As was fitting, the old court-house, the temple of justice, had been reared in the centre of the town, and the square that surrounds it took the shape of a park of considerable dimensions. On two sides were some of the more pretentious dwellings; the tavern, with a few of the more modest houses took up a third side; while the fourth side was taken up by the shops and stores; and so careful had the early settlers been with the trees, that it was possible to stand in a certain upper window of the court-house, and look out upon the town with not a house in sight. Naturally, the most interesting feature of Shady Dale was the Clopton Place. It had been the home of the First Settler, and in 1860, when Nan and Gabriel were enjoying their happiest days, it was owned and occupied by the son, Meriwether Clopton. From the time of the First Settler, the Clopton Place had been dedicated and set apart to the uses of hospitality. The deed in which General McGillivray, in the name of the Creek Nation, conveyed the domain to Raleigh Clopton, distinctly sets forth the condition that the Clopton Place was to be an asylum and a place of refuge for the unfortunate and for those who needed succour. During the long and bloody contests between the white settlers and the Creeks, it was the pleasure of the Creek chief to pay out of his own private fortune, which was a large one for those days, the ransoms which, under the rules of the tribal organisations, each Indian town demanded for the prisoners captured by its warriors. Such was the poverty of the whites in general that only occasionally was General McGillivray reimbursed for his expenditures in this direction. But no matter by whom the ransoms were paid, the prisoners were one and all forwarded to the Clopton Place, where they were cared for until such time as they could be transferred to the white settlements. In this way hospitality became a habit at the Place, and in the years that followed, no wayfarer was ever turned away from those wide doors. In the pleasant weather, it was a familiar spectacle to see Meriwether Clopton sitting on the wide lawn, reading Virgil and Horace, two volumes of which he never tired. His favourite seat was in the shade of a silver maple, through the branches of which a grapevine had been trained. This silver maple, with the vine running through it, and the seat in the shade, were a realisation, he once told Gabriel and Cephas, of one of the most beautiful poems in one of the volumes, but whether Virgil or Horace, the aforesaid Cephas is unable to remember.