Archie, Boston, and imported Glencoe himself, now were sons of Mambrino Patchin, and George Wilkes and Harold. And a splendid lot they were—sires,—brood mares and colts, in the paddocks of The Gaffs.

Travis took no man's dust in the Tennessee Valley. At county fairs he had a walk-over.

He had inherited The Gaffs from his grandfather, for both his parents died in his infancy, and his two remaining uncles gave their lives in Virginia, early in the war, following the flag of the Confederacy.

One of them had left a son, whom Richard Travis had educated and who had, but the June before, graduated from the State University.

Travis saw but little of him, since each did as he pleased, and it did not please either of them to get into each other's way.

There had been no sympathy between them. There could not be, for they were too much alike in many ways.

There can be no sympathy in selfishness.

All through the summer Harry Travis had spent his time at picnics and dances, and, but for the fact that his cousin now and then missed one of his best horses from the stable, or found his favorite gun put away foul, or his fishing tackle broken, he would not have known that Harry was on the place.

Cook-mother Charity kept the house. Bond and free, she had spent all her life at The Gaffs. Of this she was prouder than to have been housekeeper at Windsor. Her word was law; she was the only mortal who bossed, as she called it, Richard Travis.

Usually, friends from town kept the owner company, and The Gaffs' reputation for hospitality, while generous, was not unnoted for its hilarity.

To-night Richard Travis was lonely. His supper tray had not been removed. He lit a cigar and picked up a book—it was Herbert Spencer, and he was soon interested.

Ten minutes later an octoroon house-girl, with dark Creole eyes, and bright ribbons in her hair, came in to remove the supper dishes. She wore a bright-colored green gown, cut low. As she reached over the table near him he winced at the strong smell of musk, which beauties of her race imagine adds so greatly to their aesthetic status-quo. She came nearer to him than was necessary, and there was an attempted familiarity in the movement that caused him to curve slightly the corner of his thin, nervous lip, showing beneath his mustache. She kept a half glance on him always. He smoked and read on, until the rank smell of her perfume smote him again through the odor of his cigar, and as he looked up she had busied around so close to him that her exposed neck was within two feet of him bent in seeming innocence over the tray. With a mischievous laugh he reached over and flipped the hot ashes from his cigar upon her neck. She screamed affectedly and danced about shaking off the ashes. Then with feigned maidenly piquancy and many reproachful glances, she went out laughing good humoredly.

He was good natured, and when she was gone he laughed boyishly.

Good nature is one of the virtues of impurity.

Still giggling she set the tray down in the kitchen and told Cook-mother Charity about it. That worthy woman gave her a warning look and said:

“The frisk'ness of this new gen'ration of niggers makes me tired. Better let Marse Dick alone—he's a dan'g'us man with women.”

In the dining-room Travis sat quiet and thoughtful. He was a handsome man, turning forty. His face was strong, clean shaved, except a light mustache, with full sensual lips and an unusually fine brow. It was the brow of intellect—all in front. Behind and above there was no loftiness of ideality or of veneration. His smile was constant, and though slightly cold, was always approachable. His manner was decisive, but clever always, and kind-hearted at times.

Contrary to his habit, he grew reminiscent. He despised this kind of a mood, because, as he said, “It is the weakness of a fool to think about himself.” He walked to the window and looked out on the broad fields of The Gaffs in the valley before him. He looked at the handsomely furnished room and thought of the splendid old home. Then he deliberately surveyed himself in the mirror. He smiled:

“'Survival of the fittest'—yes, Spencer is right—a great—great mind. He is living now, and the world, of course, will not admit his greatness until he is dead. Life, like the bull that would rule the herd, is never ready to admit that other life is great. A poet is always a dead rhymester,—a philosopher, a dead dreamer.

“Let Spencer but die!

“Tush! Why indulge in weak modesty and fool self-depreciation? Even instinct tells me—that very lowest of animal intellectual forces—that I survive because I am stronger than the dead. Providence—God—whatever it is, has nothing to do with it except to start you and let you survive by overcoming. Winds you up and then—devil take the hindmost!

“It is brains—brains—brains that count—brains first and always. This moral stuff is fit only for those who are too weak to conquer. I have accomplished everything in life I have ever undertaken—everything—and—by brains! Not once have I failed—I have done it by intellect, courage—intuition—the thing in one that speaks.

“Now as to things of the heart,”—he stopped suddenly—he even scowled half humorously. It came over him—his failure there, as one who, sweeping with his knights the pawns of an opponent, suddenly finds himself confronting a queen—and checkmated.

He walked to the window again and looked toward the northern end of the valley. There the gables of an old and somewhat weather-beaten home sat in a group of beech on a rise among the foothills.

“Westmoreland”—he said—“how dilapidated it is getting to be! Something must be done there, and Alice—Alice,”—he repeated the name softly—reverently—“I feel—I know it—she—even she shall be mine—after all these years—she shall come to me yet.”

He smiled again: “Then I shall have won all around. Fate? Destiny? Tush! It's living and surviving weaker things, such for instance as my cousin Tom.”

He smiled satisfactorily. He flecked some cotton lint from his coat sleeve.

“I have had a hard time in the mill to-day. It's a beastly business robbing the poor little half-made-up devils.”

He rang for Aunt Charity. She knew what he wished, and soon came in bringing him his cocktail—his night-cap as she always called it,—only of late he had required several in an evening,—a thing that set the old woman to quarreling with him, for she knew the limit of a gentleman. And, in truth, she was proud of her cocktails. They were made from a recipe given by Andrew Jackson. For fifty years Cook-mother Charity had made one every night and brought it to “old marster” before he retired. Now she proudly brought it to his grandson.

“Oh, say Mammy,” he said as the old woman started out—“Carpenter will be here directly with his report. Bring another pair of these in—we will want them.”

The old woman bristled up. “To be sure, I'll fix 'em, honey. He'll not know the difference. But the licker he gits in his'n will come outen the bottle we keep for the hosses when they have the colic. The bran' we keep for gem'men would stick in his th'oat.”

Travis laughed: “Well—be sure you don't get that horse brand in mine.”

CHAPTER III

JUD CARPENTER

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