at last that there was a chill mist groping among the
trees and that he was very cold.

He went back along the Red Road stumblingly. Was this to be the end of
the dream, which he had fancied would last forever? Could it be that she
was not for him? Was it no hoary lie that the sins of the fathers were
visited upon the third and fourth generation?

When he reentered the library the candle was guttering in the burned
wings of a night-moth. The place looked all at once gaunt and desolate
and despoiled. What could Virginia, what could Damory Court, be to him
without her? The wrinkled note lay on the desk and he bent suddenly with
a sharp catching breath and kissed it. There welled over him a wave of
rebellious longing. The candle spread to a hazy yellow blur. The walls
fell away. He stood under the moonlight, with his arms about her, his
lips on hers and his heart beating to the sound of the violins behind
them.

He laughed--a harsh wild laugh that rang through the gloomy room. Then
he threw himself on the couch and buried his face in his hands. He was
still lying there when the misty rain-wet dawn came through the
shutters.

CHAPTER XLI

THE COMING OF GREEF KING

It was Sunday afternoon, and under the hemlocks, Rickey Snyder had
gathered her minions--a dozen children from the near-by houses with the
usual sprinkling of little blacks from the kitchens. There were parents,
of course, to whom this mingling of color and degree was a matter of
conventional prohibition, but since the advent of Rickey, in whose soul
lay a Napoleonic instinct of leadership, this was more honored in the
breach than in the observance.

"My! Ain't it scrumptious here now!" said Cozy Cabell, hanging yellow
lady-slippers over her ears. "I wish we could play here always."

"Mr. Valiant will let us," said Rickey. "I asked him."

"Oh, _he_ will," responded Cozy gloomily, "but he'll probably go and
marry somebody who'll be mean about it."

"Everybody doesn't get married," said one of the Byloe twins, with
masculine assurance. "Maybe he won't."

"Much a boy knows about it!" retorted Cozy scornfully. "Women _have_ to,
and some one of them will make him. (Greenville Female Seminary Simms,
if you slap that little nigger again, I'll slap _you_!)"

Greenie rolled over on the grass and tittered. "Miss Mattie Sue didn',"
she said. "Ah heah huh say de yuddah day et wuz er moughty good feelin'
ter go ter baid Mistis en git up Marstah!"

"We