“Then this sectional interference does not touch him?” said Courtland bitterly.
“No. He's an Englishman; his father was a known friend of the Confederacy, and bought their cotton bonds.”
She stopped, gazing into Courtland's face with a pretty vague impatience and a slight pouting of her lip.
“Yo' say yo' had known me for three years before yo' saw me. Well, we met once before we ever spoke to each other!”
Courtland looked in her laughing eyes with admiring wonder. “When?” he asked.
“The first day yo' came! Yo' moved the ladder when I was on the cornice, and I walked all ever yo' head. And, like a gentleman, yo' never said a word about it. I reckon I stood on yo' head for five minutes.”
“Not as long as that,” said Courtland laughing, “if I remember rightly.”
“Yes,” said Miss Sally with dancing eyes. “I, a So'th'n girl, actually set my foot on the head of a No'th'n scum of a co'nnle! My!”
“No! I want to apologize. Sit down, co'nnle.”
He did so, seating himself sideways on the bank. Miss Sally stood beside him.
He obeyed smilingly. Miss Sally suddenly slipped behind him. He felt the soft touch of her small hands on his shoulders; warm breath stirred the roots of his hair, and then--the light pressure on his scalp of what seemed the lips of a child.
He leaped to his feet, yet before he could turn completely round--a difficulty the young lady had evidently calculated upon--he was too late! The floating draperies of the artful and shameless Miss Sally were already disappearing among the tombs in the direction of the hollow.
The house occupied by the manager of the Drummond Syndicate in Redlands--the former residence of a local lawyer and justice of the peace--was not large, but had an imposing portico of wooden Doric columns, which extended to the roof and fronted the main street. The all-pervading creeper closely covered it; the sidewalk before it was shaded by a row of broad-leaved ailantus. The front room, with French windows opening on the portico, was used by Colonel Courtland as a general office; beyond this a sitting-room and dining-room overlooked the old-fashioned garden with its detached kitchen and inevitable negro cabin. It was a close evening; there were dark clouds coming up in the direction of the turnpike road, but the leaves of the ailantus hung heavy and motionless in the hush of an impending storm. The sparks of lazily floating fireflies softly expanded and went out in the gloom of the black foliage, or in the dark recesses of the office, whose windows were widely open, and whose lights Courtland had extinguished when he brought his armchair to the portico for coolness. One of these sparks beyond the fence, although alternately glowing and paling, was still so persistent and stationary that Courtland leaned forward to watch it more closely, at which it disappeared, and a voice from the street said:--