Soon the chimneys and big dormer-windows of Derwood Manor, surmounting the spacious colonial porch with its high pillars, rose above the skirting of trees. Then came the quaint gate with its brick posts topped by stone urns, through which swept a wide road bordered by lilac bushes. Dismounting at the horse-block the young painter handed the reins to a negro boy who had advanced to meet him, and, making his way through a group of pickaninnies and snuffing hounds, mounted the porch. The Judge was waiting for him on the top step with both hands outstretched in welcome; a man of fifty, smooth-shaven, with iron-gray hair, a thin, straight mouth and a jaw as square as a law book. "You needn't look for your letter, Mr. Gregg," he exclaimed heartily. "The nephew of my old classmate is always a welcome guest at Derwood Manor. We have been expecting you all the morning--" and the Judge shook the young man's hand as if he had known him from babyhood. It was in the early fifties and the hatreds of later years were unknown among men of equal social position in a land where hospitality was a religion. "Let me present you to Mrs. Colton and my little son, Phil." Adam turned, and it seemed to him as if the glory of all the blossoms he had seen that day had gone into the making of a woman. Dressed all in white, a wide blue sash about her slender waist; graceful as a budding branch swaying in a summer wind; with eyes like rifts of blue seen through clouds of peach bloom; hair of spun gold in lifted waves about her head, one loosened curl straying over her beautiful shoulders; mouth and teeth a split pomegranate studded with seeds of pearl--she seemed the very embodiment of all the freshness, beauty, and charm of the awakening spring. Instantly all the flesh tones from rose madder and cadmium to indigo-blue ran riot in his head. "What coloring," he kept saying to himself--"What a skin, and the hair and shoulders, and the curl that breaks the line of the throat--never was there such a woman!" Even as he stood looking into her eyes, pretending to listen to her words of welcome, he was deciding on the colors he would use and the precise pose in which he would paint her. "And it is such a delight to have you with us," she was saying in joyous tones, as though his coming brought a holiday. "When I knew you were to be here I began right away to build castles. You are to paint my portrait first, and then you are to paint Phil's. Isn't that it, Judge? Come Phil, dear, and shake hands with Mr. Gregg." "Whichever you please," Adam replied simply, the little boy's hand in his. "I only hope I shall be able to do justice to you both. It will be my fault if I don't with all this beauty about me. I am really dazed by these wonderful fruit-trees." "Yes, we're going to have a good season," exclaimed the Judge--"best we have had for years, peaches especially. We expect a----"