woods beyond. To the westward "the Ridge" made a straight, horizontal
line, except on clear days, when the mountains still farther away showed
a tenderer blue scalloped across the sky.

A stranger passing through the country prior to the war would have heard
much of Elphinstone, the Keith plantation, but he would have seen from
the main road (which, except in summer, was intolerably bad) only long
stretches of rolling fields well tilled, and far beyond them a grove on
a high hill, where the mansion rested in proud seclusion amid its
immemorial oaks and elms, with what appeared to be a small hamlet lying
about its feet. Had he turned in at the big-gate and driven a mile or
so, he would have found that Elphinstone was really a world to itself;
almost as much cut off from the outer world as the home of the Keiths
had been in the old country. A number of little blacks would have opened
the gates for him; several boys would have run to take his horse, and he
would have found a legion of servants about the house. He would have
found that the hamlet was composed of extensive stables and barns, with
shops and houses, within which mechanics were plying their trades with
the ring of hammers, the clack of looms, and the hum of
spinning-wheels-all for the plantation; whilst on a lower hill farther
to the rear were the servants' quarters laid out in streets, filled
with children.

Had the visitor asked for shelter, he would have received, whatever his
condition, a hospitality as gracious as if he had been the highest in
the land; he would have found culture with philosophy and wealth with
content, and he would have come away charmed with the graciousness of
his entertainment. And yet, if from any other country or region than the
South, he would have departed with a feeling of mystification, as though
he had been drifting in a counter-current and had discovered a part of