the eye from the wide southwest porch, where on warm evenings the
Langdons and their frequent guests gathered to dine or to watch the
golden splendor of the dying sun.

The Langdon family had long been a power in the South. Its sons fought
under Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, under Zachary Taylor in the war
with Mexico, and in the Civil War men of that name left their blood
on the fields of Antietam, Shiloh, the Wilderness and Gettysburg. But
this family of fighting men, of unselfish patriots, had also marked
influence in the ways of peace, as real patriots should. Generations
of Langdons had taken deepest pride in developing the hundreds of
acres of cotton land, whose thousands of four-foot rows planted each
April spread open the silvery lined bolls in July and August, and the
ripened cotton fiber, pure white beneath the sun, gave from a distance
the picture of an expanse of driven snow.

The Hon. Charles Norton had reason for feeling well pleased with the
world as he fastened his bay Virginia hunter to a convenient post
and strode up the steps of the mansion, which was a characteristic
survivor of the "old South," the South of gilded romance and of
gripping tragedy. Now in this second year of his first term as
Congressman and a promising member of the younger set of Southern
lawyers, he had just taken active part in securing the election of
Colonel William H. Langdon, present head of the family, to the United
States Senate, though the ultimate action of the Legislature had been
really brought about by a lifelong friend of Colonel Langdon, the
senior Senator from the State, James Stevens, who had not hesitated to
flatter Norton and use him as a cat's-paw. This use the Hon. Charles
Norton seemed to consider an honor of large proportions. Not every
first-term Congressman can hope for intimacy with a Senator. Norton