Even now, athrill with the joy of the moment, Henry Falkins felt at the back of his mind an oppressive sense of the humorless and brooding hills, and the humorless and brooding men who peopled them.
They were turning between stone gate-posts into a driveway that led through shaded woodlands where thorough-bred dams grazed in sleek aristocracy with leggy colts capering at their sides. Beyond was the brick house, toned by its generations to an ancient richness, with its harping pine and cedar trees about it, and at the left its garden, giving a border of bright flower mosaic.
They had not been talking much. They were both happy enough to be silent together, but as they turned into the home place Lucinda raised sparkling eyes. He was riding close, and, as his horse swerved suddenly to the side of her own mount, she leaned impulsively toward him and let her gauntleted hand drop for a moment to his bridle arm, as she whispered happily:
"My bluegrass is yours, and your mountains are mine--and all the life of Kentucky is ours!"
At the broad verandah where a negro appeared to take their horses, Colonel Cameron looked up from his paper and smiled his welcome. The entire house seemed to smile a welcome. Late roses still clung along the walls where their earlier brethren were fallen to pods. The girl sat in a deep porch-chair and the setting sun gilded the landscape and rested on her delicate coloring and features as she smiled on the two men whom she loved: the old man of the passing order of chivalry and elegance, and the young man of slowly awakening hills. And when night came the man and the girl sat alone in the shadow of an oak. Soon he must be back in the troubled highlands, but to-night was his, with its stars overhead; its sense of security and delight; its whispered talk; and, drifting from the negro cabins, the mellow cadence of songs and the tinkle of banjos. When the girl fell silent and he spoke only by the telegraphy of his hand-clasp on her slender fingers, there came to his ears the words of an old song, forgotten save by these children and grandchildren of slaves:
"Way down yander in de big bayou-- Whar de Yankee gunboats lay, Ole Massa's tuck his hat an' coat-- An' I spec's he's runned away."