"Thank you, and bless you," he said to me, as I went past him in the

darkness, and for just a second I suspected that his hand was laid on my

black braids but I was not sure. I knew the gratitude was for my

getting Martha off the scene of action so quietly and swiftly.

"A bit of raw life for you, Charlotte," Nickols remarked as he went with

me through the fragrant night back to Mark's and Nell's feast. "The

eternal girl, two-men melee."

"In this case it was girl--three men, the third skunking it," I answered

in words as coarse and as forcible as the scene I had just witnessed.

"I'd like to get my bare hands around the throat of the man who is

hiding behind Martha and that little child."

"That remark from you, my dear Charlotte, just goes to show that when

women get even the smell of bloodshed they become fiercer than the

male," said Nickols with a cool laugh that further infuriated me.

"Yes, I do feel like a female jaguar," I answered hotly and then

collapsed inside at the use of that name for myself in conjunction with

my secret title for the Reverend Mr. Goodloe.

"It would be better if you felt yourself in the character of a ferret if

you intend to go out on a still hunt for all unacknowledged paternity,

even in dear, simple, little old Goodloets," Nickols further jeered as

we came up the steps of the Morgan house from where the others were just

going into the dining room to resume their eating and drinking and being

merry.

"I'll find that one man," I answered as I swept into the dining room,

seated myself in my place and drained my glass of flat wine.

"Heaven help him!" laughed Nickols wickedly, and he raised Mr. Goodloe's

full glass as he slipped into his place beside me.

For a week after the shooting fray my soul sulked darkly in its tent and

meditated while I went on my usual gay rounds of self-enjoyment. The

garden was being brought to a most glorious mid-August triumph and the

inhabitants for miles around were coming to see it. All of father's old

friends, from whom he had shrunk in the last years, hung around him in

the old way. He sat with them under the old graybeard poplars around

which had been planted a plantation of slim young larches by the wizard

of White Plains. From discussions about gardening and Americanisms all

the old Solons of the local bar, and even of the towns around, gradually

led their fallen leader back into his place and were battling with him

over politics and jurisprudence as they had in past days. The day I went

into his library to ask father about employing another likely black

garden boy that Dabney had discovered, and found him, Judge Monfort from

over at Hillcrest in the third district, Mr. Cockrell and Mr. Sproul

around his table deep in huge volumes from the shelves, buried in a

cloud of tobacco smoke and argument in which Latin words flew back and

forth, I went up to my room and stood helpless before my window looking

out towards Paradise Ridge.




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