Nature had fashioned Elliott Harding when in one of her kindly moods. She had endowed him with many gifts; good birth, sound health of body and mind, industry, resolution and ambition. Besides possessing these goodly qualifications, he stood six feet in height, and in breadth of shoulder, depth of chest, sturdiness of legs and arms, he had few superiors. There was, too, a nobility of proportion in his forehead that indicated high breeding and broad intellectuality, and his face was full of force and refinement. His steel blue eyes gleamed with a superb self-confidence. By profession, Elliott Harding was a lawyer; by instinct, a writer. He practiced law for gain. He wrote because it was his ruling passion. He was a man who had been early taught to have faith in his own destiny and to consider himself an agent called by God to do a great work. When he came to his southern home he came with a purpose--a purpose which he determined to carry out quietly but with mighty earnestness. When he first arrived in the town he was content to rest unheralded, and his presence was not understood by the villagers. Nearly every morning now, he could be seen from the opposite window of the college to enter the old abandoned house and sit for hours near the door, his head bowed, his fingers busy with note-book and pencil. For some weeks this proceeding had continued with little variation. People noted it with diverse conjectures. Old men and women feared lest this man, whoever he might be,--a real estate agent perhaps--would bring about the restoration and sale of the old Harding home. These old-time friends, who had known and loved the father, Richard Harding, through youth and manhood, now rebelled against the possible disregard of his last request, which had become a heritage of the locality. With anxiety they watched the maneuvers of this mysterious individual and drearily wondered what would result from his stay. To young Harding the anxiety he had caused was unknown. Absorbed in his own affairs, he was too much occupied to think of the impression he was creating. His whole thought was given to gleaning the knowledge he required for the writing of the book by which he hoped to permanently mould southern opinion in conformity with his own against what he believed to be the shame of his native land. It was an evening in the third month of his residence in Georgetown. Elliott Harding paused in his walk along the street not quite decided which way to go.