And here was a thing for the little
dexterities of a lawyer's clerk. Everybody in Virginia, who knew
my father, can realize how he was apt to meet the vague message
of Zindorf that got him in this house, and the patronizing
courtesies of Mr. Lucian Morrow.
He was direct and virile, and while he feared God, like the great
figures in the Pentateuch, as though he were a judge of Israel
enforcing his decrees with the weapon of iron, I cannot write
here, that at any period of his life, or for any concern or
reason, he very greatly regarded man.
He went over to the window and looked out at the hills and the
road that he had traveled.
The mid-morning sun was on the fields and groves like a
benediction. The soft vitalizing air entered and took up the
stench of liquor, the ash of tobacco and the imported perfumes
affected by Mr. Lucian Morrow.
The windows in the room were long, gothic like a church, and
turning on a pivot. They ran into the ceiling that Monroe had
built across the gutted walls. The house stood on the crown of a
hill, in a cluster of oak trees. Below was the abandoned
graveyard, the fence about it rotted down; the stone slabs
overgrown with moss.
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