Down the long avenue that led from the house to the great entrance gate
came the Little Colonel on her pony. It was a sweet, white way that
morning, filled with the breath of the locusts; white overhead where the
giant trees locked branches to make an arch of bloom nearly a quarter of
a mile in length, and white underneath where the fallen blossoms lay
like scattered snowflakes along the path.

Everybody, in Lloydsboro Valley knew Locust. "It is one of the prettiest
places in all Kentucky," they were fond of saying, and every visitor to
the Valley was taken past the great entrance gate to admire the long
rows of stately old trees, and the great stone house at the end, whose
pillars gleamed white through the Virginia creeper that nearly covered
it.

Everybody knew old Colonel Lloyd, too, the owner of the place. He also
was often pointed out to the summer visitors. Some people called
attention to him because he was an old Confederate soldier who had given
his good right arm to the cause he loved, some because they thought he
resembled Napoleon, and others because they had some amusing tale to
tell of the eccentric things he had said or done.

Nearly every one who pointed out the imposing figure, which was clad
always in white duck or linen in the summer, and wrapped in a
picturesque military cape in winter, added the remark: "And he is the
Little Colonel's grandfather." To be the grandfather of such an
attractive little bunch of mischief as Lloyd Sherman was when she first
came to the Valley was a distinction of which any man might well be
proud, and Colonel Lloyd _was_ proud of it. He was proud of the fact
that she had inherited his lordly manner, his hot temper, and imperious
ways. It pleased him that people had given her his title of Colonel on