CHAPTER VI


John Barclay returned to Sycamore Ridge in 1872 a full-fledged young
man. He was of a slight build and rather pale of face, for five years
indoors had rubbed the sunburn off. During the five years he had been
absent from Sycamore Ridge he had acquired a master's degree from the
state university, and a license to practise law. He was distinctly
dapper, in the black and white checked trousers, the flowered cravat,
and tight-fitting coat of the period; and the first Monday after he
and his mother went to the Congregational Church, whereat John let out
his baritone voice, he was invited to sing in the choir. Bob Hendricks
came home a year before John, and with Bob and Watts McHurdie singing
tenor at one end of the choir, and John and Philemon Ward holding down
the other end of the line, with Mrs. Ward, Nellie Logan, Molly
Culpepper, and Jane Mason of Minneola,--grown up out of short dresses
in his absence,--all in gay colours between the sombre clothes of the
men, the choir in the Congregational Church was worth going miles to
see--if not to hear.

Now you know, of course,--or if you do not know, it is high time you
were learning,--that when Fate gives a man who can sing a head of
curly hair, the devil, who is after us all, quits worrying about that
young person. For the Old Boy knows that a voice and curly hair are
mortgages on a young man's soul that few young fellows ever pay off.
Now there was neither curly head nor music in all the Barclay tribe,