The final acceptance of the hill people's fate came like a deadening shock to the men and women of the Lost Mountain district--they were forgotten in the new dispensation; in the readjustment they were overlooked! The Hertfords left the hills with uplifted and indignant heads--they had the courage of their convictions and meant to take what little was left to them and demand recognition elsewhere--they had always been rovers. Besides, just at that time Lansing Hertford and Sandford Morley, sworn friends and close comrades, had had that secret misunderstanding that was only whispered about then, and it made it easier for Hertford to turn his back upon his home lands and leave them to the gradual decay to which they were already doomed. The Waldens had retained enough of this world's goods to enable them to descend the social scale slower than their neighbours. Inch by inch they debated the ground, and it was only after the Civil War that Fate gripped them noticeably. Up to that time they had been able to hide, from the none too discriminating natives, the true state of affairs. The Morleys and the Tabers, the Townleys and the Moores, once they recognized the true significance of what had happened, made no struggle; uttered no defiance. They slunk farther back into the hills; they shrank from observation and depended more and more upon themselves. They intermarried and reaped the results with sullen indifference. Their hopes and longings sank into voiceless silence. Now and then Inheritance, in one form or another, flared forth, but before it could form itself into expression it was stilled and forbidden, by circumstances, to assert itself. Sad, depressed Lost Hollow! Over it loomed darkly the mountain whose peak was so often shrouded in clouds. The people loved the hills and the shadows; they glided like wan ghosts up and down The Way or took to the more sheltered trails. When they were sober they were gentle, harmless folk, but when whiskey overpowered them the men became dully brutal, the women wretchedly slavish, and the children what one might expect such sad little creatures to become! Lacking in intellect, misshapen and timid, they rustled among the underbrush like frightened animals; peered forth like uncanny gnomes, and ate and slept how and as they could. After the Civil War these people became "poor whites" and were ground between the nether millstone of their more prosperous neighbours and that of the blacks, until they sank to the lowest level. Their voices were hushed and forgotten; their former estate blotted out in their present degradation, and just then Sandy Morley and Cynthia Walden were born and some high and just God seemed to strengthen their childish voices; vouchsafe to them a vision and give their Inheritance charge over them.