It is worth the noting, this trait of Acredale, at a time when riches
and success are looked upon as condoning every breach of the decalogue.
Just how the intimacy between the two men came about was not known. It,
however, was known that when Boone first came to Acredale he had been
helped in his affairs by Dick Perley's lavish means. In a few years
Boone was the patron and Perley the client. As Boone grew rich Perley
grew poor, until finally all was gone. Then the fairest lands of the
Perley inheritance passed to Boone. It was the fireside history of the
whole Caribee Valley that the rich contractor had encouraged the ruined
gentleman in the excesses that ended the profligate's career; that the
two men had staked large sums at play in Bucephalo, and that inability
to meet his losses to Boone had caused Dick Perley's flight. He had been
seen by one of the village people a year or two before the war in
Richmond, and had been heard of in California later, but no word had
ever reached his family, not even when his wife died, two years after
his exile. There were those who said that Boone was in correspondence
with his victim, and it was known that drafts, made by Dick Perley, had
been paid by Boone at the bank in Warchester. Between Boone and the
Perley ladies, whose house was separated from "Acre Villa" by a wide
lawn and hedge, there had always been the tacit enmity that wrong on one
side and meek unreproach on the other breeds. The rancor that manifested
itself in Boone's treatment of the Misses Perley was not imitated by
them. They never alluded to their affluent neighbor, never suffered
gossip concerning the Boones in what Olympia humorously called the
"Orphic adytum," the "tabby-shop," as Wesley named the Perley parlors.
Young Dick, however, had none of the scruples that kept his aunts
silent. One dreadful day, when he had been nagged to fisticuffs with
Wesley, whose dudish dignity exacted a certain restraint with the
hot-headed youngster, Elisha Boone, behind the thick hedge, heard on the