There were neighbors
within half that distance of Tallwoods, settlers nestled here or
there in these enfolding hills and forests; but of neighbors in
importance equal to that of the owner of Tallwoods there were few
or none in that portion of the state. The time was almost feudal,
but wilder and richer than any feudal day, in that fief tribute was
unknown. The original landlord of these acres had availed himself
of the easy laws and easy ways of the time and place, and taken
over to himself from the loose public domain a small realm all his
own. Here, almost in seclusion, certainly in privacy, a generation
had been spent in a life as baronial as any ever known in old
Virginia in earlier days. A day's ride to a court house, two days
to a steamer, five hours to get a letter to or from the occasional
post--these things seem slight in a lifelong accustomedness; and
here few had had closer touch than this with civilization.

[Illustration: Tallwoods]

The plantation itself was a little kingdom, and largely supplied
its own wants. Mills, looms, shops,--all these were part of the
careless system, easy and opulent, which found support and gained
arrogance from a rich and generous environment. The old house
itself, if it might be called old, built as it had been scarce
thirty years before, lay in the center of a singular valley, at the
edge of the Ozark Hills. The lands here were not so rich as the
wide acres thirty miles or more below, where on the fat bottom
soil, black and deep, the negroes raised in abundance the
wealth-making crop of the country. On the contrary, this, although
it was the capital of the vast Dunwody holdings thereabout, was
chosen not for its agricultural richness so much as for its
healthfulness and natural beauty.

In regard to these matters, the site could not better have been
selected. The valley, some three or four miles across, lay like a
deep saucer pressed down into the crest of the last rise of the
Ozarks. The sides of the depression were as regular as though
created by the hands of man. Into its upper extremity there ran a
little stream of clear and unfailing water, which made its entrance
at an angle, so that the rim of the hills seemed scarcely nicked by
its ingress. This stream crossed the floor of the valley, serving
to water the farms, and, making its way out of the lower end by a
similar curious angle, broke off sharply and hid itself among the
rocks on its way out and down