Reins dropped loosely in his lap, Beauregarde, the driver, sat sideways on the box and emitted information in terms of his own; and Laine looked and listened in silent joy to statements made and the manner of their making.

“Yas, suh, this heah town am second only in historic con-se-quence to Williamsburg, suh, though folks don’t know it till they come and find it out from me.  I been a-drivin’ this heah hack and a-studyin’ of history for more’n forty years, and I ain’t hardly scratch the skin of what done happen heah before a Yankee man was ever thought of.  They didn’t use to have no Yankees ’fore the war, but they done propogate themselves so all over the land that they clean got possession of ’most all of it.  They’s worse than them little English sparrows, they tell me.  Marse George Washington he used to walk these streets on his way to school.  He had to cross the river from Ferry Farm over yonder”—­the whip was waved vaguely in the air—­“and he wore long trousers till he got to be a man.  Young folks didn’t use to show their legs in those days, suh, jes’ gentlemen.  That place we’re comin’ to is Swan Tavern, and if it could talk it could tell things that big men said, that it could.  This heah house is where Mis’ Mary, the mother of Marse George Washington, used to live when she got too old to boss the farm.  Some society owns it what was originated to preserve our Virginia iniquities, and they done put up a monument to her that’s the onliest one ever put up to a woman for being the mother of a man.  They was bus head people, the Washingtons was, but so was a lot of others who didn’t do nothin’ to prove it, and so is now forgot, and quality folks in them days was so thick there warn’t enough other kind to do ’em reverence.  Governor Spottswood and his Horse-Shoe gentlemen took dinner once in this heah town, and President James Monroe used to live heah.  I’m a-goin’ to show you his home and his office, presently, and the house where Marse Paul Jones used to live in.  I reckon you done heard tell of Marse John Paul Jones, ain’t you?”

Laine admitted having heard of him, but historic personages did not interest as much as present-day ones.  The occupants of certain quaint and charming old houses, with servants’ quarters in the rear and flower-filled gardens in the front, the rose-bushes of which were now bent and burdened with snow, appealed, as the other places of famous associations failed to do, and he wondered in which of them Claudia’s relatives lived.

At Marye’s Heights Beauregarde waxed eloquent.  Half of what he said was unheard, however, and as Laine’s eyes swept the famous battle-fields his forehead wrinkled in fine folds.  Could they have been settled in any other way—­those questions which had torn a nation’s heart from its bosom?  Would the spilling of blood be forever necessary?  He ordered Beauregarde to drive to the hotel.  There was just time for lunch, and then the boat which would take him down the river to where Claudia would be waiting.