The Valiants of Virginia

Along the dark turnpike John Valiant rode with his chin sunk on his breast. He was wretchedly glad of the darkness, for it covered a thousand familiar sights he had grown to lov...

He was still sitting motionless when there came a knock at the door and it opened to admit the gruff voice of Doctor Southall. A big form was close behind him.

The brown ivied house in the village was big and square and faced the sleepy street. Its front was gay with pink oleanders in green tubs and the yard spotted with annual encampm...

The sun had passed the meridian next day when Valiant awoke, from a sleep as deep as Abou ben Adhem's, yet one crowded with flying tiptoe dreams. Inchoate and of such flimsy mat...

"Sorrow weeps--sorrow sings." As Shirley played that night, the old Russian proverb kept running through her mind. When she had pushed the gold harp into its corner she threw he...

He saw them coming through the gate on the Red Road--the major and Shirley in a lilac muslin by his side--and strode to meet them. Behind them Ranston propelled a hand-cart fill...

Ten minutes later a motor was hurling itself along the Red Road to the village. The doctor was in his office and no time was lost in the return. En route they passed Judge Chalm...

Beyond the selvage of the sleepy leaf-sheltered village a cherry bordered lane met the Red Road. On its one side was a clovered pasture and beyond this an orchard, bounded by a...

The row of horsemen had halted in a curving line before the grand stand, and now in the silence the herald, holding a parchment scroll, spurred before each rider in turn, demand...

John Valiant looked up. Facing them at an elbow of the broad road, was an old gateway of time-nicked stone, clasping an iron gate that was quaint and heavy and red with rust. Ov...

A warm sun and an air mildly mellow. A faint gold-shadowed mist over the valley and a soft lilac haze blending the rounded outlines of the hills. A breeze shook the twigs on the...

Eyes arched with fan-shielded whispers, and fair faces, fore-shortened as they turned back over powder-white shoulders, followed their swallow-like movement. From an ever-wideni...

The young man was the glass of fashion, from the silken ribbon on the spotless Panama to his pearl-gray gaiters, and well favored--a lithe stalwart figure, with wide-set hazel e...

"I'm so sorry," was what he said, as he kneeled to release her, and she was grateful that his tone was unmixed with amusement. She bit her lips, as by sheer strength of elbow an...

Till the sun was high John Valiant lay on his back in the fragrant grass, meditatively watching a bucaneering chicken-hawk draw widening circles against the blue and listening t...

The green, mid May Virginian afternoon was arched with a sky as blue as the tiles of the Temple of Heaven and steeped in a wash of sunlight as yellow as gold: smoke-hazy peaks p...

It was Sunday afternoon, and under the hemlocks, Rickey Snyder had gathered her minions--a dozen children from the near-by houses with the usual sprinkling of little blacks from...

The grim posse that gathered in haste that afternoon did not ride far. Its work had been singularly well done. It brought back to Damory Court, however, a white bulldog whose br...

The major was massive-framed, with a strong jaw and a rubicund complexion--the sort that might be supposed to have attained the utmost benefit to be conferred by a consistent in...

He awoke to a musical twittering and chirping, to find the sun pouring into the dusty room in a very glory. He rolled from the blanket and stood upright, filling his lungs with...

Shirley looked at Valiant with a deepening of her dimple. "Rickey isn't an aristocrat," she said: "she's what we call here poor-white, but she's got a heart of gold. She's an or...

Shirley stood looking out at the rain. It was falling in no steady downpour which held forth promise of ending, but with a gentle constancy that gave the hills a look of sodden...

Inky clouds were gathering over the sunlight when Shirley came from Damory Court, along the narrow wood-path under the hemlocks, and the way was striped with blue-black shadows...

The story was not a long one, though it omitted nothing: the morning fox-hunt and the identification of the new arrival at Damory Court as the owner of yesterday's stalled motor...

