Through the bright drowsiness of the little city he rode in the early Sunday morning, and his heart sang for joy to feel himself again across a horse, and for the love of the place that warmed him already.  The sun shone hotly, but he liked it; he felt his whole being slipping into place, fitting to its environment; surely, in spite of birth and breeding, he was Southern born and bred, for this felt like home more than any home he had known!

As he drew away from the city, every little while, through stately woodlands, a dignified sturdy mansion peeped down its long vista of trees at the passing cavalier, and, enchanted with its beautiful setting, with its air of proud unconsciousness, he hoped each time that Fairfield would look like that.  If he might live here—­and go to New York, to be sure, two or three times a year to keep the edge of his brain sharpened—­but if he might live his life as these people lived, in this unhurried atmosphere, in this perfect climate, with the best things in his reach for every-day use; with horses and dogs, with out-of-doors and a great, lovely country to breathe in; with—­he smiled vaguely—­with sometime perhaps a wife who loved it as he did—­he would ask from earth no better life than that.  He could write, he felt certain, better and larger things in such surroundings.

But he pulled himself up sharply as he thought how idle a day-dream it was.  As a fact, he was a struggling young author, he had come South for two weeks’ vacation, and on the first morning he was planning to live here—­he must be light-headed.  With a touch of his heel and a word and a quick pull on the curb, his good horse broke into a canter, and then, under the loosened rein, into a rousing gallop, and Philip went dashing down the country road, past the soft, rolling landscape, and under cool caves of foliage, vivid with emerald greens of May, thoughts and dreams all dissolved in exhilaration of the glorious movement, the nearest thing to flying that the wingless animal, man, may achieve.

He opened his coat as the blood rushed faster through him, and a paper fluttered from his pocket.  He caught it, and as he pulled the horse to a trot, he saw that it was his cousin’s letter.  So, walking now along the brown shadows and golden sunlight of the long white pike, he fell to wondering about the family he was going to visit.  He opened the folded letter and read: 

“My dear Cousin,” it said—­the kinship was the first thought in John Fairfield’s mind—­“I received your welcome letter on the 14th.  I am delighted that you are coming at last to Kentucky, and I consider that it is high time you paid Fairfield, which has been the cradle of your stock for many generations, the compliment of looking at it.  We closed our house in Lexington three weeks ago, and are settled out here now for the summer, and find it lovelier than ever.  My family consists only of myself and Shelby, my one child, who is now twenty-two years of age.  We are both ready to give you an old-time Kentucky welcome, and Westerly is ready to receive you at any moment you wish to come.”