Vivian, even at the manly age of twelve, and in the face of all the traditions of chivalry, which to a Southern boy of that period exercised a very real influence over his attitude toward the softer sex, despite the vigilance of his mother and aunts, who were perpetually admonishing him to recollect that "Mandy was little and a girl besides," Vivian was tormented by a desire to subdue his spunky, small cousin at any cost of time and ingenuity. He had once made a great flourish with a hazel switch and raised a welt on her slim bare arm, which gave him immense satisfaction at the moment, and haunted him remorsefully for weeks afterwards. Amanda had promptly pulled out a lock of his hair, and then, setting her back against the side of the barn and gritting her tiny white teeth, had bidden him "come on" in a tone ringing with belligerent probabilities. After that day a new element was added to the attraction the two children had for each other. Their attitude was much like that of two unfledged chickens who have had a fight ending in a drawn battle, and have a thirst for satisfaction. Whoever has watched a pair of very young roosters in the act of combat, knows how each one makes a peck and then draws off and stands upon the defensive, vigilant and defiant; another peck--then another rest, neither one giving in or running away until some intruder parts them. Vivian and Amanda had continued upon these terms until increasing years rendered actual fighting impossible, and left to their antagonistic spirits only the resource of stinging words, and to hours of repentance the mere interchange of shy glances and softer speech, added to a fierce absorption of one another's society, which left the rest of the world completely outside. The Powell and Thomas tribe had come in the course of time to accept the alliance between the fighting cousins as one of the mysterious results of the strange similarity of the two children in looks and disposition, and all the other young cousins had learned that these two black-eyed friend-enemies belonged to one another, and tolerated no interference in their relation. Both were fatherless, and so, in either case, the young spirit that needed wise and loving restraint, had broken through the feeble curb of motherly fondness and gained freedom before achieving the self-control that prevents liberty from degenerating into license. Amanda was now eighteen, and Vivian--just home from a two-years' term at the College of Virginia--was twenty-four. The two mothers, sitting together that afternoon, a week after Vivian's premature return from college, were anxiously alive to all the possibilities smouldering in such a period and fanned by recent separation and the excitement of inquiry into the changes a couple of years had wrought.