Yet it should be said that the man least respected by the Pinetuckians was the man least gossiped about. This was Bradley Gaither, the richest man in the neighbourhood. With few exceptions, all the Pinetuckians owned land and negroes; but Bradley Gaither owned more land and more negroes than the most of them put together. No man, to all appearances, led a more correct life than Bradley Gaither. He was first at church, and the last to leave; he even affected a sort of personal interest in politics; but the knack of addressing himself to the respect and esteem of his neighbours he lacked altogether. He was not parsimonious, but, as Squire Inchly expressed it, "narrer-minded in money matters." He had the air of a man who is satisfied with himself rather than with the world, and the continual exhibition of this species of selfishness is apt to irritate the most simple-minded spectator. Lacking the sense of humour necessary to give him a knowledge of his own relations to his neighbours, he lived under the impression that he was not only one of the most generous of men, but the most popular. He insisted upon his rights. If people made bad bargains when they traded with him--and he allowed them to make no other kind,--they must stand or fall by them. Where his lands joined those of his neighbours, there was always "a lane for the rabbits," as the saying is. He would join fences with none of them. Indeed, he was a surly neighbour, though he did not even suspect the fact. He had one weakness,--a greed for land. If he drove hard bargains, it was for the purpose of adding to his landed possessions. He overworked and underfed his negroes in order that he might buy more land. Day and night he toiled, and planned, and pinched himself and the people around him to gratify his land-hunger. Bradley Gaither had one redeeming feature,--his daughter Rose. For the sake of this daughter Pinetueky was willing to forgive him a great many things. To say that Rose Gaither was charming or lovely, and leave the matter there, would ill become even the casual historian of Pinetucky. She was lovely, but her loveliness was of the rare kind that shows itself in strength of character as well as in beauty of form and feature. In the appreciative eyes of the Pinetuckians she seemed to invest womanhood with a new nobility. She possessed dignity without vanity, and her candour was tempered by a rare sweetness that won all hearts. She carried with her that mysterious flavour of romance that belongs to the perfection of youth and beauty; and there are old men in Rockville to-day, sitting in the sunshine on the street corners and dreaming of the past, whose eyes will kindle with enthusiasm at mention of Rose Gaither's name.