Dawson’s Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich, slave-worked grain and pork country back of it.  The town was sleepy and comfortable and contented.  It was fifty years old, and was growing slowly—­very slowly, in fact, but still it was growing.

The chief citizen was York Leicester Driscoll, about forty years old, judge of the county court.  He was very proud of his old Virginian ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately manners, he kept up its traditions.  He was fine and just and generous.  To be a gentleman—­a gentleman without stain or blemish—­was his only religion, and to it he was always faithful.  He was respected, esteemed, and beloved by all of the community.  He was well off, and was gradually adding to his store.  He and his wife were very nearly happy, but not quite, for they had no children.  The longing for the treasure of a child had grown stronger and stronger as the years slipped away, but the blessing never came—­and was never to come.

With this pair lived the judge’s widowed sister, Mrs. Rachel Pratt, and she also was childless—­childless, and sorrowful for that reason, and not to be comforted.  The women were good and commonplace people, and did their duty, and had their reward in clear consciences and the community’s approbation.  They were Presbyterians, the judge was a freethinker.

Pembroke Howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged almost forty, was another old Virginian grandee with proved descent from the First Families.  He was a fine, majestic creature, a gentleman according to the nicest requirements of the Virginia rule, a devoted Presbyterian, an authority on the “code”, and a man always courteously ready to stand up before you in the field if any act or word of his had seemed doubtful or suspicious to you, and explain it with any weapon you might prefer from bradawls to artillery.  He was very popular with the people, and was the judge’s dearest friend.

Then there was Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, another F.F.V. of formidable caliber—­however, with him we have no concern.

Percy Northumberland Driscoll, brother to the judge, and younger than he by five years, was a married man, and had had children around his hearthstone; but they were attacked in detail by measles, croup, and scarlet fever, and this had given the doctor a chance with his effective antediluvian methods; so the cradles were empty.  He was a prosperous man, with a good head for speculations, and his fortune was growing.  On the first of February, 1830, two boy babes were born in his house; one to him, one to one of his slave girls, Roxana by name.  Roxana was twenty years old.  She was up and around the same day, with her hands full, for she was tending both babes.

Mrs. Percy Driscoll died within the week.  Roxy remained in charge of the children.  She had her own way, for Mr. Driscoll soon absorbed himself in his speculations and left her to her own devices.