especially exerted and
arrayed itself in its most festive garments. The great dining-room was
filled to overflowing, the waiters were driven to desperation by the
demands made upon them as they flew from table to table and endeavoured
with laudable zeal to commit to memory fifty orders at once and at the
same time to answer "Comin', sah" to the same number of snapped fingers.
There were belles from Louisiana, beauties from Mississippi, and
enslavers from Virginia, accompanied by their mothers, their fathers,
their troops of younger brothers and sisters, and their black servants.
There were nurses and valets and maids of all shades from ebony to
cream-colour, and of all varieties of picturesqueness. All day the
immense piazzas were crowded with promenaders, sitters, talkers,
fancy-workers, servants attired in rainbow hues and apparently enjoying
their idleness or their pretence at work to the utmost. Every morning
parties played ten-pins, rode, strolled, gossipped; every afternoon the
daring few who did not doze away the heated hours in the shaded rooms,
flirted in couples under trees on the lawn, or in the woods, or by the
creek. Every evening there was to be found ardent youth to dance in the
ballroom, and twice a week at least did this same youth, arrayed in robes
suited to honour the occasion, disport itself joyfully and with
transcendent delight in the presence of its elders assembled in rooms
around the walls of the same glittering apartment with the intention of
bestowing distinction upon what was known as "the hop."

Sometimes, in dull seasons, there was a scarcity of partners upon such
occasions; but this year such was not the case. Aside from the brothers of
the belles and beauties before referred to, who mustered in full force,
there was a re