silver gray shadows of mossy tree-trunks, and the rich, dark,
restful green of polished magnolias.

Half a dozen fine Cotswold ewes browsed on the grass, and the small
bell worn by a staid dowager tinkled musically, as she threw up her
head and watched suspiciously the figure moving under the elm
arches. Beneath the far reaching branches of a patriarchal cedar, a
small herd of Jersey calves had grouped themselves, as if posing for
Landseer or Rosa Bonheur; and one pretty fawn-colored weanling ran
across the sward to meet the stranger, bleating a welcome and
looking up, with unmistakable curiosity in its velvety, long-lashed
eyes.

As the avenue gradually climbed the ascent, the outlines of the
house became visible; a stately, typical southern mansion, like
hundreds, which formerly opened hospitably their broad mahogany
doors, and which, alas! are becoming traditional to this generation-
-obsolete as the brave chivalric, warm-hearted, open-handed, noble-
souled, refined southern gentlemen who built and owned them. No
Mansard roof here, no pseudo "Queen Anne" hybrid, with lowering,
top-heavy projections like scowling eyebrows over squinting eyes;
neither mongrel Renaissance, nor feeble, sickly, imitation
Elizabethan facades, and Tudor towers; none of the queer, composite,
freakish impertinences of architectural style, which now-a-day do
duty as the adventurous vanguard, the aesthetic vedettes "making
straight the way," for the coming cohorts of Culture.

The house at "Elm Bluff" was built of brick, overcast with stucco
painted in imitation of gray granite, and its foundation was only
four feet high, resting upon a broad terrace of brickwork; the