The Valiants of Virginia

announcement, a chronic serial from an exclamatory marble-quarrying company, a quarte

rgish, corpulent and heavy, of stout Manila paper, and bore, down one side,

elf, and then, with a smile at the unmascul

in the most uncompromisingly

ar

was his desire that the services indicated in connection with this estate should continue till this date. We hand you herewith our

obl

very

on and

clos

ich was entered a series of annual tax payments with minor disbursements cr

slanting handwriting, his own name. The envelope contained a creased yellow parchment, from between whose folds there

a plantation in Virginia, twelve hundred odd acres, given under the hand of a vice-regal governor in the sixteenth century. I had no idea titles in the United States went back

here the dialect stories grow. The paradise of the Jim-crow car and the hook-worm, where land-poor, clay-colored colonels with goatees sit in green wicker lawn-chairs and watch their shadows go round the house

Southern names and legends of planter hospitality-and had married Northern women, till the announcement in the marriage column that the fathers of bride and bridegroom had fought in opposing armies at the battle of Manassas had grown as hackneyed as the stereo

s worn and broken in the folds as if it ha

an) to learn, from a recent transfer received for record at the County C

en printed in the year of the transfer to himself, w

inor, the son of

t in its present state (for, as is well known, the house has remained with all its contents and furnishings untouched) to rest during so long a term of years unocc

bad name. Probably he couldn't sell it, and maybe nobody would even live in it. That would explain why it remained so long unoccupied-why th

ficates of stock in some zinc-mine whose imaginary bottom had dropped out ten years ago. Here was real property, in size, at least, a gentleman's domain, on which real

e army of rent-payers. When my twenty-eight hundred is gone, I could live down there a landed proprietor, and by the same mar

lub corridors and welcome diner at any one of a hundred brilliant glass-and-silver-twinkling supper-tables, entombe

f it quickly. It lay with the superscription side down. On it was

on, John

es the age of

ears ago! He broke the seal with a strange feeling as if, walking in some

om lying waiting so long. But strangest of all is to think that you yourself whose brown head hardly tops this desk, will be as tall (I hope) as I! How I wonder what you will look l

, and many, many more Valiants before them were born. Sometime, perhaps, you will know why you are John Valiant of New York instead of John Valiant of Damory Court. I can not tell you myself, because

. And I know there is such a thing, too, as fate. 'Every man carries his fate on a riband about his neck'; so the Moslem put it. It was my fate to go away, and I know now-since distance is not made by miles alone-that I myself shall never see Damory Court again. B

! Wishing-House

rchment deed wil

m, Master;

plays. I have had many toys, but O John, John! The o