l" having passed, he would betake himself to genial affairs, help a
neighbor with his work, lend his chattels to shiftless farmers, cut wood
and haul it for widows, and gathering children about him entertain them
with stories of the great war.

And how dearly that war had cost him. East Tennessee did not tear itself
loose from the Union; Andrew Johnson and Parson Brownlow, one a
statesman and the other a fanatic, strangled the edicts of the lordly
lowlanders and sent regiment after regiment to the Federal army. Among
the first to enlist were old Jasper Starbuck and his twin boys. The boys
did not come back. In the meantime their heart-broken mother died, and
when the father returned to his desolate home, there was a grave beneath
the tree where he had heard a sweet voice in the evening.

Years passed and he married again, a poor girl in need of a home; and at
the time which serves as the threshold of this history, he was sobered
down from his former disposition to go out upon a "pilgrimage" of
revenge. His "spells" had been cured by grief, but nothing could kill
his humor. Drawling and peculiar, never boisterous, it was stronger than
his passion and more enduring than the memory of a wrong. He was not a
large man. A neighbor said that he was built after the manner of a
wild-cat. He was of iron sinew and steel nerve. His eyes were black with
a glint of their youthful devilishness. His thick hair was turning gray.

Margaret, his wife, was a tender scold. She was almost a foundling, but
a believer in heredity could trace in her the evidences of good blood.
From some old mansion, long years in ruin, a grace had escaped and come
to her. An Englishman, traveling homeward from the defunct colony of
Rugby, declared that she was an uncultivated duchess.

"This union was blessed,"--say the newspapers and story-books, speaking
of a marriage,--"with a beautiful girl," or a "manly boy." Often this
phrase is flattery, but sometimes, as in this instance, it is the truth.
Lou Starbuck was beautiful. In her earlier youth she was a delicious
little riot of joy. As she grew older, she was sometimes serious with
the thought that her father and mother had suffered. She loved the truth
and believed that bravery was not only akin to godliness, but the right
hand of godliness.

In Starbuck's household, or at least attached to his log-house
establishment, there were two other persons, an old black mammy who had
nursed Jasper, and a trifling