In the ripple that stirred across the court room at the examiner's abrupt conclusion, John Valiant, who had withstood that pitiless hail of questions, rose, bowed to him and slo...

Katharine left the field of Runnymede with John Valiant in the dun-colored motor. She sat in the passenger's seat beside him, while the bulldog capered, ecstatically barking, fr...

A red rose, while ever a thing of beauty, is not invariably a joy forever. The white bulldog, as he plodded along the sunny highway, was sunk in depression. Being trammeled by t...

the lower tier, with a group of young people. He could not have told what she wore, save that it was of soft Murillo blue with a hat whose down-curved brim was wound with a shad...

As he greeted her, his gaze plunged deep into hers. She had recoiled a step, startled, to recognize him almost instantly. He noted the shrinking and thought it due to a stabbing...

Dusk had fallen that evening when John Valiant's Panhard turned into a cross-street and circled into the yawning mouth of his garage. Here, before he descended, he wrote a check...

The Tournament Ball at Damory Court that night was more than an event. The old mansion was an irresistible magnet. The floor of its yellow parlor was known to be of delectable h...

He tore open the letters abstractedly: the usual dinner-card or two, a tailor's spring announcement, a chronic serial from an exclamatory marble-quarrying company, a quarterly s...

Though the doctor left the church with Shirley and her mother, he did not drive to Rosewood, but to his office. There, alone with Mrs. Dandridge while Shirley waited in the carr...

The noon sun of tournament day shone brilliantly over the village, drowsy no longer, for many vehicles were hitched at the curb, or moved leisurely along the leafy street: big,...

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!--Major Bristow's ivory-headed camphor-wood stick thumped on the great door of Damory Court. The sound had a tang of impatience, for he had used the knocker...

Alone in the ebbing twilight, John Valiant found his hamper, spread a napkin on the broad stone steps and took out a glass, a spoon and part of a loaf of bread. The thermos flas...

Presently he took a check-book from his pocket and began to figure on the stub, looking up with a wry smile. "To come down to brass tacks," he muttered, "when I've settled every...

In the great hall at Damory Court the candles in their brass wall-sconces blinked back from the polished parquetry and the shining fire-dogs, filling the rather solemn gloom wit...

John Valiant sat propped up on the library couch, an open magazine unheeded on his knee. The reading-stand beside him was a litter of letters and papers. The bow-window was open...

A quicker breeze was stirring as John Valiant went back along the Red Road. It brushed the fraying clouds from the sky, leaving it a pale gray-blue, sprinkled with wan stars. He...

"I 'clare t' goodness," she muttered, "I was jes' fixin' t' go t' sleep!" The lamp on the table was low and she turned up the wick, then threw up her arms like ramrods, in delight.

While the vibrant strings hummed and sang through the roses, and the couples drifted on tireless and content, or blissfully "sat out" dances on the stairway, Katharine Fargo hel...

"That was ungenerous of you," she said then with icy slowness. "Though no doubt you--found it entertaining. It must have still further amused you to be taken for an architect?"

To-day the master of Damory Court deemed this a true saying. For the air was like wine, and the drifting white wings of cloud, piled above the amethystine ramparts of the far Bl...

Not long after, from the musicians' bower the sound of _Home, Sweet Home_ drifted over the poignant rose-scent, and presently the driveway resounded to rolling wheels and the vo...

The tawny scudding streak that led that long chase had shot into the yard, turning for a last desperate double. It saw the man in the foreground and its bounding, agonized littl...

For a long time John Valiant sat motionless, the opened letter in his hand, staring at nothing. He had the sensation, spiritually, of a traveler awakened with a rude shock amid...

When the major entered his room, Jereboam, his ancient body-servant, was dawdling about putting things to rights, his seamed visage under his white wool suggesting a charred stu...

Valiant went with them to the outer door. A painful thought was flooding his mind. It hampered his speech and it was only by a violent effort that he found voice: