“This is the meanest act of my life.”

Suddenly now the boy knew that the act was done for him—­and his eyes filled as he looked after the retreating horseman upon whose shoulders so much secret trouble weighed.  And when the elder man passed through the gate and started down the pike, those broad shoulders began to droop, and the lad saw him ride out of sight with his chin close to his breast.  The boy started back to his packing, but with a folded coat in his hand dropped in a chair by the open window, looking out on the quick undoing in that woodland of the Master’s slow upbuilding for centuries, and he began to recall how often during the past summer he had caught his father brooding alone, or figuring at his desk, or had heard him pacing the floor of his bedroom late at night; how frequently he had made trips into town to see his lawyer, how often the lad had seen in his mail, lately, envelopes stamped with the name of his bank; and, above all, how often the old family doctor had driven out from town, and though there was never a complaint, how failing had been his father’s health, and how he had aged.  And suddenly Gray sprang to his feet, ordered his buggy and started for town.

Along the edge of the bleeding stumps of noble trees the colonel rode slowly, his thoughts falling and rising between his boy in the room above and his columns of figures in the room below.  The sacrilege of destruction had started in his mind years before from love of the one, but the actual deed had started under pressure of the other, and now it looked as though each motive would be thwarted, for the tobacco war was on in earnest now, and again the poor old commonwealth was rent as by a forked tongue of lightning.  And, like the State, the colonel too was pitifully divided against himself.

Already many Blue-grass farmers had pooled their crops against the great tobacco trust—­already they had decided that no tobacco at all should be raised that coming year just when the colonel was deepest in debt and could count only on his tobacco for relief.  And so the great-hearted gentleman must now go against his neighbor, or go to destruction himself and carry with him his beloved son.  Toward noon he reined in on a little knoll above the deserted house of the old general, the patriarchal head of the family—­who had passed not many years before—­the rambling old house, stuccoed with aged brown and still in the faithful clasp of ancient vines.  The old landmark had passed to Morton Sanders, and on and about it the ruthless hand of progress was at work.  The atmosphere of careless, magnificent luxury was gone.  The servants’ quarters, the big hen-house, the old stables with gables and sunken roofs, the staggering fences, the old blacksmith-shop, the wheelless windmill—­all were rebuilt or torn away.  Only the arched gate-way under which only thoroughbreds could pass was left untouched, for Sanders loved horses and the humor of that gate-way, and the old spring-house