. . . and though some said it was from pique, there was no more happily married pair in all the county.

A year later a new Oliver came to keep up the name and tenets of the Hampdens. Oliver Hampden, now the head of the Bar, would not have envied any man on earth had not his wife died a few years later and left him alone with his boy in his big house.

Lucy Drayton was born two years after young Oliver Hampden.

The mammies of the two children, as the mammies of their parents had done before them, used to talk them over on the edge of the shaded meadow which divided the places, and thus young Oliver Hampden, a lusty boy of five, came to know little Lucy Drayton fully three years before his father ever laid eyes on her.

Mr. Hampden was riding around his fences one summer afternoon, and was making his way along the double division line with a cloud on his brow as the double rows recalled the wide breach with his neighbor and former frie. . . Read More