Published by Good Press, 2021

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      EAN 4057664634948

Table of Contents

       I

       A STRANGER FROM SOUTH CAROLINA

       II

       AN EVENING VISIT

       III

       THE OLD JUDGE

       IV

       DOWN THE RIVER

       V

       THE TOURNAMENT

       VI

       THE QUEEN OF LOVE AND BEAUTY

       VII

       'MID NEW SURROUNDINGS

       VIII

       THE COURTSHIP

       IX

       DOUBTS AND FEARS

       X

       THE DREAM

       XI

       A LETTER AND A JOURNEY

       XII

       TRYON GOES TO PATESVILLE

       XIII

       AN INJUDICIOUS PAYMENT

       XIV

       A LOYAL FRIEND

       XV

       MINE OWN PEOPLE

       XVI

       THE BOTTOM FALLS OUT

       XVII

       TWO LETTERS

       XVIII

       UNDER THE OLD REGIME

       XIX

       GOD MADE US ALL

       XX

       DIGGING UP ROOTS

       XXI

       A GILDED OPPORTUNITY

       XXII

       IMPERATIVE BUSINESS

       XXIII

       THE GUEST OF HONOR

       XXIV

       SWING YOUR PARTNERS

       XXV

       BALANCE ALL

       XXVI

       THE SCHOOLHOUSE IN THE WOODS

       XXVII

       AN INTERESTING ACQUAINTANCE

       XXVIII

       THE LOST KNIFE

       XXIX

       PLATO EARNS HALF A DOLLAR

       XXX

       AN UNUSUAL HONOR

       XXXI

       IN DEEP WATERS

       XXXII

       THE POWER OF LOVE

       XXXIII

       A MULE AND A CART

I

      A STRANGER FROM SOUTH CAROLINA

       Table of Contents

      Time touches all things with destroying hand; and if he seem now and then to bestow the bloom of youth, the sap of spring, it is but a brief mockery, to be surely and swiftly followed by the wrinkles of old age, the dry leaves and bare branches of winter. And yet there are places where Time seems to linger lovingly long after youth has departed, and to which he seems loath to bring the evil day. Who has not known some even-tempered old man or woman who seemed to have drunk of the fountain of youth? Who has not seen somewhere an old town that, having long since ceased to grow, yet held its own without perceptible decline?

      Some such trite reflection—as apposite to the subject as most random reflections are—passed through the mind of a young man who came out of the front door of the Patesville Hotel about nine o'clock one fine morning in spring, a few years after the Civil War, and started down Front Street toward the market-house. Arriving at the town late the previous evening, he had been driven up from the steamboat in a carriage, from which he had been able to distinguish