He learned that “the most influential man down there” was General Keith, and that his place was for sale.

“I can reach him,” said Mr. Wickersham, with a gleam in his eye.  “I will have a rope around his neck that will lead him.”  So he bought the place.

Fortunately, perhaps, for Mr. Wickersham, he hinted something of his intentions to his counsel, a shrewd old lawyer of the State, who thought that he could arrange the matter better than Mr. Wickersham could.

“You don’t know how to deal with these old fellows,” he said.

“I know men,” said Mr. Wickersham, “and I know that when I have a hold on a man—­”

“You don’t know General Keith,” said Mr. Bagge.  The glint in his eye impressed the other and he yielded.

So Mr. Wickersham bought the Keith plantation and left it to Greene Bagge, Esq., to manage the business.  Mr. Bagge wrote General Keith a diplomatic letter eulogistic of the South and of Mr. Wickersham’s interest in it, and invited the General to remain on the place for the present as its manager.

General Keith sat for some time over that letter, his face as grave as it had ever been in battle.  What swept before his mental vision who shall know?  The history of two hundred years bound the Keiths to Elphinstone.  They had carved it from the forest and had held it against the Indian.  From there they had gone to the highest office of the State.  Love, marriage, death—­all the sanctities of life—­were bound up with it.  He talked it over with Gordon.

Gordon’s face fell.

“Why, father, you will be nothing but an overseer.”

General Keith smiled.  Gordon remembered long afterwards, with shame for his Speech, how wistful that smile was.

“Yes; I shall be something more than that.  I shall be, at least, a faithful one.  I wish I could be as successful a one.”

He wrote saying that, as he had failed for himself, he did not see how he could succeed for another.  But upon receiving a very flattering reassurance, he accepted the offer.  Thus, the General remained as an employe on the estate which had been renowned for generations as the home of the Keiths.  And as agent for the new owner he farmed the place with far greater energy and success than he had ever shown on his own account.  It was a bitter cup for Gordon to have his father act as an “overseer”; but if it contained any bitterness for General Keith, he never gave the least evidence of it, nor betrayed his feeling by the slightest sign.

When Mr. Wickersham visited his new estate he admitted that Mr. Bagge knew better than he how to deal with General Keith.

When he was met at the station by a tall, gray-haired gentleman who looked like something between a general and a churchwarden, he was inclined to be shy; but when the gentleman grasped his hand, and with a voice of unmistakable sincerity said he had driven out himself to meet him, to welcome him among them, he felt at home.