Show I 1 J ante callic LIE ERMINE rivea 49 ab elte caeti uth oe LAUREN stout y ay oy adaa colw flav ff av 80 J SYNOPSIS 14 a rich docte favorite NI jant ballant feel that tho the a llant cor founded anti and ller ach ills his father feed oratio he principal rin cipal source of tits hla very b hs cLi ailed led ho voluntarily turns turna rato 1 fortune to tite receiver celver re 1 pa ver I 1 r tv a tion corporation r r th or r the c 3 t CHAPTER ill III continued aln to be out sidel all that light and as olor color and comfort and pleasure would um and sparkle on just the same a bough he was no longer within the OIL circle role of its effulgence slaving per ba haps aps be thought with a twisted smile occupation tion that called tawdry q at EO some me for it no experience to pay tor for a 0 meal to in a some second rato rate restaurant and a ill pallet allet in some shabby genteel hall ball I 1 bedroom ledro orn till his clothes wore were replaced be by r ill fitting hand nie me downs till by wretched fetched gradations lie he arrived finally A bt at the status of the dime seat in the 0 gallery illery and five cent cigars 4 there was one way back it lay 11 through the hackneyed gateway of t marriage youth comeliness and fine en JA in the tha world he know knew were a fair air exchange for wealth any day outlet cutlet for cutlet the satiric phrase ran through his mind why not others biers did so BO and as for himself it perhaps need bo 60 no question of at plain I 1 and spinster ed millions there was katharine fargo in his heart john valiant was aware by those subtle signs w which litch men and women nomen alike distinguish that while katharine fargo loved first and foremost her own wonderful person he had bad been an easy second in her regard john valiant looked down at the bulldog squatted on the floor hla his eyes shining in the dimness A little hot ripple bad run over him not on your life chuml chum he said no shameless barter there must be other things besides money and social position in this doddering old world after 01 were going to begin something lor for ourselves it if its only raising cabbages and were going to stand it without any baby aching the nurse never held our noses when we took our castor oil it was folded down that old bright brig ht page finis had bad been written to the rose colored chapter and even as he told himself he was conscious of a new rugged something that had been slowly dawning within him a sense of courage even of zest and a furious hatred of the self pity that had bad wrenched him even for a moment he HB turned from the window picked up his letters and followed by the dog went slowly up another flight to his bis room 0 ile ho tore open the letters abstractedly 7 the usual dinner card or two a tailors spring announcement a chronic serial from an exclamatory marble quarrying company a quarterly statement of a club house committee the tha last two missives bore a nondescript ak k one was small with the name of a legal firm in its corner the other was largish corpulent and heavy of stout manila paper and bore down one side a gaudy procession of postage stamps proclaiming that it had bad been registered in that I 1 wonder he said to himself and then with a smile at I 1 for fol a long time john valiant sat motionless the opened letter in his hand staring at nothing the speculation opened the smaller envelope dear sir began the letter in the most uncompromisingly conventional of typewriting dear sir enclosed please find with title deed aeed a memorandum opened in your 11 came ne by the late john valiant some years before his death it was his bis desire that the services indicated in connection with this estate should continue till this date we wa hand you herewith our check for awu t afu hundred and thirty six dollars and twenty cents the balance in your favor for which please send receipt and oblige yours very truly Em emerson erEon and dall ball enclosure he turned to the memorandum it bowed a sizable initial deposit against which was entered a series of andua annual 1 tax payments with minor disbursements credited to inspection and care the tax receipts were pinned to tile tho account the larger wrapper contained an unsealed so aled envelope across which was written iten in faded ink and in an enfa millar dashing slanting handwriting his own name the envelope contained a creased yellow parchment from between whose folds there clumped and fluttered nutt ered down upon the floor a long flattish object wrapped in a paper a newspaper clipping arid and a letter puzzled he unfolded the crackling thing in his fits hands why he said halt half aloud its its a deed made over to no me lie ile overran it swiftly part of an old colony grant a plantation in virginia twelve hundred odd acres given under the hand of a vice regal governor in the sixteenth century I 1 had no idea titles in the united states went back so far as that ills eye led fled to the end it was my fathers father 91 what could he have wanted of an estate in virginia it must have come into his hands in the course of business lie ho picked up the newspaper clipping it was worn and broken in the folds as if it had been carried for months in a pocketbook it will interest readers of this section of virginia the paragraph began to learn from EL a recent transfer