was in that indeterminate belt which neither of the great staples
could claim exclusively as its own--that delectable land where every
conceivable product of the temperate zone grows, if not in its
rankest luxuriance, at least in perfection and abundance. Tobacco
on the hillsides, corn upon the wide bottoms, cotton on the gray
uplands, and wheat, oats, fruits, and grasses everywhere. Five
hundred acres of hill and bottom, forest and field, with what was
termed the Island, consisting of a hundred more, which had never been
overflowed in the century of cultivation it had known, constituted
a snug and valuable plantation. It had been the seat of an old
family once, but extravagant living and neglect of its resources
had compelled its sale, and it had passed into the hands of its
present owner, of whose vast possessions it formed an insignificant
part.

Colonel Desmit was one of the men who applied purely business
principles to the opportunities which the South afforded in the
olden time, following everything to its logical conclusion, and
measuring every opportunity by its money value. He was not of an
ancient family. Indeed, the paternal line stopped short with his
own father, and the maternal one could only show one more link,
and then became lost in malodorous tradition which hung about an
old mud-daubed log-cabin on the most poverty-stricken portion of
Nubbin Ridge.

There was a rumor that the father had a left-handed kinship with
the Brutons, a family of great note in the public annals of the
State. He certainly showed qualities which tended to confirm this
tradition, and abilities which entitled him to be considered the
peer of the best of that family, whose later generations were by