"Six feet in your socks, to the inch, without that hair. I reckon it won't
stunt you--not now."

"All right," laughed Chad, "then I'll take that drink." And together they
drank.

Thus, Chadwick Buford, gentleman, after the lapse of three-quarters of a
century, came back to his own: and what that own, at that day and in that
land, was!

It was the rose of Virginia, springing, in full bloom, from new and richer
soil--a rose of a deeper scarlet and a stronger stem: and the big village
where the old University reared its noble front was the very heart of that
rose. There were the proudest families, the stateliest homes, the broadest
culture, the most gracious hospitality, the gentlest courtesies, the finest
chivalry, that the State has ever known. There lived the political idols;
there, under the low sky, rose the memorial shaft to Clay. There had lived
beaux and belles, memories of whom hang still about the town, people it with
phantom shapes, and give an individual or a family here and there a subtle
distinction to-day. There the grasp of Calvinism was most lax. There were the
dance, the ready sideboard, the card table, the love of the horse and the dog,
and but little passion for the game-cock. There were as manly virtues, as
manly vices, as the world has ever known. And there, love was as far from lust
as heaven from hell.

It was on the threshold of this life that Chad stood. Kentucky had given birth
to the man who was to uphold the Union--birth to the man who would seek to
shatter it. Fate had given Chad the early life of one, and like blood with the
other; and, curiously enough, in his own short life, he already epitomized the
social development of the nation, from its birth in a log cabin to its swift