rose-vines soon embowered the verandas, while, on the south side,
English ivy was gradually coaxed up the bare brick wall. This medley of
leaf and bloom gave to the whole house that air of friendliness and
homeliness that marks the shrine of the Anglo-Saxon's household gods the
world over.

Such was the nest that the Reverend Orme built by the sweat of his brow
to harbor his little family, which, at the beginning of this history,
consisted of himself; Ann Leighton, his wife; and Mammy, black as the
ace of spades without, white within.




CHAPTER II


Ann Sutherland Leighton was one of those rare religionists that
occasionally bloom in a most unaccountable manner on a family tree
having its roots in the turf rather than clinging to Plymouth Rock.
Isaac Sutherland, her father, had been knowing in horse-flesh, and would
have looked askance on the Reverend Orme Leighton as a suitor had he not
also been knowing in men. The truth was that in Leighton the man was
bigger than the parson, and to the conceded fact that all the world
loves a lover he added the prestige of the less-bandied truth that all
the world loves a fighter. He, also, knew horse-flesh. He finally won
Ann's father over on the day when Ike Sutherland learned to his cost
that the Reverend Orme could discern through the back of his head that
distension of the capsular ligament of the hock commonly termed a bog
spavin.