The boy looked at him with shining eyes. “Some years” sounds like “forever” to extreme youth. His face was expressive with delight. He came up to Skelton, and of his own accord laid his hand timidly upon Skelton’s arm. It was the second time in his life that he had ever done such a thing, and the first time he had ever seen Skelton overcome with emotion. He looked at the boy with an intensity of affection that was moving; a mist came into his eyes. He rose and walked quickly to the end of the porch, leaving Lewis standing by his empty chair--amazed, touched, at what he saw before him. Skelton’s weakness was womanish, but he did not feel ashamed of it. He felt that in the boy’s heart the natural affection was quickening for which he had longed with a great longing. After a while he turned and made some ordinary remark to Lewis, who answered him in the same way; but there was a sweet, ineffable change in their attitude one to the other. Nature had her rights, and she had vindicated herself. Lewis fondly thought the disgrace that he dreaded was forever removed from him, and no longer struggled against that feeling of a son for his father that had been steadily growing in his breast, although as steadily repressed, ever since he had known really who he was. As for Skelton, he walked down towards the river in a kind of ecstasy. The boy’s heart was his. No lover winning his mistress ever felt a more delicious triumph. As he strolled along by the cedar hedges near the river, and the masses of crape myrtle and syringa, that could withstand the salt air and the peevish winds of winter, he began to consider all his new sources of happiness. There was the deep, tumultuous joy of Sylvia’s love, and the profound tenderness he felt for Lewis, that had only grown the more for the stern subduing of it; and there was that awakened creative power which made him feel like a new man. And the spectre of his hatred of Blair had been laid at least for a time--no one can hate the being one has just benefitted. And then, looking about him, he felt that Deerchase was not a possession to be despised. He had seen too much real grandeur to overestimate the place; yet it was singularly beautiful, not only with the beauty of green old gardens and giant trees that clustered around the stately house, and noble expanses of velvety turf and dewy woods, but it had that rich beauty of a great, productive, landed estate. Nature was not only lovely, but she was beneficent. Those green fields brought forth lavishly year after year. There was room, and work, and food for all. Skelton saw, half a mile inland, the negroes weeding out the endless ranks of the corn, then as high as a man’s head, and flaunting its splendid green banners magnificently in the August air. The toilers were merry, and sang as they worked; two or three other negroes were half working, half idling about the grounds, in careless self-content; Bob Skinny sunned