received tor for record at the county clerks office that damory court has passed to mr air john valiant minor lie ile turned tho the paper over and found a date it had been printed in the year of the transfer to himself when he bo was six years old the year his father had died john valiant minor tho the son of the former owner there are few indeed who do not recall the tragedy with which in the public mind the estate is connected the tact fact moreover that this old homestead has been let left in its present state for as is well known the house bouse has remained with all its contents and furnishings nish ings untouched to rest during so long a terra term of years yeara unoccupied could not of course fall to be commented on and this circumstance alono alone has perhaps tended to keep alive amelai choly story which may well be forgotten ile he read the elaborate rather stilted phraseology in the twenty year old paper with a wondering interest an old house he mused with a bad 0 name nam o probably he sell cell it and maybe nobody would ever live in it that would explain why it remained so long unoccupied why there are no records of rentals probably the land was starved and run down its an offset off oft set to the hall bedroom idea at any rate he said to himself humorously it holds out an escape from the noble army of rent payers when my twenty eight hundred is gone I 1 coull could live down there a landed proprietor and by the same mark an honorary colonel and raise the cabbages I 1 was talking about eh chum while you stalk rabbits how does that strike you ile he lauga d whimsically ile he john valiant of abw ew york first nighter at its theaters tall L all fellow well met in its club corridors arid and welcome diner at any one of a hundred bundred brilliant glass and sliver silver twinkling supper tables entombed on the wreck of a virginia plantation a would be country gentl gentleman e on un automobile and next to noth nothings inga ing a year ile he bethought himself of the fallen letter and possessed himself ct cf it quickly it lay with tho the superscription side down on n it was written in the same hand which had bad addressed the other envelope for my son john valiant when he reaches the age ageos of that then had been written by hta his father and he had bad died nearly twenty years ago lie he broke the seal with a as if walking in some familiar thoroughfare he be had stumbled on a ant aart sunken tombstone when you read this my sou son you will have come to mans man a estate it Is curious to think that tinis black black ink may be faded to gray and this white white paper yellowed just from lying waiting so long but strangest ot of all Is to think that you yourself whose brown head hardly tops this desk will be as ag tall 1 I hope as I 1 how I 1 wonder what yo yov will look like chent and shall 1 I th teal eal real 1 I 1 I mean be peering ov your strong broad shoulder as aa yi read who knows wise men hope dreamed such i a thing possible and I 1 am not a bit wise john you will not have forgotten that you are a valiant dut but you are also a virg virginian antan will you have discovered this for yourself hero is the deed to the land where I 1 and my father and tits his father and many many more gallants Vali Val ants lants before them were born sometime perhaps you will know why you are john valiant of now new york in stoid sted sto i d or of john valiant of damory court I 1 can not tell you ikye because it la Is too true a story and I 1 have forgotten fr gotten how bow to tell any but fairy tales othere everything gappens right where the prince marries the beautiful princess and they live ll 11 va happily to gether ever arter you may nover never care to live at damory court maybe tho the life you will know so well by tho the tini time e you read this will have welded you to itself it so go well arid ad good then leave the old place laco to your son but there la Is such buch ic thing as racial habit arid and the call of blood arid and I 1 know thero there la in such a thing too as a fate every man carries his fate on a about hla his nock neck so BO the moslem put it it was my fate to go away and I 1 know now since distance la is not made by miles alone that I 1 myself shall never see ece damory court again but life Is a strange wheel that goes round and round and comes back to the same point again and again and it maybe may be your fate to go back then perhaps you will cry 00 C she was the first to recover you did look so funny I 1 but oh not on the old white bears skin rug never again with me holding your small email small hand 1 housel wishing housel where are you and this old parchment deed will answer here I 1 am master here I 1 am ali ah we are only children after all playing out our plays I 1 have had bad many toys but 0 john john jabal the ones I 1 treasure most are all in the never never landt land CHAPTER IV A valiant of virginia for a long time john valiant sat motionless the opened letter in his hand staring blaring at nothing he had the sensation spiritually of a traveler awakened with a rudo rude shock amid wholly unfamiliar surroundings he ha was trying to remember to put two and two together ills his father had been southern born yes he had known that but he had known nothing whatever of his fathers eany earby