The last of the Greenwood Carys walked to the western window and stood looking out and up.  He looked from a hill-top, but the summit upon which lay the Cary burying-ground was higher yet.  The flat stones did not show, nor the wild tangle of dark vine, but the trees stood sharp and black against the vivid sky.  Cary stood motionless, a hand on either side of the window frame.  The colour faded from the sky, and there set in the iron grey of twilight.  He left the window, called for candles, and when they had been brought, sat down at the heavy table and began to draw a map of the country between the ford and Red Fields.

Three days later he rode into Charlottesville and stopped at the office of Mr. Smith, whom he found at the back of the house, watching from a chair planted in the sunshine the springing of a line of bulbs.  “You see, sir,” quoth the agent, “I cultivate my garden!  Tulips here, crocus there, yonder hyacinths.  Red Chalice has been up two days, and my white Amazon peeped out of the earth yesterday.  King Midas and Sulphur and Madame Mere are on the way.  Well, Mr. Cary, I tried my level best with that commission of yours, and I failed!  The boy is not for sale.”

“Ah!” said Cary, and stooped to examine the white Amazon.  “I hardly expected, Mr. Smith, that he would be for sale.  At no price, I presume?”

“At no price.  He is one of the house servants, and his master is attached to him.  I am very sorry, sir.”

His client rose from the contemplation of the springing hyacinth.  “Give yourself no uneasiness, Mr. Smith.  I am not disappointed.  There are reasons, no doubt, why Mr. Rand declines to part with him.  Let us put it out of mind.  What a bright little garden you will have, sir, when tulip, crocus, and hyacinth are all in bloom!”

He took his leave, and rode homeward through the keen March weather.  “I am beginning to remember quite plainly,” he said.  “Presently I’ll know it like an old refrain—­every word, Saladin, every word, every word, down to the last black one.”

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE SIMPLE RIGHT

An important case in a neighbouring county called Lewis Rand from home, and kept him an April week in the court room or in a small town’s untidy tavern.  It was his habit, known and deferred to, never to accept at such times the hospitality sure to be pressed upon him.  The prominent men of his party urged him home with them, but accepted his refusal with a nod of understanding, and rode on strong in the conviction that a man so absorbed, so given over to watching and guarding his client’s interests, was assuredly a man to be relied upon in any litigation.  A great lawyer was like a great general—­headquarters on the field.  As for Lewis Rand and the next election—­if he wanted to be Governor of Virginia, men who heard him in the court room were not the ones to say him nay!  To a rational man his genius vindicated his birth.  If he wanted the post, and if it was to the interest of the state, in God’s name let him have it—­old Gideon to the contrary!