But when Boyd Westover took his degree at the University in early June and returned to Wanalah to assume his duties as administrator, he learned for the first time that the plantation had not been earning the cost of all this high living. There was not only the hereditary debt upon the place--a debt that so great a plantation, wisely conducted, might have borne comfortably--but added to it was a confused mass of fresh debts accumulated during his father's lifetime and in consequence of his extravagance. The entertainment of pleasure-seeking guests was suspended now, of course, during the period of mourning, and in view of the ill health into which his mother had fallen since the shock of his father's sudden death, the suspension seemed likely to endure for a long period to come. In the meantime Boyd Westover was both perplexed and appalled by the magnitude of the problem he was set to solve. For a time he doubted even the solvency of the estate, but later reckonings had shown him that this fear was not justified, though the fact brought small relief to his mind, for peculiar reasons connected with the character of the property itself. If he might have sold out everything, he could have paid off all the debts, leaving a small but sufficient competency for his mother's support. As for himself, he gave no thought for the future. He was young, strong and fit to meet fate unarmed. But he could not sell the property without unpardonable offence to his own soul and to the sentiment of the community which was to him the world. For by far the greater part of that property and altogether the most salable part of it consisted of the negroes, every one of whom had been born on Wanalah plantation as their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had been before them. Among the high class Virginians--the class to which Boyd Westover belonged by immemorial inheritance--it was held to be a shamefully impossible thing to sell a negro except for incorrigible crime, or for the purpose of bringing a man and wife together, on one plantation. "I simply will not sell the servants," the young man said to himself when matters seemed at their worst. "Rather than do that, I'll run them all off north, set them free and let the estate fall into bankruptcy." Since that time the young man's close study of the situation had convinced him that neither of these courses was necessary. By cutting down the force of house servants to the measure of his own and his mother's modest needs, and putting every able-bodied negro at profitable work in the crops, he was confident that he could make the plantation carry its load of debt and slowly reduce it. That was now his task, and in spite of the glory of the midsummer morning his mind was busy planning ways and means, when suddenly a combined baying from the hounds arrested his attention. Looking up he saw a young woman on horseback in a pasture not far ahead--a young woman in difficulty and sore danger.