“I’m surely fond of Albemarle, ma’am,” answered Adam.

“When I’ve rolled long and far enough and the moss is ready to gather on me, I reckon I’ll roll back to a hillside in the old county.  I’m sorry to see the drouth so bad.  We’ve had a power of rain over the mountains.”

“Not long since, I had a letter from a kinsman of mine in Louisiana, and he spoke of you.  He said that up and down the rivers you were known, that the villages made it a holiday when you came to one, and that in the forest your name was like Robin Hood’s.”

“Robin Hood?  Who’s he?” demanded Adam; then, “Oh, you mean the man in the poetry book.  I reckon he never saw the Mississippi in flood, and his forest would have laid on the palm of your hand.  Yes, I’m known out there.”  He gave his mellow laugh.  “A letter of introduction from Adam Gaudylock is a pretty good letter, whether it’s to the captain of an ark, or a Creek sachem, or a Natchitoches settler, or a soldier at Fort Stoddert.  Let me help you in, ma’am.”

He handed her to her seat with the sure lightness and the woodsman’s grace which was part of his charm, then gave her order to Gabriel.  The coach turned and went back through the Main Street, and so on, in the yellow afternoon, to the Three-Notched Road.  As she passed again the green door, Mrs. Selden looked out, but the door was fast and the shutters closed behind the blush roses.  “He must have gone home early,” she said to herself, and all the way along the Three-Notched Road she thought of Lewis Rand and his career.

Rand had not gone home, but was walking down the street towards the Eagle and the post-office.  Presently the stage would be in, and he carried a letter the posting of which he did not care to entrust to another.  He walked lightly and firmly, in the glow before sunset, and as he approached the post-office steps he met, full face, coming from the other end of the town, Colonel Richard and Major Edward Churchill and Fairfax Cary.  They were afoot, having left their horses at the Swan while they waited for the incoming stage.  The post-office had a high white porch, and on this were gathered a number of planters and townsfolk, while others lounged below on the trodden grass beneath three warped mulberries.  All these, suspending conversation, watched the encounter.

Rand lifted his hat, and Fairfax Cary answered the salute with cold punctilio, but the two Churchills, the one with a red, the other with a stony countenance, ignored their nephew-in-law.  The four reached together the post-office steps, a somewhat long and wide flight, but not broad enough to accommodate a blood feud.  Rand made no attempt at speech, conciliatory or otherwise, but with a slight gesture of courtesy stood aside for the two elder men to pass and precede him.  The smile upon his lip was half bitter, half philosophic, and as they passed, he regarded them aslant but freely.  The burly, heated figure of the Colonel was trembling with anger, while Major