“There you go,” he apostrophised. “Most men think they could advise the Almighty; but you, Richard Skelton, think yourself _the_ Lord Almighty Himself! Unbridled tongue, indeed! I lay odds that I’ll make you write that sixth section of your Introduction over again before this day is out. I know a weak spot in your theory that knocks that chapter into flinders, and I’ve been saving it up for just such an occasion as this. But go your way, and I’ll go mine.” “Fair and free is the king’s highway!” he sang, loudly and sweetly. CHAPTER II. It is impossible for anything in this tame, latter-day age to be compared with the marvels of fifty, sixty, seventy years ago. The worn-out, tired race declines to be awed, or delighted, or startled any more. “Old Wonder is dead.” People have lost the sense of admiration. It is the price paid for civilisation. But it was not always so. Fifty years ago the romantic, the interesting, even the mysterious, still existed. Luxury was rare, and life was so hard and poor to most people on this continent that imagination had to be called in to make it even tolerable. Superlatives had not gone out of fashion, and therefore it is quite just to apply the words grand, magnificent, superb, to Deerchase. True, if that deadly enemy of superlatives, comparison, be levelled against it, there is no doubt the irreverent modern would smile; for what the fresh, wonder-loving people in 1820 thought ineffably splendid, the jaded, sated people of 19-- would think cheap, tawdry, not worth speaking of, after all. So that the pictures in the main hall at Deerchase would be pronounced mediocre, the park rather ambitious than imposing, the stables and the establishment generally insignificant compared with those of the merchant princes of to-day. But the owner of Deerchase had this immense advantage over the rich people of to-day--not the whole possessions of all of them could command half the awe, delight, and distinction that Deerchase did in its time. And if the power of places to awe and delight be gone, what shall be said of the lost power of individuals? But in 1820 hero worship survived with many other beautiful and imaginative things that the world has outgrown; and Richard Skelton, Esquire, was an object of envy and admiration to the whole county, and to half the State of Virginia besides.