our boys, I flung myself down on the steps near by, and now and again
joined in their conversation.

I was much surprised to learn that our whilom guest, Gordon Orme, had
taken sudden departure during my absence, he having been summoned by a
messenger from the village, who he stated brought him word that he must
forthwith be on his way to Albemarle. He had asked my father if he cared
to sell the black horse, Satan, to which he had taken a fancy, but this
had been declined. Then it seems there had come up something of our late
meeting at the village, and Orme, laughing, had told of our horse
breaking and wrestling in a way which it seemed had not detracted from
my standing in my parents' eyes. None of us three was willing to
criticise our guest, yet I doubt if any one of us failed to entertain a
certain wonder, not to say suspicion, regarding him. At least he was
gone.

Our talk now gradually resolved itself to one on business matters. I
ought to have said that my father was an ambitious man and one of wide
plans. I think that even then he foresaw the day when the
half-patriarchial life of our State would pass away before one of wider
horizons of commercial sort. He was anxious to hand down his family
fortune much increased, and foreseeing troublous times ahead as to the
institution of slavery in the South, he had of late been taking large
risks to assure success in spite of any change of times. Now, moved by
some strange reasons which he himself perhaps did not recognize, he
began for the first time, contrary to his usual reticence, to explain to
my mother and me something of these matters. He told us that in
connection with his friend, Colonel William Meriwether, of Albemarle, he
had invested heavily in coal lands in the western part of the State, in
what is now West Virginia. This requiring very large sums of money, he