hind him Allan Gold and the road to Thunder Run, Richard
Cleave came, a little later, to his own house, old and not large,
crowning a grassy slope above a running stream. He left the highway,
opened a five-barred gate, and passed between fallow fields to a second
gate, opened this and, skirting a knoll upon which were set three
gigantic oaks, rode up a short and grass-grown drive. It led him to the
back of the house, and afar off his dogs began to give him welcome. When
he had dismounted before the porch, a negro boy with a lantern took his
horse. "Hit's tuhnin' powerful cold, Marse Dick!"

"It is that, Jim. Give Dundee his supper at once and bring him around
again. Down, Bugle! Down, Moira! Down, Baron!"

The hall was cold and in semi-darkness, but through the half-opened door
of his mother's chamber came a gush of firelight warm and bright. Her
voice reached him--"Richard!" He entered. She was sitting in a great old
chair by the fire, idle for a wonder, her hands, fine and slender,
clasped over her knees. The light struck up against her fair, brooding
face. "It is late!" she said. "Late and cold! Come to the fire. Ailsy
will have supper ready in a minute."

He came and knelt beside her on the braided rug. "It is always warm in
here. Where are the children?"

"Down at Tullius's cabin.--Tell me all about it. Who spoke?"

Cleave drew before the fire the chair that had been his father's, sank
into it, and taking the ash stick from the corner, stirred the glowing
logs. "Judge Allen's Resolutions were read and carried. Fauquier Cary
spoke--many others."

"Did not you?"

"No. They asked me to, but with so many there was no need. People were
much moved--"

He broke off, sitting stirring the fire. His mother watched the deep
hollows with him. Closely resembling as he did his long dead father, the
inner tie, strong and fine, was rather between him and the woman who had
given him birth. Wedded ere she was seventeen, a mother at eighteen, she
sat now beside her first-born, still beautiful, and crowned by a lovely
life. She had kept her youth, and he had come early to a man's
responsibilities. For years now they had walked together, caring for the
farm, which was not large, for the handful of servants, for the two
younger children, Will and Miriam. The eighteen years between them was
cancelled by their common interests, his maturity of thought, her
quality of the summer time. She broke the silence. "What did Fauquier
Car