! He goes to hell every Friday
noon to carry brimstone and tell the devil what folks have been up to."

She clapped her hands. "You're certainly learning fast. When I was
little I used to be delighted to see a blue-jay in the cedars on Friday
afternoon. It was a sign we'd been so good there was nothing to tell.
Follow me now and I'll show you the view from Lovers' Leap. But look
down. Don't lift your eyes till I tell you."

He dropped his gaze to the small brown boots and followed, his eyes
catching low side-glimpses of woodsy things--the spangled dance of
leaf-shadows, a chameleon lizard whisking through the roots of the
bracken, the creamy wavering wings of a white moth resting on a dead
stump. Suddenly the slim path between the trees took a quick turn, and
fell away at their feet. "There," she said. "This is the finest view at
Damory Court."

They stood on the edge of a stony ravine which widened at one end to a
shallow marshy valley. The rocks were covered with gray-green feathery
creepers, enwound with curly yellow tendrils of love-vine. Across the
ravine, on a lower level, began a grove of splendid trees that marched
up into the long stretch of neglected forest he had seen from the house.
Looking down the valley, fields of young tobacco lay tier on tier, and
beyond, in the very middle of the mellow vaporous distance, lifted the
tapering tower of a far-off church, hazily outlined against the azure.

"You love it?" he asked, without withdrawing his eyes.

"I've loved it all my life. I love everything about Damory Court. Ruined
as it is, it is still one of the most beautiful estates in all Virginia.
There's nothing finer even in Italy. Just behind us, where those
hemlocks stand, is where the duel the children spoke of was fought."

He turned his head. "Tell me about it," he said.

She glanced at him curiously. "Didn't you know? That was the reason the
place was abandoned. Valiant, who lived here, and the owner of another
plantation, who was named Sassoon, quarreled. They fought, the story is,
under those big hemlock trees. Sassoon was killed."

He looked out across the distance; he could not trust his face.
"And--Valiant?"

"He went away the same day and never came back; he lived in New York
till he died. He was the father of the Court's present owner. You never
heard the story?"

"No," he admitted. "I--till quite recently I never heard of Damory
Court."

"As a little girl," she went on, "I had a very vi