the conspicuous courtesy, and I indicate the service to the
commonwealth of legal papers in form and court proof. May I hope, Sir,
that you will not deny us the benefit of your highly distinguished
service."

My father very slowly looked about him in calm reflection.

He had ridden ten miles through the hills on this April morning, at
Zindorf's message sent the night before. The clay of the roads was still
damp and plastic from the recent rain. There were flecks of mud on him
and the splashing of the streams.

He was a big, dominating man, in the hardened strength and experience
of middle life. He had come, as he believed, upon some service of the
state. And here was a thing for the little dexterities of a lawyer's
clerk. Everybody in Virginia, who knew my father, can realize how he was
apt to meet the vague message of Zindorf that got him in this house, and
the patronizing courtesies of Mr. Lucian Morrow.

He was direct and virile, and while he feared God, like the great
figures in the Pentateuch, as though he were a judge of Israel enforcing
his decrees with the weapon of iron, I cannot write here, that at
any period of his life, or for any concern or reason, he very greatly
regarded man.

He went over to the window and looked out at the hills and the road that
he had traveled.

The mid-morning sun was on the fields and groves like a benediction. The
soft vitalizing air entered and took up the stench of liquor, the ash of
tobacco and the imported perfumes affected by Mr. Lucian Morrow.

The windows in the room were long, gothic like a church, and turning
on a pivot. They ran into the ceiling that Monroe had built across the
gutted walls. The house stood on the crown of a hill, in a cluster of
oak trees. Below was the abandoned graveyard, the fence about it rotted
down; the stone slabs overgrown with moss. The four roads running into
the hills joined and crossed below this oak grove that the early people
had selected for a house of God.

My father looked out on these roads and far back on the one that he had
traveled.

There was no sound in the world, except the faint tolling of a bell in
a distant wood on the road. It was far off on the way to my father's
house, and the vague sound was to be heard only when a breath of wind
carried from that way.

My father gathered his big chin, flat like a plowshare, into the trough
of his bronze hand. He stood for some moments in reflection, then he
turned to Mr. Lucia