abhorred, and were given a free passage back in returning men-of-war.
But when the reflux had waned and died, there was still a residue of
half a hundred families, most of whom were so destitute that they could
not reach the coast. With them stayed a very few who were held by their
premature investments or by a deeper loyalty or a greater pride. Among
the latter was the head of the divided house of Leighton.

The Reverend Orme Leighton was one of those to whom the war had brought
a double portion of bitterness, for the Leightons of Leighton, Virginia,
had fought not alone against the North, but against the North and the
Leightons of Leighton, Massachusetts.

To the Reverend Orme Leighton, a schism in the church would have meant
nothing unless it came to the point of cracking heads; but a schism in
governmental policy, which placed the right to govern one's self and own
black chattel in the balance, found him taking sides from the first,
thundering out from the pulpit, supported by text and verse, the divine
right of personal dominion by purchase, and in superb contradiction
voicing the constitutional right to self-government. When the day of
words was past, he did not wait for the desperate cry of the South in
her later need. Abandoning gown and pulpit for charger and saber, he was
of the first to rally, of the last to muster out. Nor at the end of the
long struggle did he find solace in the knowledge that he had fought a
good fight. To him more than the South had fallen. God had withheld his
hand from the just cause, and Leighton had fought against Leighton!

It was characteristic of the Reverend Orme Leighton that the rancor
which came with defeat was not visited upon those members of his clan
who had fought against him. But for that very reason it was all the more
poignantly directed against that vague entity, the North. Never, while