days or of his forebears bears since he had been old enough to wonder about such things he be had bad alad no one to ask I 1 questions of phrases of the letter fan through his mind sometime ome time perhaps you will know why you are john valiant of new york instead of john valiant of damory court 0 1 I cannot tell you myself there was some tragedy then that had chad blighted the place some melancholy story as the clipping put it he bent over tho the deed spread out upon the table following with his finger the iong line of transfers to john Val he be muttered what odd spelling lingl robert Val yant with out the e here in 1730 the y begins to be 1 I 1 there was something strenuous arid and appealing in the long lino line of dates valiant always a valiant low ilow I they held on to it theres never a break A curious pride newborn new born and self belt conscious was dawning in him ile he was descended from ancestors who had been no weaklings wea klings A vallan valiant t had settled on those acres under tinder a royal governor before the old frontier fighting was over and the indians had bad sullenly retired to the westward the sons of at those who had braved sea and savages had bowed their strong bodies and their stronger hearts to raze ate forests and turn the primeval jungles into golden plantations there stole into fate tits ills mood an aery suggestion of intention why should tho the date assigned for that deeds delivery have been the very day on which lie he had elected poverty hero was a foreordination as pointed as the index fanger anger of a guidepost guide post every man carries his tate fate he repeated on a about his neck chum do you believe in tate rate for answer the bulldog cocking an alert eye on his master his bis occupation a tf it unsuccessful mastication of the flattish packet that had fallen from the folder folded deed and with much solicitous tall tad wg egging ging brought the sodden thing in his mouth and put it into the outstretched hand ills his master unrolled the pulpy wad and extricated the object it had enclosed an old fashioned iron door key 4 4 s 0 0 0 after a time valiant thrust aha kov 1 into its his pocket and rising went to a trunk that lay against tho the wall searching in fit a portfolio lie ho took out a aniball old fashioned photograph much battered arid soiled it had been put cut front a larger group anil and tile the name of tho the photographer had been erased from the back lie ho set it upright on the desk and bonding banding forward looked long 1019 at the faco face it disclosed it was the iho only picture lie ho had ever possessed of its his father ilo ile turned and looked into tho the glass above abobo the alio dresser tile tho faatu features res were the same eyes brow lips and strong waving hair but tor for its time staais the photograph might have been one ot of himself yesterday 1 I V on the rod road tho the green mid may virginian afternoon was arched with a sky as blue as the tiles ot at tho the temple of heaven and steeped in a wash of sunlight as collow as gold nothing in all the springy landscape but looked warm and opalescent and inviting except capt a tawny bull that from across a barred fence corner switched a truculent tall in silence arid glowered sullenly at the big motor halted motionless at tho the side of the twisting road curled wormlike worm like in the tha drivers seat with his fits chin on his knees john valiant sat with hla his eyes upon the distance for an hour he had whirred whirled through that wondrous shimmer of color alth a flippant loitering breeze lit in his face sweet from the crimson clover that poured and rooted over the roadside chum old man an said valiant with T his arm about tho the bulldogs neck if those color photograph chaps had shown us this we simply havo have believed it would we such scenery beats the roads were used to what ile he wound his strong fingers in a choking grip in the scruff of the white neck as a chipmunk chattered by on the low stone wall no you dont you cann cannibal iball hes a jolly lit tle tie beggar and be deserve boing eaten lie ile oiled filled hla his briar wood pipe and drew in great breaths breathe of the fragrant incense what a pity you dont smoke chum you miss such a lota after a time be shook himself and knocked the red core from tho the pipe bowl against heel 1 I hate to start he confessed half to the dog and halt half to himself to leave anything so beautiful as this however on with the dance by the road map the village cant be tar far now so long mr bull lie he clutched the self belt starter but there was only a protestant wheeze the car declined to budge climbing down he cranked vigorously the motor turned over with a surly grunt of remonstrance and after a tentative throb throb coughed and stopped dead something was wrong with a sigh he flung oft off his tweed donned a smudgy jumper opened his bis toolbox tool box and with a glance at his wristwatch wrist watch which told win him it was three k threw up the monsters hood and went bitterly to work at halt half past three the investigation had got as tar far as the lubricator at four the bulldog had giyen given it up and gone nosing afield at halt past four john valiant lay flat on hla his back like some disreputable stevedore ste vadore alternately tinkering with |