around which travelled a single rusty hand. In its shadow to the right
lay the home of the archdeacon, a stately mansion with Corinthian
columns reaching to the roof and surrounded by a spacious garden filled
with damask roses and bushes of sweet syringa. To the left crouched a
row of dingy houses built of brick, their iron balconies hung in
flowering vines, the windows glistening with panes of wavy glass purpled
by age.

"On the sunny side of the square, opposite the church, were more houses,
high and low: one all garden, filled with broken-nosed statues hiding
behind still more magnolias; and another all veranda and honeysuckle,
big rocking-chairs and swinging hammocks; and still others with porticos
curtained by white jasmine or Virginia creeper."

--From "The Fortunes of Oliver Horn."




KENNEDY SQUARE




CHAPTER I



On the precise day on which this story opens--some sixty or more years
ago, to be exact--a bullet-headed, merry-eyed, mahogany-colored young