It was just dark--the rising full moon was blazing like a bonfire among the trees on Campbell's Hill, across the creek--when the shucking party gathered rapidly around the Captain's ridge of corn. The first comers waited for the others, and spent the time looking at the heap, and speculating as to how many bushels it would "shuck out." Captain Lumsden, an active, eager man, under the medium size, welcomed his neighbors cordially, but with certain reserves. That is to say, he spoke with hospitable warmth to each new comer, but brought his voice up at the last like a whip-cracker; there was a something in what Dr. Rush would call the "vanish" of his enunciation, which reminded the person addressed that Captain Lumsden, though he knew how to treat a man with politeness, as became an old Virginia gentleman, was not a man whose supremacy was to be questioned for a moment. He reached out his hand, with a "Howdy, Bill?" "Howdy, Jeems? how's your mother gittin', eh?" and "Hello, Bob, I thought you had the shakes--got out at last, did you?" Under this superficial familiarity a certain reserve of conscious superiority and flinty self-will never failed to make itself appreciated. [Illustration: CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.] Let us understand ourselves. When we speak of Captain Lumsden as an old Virginia gentleman, we speak from his own standpoint. In his native state his hereditary rank was low--his father was an "upstart," who, besides lacking any claims to "good blood," had made money by doubtful means. But such is the advantage of emigration that among outside barbarians the fact of having been born in "Ole Virginny" was credential enough. Was not the Old Dominion the mother of presidents, and of gentlemen? And so Captain Lumsden was accustomed to tap his pantaloons with his raw-hide riding-whip, while he alluded to his relationships to "the old families," the Carys, the Archers, the Lees, the Peytons, and the far-famed William and Evelyn Bird; and he was especially fond of mentioning his relationship to that family whose aristocratic surname is spelled "Enroughty," while it is mysteriously and inexplicably pronounced "Darby," and to the "Tolivars," whose name is spelled "Taliaferro." Nothing smacks more of hereditary nobility than a divorce betwixt spelling and pronouncing. In all the Captain's strutting talk there was this shade of truth, that he was related to the old families through his wife. For Captain Lumsden would have scorned a _prima facie_ lie. But, in his fertile mind, the truth was ever germinal--little acorns of fact grew to great oaks of fable. How quickly a crowd gathers! While I have been introducing you to Lumsden, the Captain has been shaking hands in his way, giving a cordial grip, and then suddenly relaxing, and withdrawing his hand as if afraid of compromising dignity, and all the while calling out, "Ho, Tom! Howdy, Stevens? Hello, Johnson! is that you? Did come after all, eh?"