n those days, suh, jes' gentlemen. That
place we're comin' to is Swan Tavern, and if it could talk it could
tell things that big men said, that it could. This heah house is
where Mis' Mary, the mother of Marse George Washington, used to live
when she got too old to boss the farm. Some society owns it what was
originated to preserve our Virginia iniquities, and they done put up
a monument to her that's the onliest one ever put up to a woman for
being the mother of a man. They was bus head people, the Washingtons
was, but so was a lot of others who didn't do nothin' to prove it,
and so is now forgot, and quality folks in them days was so thick
there warn't enough other kind to do 'em reverence. Governor
Spottswood and his Horse-Shoe gentlemen took dinner once in this heah
town, and President James Monroe used to live heah. I'm a-goin' to
show you his home and his office, presently, and the house where
Marse Paul Jones used to live in. I reckon you done heard tell of
Marse John Paul Jones, ain't you?"

Laine admitted having heard of him, but historic personages did not
interest as much as present-day ones. The occupants of certain
quaint and charming old houses, with servants' quarters in the rear
and flower-filled gardens in the front, the rose-bushes of which were
now bent and burdened with snow, appealed, as the other places of
famous associations failed to do, and he wondered in which of them
Claudia's relatives lived.

At Marye's Heights Beauregarde waxed eloquent. Half of what he said
was unheard, however, and as Laine's eyes swept the famous
battle-fields his forehead wrinkled in fine folds. Could they have
been settled in any other way--those questions which had torn a
nation's heart from its bosom? Would the spilling of blood be
forever necessary? He ordered Beauregarde to drive to the hotel.
There was just time for lunch, and then the boat which would take him
down the river to where Claudia would be waiting.

As the boat swung off from the wharf and slowly made its way down the
narrow river, curving like a horse-shoe around its ice-bound banks,
Laine, standing in the bow, scanned the scene closely, and wondered
if it were but yesterday that he had been in the rush and stir of
city life. Straight up from the water the bluff rose boldly. Rays
of pale sunlight sent threads of rainbow colors on the snow which
covered it, and through the crystal-coated trees, here and there, a
stately mansion could