se the Major went to the sideboard.

"Have a drink, Chad?"

Chad laughed: "Do you think it will stunt my growth?"

"Stand up here, and let's see," said the Major.

The two stood up, back to back, in front of a long mirror, and Chad's
shaggy hair rose at least an inch above the Major's thin locks of gray.
The Major turned and looked at him from head to foot with affectionate
pride.

"Six feet in your socks, to the inch, without that hair. I reckon it
won't stunt you--not now."

"All right," laughed Chad, "then I'll take that drink." And together
they drank.

Thus, Chadwick Buford, gentleman, after the lapse of three-quarters of
a century, came back to his own: and what that own, at that day and in
that land, was!

It was the rose of Virginia, springing, in full bloom, from new and
richer soil--a rose of a deeper scarlet and a stronger stem: and the
big village where the old University reared its noble front was the
very heart of that rose. There were the proudest families, the
stateliest homes, the broadest culture, the most gracious hospitality,
the gentlest courtesies, the finest chivalry, that the State has ever
known. There lived the political idols; there, under the low sky, rose
the memorial shaft to Clay. There had lived beaux and belles, memories
of whom hang still about the town, people it with phantom shapes, and
give an individual or a family here and there a subtle distinction
to-day. There the grasp of Calvinism was most lax. There were the
dance, the ready sideboard, the card table, the love of the horse and
the dog, and but little passion for the game-cock. There were as manly
virtues, as manly vices, as the world has ever known. And there, love
was as far from lust as heaven from hell.

It was on the threshold of this life that Chad stood. Kentucky had
given birth to the man who was to uphold the Union--birth to the man
who would seek to shatter it. Fate had given Chad the early life of
one, and like blood with the other; and, curiously enough, in his own
short life, he already epitomized the social development of the nation,
from its birth in a log cabin to its swift maturity behind the columns
of a Greek portico. Against the uncounted generations of gentlepeople
that ran behind him to sunny England, how little could the short sleep
of three in the hills count! It may take three generations to make a
gentleman, but one is enough, if the blood be there, the heart be
right, and the brain and ha