The original landlord of these acres had availed himself of the easy laws and easy ways of the time and place, and taken over to himself from the loose public domain a small realm all his own.

Here, almost in seclusion, certainly in privacy, a generation had been spent in a life as baronial as any ever known in old Virginia in earlier days.

A day's ride to a court house, two days to a steamer, five hours to get a letter to or from the occasional post--these things seem slight in a lifelong accustomedness; and here few had had closer touch than this with civilization.
[Illustration: Tallwoods] The plantation itself was a little kingdom, and largely supplied its own wants.

Mills, looms, shops,--all these were part of the careless system, easy and opulent, which found support and gained arrogance from a rich and generous environment.

The old house itself, if it might be called old, built as it had been scarce thirty years before, lay in the center of a singular valley, at the edge of the Ozark Hills.