merican continent. The
Poplars, under whose broad roof I made the seventh generation nested and
fledged, spreads out its wings and gables upon a low hill which is the
first swell of the Harpeth hills, and the rest of the old town stretches
out on the hillside before it down to the valley, in which runs the
Harpeth River, curving around the town and flowing out of the valley to
the Mississippi. Behind the Poplars roll the fields and meadows of the
Home Farm, which has given food and sustenance to the Poplars' brood
since the days of the redskins, when it was cleared by the first Powers
and his servants, with muskets ready to fire into the surrounding
forests. To the left of the Poplars and beyond the chapel lies the
Settlement, in which those lacking in worldly goods have lived for
generations in a kind of semi-poverty, which is about the only poverty
known in the Harpeth Valley. Lately, the Settlement has taken unto
itself a measure of prosperity, because of the great tannery and harness
works in its midst on the banks of the river, which is bringing in gold
from Russia and France. Everybody has made money in the last few years,
and the fashionable wing of Goodloets to the left of the Poplars shows
improvements and restorations that are both costly and sometimes
amazing. However, fortunately the inhabitants of the old village are
conservative, and very little of the delicious moss of tradition has
been scratched off; it has only been clipped into prosperous decorum,
and antiquity still flings its glamour over the town.

"I feel as much rooted as one of the old poplars," I said to myself as
some whim made me go down the steps and out into the garden, along the
walks with their budding borders of narcissus and peonies, down through
Nickols' sunken garden to the two oldest of all the poplars that now
seemed to be standing sentinel to prevent any raid from me on the little
stone meeting house over the lilac hedge. "You dear old graybeard," I
said to the one on my left, as I looked up and saw a faint feathering of
silver on its branches. And as I spoke I took the old trunk into my
embrace and laid my cheek against the rough bark.

And then something happened. Afterwards I was glad that I was leaning
against the strength of the old graybeard poplar and hidden behind it.

Suddenly from out the shadows beyond the lilac hedge, through whose bare
branches any movement in the yard of the chapel showed plainly, a woman
came stumb