Had the visitor asked for shelter, he would have received, whatever his condition, a hospitality as gracious as if he had been the highest in the land; he would have found culture with philosophy and wealth with content, and he would have come away charmed with the graciousness of his entertainment.  And yet, if from any other country or region than the South, he would have departed with a feeling of mystification, as though he had been drifting in a counter-current and had discovered a part of the world sheltered and to some extent secluded from the general movement and progress of life.

This plantation, then, was Gordon’s world.  The woods that rimmed it were his horizon, as they had been that of the Keiths for generations; more or less they always affected his horizon.  His father appeared to the boy to govern the world; he governed the most important part of it—­the plantation—­without ever raising his voice.  His word had the convincing quality of a law of nature.  The quiet tones of his voice were irresistible.  The calm face, lighting up at times with the flash of his gray eyes, was always commanding:  he looked so like the big picture in the library, of a tall, straight man, booted and spurred, and partly in armor, with a steel hat over his long curling hair, and a grave face that looked as if the sun were on it.  It was no wonder, thought the boy, that he was given a sword by the State when he came back from the Mexican War; no wonder that the Governor had appointed him Senator, a position he declined because of his wife’s ill health.  Gordon’s wonder was that his father was not made President or Commander-in-Chief of the army.  It no more occurred to him that any one could withstand his father than that the great oak-trees in front of the house, which it took his outstretched arms six times to girdle, could fall.

Yet it came to pass that within a few years an invading army marched through the plantation, camped on the lawn, and cut down the trees; and Gordon Keith, whilst yet a boy, came to see Elphinstone in the hands of strangers, and his father and himself thrown out on the world.

His mother died while Gordon was still a child.  Until then she had not appeared remarkable to the boy:  she was like the atmosphere, the sunshine, and the blue, arching sky, all-pervading and existing as a matter of course.  Yet, as her son remembered her in after life, she was the centre of everything, never idle, never hurried; every one and everything revolved about her and received her light and warmth.  She was the refuge in every trouble, and her smile was enchanting.  It was only after that last time, when the little boy stood by his mother’s bedside awed and weeping silently in the shadow of the great darkness that was settling upon them, that he knew how absolutely she had been the centre and breath of his life.  His father was kneeling beside the bed, with a face as white as his mother’s, and a look of such mingled agony and resignation that Gordon never forgot it.  As, because of his father’s teaching, the son in later life tried to be just to every man, so, for his mother’s sake, he remembered to be kind to every woman.