The purchase was in train, and in its own fashion Gideon's sluggish nature rejoiced.

He was as land-mad as any other Virginian, but he had neither a lavish hand nor a climbing eye.

What he loved was the black earth beneath the tobacco, and to walk between the rows and feel the thick leaves.

For him it sufficed to rise at dawn and spend the day in the fields overseeing the hands, to come home at dusk to a supper of corn bread and bacon, to go to bed within the hour and sleep without a dream until cockcrow, to walk the fields again till dusk and supper-time.

Church on Sunday, Charlottesville on Court Days, Richmond once a year, varied the monotony.