the country, he was plainly in no haste to become committed to
any one of the several propositions Crenshaw was eager to submit.
Later, and still in the guise of a prospective purchaser, he met
Bladen, who also dealt extensively in land, and apparently if
anything could have pleased him more than the region about the
Cross Roads it was the country adjacent to Fayetteville.

From the first he had assiduously cultivated his acquaintance
with the new owners of the Barony. He was now on the best of
terms with Nat Ferris, and it was at the Barony that he lounged
away his evenings, gossiping and smoking with the planter on the
wide veranda.

"The Barony would have suited me," he told Bladen one day. They
had just returned from an excursion into the country and were
seated in the lawyer's office.

"You say your father was a friend of the old general's?" said
Bladen.

"Years ago, in the north--yes," answered Murrell.

"Odd, isn't it, the way he chose to spend the last years of his
life, shut off like that and seeing no one?"

Murrell regarded the lawyer in silence for a moment out of his
deeply sunk eyes.

"Too bad about the boy," he said at length slowly.